Death Wish

Yeah, the Charles Bronson original. I remember liking this as a teenager. Probably because it was "scandalous" or something. Charles Bronson is a man whose wife and daughter are attacked and he's had enough. He's gonna take out the punks who did it! Look for Jeff Goldblum in an early role as one of the douchebag punks. Anyway, the version on Netflix is at least slightly shorter than I remember, with the rape scene being a bit shorter. Anyway, this movie isn't very good and time has not been kind to it. 3/10.

The Central Park Five

Ken Burns documentary on the five black teenagers (wrongfully) convicted of a 1989 attempted murder and rape of a white female jogger in Central Park. If you want to be angry at a whole bunch of people at once, this is a good choice to watch. You've got the cops focusing on this group of teenagers for no apparent reason other than they were somewhere in the park that same night. And then they interrogate them for hours and hours without attorneys or family, eventually coercing factually incorrect false confessions from four of them. Then the DA pushes forward with a prosecution with - literally - only the confessions as evidence. The defense attorneys are incompetent, either doing nothing or claiming "well, he just watched" instead of actually saying their guy was not present. It's all a big mess. And, oh yeah, the cops had DNA from the case and DNA from the guy who actually committed the crime and either never compared the two or ignored the results. The end result is a powerful documentary that is well-made but not a complete home run. The question of what crimes the five may have actually committed that night is never answered, for example. Still, this is a good doc. 8/10.

* - The end of the movie states that the boys' lawsuit against NYC and others had yet to reach resolution. Since the making of the movie, a settlement was announced but I don't know if that ever came to fruition. Meanwhile, the DA in the case still thinks the boys are guilty even though the only DNA present at the scene was that of the guy who confessed.

The Company Men

Ben Affleck plays a sales guy who gets downsized in the wake of the economic crisis. Tommy Lee Jones is his boss and Craig T Nelson is the CEO. Kevin Costner plays the brother-in-law. This is a somber movie with a few light moments that takes a pretty realistic look at what happens to upper-middle class (or above) folks who lose their jobs and their employment prospects afterward. Affleck is solid, Nelson is good, Tommy Lee plays himself, and Costner demonstrates the hilarity of his (in)ability to do a good accent. Good movie that doesn't really strive for greatness and thus never gets there. I did get a bit of a chuckle out of the financial situation Affleck is in - he makes $125k + incentives and is his family's sole paycheck, yet they live in a home that's worth well north of $1m. If that doesn't just explain the mortgage crisis in a nutshell, LOL. Anyway, good movie that just creeps over the Tabedoza line - 8/10.

The Story of Luke

Luke is a 25-year old autistic man raised by his grandparents from an early age. His grandmother, who taught him to cook and homeschooled him through high school, has just passed away, leaving Grandpa to go into a nursing home and Luke to go live with his aunt and uncle. They are nearing a divorce, the aunt is unlikable, and Luke thinks he'd like to get a job and "screw". The movie centers on Luke's different relationships with the folks in his life - the bitchy aunt he helps to soften, the receptionist at the job place that he decides he should date, the cousin who helps him look for jobs, etc. And those relationships work well. It's the one with his job trainer, played by Seth Green, that doesn't. Green plays an autistic man very aware of his condition who pretends to be normal but mostly just spends the movie screaming at Luke and calling him "retard". It's a painfully awful exaggeration of a character and a huge negative on the movie. He's also developed a software program that imitates "normal" people so Luke can talk to it and practice being normal. That's about as realistic as me dating Julianne Hough & Amy Adams - at the same time. Good grief. Green's entire character drags the movie down big-time. Luke himself is awkward but a lot higher functioning than expected, in that he's able to understand sarcasm and figures of speech, etc. In the end, this is a movie that could have been a nice, sweet tale of a young man overcoming difficulties but instead is just a mediocre maudlin attempt at doing that. 6/10.

Twisted

Sometimes you just want something pretty mindless playing in the background while you're occupied with something else. Hence this movie. It was either that or Boys Don't Cry, but I figured that would require a bit more of my attention. Anyway, Ashley Judd is a very promiscuous homicide detective who gets a big promotion on the back of solving a series of murders. The twist is she's also the daughter of a former cop turned serial killer who also killed her mom. Soon, another killer is active and he's killing...her sexual conquests. And she's got no alibi for the times of their murders, soon becoming a prime suspect. Or is the killer her partner? Or ??? When I chose this as a "mindless movie", I was definitely right. Another thriller that fails to rise above the mediocre entries in its genre. The cast is good - Judd, Andy Garcia, Samuel L Jackson - but they've got nothing to work with. Ho hum... 4/10.

Taking Lives

Angelina Jolie is an FBI profiler called to Montreal to assist with a murder case. Seems some guy is killing people and then taking their identities. Except Jolie is the one who figures that out, so why she got called in the first place is a mystery. Ethan Hawke is a witness to one of the murders. He and Jolie solve the case, hook up, etc. This is a pretty much by-the-numbers thriller that mostly is designed to have Jolie walking around looking "sexy professional" in her suits. That you never for one second believe she could possibly ever actually have that job is secondary. Another movie for the "not great" category - 5/10.

Enough

Remember when Jennifer Lopez was trying to become a big movie star and thought that a female empowerment vehicle was the way to go? Yeah, this is that movie. Anyway, J-Lo plays "Slim", a waitress swept off her feet by a millionaire into a wonderful life. There are signs early on that he's a creep but nothing too obvious. Years later, she learns he's being unfaithful. When confronted, he becomes physically abusive and tells her, basically, learn to live with it, Jenny From the Block. Well, Jenny ain't havin' it, so she flees. It all comes to a head with a showdown at his house after she's had roughly a month of training - becoming a super-awesome ninja/MMA god/assassin in the process. Anyway, this is essentially a big budget Lifetime "woman gets revenge on abusive man" movie. There are some gigantic plot holes and leaps in logic along with some weird side things (J-Lo is called, essentially, unattractive a couple times in the movie. WTF?) This is a dumb movie but not exactly terrible to watch. Wonder if her new movie, which undoubtedly will play out almost exactly the same, will be much different or better? Anyway... 4/10.