"Mustang" is bold, audacious and a revelation about young women's lives in Turkey

A very insightful movie about the way young girls and women are treated and dealt with when it comes to marriage in old fashioned, conservative countries. Not unlike most places in the Middle East, arranged marriages are very common in Turkey, and the five orphan girls who are the subjects of this coming of age - and coming-of-forced-marriage - drama are uniquely born in the wrong place, but at a time when rebellious and sexually promiscuous behavior constantly clash with the cultural norms of a strict Muslim society. Director Deniz Gamze Ergüven has made a very important film about an even more important issue facing all women in backwards countries that are still practicing outdated traditions of the past, but in today's changing and (somewhat) progressive world it creates conflict and drama like no other topic. The lives that young women especially are subjected to in these places are sad and depressing indeed, and some parts were difficult to watch, albeit necessary for the delivery of its gut wrenching theme. I don't think I'll ever want to watch this movie again; however, I will remember it for many years to come.
A-

"The Night Manager" is the best le Carre TV/movie adaptation yet

I must admit, I've not been a fan of relatively recent movies based on John le Carre's novels.  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and A Most Wanted Man were rather bland and overwrought, and left a lot to be desired.  I'm not ashamed to admit that until I saw the new TV miniseries The Night Manager, I thought the man's works were overrated and not really adaptable for the screen.  What the hell did I know.

The Night Manager, new miniseries (BBC and AMC) based on one of le Carre's novels from some thirty years ago, is good.  No, seriously.  It's really good.   Exploring the secret mission of one Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), a British agent working undercover to bring down an international illegal arms smuggler Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), the series is perfectly written, directed and acted all around.  We are treated to some glorious locales around the globe - Egypt, Spain, England, Turkey, Switzerland, to name just a few - and the cast does an excellent job of emitting subtle details of their characters' relationships to one another.  Ascene in a seafood restaurant between a frustrated Lance Corkoran (Tom Hollander) and an under-appreciated waiter is executed to near perfection; Hollander himself deserves an award for his bold performance, which is convincing to the max.

Director Susanne Bier, who admirably helmed every single episode, does a terrific job of keeping the tension and suspense at the highest level, from the opening moment to the final second.  She captures le Carre's story and theme appropriately, and is just as much of a creator of the story's time and place as le Carre here (setting has been updated from the novel's 1980s to today).  I don't know if there really are bad guys like Roper in our world, but it's hard to imagine there not being anyone who at least slightly resembles him.  All I can do in that case is hope that a real-life Jonathan Pine is out there somewhere, endangering himself and risking everything to keep us and our neighbors safe.
A

"10 Cloverfield Lane" is 80% bore, 20% excitement: all in all, mediocre

Misery meets War of the Worlds, kind of. The unfortunate thing is, there's too much of the former, and not enough of the latter. The movie has nice "bookends": the first 5 minutes, and the last 10 or so. However, it's the middle portion where it drags and becomes exhausting. John Goodman is not very convincing as the large, lonely bully who has plenty of skeletons in his closet, and whose attempt to impersonate a "savior" is obviously a charade. His tone is all over the place, and I didn't find much of his performance to be genuine at all; instead, it's labored and over the top. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the real deal, and it's just unfortunate she doesn't have a better script to go with her obviously superior acting. I never cared much for the 2008 movie Cloverfield that this film is clearly a spin-off of. I'm not sure that I'd honestly ever want to re-watch either one again. The trailer for this one was great, though. Too bad that the whole movie doesn't possess that kind of mysterious excitement.
C

"The Beauty" leaves impression of a FOX TV drama: bland and overstuffed

When I first saw the copies of the somewhat recent Image comic The Beauty on the stands, I was mesmerized by its cover of a woman who appears to be ill with some very ominous sickness.   Who was she?  Where did she come from?  How did she come to appear this ... dead?  All these questions when through my mind.  But alas, I got answers to some of them - if not all - after having read the first Trade Paperback issue.

Featuring a pair of detectives who may or may not be secretly into each other, a la Scully and Mulder of X-Files fame, Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley's new enigmatic, sci-fi-meets-possible-apocalyptic-doom-in-form-of-a-deadly-disease comic does remind one of old TV shows from Fox network (Fringe, anyone?).  Vaughn and Foster are investigating The Beauty, which is a sexually transmitted virus that gives its victims physical and cosmetic bliss, but also kills them by making their head combust internally, like a light bulb whose interior gases have expanded just a bit too much.

The artwork by Haun is clean and precise; his characters look more or less the same from page to page and from issue to issue, and that is not something that can be said of every work in the contemporary world of American comics.  However, the script/story here is a bit flat: it's simply overwritten, featuring too many characters whose motivations and intentions remain unclear.  I couldn't help but wonder if the appearance of a mysterious "villain", Mr. Calaveras, - who resembles Red Skull of Captain America universe - is simply there for show.  Calaveras likes to slice and dice prostitutes he sleeps with, and also touch naked men as much as he pleases.  Not only that, he has a bunch of goons who, when they get trigger happy, like to shoot up police who are on the verge of discovering a cure for The Beauty.  All that aside, he really isn't very interesting at all.  In other words, he's all style, no substance.

The Beauty reminds me a great deal of another Image comic that I've recently come across, Injection.    Just as in that one, I found the idea here of a world threatened by a virus or some other man-made impending doom somewhat unsatisfying, especially for a comic.  This medium, as diverse as it is nowadays with numerous genres and its leading heroic characters by various publishers, simply needs to be more fun. Or if it should take the serious tone, it should at the very least be engaging.  Sadly, The Beauty is not quite either.
C

"Keanu" is a one-note comedy which contains less laughs than one of Key & Peele's sketches

Meh. Forgettable. I'm a huge fan of Key & Peele, and their Comedy Central show was, for the most part, hilarious. But I honestly laughed maybe 3 or 4 times here, which is just as many times that I laugh in one of their 3 or 4 minute sketches. Many have already said that this movie is a bad sketch stretched out to feature length, and for the most part, they're right. The script is really lazy, suggesting additional sub plots that go nowhere (what is up with Clarence's wife and that dude who go on a weekend getaway together? And what is it exactly that he does that ends up offending her so? A better movie would've dealt with these issues), and additionally, it just takes the one-joke and runs with it, whether the gags work or not. For the most, part they do not. It's a shame, because these guys are very funny and talented; they just don't really prove any of that here.
C

"30 Days of Night: Dark Days" continues the vampire saga, but a little further south this time around

This sequel story to Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's dark and murky illustrated vampire tale 30 Days of Night takes us to sunny California, far away from the frozen and dark vastness of the small Alaskan town, Barrow.  Stella Olemaun, wife of the deceased sheriff of Barrow, Eben Olemaun, arrives in Los Angeles to promote her new book about her encounter with vampires, hoping to raise awareness about the presence of these bloodsuckers in our world.  The thing is, no one believes her, and she's therefore forced to resort to alternative methods.

30 Days of Night: Dark Days continues to present us with pages that are predominantly black and difficult to define.  Their content is hardly ever clear, and is confusing more often than not; characters are identifiable, but their actions sometimes are not.  It is especially difficult to decipher scenes of conflict.  When two or more characters are involved in a fight, the result is the comic book version of a nuclear explosion captured in still time: it is impossible to tell who's winning, who is actually who on the page, and what the final result of such conflict is.

The unfortunate thing about this serial is that the very thing that made it unique and special - the stylish and overly ominous artwork - is the same thing that drags it down.  Illustration and drawing style aside, Stella's relationship with the vampire Dane here is well handled, and is definitely the aspect of this story that elevates it above its predecessor.  At the end, when Stella is somehow able to resurrect her dead husband Eben back to life, we're unsure if this is a clever ploy from Niles to inject a pleasant twist into the series, or a desperate move from a writer running out of fresh ideas.  Either way, Dark Days is a slight improvement, but it still leaves a lot to be desired, especially from a graphic standpoint.
C+

"Zootopia's" ambitions are grand, its leads are righteous and charming, and its story is charistmatic and engaging

A brave and ambitious new Disney movie, one that takes chances I've not seen in years (perhaps decades?). Visually and cosmetically, this is a movie for children, full of colorful animals and cute-looking characters they surely will adore; however, from a content perspective, the script is very clever and daring, exploring themes of "us vs. them" that is reminiscent of a coming of age drama, and as such only adults will be able to fully appreciate what it's trying to do. The Fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) is a character for the ages, a scoundrel willing to rip anyone and everyone off for his own personal gain in this universe where Foxes aren't given the benefit of the doubt, but he's also a kind and thoughtful creature capable of surprising gestures. Ginnifer Goodwin's Judy Hopps is a young idealist prepared to do whatever's necessary to uphold the universal justice she holds so dear to her heart. The scene between these two characters in which she apologizes to him for being previously mean is worth the entire admission. The good thing is, the movie doesn't have a single bad scene. One of the best movies of the year.
A