Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

It’s like a twisted Lifetime movie with better cursing. Performances are really strong. Filmmakers walk a delicate high-wire of tone; combining heavy grief with deadpan wit and southern sarcasm. The stakes are high, and Martin McDonagh and company handle these sudden shifts in tone skillfully. As my lovely wife Kristen Haldeman Kauffman said, “It’s more Coen Brothers than a Coen Brothers movie.” The aforementioned tone shifts, are, in some moments, exhilarating; there are several instances when humor is mined from terminal cancer. So it’s well-done, but occasionally sad.   

Murder on the Orient Express

Past incarnations of Poirot have depicted him as a big, fat slob. Who knows? Maybe Christie imagined him that way, too. But Kenneth Branagh has done for Poirot what Guy Richie did for Sherlock Holmes -- made him lean, spry, and a black belt in karate. The structure of Christie’s murder mystery means that we never get to know very much about the man murdered, the backstory, or the suspects until the very end, which makes the proceedings feel impersonal and distant. Be that as it may, the acting by the ensemble is top-notch, the sets are as "Harry Potterish" as they could be, and the pace is peppy.

Thor: Ragnarok

This was closer to a Power Rangers movie than the actual Power Rangers movie that came out a few months ago. Neon colors blast from the screen, heroes and villains crack wise and never shut up, nobody ever seems to be in any real peril. I was impressed by the music score composed by Devo guy and new wave guru Mark Mothersbaugh. It’s a combination of typical, bombastic superhero music, a "Missing Persons" album, and a Bret Easton Ellis, new-wave coke party. Usually, people want their superhero movies to be heroic in some way. Do good, save the world, conquer the evildoers. Act as some kind of remedy or analogue for society’s ills. Maybe we could learn to be better humans. "Ragnarok" intends to be pure fantasy. Funnier and more colorful than it should be. Irreverent and barely human. It’s never boring, but it’s not really a sustainable tone, either. Brief moments, like when the Valkyrie recalls a bygone battle atop a flying Pegasus, stoke the potential for a serious opera; a myth; a true Norse saga. I’d see that movie, too.