I Watch Them So You Don't Have To

Greetings, gentle readers. 
I've been housebound and bed-ridden invalid for months and I would be remiss as my duty as a gimp if I were to fail to share my experiences with the world at large.  In this case, I've had the opportunity to watch all of the under-marketed and under-distributed films of the recent decade or so.  I can thus try to enlighten and educate people at large as to which films on late-night cable or on whatever streaming service to which they subscribe, are worthy of a 90+ minute investment.
I'm going to have to do this in installments, so I've decided to go through films in order of genre.

I've never heard of that film...

Biographies

• Borg v. McEnroe (2018) - Shia LeBoeuf does a credible job as John "The Brat" McEnroe, but this film is really about how Björn Rune Borg was almost as crazy-bonkers.  Honestly.  The tennis sequences are not terribly interesting, and adult-Borg is not as interesting as child-Borg.  A boring watch unless you're a Swede who believes that your ethnicity bestows a hidden and latent Viking ferocity that expresses itself in oppressively monotonous press conferences.  Two jellybeans.
• Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017) - If you didn't know that Wonder Woman was constructed on the basis of BDSM fantasy, then please feel free to crawl back under your rock.  She has a rope that compels bound victims to tell the truth, she has constrictive jewellery that repels bullets, and she wears the closest thing to a corset-bikini permissible by the United States censors.  Unpopular viewing for those unwilling to see "female empowerment" reduced to "male bondage fantasy." Kinky, but basically a tepid rebellion against 1950s moral censorship. Two jellybeans.
• Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017) - Domhnall Gleeson makes the character of A.A. Milne rarely rise above the emotional level of an animated corpse and even then only in the absence of Margot Robbie.  An oddly-edited film that gives the impression it was cobbled together from anecdotes given by conflicting witnesses.  If you want to watch a film that wonders aloud what makes a delightful high society wit and playwright into a drab and sullen recluse, or why a woman can flap between meaningless histrionics and doting melodramatic maternal feelings for no other reason than a decades-long post-partum thing... go ahead.  But any insights hidden in the film are broken by the disjointed display of third-party-observed tableaux, rather than any elucidation by any of the participants.  One jellybean.
• Rebel In The Rye (2017) - This film disappeared in part because Kevin Spacey was publicly unmasked as a sexual predator who claimed amnesty because of mitigating homosexuality.  It also disappeared for good reason because J.D. Salinger is a ridiculously difficult subject for a film, and Salinger himself helped to perpetuate his own obscurity.  For lack of primary source material, this film falls into the same trap as "Goodbye Christopher Robin" in that it appears to be a pastiche of anecdotes contrived to form a narrative with a thematic agenda.  Nicholas "About a Boy" Hoult tries to show Salinger as an earnest, but PTSD-afflicted misanthrope, but in the final analysis, we are not given any insights into the universal appeal of Salinger's works, the literary techniques he employs, or the underlying philosophy embodied in his fictitious literary Glass family.  In fact, Salinger's work, with the exception of "Catcher in the Rye" is largely ignored in favour of meandering scenes of angst that try to depict the author as the titular "Rebel" when in fact there is very little rebellion on display. The film is not awful, but will leave Salinger aficionados unsatisfied, and the literary uninitiated puzzled.  One and a half jellybeans. 
• Jeremiah Tower:  The Last Magnificent (2016) - a sad film by any stretch, but an interesting one for anyone interested in the business side of running a restaurant.  An interesting elucidation on the intersection of celebrity, cuisine, and finance.  Particularly poignant is the story of homosexual backlash against Jeremiah in San Francisco during the heated days of perceived AIDS/HIV discrimination, and just how that ridiculous situation intersected with the earthquake in the 1980s.  Three and half jellybeans.
• A Futile and Stupid and Gesture (2018) - As much as Domhnall Gleeson made A. A. Milne feel like an emotionless automaton in "Goodbye Christopher Robin", he was at least a humourous homunculus in this film - and the only real avenue for a viewer to gain access to the story of Douglas Kenney.  Harvard Lampoon and National Lampoon were institutions founded in juvenile pranks and hysterical spoofs, and yet the film only wants to see the protagonist as a substance-abuser with an overwhelming desire to make his father proud.  The laughs and hijinks are muted so that the psychological narrative can be firmly stamped all over Will Forte's anguished face.  Gleeson deadpans the only witty and acerbic lines in the film, while Forte plays the doomed antihero to a slow and pedantic conclusion.  After watching this film, a neophyte would wonder how "Animal House" made any money at the box office.  One jellybean.
• Chappaquiddick (2018) - A film with a lot of content, but resonates with as much authenticity as a tin drum.  Jason Clarke plays a Ted Kennedy as a perpetually befuddled and confused child with an overwhelming family burden to succeed in the footsteps of his two assassinated brothers.  That's the angle.  Everything else is basically a recitation of evidence admitted in court with a few details chipped in by minor participants.  Large questions are left unanswered, and Kennedy is basically portrayed as an incompetent victim, despite suspicions that he may actually have been a murderous coward.  Even though Ted has been dead for almost a decade, there is still some sort of reverent hesitation that makes this film feel restrained and inauthentic.  Clancy Brown's depiction of Robert McNamara earns this film an extra half jellybean.  One and a half jellybeans.
• Anthropoid (2016) - Ordinarily, historical films involving Nazis are pretty straightforward - guys in the jackboots with the lightning bolts on their lapels are bad, and people in leather jackets and berets are good.  Can't go wrong.  Somehow this film does.  Reynhard Heydrich was a truly awful human being - so inhuman as to be categorized as anthropoid (man-like).  He was so awful that the rest of the Third Reich didn't know how to get rid of him without angering Hitler himself.  We thus reach a point in history where a pack of heroic Czechs, led by Cilian Murphy try to assassinate the evil bastard at the same time as the German High Command tries to shuffle him somewhere where he can do less harm.  With a narrow window of opportunity, the freedom fighters botch the assassination, allowing the wounded Heydrich to decree all manner of horrid reprisals before he dies under attendance of his own medical staff.  Their degree of medical participation in his demise is unknown.  The new German occupation then spend the remaining forty minutes of the film trying not to kill the partisans before finally surrendering to fate and putting them (and the plot) out of its misery.  One jellybean.
• Battle of the Sexes (2017) - One would think that the landmark match between Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King in 1973 could have used a number of angles.  Billie Jean King was fighting for some degree of pay equity between genders, so there's the feminist angle.  Riggs had previously beaten women's number one Margaret Court handily, so there is a technical sporting angle of the tactics and athleticism required in tennis at that time.  The film could have focused on King herself (played by a bored-looking Emma Stone), who was just coming to terms with her sexual orientation.  It could have focused on Riggs, who was battling a gambling addiction as well as his female opponents.  In the end, there is no real focus.  King is portrayed as rather dull person whose personal life could never be as interesting as her net play, despite infidelity and lesbianism.  The matches are only shown as tantalising snapshot tableaux, and Riggs (played capably by Steve Carell) seems to get far more screen time than one might expect, considering the rather linear progression of his character.  Deeply unsatisfying, and unfair to the subjects of its source material.  One jellybean.
• Death of Stalin (2017) - A truly strange film about some truly strange events.  Totalitarian states lend themselves to parody because so much of their machinations seem absurd to the casual observer.  Thus, when Stalin is found facedown in his office, the Communist political apparatus finds itself paralyzed, since all decisions were made by the insensate leader.  The confusion only grows in magnitude when it is eventually determined that he has, at some point, actually died.  The fact that the events are based on historical fact somehow makes the whole scenario even more darkly humourous.  Steve Buscemi does a remarkable job of portraying Nikita Khruschev, the bald bureaucrat who somehow manages to navigate the corridors of power without alienating too many of the lurking psychopaths, but Jason Isaacs positively steals the show as Georgy Zhukov.  The bombastic field marshal steals every scene as some sort of Nazi-stomping Yorkshire gangster with a direct approach to every situation in direct contradiction of all of the political weasels in the Kremlin.  Michael Palin is great as old Vyacheslav Molotov, and even has a couple of tear-jerking scenes in stark relief to his hysterical performances as a member of Monty Python.  A remarkably substantial film, and definitely worth a watch.  Four jellybeans.
• The Disaster Artist (2017) - The problem with making a meta-production of a film about the making of an existing film is that it becomes terribly easy to fill screen time with that of the topic film rather than the action of that film's production.  In this regard, "The Disaster Artist" manages to tread a fine line.  Once one gets past the gormless and pathetic gurning of Dave Franco, his elder brother James actually turns in a notable performance as quirky nutjob Tommy Wiseau, though some of the best scenes in the film are found when James Franco's scenery-chewing grandstanding is tempered with colleague Seth Rogen's cynical interjections as Sandy Schklair.  Entertaining without being enlightening, it's an amusing detour into Franco's thespian self-indulgence.  Three jellybeans.
• The Founder (2016) - This is a fantastic exploration of the McDonald's corporate phenomenon.  The story makes so much sense in hindsight that one wonders how it came down to a schmuck like Ray Kroc to create a lucrative multibillion-dollar empire using simple first principles.  Michael Keaton has a difficult row to hoe, making a conniving swindler like Kroc palatable as a protagonist, and yet manages to do so commendably.  Any other actor playing an character that ditches a wife played by Laura Dern and cheats aw-shucks good guys played by Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch would face ostracism by proxy, but Keaton somehow manages to imbue his greed with a Gordon Gecko-esque charm.  Not the glossiest production, but earnest and candid.  Four Jellybeans.

And to quickly recap my last random musical songlisting in the hope that the universe is speaking through me through my iPod, here are the last tracks that were given to me during my last shower.

• Pig Bad, by Bad Manners
• Fishes on the Line, by Lightning Seeds
• Sail on Sailor, by Matthew Sweet and Darius Rucker
• Star Baby, by The Guess Who
• ElectroFunk 21, by DJ John
• San Jacinto, by Peter Gabriel

And that's all for now.  When next we meet, I will continue my movie reviews.  I'm probably going to call the next genre Drama just to simplify such categorizations as Noir, Thriller, Psychological Whatnot, or Mystery.  After that, I reckon I can have Action subsume such categories as Adventure, Sci-Fi, Crime, and Horror.
Until then, goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS