Very interesting film. This is the story of James “Whitey” Bulger and much of it is compelling stuff. First of all, it’s nice to see Johnny Depp doing some serious acting and he’s excellent in this. There were several scenes with just dialogue that were amazingly intense thanks to Depp’s performance. Some of the best work I’ve seen him do in years.

Second, what a surprise Joel Edgerton was in this. He was horrible in Exodus: Gods & Kings last year and I didn’t expect much but wow, he nearly stole every scene he was in, crafted a compelling character that seemed to be as much a lead as Depp, and was utterly believable with both his character and his Boston accent. Third, the true story is absolutely crazy (you can’t make this stuff up) and goes a long way to keeping the viewer glued to the twists and turns. Curiously, Benedict Cumberpatch isn’t that great here. His Boston accent is terrible. His character doesn’t have much to do of interest (he’s the younger Senator brother of Whitey Bulger) and much of his acting falls kind of flat. He’s usually great but I just don’t think the part was right for him this time around. The rest of the cast does excellent work though and made each scene worth watching.

One distracting thing was the makeup in some places. The contacts Depp wore were distracting as was some of his makeup. There were also a few whigs that looked really bad. But the costumes & art direction were fabulous, making up a lot for the few weird makeup issues. Didn’t kill the film but I can’t help thinking it would have been better if some of the makeup and whigs had been toned down.

I still have no idea why the film is called Black Mass but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It’s worth seeing just for Depp and Edgerton’s performances alone but there’s a lot more here to like. If you’re into true crime stories and mob movies, this is one of the best this year.

This is the follow-up to the highly profitable comedy hit 21 Jump Street. Again, the focus is on making it a comedy but this time the jokes and ridiculous situations are amped up even more. All the cast and directors/writers are back and things get moving right away.

I particularly liked a quick scene that featured the Benny Hill music with a couple of cars chasing each other across the screen several times. That’s the kind of clever throwback stuff I really respect and I only wish there had been more of it. Ice Cube also gets more screen time here and uses it quite well, getting one of the funniest scenes as he trashes a fancy lunch buffet.

There’s also a credits sequence at the end that posits tons of different mock sequels and it’s one of the funniest parts of the entire film. Does a great job at making fun of themselves and just having “fun” in general with the whole concept. I kind of wish the whole movie had just been a bunch of these sequences put together.

Strangely, this one tries for drama at certain points. Not serious drama but also not comedy and those scenes just came off feeling boring. There’s a few good laughs here but I’m not sure this achieved the same level of funny as the first one. That being said, it’s not that far off.

This is a remake of the 1980’s TV show 21 Jump Street starring Johnny Depp and although I only maybe saw a couple of episodes of the old show, this movie is very different. Is that a good thing?

It depends on whether or not you like crass humor. The approach here was to turn the concept of the TV show, instead into a comedy with two bumbling cops who are much too old and have to go back to High School to solve a case. Even though I’m not the biggest fan of the near universal approach to comedy today which centers on private part jokes, massive swearing, and blue improv lines, there were quite a few jokes that hit in this.

Specific credit needs to go to both Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum who have great chemistry and are pretty funny as a duo. Also, Phil Lord and Chris Miller (who also wrote and directed the much more clever and surprisingly funny Lego Movie) do a good job here mining the TV show for a lot of laughs. If you like this sort of comedy, this is one of the better ones I’ve seen lately.

M. Night Shyamalan has been in a rough creative slump over the past few years. After Earth was uncharacteristically boring and while I get what he was trying to do with The Last Airbender, almost nothing worked in that film. The Happening is only fun if you watch while mocking it (it is a truly “great” bad movie). But Night is so talented, from his high concept ideas to his beautiful cinematography, he’s someone in the film industry that we need firing on all cylinders.

So it was with a bit of trepidation that I watched The Visit. I’m pleased to report this is one of Night’s best films in years. It’s very clever in how it uses the “documentary-style” camera work to service the story. The Visit has more in common with The Sixth Sense in a lot of ways than Night’s other films. Not because of the twist but because the scares & suspense are both well done and don’t devolve into cheap jump scares. Night also uses tone masterfully to bring out a surprising number of emotions during the film from laugh out loud comedy to heartfelt drama and quite a few moments of fear & dread along the way.

I really enjoyed this and I’d say it’s one of Night’s best films in years. I hope he’s back on track because I’m really excited for what he cooks up next.

Director Alex Gibney also made the documentary film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015) which was very interesting and also brought up many troubling questions about Scientology. This film follows in the same format, presenting the dichotomy of Steve Jobs and bringing up troubling questions.

But what’s interesting to me is that several of the questions were nothing more than just troubling questions. The filmmakers would have you believe the case was closed and Jobs was absolutely guilty of everything they accused him of but it wasn’t as clear cut for me.

Several of the stories have been corroborated by multiple sources and I have no doubt in my mind are true such as Job’s early disavowal of his daughter, his sometimes abrasive and vindictive attitudes, and some of his half-truths to the media.

But the core of the film focuses more on 1) Apple’s offshore manufacturing, 2) Apple’s tax shelters, and 3) The stockholder share back-dating controversy.

Apple’s Offshoring: The big criticism lobbed at Apple was that they had horrible work conditions and low pay for workers. The director even says in voice over that Apple should have paid people more since Apple was getting such a great margin on their phones. That’s totally ridiculous. Apple is a company who is in the business of making money. So what if they’re margins are great. That doesn’t require them business-wise or even morally to pay their downstream providers more. And in regards to work conditions, the companies manufacturing Apple products are not Apple. They are separate companies. Apple trusts those companies to do business safely. So it isn’t as clear cut that Apple could go in there and run someone else’s China-based company just because work conditions were not up to standards.

Tax shelters: The criticism is that Apple has a large portion of their holdings in Irish tax shelter companies. Because the money is in Ireland, Apple avoids U.S. taxes for some of its holdings. The filmmakers want to say this is wrong but I don’t blame Apple at all. I’d do exactly the same. The U.S.’s corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world for Capitalist countries. So anyway that a company can legitimately protect some of its assets from those onerous taxes makes a lot of sense. It’s not illegal to have offshore holdings.

Stockholder back-dating:  The criticism was that Apple back-dated stock without disclosing and that Steve Jobs knew about it even though he is on record as saying he didn’t. I think this is probably totally true. Steve was a maverick and he worked the system to his advantage, possibly even doing illegal things in a ends justify the means type of way. Some people at Apple took the fall for him because the company would have been dealt a 20 Billion blow if not. Does this type of thing happen elsewhere? All the time. I’ve personally seen business people do all kinds of shady things with stock so even though this was morally wrong, it was not surprising.

Steve Jobs wasn’t a saint. He was a troubled man in many ways. He was great at what he did and that’s why a lot of people respect him. This film was much too focused on the negative for my tastes. I think there is a lot more to Steve Jobs than just the controversies in his life.

What a delightful little comedy from the 1950’s. I’m a huge Cary Grant fan and his one-liners & sarcasm absolutely shine in this. Somehow this film flew under my radar up until recently when I heard about it and I’m glad I did. It’s a mini-classic of the era and another great Cary Grant performance.

The script is fabulous. Not only are there some great twists and situational comedy but the turns of phrases and punchlines are fabulous as well. This film is from the days when comedy was clever and took real work (as opposed to today’s popular comedy which is all about crassness and shock value). Loved it.