Game Night:

This lightweight big-screen comedy with dramatic moments is set among a group of friends who meet regularly for weekend game nights that include such things as charades and Pictionary.  Max and Annie (Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams) are the couple at whose home most of the game nights are held.  Their friends include Ryan who is intellectually challenged and who brings a different date each week, and Kevin and Michelle.  Max's overachieving brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) shows up from time to time, just to impress everyone with his high-flying lifestyle, and it's on this particular night that he proposes a new twist in the game.  One of the party guests will be kidnapped, and it's the job of the others to solve the mystery, with the winner getting Brooks' classic Corvette Stingray as a prize.  Of course, just like a bad sitcom, you can see the setup coming over the horizon from a great distance.  The company hired to put on the mystery has its rep in the guise of an FBI agent show up to set the ground rules ... and then the kidnappers burst in, knocking the fake agent unconscious.  Surprise - they are real kidnappers, not fake ones, and it turns out that not every one of Brooks' business ventures are on the up-and-up, so he has been abducted and it's the real thing, but the rest of the players think it's just the game.  There are some funny moments, particularly with Rachel McAdam's character, and overall, it's good fun with one disclaimer - the rating here is 14A, but it's an R-rated movie in the States, and that's what it should be here, so parents beware.

Red Sparrow:

Jennifer Lawrence is the title character here, a Russian ballerina who has a career-ending injury, and is recruited by her country to become an operative who can compromise a CIA agent, and more.  ​ There are two ways to look at this spy thriller - either as an inside look at what it must be like to work as an operative in a country such as Russia, or more my opinion, that this is a dark, sadistic, brutal movie that takes far too many liberties in its quest to have a mole in the service of one country or another, given up.  Lawrence is Dominika Egorova, who goes into the Red Sparrow training program because she has no choice, just like everyone else there.  We learn along the way that this was a program started under Nikita Khrushchev’s regime in the days of the USSR, a place where its operatives, mostly women, are trained to seduce and to manipulate.  The training is graphic, at the hands of Matron (Charlotte Rampling) and there are numerous scenes of nudity and activities not suited for discussion on a morning radio program.  Taking place in Russia, Hungary, and London, it's a cat-and-mouse game with CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), and a story that keeps us off balance from beginning to end. More than I want to know about spy training in Russia, although the bones of the story, when you break it down to its component elements, are very strong.  Rated 18A.

15:17 to Paris:

ot director and producer Clint Eastwood's best work, unfortunately.  I am a huge fan of Eastwood, and I found myself very disappointed in this story of three Americans on a train from Amsterdam to Paris in 2015, who encountered an alleged Islamic terrorist on board.  The story is that the three helped subdue the man, who had already shot a passenger in the neck, and they put him in restraints until officials arrived.  That's it.  It's a slim premise on which to hang a movie, and it shows in almost every scene.  The Americans were Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alex Skarlatos.  Stone was in the Air Force and was on leave at the time, Skarlatos was a national guardsman who had seen action in Afghanistan, and Sadler was their friend from Middle School who was still in college when he was convinced to take the summer off and do a tour of Europe with his lifelong friends.  The actual people played their own parts, and unfortunately, that showed, as there was little finesse in any of the characters.  Director Eastwood spent far too much time showing us the boys in their childhoods, always in trouble at school, with Spence Stone desperately wanting to be in the Armed Forces and make a difference in people's lives.  Far too much time is spent on this exposition, and then far too much time is spent on their European tour, as the young men tour Germany, Amsterdam, and finally France ... we don't learn anything about anyone else.  We don't know anything about the gunman or his motivation.  We know nothing about the man who was shot, a Frenchman who was born in the US ... and we don't get any idea as to what happened later, other than a parade in the men's native Sacramento, CA.  Far too thin a story on which to hang an entire movie, I want to say it's paper-thin ... but it's more like Saran wrap.  Big disappointment.  Rated 14A.

 Gone Too Soon (2018):

What do Rolling Stones original member Brian Jones, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors' Jim Morrison, grunge-rocker Kurt Cobain, and singer/composer Amy Winehouse have in common, other than the fact that they are all dead musicians and singers?  Answer:  they all died at age 27.  What is the mystique behind that age, behind that number?  This film includes interviews with friends, co-workers, and people who knew each of those who joined the "27 Club" as it looks for an answer to the question of that age.  Why then?  Why so many?  Brian Jones died in 1969, Amy Winehouse in 2011, with all the others in between.  Interesting topic, interesting film.  Rated 14A. 

Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009):

Good cast here, for a movie that received terrible reviews when it was released, but went on to make a great deal of money because, despite the critic's opinions, audiences loved it.  A dramatic comedy that stars Hugh Grant and Sara Jessica Parker as a couple whose marriage is on the rocks, and are on the verge of divorce, offers an interesting change-up.  On the streets of New York they witness a murder, one in which organized crime was involved.  In the blink of an eye, they are in the witness protection program, they have new identities, and they are living in the small town of Rae, Wyoming.  It isn't long though, before the mob finds out their whereabouts and comes looking.  Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen star as the local sheriff and his wife, whose job it is to keep the Morgans safe.  Too late for that now, though.  Rated 14A.