The Contractor (2022):

A good cast here with Chris Pine as James Harper, involuntarily discharged from the U.S. military where he was a Special Forces operative. In order to support his family, along with his best friend Mike (Ben Foster) joins a private contracting organization, essentially a group of mercenaries, under the command of a veteran soldier played by Kiefer Sutherland. Initially it seems like a good move as the group takes on an international contract overseas, but soon people around Harper are dying, his daughter back in the States is kidnapped, and Harper himself seems to have a target on his back. None of it makes sense, and soon he recognizes that each of those murdered in his vicinity had a specific tie to his daughter. He must extricate himself from the covert overseas mission and find his way back home, despite all odds, to protect his family and to find his daughter. But the plot twists are just starting as the girl’s abduction begins to be something more than appearances would indicate. Shooting locations in Romania and Germany give the film an authentic look. Rated 14A.

Nine Bullets (2022):

It is hard to imagine that the talent involved in this action-thriller would have signed on to such a dubious production. Lena Heady (“Game of Thrones”), Sam Worthington (“Avatar”) and Barbara Hershey (“Black Swan”) really ought to know better than to become involved with a film the script for which is beyond senseless. Gypsy (Heady) is a burlesque dancer who comes home from work to find a boy covered in blood, hiding in her house. She learns in short order that the boy, a neighbour, witnessed the killing of his parents, and now the murderers want the boy, his dog, and any other hangers-on (meaning Gypsy herself) taken out of the picture. The chase is on as Gypsy decides to get the boy on the run, and then follow him later. Much of what transpires makes little sense from the points of plotting and developing character. Gypsy’s actions are not in keeping with what one might expect from any human forced into this kind of situation, and where there is a boy’s dog, and bad people with guns, well, you can expect the worst. We see the death of a baby onscreen for no apparent reason other than to shock us, there is sex and nudity that was clearly inserted to give the move an R-rated edge, and in the end, not much of what is resolved is satisfying. Rated 18A.

Eraser: Reborn (2022):

In 1995 Arnold Schwarzenegger played a U.S. Deputy Marshal John Kruger aka “The Eraser.” He was an expert in witness protection, and his specialty was in created a scenario where it appeared that his witness either never existed at all, or had died never to surface again. Created by the writing team of Tony Puryear, Walon Green, and Michael S. Churnichin, Puryear has done a small amount of TV work in the years since, Green has been executive producer of such series as “Law & Order,” “ER,” and NYPD Blue,” and Churnichin has co-executive-produced “Law & Order SVU,” and “24.” The trio has decided to get the band back together again and revive the “Eraser” movie more than two decades later with British actor Dominic Sherwood (“Shadow Hunters,” “Penny Dreadful”) in the lead role playing a character named Mason Pollard, a U.S. Marshall whose specialty, just like John Kruger, is to erase all traces of witnesses to major crimes. When he takes on the seemingly routine task of erasing a mobster’s wife, Jackie Lai (Rina Kimura), things go badly when it’s clear he has been set up, sparking a globetrotting pursuit around the world as bad guys close in at every angle. A good thriller, even without (or maybe because it’s without) Schwarzenegger. Rated 14A.

Stranger Things: Season 4 (TV Series) (2022):

The horrors of The Upside Down continue to haunt the small town of Hawkins, Indiana, while the original cast returns intact, with the kids who fought those horrors now in high school and facing their own challenges. When season three ended, we were in the midst of the Battle of Starcourt, the mall which became the focus of the bizarre creatures focused on destroying humans. Town Sheriff Hopper isn't in Hawkins when the action opens. He was captured and is the focus of interrogation somewhere on Russia's Kamchatka peninsula by both human dangers and those more out worldly. A good part of the start to this season, which will come in two parts separated by one month's time, has the pals, the kids, including Eleven, Mike, Dustin, et al off on separate missions of a sort, really the first time in their young lives that they haven't been a tight group. Rated 14A.

Operation Mincemeat (2021):

This film, based on actual events in WWII, was released by Warner Bros in the UK theatrically, and is being released by Netflix in North America. Colin Firth stars in this ingenious story of an espionage operation in 1943 that turned the tide of the war when a pair of British operatives used a combination of a corpse and false identity documents to deceive the Germans at a critical point when a huge build-up of troops was set to quash the allies. It tells the story of those who fight in the shadows, and whose true exploits are sometimes unknown and lost in the fog of war and the mirage of history. Rated 14A.