The Constant Gardener (2005)

Someone's been dropping DVDs on the giveaway shelves at my apartment building. This was the only one to interest me so far. I didn't know any more than the gawky title when it was new, but once I read that it was a political thriller from John le Carré, I figured on checking it out. His work had been hit (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold) and miss (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) to me, but at least I'd get a better feel for him.

English diplomat and, yes, gardener Justin (Ralph Fiennes) falls for Amnesty International activist Tessa (Rachel Weisz) and agrees to take her to Kenya, where he's headed for work. They marry, but much of her present activity remains unknown to him. When she dies in a remote area, it's clearly murder, but by whom and why? He soon learns that she was on the verge of blowing the whistle on a shady, powerful drug company, which now threatens to off him too if he keeps sniffing around.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Oh look, LAIKA again. For once, I felt like seeing their work in a theater, and so did my dad. Maybe that's because the stop-motion animation studio is trying something different this time: a setting in feudal Japan. You can't really tell from my past reviews, but I'm kind of a sucker for entertainment set thereabout.

A woman, Sariatu (uh, Charlize somebody), and her eye patch-wearing baby barely survive a stormy sea voyage and then make a home in a cave. There is a village nearby, but they have no money for better lodging. About a decade later, Sariatu spends most of the day catatonic, but son Kubo (Art Parkinson) has grown precocious, making a name for himself by telling stories of his samurai dad Hanzo fighting the Moon King's forces -- while illustrating them with moving origami controlled by his magic string instrument, which nobody identifies by name, but I determined it to be a shamisen.

Little does he know how much truth there is to his stories, until the day he neglects his mom's rule to come home by nightfall. The Moon King (Ralph Fiennes, once again playing a main villain in a family feature) is Sariatu's father and can now detect Kubo. The king and his identical other two daughters (both Rooney Mara) will stop at nothing to bring Kubo into their celestial kingdom, which pretty much requires that they blind him and make him learn to enjoy killing Earth mortals.

Spectre (2015)

I've had mixed feelings about the post-reboot James Bond series, just as I've had mixed feelings about the series as a whole. Casino Royale had a lot going for it, but not the story; I could've done without the extensive poker. Quantum of Solace was more Bourne than Bond, mainly for the worse. Skyfall became one of my favorites thanks to Javier Bardem's intelligent villainy, but it still dispensed with a number of elements we've liked about the franchise.

A title referring to the organization that Bond most frequently opposed during the Cold War seems promising for a return to the old ways. Here Bond (Daniel Craig) and his associates on Her Majesty's Secret Service gradually discover the existence of an even more secret yet powerful group, even as its influence on the government threatens to disband theirs. (Reminds me a bit of another movie from 2015.) And once again, the enmity gets personal.