The Fall Guy (2024)

I had never heard of the '80s TV series of the same title. Fortunately, this is only a loose adaptation, so it doesn't presuppose much knowledge. The only detail I know would have meant more to me with familiarity was a pair of cameos.

Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a beleaguered stuntman, most notably standing in for obnoxious actor Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). A particularly bad injury dissuades him from further stunts, until producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) asks him to work on the directorial debut of his ex-girlfriend, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). Gail later confides that the invitation isn't really about the job: She wants him to track down the suspiciously absent Tom before the production fails. Colt always knew that Tom was troubled, but he doesn't anticipate what follows. Hint: The title has a double meaning.

Marshland (2014)

The original Spanish title literally translates to "The Minimal Island." Either way, the point is to call attention to a remote setting, possibly with a symbolic status in light of the bleakness.

Specifically, it's set in or near Spain's Guadalquivir Marshes, reputedly akin to the U.S. Deep South, in 1980. Two promiscuous teen sisters who wanted to move away are soon found murdered in one marsh, having been treated worse than the girls in The Last House on the Left, albeit thankfully not on screen. The two Madrid-based detectives assigned to the case, Juan (Javier Gutiérrez) and Pedro (Raúl Arévalo), have not worked together before and espouse rather different worldviews, but they're both determined to catch the killer(s) before another girl meets a similar fate.

Halloweentown (1998)

I hadn't heard of this when it was new, probably because it was showing only on the Disney Channel. Only now that I've seen it on a couple lists of favorites to stream this time of year did I take any interest, and still not much. Mainly, I wanted something short and readily available to kick off my October-appropriate reviews.

Every year, single mother Gwen (Judith Hoag) forbids her children from going out on Halloween night, but her mother, Agatha (Debbie Reynolds), pays a visit the kids welcome much more than Gwen does. What makes this year different is that Marnie (Kimberly J. Brown), 13, overhears an argument between the adults and learns that they are a family of natural-born witches, tho Gwen insists on raising them as mundanely as their late non-warlock father would. Furthermore, Agatha comes from a hidden town populated with all sorts of beings most humans don't welcome -- and its citizens have been turning suddenly hostile and vanishing to parts unknown. When Gwen refuses to help solve that case, Marnie sneaks aboard the magic bus that Agatha catches, along with Marnie's preteen brother, Dylan (Joey Zimmerman), and seven-year-old sister, Sophie (Emily Roeske).

My Favorite Year (1982)

From the title, I assumed that the story would take place over the course of a year. Instead, it's only a few weeks, tops. All we really get from the title is a setting in the past and an occasion that is, like most comedies, happy in the end.

In 1954 New York, junior sketch comedy writer Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker) is excited to have Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole), an Errol Flynn knockoff, guest-star on his show. Alas, the now burnt-out Swann is prone to stinking drunkenness, philandering, and tardiness if not absenteeism. Stone pleads with Sid Caesar-like show star Stan Kaiser (Joseph Bologna) to give Swann a chance all the same. Kaiser agrees on the condition that Stone watch Swann like a hawk. No problem, right?

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Why didn't I see this sooner, perhaps in a theater? Probably because Won't You Be My Neighbor? came out not so long before. But now seems like a good time to explore promising stress relief.

In 1998, Lloyd (Matthew Rhys), an Esquire writer based loosely on Tom Junod, has such a reputation for scathing articles that almost nobody will agree to an interview with him anymore. His editor, Ellen (Christine Lahti), gives him a different kind of assignment: 400 words on Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks), as part of a series on heroes. Lloyd is not happy about this; neither is his wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), partly because he'll have to fly from New York to Pittsburgh, leaving her alone with their baby for a while, and partly because she worries what he'll write about her childhood icon. But Rogers has a way of helping people deal with their emotions more healthily, which is especially important when Lloyd holds a serious grudge against his own father, Jerry (Chris Cooper).

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019)

After my rave about the 2015 outing, I pretty much had to see this soon. Even if it meant reviewing three British movies in a row, each made in a successive year ending with 9.

A flying saucer descends pretty close to Mossy Bottom Farm, with one frightened human witness to its landing site and the solo pilot's emergence. As luck would have it, the alien, Lu-La, comes to the farm and is discovered by Shaun, who lets the other sheep in on her(?) but hides her from the farmer and his dog, Bitzer. The farmer does notice rumors of a UFO and decides to cash in by directing his animals to construct a crude theme park. The sheep cover for Shaun as he and Lu-La sneak out, trying to get her home before the Ministry of Alien Detection, led by a grimly determined Agent Red and a beleaguered WALL-E-like robot, stops her.

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2002)

Cowboy Bebop is easily my favorite action anime series, partly for its relatively normal premises. I still had some trepidation in approaching the movie, released a few years after the last episode (but taking place in between two late episodes, AIUI). After all, Serenity disappointed many Firefly fans. And was CB:TM made only for people who'd seen the entire show, which I haven't yet? The answer turns out to be no, and I'll fill in the rest of you shortly.

In 2071, Mars is so terraformed that you could hardly tell it from a near-future Earth. In a Martian metropolis, terrorists spread an illness unknown to doctors and seemingly impossible to trace. With no leads, the authorities post an enormous bounty on the perpetrators, calling the attention of a ragtag band of perpetually underfunded bounty hunters (some of them slangily called "Cowboys") aboard the spaceship Bebop. Yeah, they ought to care anyway, but they try not to.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Thankfully, I did not let Nemesis be the last Trek film I ever watched. But I did approach STB with a little trepidation. Reports of it being more like the original series than the previous two installments clashed with the trailer playing the Beastie Boys, which George Takei himself thought made it look generic apart from the fleet uniforms. And how long would the hyped new same-sex match for Sulu (John Cho) demand our attention?

The answer: about three literal seconds. More important is the touching notice that First Officer Spock's (Zachary Quinto) alternate-timeline counterpart (the late Leonard Nimoy) has passed away. It distracts the present Spock from his personally chosen mission to do his part for the few remaining Vulcans, which yielded a peaceable breakup with Lt. Uhura (Zoe Saldana).

But this, too, does not concern the main conflict. Before long, the heroes are attacked by unfamiliar aliens, who capture many crew members and a portion of a powerful weapon. The disabled Enterprise crashes on the enemy's mountainous planet, where Krall (the ubiquitous Idris Elba) is a Federation-hating life energy vampire out to annihilate the new space city of Yorktown. As the key crew come back together from their separate pods, they enlist the aid of badass alien woman Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), who has a bone to pick with Krall.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

I know what you're thinking: "What a follow-up." I may be the only person in the world to have chased The Force Awakens with one of the least popular Star Trek films. Why did I? Mainly because I was donating platelets and had only so many options for viewing on the portable screen.

This is not to say that I'd never have seen it otherwise. Sure, it was the Die Another Die of its franchise, breaking the pattern of esteemed even-numbered entries and precipitating a longer hiatus than usual followed by a reboot. But I didn't feel like I wasted my time watching DAD, and my taste in Trek fare differs from most who watch a lot of it; The Wrath of Khan, for instance, appealed to me less than Insurrection did. (How many brains just popped?) I couldn't help feeling a tad curious.

Continuing with the "Next Generation" crew under Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Nemesis sees them on an unexpected mission to head to previously verboten Romulan Empire space for an announced peace treaty. Given the misadventure in Star Trek VI with the Klingon pact, I don't blame several key crew members for having their doubts. But neither Klingons nor Romulans form the main threat this time; in fact, a young villain named Shinzon (Tom Hardy) hates the Romulans above all, for personal reasons. So why should the Enterprise crew intervene, apart from, y'know, heroism? Because Shinzon has a keen interest in Picard for other personal reasons, which I spoil below.

Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)

Had it really been ten years since I last watched a feature film from Aardman Animations? I'm afraid so. After the success of Chicken Run and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, they had a string of less promising releases: Flushed Away, Arthur Christmas, and The Pirates! Band of Misfits. Fortunately, I had seen several episodes of the "Shaun the Sheep" TV series and thus knew it to be more in the vein of the Wallace and Gromit franchise. It was easier than I'd hoped to talk both parents into watching.

OK, the movie wasn't entirely a safe bet. Each episode streams less than 20 minutes, including the opening sequence, the end credits, two plots, and a little dance in the middle for filler. Maybe the studio just didn't want to spend any more time and resources on stop-action than necessary. But there was further room for doubt: Episodes consistently kept the setting to a little farm and, with only one human character, had absolutely no dialogue. Even in this 85-minute romp, which moves much of the action to "the Big City," humans say very little; and when they do, it's basically Simlish. Apart from the background music, I've heard more spoken English -- heck, more verifiable words in any language -- from Jacques Tati animations.