Bad Moms (Jon Lucas & Scott Moore, 2016)

0/10
This wasn't my choice to watch but wow this was putrid. Basically motherhood wish-fulfillment porn. Plot-wise, you know what to expect if you've ever seen an Apatow thing (this was written by The Hangover guys) - a bunch of like-minded characters, moms here, lash out at the restraints imposed upon them by society's expectations, decide to Go Wild, learn some lessons about moderation in the end, blah blah. Curiously, Bad Moms kicks off on a decidedly anti-feminist note - the central character Amy (played by Mila Kunis) has her life go completely off the rails when her husband leaves. This is even more interesting because Amy's husband, of course, is portrayed as an oblivious, do-nothing loser. So it's weird that him leaving is what sends her life spiraling into chaos.
So Amy joins up with 2 other moms who want to Go Wild - Kristen Bell playing the timid one and Kathryn Hahn playing the brassy one in roles you've seen before being played by Tina Fey and Amy Schumer - and we're treated to excruciatingly implausible scenes like Amy struggling to get laid at a bar because she doesn't know how to talk to men and can only talk about "mom stuff" like her kids' bathrooms habits. I will remind you that Amy is played by Mila Kunis, who could probably brand a swastika into her forehead and still go home with any number of men of her choosing.
The whole movie is like that, extremely tone-deaf and lacking in self-awareness. It doesn't care much beyond being obnoxious and hoping that some very deluded individuals will identify with its cartoon character protagonists.
Most of this ground was already covered well by Bridesmaids, or covered well enough by Sisters. It's cool that female ensemble comedies are an established thing and more prominent than ever but this does no favors at all to the genre.

The Girl on the Train (Tate Taylor, 2016)

6/10
I haven't read the book. The movie wasn't as bad as I expected, in fact the reviews seem a little harsh. It's a functional enough thriller, keeps you guessing reasonably well (I didn't figure out whodunnit, but I'm notoriously lousy at that) and features a really good performance by Emily Blunt, even if it's a little showy. The most annoying thing in the movie (vague spoiler talk): and this probably worked better on the page, is that it relies upon misleading its audience as the foundation for its "twist". Similar to Gone Girl, but at least it doesn't have the same pretentions of artistry that movie did. So when you show me something taking place, and then show me something later that basically says "no this is how it really happened", it just feels like a cheap trick, not clever moviemaking (or storytelling).
As a decently entertaining night at the movies, you could do worse.

Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle, 2015)

7/10
I guess The Social Network set us on a path of movies showing us how clever jerks got to be really rich jerks as each global giant successively gets their entry into the canon (stay tuned this year for Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc! Who will play Colonel Sanders in his biopic in 2018?!). Aaron Sorkin scripted this one as he did The Social Network. The dialogue certainly crackles, thanks in no small part to Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet who are both terrific, but it does veer into portentousness at times, with characters in the heat of an argument delivering clunky lines that are heavy-handedly meant to be interpreted as a metaphor for the scene as a whole.
The three product launch sequences that make up the movie are impressively mounted, although each feels more rote than the last - the movie has Jobs commenting on this repetitiveness in an attempt at self-awareness ("I feel like before every product launch people get drunk and tell me what they really think about me") but it doesn't make it feel less paint-by-numbers.
Like Moneyball, another Sorkin adaptation, there seems to be a fear of getting too technical - there with baseball stats, here with computer specs. Any technical sequence is immediately followed up with a hammy father-daughter scene as if to scramble to pull the viewer back in but frankly, as in Moneyball, I found the technical stuff way more interesting than the Hollywood schmaltz.
Overall it's a decent movie, the acting is the strength by far and the writing is solidly in second. I'm just not sure what all we were supposed to glean by sitting through it. We already knew that Sorkin could write and Fassbender could act and Boyle could direct and Jobs was a jerk who took more credit than he deserved.

The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016)

5/10
I'll gamely defend Only God Forgives, it's not a masterpiece on the level of Drive but it's still got enough going for it that it deserves better than it got from a critical point of view. Not so for The Neon Demon. Nicholas Winding Refn's now signature style is firmly in place - mind-boggling costumes, make-up and, well, neon lighting with a great score once again by Cliff Martinez. It's a little more chatty than OGF or Drive, but not by a whole lot. What's disappointing is all this aesthetic is wasted on such a by-the-numbers plotline - the virginal blonde heading to Los Angeles to make it in the cut-throat model industry. It's a little more stimulating than Cronenberg's dive into similar predictable territory a couple years ago with Maps to the Stars, but barely. Refn wrote the movie himself, I just can't figure out what he was trying to get across that hasn't been done a bunch already before. The movie has a cool, totally over the top grand guignol finale that I enjoyed a lot, and I wish the rest of the movie was equally unchained. As it is, it's pretty forgettable aside from some nice visuals.

Demolition (Jean-Marc Vallee, 2015)

6.5/10
I can't really make heads or tails of what this movie was going for. Jake Gyllenhaal's Davis loses his wife in a car accident, lashes out by claiming he never really loved her, and deals with his grief by taking things apart - and yes, eventually, demolishing them. It feels derivative of movies like American Beauty or Fight Club where there's some event that causes the main character to disconnect from society in bizarre and unexpected ways. But as Demolition goes on it turns more and more formulaic. Davis strikes up a friendship with his paramour's oddball son and, you know, The Healing Process Begins and all that stuff. It's okay; Gyllenhaal puts in a good performance, the kid actor is not entirely insufferable, there's good music, some funny scenes, etc. The direction itself is pretty bland though, not really what I would have expected from Jean-Marc Vallee, and overall there is a feeling that the movie thinks it's more clever and original than it actually is.

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (Werner Herzog, 2016)

7/10
Werner Herzog's latest documentary is "about" the internet, in loose terms. As you might expect from a Herzog documentary it departs from a chronological telling of the history of the internet very quickly and instead focuses on the people telling the stories along the way. The film is divided into 10 chapters, although sometimes interview subjects bleed over into other segments. It focuses on pioneers of the internet, world famous hackers, people allergic to radio waves, young adults battling internet addictions, Elon Musk, MRI technicians, a family harassed in a most despicable fashion by internet trolls, and so on. Herzog narrates and asks questions on-camera with his usual mix of detached wonder and dark humor - Herzog's description of the university where the internet was born refers first and foremost to its "repulsive hallways".
There aren't too many great shakes to be had (or history lessons either) but Herzog pokes and prods his subjects in an endearing fashion, and content-wise there's certainly enough to chew on with all the questions inherent to the subject matter. But I wonder if this wouldn't have worked better not as a film but as a series of 10 episodes on a format like Netflix where each subject and topic was allowed more in-depth exploration.

Love (Gaspar Noe, 2015)

5/10
This is just the 4th feature Gaspar Noe has directed in 17 years. It isn't as atrociously awful as Enter the Void, but we're still far from the heights of Irreversible (I have yet to see Seul Contre Tous). Notably, Love features graphic scenes of unsimulated sex. However, recent arthouse films like Blue is the Warmest Color and Stranger by the Lake have featured graphic sex scenes as well as being remarkable films, thus raising the bar across the board. It's not enough to skate by using sex in an attempt to be "shocking", you also have to provide a great movie. Love is not a great movie. As I said, it's not as bad as Enter the Void, but it's not as adventurous either, for what that's worth. Noe is at his best making his case for pure, passionate love and sexuality embittered by what we know is coming (evoking very much his strength in Irreversible) but these moments are too few and far between. The sex becomes monotonous, the acting is dicey throughout, and it's just not that interesting or provocative. The lighting, however, is truly exquisite. And at least Noe appears to have made an attempt to edit this one, unlike Void. But it's just not good enough.