FACES PLACES

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

I suppose it's natural to wonder what might get lost in translation with foreign films, considering in this case that the original French title, Visages Villages, actually translates literally to Faces Villages. But, since they rhymed in French, naturally they wanted it to rhyme in English. I guess not that much is different between the words "villages" and "places." Except, you know, nuance.

Thankfully, a whole lot of this pleasant and charming documentary needs no translation, so much of it is reliant on visual art. Faces Places is by, about, and features the photography and art of a relatively odd-couple set of friends, thirty-three year-old JR, and 88-year-old Agnès Varda.

They travel the French countryside in a small truck, on the sides of which, the walls behind the cab in which JR drives and Agnès rides shotgun, is printed the image of a giant camera. The truck has been rigged to print out giant, poster-sized sheets of photographs within minutes (maybe less?) of them being taken, like it's a giant Poloroid camera. They stop from town to town, getting to know the locals, taking their picture, and then pasting them as giant photo murals on the sides of buildings.

This makes for a great many truly unforgettable images -- I was tempted to say indelible, except that in many cases weather washes the images away -- my favorite of which is of an old German bunker deliberately knocked off a cliff, and which happened to land propped up on its side. It essentially became a work of art in its own right once landed there, but now JR takes an old, 1950s photo of an old photographer friend of Agnès's and pastes it larger than life across its face.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, however. They take photos of three wives of dock workers and paste them in massive sizes onto stacked shipping containers. JR gets photos of Agnès's feet and also a close-up of her eye and pastes them alongside train cars. One young woman becomes a local celebrity after a lovely shot of her sitting with a parasol is pasted huge against a building in her small hometown.

Faces Places is, for the most part, just a succession of stops on Agnès and JR's meandering tour of their country, their subjects emotionally reacting to photographs of them being turned into giant public wall art. And indeed, this alone is often genuinely moving, in the midst of the fun of just hanging out with these two photographers, their friendship seeming relatively unlikely, until Agnès and brought to meet JR's still-living, 100-year-old grandmother. He clearly loves her dearly.

We also get a fair amount of scenes between JR and Agnès that are quite transparently staged, and with this, mileage may vary. JR has evidently tried to make it part of his persona to refuse ever taking off his sunglasses, no matter how much Agnès pesters him about it. This becomes something intended as a plot point in the telling of their story, but winds up coming across much more as a gimmick.

But, okay, fine. Faces Places is not always straightforward when it comes to being a "documentary." One could argue that's part of the point, this film itself being a unique work of art in its own right. This makes the occasional, subtle artistic flourishes perfectly appropriate.

And if nothing else, the friendship and affection between JR and Agnès is genuine. That and the art they create, which is shared generously here, easily makes Faces Places worth seeing.

My favorite of many fantastic images in FACES PLACES.

Overall: B+

A FANTASTIC WOMAN

Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

It's sort of unfortunate and backward, that the thing that makes A Fantstic Woman truly stand out is its lead is a transgender character played by -- gasp! -- an actual trans actor.

To be clear, I don't subscribe to the idea that non-trans actors playing trans characters is inherently wrong. It's an age-old debate also often had by people in the disability community: should every disabled character be mandated to be played by an actor with whatever disability the character has? My argument has always been that this is the very nature of acting itself: playing the part of something you are not. It's all make-believe, right? (There's always a line, of course, and something like blackface crosses it.) The flip side of this argument is that people who are trans or disabled -- or gay people or people of color -- should be cast more often in parts that are for anyone, not expressly written for whatever characteristic by which they are most defined by the outside world.

That said, much like the superb Tangerine (2015), A Fantastic Woman is indeed a trans story, and having a trans actor play the part certainly gives it a fresh authenticity. This doesn't have quite the unique vision of Tangerine, which was unlike any other movie ever made (in more ways than one), but Daniela Vega as Marina Vidal certainly gives it a unique perspective.

There is also a certain fascination in seeing a story like this told from the point of view of another culture, here specifically Chile. A lot of people treat Marina terribly, and a lot of it is pretty typical of trans stories: harassment, being called a "faggot," humiliating treatment from local law enforcement even when they are insisting they are there to help. It's tempting to complain about A Fantastic Woman from this perspective, but for two things: first, these things in reality remain all too common; and second, who am I to judge this as a reflection of a slice of Chilean culture? I don't live there.

Marina's story is indeed a sad one, though, which, while not nearly as tragic as it could be (Boys Don't Cry this is not, thank God), can get pretty heavy. At the beginning of the story, Marina is happily coupled with a man much older than she is. But one night she wakes up to find him having an attack of some sort, and not long after she rushes him to the hospital, she dies there. A Fantastic Woman is the story of how Marina deals with this blindsiding event while the man's family treats her terribly. One particularly searing line, when Marina is getting kicked out of the funeral she has been explicitly told not to come to: "Have you no respect for other people's pain?" As though Marina's own pain, which is easily just as intense as anyone else's, if not more so, is meaningless, a notion to be discarded along with her humanity.

While Marina endures emotional traumas one after another (starting at the very hospital she rushes to, where she is misgendered by police and asked to produce an ID that has not yet been changed), she moves through this story as a paragon of resilience and strength -- and without contrivance. She occasionally makes ill-advised choices, but never fatal ones, and stays a course that runs between resolve and defiance. Even in the midst of a life turned upside down by a random, tragic event, of all the people in this movie, Marina emerges as the hero.

Perhaps to add something adjacent to levity, director and co-writer Sebastián Lelio sprinkles in occasional stylistic flourishes: Marina walking against massive guts of wind; the occasional visions of her beloved Francisco. There's even a night club dance number, which sounds out of place in a story like this, but Lelio integrates it seamlessly. A lot of these diversions are cut into the movie's trailer, which makes it seem a bit more stylized than it actually is; most of it is much more straightforward. But using such flourishes sparingly only helps it.

If anything makes A Fantastic Woman worth seeing, however, it's Daniela Vega, quietly intense in the title role. She makes choices one might call brave, and offers a kind of representation never seen onscreen, with a frank and realistic portrayal of daily living as a trans woman. She exists here just as a regular person, after all -- she's just a waitress, not a sex worker, much as the police might assume her to be. She led a normal life until unfortunate circumstances befell her and ignited the small mindedness of those around her, and this is a film that depicts how it's the rest of society, not her, that is in urgent need of an attitude adjustment.

Yes, it's true: Marina is indeed a fantastic woman.

Overall: A-

GAME NIGHT

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Typically a broad comedy with a large ensemble cast can easily fall under the weight of its star power, but somehow Game Night manages to avoid such a trap. It's engaging and consistently funny and offers just what you expect, and want, from it.

It's hardly a new concept, the story of unwitting participants in a game of some kind that feels like it may or may not have fatal consequences. The twist here is that the participants are told from the outset that it's a make-believe game, and they go on thinking it's fake for some time after things actually get real.

With a large assortment of characters, most of them well-established friends who go to each other's houses for weekly Game Nights, it's rather an accomplishment that this group of seven consists of truly distinct, well-drawn personalities. Max and Annie (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, both practically made for these kinds of roles) are the uber-competitive gaming couple who tend to host the Game Nights. Four of their typical guests are one longstanding couple, Kevin and Michelle (New Girl's Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury), and one other good friend, Ryan (Billy Magnussen) and a different date every week, all of them so similarly vapid that the rest of the group have difficulty tearing them apart. That is, until this week, when Ryan brings his work friend Sarah (Catastrophe's Sharon Horgan). Ryan and Sarah are particularly fun to watch since they flip the typical gender script, and it's Sarah constantly marveling at Ryan's airheadedness. Sharon Horgan excels at expressions of incredulousness.

Crashing the proceedings is Max's brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler), who brings in the "next level" element, turning a typical night of board gaming into a "murder mystery" night. The group is warned that sometime in the evening one of them will be kidnapped and it's up to the rest of them to follow clues and find him. And Game Night is so packed with familiar faces that even Jeffrey Wright shows up as one of the game-actors, but his part barely counts as more than a cameo. Later Michael C. Hall shows up in the final act, his familiarity almost a distraction, but I still won't spoil how he fits into it all.

I will mention, though, Jesse Plemons (who was previously seen on Friday Night Lights along with Kyle Chandler) as the creepy-weird cop neighbor constantly trying to get invited to Game Night, but Max and Annie keep trying to avoid him. Plemons winds up factoring into the story pretty significantly, including not one but two sudden twists in the plot, and in terms of performance he might just be the MVP of the production. It would have been nice to find out whatever happened to his wife who used to be the better Game Night player but has since left him, which we really never find out, but whatever. You can't expect perfection, I guess.

Too often I find myself marveling at the number of stars who all read the same terrible script and somehow thought it would be a good idea to make it into a movie. The most refreshing thing about Game Night is it's actually the type of movie that is usually mediocre at best, but this one is fun and clever throughout, with solid comic performances throughout. Game Night does flirt with mediocrity at times, but never quite dips to that level. It doesn't exactly flirt with greatness, I'll concede, but so what? This is a movie whose twisty plot of hapless characters in over their heads is never overtly contrived, which we could use more of. It's simply a good time for an hour and forty minutes.

Oh no, they don't realize it isn't a game! Fun for us, though.

Overall: B+

EARLY MAN

Directing: B
Acting: B-
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Animation: B-

I'm not into sports. I don't follow soccer -- or "football" everywhere in the world outside the U.S. -- and thus don't even quite understand it. I thought Early Man was going to be a cute and silly movie about cavemen (and cavewomen) of the Stone Age fighting against people of the Bronze Age to preserve their dying way of life. Turns out it's a movie about how people of the Stone Age invented soccer, and then used a match against Bronze Age players in a wager to keep their valley.

Okay, what?

I'm trying to be fair here. But Early Man is wonky from the start even from outside its massive focus on soccer. It can't even get its history right in broad strokes, its opening scene depicting humans and dinosaurs co-existing. What is this, produced by the curators of the Creationist Museum? At least Jesus never pops up.

Yeah yeah, it's just a cartoon -- or more accurately, stop-motion by Aardman Animation, which previously brought us delightful feature films like Flushed Away (2006) and Shaun the Sheep (2015). Its full history is admittedly slightly spotty, but they are capable of very fun and clever storytelling. They make quite an effort at it with Early Man, but honestly, this movie just didn't speak to me.

There are occasional giggles with moderately effective gags here and there, but the story focuses far too heavily on this soccer game. The Bronze Age people have come to mine for ore in the small, lush valley where the Stone Age people, who are sweet but a little boneheaded, make their home. Young Dug (Eddie Redmayne) finds himself accidentally scooped up and taken to the Bronze Age land, where he happens upon a soccer pitch (it is called a pitch, right? -- you see how much this movie is not made for me?). He befriends a young woman named Goona (Maisie Williams) who has dreams of playing the game in front of all the fans, and she trains the Stone Age team and winds up joining them.

The story features the requisite lessons of teamwork being more effective than self-advancement, nothing especially new or inventive there. Early Man is relatively fun overall, I'll concede, but neither its animation nor its script features even half the inventiveness that we can typically expect from Aardman. In fact, the animation designs are goofy as hell, even by Aardman standards. Honestly I found myself disinterested, close to bored, relatively early on. The least they could do is give it a less misleading title than Early Man -- like, I don't know, Early Football Players -- and make the story clearer in promotional materials.

But, I can imagine this movie working a lot better for other people, to be fair -- specially people with more than a passing familiarity, or an eager interest, in the sport of soccer. I do not. Thus, I would need the movie to offer something more substantial than this one does to sustain my attention. But, that's just me.

Hognob here is the most watchable part of the movie.

Overall: B-

BLACK PANTHER

Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A
Special Effects: B+
Production Design: A-

For obvious reasons I can't speak to what Black Panther must mean to black audiences. I'll let them speak for themselves. What I can say is it's easily the best superhero movie (or, more accurately, comic book adaptation) since 2008's The Dark Knight, and arguably the best since 1992's Batman Returns, or by some measures the best ever made.

This is certainly a film that stands on its own, in spite of it being (unfortunately) part of the "Marvel Cinematic Universe," in a way no other Marvel adaptation has achieved since the unveiling of this shared "universe." This all started with Iron Man (also 2008), a relatively strong start to what was followed by an entire decade of superhero movies that virtually all follow the same formula, to the point that I now actively avoid these movies as a general rule. It's just the same shit, different month.

Every once in a while, however, a delightful exception comes along. Last year's Logan was one them. Not even that could stand up to the import of Black Panther, how much this film can mean to so many people. Everyone wants to see reflections of themselves in the heroes they see onscreen. I suppose all that's left is for a movie about a legitimate superhero who happens to be gay to come along, but I'm not complaining. I mean, Black Panther has plenty of eye candy, at least.

Although it clocks in at 134 minutes, this movie has a lot going on, and director and co-writer Ryan Coogler presents it with consistent efficiency -- especially the backstory of the fictional African country of Wakanda, succinctly explained in a matter of seconds. It turns out Coogler is another in an increasing line of directors of smaller but excellent films (in his case, 2013's Fruitvale Station) given the reigns of a massive blockbuster. Coogler turns out to be an inspired choice, a man who clearly knows how to weave serious cultural issues with subtle perfection into the narrative of blockbuster entertainment.

And the story does a bit of a bait and switch in a rather satisfying way, turning the notion of a supervillain on its head. This movie's "bad guy" isn't who it seems at first, and the villain that emerges is by no means intrinsically evil. The major players here all agree that problems the world over need addressing, a fight for the oppressed. The debate is regarding the secret technological resources of Wakanda, whether it should be shared, and how. In fact, the story of Black Panther is written with such precision that it allows audiences to engage in that debate themselves, without supplying easy answers.

This is perhaps what impresses me most about Black Panther: even in a movie packed with action, a movie still recognizable as a comic book adaptation, none of it is contrived -- that being the key difference from nearly every other superhero movie of the past decade. It characters of royal blood and themes of family rivalry are almost Shakespearean. It deals with succession to the throne and ritual battles, all with production and costume design with fantastically authentic African influences. The hero just happens to be a man who suits up in an alien technology-enhanced panther costume.

Not only is Black Panther  unapologetically African, it is also quite defiantly feminist -- it's probably the most female-empowered action movie since Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). The two main rival characters here may be men, but they are surrounded by the most badass women warriors (led by Danai Gurira, with an even balance of poise, strength and humor), without whom Black Panther would be nothing. And there is diversity to these women's abilities; they aren't all just warriors. Black Panther has a sister (Letita Wright) who is a genius with the "vibranium" technology, designing his weapons and defenses for him, as well as for the entire country. Angela Basset is perfectly regal as his royal mother. Lupita Nyong'o is the skilled spy he's in love with.

And I haven't even mentioned Chadwick Boseman as the title character, with shades of Bruce Wayne in his struggle to reconcile duties between alter egos. The difference here is a much greater responsibility and global question rests on his shoulders. Michael B. Jordan is hot as shit as his rival, "Killmonger" (a cornball name that nevertheless works). Or even key parts by Get Out's Daniel Kaluuya, and Forest Whitaker, Sterling K. Brown, Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis. The latter two almost seem deliberately to subvert the "token black character" concept, here being pretty clearly token white characters -- the only white characters of any significance in this vast ensemble cast -- and yet they are used both playfully and effectively, with layered and knowing performances all their own.

The setting moves around the world a bit, from London to Oakland to South Korea -- Korea featuring a pretty nifty car chase sequence -- but the vast majority of the story takes place right there within the gorgeously rendered country of Wakanda. I can't say the special effects are especially cutting edge here, but the story, the writing and especially the editing, are so strong as to render that immaterial, providing a true sense of place, even though it's entirely invented.

In other words, in a multitude of ways, Black Panther is a historic film, a point that cannot be understated, even though the film itself is executed with brilliant understatement all its own. On the surface, it's a tightly polished action adventure, with stakes that matter and characters that feel authentic -- all elements sorely lacking from most comic book movies these days. This is not just another story about cookie-cutter heroes we have no reason to feel emotionally invested in because they are ultimately invincible. This is a story with emotional heft, a playful heart, and real-world concerns. You really could not ask for more than what this movie delivers.

Black Panthers takes the Marvel Universe in a new direction.

Overall: A-

Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animated

Dear Basketball: B
Negative Space: B+
LOU:A
Revolting Rhymes Part One: B+
Garden Party: B+ ["Highly Commended"]
Lost Property Office: B
Weeds B
Achoo: B- Dear Basketball (USA, 6 minutes) precipitated a fair amount of humor on Twitter about basketball player Kobe Bryant somehow becoming an Academy Award nominee -- because he wrote and narrates the poem that makes up the audio of this entire short. I don't particularly see any pressing reason to make fun of it. I have close to zero interest in basketball, sure, but I can still recognize sincerity when I see it. This isn't the greatest poem in the world, but that's beside the point. This is effectively evocative with its animated pencil drawings and earnest delivery. Negative Space (France, 5 minutes) is a light hearted little stop motion short, with rather odd looking characters that sort of look like papier-mâché, about a boy who learned how to pack suitcases from his father. This one kind of touched me in a personal way because my stepmother also taught me how to maximize space in luggage by rolling up my clothes. This kid has a few more rules, hence the aversion to "negative space" used inefficiently, which serves as a cute little punch line at the very end. LOU (USA, 7 minutes) is far from the longest short in this year's group of nominees, but, it should come as no surprise that as the Pixar submission, it's easily the strongest. This one, about stolen toys come to life to teach a playground bully a lesson, has charmes that practically leap off the screen. Here Pixar continues its knack for presenting stories that are equal parts enchanting and moving. Revolting Rhymes Part One (UK, 29 minutes) is based on a story by Roald Dahl, and is thus a suitably twisted mashup take on several fairy tales at once: Little Red Riding Hood (who here becomes a vengeful badass); Snow White; and the Three Pigs. The story is narrated by the wolf who has lost his two nephews, and we find out how that happened. This one is by far the longest of the animated shorts, but with a pacing that never lulls, it remains engaging and fun from beginning to end. I might be more tempted to dismiss Garden Party (France, 7 minutes), if not for its stunning, photorealistic animation. It's mostly of frogs, each of them lazily exploring what increasingly becomes clear is an abandoned mansion whose inhabitant has been shot and killed. Thus, it goes from peaceful and beautiful to dark and disturbing pretty quickly. Lost Property Office (Australia, 10 minutes), the first of the "Highly Commended" shorts used as filler to stretch the full prohram to a barely feature length 83 minutes, is another stop motion short, this one in black and white with impressively detailed, art deco cityscapes. It's just a man who ultimately gets laid off and finds a way to turn all the junk he works with into an escape, but it does have its charms. Weeds (USA, 3 minutes) is the shortest of all the shorts here, but as a brief parable about "daring to dream," does wind up being memorable, as we watch a dandelion struggle to escape the fatally dry and hot part of a sidewalk and make it to where a nearby sprinkler hits. Short as it is, it's easy to see this one only barely missing out on getting an Oscar nomination, particularly considering its crisply rendered animation. Achoo (France, 7 minutes), on the other hand, is easily the weakest of all offerings here, and it's too bad it gets presented last instead of allowing something strong to be used for going out with a bang. At least there is a "bang" here, as it tells us how fireworks were created -- by a dragon with a cold. The animation here is well done, but the story is somewhat weak, and I can't really decide how I feel about the rendering of the one Chinese human character, who is a little too much of a caricature, even for a cartoon.

Overall: B+

Oscar Nominated Shorts: Live Action

DeKalb Elementary: B+
The Silent Child: B+
My Nephew Emmett: A-
The Eleven O'Clock: B+
Watu Wote / All of Us: A- DeKalb Elementary (USA, 21 minutes) is an impressively tense short film for how spare it is in production design: a possible school shooter walks in with a gun, and all we ever see for all 21 minutes of the run time is the reception area where the young man spends his time. We never know whether he might actually shoot someone, but soon learn he has mental issues an is off his meds, and the entirely black staff, particularly an unlucky woman covering reception just for the day, helps talk him down. All of the action takes place exclusively in this one room, but the characters each effectively evoke their individual worlds outside of it. What The Silent Child (UK, 20 minutes) lacks in resolution, it makes up for in messaging: this is about a little deaf girl whose parents don't quite understand the importance of teaching her sign language, and the young teacher who tries in vain to explain it to them. We learn at the end of this filn that while 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, 78% of deaf children attend hearing schools. This film has little chance of winning the Oscar, given the racially charged political climate tipping the odds in favor of the several shorts that address racial issues, but for this one, the win is truly just in getting nominated -- exposure to these issues is the key. This is the first of four shorts out of those nominated that shows footage of the cast and crew learning of their nomination. This one is well deserved, and in all cases it's fun and touching to see the filmmakers so excited. My Nephew Emmett (USA, 20 minutes) features a very slow and deliberate pace, and eases us into the realization that it's based on the true story of Emmett Till, a young black man murdered in Mississippi or simply whistling at a white woman. His 64-year-old uncle tries, ultimately in vain, to protect this boy visiting from Chicago where social mores are a little different. Soon enough to white man arrive at the house, armed, leaving the residents of the home powereless to stop them from taking the young man away. Needless to say, this one is a bit of a downer in the end, but it's no less powerful for it, and is the strongest short film among these five. It would get my vote for the Oscar. Every year there has to be at least one live action short that is more light-hearted and fun, lest the whole bunch of them lure us al into a deep depression. The Eleven O'Clock (Australia, 13 minutes) is this year's example, a comic story of a psychiatrist seeing a patient who is convinced he is himself a pyschiatrist. It quickly becomes clear that we, the viewer, do not know exactly who truly is the psychiatrist and who is the patient. The inevitable twist at the end could not be more predictable, but the film is still a worthy bit of a good time. Watu Wote / All of Us (Germany / Kenya, 22 minutes) closes out this year's live action set with what turns out to be the true story of a bus raided by Muslim extremists on the border between Kenya and Somalia. When the one Chrisian woman on the bus, whose husband and baby were previously killed by Muslims and thus made her deeply hateful, is protected by all the Muslims on board, it's tempting to feel the story is a little contrived. But, then you learn that this is based on true events, and it becomes more genuinely affecting. There's still a slight note of "can't we all just get along" to the proceedings, tense as they are, and it's also tempting to roll one's eyes at that. But once this relatively brief story is done being told, it proves more moving than expected. Overall: B+

THE COMMUTER

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B+

When an action movie comes along with a name as dumb as The Commuter, you certainly don't expect it to be surprisingly clever from the start. But, I rather liked the way we are introduced to Michael MacCauley (Liam Neeson), in a pleasant montage of his morning routine -- barely moving forward from the same moment each day, from several instances of him waking up in bed at 6 a.m. until we see him riding his commuter train to work. We see varying degrees of his relationship with his wife (Elizabeth McGovern, criminally underused) and son.

And then one day, along comes this unfamiliar lady on the train, played with controlled sinisterness by Vera Fermiga. Farmiga is herself a strong, memorable presence, and even she doesn't get enough screen time. It's fun to see her as a villain.

And, sure, the concept is as dumb as it seems. This woman, who introduces herself as Joanna, proposes MacCauley find a bag of money in the bathroom, by doing so agreeing to the proposition before him: find the person on the train who "doesn't belong," who goes by "Prim," and plant a tracking device on their bag. Supposedly, that's it. Except that when he deviates from the plan, Joanna has deboarded the train and keeps calling him to tell him he must do what he agreed to or else his family will get killed.

What follows is basically a cross between Taken and Runaway Train. There's nothing especially new to the storytelling here, but I must admit, I enjoyed The Commuter way more than I expected to. I'll even confess the single reason I even went to see it was because choices for new movies in theatres have been truly terrible for weeks, worse than it's been for years in the month of January. I literally saw The Commuter because I there appeared to be nothing better to see.

The critical consensus is mixed, and that makes sense. But The Commuter is one of those movies where the reviews arguably don't matter -- it's a certain type of movie that some people go looking for, and those people get what they're looking for. It's nothing special, but it delivers.

And to its credit, The Commuter, in spite of a script that is mediocre at best, has solid performances, and is edited in such a way that it's consistently suspenseful from beginning to end. It's fairly unpredictable, considering how contrived it is. It has a few surprises up its sleeve, and it has a great train derailment sequence that is as riveting as it is stupid. Sure, Liam Neeson leaps between train cars in slow motion like he's in a Mission: Impossible movie, but who cares? We're all having fun.

Liam Neeson may be the unlikeliest of action stars working today, although his rebirth as one in Taken now occurred a full ten years ago, in 2008. At that time, he was a 56-year-old playing 51 -- and here, he's a 66-year-old playing sixty. Hollywood aging at work, I guess. Neeson plays it well, though. He gets all the memorably cornball lines, playing regular working people with special skills learned at a former job in law enforcement -- this time, a former cop. He has a younger ex-partner friend played by Luke Wilson, and there's a captain they both resent played by Sam Niell. They all seem to know what kind of movie they're in -- and it's one that works better than most movies of its ilk.

In other words, The Commuter delivers the thrills you expect from it, without insulting your intelligence, at least not to an unbearable level. Here is a movie that seems to understand there's a line to draw with suspension of disbelief, and it stops just short of it. It's pretty forgettable in the long run, but entertains just the way you want while you're watching it.

Here's a hypothetical situation for you: what if this movie is not quite as dumb as you think it will be?

Overall: B