MUTE (2018), a sci-fi noir set in a future Berlin, tells the story of a mute man living in a future Berlin. When his girlfriend disappears, he goes on a mission through the city’s seedy underworld to find her. This movie seems to be widely hated but I found it surprisingly fun.

Leo, the mute (played by Alexander Skarsgård), can’t speak due to a childhood accident and despite living in a city where that problem could be corrected, he refuses to undergo surgery because he was raised in an Amish or similar community. When his girlfriend disappears, he sets out to find her, eventually putting him up against a pimp, the crime boss who runs the bar where he works, and two Army surgeons who’d served in New Kabul together, one of whom has gone AWOL to avoid going back to the front.

The surgeons, Cactus Bill and Duck, played by Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux, steal the show. They appear to be modeled directly on Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John from MASH (the movie, not the TV show), if Trapper John was a violent psychopath and Hawkeye was a pedophile. Leo bashes his way across Berlin’s underworld, bringing him on a collision course with Cactus Bill.

Thematically, the story is about the humanizing influence of love in a city that has dehumanized its residents, while the plot is basically part mystery and part race for Leo to save his girlfriend and gain vengeance before his enemy disappears forever. The world building is terrific, worthy of BLADE RUNNER.

Overall, the movie is a bit convoluted and poorly stitched with plenty of errant scenes that either go over the top or nowhere, but overall I got a real kick out of it. It’s a solid sci-fi noir with great performances and plenty of futuristic eye candy.

I put off watching EX MACHINA (2015) as I had it confused with AUTOMATA, another film about artificial intelligence and which I found pretty lackluster when I watched it as an advance screener. EX MACHINA is a great, simple film with numerous similarities to Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST.

Caleb wins a technology company’s lottery to spend a week with the CEO at his remote home/laboratory complex. The only other occupants are Kyoko, a silent maid, and Ava, an android with artificial intelligence. The goal of the week is for Caleb to administer a Turing test to Ava to see if she’s indistinguishable from a human being.

Nathan, the CEO, makes a great “mad scientist,” seemingly far less feeling and empathetic than Ava reveals herself to be during her sessions with Caleb. Immediately, we sense that Nathan is orchestrating a larger game, while Ava knows if she doesn’t pass the test she will be deactivated. The resulting conflict is tense, engaging, and heavily spiced with smart dialogue about artificial intelligence, what separates biological humanity from the artificial kind, and the horrible consequences the singularity could have for our species.

So yeah, EX MACHINA is a great little science fiction movie, the kind of thoughtful movie of which I’d like to see more.

THE DISASTER ARTIST (2017), based on the book of the same name by Greg Sestero, is a biographical-comedy depicting the making of THE ROOM (2003), which many consider the king of crap movies. The film is produced and directed by James Franco and also stars him as Tommy Wiseau, the seriously weird dude who invested a reported $6 million of his personal fortune to make THE ROOM. The result is a hilarious take on the making of the movie that is also full of heart.

I remember catching the trailer of THE ROOM back in the day and thinking, WTF? I couldn’t believe how ridiculous it looked, and Tommy Wiseau, who starred in it, struck me as unintentionally hilarious. While I skipped it, being the kind of guy who doesn’t really believe that a movie can be “so bad it’s good,” many people didn’t, turning it into a cult classic after its disastrous release. THE DISASTER ARTIST tells the inside story from the perspective of Greg Sestero, Wiseau’s friend who played second lead in the film, from meeting Tommy in an acting class to moving to Los Angeles to trying and failing to score acting jobs to making THE ROOM.

Tommy is a fascinating character. Nobody really knows where he’s from, how old he is, where he got his money. His look and accent are naturally humorous. He’s ridiculous in many ways, and childish and cruel when he feels unappreciated. Still, he’s extremely likeable. He believes in himself, exhorts his friends to be the best they can be, and is so damn earnest and carefree you can’t help but love him. James Franco really wanted to do this movie, and it shows. His brother gives a great performance as Greg Sistero, but Franco shreds every scene as Tommy. From the first scene to the last, you can tell Franco didn’t want to ridicule Tommy, playing him with a ton of heart. I can’t believe he didn’t get an Oscar nomination for it.

Overall, it was a surprisingly fun and funny movie from beginning to end. While I’ll still never see THE ROOM, I loved this movie about the making of.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE got a lot of hate from critics when it came out. I was curious about it because of its themes, but not that much so as the majority of superhero movies fall flat for me. When it showed up on Netflix, I decided to give it a few minutes on a lark and ended up staying up far too late to finish it.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN begins with the epic battle between Superman and General Zod, which results in mass casualties in Gotham in an event that looks like 9/11 x 100. This event makes Batman and numerous other people question Superman as an existential threat, even as many others have begun viewing him as a messianic figure, a god. Superman, meanwhile, regards Batman as a violent vigilante who needs to obey the law like everybody else. The stage is set for conflict, provided by Lex Luthor, modeled after a young and eccentric dot-com mogul, who believes Superman’s existence negates human achievement (while also imposing a stern father figure he resents on a personal level), and therefore should be destroyed.

The result is actually a great movie that does justice to these powerful, often unexplored themes. We actually get to see Superman wrestle with the understanding that his actions, while saving the world, may ruin or cost thousands of lives in the process, and resulting wonder whether Earth would be better off without him. (I confess to agreeing with Lex Luthor for quite a bit of the film.) We get to see Batman justify not accidentally but purposefully killing numerous villains to save lives. As a guy raised on stories where superheroes always faced clear-cut choices between good and evil, with their actions having few ill side effects, the murky ethics explored in this movie combine to make a great theme. The rest of the growing DC movie franchise is woven into the plot fairly delicately, most prominently Wonder Woman.

So overall, I liked it quite a bit. It was a cut above the usual superhero stuff, far more thoughtful, dark, and filled with great action.