a) Colossal
I'd been really looking forward to seeing this movie, partly because of the bizarre concept, and partly because the director, Nacho Vigalondo, made one of my favorite segments in the short horror film anthology The ABCS of Death. And it really lived up to my expectations, I just adored it. It reminded me of Groundhog Day in that it set up this fairly odd, convoluted concept with some internally consistent 'rules' and played it out to a narratively satisfying conclusion, but there's no real attempt at explaining how or why this all happened, you end the film in the dark just like the characters.

b) The Babysitter
It's weird to think that at one point in time McG graduated from directing Smashmouth videos to multiple $100 million budget features. But his bubble burst eventually and he's now just another hack who does suitably low profile stuff like this horror comedy for Netflix. As with most uninspired horror comedies, this kind of plays the middle so much that it just winds up not being funny or scary much at all, although there is a fair amount of gore and some loud young actors trying to yell their way into campy hilarity.

c) All Nighter
This movie is basically one prolonged set up for J. K. Simmons to berate and roll his eyes at quirky and eccentric millennials, which seems like kind of a lazy way to solidify the Simmons brand post-Whiplash. But the cast is decent, it's relatively spirited and charming even if it falls short of what it could've been.

d) Mine
I'm a sucker for movies that consist almost entirely of one character going through one violent or painful ordeal more or less by themselves, your 127 Hours type scenarios. So this movie where Armie Hammer steps on a landmine, and spends the rest of the movie trying to stay alive and not step away from the mine and setit off, had some potential to be pretty gripping. I felt they kind of threw too many ingredients into the pot to make it exciting, though, particularly once he starts hallucinating and reliving memories and whatnot. But really, Hammer is barely enough of a movie star to even carry the noisy action flicks he's done, so he really isn't fit to handle a role like this.

e) The Program
My wife and I are both big fans of Ben Foster, I feel like if he'd had the right breakthrough role early in his career to get to a certain level of fame he really could've thrived with a DiCaprio type career, but he's done pretty well for himself with a more slow burn of steadily impressive performances. And this movie where he plays Lance Armstrong is really a great showcase for what he does well, he really disappeared into the role more than I thought he would. There's a funny scene where Foster-as-Armstrong, before his public disgrace, hears that there's a biopic about him in the works and speculates on whether Matt Damon or Jake Gyllenhaal will play him. It struck me as an interesting meta moment, maybe deliberately or maybe not acknowledging that if Armstrong had remained an American hero the story of his life would be a more upbeat movie with a bigger star.

f) Mr. Holmes
This movie came out at a point when 4 actors had portrayed Sherlock Holmes in major film and TV projects in the space of as many years, so it just seemed like overkill even for one of the most adapted characters in literature. But I'm glad I got around to it, it was a well rendered imagining of an elderly Holmes working one last case, kinda makes me wish it had followed a long series of films of Ian McKellan as Holmes.

g) Maggie
It's kind of fitting that even an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger's serious quiet performance in a movie fairly low on action scenes is still a zombie apocalypse flick. It seemed decent but the whole thing was just so slow and muted that I just lost interest pretty quickly. 

h) Runnin' Down A Dream

I have loved Tom Petty's music for as long as I can remember, and had watched bits and pieces of Peter Bogdanovich's 4 hour documentary about him on cable here and there over the past decade. But I didn't finally sit down and watch the whole thing until the week Petty died, which was just a great way to drink in the Heartbreakers' whole remarkable career and appreciate his legacy.