Safe House (1999) The lack of a real film career for Patrick Stewart kind of always baffled me. Outside of Star Trek and X-Men, he doesn't have much to show for all his considerable talent. Rewatching Safe House, it became a little more understandable. I think either he just wasn't offered a lot of options, or he wasn't very good at making selections from them. Safe House is a classic Patrick Stewart performance, filled with just about every quirk you've seen if you're familiar with his Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, except the story itself can't decide if it's ridiculous or if we should be taking it seriously. Stewart plays an ex-CIA DIA operative who in retirement lives a paranoid life no one around him understands. Because the film can't decide what it is, Stewart spends most of it looking unnecessarily silly. I'm left with the question, why waste his talent on something like this?
Screwed (2000) The death of Norm Macdonald hit a lot of people pretty hard. I had been a fan who tried to keep tabs on his career post-Saturday Night Live, but eventually he sank into an undeserved oblivion (except for a vocal performance in The Orville, his last notable work). He was one of those people, like John Cleese, who couldn't help but sound hilarious. Screwed is Macdonald playing a butler who hatches a crazy scheme with Dave Chappelle to stage his own kidnapping, with equally ridiculous results. I love it.
Serenity (2005) This latest rewatch I finally just threw my hands up. Joss Whedon developed a whole cult following thanks to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which carried over into Firefly, the short-lived show Serenity continues. Ironically, it wasn't until Whedon reached his career zenith as director of The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron that people finally decided maybe they didn't like him as much as they thought they did. If I could sum up the career of Joss Whedon in one word, it would be: self-indulgent. He was never really one to question the logic of his decisions. The results, more often than not, were far more ridiculous, and not in the good Norm Macdonald sense, than anyone ever cared to admit.
Serenity (2019) In recent years critics have kind of gone out of their way to discredit the kinds of movies that used to define the mainstream. This Serenity was one of those victims, labeled a total disaster despite being anchored by compelling performances from Matthew McConnaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, and Djimon Hounsou, and an unusual story whose logic is spelled out despite what you might have heard, high concept, in the aftermath of Shyamalan and Nolan, having apparently become taboo.
Shazam! (2019) With the massive success of the MCU, the DCEU's relative failure tended to be explained as it lacking the sense of fun that pervaded, well, the successful MCU. So Shazam! happened, and was actually less successful than the DCEU had been to that point. I like it. I don't love it (it doesn't help that lead character Billy Batson is outshined by two of his kid costars, Freddy Freeman and Darla (who hopefully has a vastly expanded role in the sequel).
Sicario (2015) Denis Villeneuve's follow-up to Prisoners, and to date his last English-language straight drama, powered by the doubt of Emily Blunt as she attempts to navigate the murky waters of Josh Brolin and Benecio Del Toro.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) The follow-up, not directed by Villeneuve, is basically a repudiation of the first one, Brolin and Del Toro on the defensive, although it makes a strong case for the films best being understood as rare recent star vehicles for Del Toro, as this one ultimately hinges on his enigmatic foreign agent trying to find whatever justice he can.
Side Effects (2013) I can't really explain why Steven Soderbergh voluntarily shrank his Hollywood profile, perhaps feeling guilty over the glitz of his Ocean's trilogy. Here he relies on Jude Law and Rooney Mara to navigate the tricky waters of the justice system and pharmacological drugs, with an unexpected twist ending. I hadn't successfully watched the whole film previously (same as had happened with Prisoners), so it was a welcome discovery finding out what the actual film was like.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) I don't think this follow-up is as successful as the first one (which was full of fun performances). This one is more about the general pulp noir feel, which itself is still fun to experience, and adding the likes of Eva Green and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to the mix, plus increasing the size of Jessica Alba's role, creates enough new atmosphere to make it worth savoring.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) The paradox of the modern film era is that when CGI made anything possible, the very idea of movie magic seemed to become impossible to enjoy. This early digital landscape came and went to little interest, although the results are still fun to watch, nearly twenty years later. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow are a punchy duo in this version of something b-movies did all the time, but this one is just capable of doing it better.
