65.) The Intern [9/30/2015]

Maybe I am expecting too much: Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway were both pretty good, the story had some interesting elements, and I wasn't bored, so I should probably call this a win; that said, for a movie that went as far as to have the characters state, loudly and often, that women could have it all, it sure focused a lot on a dude, albeit a helpful one, who underwent no significant life changes while a woman with a complete arc about self-acceptance and forgiveness was literally marginalized; with a few narrative shifts in focus, this might have been a really great, uplifting movie about women in the work place, but instead we get a movie about an old guy who helps people by just being himself.

64.) Pawn Sacrifice [9/29/2015]

Chess as a metaphor in films has been done before, and I generally find them tedious; here, though, the complexity of chess is far more nuanced, and thus its use as a metaphor for the enigmatic (and problematic) is more nuanced than the typical motif of chess-as-war conceit; Toby MacGuire does crazy pretty well as he works to distance himself further from Spider-Man, and Liev Schreiber is a nice counter-balance to that insanity (as I am sure Spassky was to Fischer).

63.) Sleeping with Other People [9/24/2015]

This movie was tricky to review: Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis made for pretty good leads in this fast-talking romantic comedy about two impossibly charming people with conflicting attitudes about sex and relationships; I remember liking it, but I feel like I'll likely forget I saw the movie (which would be a shame, because I remember liking it when I left the theater).

62) No Escape [9/23/2015]

Set against the vague backdrop of a rioting Asian country, this movie featured a lot of running with little context as to why anything was happening (why was Owen Wilson taking a shady job when he had a nearly successful patent; what was Pierce Brosnan supposed to be; why were the Asian people rioting; etc.), leaving the movie feeling tense, but mostly confusing; surprisingly, Luke Wilson was okay as the frantic action star, and it's always nice to see Lake Bell get work.

61.) Everest [9/19/2015]

Like Into the Wild, this was a movie about the most predictable tragedy imaginable, but unlike Chris McCandless, Rob Hall seemed like a thoughtful and careful person who was caught in an unfortunate (though not unpredictable) circumstance; it was, not surprisingly, a difficult movie at times, watching what seemed like a really good guy freeze to death.

60.) A Walk in the Woods [9/17/2015]

An old-man version of Wild but lacking the clarity in metaphors and character arcs; if you liked all the walking scenes in The Hobbit but hated the fantasy aspects of the film, then A Walk in the Woods is for you.

59.) Mistress America [9/15/2015]

Noah Baumbach again releases a movie where someone (this time co-writer and star Greta Gerwig) is living a stunted adulthood, refusing to see the world as it is while aimlessly drifting through life and being admired for it; so if that is your bag, this will probably be alright by you; Gerwig is pretty good, though the machine gun dialogue is full of pretty words that mean nothing (which might be the point).

58.) Dope [9/10/2105]

I missed this the first time it came through, and then it inexplicably came back; the love child of Super Bad and Napoleon Dynamite, this was an incredibly charming and funny movie about kids who refuse to fit in (in this case, with the culture of South Central LA), and fight for their right to be weird and different; I loved this movie.

57.) Straight out of Compton [9/3/2015]

Having been a young teenager when NWA released their first album (and during the LA riots against which the film is set), a lot of this movie rang true to what I remember (though, being a white Midwestern suburbanite, it did fill in some pretty huge gaps in my own understanding, like how completely horrifying Sug Knight is and how bold a move Ice Cube made leaving NWA); that said, it did significantly gloss over some of the more unseemly bits that conflicted with the narrative, like how Dr Dre beat a lot of women and how Eazy-E was sort of a scuzzy dirtbag, which gave the group a bit more of a rosy shine than it deserves.

56.) The End of the Tour [9/1/2015]

End of the Tour, the bio-pic about author David Foster Wallace, was an interesting exploration of not just the reclusive and troubled writer, but of what makes some people great (even if they don't want to be) and what makes some people forgettable (even if they're trying not to be); I put Infinite Jest on my Amazon wishlist so I can be like everyone else who owns it but hasn't read it, so there is that.