The Qwipster Film Review Podcast

In 2001, the Boston Globe's new editor-in-chief is Marty Baron, a Jewish media exec coming in from Miami to take over the reins of a paper that has always catered to a predominantly Catholic community and readership, but one on the cusp of primarily getting their news through their AOL connection and the World Wide Web. Baron's first order of business is in getting to the guts of what the paper does and try to make it relevant to the readers they serve, and, in a conversation with Walter "Robby" Robinson, who leads a four-person investigative squad known as "Spotlight", he persuades them to put their current story on hold and dive headfirst into getting to the root of a story about a priest who has been accused of several instances of molestation in the Boston community he serves, as it seems he has had a pattern of doing this wherever the Catholic Church has placed him, only for the story to be mostly buried and see him re-emerge in another community some time later. With the Church having such strong influence in the town, Robinson knows they're going to face strong opposition wherever they dig, but the more resistance they get, the more they become convinced that the problem isn't just one priest, or several -- it's an entire system within the Church that systematically keeps the stories under wraps for fear of shining a light on the many disturbing criminal acts within from individual serial perpetrators, as well as the environment of cover-ups that allows them to operate, seemingly without impunity.

Isaac, Ethan, and Chris are friends since childhood who've made it a point, after Ethan's parents are killed by a drunk driver, to get together on every Christmas Eve in order to party like there's no tomorrow. (Yes, they're going to commemorate someone else's drunken revelry that led to a tragedy that left one of them becoming an orphan by engaging in it themselves.) Now into their thirties and ready to get serious about family and career, they've decided that this year's night of debauchery will be their last. Knowing they should go out with a bang, Ethan manages to steal tickets to the biggest and most exclusive party in New York City. However, there are several factors that threaten to make the night not last, including Ethan's inability to get over his ex, dad-to-be Isaac's over-consumption of the box of various drugs his nine-months-pregnant wife has given him, and burgeoning football star Chris wanting to desperately to score point with the captains on his team that he means to secure a stash of weed they've asked him to bring to the bash.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 is the fourth and final film based on the Suzanne Collins trilogy of young adult novels, and the story, as it reaches its big climax, shifts more into a war flick and less a sci-fi based satire, as it becomes a game of survival to see if Katniss can stay alive long enough to capture and kill the villainous President Coriolanus Snow. It's a decidedly darker film, not only in themes, but also in delivery, as the high-gloss shine of the aristocracy becomes dismantled by revolution, and what's left of the Capitol is a mostly empty wasteland of deadly booby-traps set up by the craft game-makers (they've dubbed this the 'unofficial 76th Hunger Games'), forcing the small band to evade explosive landmines, powerful gun turrets, floods of hot oil, murderous humanoid mutants (called Mutts), and other nastier concoctions to achieve their ultimate mission. To complete her task, Katniss defies the explicit instructions given to her from leader of the rebellion, President Alma Coin, to remain a tool for propaganda by actually taking a small faction of mainly prior Hunger Games survivors out to the battlefield to infiltrate the Capitol and put an end to the tyrannical reign of Snow over the 13 districts of Panem.

Though the movie weaves many side stories in and out of it, the through-line of The Peanuts Movie is in whether or not Charlie Brown will strike up enough nerve to talk and get to know the new girl in the school he develops an instant crush on (he's dubbed her the Little Red-Headed Girl -- she's traditionally never actually seen in prior works, but we finally get a glimpse of her here).  Taking place over the course of a school year, Charlie Brown seizes upon several opportunities to put himself on her radar (a dance competition, a talent show, acing a test, and a book report on "War and Peace"), hoping that being seen as a 'winner' will give him the leverage necessary to overcome the instances when he feels like a loser with a perpetual streak of bad luck.  In between this are several interludes, many showcasing some Snoopy solo daydream adventures where he "dogfights" the dreaded Red Baron to fight for the love of a French poodle named Fifi, high in the clouds, which is where the film's choice to render 3D animation is put to good use, even if repeated visits are a bit of overkill.

Emma Donoghue beautifully adapts her best-selling 2010 novel of the same name, about young woman named Joy Newsome (Brie Larson), who has been kidnapped and held as a captive for repeated sexual abuse in the soundproofed and electronically secured shed in the backyard of a deranged sexual predator for over seven years. In the shed with her is her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay), who was born and raised in captivity in that tiny environment that they simply call "Room", and whose understanding of the world comes only through his mother's carefully shielded words, a television set that he's been led to believe shows pure fantasy, and a small skylight. For five years, she's been able to shield Jack from her captor's advances, but the constant fear and her inability to keep the inquisitive young boy hidden has her think it's imperative that she find a way for him to escape, and, hopefully for him to be able to tell someone who can help that she's still alive and hopeful of being found. However, Jack is the only positive thing she has in this world, and it's hard to let him go, especially when he doesn't know anything about what's beyond Room's walls, or of other people, which makes his chance of survival in doubt.

M is none too thrilled with the events of Bond's Mexican excursion, especially as it makes the proposed merger between MI5 and the more top-secret MI6 a reality, which will threaten to take out the 00 series of spies in favor of using hi-tech surveillance equipment like satellites and drones.  This ends up resulting in a grounded 007 getting injected with a substance that allows his whereabouts to be tracked at all times so he doesn't go rogue again, which, of course, he's going to disregard.  However, Bond is on a mission, along with Dr. Madeleine Swann, the daughter of a Bond villain who allies with him, seeking revenge for her father's death, leading him to have to infiltrate a massively powerful underground crime organization known as SPECTRE, run by the umbral Austrian criminal terrorist, Franz Oberhauser, who may have had a hand in all of the super-spy's most recent foibles.

Steve Jobs is written by highly acclaimed screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who scored big with another tech industry biography with 2008's The Social Network. Although Walter Isaacson's best-selling biography on Jobs published in 2011 provides many of the facts used in the film, Sorkin takes all of those facts and conversations and eaves them into its own fictional circumstances, setting all of the backstage drama in the ramp-up to three key product launches in the career of Jobs, 1984's Apple Macintosh, 1988's NeXT "Cube", and 1998's iMac.  Handlers, work associates near and not-so-dear, skeptical tech journalists, demanding ex-girlfriend named Chrisann Brennan, and even Lisa, an estranged daughter Jobs denies is even his, come in and out of the story as he preps for going out on stage and trying to wow the crowd in his hype for another one of his uniquely designed consumer products. 

Starting off in Buffalo, NY, at the turn of the 20th century, Mia Wasikowska stars as an aspiring writer named Edith Cushing (nod to Hammer Horror thespian Peter Cushing , no doubt) is struggling to get publishers to accept her ghost story novel in an era in which female authors are relegated to the romance genre. Thought to be on a clear trajectory to become a spinster due to her independent spirit, Edith is soon courted by a well-to-do British man named Thomas Sharpe. The two eventually marry, and Edith uproots to Thomas's massive but rundown mansion in England that has been built upon a mountain made out of red clay, which has caused the bottom floors to seep eerie blood-like ooze. Also living there is Thomas's enigmatic sister Lady Lucille, who seems to have tendrils in every corner, including in her brother's mind and heart. Proverbial skeletons fill the closet, but actual ghosts too, as the promising beginning of a new life may also come to a quick end for Edith, if she doesn't keep her wits about her.

Set starting in 1957, in the midst of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Tom Hanks stars as New York-based insurance lawyer James B. Donovan, a by-the-book guy. Donovan is called upon by United States representatives to provide the legally defense for Rudolf Abel, a longtime Brooklyn resident who has been accused of espionage for the Soviet Union for many years. The United States feel it's an open-and-shut case, but Donovan still takes his role very seriously, unwilling to play patriot by undermining his client to provide information to the CIA, and the public at large begins to despise him for trying to defend a man for supplying information to a country that is threatening the U.S. with nuclear annihilation. Knowing that his client could get the death penalty for his alleged crimes should he be convicted, Donovan beseeches the already biased judge for leniency, citing that Abel would be good to have alive and incarcerated in case one of our spies ends up getting caught in a Communist country. Donovan's insight bears fruit when a U-2 pilot named Powers is shot down flying a recon mission in Russian airspace, and the U.S. wants him back before the Soviets manage to extract sensitive intel from him while he's in their custody. Now's the time to play their trump card of Abel for Powers, and there's only one master negotiator they've come to trust to get the job done who wouldn't have information to give of his own: James Donovan. However, Donovan threatens to muck up the works when he tries to get two political prisoners for one, requesting the release of an American student named Pryor, who was captured behind the Berlin Wall.

Starting out in London around 1930 we find a young and anguished mother leaving her newborn baby on the doorstep of an orphanage. During the bomb-ravaged times of World War II, years later, the baby grows into a spirited young lad, Peter, who quickly makes friends with the fellow boys in the orphanage, but even faster enemies with the badgering nuns that run the facility. Things get complicated when Peter learns that other boys have gone mysteriously missing in the night, and he wants to get to the bottom of things before he ends up the same. Peter finds out firsthand soon enough when pirates from the sky descend upon the building and steal him and all the other lads away to their flying pirate ship, run by the ruthless Blackbeard, who uses them for cheap labor in mining fairy dust from a land he's dubbed Neverland. However, when a cruel punishment reveals Peter's ability to fly (something the boy didn't even know he had in him), Blackbeard recalls a chosen-one prophecy of a rebellion led by a boy, born from the union of a fairy prince father and human mother, who could fly and makes him very wary of Peter. The boy's put into pirate jail, where he soon befriends and American(?) adventurer named James Hook, who springs them out and takes them to the land of fairies transplanted when the pirates took over Neverland, where the scrappy mystic Tiger Lily leads. Peter thinks that Neverland has the key to being reunited with his mother again, and together with the newfound rebels, the prophecy Blackbeard fears takes root.

Emily Blunt stars as FBI agent and SWAT team member Kate Macer, whose services are enlisted in voluntarily helping out a mysterious group of black ops law-enforcement agents headed by drug war advisor Matt Graver (Brolin) and partner in crime-fighting in former Colombian prosecutor Alejandro (Del Toro), who are operating under the usual radar in their effort to deal with the extremely dangerous Mexican drug cartels that have begun to take firm root on the U.S./Mexican border, and have even spilled over activities into the Southwestern U.S. She's in way over her head in the tasks at hand as she travels to the 'lion's den' of Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, where the drug cartels have complete dominion. Macer, a firm believe in the law and her duty to uphold it, sees her new partners tactics as not only illegal, but potentially immoral, but her desire to see justice done after a calamitous mishap that saw several of her fellow agents killed in a suburban Arizona house raid gives her the resolve necessary to see the people responsible go down, specifically cartel kingpin Fausto Alarcon.

A NASA mission finds a group of scientists and astronauts on the surface of Mars collecting info and samples of the native soil.  Their mission ends prematurely when a major dust storm flings rocks and other debris around, causing the crew to head toward their spacecraft to leave the area, leaving behind a fallen team member, Mark Watney, who has been presumed to have died during the storm.  Only Watney doesn't die, though he is quite injured, but manages to make it back to the Mars station for a bit of healing and contemplation on the fact that he is now stranded with no means of communication, and likely to die when one of his many precious resources (food, water, air) runs out.  About four years out from the next expected mission to Mars, Watney decides he's going to use his training in botany and engineering to try to not only figure out a way to extend his chances of survival as long as he can, but he's also going to have to find a way to let those on Earth know he's still alive on the hopes they'll come back before it's too late for him.

The Scorch Trials is the follow-up to the modest 2014 hit, The Maze Runner, based on the 2010 YA novel by James Dashner.  We continue to follow Thomas and his fellow Gladers, now out of the original maze, taken to a research facility where they meet the main administrator, Janson, who tells them that they will be taken to a place where they will no longer be in danger, once they pass a series of tests.  Thomas soon discovers that not everything is what it appears to be, and comes to the conclusion that their lives will be in danger if they remain there.  They take their chances surviving out on the Scorch, the desert-like surrounding area where a deadly Flare virus has run rampant and has turned much of the infected into miserable and deadly zombies, dubbed Cranks here.  Hoping just to survive, the crew soon discovers that there are other humans left out there, who may be instrumental in fighting back against WCKD (WICKED), the original organization that enslaved them in order to harvest a vaccine to combat the Flare virus.

Based on the infamous true story from the late 1970s to early 1980s, Johnny Depp stars as James "Whitey" Bulger, a ruthless Irish-American crime boss who climbed the ladder to the top in south Boston as the leader of the Winter Hill Gang.  In some part, it helps that his brother Billy is a highly influential politician in the area, but his biggest breakthrough on the fast-track to success comes when a childhood friend named John Connolly happens to be an FBI Agent assigned to take down crime bosses in Boston, and uses Bulger as an informant to take down what was then bigger fish in the city.  Bulger is no rat, so he says, but if there's a way to take down his competition while also affording his own activities some protection, he's also no fool either.  He takes the offer to exchange information for the authorities looking the other way, and soon both Bulger and Connolly gain instant success and influence in their respective positions, though things get more complicated when the murderous, drug-selling, arms-dealing, extorting, racketeering Bulger's protection allows him to become the biggest fish in the pond.

Fifteen-year-old Becca and her slightly younger brother Tyler are sent for a week-long stay in rural Pennsylvania to stay at the home of the grandparents they've never met while their single mother decides to treat herself to a romantic cruise with her new beau. Their first time staying with the elderly for an extended period, the kids are disturbed by the behavior of their Nana and Pop Pop, including Nana's cavorting around the house nude in a manic state, or Pop Pop's tantrums and mysterious trips to he secluded shed outside.