The Qwipster Film Review Podcast

Set in Los Angeles in the year 1967, we find a widowed scam artist named Alice, who is working from home as a spiritual medium to make ends meet for herself and her two misfit daughters, fifteen-year-old Lina and nine-year-old Doris. Inspired by a new 'board game' of sorts that has spooked Lina and her friends, Alice decides to incorporate a Ouija board into her flashy seance showcase, but things take a weird turn when it ends up that the device seems to actually be a portal into the spiritual world, one that might put the family in contact with their deceased father/husband. Alas, what they find on the other side is increasingly unnerving, and now young Doris is showing signs of becoming a conduit for malevolent forces to make the leap to the earthly realm.

The plot involves the Dynamic Duo trying to take down their main four nemeses -- Joker, Riddler, Penguin and Catwoman -- who've joined forces to capture a Replicator Ray. which is a laser-gun of sorts that can make an exact replica of anything it targets. Despite falling into the right hands, those with wrong hands still manage to manipulate matters to their benefit, resulting in a major upheaval in the city of Gotham that could have long-ranging consequences if the good guys can't figure out how to reverse the Ray's duplicative properties.

The third film in the Dan Brown adaptation series that already includes The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons sees Tom Hanks return to play main Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who we find at the beginning of the story waking up with a head injury in a hospital in Florence, Italy. Langdon can't remember how he got there, or much of anything else in recent memory, but someone apparently wants him dead, causing a hasty escape, with his British doctor, Sienna Brooks, who just so happens to be an avid fan of his scholarly books on secret codes, in tow. Soon enough, both of their skills at finding connections through great works of art and European history are put to use, from analysis of Boticelli paintings to new interpretations of Dante's "Divine Comedy" (the first part of which the film derives its title), leading them on a race against time across the Mediterranean to thwart a secret society's plan to launch a plague that will wipe out half of the Earth's human population, ostensibly to prevent complete extinction.

Tom Cruise returns as Reacher, who travels to Washington DC to meet up with the attractive Military Police officer Major Susan Turner, only to find that she has been discharged from duties and has been arrested for espionage in connection with the killing of two American soldiers in Afghanistan. What's worse, Reacher also becomes a suspect linked to the murder of Turner's defense lawyer and gets apprehended. Sensing a frame job from within the military itself, Reacher and Turner have little choice but to go on the run in New Orleans and clear their own names by rooting out the source of the conspiracy involving a suspicious arms-dealing corporation before they, or the runaway teenager named Samantha, who could be Reacher's daughter, end up becoming the next victims.

Ben Affleck stars as the titular accountant, a highly functional autistic savant and skilled fighter/gunman named Christopher Wolff, who currently has an office at a strip mall that fronts for his real business, and a lucrative one at that, as the under-the-radar forensic accounting wunderkind who helps save major businesses, governments, and underworld figures willing to pay an exorbitant price. His latest client is a famed roboticist named Lamar Black, who wants the accounting dynamo to go through his books to find out why his own accountant, Dana Cummings, is having trouble with some of the numbers that aren't adding up, potentially resulting in a major financial leak in profits. When his work is cut short, Wolff can't bear to stop without achieving completion, though the Treasury agents on his tail threatens to undo everything he's built up before that can happen.

Emily Blunt stars as lonely, alcoholic divorcee Rachel Watson, who spends a part of every day commuting on a train, looking at the goings-on in a couple of homes that happen to be along the suburban New York route. One of those homes happens to be her former residence, where her ex-husband Tom, who Rachel has yet to get over as evidenced by her persistent drunk dialing and texting to him, is inhabiting with his new wife Anna, and their newborn child. Another home, just a couple of houses down, has another happy couple, Scott and Megan Hipwell, which makes consummate train-wreck (no pun intended) Rachel so envious, she drowns her jealousy toward those living the perfect Stepford-esque life the once had with more bottles of vodka, causing paranoia, blackouts and otherwise erratic behavior. When Rachel spies Megan with another man, then goes missing, she thinks she may have a clue to what may have happened to her, getting involved in ways that make her a potential suspect -- or a potential target. If only she could remember all of the details through her drunken blackouts.

Nate Parker's Birth of a Nation is based on real-life events that occurred in Virginia in 1831, where a slave named Nat Turner would lead a revolt against the white slave-owners. The film showcases how Nat went from Africa as a child to the cotton plantation of the Turner family, growing up picking in the fields, but very unique among the slaves there because he could read. His chosen book was The Bible, eventually learning to preach with the guidance of a relatively generous mistress of the house, Elizabeth. Later in his life, his slave master, the hard-drinking but comparatively compassionate Samuel, would shop him out to other locations to keep other slaves compliant through carefully chosen scriptures within. However, what he witnesses in terms of gross violence, rape and torture against the slave population soon compels him to take a stand against the oppression inflicted on people of African descent in the American South, calling on his metaphorical brothers and sisters to cast their chains away and rise up in a violent confrontation to fight for their freedom.

Filmmaker and documentarian Werner Herzog continues his fascination with the current state of the planet Earth and its inhabitants with Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, which seeks to show how the internet has changed the way human beings live and perceive one another, with advancements in technology that has been of great benefit to us all, while at the same time been a source of pain and angst for many others. Directing and narrating the piece, Herzog offers these reveries, these "daydreams and musings", in bite-sized vignettes, starting with the origin of the internet in a small laboratory on the UCLA campus in 1969 (the first transmission, meant to transmit the word "L-O-G" to another computer at Stanford University but crashed after the first two letters, forms the inspiration of the film's title), all the way to the possible future in potential settlements in space beyond Earth.

Deepwater Horizon depicts the events leading up to and during what would eventually become the worst oil spill in the history of the United States, where the titular drilling rig, the largest in the world at the time, would explode under massive amounts of pressure in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven of the 126 people on board, just 52 miles off of the coast of Venice, Louisiana, on April 20, 2010. A burst of methane gas trapped over three miles below the ocean surface blast up the well, eventually blowing out on the rig, where oil would continue to rush into the Gulf for nearly three months straight.

Phiona Mutesi, who we see growing up in Katwe, in the crime-ridden slums of Kampala, capital of Uganda, with a future ahead of her that seems to offer more of the same for her and her family. David Oyelowo co-stars as Christian missionary and youth outreach coordinator Robert Katende, who discovers a hidden prodigy in Phiona when he gathers some of the local children together to teach them the game of chess. Phiona gets very good, very quickly, soon enough besting all of the kids in Katwe, leading Robert to seek greener pastures by trying to have her compete in competitions sponsored by schools for the more formally educated. However, opportunities are scarce for someone of her situation (not only prejudice against people of the slums, but you also need money to enter some of the competitions), and Phiona's widowed mother Harriet grows increasingly concerned that the path Robert has her on will lead to a diminishing of her home life and earning money to help feed her and the family by selling maize (corn) at the local market.

Asa Butterfield stars as Jacob, an American teenager close to his grandfather, Abe, who would frequently impart his fanciful stories of his own youth spent at the peculiar home of the story's title. The home is run by Miss Peregrine, who caters to orphan children who possess strange and magical traits (one has bees living within him, another with a mouth on the back of her neck, another with the strength of ten men, etc.). When his grandfather passes, Jacob determines to find if Abe's stories about the magical home off the coast of Wales is real, but he discovers the place in rubble, bombed out by Nazis during World War II. However, Jacob soon discovers that a 'time loop' in which the orphanage continues to exist on the fateful day of the bombing in 1943, thanks to Miss Peregrine's ability to reverse time one day, every day. However, even the time loop may not be enough to save them, as the viciously evil Barron and his grotesque Hollowgast friends are out to snuff 'peculiars' out.

Michael Shannon plays Tom, celebrating his birthday at a critical time in his life, wondering what to do when his Persian wife is on the verge of moving from their home in New York to California to continue her education and help in her passion to make jewelry as a career. At the party, Tom's workmate Clyde brings over a guest, Alice, a new acquaintance he hopes will eventually be more. We know what the guests of Tom's party does not, thanks to an opening montage: this stranger has had many identities over the years, and Alice is just her latest. When she reveals her past at the party, it becomes all the buzz, and as Tom gets to talking to her more, we soon find out that they are both hiding secrets - the woman who must move on whenever she becomes trapped in a life and the man so set in his ways, he has a hard time leaving even when there's not much to stay for.

A man's mother whas been discovered to have an advanced-stage brain tumor that needs immediate removal, with John Krasinski playing the role of bored office worker and would-be graphic novel author John Hollar, who moved to New York and is currently awaiting the birth of a baby with his well-to-do girlfriend, Becca. He receives a call to return to his Midwest home to be there for his mother Sally's risky but crucial brain surgery, where he is greeted by his financially struggling plumber father, Don, and his recently laid-off brother Ron, who hasn't yet been able to move on from his divorce.

Set in the year 1879, this new version moves the action from feudal Japan and Mexico to a struggling new town called Rose Creek, who are being bled dry and forced to leave or die from a ruthless and iron-fisted land baron named Bartholomew Bogue, who is looking to continue amassing riches by getting rid of themeek residents of the town to further set up his gold-mining operation. When Bogue's attempts to terrorize the people of Rose Creek into leaving turn deadly, recently widowed Emma Cullen seeks righteousness and revenge by enlisting the services of fearless duly-appointed warrant officer Sam Chisolm to help protect the town and put an end to Bogue's murderous ways. With the local sheriff and deputies on his payroll, and an army of desperadoes to protect Bogue, Chisolm knows he's going to need a formidable team on his side as well, soon enlisting the services of a ragtag group of skilled gunfighters, as well as to train the town of mostly pacifists on how to fight for the town that's rightfully theirs.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Edward Snowden (doing a reasonable interpretation of his voice and demeanor), a neoconservative wanting to serve his country but whose military career is cut short due to frequent injuries, turning his sights to working to help is country in another capacity though a career in government intelligence. He proves to be more than adept at this job, which allows him to climb the ranks to higher and higher levels of security clearance within the CIA. However, the closer he looks at their programming, the more disturbed he is to find just how intrusive many of the surveillance software and techniques are under both the Bush and Obama administrations, leading him to have a crisis of conscience on whether the American public has a right to know about how their privacy has eroded in the computer, smart phone, internet and social media age.