Malice (1993)

This thriller, a bit Pacific Heights in that Nicole Kidman and Bill Paxton's married Boston couple take in a charismatic but likely troublesome renter to overcome a financial trouble, is really quite fun despite how silly and overstuffed it all is, featuring an entire serial rapist/killer subplot (with an early career Gwyneth Paltrow) seemingly for the sole purpose of justifying the taking of a sperm sample for a grander story arc involving a too-good-to-be-true Uncle Charlie, a ludicrous Rear Window flourish, and a Witness For The Prosecution consultation in a squalid apartment where truths are out.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Equalizer 2 (2018)

McCall is back dishing out vigilante justice in not one but five concurrent missions that so overfill this sequel there's no room for any plot details - the reason people are being killed in the main storyline is because their names are on a list (and that is literally all there is to learn about the matter), and similarly there's no time for elaboration in the "Not Without My Daughter" opening scenes nor any detail offered in the overly-ambitious Woman In Gold side story that keeps interrupting the action; there's nothing much to know in the Dangerous Minds character-building side story involving McCall keeping a young man from falling in with gangbangers, and no detail (nor sense) in the Twister denouement in which a storm event conveniently evacuates McCall's hometown just in time for a bad-guy showdown, and finally, don't expect any elaboration of any kind in yet another episode, a kind of Promising Young Woman sequence involving gang rapists.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Lost Highway (1997)

Time, identity and memory are at issue in this cryptic headf-, um, puzzle from David Lynch, one in which a terrifying harlequin mystery man (Robert Blake) taunts jazz saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) and his 'other', mechanic Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) with cryptic messages that hint at personality schisms and dark fears.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW