The Girl On The Train (2016)

A daily commute on a train allows a woman, not a girl, to observe the lives of two couples who seem to pop out and share intimate moments on their balconies with the regularity of cuckoo birds marking the time and the commuter gets mixed up in a murder case when one of the observed disappears, in this adaptation of the popular - but judging by this movie - ridiculously plotted Paula Hawkins book, a perfect movie for anyone who likes their mystery thrillers to unfold surprise-free, in an incoherent monotone, mostly in the dark and out of chronological order to disguise how unremarkable it is, with only personality-free characters, several of them indistinguishable from each other, behaving in only completely cracked ways.

★☆☆☆☆

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The Magnificent Seven (2016)

"Staged" is one word that springs to mind watching this update of the updates of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, with sets and props so pristine and removed from the action that they look like cartoons and with costumes that look like dress-ups, close-ups of sweaty brows that look like Sergio Leone playacting, and scenes of men entering buildings via saloon doors and exiting seconds later via windows looking like comedic sore thumbs...and other words that spring to mind are "dreadfully boring", "horribly unengaging", "by the numbers" and "far from magnificent".

★☆☆☆☆

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