Aside from its patently awkward title, Gavin O’Connor’s “Jane Got a Gun” still had a draw, namely its two stars Natalie Portman and Joel Edgerton and its tight-knit story in a Western setting. Unfortunately it became better known for the carousel of people joining and then leaving the film as well as the distribution turmoil. The Weinstein Company eventually dropped the film into the January wasteland of releases. Predictably it bombed.

It’s amazing that the film was ever completed. Michael Fassbender, Jude Law, and Bradley Cooper were all cast in important roles but left the project. Director Lynn Ramsay left and was replaced by O’Connor. Cinematographer Darius Khondji left and was replaced by Mandy Walker. Brian Duffield’s script received substantial rewrites by Joel Edgerton and Anthony Tambakis. That the film manages the cohesion it does is impressive.

But I think all of those production woes put up some insurmountable hurdles. While there is a simple but interesting premise, “Jane Got a Gun”struggles to sustain any level of energy. It putters along towards its obvious conclusion giving us a few good character moments but not enough to save the film from its mediocrity.

Portman plays Jane Hammond who has settled down on a patch of land with her daughter and husband Bill (Noah Emmerich). But Bill can’t shed his outlaw ways. After wrangling with a gang called the Bishop Boys and their leader John Bishop (Ewan McGregor), he returns home full of bullets and with the gang hot on his heels. What a great guy.

With Bill incapacitated Jane asks her ex-fiancé Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton) to help her protect her husband and house. The two must navigate several emotional mine fields include their past relationship and Dan’s glaringly obvious (and reasonable) disdain for Bill. The movie plants itself here for a bit exploring the history of these two through a number of pointed conversations and flashbacks. It doesn’t add much to the film and only pushes back the inevitable conclusion.

I certainly can’t fault the performances although there are moments where Portman struggles mightily with her Old West accent. Edgerton is good even though his character isn’t nearly as layered as he could have been. Ewan McGregor is fun in a cheesy, evil, mustache-twirling way. The problem is I’m not convinced the movie is intentionally playing him that way.

In the end “Jane Got a Gun” is the definition of bland. Its faults aren’t egregious or due to creative incompetence. It simply lacks that pivotal spark in the relationships, in the dialogue, and even in the action. The frustration comes in knowing it isn’t a terrible film. It’s just a flavorless western that can’t seem to capitalize on its decent ideas.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS

As a moviegoer one of the best experiences you can have is unexpectedly discovering a wonderful film. It may be a movie you flippantly dismissed. Maybe one you had absolutely no expectations for. But then you see it and you’re blindsided by how good it truly is. Everything I just described defines my experience with Jon Favreau’s “The Jungle Book”.

This semi-live action remake of Disney’s 1967 animated classic may be my biggest surprise of the year. On the surface remaking this story through live action and a ton of CGI seems unnecessary. But while it has been years since I’ve seen the original, Favreau’s freshened up version pulls just as much from Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 stories as the animated feature. And it actually leaves a much stronger and more satisfying impression. Again, something I never expected.

Debuting young actor Neel Seethi plays a “man-cub” named Mowgli. Orphaned as a child and raised by a wolf named Raksha (Lupita Nyong’o), Mowgli lives among the pack trying to fit in but knowing he is unlike the other wolves. A black panther named Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), who first discovered Mowgli as a baby, now trains him to live like the wolves while avoiding his ‘man tricks’ as a means to survive. Despite the good intentions, this only accentuates Mowgli’s human-born inferiority.

When the dry season arrives a vicious human-hating Bengal tiger named Shere Khan (Idris Elba) breaks a longstanding water truce and states he will kill Mowgli once the rains come. Fearing for his wolf family’s safety, Mowgli leaves his pack and ventures into the jungle, but he quickly realizes the dangers of Shere Kahn’s violent and dogged determination.

The Justin Marks screenplay bounces back and forth between perilous thrills and lighthearted comedy and that’s no complaint. It works because he always keeps the focus on Mowgli and his venture to find and understand where he fits in. It’s a simple but heartwarming story that never flatlines and never insults its audience by dumbing itself down. It’s one of those rare family treats that easily speaks to every age group.

The story is also written in a way that allows Favreau and his animation team to flex their computer-generated muscles. Let me be clear, this film looks amazing. The effects are nothing short of extraordinary. Shot entirely on Los Angeles sound stages and employing the latest innovations in motion capture, photorealistic rendering, and CGI, Favreau’s undertaking was incredibly ambitious and could have easily failed. Instead he creates a gorgeous and sublimely realistic world that shows off one incredible location after another and that makes talking animals as believable as possible.

And speaking of those talking animals, the voice work is another huge plus. Kingsley, Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson as a sultry serpent, Christopher Walken as a gigantopithecus mob boss – they’re all excellent. But the standouts are Bill Murray as a big brown sloth bear and Elba’s terrorizing Shere Kahn. Murray’s Baloo allows him the vocal space to be exactly what you would want from him – Bill Murray playing a bear. On the other end Elba brings such danger and menace to the film’s tiger antagonist.

But it all comes back to Seethi and his wonderful debut performance. The lone human character of any significance, Seethi is asked to carry a pretty big load. He manages wonderfully. His performance is one of many things that make Favreau’s project so satisfying. Toss in its great characters, good story, perfect pacing, and mind-blowing special effects. There are two songs which feel wedged in and a little jarring and the plot does rely on a couple of ‘conveniences’, but in no way do those minor gripes ruin what may have been the most pleasant surprise of 2016.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

“John Wick” was a fun, fresh 2014 action thriller that added its own little twist to the “boy and his dog” story. Okay, perhaps that’s a tad misleading. Instead let’s say it was a stylized shoot-em-up heavily influenced by Hong Kong cinema and the 1980s action genre. Personally speaking that is a tantalizing recipe and “John Wick” used it to violent bloody near perfection.

The surprising success of the film and eventual cult status lead to a sequel simply titled “John Wick: Chapter 2”. Former stuntman Chad Stahelski returns to direct and Derek Kolstad is back as screenwriter. Most importantly 52 year-old Keanu Reeves (yes, I said 52 years-old) reprises his role as the hard-boiled and well-dressed hitman John Wick. If you weren’t fully convinced of his tough guy status after the first film wait till you see him here.

“John Wick 2” ties up a few loose ends before launching into its own bullet-riddled story. Wick once again finds himself trying to get out of the hitman business, but an old blood oath comes back to haunt him. Weaselly crime boss Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) violently rejects Wick’s unwillingness to honor their pact which catapults John right back into the life he desperately wants to leave.

One of the real treats of “John Wick 2” is how it expands on its wild global underworld network of assassins which lies just under the crust of the world’s biggest cities (in this case New York City, Rome, and then back to the Big Apple). It’s an interconnected outfit with its own rules and codes many of which are shared by the delightfully droll Ian McShane. He returns as Winston, the “manager” of the Continental Hotel which is actually the network’s New York City kill-free headquarters. Other fun characters return including Lance Reddick as the hotel’s concierge and John Leguizamo as Wick’s chop-shop buddy.

There are some lively new faces as well. Lawrence Fishbourne is introduced as an underground crime lord hilariously called The Bowery King. Common plays a quiet yet lethal fellow assassin who shares some fantastic scenes with Reeves. There is also Ruby Rose (“Orange is the New Black”) as D’Antonio’s cartoonish but perfectly fitting mute enforcer.

In addition to the cool mythology and world-building is the energetic gun-fu action which sports a hypnotic choreography as elegantly composed as some of the best musicals. Here killing takes the place of dance and you have Keanu Reeves with a Glock instead of Gene Kelly with an umbrella. As silly as that sounds it’s actually pretty accurate. Stahelski’s stunt coordinator muscle never subverts his storytelling, but it does give us some spectacular set pieces. He also know Reeves well, having served as his stunt double on the “Matrix” trilogy. To make the action as authentic as possible Stahelski put Reeves through an extensive boot camp featuring martial arts, gun training, and driving. The payoff is a hoot.

I’ll be the first to admit that the “John Wick” movies have surprised me. They could have easily been your standard throw-away dreck. Instead they are films that meld a fresh new style with and old-school action nostalgia. “Chapter 2” has a fun time expanding on the first movie and being completely comfortable in the world it has created. There is a beautiful rhythm to the violence and the film never loses its self-awareness or tongue-in-cheek wit. All of that said “John Wick: Chapter 2” isn’t some groundbreaking piece of cinema, but it’s remarkably unique and it operates by its own rules at every turn. I really like that about it.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

There are a number of traps and obstacles filmmakers face when making a biopic. It grows even more challenging when the film’s focus is a beloved historical and cultural figure. “Jackie”, director Pablo Larraín’s portrait of Jackie Kennedy, would seem to be a prime example. But this film avoids many of these routine complications by setting itself up as something strikingly unique right out of the gate.

Writer Noah Oppenheim first conceived “Jackie” as an HBO miniseries but the project evolved into a compact, tightly-wound 98 minute feature. It tells the story of Jackie Kennedy but not in the traditional sense. Instead it restricts its focus to the four days between the assassination of her husband President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 to the state funeral on November 25th. It’s told almost entirely from her perspective yet it’s much more than a detailed historical account. The film’s interest is in exploring Jackie’s state of mind during those impossibly traumatic few days. It does so with equal amounts of fact and speculation.

The narrative framework comes in the form of an interview. Billy Crudup, credited as simply The Journalist (but based on Life magazine journalist Theodore White), arrives at the Kennedy’s Hyannis Port compound to interview the former First Lady. He’s met by a pale, drained Jackie (played with uncanny ferocity by Natalie Portman). Throughout their mercurial and sometimes contentious interview it becomes clear Jackie is the one dictating the terms of what will be written. When she lights a cigarette she emphatically tells the journalist “I don’t smoke.” – a clear signal to him that she controls the message.

Through the interview we revisit those agonizing four days the way Jackie recalls them. All of the iconic imagery is there – the ’61 Lincoln convertible, the pink bloodstained Chanel dress, Jackie and Caroline kneeling at JFK’s casket. Larraín presents these scenes through well detailed recreations and archived historical footage. But this movie is more interested in the time between those well-documented moments. What did Jackie do? Better yet what was she feeling?

Because of this focus “Jackie” maintains a keen psychological edge to it. You see it as she maneuvers through an emotional haze of grief and anxiety. Larraín and Oppenheim want us inside of Jackie’s head as they themselves ponder her internal reactions to such painful and uncertain events. Portman runs with it, diving so deeply into the psyche of her character that we completely forget the two look nothing alike. You buy into her personal struggles and her wranglings with others including her compassionate brother-in-law Bobby (played by Peter Sarsgaard who is so good here) and Lyndon B. Johnson (John Carroll Lynch).

Surprisingly this isn’t a puff piece aimed at reinforcing Jackie’s venerated cultural image. It doesn’t shy away from her weaknesses or blemishes. At the same time it doesn’t shortchange her strength and fortitude. At no point does the film question her resilience or integrity. If anything it humanizes her and makes her a more sympathetic and relatable person especially considering the overwhelming pressures she faced.

This movie’s unusual approach to the biopic is sure to catch a lot of people off guard. In some of its deeper internal moments it’s almost hallucinogenic, maybe too much so on occasion. Mica Levi’s moody score is a big contributor. It plays prominently from start to finish and blankets the entire film with a steady sense of unease. And then we get back to Portman and her sublime performance. It’s peculiar and off-kilter, perfectly so. That makes it a wonderful fit for this unusual but thoroughly satisfying portrait.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

Who would have guessed that Robert Ludlam’s trilogy of novels would spawn an immensely popular $1.2 billion movie franchise? That’s what happened with the Jason Bourne series. It began in 2002 with “The Bourne Identity”. Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass would make three films together. Throw in 2012’s ill-advised “The Bourne Legacy” (minus Damon and Greengrass) and that brings us to 2016 and the latest film, the generically titled “Jason Bourne”.

You could say it is an odd and unexpected return not only of Damon and Greengrass but of the series itself. The Jason Bourne character has lied dormant for nine years yet the new film is essentially a direct sequel to 2007’s “The Bourne Ultimatum”. You would think Greengrass (who also co-wrote the screenplay) had a big vision if he was bringing his lethal, conflicted amnesiac back out of the shadows. Turns out he really doesn’t. In fact, you could say that “Jason Bourne” follows the very familiar franchise blueprint.

But that’s not saying it’s a bad movie. In fact I think a lot of the initial quick-triggered criticisms are undeserved. “Jason Bourne” has many of the same ingredients as the first three films – a good cast, some intense pacing, a handful of impressive action scenes. At the same time it’s tough to overlook the fact that somethings are clearly missing in certain areas of the film.

One of those areas is the story itself. Again, it isn’t bad, but nothing about it feels particularly fresh or original when compared to the past Bourne pictures. Bourne (Damon) is mistakingly implicated in the hacking of a CIA database. The actual culprit is Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) who unearths information that puts Bourne on yet another trail to find out more about his past. Hot on his heels is the ‘shoot first’ CIA led by their craggy director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) and ambitious head of operations Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander).

Greengrass’ story globetrots around the world and features several interesting locations including Greece, Iceland, Berlin, London, and Las Vegas. You’ll also see plenty of text messages, computer screens, and keyboard tapping. But one thing you won’t see is even the slightest hint of a smile. Every single character is stern, dour, moody, or downbeat. It tends to fit with the tone Greengrass is going for, but I couldn’t help but find the ever-present, super-serious expressions a bit amusing. And don’t think about the story too much. Question marks and plot holes are everywhere.

The film sports around three big action set pieces which are overshadowed by the slick, methodical, surveillance-based buildup leading to them. As has become commonplace in many films, the action is hacked to pieces in the editing room. Shaky cameras and quick cuts are disorienting. Perhaps it’s needed for a now older Matt Damon (the Liam Neeson action flicks incorporate the same method), but it’s still annoying. The one exception is the big finale – a fantastic edge-of-your-seat sequence in Las Vegas. Greengrass calms his camera down a tad and gives us an action scene that rivals anything in the first three pictures.

So what to make of “Jason Bourne”. It’s a movie with plenty of the Bourne elements fans will be expecting. It is a bit slow out of the gate, but when it gets its footing it falls right in line with the franchise. But that’s also why the film felt a bit stale and routine. It does nothing to step outside the franchise’s strict established bounds. Ultimately it doesn’t do enough to avoid feeling like a tacked on chapter to the Bourne story. Still a well made and fairly entertaining chapter, but nothing fresh and nothing that reenergizes the series after so many years away.

VERDICT – 3 STARS