Meg

Actors: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis

Rating: 8 out of 10, A movie about a huge shark and Jason Statham. I wasn’t going to miss that, even if it meant listening to my wife gasp appreciatively every time Statham took off his shirt. I’d read the book years ago and always wondered why they hadn’t made a movie about a huge prehistoric shark emerging to devour 21st century humans. The movie took itself a little too seriously at times and had to vanilla-ize to stay below an R rating but it still reveled in the summer monster flick traditions. It was truly unnerving to see a great white shark the size of a freight train cruising around indulging for a penchant for Chinese food. Some of the attacks were startling and even diverted my wife’s attention from Statham’s pecs for a while. This was formulaic but extremely well done as the meg ate his way through the supporting cast. The ending was a bit contrived but did you really think he stood a chance against Statham. A lot of fun.

MVP: Statham as Jonas, like the shark had a chance

The Spy Who Dumped Me

Actors: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Justin Theroux, Sam Heughan, Hasan Minhaj, Gillian Anderson

Rating: 8 out of 10, This might have been a little too long but there can never be too much Kate McKinnon who’s back playing her usual character walking a thin line of sanity. Mila Kunis is playing her usual straight ”man” for McKinnon’s outlandishness and it works. There were several scenes where I was laughing out loud which is rare for me in a darkened theater. I really liked that the female characters were not victims although it would be easy to fall into that with plot of a gal (Kunis) literally dumped by a spy who has the entire intelligence world descending on her and her crazed gal pal. Instead they head out for Vienna and are soon bounding around the major cities of Europe one step ahead of assassins and smarmy operatives who consistently underestimate them. While most of their success is achieved accidently it is uniformly funny. Jane Curtin and Paul Reiser are hilarious in very small roles as completely inappropriate parents which makes sense since they spawned McKinnon. A good laugh when I needed one and Kunis thoroughly dominates an evening gown for climatic fight.

MVP: Kunis as the unsuspecting and lethal Audrey