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The Astronaut

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  • Title: The Astronaut
  • IMDb: link

I’ll give Kate Mara credit for taking unusual projects. However, when they don’t work they really don’t work. The Astronaut starts out as a psychological thriller with Mara cast as our astronaut recently returned from space and suffering “common” side effects while kept in seclusion in a secure facility off the grid (which at least makes for an interesting setting as events devolve). Mentioning several times what our astronaut is experiencing is normal, the film continues to push and prod Mara’s character to question her reality and her sanity.

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Balls Up

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  • Title: Balls Up
  • IMDb: link

In a library of mediocre to awful Prime original movies, Balls Up asks them all to hold their beer. This aggressively unfunny comedy stars Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser as employees for a company that invents a condom that also covers a man’s balls (hence the film’s title) who cause an incident at the World Cup making them the target of an entire country of insane soccer fans. We also get the likes of Benjamin Bratt, Sacha Baron Cohen, Eva De Dominici, Daniela Melchior, and Molly Shannon for equally unamusing moments.

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The Phantom

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  • Title: The Phantom
  • IMDb: link

Although 1996’s The Phantom wasn’t a big success with critics or audiences of the time, I had a grand old time seeing in theaters. The adaptation of Lee Falk‘s classic character unapologetically leans into making a comic book movie accepting the ridiculousness of the premise and championing it rather than forcing such bizarre concepts to appear more realistic. Set in 1938, with a focus on practical effects, if anything the nostalgic charm of the film has made it age even better with time. Revisiting it every few years, I always end up having a good time and appreciate it even more 30 years later.

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Ryde

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  • Title: Ryde (2017)
  • IMDb: link

There’s an interesting 20-minute short film buried in writer/director Brian Frank Visciglia‘s 2017 thriller Ryde. However, at 84 minutes, a serial killer (David Wachs) taking over a ride-share driver’s car to find victims gets stuck in attempts to elongate the story with our killer’s separate vignettes and lengthen the not-all-that-interesting dialogue between our other main character (Jessica Serfaty Michel) and her loser boyfriend (Ronnie Alvarez).

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Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

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  • Title: Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
  • IMDb: link

The bizarrely-named Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, suggesting the film is part of franchise that doesn’t exist, is a slight deviation from the usual Jason Statham-versus-the-world stories. In what appears to be a half-assed Mission: Impossible knockoff, Statham stars as the Ethan Hunt of the film charged with getting back a stolen weapon about to be sold on the black market. His team includes Aubrey Plaza, doing double duty as the female field agent and tech support, and Bugzy Malone in a role best described as “the other guy.”

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