The struggle is real. Or maybe just in your head.

In case my review of the (don’t call it quirky, don’t call it quirky) quirky psycho-thriller Buster’s Mal Heart didn’t fully convey it, I want to further express my delight at the film’s portrayal of crankery, perhaps best exemplified by a gaunt, disheveled man on public access TV (is that still a thing?) talking about how the universe is governed by sphincters, “from black holes to assholes,” and how the in the coming inversion all of creation is going to disappear up its own backside. Or something like that. Marvelous.

And yet, where would we be without cranks? How many movies have for their hero the one man who refuses to accept the horse manure that the system shovels at him every day? “In a world...one man...” etc. So many great comedians are cranks, calling bullshit on the accepted, the standard, the unexamined garbage that passes for normality. The world has dealt them a blow and left them tender, and now they’re probing the wound and wondering what hit them. Buster’s Mal Heart is like that. I liked it a lot. And what’s more, I liked looking at it and listening to it.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword? Not so much. Too desaturated, sparky, and twitchy visually; too bombastic, throbbing, and thumpy in the audio department. Guy Ritchie fans will probably not be disappointed. But I was, especially since there was a lot of up-in-your-head psychodrama that, SPOILERS, got resolved without any real change or sacrifice from our hero. As with Moana, there needs to be more drama on the protagonist’s part than accepting your status as The Chosen One. (Even The Matrix understood this and had the smarts to bring in salvific love.)

The Wall falls somewhere between the two. It’s a solid piece of action filmmaking that finds a way to make its headgames feel like they matter.

Alas, all the rumination in the world couldn’t save Risk for Scott. Politics makes strange bedfellows, but from the sound of it Laura Poitras maybe should have stuck with Edward Snowden and steered clear of Julian Assange. Hasn’t he had enough cinematic exposure already, what with Underground and The Fifth Estate? (Maybe not, I guess, given that just about every big-budget action film now features a hacker and talk about how the one who controls the information controls the world.)

As for Snatched and After the Storm, they managed two stars apiece, but the reviews include phrases such as “could have used a laugh track” and “imitation Koreeda.” Something to think about. Still, Scott had a good chat with director Adam Levine, so it wasn’t all bad.