“Abducted” is a thriller novel written by T.R. Ragan and introduces a traumatized private investigator named Lizzie Gardner.  When she was a child, Lizzie was kidnapped and held captive by a serial killer who liked to terrify his unwilling guests with venomous spiders.  She ended up calling him Spiderman.  Anyway, Lizzie escaped his clutches and grew up to be a tightly wound private eye with a lost love who turns back up in her life. It was thought that Spiderman was identified and imprisoned, however girls started disappearing again and notes are left taunting Lizzie.

There is not much here I have not seen in other detective series.  Lizzie is mildly interesting but a little too familiar.  This Spiderman character is a bit cartoonish. His motivation for his misdeeds lack a bit of creativity.  He believes he is purging society of troublesome teen-age girls or something.  Of course, he is playing cruel mind games with our intrepid, dogged Lizzie.

The prose style is competent but not all that compelling.  It was good enough to keep me interested to see how this whole played out, but I am an easy audience for this genre.  It ended up being a serviceable distraction but not much more.

“Murder Mystery” is a comedy, and well….a mystery film that stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.  James Vanderbilt is the writer of this latest effort to spoof my favorite genre while Kyle Newacheck is the reasonably competent director.  Luke Evans, Gemma Arterton, and Terence Stamp are included in the cast.

A married couple take a somewhat impromptu trip to Europe to fulfill a promise that was made on their wedding date fifteen years before.  Sandler plays Nick Spitz, a New York City cop who has some trouble getting promoted to detective while Aniston has the role of the hairdresser wife with a perfectly understandable love for murder mysteries. Adam Sandler basically does the kind of obnoxious, clueless character he usually performs.  Spitz is one of these guys with no verbal filter who keeps making promises which he cannot quite deliver on.  His wife, Audrey, is the likeable, ditzy sort who wants a bit more romance from her husband.  I am not sure what she expected from marrying someone by the name of Nick Spitz and is as slovenly as most of Sandler’s roles.  If one doesn’t examine the motivations too closely and rest them against…you know… reality, the pairing does rather work for this film.  It’s probably because both of the lead stars have such profound record of comedic acting.  This doesn’t seem too much of a stretch for either of them, but Aniston in particular was often quite good.  I think she would be considered the straight man in this particular double act.  She and Sandler do seem to have pretty believable chemistry for the most part, especially since she has mastered the art of exasperation.  Sandler was Sandler.  I had some trouble getting to like his character for quite a while.

The film itself was fine.  There was nothing all that new under this particular sun.  The plot dealt with lots of rich Europeans, a disputed inheritance, and familial betrayals.  There was some location shots, and a pretty good car chase scene.

Not all of the jokes landed that well, but not all of them missed the mark either.  Two practiced comedy veterans like Aniston and Sandler do help keep this movie from being a train wreck, but the writing and that sense of this being more of the same does keep it from being that memorable.

There is still some fun to be had with this film in spite of the cracks.

“Men In Black: International” is the latest in the “Men In Black” film franchise in case anyone couldn’t figure that out by the title.  Yes, it continues the series which previously starred Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.  This time, we get two new agents portrayed by the hunky Chris Hemsworth and the undeniably gorgeous Tessa Thompson.  Thompson, of course, being the one who kept my attention the most, for the obvious and politically incorrect reasons.  Although as well as being quite eye-catching, Thompson puts in an unsurprisingly good performance.  I am not surprised that she kept up well enough with the talents of other more seasoned actors such as Emma Thompson and Liam Neeson because I have seen quite a bit of her other work and can’t recall anything where she was disappointing.  She has already established engaging chemistry with Hemsworth from their time together in recent MCU films. A couple of fellows named Art Carcum and Matt Holloway are the scriptwriters with F. Gary Gray directing this latest cinematic venture.

The film starts off with a young girl witnessing the intervention of a couple of MIB agents when they are tracking a cute little alien that has managed to elude them.  The girl sees the employment of the famous neuralyzers which erases the memories of her parent’s encounter with the mysterious MIB.  She grows up to be some kind of genius who is able to find the headquarters and is recruited by Emma Thompson’s characters.  There are two actors named Thompson in this one, so this could get a little tricky.  Anyway, the newly minted Agent M is sent to London where she meets Liam Neeson’s High T and Hemsworth’s Agent H, and the two new partners have to go on the run, find some other alien weapon, and then a mole in the agency.  Typical MIB hijinks.

This film is pretty easy to mock in many ways, but it does work better than I expected for another installment in a probably overdone franchise.  Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson do work well together.  Even the ridiculous tiny alien sidekick known as Pawnee, voiced by Kumail Nanjiani, was not as annoying as he could have been. I actually ended up liking the little guy, and those kind of characters usually are rather obnoxious.

Rebecca Ferguson plays the lead villain here as an arms dealer who has well…three arms.  She apparently is a former flame of the hapless Agent H.  She’s fine in this role. There’s a pretty good fight scene between her and Agent M.

There were some nods to the prior films, but not too much, which I sort of appreciated. I don’t mind a tip of the hat to what came before, but that sort of practice could get a little distracting if one is trying to introduce new characters and elements into a long-running franchise.

There are times when the writing and editing falls short on coherence, but the charisma and performance of the cast is helpful in making that somewhat forgivable.  It’s not entirely forgivable, but I didn’t leave the theater in a rage over a misspent afternoon. Some of the supposed twists and surprises were not all that hard to predict.  I was pretty entertained, particularly in the second half.  If the head honchos here decide to reunite Agent H and Agent M, I might still be willing to give them another go, hoping for a better plot, of course.

“The Final Problem/ The Empty House” is an audio double feature from Big Finish Productions featuring Sherlock Holmes starring Nicholas Briggs and Richard Earl as the crime solving duo of 221B Baker Street. Briggs has been quite busy in this one.  He directed this release with the assistance of Ken Bentley as well as adapting the material written by the master himself, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  This is a pivotal point in the original canon when Doyle tried to kill off his most famous literary creation and then brought him back to the pages of “The Strand” a few years later.

This has a pretty small cast that features Alan Cox as the malevolent Professor Moriarty alongside John Banks and Beth Chalmers.  This is pretty much an audio book since Earl reads the narration as Dr. Watson almost word for word.

Nicholas Briggs gives a solid performance as Holmes.  I am not sure why I have a bit of a hard time fully buying into his interpretation though.  Sometimes he doesn’t sound quite as natural as I would prefer when reading some of the dialogue.  He is a fellow Sherlockian so I don’t have the heart to be all that critical of his performance.  Actually, I am getting used to his delivery, so I am not really that put off by him.  I also do not find him to be bad in the role, but I may be too used to some of the prior thespians such as Basil and Jeremy.  It may just be the way the prose is written in that it tempts him to sound a little more haughty than he needs to, although Holmes really isn’t the most humble of souls. Anyway, I actually have a tremendous respect for Briggs’ talents as a writer and producer, and he does well enough as an actor in other episodes.  I enjoy his enthusiasm for Sherlock Holmes and the other ranges he works on for Big Finish.  I am glad that Big Finish contribute to the Holmes legacy, and Briggs should continue to be a major part of that.

Richard Earl is the perfect choice for Watson.  I found the way he pitched his voice when relating Watson’s reaction to Holmes’ sudden reappearance in his consulting room after being thought dead after the battle with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland very enthralling.  I have read these stories numerous times and watched the televised version starring Jeremy Brett as well, and it’s a great moment in all adaptations I have seen or heard.  Earl probably has the hardest performance since he is the one speaking through most of the episodes, and he really is quite engaging.

John Banks plays the role of Colonel Sebastian Moran in “The Empty House”.  He is a solid performer as well, but he delivers the hatred with gusto.  He borders a bit on overacting during his brief moments, but Doyle’s style of writing can lend itself to such an approach at times.

I was pleased with how faithful this presentation was to the original stories published by Sir Arthur.  The sound effects were quite convincing as well.  The theme music also serves quite nicely in building the anticipation for the adventure to begin in earnest.

This is probably one of the strongest releases in this range, and it is largely due to the respect demonstrated to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original presentation of these two stories.  It’s very enjoyable regardless of the how much I have read or experienced these two stories in the past.

“The Monsters of Gokroth” is a Doctor Who audio play presented by Big Finish Productions.  Matt Fitton is the author of this particular adventure which features Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. Jessica Martin reprises her role of Mags, who was first introduced in the television serial “The Greatest Show In The Galaxy”.  The Doctor first encountered the alien werewolf from Vulpana in the company of intergalactic explorer Captain Cook as they discovered the lethal secrets of the Psychic Circus.

Victoria Yeates and Jeremy Hitchen are included in the cast and do quite well, but that is hardly surprising with a Big Finish cast.

Mags has come to Gokroth to seek help with being able to better controlling her more bloodthirsty tendencies.  Her werewolf transformations have become more unpredictable and a doctor is on the planet studying other monstrous beings.  Of course, discord and fear erupt between the monsters and the humans just in time for the Doctor to discover Mags and trap them both in the center of the maelstrom.

I may have to give this one another listen to appreciate the basic conflict more.  McCoy is great as usual, but I wasn’t drawn that much by the plot.  I do think that revisiting Mags is an interesting direction though.  It does give Big Finish the opportunity to explore dynamics that could have had potential in the television series, and they usually have been quite successful with these efforts.

I think Fitton is a pretty good writer for the most part, and I may learn to appreciate this episode down the road.  McCoy’s Doctor gets a better presentation than he sometimes got in the television series, and his presence is certainly easy to appreciate even here.

Even if this episode didn’t hit it out of the park, in my opinion, it will be fun to hear how things go down between the Doctor and Mags in the upcoming episodes.

“Rocketman” is the musical biographical film about the legendary Elton John.  He was born Reginald Dwight, in case anyone was not sure about the title.  Dexter Fletcher is the director while Lee Hall is the credited scriptwriter.  Taron Egerton takes on the lead role and is actually proven to be a solid casting choice.  Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, and Bryce Dallas Howard are also included in the cast.

This is a musical in the classic sense with people breaking out into song at random throughout the film.  Egerton is known to have sang on his own and does a fine job with it. There’s no way he could sound exactly sound like Elton John, but that still somehow makes the experience better.  It would not be entirely surprising to see Egerton earn an Oscar nomination here.

Some aspects the film seemed a little unnecessarily gratuitous, but I am a staunchly conservative Christian, so of course I am going to wince at some of the excesses depicted in this piece.

I did have some difficulty keeping my bearings as to where I was in John’s timeline as the movie progresses.  I may be too reliant on years being flashed on the screen during biopics.

If I were to meet Elton John, I doubt we would agree much on social or political matters, but I did grow up enjoying a lot of his music over the years.  It was interesting to be reminded of his outlandish stage appearance early in his career.

I didn’t find this to be any grand masterpiece of cinema, but it was engaging.  I certainly could not find fault with the cast or the performances.  Howard seemed to be a bit of a risk as Elton’s mother since she is only nine years older than Egerton, but this isn’t the first time that such a suspension of disbelief was required.

Anyway, any criticism I may have is fairly minor for the most part.  It’s an interesting, thought-provoking movie about someone whose musical talent has made an enormous, if somewhat complicated,  impact on the culture.

“The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye” is a novel by David Lagercrantz and continues the series started by the late Stieg Larsson which featured the Swedish hacker and vigilante Lisbeth Salander.

Lisbeth is finally in prison for a few months after breaking a few laws for the side of the angels in the previous novel.  It does not take her long to run afoul of a gang leader who has been bullying a Bangladeshi prisoner.  Investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist is on hand to help, especially when one of the very few people Salander respects and trusts is murdered.  There is also another clue to Salander’s past that is uncovered involving immoral experiments conducted on twins.

It’s fun to know that Salander can continue after her creator’s demise in some fashion, however this installment is not as engaging as I hoped.  It could be that Salander spends much of this tale somewhat immobilized.  The novel wasn’t really a failure, but there were not that many shocking revelations.  It is heartening to know that Lagercrantz will bump off a few of the characters created by Larsson in order to move Salander’s story forward.

The climax provides a bit of a payoff, however I do not find this to be one of the stronger additions to the series.

Another killer is lurking in early 19th century London, and Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, has another troubling murder to solve in “Why Kill the Innocent” by C.S. Harris.

“Dark Phoenix” is the latest film in the X-Men franchise and was written as well as directed by Simon Kinberg.  The film sees the return of cast members including James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Jennifer Lawrence, Sophie Turner, and several other familiar faces.

The film is supposed to be an adaptation of the comic book era known as “The Dark Phoenix Saga” initially written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne.  I have not read the comic book series even in my younger years, so I can’t speak to the faithfulness of this latest effort.  Audiences saw another version of Jean Grey’s transformation into the Phoenix with a previous X-Men film entitled “The Last Stand”.

The McAvoy version of Charles Xavier has taken in Jean Grey and raised her in his school for gifted children. Of course, the gifted children are not so much geniuses as they have unique abilities courtesy of their mutant DNA.  However, the good professor has kept secrets from the supposedly orphaned Jean.  The actions begins with the X-Men flying off into space to rescue astronauts apparently threatened by a solar flare.  Although the rescue is successful, a mysterious force inhabits the body of Jean Grey, amplifying her already formidable psychic abilities.  Just when the situation can’t look worse, an alien presence has arrived searching for the one who absorbed the powers of the space phenomenon.  The leader of these invaders have taken over the form of Jessica Chastain, or rather the character she is portraying.

Anyway, there is a lot going on in this thing.  The story struggles with a consistent coherence.  Sophie Turner is okay as the increasingly befuddled and desperate Jean Grey.  She tends to get panned pretty thoroughly for her, and I didn’t think she was all that awful.  I thought Fassbender as Magneto was the most compelling of the cast.  It’s a talented cast, and they did the best they could, but really the film suffers from profound mediocrity in the writing.  Plus, as mentioned before, this storyline has already been done on the big screen.

The visual effects were done well enough, but that was not unexpected.  The movie has a few interesting moments and revelations, but nothing that really filled me with awe and amazement.

I would hesitate to call this piece truly terrible, but I can’t say there is much to call it all that good.

“Wraith” is a supernatural thriller written and directed by Michael Sajbel, who decides on a rather unusual genre to express his views against abortion.  Lance Henriksen is probably the only cast member most will immediately recognize.  Much of the film centers on a struggling family played by Jackson Hurst, Ali Hillis, and Catherine Frances. The family live in an impressive old house with too many rooms for a family of three.  The father is looking for work, and the mother is a writer not sure if her next work is going to be published.  Right when the mother learns that she is expecting her second child fourteen years after the birth of her first, strange occurrences are appearing in the house.  There’s a spectral girl running around uttering cryptic things.

It’s not a terrible idea for a movie, but it was cheaply produced.  I certainly don’t have any objection to the message that was ultimately conveyed about the option of abortion. It was kind of heartening to see someone attempt a piece of work that goes against the Hollywood culture.

It’s a basic B ghost movie.  The acting wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t great.  I still think Henriksen has the best gravelly baritone though.  He plays a blind priest who ends up coming to the aid of the haunted family.

Anyway, a production such as this is likely to appeal to those who get a strange kick out of B movies, and for that particular niche, there are worse ones out there.

“Agatha and the Truth of  Murder” is a film that provides a pretty implausible but entertaining explanation for the eleven days in which famous mystery writer Agatha Christie had disappeared in 1926.  Ruth Bradley plays the embattled Christie who is facing divorce and the sense of predictability in her writing.  Pippa Haywood, Bebe Cave, and Ralph Ineson are also included in the cast.  Tom Dalton wrote the script, which was then directed by Terry Loane.

Agatha is approached by a woman wanting some help with solving the murder of her partner which occurred on a train six years prior.  Agatha is reluctant at first since she was merely a writer and not an actual detective.  She finally agrees to take on the challenge and adopts the guise of a legal representative named Mary Westmacott. Fans would recognize this as a writing pseudonym as well. Anyway, she gathers the five people who would make plausible suspects who believe some inheritance is up for grabs. Of course, another murder occurs, and Agatha starts to feel a bit out of her depth.

I am not sure how close Bradley was in her actual depiction of Agatha Christie, however I still found her performance pretty enjoyable.  It ended up being the basic British setup of a group of people in a remote mansion with a killer among them.  Of course, the whole thing of Christie’s eleven day disappearance has been fodder for various writers and filmmakers periodically for decades.

This film may not be the most original and creative cinematic endeavor, but it was still pretty enjoyable, especially if one is an enthusiast for Agatha Christie and the era of mystery writing in which she ruled.