INFERNO

It probably doesn’t need to be said, but over the past five years Tom Hanks has been enjoying a rather spectacular run of creative accomplishments. A brilliant performance in Captain Phillips. Acclaimed turns in Bridge of Spies, Saving Mr. Banks, and A Hologram for the King. Current raves for Sully – his biggest non-animated hit in a decade. Documentary cred as executive producer of CNN’s The Sixties, The Seventies, and The Eighties. Emmy Awards for co-producing HBO’s Game Change and Olive Kitteridge. David S. Pumpkins. Now Hanks stars in Inferno, his third go-around as author Dan Brown’s cerebral action hero Robert Langdon. And all I gotta say is: The run sure was nice while it lasted.

MASCOTS

We’re about a half-hour into Christopher Guest’s new comedy Mascots when a familiar figure, one played by Guest himself, enters the scene with a sweetly swishy “Hello-o-o-o!” It’s been almost 20 years, but he’s just as you remember him: the goatee, the bowl cut shaved two inches above his ears, the polka-dot blouse, the pants that can only be described as “indescribable.” (They look like clown pajamas designed by Calvin Klein.) Granted, the guy is moving a little slower than he used to, and his speech is a little stilted, and there are liver spots where there weren’t before, and nothing he says or does comes as much of a surprise. But what does it matter? It’s Corky St. Clair, for Pete’s sake – that indefatigable, talent-free impresario from Waiting for Guffman! To quote the man’s adorable sycophant Steve in 1997: “Corky! CORKY-Y-Y-Y!!!”

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

Given how much fiction I get in my weekly movie-going, home-video, and streaming intake, I’m generally – make that awfully – negligent about getting it from books. Last fall, however, I made an exception for author Paula Hawkins’ bestselling mystery/thriller The Girl on the Train, and now that Tate Taylor has directed a film version, I can (for once!) share a reasonably educated opinion on the inevitable “Which was better?” query: They’re pretty much the same. By which I mean both works are ludicrously plotted, overly reliant on convenience and cliché, and, despite their considerable flaws, sometimes trashily entertaining.

DEEPWATER HORIZON

Aside from both being based on real-life 21st Century events, you wouldn’t think that Deepwater Horizon – director Peter Berg’s disaster thriller about the devastating BP oil spill of 2010 – would have much in common with Clint Eastwood’s current “Miracle on the Hudson” hit Sully. The former finds cost-cutting recklessness leading to the deaths of 11 men; the latter details a heroic landing that resulted in zero fatalities. The horrific accident of the former lasted for months; the calamity of the latter was over in minutes. The tone of the former is tragic; the latter’s is triumphant. Yet all throughout Deepwater Horizon, and especially during its vividly detailed scenes of mass destruction, I kept thinking the same thing I thought through the whole of Sully: Why exactly was this movie even made?