BURNT and OUR BRAND IS CRISIS

This past weekend brought with it not only Bradley Cooper in the genius-chef-in-crisis drama Burnt, but also Our Brand Is Crisis, in which Sandra Bullock plays a political strategist running a Bolivian presidential campaign. You know what this means, right? It may be happening on neighboring screens, but after six long years, we're finally treated to the All About Steve reunion no one was asking for!

BRIDGE OF SPIES

I caught Steven Spielberg's Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies at a Friday-matinée screening alongside roughly 75 others. You could tell it was a predominantly, shall we say, mature crowd because of the volume and frequency of coughing fits, the food items being unwrapped with aching slowness, and the stage-whispered narration following louder queries of "What'd he say?!" You could also tell that, on numerous occasions, the movie was really working for this group, because for long stretches the crowd opted to remain collectively, blessedly silent.

PAN

Not long into director Joe Wright's origin fable Pan, the 12-year-old Peter (Levi Miller), newly captured by pirates descending from bungee cords, surveys the World War II fighter planes striking his kidnappers' airborne pirate ship and shouts, "Oh, come on!" Roughly an hour later, in the midst of another aerial attack, Captain Hook (Garrett Hedlund) - a heroic American boasting Indiana Jones' wardrobe and two functional hands - gazes at the melee involving enormous CGI birds of prey and shouts, "Oh, come on!" What does it say about a movie when even its leads can't believe in the on-screen nonsense?

There have been verified reports of patrons vomiting during the last half hour of The Walk, director Robert Zemeckis' big-budget take on Philippe Petit's famed 1974 high-wire trek between Manhattan's Twin Towers, a tale previously recounted in James Marsh's Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire. The response of those patrons is understandable; as a lifelong sufferer of vertigo - especially when those vertiginous heights are around 1,368 feet above street level - I did have to look at the cineplex floor a few times to steady my nerves. But in the end, my senses of profound terror, anxiety, and euphoria at Zemeckis' cinematic feat proved worth the discomfort. I only wish I could say the same for the movie's first 90 minutes, which could easily provoke vomiting among those, like myself, who gag at the mere thought of revisiting Amélie.