Dolemite Is My Name (2019) **

By the numbers "let's make a movie" movie made a little bit better by Mr. Murphy and Mr. Snipes.

La tête d'un homme (1933) **

One of the first adaptations of Maigret is mainly a character study of the villain. Some nice scenes, plenty of innovative camera tricks and atypical shots. Not really interested in the whodunit aspects of the story.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018) **

Literal interpretation of the source novel is well made, acted. Nice to see Mr. Glover back on the screen.

The Good Liar (2019) **

Enjoyable who's-conning-who flick is well made. Mirren is exceptional.

Why thousands of Amazon packages converge on a tiny Montana town - The Verge

The end result is a bizarre, looping supply chain. Some hair conditioner might get sent from a Walmart warehouse in Grantsville, Utah, to Roundup, then from Roundup to an Amazon fulfillment center in Joliet, Illinois. Finally, Amazon sends it out to a customer.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe another seller buys the item and sends it to another prep center. The preppers are constantly getting packages from Amazon, which they unbox and repackage and send back to Amazon.

This is what’s called an Amazon flip. Sometimes it happens when one seller buys something from another seller who isn’t using Prime shipping, then marks it up and sends it back to Amazon in the hopes that the Prime designation will cause the algorithm to give them better billing. Other times, sellers will buy products from Amazon when the price drops, then send them right back.

Tideland (2005) **

It's very well made but this is one instance where the source material should never have been put on film to begin with. Not pleasant.

How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster - Los Angeles Times

Three years after Castle Bravo, U.S. authorities encouraged Joseph, her family and her neighbors to return to Rongelap.

U.S. government documents from the time show that officials weighed the potential hazards of radiation exposure against “the current low morale of the natives” and a “risk of an onset of indolence.” Ultimately they decided to go forward with the resettlement so researchers could study the effects of lingering radiation on human beings.

“Data of this type has never been available,” Merrill Eisenbud, a U.S official with the Atomic Energy Commission, said at a January 1956 meeting of the agency’s Biology and Medicine Committee. “While it is true that these people do not live the way that Westerners do, civilized people, it is nonetheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”

The Lighthouse (2019) ***

Oddball flick that seems to be about the maddening effects of roommates. Along the way some good actors get to show their stuff as the craziness escalates.

The Laundromat (2019) **

Soderbergh directs the heck out of this flick, and the actors work their collective butts off but an avalanche of exposition kills the story. Banderas in particular should have asked to be paid by the word.

The Domino Principle (1977) *

Logically silly, ham-fisted conspiracy thriller has no thrills, just some nice exteriors of The Bay Area.

A Face in the Crowd (1957) ***

Probably considered too far fetched in its time, it's unfortunately proven to be too naive in its denouement. Terrific performances.