Big Driver: (2014. dir: Mikael Salomon) Stephen King doesn't seem to like humans, and that may be partly why his short stories generally make suck-ass movies. He uses the page as a place to take revenge on the humans he so dislikes. This protagonist (Maria Bello) is a successful writer of mysteries, allowing King to vent some spleen on faux-fans who disrespect his writing and the annoyingly cheery organizers of book-signings, and, like most Stephen King ventures, this one is peopled by characters who are both unrealistic and unlikable. It most resembles the execrable Johnny Depp vehicle Secret Window in that the bulk of it finds its hero conversing with not very interesting voices inside her head. There's awful, relentless violence (a rape and murder attempt) then a lot of cartoonish revenge-violence which finds itself turning on some pretty big coincidences (thank God the guy she murdered who she thought was innocent turned out to be, in fact, guilty as hell! Dodged a karmic bullet there). Maria Bello, being a Sexy Woman of a Certain Age, obviously has limited choice of roles now, and I can see why she chose it. In spite of her good work, it still mostly sucks.
the Goonies: (1985. dir: Richard Donner) This is mainly a reboot of the second Indiana Jones movie, the one that had no real plot but played like a roller coaster ride, repackaged as an adventure for little kids. It gave rise to some kids who went on to great things: Josh Brolin, Sean Astin, Martha Plimpton. Apparently it's a hoot if you're eight years old, but, except for a nostalgia trip, I wouldn't recommend wading into its insipid waters if you're a single day older than that.
*SPOILER ALERT*
the Spanish Prisoner: (1997. dir: David Mamet) As a kid, I thought "Mission: Impossible" was a brilliant show. Their capers were airtight, flawless, ingenious. If you watch it as an adult, you see there are mack-truck-sized plot-holes, incredible serendipities, and an absurd reliance on luck to win the day.
That's kind of the Spanish Prisoner's thing: a flawlessly clever web of evil is woven in assured, conspiratorial silence around our hapless hero (Campbell Scott), and he is so passive, so easily led, that he only makes two real choices throughout the entire, twisty course of the story which are not nets carefully laid out for his very predictable step. The trouble with a cliff-edge thriller in which every smallest plot-point turns out to be a crucial cog in a vast machine of maleficience is that even a single coincidence cannot be allowed, even one "fudge" rouses a fury of skepticism. (Like: how did they switch the notebook? We're looking at it the whole time. And why does our hero randomly question the resort about their security footage? When he accidentally runs across the Rich Guy's car, why does he sleuth him out to the hidden car lot, a piece of enterprise entirely out of character for our guy?) In fact, the ongoing passivity of our hero makes him exasperatingly unlikable. We want, by the end, to throw him over for a version who's going to make a choice now and then.
Still, Mamet takes nice care with the details, like an opening shot in an airport warning folks not to carry bags for other people. And you could make a drinking game out of every quirky turn which will later return to haunt our guy: when the Rich Guy jokingly creates a Swiss bank account in his name (because THAT happens every day and never rouses suspicion), or when the Rebecca-of-Sunnybrook-Farm secretary-with-a-crush says, "You can never tell about people. Except me. I'm just what I seem to be." Warning bells clang there. Or, let's face it, when he leaves his bloody fingerprints all over a murder scene. Has this guy never watched television?
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