Ava

I’ve heard enough from Jessica Chastain to believe she simply wants to be treated like one of the guys. The problem with that is if your only goal is to be like everyone else, you’ll never be better than anyone else. “Ava” (2020) retraces the steps of “Atomic Blonde” by building a mediocre spy thriller around the novelty of a female assassin. Chastain’s subplot (complicated family and substance-abuse baggage) is also somewhat novel, but it’s a slight variation on a role her co-star, Colin Farrell, could have played in 2006, or Burt Reynolds in 1986 or Gene Hackman in 1976.

Malone

Macho leading-man action movies don’t get any more generic than “Malone.” Burt Reynolds is at his toupeed, barrel-chested, mailing-it-inniest. I think it was filmed during the period when he was addicted to Halcyon. King of the one-word sentence. King. Undisputed. Seriously. The plot is ripped off from every western ever made (stranger with a past rides into town, gets caught up in local drama between townsfolk and land baron) with requisite 1987 twists (Mustangs, survivalists, the CIA, shadowy government conspiracies). It’s “Pale Rider” plus “On Deadly Ground” except not as good. It’s not terrible. It just kind of… is. Seriously.