Astronaut

A 75-year-old man with a heart condition, mourning the recent loss of his wife, ends up the first space tourist? Sounds like a cinematic essay question for a test on willing suspension of belief. Give Richard Dreyfuss an A. For “Astronaut” (2019). This elegant little film takes every implausibility (and don’t worry, there’s more than I’m mentioning here) and twists them back around until they’re art, like extraterrestrial origami. And bless Dreyfuss for saving his typical blowhard, scenery-chewing arrogance until the one moment where it actually works. It’s not the best movie this year, but it’s a most pleasant surprise.

Benjamin

I once wrote a novel about a sarcastic person whom everyone took seriously. Thus, the sarcastic person ended up having to play out a lie they never meant to tell. Now, if someone told you Redbox was joining the original content game along with Netflix and Amazon Prime, you’d think that someone was sarcastic. What if that someone was Redbox and you actually believed them, so they had to hire Bob Saget to make a godawful film about an intervention where the interveners are more messed up than the intervened? It’s called “Benjamin” (2019) and it’s worse than my novel.