American Woman (the one with Sienna Miller)

(Note: There were two films named “American Woman” released to U.S. audiences in close proximity)

If you took every one of the sad Sheryl Crow songs and tried to turn them into a movie, you’d end up with “American Woman” (2019). Haunted by the bad decisions of herself and others, slowly being grinded down by working-class life, Sienna Miller’s protagonist is a tragic figure except when she’s her own worst enemy. (Heck, Miller even looks like Crow.) There’s a missing-persons subplot that you keep thinking is going to spark into a full-fledged, true-crime story every time a new character is introduced, but alas, it’s simply a movie about perseverance, though a well-made one at that.

Kingdom of Heaven

Jerusalem’s a messed-up place, what with everybody who lives there wanting to kill each other and everything. That’s my 17-word synopsis of current geopolitics, as well as the 2005 film “Kingdom of Heaven,” which takes place 900 years earlier, when Jerusalem was just as messed up as now. Except back then, dreamy Orlando Bloom served as a knight who represented all that is good in men. Because of that, all the non-dreamy men want to kill him. So, basically, people haven’t learned a damn thing in the past 900 years, which this film goes to great lengths to remind us.

Legend

In 1986, Ridley Scott and Tom Cruise made a movie about unicorns. And fairies. And making out in the woods. “Legend,” in a word, is lame. It’s like they were bored and decided to shoot a crappy movie over the weekend. The plot is a simplistic, good-versus-evil allegory with all kinds of quasi-religious symbolism. And unicorns. And goblins. And Tim Curry, in the typecasting event of the century, as the devil (I wonder if he ever sits at home and says to himself, “Why can’t I ever play a friendly fire chief? Or a kindly country doctor? Or a unicorn?”)