Every now and again I catch myself with a free evening to catch a movie. Usually the little ones are off somewhere, or I’m off somewhere, and I have some hours to spare. Inevitably I have the same conversation with myself or others:

“What’s playing?”

“Anything I want to see?”

“Anything possibly entertaining?”

“Hell with it. To the local food eatery/dispenser of spirits!”

But the plural of anecdote is not data (or is it?), so let’s consider what’s in theaters this very weekend. Mayhaps I will be surprised:

First Man: I’ve already blogged about this. I don’t care at all. Spoilers: he lands on the moon.

Venom: Venom is not a hero. I’m going to retype that bold and in all caps: VENOM IS NOT A HERO. Venom is a villain (and I don’t care how many nerds want to argue and say that on their character dimension chart, he’s Chaotic Neutral or some nonsense. Venom fights Spiderman. That makes him a villain. Also, Chaotic Neutral is the laziest kind of character creation, because it just means you can do whatever you happen to need to do. It’s not edgy, nerds). Villains should not be protagonists, because they are villains. I’m looking at you, DC with your insistence on making The Joker the soul of the Batman world. Stop that now.

Bad Times at the El Royale: Looks like a script for Smokin’ Aces 3 got manhandled by someone on Tarantino’s editing staff. I like Jon Hamm doing noir stuff so I’ll probably check this out at some point. But not in the theaters.

A Star is Born: They are now so far down the remake well that they’ve hit this muck. And don’t tell me it’s not a remake. They didn’t have Bradley Cooper grow a Jesus beard to not look like Kris Kirstofferson. People struggle towards fame and sing songs and become famous and Lady Gaga’s voice is like Buttah! Pleh.

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween. This might be fun if you made a drinking game out of it. And you brought booze into the theater. And went by mistake.

Smallfoot. The Yetis don’t believe humans exist, until a misfit Yeti teaches the community that what they think is wrong. IT’S LIKE A METAPHOR YOU GUYS.

Night School. Kevin Hart is wacky – in school. It’s probably funnier than whatever Adam Sandler poops out next. But not much funnier.

Halloween. Am I the only one that thinks its weird that they haven’t remade Nightmare on Elm Street yet? I hope so, because if I’m not they’re eventually going to remake it. And it will suck. Just like this will.

The House With a Clock in It’s Walls. The Kids Doing Magic genre is getting thicker…..

….and Jack Black is getting laaaaaaarger.

The Hate U Give. The Social Justice flick of the season. Sleeper Oscar favorite. The star will be lauded, give speeches, and then never have a career.

Have I always been this cynical?

A Simple Favor. There’s a reason Paul Feig keeps getting work, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. That said, this might be worth a Netflixing.

Hell Fest. In which horror tropes go meta. I really do tire of horror’s self-awareness sometimes. Just splatter the blood and stop acting like you’re Fellini.

The Nun. Like The Name of the Rose, but stupider.

The Predator. Does anyone else think it’s weird that they haven’t done a Commando remake…

And the final result?