Ma Is Best When It Gets Messed-Up and When It Comes To Octavia Spencer's Performance

The writer of Superhero Movie just wrote Chernobyl, one of the most thoughtful TV shows in ages, and one of the two dudes behind Movie 43 just directed a Best Picture-winning movie, so sure, why shouldn't the director of The Help, Tate Taylor, transition over into directing micro-budget trashy horror movies like Ma? Taylor hopping into this genre of filmmaking produces a feature that's honestly average in most regards but does produce its share of fun off-kilter moments. Whenever it dares to get strange and messed up, Ma does have a spark of life to it, even if most of it tends to be more rudimentary than disturbing. 

Professor Marston And The Wonder Women's Best Moments Reinforce How Clunky Some of its Storytelling Is

Now that Wonder Woman is the star of one of the biggest superhero movies of all-time, the character's backstory is pretty well-known by the general public, but the life of the creator of Wonder Woman is likely still a mystery to many. Well, in order to fully process who was behind the character of Wonder Woman, we have to go all the way back to the 1930's, when husband/wife duo William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) and Elizabeth Holloway Marston (Rebecca Hall) are trying to hit the big time at the college they work at, a college that, incidentally, does not recognize Elizabeth's intellectual achievements solely based on her gender.

Find A Better Cinematic Passenger Than The Girl On The Train

There's a sense of confusion throughout The Girl On The Train, and I'm not just referring to how the protagonist of this story has a massive dependency on alcohol makes it difficult to remember crucial memories. No, there's a pretty clear sense of dubiety that's occurring in the script too, one that seems like the screenwriter of The Girl On The Train, in an effort to adapt the 2015 book (that I have not read, just for context), was struggling to figure out what kind of tone to go for here. Was this a trashy fun thriller? Was this a thoughtful exploration of alcoholism and regret? Was this both? What is this movie?