At the Movies with Joyce & Don

At the Warwick Showcase

BLACK WIDOW
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(For ‘Avengers’ fans)The Showcase was filled with Marvel Comics fans this weekend, plus this one movie reviewer. Joyce stayed home, along with most people over 30 who are waiting for a decent movie for adults.

Scarlett Johansson stars as Natasha Romanoff. We get her backstory right up front, learning that she comes from a dysfunctional family whose father has sold her out to a Russian cult that turns little girls into assassins.

Skip ahead 20 years when Natasha and little sister Yolena meet up in the first of many wild and crazy scenes, filled with wild chases, destruction of people and property, and work for hundreds of stunt doubles.

The movie slows to a snail’s pace as the sisters engage in long conversations about their growing up in the Midwest with parents who aren’t who they seem.

Then there’s a big family reunion that has them bickering with each other, working together against evil forces and fighting each other.

Many things get blown up. Action scenes galore take place in a variety of countries with little explanation as to why or how.

If you are only vaguely familiar with the “Avengers” series, you may have thought that Natasha had been killed in one of them, and you would be right. But this story takes place before that. I had a former copy editor who would straighten me out on all the minute details, but he is long gone and I have to try to make sense out of it all … to no avail.

Fans stay through the endless credits to catch a glimpse of what may happen in the next movie. It is supposed to pique your curiosity, but made no sense to me.

On Netflix

“Biohackers” is an interesting if far-fetched sci-fi drama that takes place in Germany.

Mia is a medical student whose parents died in a car crash and twin brother died due to some unauthorized medical testing. She has also been experimented on, but has some memory loss that comes back in bits and pieces.

Mia tracks down the scientist involved in the experiments that have killed a number of children, including her brother, vowing to expose her.

Season two picks up after four months have passed. She and the scientist have been kidnapped and further testing has been done on her. Much has happened in the meantime, but Mia remembers little. The father of a schoolmate is involved in funding all kinds of gene modification and must be stopped.

There’s some humor involved her weird classmates and lots of breaking and entering with close calls. The moral is “Does the ends justify the means?

“The Innocent”: Popular novelist Harlen Coben has had a number of his stories turned into Netflix movies.

This one is about Mat, a law student whose wife disappears, and he becomes a leading suspect.

Mat spent some time in prison after killing a man in a bar fight. The man’s father is obsessed with making his life miserable.

Mat meets the love of his life, Olivia, whom we later discover has a past of her own that has led to her disappearance.

The mystery slowly unravels and we eventually learn the truth.

“Sex/Life”: Netflix pushes the envelope with this steamy soft porn series about Cooper and Billie, a handsome, loving suburban couple with kids who seem to have it all.

Billie has had an active sex life, graphically displayed up close and in living color. Cooper gives her everything she could ever want … except her insatiable desire for her Aussie record-producer lover. She can’t get him out of her mind. And doesn’t.

This tawdry soap opera is about obsession, jealousy and seriously damaged people who want it all.

It is as big and R as you can get. Keep it away from the kids.

“Fatherhood”: On the other side of the spectrum we have a mushy, PG rated movie about an unprepared widowed father who tries his best to raise a daughter.

Kevin Hart, the loudmouth, sometimes obnoxious comedian, plays so out of character in this one that he is hard to believe.

After a downer of an opener involving his wife’s death in childbirth and scenes of his mother and mother-in-law trying to take control, and the baby, we get down to a bit of humor as Matt does the best he can with diaper changing and feeding. Lots of poop jokes here.

Years pass and we watch him adjust to raising a pretentious young girl, all leading to a satisfying conclusion.