LONGLEGS
* * ½
(Weird, Confusing Horror Flick)

If you like weird, “Longlegs” is the movie for you.

If you don’t like confusing plots that don’t always add up, you might want to skip it.

Maika Monroe plays FBI agent Lee Harker with a weird, cryptic ability to decipher a serial killer’s strange notes.

Nicolas Cage plays the serial killer, and he is something to watch, sending chills up your spine every time he is on screen (which isn’t that much).

The movie begins in a box frame, like an old 8mm home movie. A young girl is visited by Longlegs.

The screen then expands to full length where years later the girl is a grown-up FBI agent who watches her partner die and captures the assailant.

Her boss (Blair Underwood) is impressed with her uncanny psychic abilities and assigns her to the serial killer’s case.

The deeper she gets into attempts to solve the murders of over 10 families, the weirder she becomes, dealing with nightmares and hinted possible connections with the killer.

Does Longlegs have an accomplice?

What’s the connection she has in her past?

Where does her mother fit in? Why is she always calling her?

And what’s the deal with those lifelike dolls that Longlegs creates?

There are so many questions to answer, and some of the answers come at you so fast you wonder what is really happening.

Want to be scared?

Want to feel horror?

Want to figure out what the heck is going on?

Good luck.

FLY ME TO THE MOON
* * ½
(Messy Moon-landing Movie)

How do we categorize this messy moon-landing movie?

It’s a rom-com about Cole Davis, a stoic NASA launch director (Channing Tatum), and Kelly Jones, a feisty marketing specialist (Scarlett Johansson), who are at odds with each other until that one moonlit moment when they suddenly fall in love.

It’s partly history, with many newsreel cuts and newspaper clippings, but also fiction, with NASA creating a fake moon landing.

It aims to be a comedy but deals with the tragedy of a terrible Apollo explosion that killed three astronauts.

Those who believe that the moon landing was a NASA conspiracy will get their noses rubbed in it, while the writers give us one of the dumbest endings ever written for the big screen.

The movie goes on forever as we watch Cole attempt to fend off the actions of Kelly as she turns the historical event into an advertising campaign (remember Tang?) and woos politicians to support the controversial space program with her charm.

While Johansson is over the top, Tatum is as blah as a rock.

Woody Harrelson plays a government agent who plots the filming of the fake landing. Ray Romano has a small part as one of the launch crew.

The shots of the Kennedy Space Center are impressive.

The storyline is not.