Shaolin

Set in China in the mid 19th century when warlords were competing for control of their local regions. When one warlord kills a powerful rival on the site of a Shaolin temple, he has solidified his grip on power. Until, of course, his grip slips. Another rival betrays him, kills his family and our warlord is forced to retreat to that same temple for safety. He has a conversion and ultimately becomes the protector that the temple has been looking for. Nothing really new here, but a well done period drama with quality martial arts and consistently engaging story. Reminded me of the IP Man series.
3 stars (out of 5)

Berlin Job

A British film that is so British that I needed subtitles. It follows a couple of brothers who are the underworld crime bosses in charge of London. One is trying to get out of the business by initiating a final big deal. Of course, the deal goes bad (losing $50 million of drugs). So the brothers need to call in favors and negotiate extensions in an effort to get themselves out from under this loss. Who do you trust and how do you get a ton of money quickly? Clearly another heist is in order. I didn't really find anything novel or exciting here. Only watch if you need a late night diversion.
2 stars (out of 5)

4.3.2.1

Four girlfriends in England find themselves in the middle of a jewel heist... sort of. They find themselves interacting with the aftereffects of a heist. The mechanism of this film, however is what makes the film. The film is really told four times, once from the perspective of each of these girls. So that each retelling fills in additional details. This works particularly well here since, even though the story is happening to the four girls, only in the first minute and last minute are all four ever together. So there are pieces of information that only one will know, and this information is essential to a full understanding. So for the mechanism, and the careful implementation of this mechanism I give full praise. For the actual story, not-so-much. I suppose I am evaluating the story based on whether the story would be good without the mechanism. In this case no. So...
3 stars (out of 5)

Frequencies

Sort of a TiMER, Brazil - ish coming of age story that probably is intended to get the viewer to think about social stereotypes and the idea that our intelligence is pre-determined. In this context, every person is tested at some point in their pre-adolescent years and their individual frequency is revealed to them. Our protagonists in this case are a high frequency (the highest) girl and a low frequency boy, who bump in to each other. In this world, such a massive difference in frequencies coming into physical proximity result in some sort natural disaster (explosion, lightning strike, birds falling out of the air, car crash, etc.). The bigger the difference in frequency, the quicker the disaster and in this case disaster happens after 60 seconds of proximity. So our potential lovers are unable to be together. But we follow them through the next 20 years, with occasional attempts to meet, until our low frequency finds a way to circumvent the problem. Follow this with strange conspiracy theory, novel aural science, and revisionist interpretation of historical art. Overall, this was strange enough to keep me watching just to find out how everything resolved. And might be fun to discuss the ideas of intelligence as a nature v. nurture after watching with your philosophical friends. But it just wasn't excellent.
3 stars (out of 5)