Desert Heat: Lazy Eye, reviewed.

Lucas Near-Verbrugghe and Aaron Costa Ganis in Tim Kirkman's Lazy Eye.

I wrote this review of writer-director Tim Kirkman's romantic drama Lazy Eye the day after the election. It's not a pan, but I think I owe Kirkman that disclaimer anyway. It was difficult to focus on a movie that day, especially one about gay people made by a gay person. The world just got a lot more frightening—a little more for LGBT folk than for straight folk like me, but only a little.

Doctor Strange, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Review Movies on the Radio

Tilda Swinton and Benedict Cumberbatch in Dr. Strange (Marvel).

Something new for me: Reviewing movies on the radio. Here's my Weekend Edition Sunday assessment of Doctor Strange, wherein Marvel hands the role of brilliant, arrogant, goateed rich-guy Avenger from Robert Downey, Jr., the most recent movie Sherlock Holmes, to Benedict Cumberbatch to the most recent TV Sherlock Holmes.

Rain Man on Fire: The Accountant, reviewed.

Anna Kendrick and Ben Affleck throw discretion to the glass. (Chuck Zlotnick/Warner Bros.)

Here, for NPR, is my rough accounting of The Accountant, a very strange action drama. It's basically Good Jason Bourne-ing, and yet still more fun than Jason Bourne.

Vernacular Spectacular: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, reviewed.

Eva Green as Miss Peregrine (Jay Maidment / Twentieth Century Fox)

The evergreen Eva Green is the best thing about Tim Burton's adaptation of Ransom Riggs' bestselling, "vernacular"-photography-inspired YA novel. But the stop-motion sequences are great, too. I reviewed the film for NPR.

If it ain't woke, don't fix it: The Magnificent Seven, reviewed.

Chris Pratt and Denzel Washington take over for Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner, respectively, in Antoine Fuqua's update of The Magnificent Seven.

Wait, Michael Biehn starred in a short-lived Magnificent Seven series on CBS in the late 90s? I've always been bad at keeping up with what's on TV, but this I should've known, given my long-term interest in the guy.

Anyway, here's my NPR review of the new Magnificent Seven from Antoine Fuqua and Denzel with Chris Pratt mugging his way around, too. Random note: It's funny that both The Magnificent Seven and Westworld, two long-dormant properties that starred Yul Brynner — most famous for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, "etcetera, etcetera" — as a black-clad cowboy, are both getting reimagined in 2016, isn't it? I think it is.