I Got Stripes: Peppermint, reviewed.

If you want a wound dressed right, you'd better dress it yourself. Jennifer Garner tapes up. (STX)

"The title, with its slight echo of the 1973 Pam Grier vehicle Coffy, promises a sticky confection of feminism and violence, but the movie it's selling is a desultory drag. It's so dull-edged that even prospect of a white woman (named North!) whose family was afflicted by, um, economic anxiety before being murdered by cartel-affiliated outlaws doesn't carry the scab-picking provocation that it should."

That's me on Peppermint, a sweaty return to sweaty form for Jennifer Garner, from Taken director Pierre Morel. It's the kind of movie that doesn't get shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, where I currently am not. The full review is here.

The January Man: The Commuter, reviewed.

Vera Farmiga and Liam Neeson let the train take the strain. (Lionsgate)

Vera Farmiga makes Liam Neeson an indecent proposal in The Commuter, Neeson's latest January-release throat-puncher. Here's my NPR review.