A Simple Favor (2018) ***1/2

If you took all the mystery noir conventions collected over decades and blended them together, you might come up with “A Simple Favor,” a fun, mildly-flawed thriller directed by Paul Feig, based on the novel by Darcy Bell.

Anna Kendrick plays Stephanie, a struggling, single mom and Mommy-vlogger. When she isn't posting crafts and recipes on the internet, she is over-volunteering at her son's kindergarten. The perky nerd strikes up an unlikely friendship with the mother of one of the other kids. Emily (Blake Lively) is a glamorous career woman, head of PR for a fashion house. She has little time for family and is unapologetic about it. Stephanie is drawn to her beautiful, new friend's confidence and fancy martinis, and Emily is drawn to Stephanie's guilelessness. She increasingly uses Stephanie for free babysitting, ultimately asking that she take her son in for a couple of days while she goes on an emergency business trip. When Emily never returns from that trip, Stephanie starts peeling back the layers of her mysterious friend's secret life.

You should definitely watch “A Simple Favor.” It's a fun, twisty, ultimately somewhat bonkers crime thriller with a great cast and some Blake Lively nudity. I mentioned some mild flaws, which take the form of some plot holes. I suspect that Emily's actions and motivations are better developed and explained in the book. In the limited time-frame of the film, not everything makes sense. That doesn't ruin the fun of the film, though, you just have to go with it.

3.5 stars out of 5

Half Baked (1998) ***

If you don't smoke weed, you might think that the perfect “pot-smoking” movie would be something with lots of trippy, flashing lights and special effects. I've learned over the years, however, that what people who smoke pot really want to see in a movie is … people smoking pot. Just like the best kind of movie to watch if you want to have sex is, well you get the idea. This being the case, Dave Chappelle's 1998 classic “Half Baked” is the perfect stoner movie. If you aren't high, it's still a reasonably fun comedy as long as your expectations are low and you can access your 13-year-old sense of humor.

Chappelle plays Thurgood, a pot-smoking janitor sharing an apartment with his stoner buddies Scarface, Brian, and Kenny. Also, there's a random guy always sleeping on the couch, known simply as “the guy on the couch.” These buds toke up daily, living in a constant state of altered neurotransmitters and low expectations. They seem happy with their lives, until Kenny gets arrested. Nice guys like Kenny don't do well in prison, so the boys try to get themselves together enough to earn bail money for him. Meanwhile, Thurgood meets a ridiculously pretty girl (Rachel True,) who isn't into potheads.

There's never a moment when you believe a second of “Half Baked.” It's nonstop, broad, ridiculous comedy, and, oh yeah, the guys are constantly smoking weed. The only thing that makes it work (if it does) is Dave Chappelle's comedic talent. Besides playing Thurgood with insouciant charm, he plays a hilarious rapper who is reminiscent of some of the characters from “Chappelle's Show.” The Guy on the Couch (Steven Wright) also puts in a bravura performance. It's a low-budget movie, panned by critics, but appealing strongly to a niche audience - all the ingredients for a cult classic. It feels wrong to give such a dumb movie more than one star, but honestly, I enjoyed it, even sober. If you like Dave Chappelle, I think you have to watch “Half Baked.”

3 stars out of 5

Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse (2018) ***

I've honestly been done with Spider-man movies for a while. In my lifetime, they have cycled through 3 different actors to play him, just recycling the story over and over. And that's just the live-action movies. Add in the comics, where the real experimentation takes place. Versions of Spidey have been every race, gender,and species you can imagine. Comic writers get away with this by simply declaring that they are working in a different universe. They've been doing this since the '50s, the “Golden Age” of comics. A writer would decide that he wanted to write a story about, say, Superman. If his story was going to contradict something from all the previous Superman comics, then he could just declare that this took place in an alternate universe.

In the case of Spider-man, most people are familiar with Peter Parker, the teenager who develops superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. In comics there's a parallel universe where Gwen Stacey, a Peter Parker love interest in the original universe, is the one bitten by the spider. There's a Spider-man Noir series about a version of spidey from the 1930's, and there's a Japanese anime comic where the hero and the spider work together to operate a mechanical spider robot. There's even a parody comic about Spider-ham, where the web-slinging hero is a pig.

There's also one where a Black/Latino teen named Miles Morales is the one who gets bitten by the radioactive spider and gets the superpowers, and that's where “Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse” picks up. There's already a Peter Parker/Spider-man in Miles's world, but he gets killed trying to stop a villain named Kingpin from opening a dangerous inter-dimensional window. The window gets opened, and spider-people from a bunch of different universes get sucked into Miles's 'verse. The dying Parker tasks Miles, who hasn't even learned to use his powers yet, with stopping Kingpin from opening the window again. Miles sets out to try, with help from the other spider-people.

As comic-book movies go, this isn't on the level of "Watchmen," but it's pretty fun. The animated format frees it up, and it's way more fun than any live-action Spider-man I've seen in a while. There's nothing particularly deep here, and your life will go along just fine if you miss it, but it's worth a watch, if you're into this kind of thing.

3 stars out of 5

Can You Ever Forgive Me (2018) ***

I had been looking forward to seeing this ever since I saw the trailer. The concept seemed delicious: A struggling writer discovers she can make money by forging colorful celebrity letters. And it's based on a true story! Turns out the movie is decent entertainment that doesn't quite live up to its concept.

Melissa McCarthy plays Lee Israel, a writer with some successful biographies under her belt. Unfortunately, when writing biographies, a successful book doesn't make you rich. Lee ekes out a living in a low-paying proof-reading job, which she loses for the same reason she has failed to break through in the publishing world: she is a misanthropic asshole. Her caustic wit is more caustic than witty, and people aren't willing to put up with that behavior from anyone who isn't rich and powerful. Desperate for cash, Lee stumbles upon a letter written by Fanny Bryce. She figures it's worth big bucks, but the bookseller she takes it to says it simply isn't interesting enough to sell for much. Lee decides she can improve on it, so she forges a pithy P.S. and the letter sells for enough to pay her rent. Lee's entrepreneurial spirit kicks in, and soon she has a collection of old typewriters, with which she forges colorful letters from a variety of dead celebs. The money flows in, but Lee gets addicted as much to the creativity as to the cash.

“Can You Ever Forgive Me” is based on Lee Israel's memoir of the same name, and to her credit, she whitewashes neither her toxic personality nor her crimes . She ultimately forged and sold over 400 letters, at least one of which found its way into a biography of the supposed author. She committed what is probably the literary crime of the century.

This is a case where a little artistic license might have been welcome. The film is funny at times and certainly fascinating, but it might have been a bit more fun to watch if they hadn't made Lee and her life so depressing. I think Melissa McCarthy does the best she can with the role, but Lee comes across as a drab person in drab clothes living in a drab apartment in, honestly, a drab version of New York City. Considering the outrageousness of the fraud Lee perpetrated, I feel like the filmmakers could have done better. Maybe they could have shared more of the apparently hilarious letters with us and focused less on Lee's cat. Still it's an interesting story and well-acted, including a terrific turn by Richard E. Grant as Lee's alcoholic, incorrigible confidant. As for the film's failings, I suppose we can forgive them.

3 stars out of 5

Barcelona (1994) **** and The Last Days of Disco (1998) ****

Like many directors, Whit Stillman likes to work repeatedly with a certain group of actors, and it's no wonder. If you find someone who is willing to recite the ridiculous lines that Stillman puts into his characters' mouths, you stick with them.

In Barcelona, Taylor Nichols (from Stillman's first film, “Metropolitan”) plays Ted, a stuffy American salesman in his company's Barcelona office. Ted's quiet life is disturbed when his free-loading cousin, Fred (Chris Eigeman, also a Stillman favorite) shows up. As part of his job, Ted gets to meet loads of pretty girls who work at a convention center, but he doesn't seem to get with any of them. Fred changes all that. Soon, the cousins are out on the town, meeting impossibly cute, sexually-liberated girls and falling in love, all to a backdrop of anti-American political sentiment.

Chris Eigeman returns for 1998's “The Last Days of Disco,” but the stars of the film are Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale. They play Alice and Charlotte respectively, a couple of college acquaintances, now junior book editors struggling on their low salaries to afford New York City rents and still enjoy the night life. Charlotte is hot, but as friends and roommates go, she's the worst. She says whatever mean thing comes into her head, oblivious to its effect on others. Here's a sample of conversation with Charlotte:

Charlotte: I'm sorry, it's just that you're so terrific, it makes me sick to think you might get in that terrible situation again where everyone hated you.

Alice: Hated me?

Charlotte: You're wonderful. Maybe in physical terms I'm a little cuter than you, but you should be much more popular than I am. It would be a shame if what happened in college should repeat itself.

These frenemies hit the club every night with a handful of friends. At the disco, they drink,do drugs, check out the freaky disco people, hook up, and talk. Especially, they talk, about subjects like “Do yuppies even exist?...I think for a group to exist, someone has to admit to be part of it.” They discuss the dark subtext of “Lady & the Tramp,” and the way “Bambi” turned an entire generation against hunting. Sex, romance, literature, they talk about everything, while in the background, the club gets raided for drug-dealing, and disco culture falls down around them. If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, this crew exchange aphorisms while disco burns.

This theme of self-involved young people chatting wittily while major events build in the background runs through both films. In Barcelona, Ted and Fred are busy falling in love, but this undercurrent of resentment against American imperialism keeps building, until it finally comes to an explosive climax. In “The Last Days of Disco,” the friends are self-absorbed, but totally un-self-aware. They don't see that they are helping destroy the thing they love. Disco started as something for the freaks and the gays, filled with people in elaborate costumes, and now it's being taken over by tourists in suits and ties. The sound and spirit that started in underground, French dance clubs has led to “Disco Duck.” The snake is swallowing its tail, and these yuppies' social life is about to be totally disrupted.

Whit Stillman films get some flack for being talky, but the thing is, they are hilarious! Listening to these nitwits pepper clueless aphorisms with occasional moments of self-realization is just good fun, if you can get into it. If you like Jane Austen, you'll probably like Stillman, and if you like both, then after watching these two gems, you need to check out "Love and Friendship," the unfinished Austen novel that Stillman finished and adapted into a movie.

4 stars for both.