ANNA (2019) - The story is another Russian girl trained as a spy in the late 80's. I liked the feel of it (lighting, angles, plot and twists), but spent the whole time feeling like "I have seen this before." That's actually possible given how much I watch films, I could end up seeing one a second time and realizing afterward I'd already seen it, but no - this was a first viewing, it just felt like deja vu. Maybe part of my disappointment lies in expecting something like Hanna where someone is raised remotely and trained specifically most her life. Instead, the only background reference is a short mention of playing chess, training and dropping out of some military school when her parents died. Nearly everything is from her mid-20's on, and she is just 'adept' at learning things despite arriving at a point in life of being a fk-toy girlfriend for a druggie loser. Everything just 'fit' so much to the trope without standing out to me in any special way in how she was 'found' and trained, and deployed. If I hadn't seen Red Sparrow, or any of the Nikita-esque films, I might have liked this more - I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. But, overall, left me with ... Meh. 7/10
Brightburn (2019) - tagged as horror with the thought 'what if superman were evil?'. We start with some home video clips of an average boy growing up in a rural town raised by loving parents, and when he hits 12-13, he hears voices and realizes he has powers (indestructible, can fly, etc). You can see a little bit of a young person figuring out who they are, pushing boundaries to determine their own future and definition, but that is very small. The film instead turns to him killing those around him, often without a lot of reason beyond 'they just made me angry'. The deaths are somewhat enjoyably gruesome, but I struggle with the 'why' in a lot of them - case in point he goes to a diner where they had his birthday party (him, mom&dad, aunt&uncle), and once everyone leaves but the main waitress lady he tortures and kills her. Why? Because she served a baby cake with a candle days-weeks earlier? Pointless. Bloody fun, but pointless. We roll towards a climax where he confronts his parents about who/what he is, and honestly, it felt weakly written and executed. The closing credits have interspersed clips of him going on a rampage destroying things, an implication of him possibly heading off to destroy the world (a set up for a sequel? I hope not). Bottom line, if you like some bloody deaths, you'll rate this about a 4-5/10, if you want something with more substance, look elsewhere. 4/10.