Serenity

Director: Steven Knight
Year Released: 2019
Rating: 1.0

Fishing boat captain Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) isn't having a lot of luck catching his white whale - sorry, I mean large tuna - and lacking in funds to pay off debts ... that is, until an old girlfriend (Anne Hathaway) makes an appearance and offers him $10 million to kill her husband Frank (Jason Clarke) while on the open waters and make it look like "an accident."  I spent the first hour wondering why the dialogue was so terrible and what was going on with those 'swooshing' camera movements and why Jeremy Strong's fishing gear salesman was acting so stiffly and Jason Clarke's dialogue is out of Grand Theft Auto and how everyone in the town 'knows everything' ... and then midway through it reveals exactly why it's so asinine and temple-rubbing terrible: Baker Dill isn't real, he's in a game being programmed by his 12-year-old son.  For the rest of the movie, you can be rest assured the awfulness was intentional: only a child could come up with something so dumb. (Allow me to use this opportunity to praise Charlie Brooker and his Black Mirror series - since I almost never review TV shows - which explores similar territory but does it with a lot more inventiveness.)