The 355
Director: Simon Kinberg
Year Released: 2022
Rating: 0.5
Multiple intelligence agencies, including the CIA (embodied by Jessica Chastain and Sebastian Stan), the BND (Diane Kruger), the DNI (Penélope Cruz and Édgar Ramírez) and MI6 (Lupita Nyong'o), have a serious interest in a mysterious "black box" that's so powerful it can cause planes to crash and cities to lose power ... but there's also a whole lot of double-crossing going on. I'm all for grrl power (as stated many times before) and empowerment and whatnot, but this is a weak amalgamation of multiple spy-themed movies and it only gets more and more preposterous the longer it's allowed to go on to the point of kind of being embarrassing for its participants. The lady spies all seem to have one defining component to their personalities - Chastain's partner was killed, Kruger's father was a double agent, Cruz is a psychologist who loves her family - but it needed more world building if they wanted to actually make something worth watching (because midnight isn't late enough). Ending it with a convenient #YesAllMen diatribe is the final kick in the ribs ... thanks for that.