Whatever happened to Encyclopedia Brown?

The Kid Detective (2020): I think Evan Morgan, the director and screenwriter here, had a nice idea--what happens to Encyclopedia Brown when he grows up?--but it seems he wasn't sure how to approach the material. What probably should have been mostly comic (or maybe even incorporated some fantasy elements) becomes a mostly serious mystery, but writing-wise, Morgan doesn't have good mystery chops, so it's mostly the story of the main character (well played by Adam Brody, pictured below), kid genius detective turned adult loser, but sadly we don't get to delve too deeply into his psychological depths (or even shallows).

The films opens in the past with a young girl accepting a ride from someone that it seems she knows, then vanishing. The kid detective (well played in his youth by Jesse Noah Gruman), who had dazzled his small town with his sleuthing abilities, fails to find her. Though he keeps his occupation over the next twenty years or so, his reputation is tarnished--though I love the detail that an ice cream shop owner keeps, somewhat reluctanly, giving him free ice cream even though he is now 32. Things change when a high school student (Sophie Nelisse) stops by to ask him to solve the brutal murder of her boyfriend. As any thoughtful viewer will figure out early on, this case will eventually cross paths with the missing girl case of the past. The details of the mystery story are a bit sloppy and not terribly involving, so the pleasures here are mostly in the acting. Brody is very good, being both sympathetic and being someone you'd like to give a swift kick to. Nelisse is charming, Wendy Crewson as Brody's mom is fine, and the lesser-known Canadian actors fill out their roles well. It does have a satisfying ending, even if some of the details along the way remain murky.

A columnist's revenge

Whoa, I'm back, safe and sound and vaccinated and ready to review some media and post some more historical movie posters, and whatever else crosses my mind. THE COLUMNIST is a satirical horror movie from the Netherlands. Katja Herbers (pictured) plays an online columnist who becomes obsessed with a form of doomscrolling, constantly checking her Twitter and Facebooks feeds for trolls who insult her for expressing her liberal ideas--it's not completely clear what triggers the initial outpouring, but it seems to involved her critiquing, on racial grounds, the continuing existence of the myth of Black Peter, a mythic associate of St. Nicholas, often portrayed as a white man in blackface. The men, mostly arrogant incel-types, call her foul names, call for her vilification and issue violent death threats.

Haven't we all wanted to murder social media trolls? This character does. From online clues, she starts hunting down these guys, explains her mission, and kills them. Afterward, she snips off one of their fingers as a souvenir. Morally, a queasy situation develops in which we are actually on the side of the killer for a while, living out a cathartic revenge that we never actually would. We listen to the voice of morality, her boyfriend, a horror novelist (whose public persona is a hollow-eyed weirdo, but who actually is a sweet snuggler) but I'm not sure how we're ultimately supposed to feel by the bloody but cathartic ending. It's fun, the last couple of minutes in particular, but it doesn't let society or the audience off the hook. Even the asshole trolls are more or less humanized. Herbers plays her descent into enjoyment of her revenge very well. You'll laugh, you'll cringe, and maybe you'll think twice about posting that nasty misanthropic dig.