'Ava' hits big on Netflix

Last week's Mank, a much-discussed very likely Oscar contender from director David Fincher, made only a short appearance in the very best 10 movie list before being unceremoniously bumped by Tiny Nicky, an Adam Sandler movie from 2000 where the comedian plays the son of Satan.

Around this writing, the top I'm all over this the list belongs to 'Ava', a Jessica Chastain vehicle that briefly played found in theaters back August before arriving on Netflix on December 7. Unless Mank carried a pistol in his Netflix thumbnail, Fincher's motion picture didn't stand a likelihood.  While Ava might appear to be a high-octane gun-fu throat-punch in the mold of John Wick or Atomic Blonde, the video is definitely both stranger and even more frustrating than its marketing materials suggests.

It opens predictably more than enough, with Chastain putting on a good chipper Southern accent and picking up a man at an airport before shooting him found in the backseat of her car.  But as her personality Ava moves through the globe, trading banter with her handler Duke (John Malkovich) and visiting with her mom Bobbi (Geena Davis), the motion picture shifts into an odd tonal register between family group melodrama and espionage potboiler.