THE ACCOUNTANT: 4 STARS

In “The Accountant,” Ben Affleck plays a pocket-protector-wearing forensic bookkeeper who “risks his life cooking the books for some of the scariest people on the planet; drug cartels, arms brokers, money launderers, assassins.” A math genius with autism and a violent side, he survives his dangerous world through dual facilities for math and mayhem.

Affleck is Christian Wolff. By day he’s a small-town strip-mall CPA, but when the sun goes down his darker side emerges. Working for the worst of the worst, he erases money trails and helps bad guys and gals launder money.

Although Christian has trouble relating to people, there are several folks who would dearly like to meet him. First is the soon-to-be retired Treasury agent Director Raymond King (J.K. Simmons)—“I was old 10 years ago,” he says.”—who assigns financial analyst (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to the case. “He’s like, a CPA accountant?” she asks. “Not quite,” replies King in what might be the understatement of the year.

Just as worrisome, but infinitely deadlier, is Braxton (Jon Bernthal), a hitman hired by a robotics company to eliminate Christian and researcher Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick) after they exposed the company’s fraud.

Luckily Christian (or whichever alias he’s using today) is part James Bond, part John Nash. A deadly mix of tactician and mathematician, he balances the books by offing some bad guys. “How does he do that?” asks Braxton. “Hit them over the head with an adding machine?”

There are twists and turns aplenty in “The Accountant” but at its heart the movie is a character study. Affleck, never a particularly animated actor, excels in a role that requires him to stay an arm’s length from people—unless he’s engaged in up-close-and-personal face-to-face combat. He is the film’s core, the centre from which everything else revolves.

Sadly everyone else is underused, including Kendrick, Simmons, John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor. It’s a stellar and seasoned supporting cast but by the end credits it’s clear they exist simply to give Wolff a reason to go on his mission. Addai-Robinson, best known from TV work on shows like “Arrow” and “Chicago Med,” benefits from some extended screen time, although her big scene involves some third act exposition that goes on for much longer than necessary.

“The Accountant” doesn’t add anything to the conversation about autism or how people on the spectrum really lead their lives, but despite long-winded explanations, flashbacks and story swerves, it’s a tautly told story that satisfies as a thriller.

AMERICAN HONEY: 2 STARS

You might want to think about your definition of what a movie is before buying a ticket for “American Honey,” a new film from British director Andrea Arnold. If story is your thing, then perhaps look elsewhere. Arnold’s has made a rambling, nearly three-hour faux cinema vérité road movie that is all journey and no destination.

Newcomer Sasha Lane is Star, an eighteen-year-old from a troubled home. Her ticket out of the dysfunction she has grown up with is a travelling band of magazine sellers led by the charismatic Jake (Shia LaBeouf) and Krystal (Riley Keough). She joins after a short job interview—“Do you got anyone who's going to miss you?"—jumping in the van as the team treks across the American Midwest, selling magazines door to door. “We do more than work,” says Jake. “We explore. We party.”

Despite training from top seller Jake, who’ll say anything to move the magazines, she's not the best sales person. "You don't have to read them,” she says. “You can use them to wipe your ass." When not selling copies of “Trout Aficionado” the team explores, parties and tries to make money while Star and Jake embark on a covert affair.

Some will find Arnold‘s free form filmmaking exhilarating; some will find it exasperating. At epic length there is an emphasis on naturalism with all that entails; the mundane and the pulse racing in equal measure. It’s not a traditional road flick, it’s part of a sub-genre of road movies, the American travelogues by British directors armed with shaky handheld cameras.

There are some sublime moments, mostly when Star and Jake inhabit the screen, but too often we’re just along for the ride, like kids banished to the backseat watching everyone else have fun while having none ourselves.

Lane is a charismatic presence and LaBeouf will forever wipe away any and all memories of his stint as a child star. The real star is Keough, a Fagin-like character, tough-as-nails with a glare that could peel the paint off the walls. She’s not just Elvis Presley’s granddaughter; she can act.

Set in a world where regular folks still open the door for rattily dressed kids selling magazines, “American Honey” is a road trip about families lost and families found, about poverty and disenfranchised youth. It’s also about three hours long, which will be too long a trip for many people.

CHRISTINE: 3 STARS

“If it bleeds it leads,” is an accepted mantra around newsrooms these days but back in 1974 it was a new, controversial idea. Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall), an investigative reporter at a local ABC affiliate in Sarasota, Florida, was particularly disdainful of the idea until she became the poster child for news sensationalism.

In “Christine,” a based-on-true-events film, Chubbuck is working at local station WZRB. She’s a steely presence, a serious person doing light news.

“People are listening to me,” she says, “so I have to be sure I'm really saying something.”

Reports on strawberry festivals and local events are the station’s stock in trade but the station manager (Tracey Letts) is desperate to get higher ratings. How? "Juicier stories,” he says. “If it bleeds it leads."

When the station owner (John Cullum) decides to poach one or two of the Sarasota on-air talents for his much larger Baltimore new division, Christine sees that as a way out. “So if I get some footage of fat people burning in cars and I'm on my way to Baltimore?”

Her progression to the larger market is stymied by illness and depression—“My life is a cesspool,” she says.”—and culminates with the news reporter becoming the news. On July 15, 1974 Chubbuck was on air, reading the news when announced, “In keeping with WZRB’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living colour, you are going to see complete coverage of an attempted suicide," before putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger.

The events in “Christine” are well-documented, so the shocking finale doesn’t come so much as a shock but the inevitable consequence of history. With the element of surprise removed, what’s left is a look at the woman at the heart of the story.

Hall plays Chubbuck as an almost otherworldly presence, someone who doesn’t quite feel comfortable in her own skin, always judging herself and those around her. “You’re not always the most approachable person,” co-worker George Ryan (Michael C. Hall) tells her, and that is the beauty of Hall’s work. In a terrific performance that elevates the movie, she plays Chubbuck as aloof but human, edgy and without a trace of sentimentality.

Christine film

UNLESS: 3 STARS

“Unless,” a new film starring Catherine Keener, is a portrait of a family in distress.

Successful author—a “book club darling”—and translator Reta Winters (Keener), her physician partner Tom (Matt Craven) and children are rocked out of their suburban complacency when daughter Norah (Hannah Gross) drops out of society to become a panhandler on the streets of Toronto.

Wrapped in a thick wool blanket, holding a sign that reads “Goodness,” Norah sits, catatonically outside of legendary discount department store Honest Ed’s. Detached and despondent, the young woman sits, quiet as the falling snow that swirls around her as her family struggles to understand why and how she ended up on the street. Is it a breakdown? A protest? A personal revolution? A reckoning of some sort?

Based on the final novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Shields, who passed away in 2003, “Unless” isn’t driven by plot but by Norah’s unhappiness and her family’s reaction to it. Some flowery dialogue occasionally gets in the way—“Sometimes I think that for Norah, there’s a bounteous feast going on but she has not been invited.”—but Keener’s keen intelligence and concern provides the emotional core that shapes the thin story into a compelling character study. In the novel Reta’s journey was an internal one and Keener makes it external and as cinematic as possible given the subdued nature of the film.

Although the question of why and how this happened lies at the heart of the film, director Alan Gilsenan is more interested in the effects of Norah’s decision than the decision itself. There is a conclusion, a reason, but the destination in this case is less satisfying than the journey.

The trauma that triggered Norah’s inward turn is unsettling, both emotionally and visually as presented in the movie, but doesn’t provide the kind of capper a story like this needs to transcend character. It feels slightly out of balance in its final minutes as it switches focus from Reta to Norah because we realize that this isn’t the story of a woman’s decision to drop out, but the story of a family’s reckoning with the aftermath of that choice.