“The Bluff”
This silly and inane movie is a star vehicle for Priyanka Chopra Jonas (the wife of singer Nick Jonas). She plays Ercel, a housewife of the Caribbean married to a seafarer (Ismael Cruz Córdova) who is off on a mission. Ercel is caring for their son Issac (Vedanten Naidoo) and her much younger sister-in-law Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green, “Anemone,” “Out of the Darkness”) on Cayman Brac. Their idyllic tropical paradise is suddenly visited by a posse of unsavories demanding a stash of gold.
Turns out Ercel was previously “Bloody Mary,” a cutthroat pirate captain of the high seas. She toggles to Caribbean kick-ass queen and dispatches the first wave of henchmen, leading to a showdown with Mary/Ercel’s former running mate, Captain Connor (Karl Urban), who has taken her husband hostage.
Director Frank E. Flowers (“Haven”) then sends Jonas, dressed up ninja-style, through a disjointed montage of action sequences. She slices up baddies, or blows them up in various creative ways (the use of explosives is one of the more innovative aspects of the film) as her charges and betrothed sit haplessly by. ”The Bluff”’s title comes from the broad cliffside — or brac — of the island, where Mary has weapons stashed throughout a maze of booby-trapped tunnels. Flowers, who is from the Caymans, allegedly concocted the story from historical happenings and local lore. It’s half-baked, hackneyed mid-1800s high seas mush. Jonas most certainly deserved a better wing-spreader and Urban, who brings some of his cheeky, gruff machismo from “The Boys” to the part, isn’t enough to right the ship. Paging Jack Sparrow.
“Paul McCartney: Man on the Run”
Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) hands Paul McCartney the mic to tell his version of the Beatles breakup and revisit his challenges as a solo artist in the aftermath. Neville deftly weaves together news and concert footage, while McCartney overlays context in an almost avuncular manner. Beatles fans will startle to hear McCartney say he, not John/Yoko, broke up the Fab Four. He also stokes the “Paul is dead” conversation with a tongue-in-cheek wink. A post-Beatles competition with Lennon recurs throughout the doc. Other voices include Moody Blues guitarist and Wings bandmate Denny Laine, McCartney’s friend and the Pretenders founder Chrissie Hynde, and Sean Lennon. At the core of the film is McCartney’s first wife and Wings keyboardist Linda Eastman, who passed away in 1998 from breast cancer. Their camaraderie and companionship is palpable. We see Eastman rearing their four children while touring with the band, and how hands-on the McCartneys were, considering Paul’s fame and financial resources. We also get McCartney’s run-ins with the law for marijuana use both in England and, more notoriously, Japan. Neville’s post-Beatle portrait props up a McCartney who’s puckish and brash but also complex and vulnerable.
For What it's Worth 
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