Movie Diary
a) Moana
When I put this on for my family to watch, we ended up watching it about 3 times in one weekend. And it wasn't just the kids who asked for it again, my wife really loved the songs. It's pretty crazy how Disney's current run of animated features (Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, and Moana) is basically approaching Pixar's best streak at this point.
b) Keeping Up With The Joneses
My theory of comedy is that casting is everything, and a lot of comedies are hurt by the impulse to cast the most beautiful people instead of the funniest people. So Keeping Up With The Joneses is notable in how well it manages that balance; the 4 principal actors consist of 3 freakishly good looking people and Zach Galifianakis looking the best he's ever looked, and the only one of them who doesn't have an extensive resume in comedy, Gal Gadot, turns out to have some pretty good comic timing. That's not to say that the movie is an unqualified success -- it mines the same regular-folks-caught-up-in-espionage territory as Spy with fewer laughs -- but I found it notable in that regard.
c) Nerve
Somehow I totally missed this movie's existence when it came out a year ago but apparently it did decent at the box office. The guys who created the Catfish movie and series and transitioned into scripted film fairly well with a couple of the Paranormal Activity sequels directed this, and it's not a bad teen Internet dystopia fable, basically it feels like if "Black Mirror" was produced for Freeform. It's a well worn cliche that high school students are often played by adults, but it really amazed me how almost every principal cast member in this was in their late 20s or early 30s. Even the youngest actor was old enough to be a college graduate. But I kinda feel bad for actors like Dave Franco and Emma Roberts, no matter how old they get they probably get cast for younger roles because they're still looked at as "James's little brother" and "Julia's niece."
Movies and shows where comedians play versions of themselves with worse careers are one of show business's most plentiful natural resources, so I'm a little sick of them. This one was pretty well done, though, good balance of establishing Henry Phillips and his act and why it's funny, but also kind of mocking it and placing it at the center of an interesting story with a good supporting cast.
e) Don't Think Twice
Yet another show business meta film made by comedians, this one Mike Birbiglia's ode to struggling improv comedy groups and what happens when one of them gets hired by "SNL" (here very thinly veiled as "Weekend Live"). Solid cast, nothing amazing but I liked it more than I expected to because they were willing to really play out a variety of different relationships between the characters with some smartly written little scenes.
f) When The Bough Breaks
I'm amused by the durability of the formula of psychological thrillers where the title and/or trailer often creepily invokes a nursery rhyme. OK movie but pretty predictable.
g) Miss You Already
This reminded me a lot of one of my favorite Toni Collette movies, In Her Shoes, except it paired her with a different Charlie's Angel and Drew Barrymore is in the Toni role and Toni is in the Charlize Theron role, if that makes any sense. A sweet, sentimental little movie but it fell short of my expectations.
h) The Conjuring
Somehow it wasn't until Anabelle: Creation came out recently that I had a clue that The Conjuring had been a huge hit and had birthed a franchise with 4 features, so I went back and checked out the first one. Really good, I was impressed at how they took the story's setting in the '70s as a cue to really evoke the mood and visuals of '70s horror like The Exorcist.
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