a) Avengers: Endgame
I've seen most of the MCU movies at this point, but rarely in the theater, so waiting for this to hit VOD would've been fine for me as a non-fanatical fan. But the Monday after Endgame opened, I was working on a video shoot that had a long break between locations with a few hours to kill in D.C., and I found a $6 matinee nearby, so I couldn't resist the opportunity. I think Infinity War was the better of the 2 movies, but I felt satisfied that they justified making it two movies, in terms of narrative and how much was going on in each of them. The time travel callbacks to various scenes from past movies wore on me a little bit, but some of them were entertaining enough that it didn't kill the momentum, I enjoyed the way some characters' arcs went (although the Black Widow/Hawkeye stuff, I didn't really understand narratively or dramatically, it felt like they were just giving the mere mortals something to do). I also left the movie with a renewed respect for Chris Hemsworth, he's arguably the biggest actor in the MCU who might not be a household name without it, but he's earned his keep, he's really funny when he needs to be but also nailed some emotional moments at times when Thor looked ridiculous, I'm glad that he's one of the actors who will probably continue making these movies for a while.

b) Shazam!
I was extremely skeptical about this movie being any good, but I'm glad my son wanted to see it, it was really enjoyable. I'm amused that between the recent releases of Little and Shazam!, Big is now kind of a genre unto itself, much like Groundhog Day is. Zachary Levi had just the right goofball charm to pull off the role, but what really stuck with me about the movie was the foster home family, Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans and Grace Fulton and especially Jack Dylan Grazer were all just note perfect and kind of grounded the human drama of the movie better than the overwhelming majority of superhero movies.

c) Us
I don't know if seeing Get Out a year after its release just doomed me to enjoy it less because I had already heard so much about it, but I'm glad I saw Jordan Peele's next movie a bit quicker, and I think even on an even playing field, I'd prefer Us. It's just darker, more violent, more eerie, more to my taste in horror. I thought the way the various reveals in the story were unspooled throughout the movie were perfectly paced, there were a couple things I maybe should've seen coming but didn't at all. Lupita Nyong'o was obviously the powerhouse performance of the movie, but I also thought Winston Duke brought the perfect amount of levity to the movie with his dopey Clark Griswold vacation dad.

d) Native Son
I watched this HBO adaptation of Richard Wright's 1940 novel just off of the strength of it having a lot of actors I'd wanted to see more of: Ashton Sanders from Moonlight, Margaret Qualley from "The Leftovers," and Bill Camp from "The Night Of." I actually saw a lot of plot parallels between Native Son and The Night Of," but I didn't see the big pivot point of the story coming at all. And I got kind of angry at the protagonist about it, because he should've known what was about to happen, I felt like screaming at the screen, it's such an infuriating turn of events. But then I read a summary of the novel and I'm really curious why they chose to make the changes to the source material that they did, I don't know, the movie was really beautifully shot and acted but I have a lot of questions about the whole thing, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

e) BlacKkKlansman
I loved the idea of this movie, just for Denzel Washington's son stepping into his old man's shoes in a Spike Lee joint and knocking it out of the park, and Spike finally getting an Oscar for a movie doesn't shy away from his bolder themes like some of his other late period crowd-pleasers (I mean Inside Man is great, but it's not gonna hurt a racist's feelings like most of his other movies). But I also loved the movie in practice, Spike really got a chance to take the story seriously while still having a lot of fun with playful and artful embellishments, and John David Washington turned in a great performance without distracting me with memories of his dad (although every time Michael Buscemi was onscreen I was very distracted by him being a dead ringer for his brother). Topher Grace as David Duke was a strangely inspired casting choice, Grace's underrated talent for playing a dumbass has never been more pointedly deployed. And I knew the documentary footage at the end of the movie was coming but I wasn't prepared for it to be a really effective and moving finale.

f) Papillon
I feel like I should definitely watch the 1973 version of Papillon, because there's just no way that Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman weren't way more entertaining in these roles than Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek are.

g) The Meg
I wasn't as excited as my wife was to watch the latest trashy killer shark movie, but once I saw that Jason Statham was in it I was on board, he rarely steers you wrong with ridiculous popcorn movies. It felt pretty predictable but sometimes the predictable deaths by shark are the most satisfying deaths by shark.

h) The Dark Tower
I've never had a clue what Stephen King's Dark Tower novels are about other than that there's a bunch of them and they're really long and involved and esoteric even by King's standards. So I was surprised to see they managed to translate it to a 90-minute movie, and after kind of listlessly watching it I feel like I don't really understand much still, other than that I understand why this got terrible reviews. Maybe the Amazon series will do a better job.

i) Penguins of Madagascar
My kids were watching this one day and I was really alarmed to hear John Malkovich voicing one the villain, that in and of itself made it a little more entertaining to me than it would've otherwise been.

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