a) Toy Story 4
The Toy Story movies are the best Pixar movies that I've never really felt much personal attachment to. I'm pretty sure I've seen all of the 3 previous movies, but usually in bits and pieces, never in the theater. But my son wanted to see this and I really enjoyed it, way more than Toy Story 3 at least. It feels like at this point they've really just taken the simple premise of toys coming alive when people aren't around to so many logical endpoints, even just in this movie, incorporating kid-made toys like Forky (easily one of the most entertaining aspects of the move), carnival prizes, and old toys in an antique shop. By the end of the movie some of the plot machinations felt really drawn out and unnecessary (around the point the toys started driving the RV), but the ending was a moving I guess conclusion of Woody's story, I got a little misty even though, as I said, I never really got to into these movies.

b) Always Be My Maybe
As rom coms continue to become more rare and sporadic at the box office, they become a larger share of the breakout hits on Netflix, and this is definitely one of the more enjoyable ones they've had. The story beats it hits are pretty predictable but it's still fun to watch unfold, with a few big laughs. As with Toy Story 4, the second half was livened up by a supporting role by Keanu Reeves, who I'm always happy to see doing more comedy even in his action hero career resurgence, my hopes are high for Bill & Ted 3.

c) Bohemian Rhapsody
I fucking love Queen and have at best a complicated relationship with music biopics, so I put this on with a lot of trepidation. And sure enough, I found a lot about the movie to be irritated by just in terms of pedantic factual stuff -- for no real reason they performed "Fat Bottomed Girls" about 4 years before it existed in reality and recorded "We Will Rock You" about 4 years after it was released in reality. They hadn't performed "in years" before Live Aid when in reality they wrapped a major tour 2 months earlier. But most heartbreaking of all, Freddie Mercury's bandmates decided that the band's last two albums, his decision to put all his remaining strength into building tragically poignant songs like "The Show Must Go On," somehow that just didn't have a place in the narrative. Also, it's weird that Queen and Elton John had the same manager but he's portrayed by 2 different "Game of Thrones" actors in their respective biopics that were both essentially helmed by the same director. All that said, Rami Malek's performance is very good if imperfect in a lot of ways, and there are a number of sequences I really enjoyed (particularly Brian May talking into his guitar pickup to argue with the rest of the band in the control room while recording "Bohemian Rhapsody").

d) The Possession of Hannah Grace
This movie had a pretty good creepy premise about a morgue worker finding out one of the bodies is possessed, and the story unfurled with some really tense scenes. But by the time the story reached its climax and all the crazy stuff was happening, it kinda felt like there was no tension left and I was just watching it play out to its conclusion.

e) Blockers
It's interesting to see a somewhat woke contemporary teen sex comedy about a really cliched regressive premise like parents desperate to stop their daughters from losing their virginity. Like, you get characters making pretty convincing criticisms of that mindset, but it's still the whole concept of the movie and it's played for laughs and normalized, at best it's a draw. That said, it was pretty good, the whole cast was pretty charming, both the parents and the teens. It's weird to realize that John Cena being in a comedy will totally increase the likelihood of me wanting to see it, but he really is funny.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 14, 2019 at 11:01 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.