a) Honey Boy
I've regarded Shia LeBeouf as a really off-putting figure for a long time, a once charismatic and promising star who got really famous with a string of mediocre movies (not just Transformers, either, like every movie he made for almost a decade), then seemed to get perhaps justifiably bored of it all and spent years trying to become some kind of meme or camp icon. So when I saw praise for Honey Boy, an autobiographical movie LeBeouf wrote as therapy while in rehab, I was skeptical but curious. But it's really good, I must admit. Lucas Hedges handily carries the movie as the Shia-inspired character, while LeBeouf walks a riskier tightrope playing essentially his own father even though he's at least a decade too young to really look the part. There were things that I thought bordered on over-the-top, but it was overall pretty touching and visceral in moments that could have been self-indulgent. A pretty impressive debut (non-documentary) feature for Alma Har'el, I particularly liked how she pulled off some very convincing glimpses of life on the set of a big effects-driven movie within the reality of a small human-scale movie.

b) 6 Underground
Like I said, those Transformers movies really bummed me out, particularly because Michael Bay can make some pretty enjoyable popcorn movies when he stays away from giant robots and just lets some hammy actors yell at each other over all the carefully orchestrated chaos -- The Rock, Pain And Gain, Con Air, pretty enjoyable movies. 6 Underground isn't quite on that level, it's a little bloated and runs out of steam, but it at least returns Bay to some of his neglected strengths, for better or worse Ryan Reynolds is a pretty ideal Bay star.

c) Midsommar
I was impressed by Hereditary and found it to be really original and memorable, while still having some misgivings about it. I'm less pleased with Ari Aster's follow-up Midsommar, in part because it felt like it took the same loose 'person traumatized by a family tragedy then becomes the victim of a strange cult ritual' concept and transposed it to a different kind of story, in some ways a more conventional slasher flick structure. It's rare that a horror movie's gore actually repulses me and makes me feel physically uncomfortable but this was one that did that, although I was really impressed by what Aster did visually and with some of the storytelling. Not really sure if my respect for this movie will increase or decrease as some time goes by and I think of it in hindsight.

d) Fighting With My Family
A biopic of a currently active entertainer's journey to fame is the kind of thing you assume will have a pretty low ceiling. But I really just adored Fighting With My Family, I laughed out loud and got misty-eyed and clapped and got caught up in every moment of the predictable yet moving story. It was about as funny as I'd expect from a movie directed by Stephen Merchent and featuring Nick Frost with a mohawk and a big bushy beard, but it also had a lot of heart and Vince Vaughn doing his usual motormouth thing more entertainingly than he has in ages. Florence Pugh was really a really impressive and magnetic performer in Midsommar and "The Little Drummer Girl, but man, Florence Pugh with jet black hair and a lip piercing and metal band shirts? I'm smitten.

e) The Last Black Man In San Francisco
I don't know why but I assumed the title of this movie was literal and it'd be like a near future tale of where gentrification is headed. But the title is merely provocative overstatement, and it fits the kind of dreamy heightened reality of lead actor Jimmy Fails's autobiographical screenplay. A really memorable, original film, I'm still not sure if every beat of the story 'worked' but it still held together pretty well, I hope Jonathan Majors gets a lot of roles off this movie.

f) Isn't It Romantic
You know how sometimes you come home in the middle of someone watching a movie, and you watch the second half of the movie with them and then later have to go back and rewatch it all or at least the first half just to piece it all together and get the whole experience? I did that recently after watching the end of Isn't It Romantic with my wife. I'm kind of weary of meta romcoms that are packed with references to all the famous old romcoms, but this one had some good jokes and I liked that the main character hated romcoms instead of being obsessed with them.

g) The Secret Life Of Pets 2
My kids watched the first Secret Life Of Pets a million times, and it's kind of loud and tiresome and all the best parts were in the trailer, but I was still kind of curious to see the sequel, where the disgraced Louis C.K.'s talking dog role was passed down to Patton Oswalt. Oswalt is obviously a better voice actor and less audibly embarrassed to be a voice in a cartoon, but most everything else that was irritating about the first movie seems to have gotten worse in this one.

h) Mune: Guardian Of The Moon
A kind of charmingly dreamy and surreal French cartoon that my kid found on Netflix, really liked the aesthetic of the animation.

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