a) Blow The Man Down
Really enjoyed this black comedy from co-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy. It had a lot of ingredients I've seen before from from the Coen brothers and others -- an accidental death in a small town, followed by cover-ups and double crosses and coincidences and twists -- but they put their own twist on it with a really detailed and memorable depiction of a Maine coastal village with a brothel owned by Margo Martindale.

b) Crawl
I was so excited to see this movie from the moment I saw the trailer, and it actually exceeded my expectations. Definitely breathed some new life into the man versus beast thriller genre, did its own thing enough to not be Jaws with alligators but it also wouldn't fall short if you did call it that. Even though my wife sat down to knowingly watch the movie about gators, she still screamed very loudly when the first alligator showed up, and I gasped and yelled at quite a few points. I liked that the movie did a dutiful job of introducing the characters and giving them motivations and relationships that occasionally shaded the action, but they didn't overdo it and ended the movie about as quickly as they could once the thrill ride was over. My wife would've liked an epilogue but I liked the way it worked without it. The song they played over the credits was a dumb joke, though.

c) Frozen II
I'm a parent, which means I've seen Frozen more times than I could count and can recite pretty much every lyric and line of dialogue from memory. But I kind of knew they had their jobs cut out for them even attempting a sequel -- the musical aspect along makes it a lot harder to capture that lightning in a bottle twice. And while I can hum "Into The Unknown" after a couple views of Frozen II, I generally don't think these songs are sticking nearly as much, and the story and the jokes don't quite pop as much either. But if you ask me a year from now, maybe my 4-year-old will have played it so many times that I will have different thoughts on it.

d) Brittany Runs A Marathon
Jillian Bell has been stealing scenes since "Workaholics" and 22 Jump Street and I'm happy to see her headline a feature, although I'm a little weary of comedic actresses like her, Rebel Wilson and Amy Schumer getting starring vehicles where the plot hinges on them being unattractive or overweight and trying to improve and/or accept themselves. It was a well done story, though.

e) Flower
I always had a crush on Lea Thompson growing up, so I unsurprisingly find her daughter Zoey Deutch cute as well. This starring vehicle directed by Max Winkler (son of Henry) is kind of a wash, though, it kind of felt like it didn't know if it wanted to be an edgy black comedy, a bawdy light comedy, a love story, a poignant Thelma And Louise sort of thing, or some combination of all of the above. There was a point a half hour before the end where I felt a very powerful urge to just stop the movie and never finish it, which I rarely do, and I powered through to the end and it never redeemed itself. If anything it got worse. There's a very awkward scene where two characters in the all-white cast grill each other on how much they know about hip hop, Adam Scott mispronounces Rakim ("Ra-keem") and I'm pretty sure it wasn't done on purpose to be funny, I did get a chuckle out of that.

f) To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
My wife recently watched To All The Boys I've Loved Before and enjoyed it so I watched the sequel with her. Definitely not as good as the first movie, but the cast is charming and has good chemistry so it was nice to revisit those characters.

g) Pass Over
I had never even heard of this movie before I wrote the bit on Spike Lee in this Complex piece and I'm glad I had a reason to check it out, I really thought Jon Michael Hall and Julian Parker gave great performances. I wish that stage plays were filmed onstage in front of audiences as films more often, it runs the risk of being a worst-of-both-worlds situation but when it works, it really works.

h) Still Bill
Another movie I watched while I was writing something, my Bill Withers piece for Stereogum, I'd always heard this movie was great but had never gotten around to seeing it. I'm never surprised when a great songwriter gives good interviews, but I was still impressed with how well Withers told his own story and offered more insight on his life and work than any of the assembled commentators, that's really seldom the case in biographical documentaries about musicians.

i) Chicken Little
A circa 2005 computer animated feature I had kind of forgotten ever existed before my kid found it on Netflix that I found surprisingly enjoyable. The less said about the Zach Braff era, the better, but otherwise it's got one of the best voice casts in modern animated feature history, including Joan Cusack, Fred Willard, Wallace Shawn, Amy Sedaris, Patrick Stewart, Adam West, Harry Shearer, Patrick Warburton, Catherine O'Hara, and Don Knotts in one of his final roles, as Turkey Lurkey.

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