The subtext of Mank is interesting: a successful director, David Fincher, filming his late father's unproduced screenplay about a perhaps the most famous example of a director and his screenwriter fighting over credit (what's more: Jack Fincher also wrote a pre-The Aviator screenplay about Howard Hughes, who was one of the inspirations for Citizen Kane). It amused me that Amanda Seyfried was damn near the only lead in the movie playing the same nationality they are in real life, but she was really good in it. As much as I find Citizen Kane lore fascinating, though, I don't know if Mank ultimately justified its existence, I didn't even feel like I knew that much about Herman Mankiewicz at the end of the movie, it was well made and interesting but not very memorable by Fincher's standards. And I don't know if Gary Oldman or the script were up the task of portraying Mank as one of the sharpest wits of his time, he wasn't that funny. 

This was, as everyone has said, not as good as the first movie. But I did kind of enjoy the particular ways in which Wonder Woman 1984 bit off more than it could chew, with a campy plot right out the comic book or the '70s TV series that towards the end took a very dark and "Twilight Zone" sort of turn. 

Existential Pixar movies where they try to turn abstract concepts into cute little cartoon characters are not my favorite kind of Pixar movies, but I liked Soul a lot more than Inside Out as far as those go. It was really thought-provoking, though, I like where they took the message of the movie, but it was still funny. I especially liked the Terry scenes -- my 5-year-old got a plush Terry in his McDonald's happy meal and happily set off making a Terry spinoff with the camera in his tablet. Jamie Foxx deserves credit for actually putting in work to create a character as a voice actor, he's one of the only leads in Pixar history where I'm not constantly picturing the actor when their character speaks. 

Back when this came out, I was actually a little surprise it was Pixar and joked that it was the most Dreamworks-looking Pixar movie of all time. It's a sweet little movie, a few really funny scenes, and I enjoyed the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired theme of the movie more because my wife and I have been playing D&D online with her family for the past year. 

Once we got set up with Disney+ on the fire stick for Xmas and were watching the new Pixar movies, my wife wanted to watch this, but I really haven't seen the original. So it was a little weird to see without that frame of reference, although I gather that the animated version had a lot more songs and talking animals. It was alright, I think the kind of stylized live action that felt like animation looked better here than it did in the nu-Jungle Book or whatever.

I was curious about this movie throughout the whole protracted controversy cycle that delayed its release, particularly after I realized that it was directed by Craig Zobel, who made one of my favorite overlooked movies of the last decade, Compliance, which explored some similar themes of manipulation and cruelty. Ultimately, I enjoyed The Hunt a lot, but more as a well paced action movie than a political satire, although that aspect worked well enough and had a decent little twist to the ending. Betty Gilpin really elevated this movie with her performance, though, she made so many great subtle little choices in how to read certain lines, I think she deserves great dramatic and comedic roles but the fight scenes in The Hunt were so great that she could totally pull off the next action movie Charlize Theron passes on.  

I grew up in a world where The Bee Gees were synonymous with Saturday Night Fever and was of course surprised at some point to learn they had a whole decade of albums before that and started out with a more Beatlesque sound, and have educated myself more about their long fascinating career over the years. So it was great to get the whole story put in its proper context by Barry Gibb, it really felt like he did a good job of telling his brothers' stories and acknowledging that they would have different memories than him but aren't around to share them now, it felt like a beautiful tribute to their brotherhood and the depth of their musical collaboration. 

Hulu has been releasing feature films for years, but it felt like Happiest Season was the first one, or at least the first non-documentary, that was really widely seen and penetrated pop culture. I found it a little disappointing as holiday rom coms go, though, the Dan Levy and Alison Brie scenes were funny but fleeting, and a lot of the stuff with Kristen Stewart as the put upon girlfriend felt like they handed her scenes that were written for Ben Stiller for a Meet The Parents sequel and were just so painfully unfunny. 

My wife and her friend had tried to go see this when it was in theaters and didn't get to, so they watched it together online one night, starting the movie at the same time in their respective homes. And it was really pretty entertaining -- there are a lot of zombie apocalypse comedies at this point, but this one distinguishes itself by being a British Christmas zombie musical with some pretty catchy songs. The cast of relative unknowns is really strong, too, Ella Hunt who plays the title character is now on "Dickinson." I'm going to have to show my wife the other musical apocalypse comedy I watched a while back, Bang Bang Baby. 

My kid put this on the other day, and it really bummed me out as somebody who loved the original Mr. Peabody cartoons on "Rocky & Bullwinkle," the voice casting was all wrong and it just didn't capture the spirit or the dry humor of the original at all. 

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