Horror is a genre where successful movies spawn sequel after sequel with no grand story arc planned out, but 2018's Halloween was a wildly successful back-to-basics movie bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back into the franchise. So now we get two more movies for a planned trilogy, with Halloween Kills getting the kind of muted response that middle movies often get in trilogies. But I thought it was pretty good -- it felt more overtly like an homage to the Carpenter movies than the 2018 movie, and a really violent one, with Curtis kind of sidelined for most of the movie. But it totally made sense for me as the middle chapter of a trilogy that made me anticipate the next movie, and there were a few pretty over-the-top moments that made it memorable in its own right. 

One of the interesting that happens as bands and other cultural phenomenons get documented over and over in books and films and so on is that the people who live the longest get more chances to tell the story. So one of the really enjoyable things about the new documentary about The Velvet Underground by Todd Haynes is that Mo Tucker and especially John Cale get to have starring roles as the primary interviewees, while there's still plenty of archival audio of Lou Reed interviews to get his two cents in. Of course, Cale was only on 2 of VU's 4 canonical albums, which helps tilt the movie further towards the usual emphasis on the Warhol days and The Velvet Underground & Nico, which is frankly my least favorite of those albums. It's a fine movie with some excellent footage and interviews (the Jonathan Richman segments are, predictably, a highlight). But I'm reading Please Kill Me right now, and the early chapters about VU are much funnier and have much juicier, more revealing anecdotes about the band than anything in this movie. 

My wife wanted to watch this Netflix vampire movie, and I thought it was a pretty decent lightweight horror flick, the cast had fun with it and I liked the premise and the moody way the whole thing was lit. 

Love And Monsters is one of those movies that was scheduled for a theatrical release in early 2020 and wound up as a VOD release after Covid hit and I think it's a shame that it slipped through the cracks, it's really quite entertaining. Basically, it's a dystopian comedy where radiation has made most animals on earth into giant monsters that have killed most of the human population, and you follow one guy as he goes on a journey to find his girlfriend from before the apocalypse -- if you're like me and watch Zombieland every time it comes on cable, I highly recommend Love And Monsters, it hits that spot nicely. The CGI is pretty impressive, too, it actual got a visual effects nomination at the Oscars. 

Pixie is a British action comedy that feels like kind of a throwback to the late '90s, all those post-Tarantino/post-Trainspotting edgy movies, heists gone wrong and stolen drugs and priests with guns. But it manages to be pretty charming in spite of all that, good cast, good writing, I enjoyed it. 

The Starling is a touching little movie about a married couple coping with the death of their infant daughter, with two leads who usually do comedies, Bridesmaids co-stars Melissa McCarthy and Chris O'Dowd, giving really excellent, sensitive performances. But I especially liked Kevin Kline in The Starling, I wish he popped up in movies more often these days, and Emily Tremaine really stole the one scene she was in, much as she had in her brief appearance in the recently canceled series "Mr. Corman," I really hope to see more of her.

Christopher Landon kicked off his career writing Paranormal Activity sequels and Disturbia, but I feel like he's really found his voice directing more playful, satirical horror movies like Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U, and this very entertaining slasher movie reboot of Freaky Friday. Obviously a lot of the comedy is derived from the easy laughs of Vince Vaughn adopting the body language and speaking style of a teenage girl and Kathryn Newton acting like a middle-aged man who's a serial killer, but they're both great, very detailed performances, and the whole thing is put together very cleverly. 

This movie, improbably written and directed by a Brazilian musician known primarily for his 'MysteryGuitarMan' YouTube channel, is one of those tense dramas where a few astronauts go into space and something goes wrong and they have to make all these difficult choices. But it held my attention, partly because you were never quite sure if the titular stowaway (Shamier Anderson) really did wind up on the spacecraft by accident as he said or if there's something shady going on, and partly because Toni Collette, Anna Kendrick, and Daniel Dae Kim play out the drama really well and make this heightened situation feel like a relatable workplace crisis or something. My wife found the end underwhelming but I like that it didn't quite go where I thought it was going and never went with a big over-the-top climax. 

Aya Cash from "You're The Worst" and William Jackson Harper from "The Good Place" star in this rom com about a couple who break up and decide to still go to her sister's wedding the next day as if they're still together. Not a really exceptional movie or anything but a good cast goes a long way in this and they're great, especially Cash. 

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