I think The Founder is probably the high water mark for this somewhat recent trend of movies that tell the backstories of big ubiquitous pop culture staples and business success stories. It's an odd little genre, though, movies about guys in suits having meetings and negotiating budgets, until the story ends with a postscript detailing all the huge sums of money generated by the events depicted therein. Matt Damon and Viola Davis do a pretty solid job of keeping the humanity of the story at the forefront, solid performances, but I kind of came out of this movie with a lower opinion of Ben Affleck as a director than I had before, the '80s music cues in particular were all kind of clumsy and ill-fitting. Chris Messina doing a belligerent J.K. Simmons type role is by far my favorite thing about Air, he should really get to do that kind of thing more. Really, the whole Artists Equity thing and everyone who worked on the movie getting paid so well is way more interesting and exciting to me than the movie itself. 

I spent countless hours of my youth playing Tetris on my Gameboy, so it should've been easy for me to invest in Tetris's story, but it just seemed kind of stupid to me, most of the same flaws as Air but magnified. As is often the case with these kinds of movies, seeing the home movie footage of the real guy the movie is based on is more interesting than the actual movie and is not at all flattering to the lead actor's performance, and usually I like Taron Egerton but he just seemed miscast. The Pet Shop Boys song "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" played over the closing scene and credits, which feels like one of the most honest things any of these movies has done. 

I love the fact that John Francis Daley, who played Dungeons & Dragons on "Freaks & Geeks" over 20 years ago, grew up to direct the most successful film adaptation of D&D to date. I played a weekly D&D game with family members for a year or two not long ago, and it's not totally my jam but it's pretty fun and I felt like the movie retained the spirit of the game well enough as a generic studio action comedy. Game Night is still by far Daley and Goldstein's best movie, though. 

This was great, I might even say I've liked each Jordan Peele feature more than the last from Get Out to Us to Nope, I'm just amazed by both his imagination and his ability to build suspense without leaning on typical horror rhythms or jump scares and give you something to think about without really spelling out the themes and subtext. Like it's pretty hard to do an alien movie that doesn't remind you of a million other alien movies and this one really feels like it stands in a category of its own. Great cast, too, excellent use of a journeyman character actor like Michael Wincott. 

A pretty good attempt at a modern vampire movie, I wasn't on the edge of my seat or anything but director Jessica M. Thompson has an excellent visual sense and paced the story well enough that it didn't really matter that it kind of moved along pretty predictably. 

Channing Tatum's directorial debut is a pretty enjoyable little movie about an Army veteran and a military dog, both of whom have pretty severe PTSD, going on a road trip together and eventually bonding. Some of the chapters in the story were a little messed up or didn't entirely work, but Tatum managed to carry the emotional weight of a movie where most of the scenes are just him and a dog really well, and the Jane Adams/Kevin Nash part was great. 

One of Donna Summer's daughters co-directed the new HBO doc about her, and it feels like a really loving portrait of her life and music that also doesn't shy away from the sad or complicated parts of the story. As always I kinda wish there was a little more about the music beyond the hits, but all the home movie footage really allowed you to see a bit more of her personality and sense of humor, and it was cool to really get a sense of what a lovely and mutually respectful collaboration she had with Giorgio Moroder, exactly what you would hope for. 

I didn't realize that a documentary about Cypress Hill came out last year until I started researching my recent piece about Black Sunday, but it's a pretty well made film, really captures the group's personalities and their unique place in hip hop. I never realized Sen Dog had this habit of kind of ghosting the group in the middle of tours and eventually left Cypress Hill for a couple years, but they still remained friends and welcomed him back in. Also, there was one hilarious moment I loved in the Ice-T interview. 

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