Nell Tiger Free was amazing on "Servant" and never nominated for any major awards or given enough praise, so I was really happy to see her star in a successful movie in an iconic horror franchise. The First Omen is also the debut feature by Arkasha Stevenson, who directed one of the best seasons of SyFy's anthology series "Channel Zero." I wouldn't say The First Omen is a masterpiece, but it's far above average for a new school prequel to a classic, with a handful of really chilling, masterfully staged scenes, and great performances by Free, Ralph Ineson, and Ishtar Currie-Wilson (Bill Nighy felt kind of underused, but whatever). 

Back in 2010, two similarly themed "supervillain redemption story" animated films were released, and Despicable Me made more money than Megamind by a respectable but not huge margin. There is a vocal minority who says Megamind was a better movie, but I feel like they're just bitter and hate the minions, it's no contest. 14 years later, there's finally a Megamind sequel, but it's on Peacock and Will Ferrell is not in it. Meanwhile, Ferrell does play the main antagonist in the fourth Despicable Me movie with a bad French accent, and it's probably the worst thing about the movie. I took my 9-year-old and 14-year-old sons to see it, we had fun. Definitely not the best movie in the franchise but there were some good parts, I liked the scene where John DiMaggio (Bender of "Futurama" fame) plays a bus driver. Dr. Nefario makes a brief return, but they replaced Russell Brand with a new voice actor, thankfully. 

Dan Levy's debut feature is pretty well made and impressive, especially considering that he only directed three episodes of "Schitt's Creek." It's a familiar sort of dramedy where the main character's spouse suddenly dies and they rely on friends to get through it and eventually move on with their life, and I was surprised that it was a little maudlin and light on comic relief (Kaitlyn Dever is hilarious in the funeral scene, the movie could've used a little more of that kind of thing). Still pretty enjoyable, though, mainly because Levy and the two friends, played by Ruth Negga and Himesh Patel, make for a great cast. 

Little Wing is based on a lovely New Yorker article by Susan Orlean about a 13-year-old girl who owns racing pigeons. Watching it, though, I was reminded of Adaptation 's plot about Charlie Kaufman adapting an Orlean book. The movie adds a host of different plot devices to make the story more exciting, including Russian gangsters and a heist and divorce and suicidal ideation. It almost feels like it could've been adapted by Kaufman's fictitious brother Donald. Not a terrible movie but a really frustrating and disappointing one that kind of wasted Brian Cox in a very boilerplate cranky old man role. 

Speaking of Nicolas Cage! I decided to finally check out Pig since the director, Michael Sarnoski, did the new A Quiet Place prequel, and Cage also has a hit right now with Longlegs. I haven't seen a lot of Cage's movies from the past decade that seemed to lean into him being a cult hero or camp icon or whatever, and I was a little worried that Pig would be that. My wife came home the night I was watching it and asked what it's about, and she was like "so it's John Wick with a pig instead of a dog?" So I was pleasantly surprised that it was a pretty quiet, soulful movie that never went for the big climactic action you sort of expected, and Cage's performance is one of the best I've seen from him in a long time. Having chapter titles for a 90-minute movie with a fairly straightforward plot felt a bit pretentious an unearned, though.  

Aftersun is the debut feature by Charlotte Wells after she directed a few short films and it's good, but I don't know, it feels a little like a short film stretched out. It's a sad and poignant film and Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio give great nuanced performances. But you could have really gotten all the key scenes and points of this over with in 10-20 minutes, which would've made more sense given the subtle show-don't-tell nature of what the movie's about. I don't know, maybe I'm just irritable about the long scenes where a Blur song gets slowed down to half speed or a Queen song plays with a bunch of dramatic reverb, I know people loved those scenes but they didn't work for me. 

I checked this out based on enjoying Maya Erskine and Jack Quaid's TV work, and it really surpassed my expectations, one of the better rom coms I've seen in the last few years. Erskine and Quaid play two platonic college friends who decide to be each other's plus one for a series of weddings they've been invited to, and it takes some pretty predictable turns from there, but they pull it off well, the characters and the story feel fully fleshed out and resonant and the comedy is character-driven and never too over-the-top. 

A lot of what I'd read this movie has kind of circled on the idea that Andrew McCarthy has been one of the less successful "brat pack" actors since the Breakfast Club/St. Elmo's Fire era. And so of course he's the one who's haunted by it and thinks it negatively impacted them, while his peers like Emilio Estevez or Demi Moore or Rob Lowe have better things to do than make a documentary about what a magazine writer called them in the '80s. But I dunno, I enjoyed the movie, I like that McCarthy took this thoughtful, bittersweet approach to being part of a pop culture phenomenon. And I think maybe he did deserve a better career that he might've had without all that brat pack baggage, now and then I'll see him in something and think he's a striking actor with a unique screen presence, like when he played a contract killer on "Good Girls." 

This documentary about the Indigo Girls reminded me of the recent documentary about Cyndi Lauper. It's nice to get a career-spanning doc about artists who are just genuinely good people and have been activists for good causes and have a few classic songs but probably don't get enough credit for their artistic legacy as a whole. And you get a nice nuanced look at the differences between Emily Saliers and Amy Ray's personalities and songwriting styles, and the different challenges they've faced in life individually or together. 

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