This was pretty good, I guess, I would say it was above average for a music biopic, as weary as I am about the tropes and history-flattening cinematic shorthand of that genre. Chalamet was solid, including his singing, but Dune: Part Two remains the 2024 film that actually substantially raised my opinion of his talent. But there's just a power in Dylan's early music that the movie almost never conjures on a visceral level, which makes all the bending of the truth for narrative feel especially futile, like you could have at least gotten some of the feeling. I did appreciate the little music nerd nods like how Al Kooper's iconic organ line on "Like A Rolling Stone" was improvised on the spot by someone who wasn't supposed to be in the session, playing an instrument he doesn't usually plays, but it was done in a slightly cheap fan service way. I will say this, though, I would totally watch sequels if they just brought Chalamet back every now and again with another movie about a different 5-year chunk of Dylan's career, kind of like "The Crown." 

I figured I should also catch up on last year's other big music biopic about a famous Bob. And it makes A Complete Unknown seem a lot better by comparison, watching this British guy in a bad wig hop around on stage. I often say that biopics and historical movies are better if they focus on a shorter timeframe instead of trying to cram an entire lifetime into two hours. But it kind of feels like One Love zooms in a little too much, pretty much the whole movie takes place between 1976 and 1978 outside of some brief flashbacks -- a very dramatic period in his life, sure, but also after many of his most famous songs had already been released. It also really pissed me off when one of his band's live performances somehow ended with a fadeout. 

I am still disappointed about the cancellation of "Rap Sh!t," but showrunner Syreeta Singleton's debut was a hit so I'm glad she's on to bigger and better things. As someone who thought Friday was one of the funniest movies I'd ever seen when I was 13, One of Them Days really brought me back to that a little bit, it might be the best vehicle to date for Keke Palmer's comedic talents. And SZA really hit the ground running as an actress with a better performance than I thought she had in her, sort of lampooning her own image as a spiritual woo woo girl. I think that physical comedy is harder than a lot of people think, though, and the handful of big physical comedy moments in this feel a little forced, but it's otherwise an increasingly rare excellent theatrical comedy. 

I'm always a little wary of how movies that have a deaf or blind character often make their disability feel like a plot device, especially if it's an action or horror movie. But The Silent Hour, which stars Joel Kinnaman as a Boston police officer who's losing his hearing and has to project a deaf murder witness, played by deaf actress Sandra Mae Frank, was a pretty compelling crime drama that never felt like it used the deafness as a cheap device. I'd love to see Frank get a big award-winning role like Troy Kotsur or Marlee Matlin one of these days. 

I saw the original Gladiator in the theater and found it pretty thrilling but I've had very little desire to see it again or think about it again in the last 25 years, I don't think I would've bothered with the sequel if Denzel Washington wasn't in it. There were a few scenes that grabbed by attention but I basically treated it as background noise. Paul Mescal was okay, but it felt like a classic case of an actor getting in the gym and getting the muscles for a part but not really being suited for it. 

A decent little romcom by Adam Brooks, who's written and/or directed a lot of decent little romcoms. It would've been a lot better with a different lead actress, though, most of the girls who came up in the Disney Channel system have some real performing chops but Sofia Carson is just kind of stiff and unnatural even when she's delivering some funny, charming dialogue. 

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