Companion is the excellent debut feature by Drew Hancock, who wrote on a number of good TV series including "Suburgatory." I feel like Sophie Thatcher never quite gets enough screentime on "Yellowjackets" for me to form much of an opinion of her as an actress but she's great in Companion, a difficult role that requires you to empathize with a robot more than the humans in the story while believing she is a robot. There are a few little twists and reveals that are handled so deftly, and Jack Quaid and Lukas Gage and Harvey Guillen are all great in it too. 

After watching a couple of very conventional music biopics, I decided to watch the movie where Robbie Williams is depicted by a CGI chimpanzee as a palette cleanser. I thought this was just alright, though. Neither the Robbie Williams songs I like nor the ones I don't know were used very evocatively. Even though CGI has certainly improved over time, it's still kind of shitty replacement for a human performance. And the thing is, this movie exists because Robbie Williams is genuinely a very charming, charismatic guy, and a lot of that is lost or at least blunted when you just make his voice come out of a mildly expressive CGI animal's face. Also, this movie is full of human women who have sex with a monkey, and even more who want to have sex with the monkey, and it isn't so weird that it ruins the movie, but it's not not weird. 

O'Dessa retells Greek mythology as a musical in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It looks cool and takes a big swing at being bold and colorful and surreal, and in some respects in succeeds, but it never really takes off. The parts with Murray Bartlett just feel like offbrand Hunger Games scenes. 

A pretty good action movie starring Viola Davis, I have to admit I put this on as kind of a background movie and then regretted it, might have to put it on again and give it more of my attention. 

The fourth live action Hellboy movie is the first one with a screenplay co-written by Mike Mignola. And while it doesn't hold a candle to the Del Toro movies, I liked it, especially how it was a bit more of a horror movie than the other ones. 

I've really enjoyed Dan Deacon's film scoring work, and got to interview him about it a while back, so I was excited that he got to work on a movie as big as Venom: The Last Dance. I feel like the score was barely audible for most of the movie, though, and Tom Hardy's Venom voice really started to sound like his Bane voice in this movie and things just a little too goofy in this one. There's a dance scene set to ABBA's "Dancing Queen" and a sentimental montage set to Maroon 5's "Memories."

I think Long After Dark is a really great underrated Petty album so it was great to see this unearthed MTV special from that era, expanded by director Cameron Crowe. I almost wish it was more of a straight up concert movie because the live footage is great, and as a rock doc it feels like a dry run for later Crowe stuff like his Pearl Jam movie, or for Bogdanovich's more definitive Petty movie, but there's still some really good stuff in here. 

I watched this Elliott Smith documentary while working on my recent Spin piece about Smith. The first five minutes center on Smith's Oscar nomination, the next five minutes after that center on his death, so I really feared the worst. But they delved into his catalog and spoke to a lot of people close to him, and man, it really just becomes a very emotional thing to watch, it brought back all of the feelings of falling in love with Smith's music as a teenager and then being heartbroken by his passing. 

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »