This is one of those rare occasions I kinda wish I had gotten out to see this in the theater, but it was great at home too. Ryan Coogler has gone above and beyond in his work on franchises and based on true stories, but this is his career-defining statement, an unapologetically pulpy horror flick that weaves history and race and music into a story that turned out more emotionally resonant than I expected after the smoke cleared. Even Michael B. Jordan's duel role as twin brothers, a very popular Hollywood flourish these days, felt like an earned and necessary storytelling device by the end. The whole ensemble was great, particularly Hailee Steinfeld, Jayme Lawson, Delroy Lindo, Jack O'Connell, Li Jun Li, and that great little acting turn by Buddy Guy. 

Opus was written and directed by Mark Anthony Green, who used to profile pop stars for GQ, so I was really rooting for it as someone who has also profiled pop stars for GQ, aside from the fact that it stars Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich in an intriguing premise. I can understand why Opus has gotten withering reviews, because at times it does feel like Midsommar or The Menu if they were set in the music industry, and I feel it's a big miscalculation for A24 to make a movie that so readily reminds people of another A24 movie. Malkovich played a Bowie-esque reclusive pop star (with songs by Nile Rodgers, no less) was pretty fun, though, and I think the movie got a little closer to having a real idea driving it than some people gave it credit for. 

So many of Guy Ritchie's movies stick to his particular signatures, but it was fun to see him kind of let loose on someone else's formula, he really threw himself into making a very derivative but entertaining pastiche of National Treasure, Indiana Jones, and other movies in that vein. If this had been in theaters instead of on Apple TV+. I would have sat there chomping popcorn and enjoying myself, even if it got a little overbearingly predictable in that CGI-heavy third act. 

The girl group Huntr/x currently has four songs on the Hot 100, including one in the top 5, which means that they're arguably the most successful K-pop group in America since the big one, BTS. But they're not a real group, they're the protagonists of a wildly popular animated feature on Netflix. I'm not entirely sold on the music, but the movie is cute and funny, I like that something like this has taken off. 

Yeah this was rough, I don't know if I would call it the worst MCU movie but it was definitely down in the lower tiers. 

These days, it feels like a big pitfall of music documentaries is that it's sometimes possible for the subject of the film to have too much control over the final product, getting in the way of a filmmaker presenting an objective and/or interesting perspective on their story. Failure frontman Ken Andrews has a background in film (he directed a bunch of Ice-T videos back in the day) and directed the feature about his own band, but I think it turned out pretty well. I saw the "Stuck On You" video on 120 Minutes back in the day and eventually checked out Fantastic Planet after it became known as a cult classic, but I didn't know much of their story or the niche they carved out at the time (including making their first album with the late Steve Albini, who's in the movie, or touring several times with Tool). There are a lot of familiar beats here (label woes, drug addiction, reuniting and finding a younger new audience) but the sincere enthusiasm of talking heads like Hayley Williams and Matt Pinfield and Margaret Cho really help you get to the heart of what's musically interesting about the band. 

This German horror movie on Netflix stars a couple actors I'd seen in the American action flick Army of Thieves. It starts out with a reasonably intriguing "Twilight Zone"-ish premise with a couple waking up one day to this big impenetrable black wall outside of all their doors and windows. But as they break through the walls to other apartments in the building, and find their neighbors trapped in the same bizarre situation, it just gets tedious and full of annoying predictable conflicts and I just completely lost interest by the end.  

Mel Gibson had a reasonable amount of filmmaking ability at one point but it's just hilarious how hapless this movie is. I felt bad for Michelle Dockery and Topher Grace that they took the paycheck to make it halfway tolerable. And as a bald American, I resent the stolen valor of Mark Wahlberg just shaving off a patch of his full head of hair, he looked ridiculous. 

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