July Movies Part 4: Happy Gilmore 2 & The Fantastic Four: First Steps

To close off the month of July, I watched one movie on streaming and one in the theater. Both were perfectly adequately movies that could serve as a good distraction this weekend, so give them a try!

Happy Gilmore 2: First off, I had never seen Happy Gilmore, so my husband quickly rectified that oversight in my film viewing by making us watch that movie earlier in the week. Then we tuned into Happy Gilmore 2, so I could see exactly how much nostalgia was baked into this sequel. Written by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler and directed by Kyle Newacheck, Adam Sandler is back as the titular angry golfer who wanted to be a hockey player but turned out to have a flair for golf instead. Spoiler alert, this movie kicks off with him being widowed, so what then follows is a descent into alcoholism and depression, which he then claws himself back from as he has to raise money to send his beloved daughter to ballet school in Paris. A noble goal, if ever there was one.

There are a lot of callbacks to the original movie, and you can bet that almost everyone from the original has returned to this film (unless they're dead, in which case they still might make an appearance). There are also a lot of cameos from new folk who were clearly huge Gilmore fans that wanted to ensure they showed up in the sequel. There's a plot involving an upstart golfing league that's trying to make golf cool again, and Happy will side with a bunch of famous professional golfers to defeat these newbies. It's all very silly and fun, and exactly what you would expect. This movie is perfect fan service so if you loved Happy Gilmore, hop on the couch and tune into Happy Gilmore 2.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps: Written by Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer, and directed by Matt Shakman, this movie is aesthetically glorious. The production design by Kasra Farahani captures a futuristic 1960s New York and is wonderfully reminiscent of the cartoons. It's all very fun and fabulous (and dare I say...fantastic?). The cast of Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach is unsurprisingly great, and the quartet look like they are having a lovely time as they banter with each other and save the planet from certain doom. There's the added complication of Sue Storm being pregnant, and the worries of whether the baby will have weird powers, and that storyline just keeps building and building as they encounter a giant cosmic being named Galactus who wants to annihilate Planet Earth. The stakes are high.

I would have recommend this movie without reservations, but the problem is that it came out one week after Superman and really pales in comparison to that movie. While all the right elements are there, the script is just not tight enough (as evidenced by the presence of four screenwriters, never a good sign), and the middle of this film drags interminably and goes off into a lot of unnecessary tangents that ultimately don't pay off. It's still a decent movie, but it misses the mark to be a truly good one.

July Comedy Binges: Murderbot, Stick, Too Much, Overcompensating

Looking for your next summer TV binge? I've got four comedies for you, all very different from each other, so there should be something for everyone!

Murderbot: Created by Paul and Chris Weitz and based on a series of novels by Martha Wells, Alexander Skarsgard stars as a SecUnit, a robot designated to protect a group of researchers who are on a mission to an uncharted planet and have been forced to hire this robot as a bodyguard for insurance reasons, even though they are a bunch of hippies who think that owning a robot is tantamount to slavery. What they don't know, however, is that the SecUnit has hacked his infrastructure so that he can be fully autonomous. But rather than going rogue and becoming some sort of violent, sentient, Terminator-esque AI, this robot is interested in far more prosaic things - he has downloaded thousands of hours worth of trashy television episodes and just wants to be left alone by the crew so he can watch reruns of his favorite space dramas.

It's a fun premise, but I'll confess, I never paid much attention to this show as I was watching it, treating it more as background noise while I did other things. The cast is great, the production design is excellent, all the right components are here, and most people have been raving about how much they love this show. But for some reason, the humor was always too one-note for me and never became much more complex and engaging than this one joke about this robot that just wants to binge TV. There's a ton of action, a lot of encounters with villains and alien creatures, and plenty of excitement for people who are genuinely looking for some science fiction adventure packed into easily digestible 30-minute episodes. It wasn't for me, but it absolutely could be for you!

Stick: Created by Jason Keller, this show stars Owen Wilson as Pryce Cahill, a washed-up golf pro who is barely getting by and still stinging from his divorce and the loss of the cushy life he used to have. However, one day he discovers Santiago Wheeler (Pete Dager), a teenager who seems to be a golf prodigy. He persuades Santi and his mother, Elena (Mariana Trevino) that they should hit up the amateur circuit, and after a lot of persuasion, they agree. The reason I watched this show, however, is because the other person joining them on this adventure is Pryce's friend and former caddy, Mitts, who is played by Marc Maron. I've been hearing Maron talk about this show for months on his podcast, so obviously I tuned in. If you're a fan of WTF, you're probably going to enjoy this performance.

This is a cute show. Watching it one week at a time was the perfect pace because you didn't get too invested but were still curious enough to see what these characters would end up doing the next week. I don't know how well it will hold up as a binge, but each episode is only 30 minutes long so it will go down easy. The writing does suffer a little from the fact that the show was created by a white guy in his 50s, so there are occasionally some painfully awkward conversations about pronouns and social justice that simply don't sound quite right when coming out of the mouths of the younger characters. But this mostly seems like a well-intentioned, sweet show about found family and picking yourself up after grief, loss, and heartbreak, all wrapped in a gentle comedy that has some very exciting golf montages, if you're into that sort of thing. Give it a try!

Too Much: This show is created by Luis Felber and Lena Dunham, so that's probably all you need to know if you're wondering if this show is for you. I am not a Dunham person by any means, but this show did still have some appeal for me, so let's discuss the good parts, i.e. the cast. Megan Stalter stars as Jessica, a woman living in New York City, who can't stop stalking her ex and his beautiful new girlfriend (played by Michael Zegen and Emily Ratajkowski), so she decides to leap at the chance to move to London for work and get a fresh start. As a romcom and Austen enthusiast, her expectations of London are mostly that she's going to be stepping into a Regency period drama and meet Mr. Darcy, but instead, she quickly discovers that it's simply another big city, just filled with people with different accents.

Jessica wastes no time in striking up a romance with Felix (the charming AF, Will Sharpe), a musician wastrel, who is extremely sweet and seems to be the polar opposite of the toxic ex she left behind in New York. Of course, Dunham can't just let things be, so we end up with a lot of drama, a lot of complications, and a lot of bad behavior. This show really gets by on the strength of Megan Stalter, the most lovable and dynamic woman on the planet that you will root for 100%. She makes Jessica such a sympathetic character, that you will never accuse this woman of doing anything wrong - it's just everyone around her who's being a tool. I did not love how the show finally ended, and while I was promised a romcom in the first episode, what I got was a little too dark and dramatic for my liking, though there is one episode that chronicles Jessica's past relationship and is a very accurate portrayal of how women can get suckered in by terrible men. Your mileage may vary, but watch this show to support Stalter, who I hope gets to be the leading lady in many more (better) things to come.

Overcompensating: Remember how when I watched Adults I felt like I couldn't relate to any of it because Gen Z is so foreign to me? Well Overcompensating, created by and starring Benito Skinner, is a story of a freshman who was the valedictorian, Homecoming King, and football all-star in high school, and is trying very hard to maintain that image in college. But he has been harboring a secret all his life...he might like boys? From the very beginning, when Britney Spears' "Lucky" is playing in the background and we see how little Benny's hormones were first set aflame by watching Brendan Fraser in a loincloth in George of the Jungle, it's clear that this is a show for millennials. So even if it's ostensibly about college, settle in my fellow 30-40-year-olds, because you're going to have a blast watching this show.

Besides Benny, the other main character we follow is the delightful Carmen (Wally Baram), a woman who is also trying to figure out her college identity. She and Benny become fast friends (after an initial attempt to be more than that), and it's lovely to see the two of them bumbling through college together. Then there's Benny's sister, Grace (Mary Beth Barone), an ice-cold bitch who thaws out beautifully over the course of the season as we delve deeper into her many layers. And of course, there's Peter (Adam DiMarco), Grace's horrible frat boy boyfriend who embodies the worst that the patriarchy has to offer. Every character on this show is fleshed out and complex, with everyone having some redeeming features, and plenty of flaws, and making plenty of mistakes because that's what we all do in college. It is extremely funny, but also extremely heartwarming and I binged this show with a big smile on my face all the way through. Also, this show has some wildly good cameos sprinkled throughout that will give you a real jolt as you make your way through the season. Everything ends on a massive cliffhanger, so I am definitely clamoring for Season 2. But until then, binge this first season to your heart's content. It's an absolute winner.

July Movies Part 3: Eddington & KPop Demon Hunters

I can't think of a blog post where I have reviewed two more different movies. Settle in readers, it's gonna be a wild and bumpy ride!

Eddington: Written and directed by Ari Aster, watching this movie is like reading a David Foster Wallace novel (or what I imagine that must be like, since I have never read one). It's long, winding, and pompous, and doesn't seem to have any kind of point. 90 minutes into this movie, I thought it was fantastic and one of the better things I'd seen in 2025. But then, it went on for a whole other hour, and by the end of it, I was thoroughly fed up with this meandering mess of a movie.

Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal star as Joe Cross and Ted Garcia, the sheriff and mayor of a fictional small town in New Mexico called Eddington. The movie begins in May 2020, so we're right in the middle of pandemic panic and a new mask mandate, that the liberal mayor has fully embraced, but the conservative sheriff is completely against. The two of them have a past, and now their political differences are fueling even more resentment and angst. Emma Stone plays Joe's wife, Louise, a woman who is suffering from mental illness and unable to put up with her husband's drama, while her mother, Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell), is living with them and filling Louise's head full of online conspiracy theories. That's not going to end well.

The first 90 minutes of this movie perfectly capture the craziness of 2020, and the heightened anxiety, anger, and anarchy that seemed to fill every waking moment of our lives. There's also a look at the protests following George Floyd's murder, and some rather humorous commentary on white teens trying to support the BLM movement without any clear action plan. It's a perfect time capsule of that moment in history. But then things take a violent and bizarre turn and escalate into a horror film that is simply exhausting and relentless to watch. There's no point to any of it, and it has nothing interesting to say, which is a huge disappointment considering how well it all began. Who is this movie for? Certainly not me.

KPop Demon Hunters: Directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Danya Jimenez and Hannah McMechan, this is an animated movie about a K-pop girl group called Huntr/x that are world famous for their singing ability, but are also secretly using the power of their voices to create a protective barrier that keeps demons from invading the human world. So yeah, this movie is nothing like Eddington.

Unless you're living under a rock, you're probably aware that the songs from this movie are currently blowing up the global music charts and people are listening to these songs on repeat. The songs are extremely catchy, and while I can't say I was a fan of all of them, I'm certainly humming a couple of them and doing the little shoulder dance to "Soda Pop" as we speak. The animation is gorgeous, and while the plot is fairly straightforward (well as straightforward as a movie about K-pop stars hunting demons could be, I guess), this is a movie that's executed with flair and panache. And it's only 100 minutes long, so it goes down easy, and you're never bored for a minute of that runtime. 

KPop Demon Hunters is an unusual movie because the premise is so wildly unexpected and unique. And yet, it still manages to be a predictable and tropey animated movie that makes for a great comfort watch. So, hop on the couch and fire it up on Netflix. You'll be bopping along to some great tunes in no time. And then you'll be jonesing for a visit to your closest Korean bathhouse.

July Movies Part 2: The Friend & Friendship

Obviously, I could not resist a post about two movies I recently caught up with on streaming that are similarly named but bear no similarities to each other otherwise. One is a gentle drama about dealing with grief, and the other is an examination of one man's insane spiral as he tries to make new friends. Neither is a film I would have wanted to go to the theater to see, but they were certainly intriguing enough for a couch watch.

The Friend: Written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel based on the novel by Sigrid Nunez, this is a movie about what happens when Iris's (Naomi Watts) best friend, Walter (Bill Murray), dies and leaves his giant Great Dane, named Apollo, to her to take care of. Of course, she lives in Manhattan in a rent-controlled apartment with a very strict no-pets policy, so this is going to be problematic. 

Iris and Apollo have a somewhat testy relationship at first, particularly as he seems to be a rather unbiddable creature who won't let her sleep on her own bed, won't take the elevator, and won't eat anything. But both of them are grieving the loss of Walter, and as you can imagine, they bond over their shared loss and find comfort in each other. There isn't much more to this film - it's a rather vibey movie about New York intellectuals and their general aesthetic, but dog lovers will probably really enjoy watching Apollo, as he's a rather magnificent beast. There's a lot of side plot about Walter and the womanizing and somewhat disappointing human being he was, but none of that seems particularly relevant and I'd be hard-pressed to say I paid much attention to any of it. Overall, this film makes for a perfectly adequate streaming experience on a slow afternoon.

Friendship: Written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, there is a LOT that happens in this movie, most of which I can't quite claim to understand. Tim Robinson stars as Craig, an awkward man with a wife and teenage son, who have a weirdly Oedipal relationship and don't seem to care much about Craig. He is too weird at work to have any friends and is mostly a lonely man seeking connection. A casualty of the male loneliness epidemic, if you will.

But then Austin (the charismatic Paul Rudd) moves into the neighborhood, and unusually, Craig strikes up a friendship with him. The two of them become really close and go off on strange adventures together, sometimes late at night, or sometimes in the middle of the workday, and everything seems rosy. But when Craig goes over to Austin's house for a party with some of Austin's other friends, his oddness becomes too much for the group to handle and he finds himself ostracized. Which of course, means that this man completely loses his mind and spirals out of control in increasingly frightening fashion for the rest of this film. This movie is kind of a comedy, kind of a horror, kind of a mess? I'm not a Robinson person, but I imagine that if you are a fan of his work, this movie would be right up your alley. It's weird and genre-defying and while I didn't much care for it, I'm sure there are many lonely middle-aged men who would. So, give it a shot, I guess?

July Movies Part 1: Jurassic World Rebirth & Superman

July means summer blockbusters and plenty of action. I checked out the two big franchise movies that have come out so far this month, and one of them was good and one of them was atrocious. Place your bets before you read any further!

Jurassic World Rebirth: I'll be honest, apart from the original Jurassic Park, I would be hard pressed to tell you anything about what happened in the subsequent sequels and reboots of this franchise. In this film, directed by Garthe Edwards and written by David Koepp, we have a greedy pharmaceutical rep (played to perfection by Rupert Friend), who needs the DNA from three different types of dinosaur species, to help him perfect a drug for heart disease that could potentially extend human lifespans by several decades. He hires Zora (a buff and action-ready Scarlett Johansson), a mercenary-for-hire as a bodyguard and general facilitator for an expedition to the Equator, where dinosaurs currently roam free in an area that is off-limits to humans. Henry (the delicious Jonathan Bailey), also joins the crew as the paleontologist who is needed for his dino knowledge, and Duncan (the always wonderful Mahershala Ali), a former colleague and friend of Zora's, steps in as their team lead and boat captain. There are other members of the crew, but the fact that they are not famous Oscar-winning actors should clue you in that maybe they're not going to last long on this expedition...spoilers!

The cast is excellent, but this script is an absolute dud, and it just keeps going and going. This is not a good movie, but I guess it's a good AC movie, i.e. it's worth it on a hot day when you really need to spend two hours indoors in an air-conditioned theater. I'd like to think that the actors had a fun time swashbuckling around the jungle, pretending to be awed by majestic dinosaurs, and collecting ridiculous paychecks, but otherwise, this is a very paint-by-the-numbers exercise where you can see every story beat coming from a mile away. There is an unusual twist involving some people they pick up on the way to their expedition, but it's really funny how some members of this team are so unlucky, while others seem to live a perfectly charmed life among these carnivorous dinosaurs. Go to this movie for a thoroughly mindless time, but please don't go into it with any expectations whatsoever.

Superman: If you're a Zack Snyder fanboy, this movie is emphatically not for you. But if, like me, you appreciate the humor that James Gunn brings to comic book movies and have a fondness for the original Guardians of the Galaxy, this movie will check a lot of your boxes. Written and directed by Gunn, this movie stars the very square-jawed and anodynely handsome David Corenswet as our titular hero, and Rachel Brosnahan as the intrepid Lois Lane, the journalist who works alongside his alter ego, Clark Kent, at the Daily Planet newspaper in Metropolis. This movie does a great job of not belaboring his origin story or their love story - the action picks up right in the middle of Superman suffering his first ever defeat at the hand of Lex Luthor (a brilliantly demented performance by Nicholas Hoult), and we then follow along to discover what's been going on in his life and fill in all the gaps in his biography along the way. It's a great "Show, not tell" script, and bypasses a lot of the tiresome tropes we can sometimes fall into when rebooting a superhero franchise for the umpteenth time.

There is a lot of plot, involving many cameos from weird fringes of the DC universe, so I won't get into all of that. The production design is beautiful and it genuinely is a very funny movie that has just the right amount of Superman earnestness that makes it feel wholesome without being impossibly corny. But like Guardians of the Galaxy, the lasting impact this movie will have on my memory involves the music. There is one action sequence set to a song I love that I would never have imagined would be in the background of a fight scene. And the end credits song is a perfect callback to a seemingly innocuous conversation between Superman and Lois halfway through the film, and makes me certain that Gunn first thinks about what songs he wants in a movie and then writes the entire script around how he's going to get those songs in. 

This movie is silly, fun, and perfectly captures the essence of Superman without being all gloom and doom about it. And while there has been a lot of talk about it being some sort of woke anti-Israel movie, I honestly felt like it was merely an anti-war movie that would apply to a war being fought in any era of modern history. If anything, this movie felt like more of a commentary on anti-immigration policies and ICE raids, with all the rhetoric of Superman being an alien who didn't deserve to be on our planet. So yeah, this movie can mean anything you want it to mean, but at the end of the day, it's simply a great comic book film that understood the assignment and fully delivered. 

June Movies Part 3: Karate Kid: Legends & F1

What better way to end the month than with some sports movies? If you want to stand up and cheer for the underdog, have I got the films for you!

Karate Kid: Legends: This movie really scratched an itch I did not know I had. As someone who watched Cobra Kai all the way through to the end, I guess I was already invested in the Karate Kid universe, but then they came up with this movie that has a ridiculously great cast and is all set in New York, which we all know is my absolute catnip. 

Directed by Jonathan Entwhistle and written by Rob Lieber, in this installment, we follow teenager Li Fong (the wonderfully charismatic Ben Wang who was last starring in American Born Chinese), who was studying kung fu with his uncle Han Sifu (played by Jackie Chan!) in Beijing but then has his life upended when his single mom (played by Ming-Na Wen!) decides they need to move to New York.

Once they get to the Big City, Li strikes up a friendship with a girl named Mia (Sadie Stanley) who works at a local pizza parlor owned by her father, Victor (played by Joshua Jackson!) who used to be a fighter but is all washed up now...but not for long. And obviously Mia's ex, Conor Day (Aramis Knight) is a nasty bully who is ready to pick fights with Li. This movie features a lot of karate, a lot of callbacks to Mr. Miyagi and his legacy, and a lot of well-choreographed fights in locations all around the city. The soundtrack was banging and I had a supremely great time from start to finish. This movie was a perfect piece of popcorn entertainment, and I happily scarfed it all down.

F1: Directed by Joseph Kosinski and written by Ehren Kruger, this is a movie that is sure to delight all fans of Formula One racing. I do not know anything about F1, but I still enjoyed this film. It's a classic sports movie that hits many familiar beats, but the actual race sequences are wonderful, the music is always pounding away in your ears, and the cast is charming AF, even if I am Team Jolie and must state outright that while I liked this movie, that does not mean I support the continued whitewashing of Brad Pitt's reputation. Particularly with this movie's inclusion of a thoroughly unnecessary romantic subplot that feels like it came straight out of an 80s movie.

Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, an excellent driver who doesn't like to commit to one thing for long and has some sort of tragic past in F1 racing. His friend Ruben (Javier Barden) now owns an F1 team that is dead last in the rankings and he begs Sonny to join his team as a driver and win them some points. Sonny joins, but there are instant clashes with the team's young rookie driver, Joshua (the excellent Damson Idris), who is desperate to improve his career prospects and has been continually hampered by this failing team. Kerry Condon plays Kate, the first female technical director in F1, who is responsible for designing the cars that they will drive. Like Joshua, she is also annoyed by Sunny's demands and unconventional behavior. But of course, the cocky American has many schemes and stratagems up his sleeve and eventually wins over all these disbelieving Europeans with his racing tactics. 

This film feels very old school and could have certainly used some judicious editing at the end. But Lewis Hamilton serves as a producer and did a great job of helping the filmmakers make the racing scenes feel immersive and electric: most of the time, I felt like I was sitting in the car and whooshing down the racetrack. Based on the way the camera lingered in some scenes, I believe there are lots of cameos from actual F1 legends in this movie, but apart from Lewis Hamilton, I didn't recognize a soul. So, if you've binged all of Drive to Survive, this movie is definitely going to provide excellent fan service. Full speed ahead!

June Comedy Binges: Adults & #1 Happy Family USA

Need to delve into some comedy for a bit? Depending on whether you're interested in Gen Z or Muslim families, I've got you covered!

Adults: All the marketing basically posits that this is Friends for Gen Z. Which, fine? As a millennial, I have never felt more like a boomer than when watching this show and shaking my head at how incomprehensibly silly these twentysomethings seem to be. But as with all comedies, the show managed to win me over by Episode 3. There was a line of dialogue that struck me as being so brilliant and hilarious, that I instantly knew the show had found its groove. And once you love the writing on a comedy, you can forgive any number of flaws.

Created by Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, the show follows a group of five friends (played by Malik Elassal, Lucy Freyer, Jack Innanen, Amita Rao, and Owen Thiele) who live in Queens (very exciting for me, as I also live in Queens, though it was quickly apparent that this show was shot in Toronto, because the subways looked different, booooo). They all live in Samir's (Elassal) childhood home while his parents are off traveling, which is convenient as none of them seem to have jobs that would enable them to really live in NYC otherwise, except for Billie (Freyer) who loses said job pretty quickly. Over the course of eight episodes, the series follows the usual story arcs - there are work anxieties, sexual anxieties, romantic anxieties, and just the general anxiety of being a Gen Zer. The overall impression you get is that being a twentysomething is always the same, where you're perpetually struggling with your career or your love life, and the only thing that makes this Gen Z is that everyone's a little bit queer and everyone's deeply unprofessional. Give this show a chance - I was all set to cross my arms and declare that I was too old for this show, but it really won me over in the end. 

#1 Happy Family USA: Well, we're back to having another war in the Middle East, so I guess watching this show would be pretty timely? Created by Pam Brady and Ramy Youseff, who also voices the main character, this is an adult animated show about a 12-year-old Egyptian boy named Rumi Hussein who lives in New Jersey with his parents and older sister, Mona. The show begins on September 10, 2001, and we get a glimpse into Rumi's life and ordinary teenage struggles with school and family life. Adolescence is painful enough, but then, September 11 happens. And now Rumi's life is upended by the fact that he is a Muslim teenage boy.

The show is very funny but also very astute. In particular, I love how it deals with the ways in which Rumi's parents deal with the aftermath of 9/11. His mother decides she wants to don the hijab and embrace her religion and Muslim community, while his father is desperate to prove that he loves America...to the point of going on Fox News to prove he's "one of the good ones." If that made you groan and then chuckle, welcome to the vibe of this entire show. It's incisive and wonderful, a dark comedy about one of the most painful moments in America's history and the immigrants who suffered because of it. Which sadly is all too relevant today.

June Movies Part 2: Materialists and Lilo & Stich

Do you want a family-friendly live-action remake of a classic animated movie? Or a grown-up romcom about the perils of dating in the big city and having to choose between money or love? If the answer is both, keep reading!

Materialists: Writer-director Celine Song is back with another love triangle, this time between Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a matchmaker in New York City, her ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor/cater-waiter still waiting for his big break in his late thirties, and Harry (Pedro Pascal), a handsome, rich man who meets Lucy at his brother's wedding, which Lucy is responsible for as she was his brother's matchmaker. Talk about a meet cute.

Lucy and John broke up years ago because they were always broke and fighting about money. So naturally Lucy is intrigued by Harry, a man who seems to be a "unicorn" in the NYC dating world and has everything she thought she wanted in a partner. But as the movie progresses, it's clear that while financially, Harry may have everything to offer, emotionally, John is the person she turns to. Who will she choose in the end?! That's for you to watch and discover.

While Song's previous film, Past Lives, was my #1 movie of 2023, this movie is not as polished and the story beats and dialogue oftentimes have a feeling of black box theater. I love this cast, I obviously love anything set in NYC, and the score by Daniel Pemberton is lovely. But this screenplay is throwing too much at the wall and nothing quite sticks. You'll probably learn a lot about yourself in terms of your reaction to Lucy's final choice of partner, so that's a fun introspective exercise. But there's a side-plot involving one of Lucy's clients that a lot of people are up in arms about because it comes out of nowhere and then is dealt with in a rather messy fashion that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Ultimately, I enjoyed this movie as a parable about the horrors of dating in NYC in your thirties - there are some great montages when Lucy is interviewing her clients and cataloguing their increasingly insane demands. All of that stuff makes for great comedy, but ultimately, I was not sold on the romance.

Lilo & Stitch: My husband loves the original 2002 animated film, and we even went to Kauai for our honeymoon and took a picture next to the Lilo & Stitch mural in Hanapepe. If you're that kind of fan, this movie will certainly delight you. As a more ambivalent fan, I still found reasons to enjoy this movie, particularly the excellent choices made by the casting director. 

Maia Kealoha, who plays Lilo, a young Hawaiian girl who finds the alien Stitch and adopts him as her dog, is deliciously charming, though over the course of two hours, hearing her scream out loud did remind me of why I don't want to have children. And Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, who plays Lilo's older sister and guardian Nani, who is struggling to take care of the bills and provide for her sister after the untimely death of their parents, is simply wonderful, a stoic, loving presence in the face of much insanity. But my favorite casting choice was Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen as the two aliens sent to Earth to capture Stitch. Magnussen in particular is always excellent at goofy physical comedy and I couldn't help but grin every time he was on screen.

Of course, one is always forced to ask when reviewing a live-action remake, does this movie need to exist? My answer is mostly, no. But there are a few intriguing deviations from the original script, and again, this cast is so charming that they make it worth it your while. Despite the title of this film, the only character I truly empathize with in this story is Nani, a woman who is trying so hard to be a responsible and good person but keeps getting thwarted by her sister and her "dog." So, I was glad to see how this film dealt with her character and ultimately let her be the hero of the story. Justice for Nani!

June Movies Part 1: On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, The Phoenician Scheme, The Penguin Lessons, Mountainhead

I have a long list of movies I have yet to see this month, but I've still managed to watch a lot of other random ones. Eclectic mix of reviews incoming...

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl: Written and directed by Rungano Nyoni, this is a Zambian movie about a woman named Shula (Susan Chardy) who discovers the dead body of her uncle lying on the road when she's driving home from a party one night. She seems strangely unfazed by this and goes through the motions of calling up her family and the police, navigating all the bureaucracy of getting this matter sorted out. What follows are the various funeral arrangements, involving Shula's mother and many aunties, aka the sisters of this dead man. Everyone is insisting that Shula grieve and show more emotion, but she seems to just be going through the motions, alongside her cousins, Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), who seems to be perpetually drunk, and Bupe (Esther Singini), who is suicidal.

If you haven't pieced it together yet, the nieces are not mourning dead Uncle Fred because of...reasons. And yet this movie is a very dark comedy, an insight into the patriarchy, and the many ways in which older generations of women will still try to protect men, while the younger generation are trying to break a vicious cycle. It's a very vibey film, but I had never seen any movie set in Zambia before, so it was extremely engaging, along with its many parallels to my experiences with Indian funereal customs...and the patriarchy, of course. Give it a shot if you want to immerse yourself in something completely unique and strange, but obviously, trigger warnings abound.

The Phoenician Scheme: Written and directed by Wes Anderson, this movie is exactly what you would expect (or at least, it's what I expected). I find it increasingly hard to talk about Anderson's films because they just all seem to blend together into one big twee art project featuring a lot of famous actors delivering nonsensical dialogue or running around like they're in a Benny Hill sketch.

In this one, Benicio del Toro stars as Zsa-Zsa Korda, a rich man in 1950 who decides to name his daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who is a nun, as his sole heir. Together, they must travel the world and meet various investors to help fund Korda's morally dubious Phoenician scheme. And of course, along the way, maybe this estranged pair will build a proper familial bond. It's all very weird, it's a string of silly vignettes, and I didn't much care for it. But I must stress, I am entirely too jaded to properly review Anderson's movies anymore - my husband thought this movie was wonderful and a return to form. So, if you're a fan, perhaps this movie will perfectly scratch an itch for you. But if you're too tired of "auteurs" like I am, give it a miss.

The Penguin Lessons: Written by Jeff Pope, based on the memoir by Tom Michell, and directed by Peter Cattaneo, this movie stars Steve Coogan as Michell, an English teacher who decided to teach at a boy's boarding school in Argentina in 1976 when they were in the midst of a coup d'etat. During a holiday in Uruguay, he rescues a penguin who was caught up in an oil slick on the beach, and then proceeds to smuggle it back to Argentina. What follows is a heartwarming story about how a grumpy old Englishman learns to become more empathetic as he is forced to engage with this penguin. And also learns to maybe stop being politically neutral while the Argentinians around him are being abducted and tortured by their government? 

The tone of this film is all over the place, but it's certainly charming enough to stream over an afternoon, particularly if you're into cute penguins. But there's something decidedly colonial about the proceedings, with a classic "white people are shocked to learn how the rest of the world operates" aesthetic. Coogan delivers a good performance, and the movie is certainly intriguing since it is based on a true story, but beyond that, it lacks any real substance.

Mountainhead: Written and directed by Jesse Armstrong (aka creator of Succession and Peep Show - talk about range!), this is a bleak movie about four tech billionaires (well one of them only has millions), who convene in a snowy mansion in Utah to talk about how they might take over the world. Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, and Jason Schwartzman star as four Silicon Valley dudes modelled after the likes of Thiel, Musk, and Zuckerberg, who are of course convinced of their own inherent genius, and blithely ignore all the chaos their technologies have wreaked upon the world. At the moment they're meeting, the world is particularly rife with misinformation and anarchy, all spurred on by the fake videos and messages being circulated on a social media platform one of them owns, and what follows is a hodgepodge of tech speak and insanity.

This is probably a good movie for those of you who are massively online. But depending on your politics, you will love this movie for very different reasons. As you can imagine, I did NOT enjoy this movie, as it depicts the very reasons why I am not massively online and do not care for tech bros. It's the darkest of comedies, and practically a horror film. It does a brilliant job of capturing that painful Silicon Valley tech speak and how these men want to optimize their lives and think that they are the only ones who know how to run the world. It's the epitome of Move Fast and Break Things, and after you watch this movie, you'll certainly feel like your brain got broken!

May Binges Part 2: The Studio, The Royals, Etoile, Your Friends & Neighbors

Are you back for more binges? I've got plenty of recommendations, let's go!

The Studio: Every week, I would desperately await the next installment of this show, and every week, it never disappointed. Created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, this is a show about what happens when Matt Remick (Rogen) becomes the head of a major film studio in LA and had to now start making uncomfortable decisions between making the artistic cinema that he loves or a big commercial blockbuster about the Kool-Aid Man. Hey, no one said capitalism was easy.

Every episode is a standout in its own unique way, and each one features a murderer's row of cameos. Martin Scorsese shows up in the first episode and gets to do some acting; it's kind of amazing. My personal favorite is probably Episode 2 which is entirely filmed like a one-shot and is about how Sarah Polley is trying to film a one-shot for a movie that Matt keeps interrupting, and it's all so meta and silly and glorious. This is a marvelous show for people who love movies but also love to mock studio executives. The cast is incredible, featuring powerhouse performances from Kathryn Hahn, Catherine O'Hara, Ike Barinholtz, and Chase Sui Wonders, and now you can just binge it all in one big gulp. How lucky are you?!

The Royals: Created by Rangita and Ishita Pritish Nandy, this show is a Bollywood extravaganza that is way too over-the-top and inane. I ate it up with a big ol' spoon. 

Ishaan Khatter stars as Aviraj "Fizzy" Singh, a young prince who has been modelling and avoiding his family in India, but has to return when his father dies, only to discover that he has been named his father's heir instead of his older brother, "Diggy" (Vihaan Samat). Turns out the estate is massively in debt, so the family decides to strike a deal with a company that wants to turn their palace into a hotel where ordinary folks get to live alongside the royal family and get a taste of that royal life. The company's CEO is a feisty and ambitious woman named Sophia Kanmani Shekhar (Bhumi Pednekar) and of course, she and Fizzy butt heads and hate each other at first, only to end up in a tempestuous romance after. As you can well imagine, there are lots of side plots and complications. and all of it is a soapy, dramatic, silly, spectacular delight. Set in Rajasthan, the production design is elaborate and gorgeous, and the actors are fully committed to the silliness, so what more could you ask for? It's not high art, but it is total entertainment.

Etoile: If high art is what you seek, Daniel and Amy Sherman-Palladino have you covered with this show. The premise is that two struggling ballet companies in New York and Paris decide to swap some of their dancers and staff for a year as a stunt to boost ticket sales and generate some buzz. Luke Kirby plays Jack McMillan, who runs the New York Metropolitan Ballet Theater, while Charlotte Gainsbourg play Genevieve Lavigne, the artistic director of Le Ballet National. Lou de Laage also stars as Cheyenne, the etoile, aka prima ballerina of Le Ballet National, who Jack snags for New York. She is highly temperamental and opinionated, but the pain of dealing with her volatile personality is worth it when you watch her perform on stage.

There are many side characters, romantic entanglements, complications, and digressions about art. All accompanied with that trademark Sherman-Palladino dialogue that we know well from Gilmore Girls,  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, etc. I have been to the ballet at Lincoln Center many times so it's also wonderful to get a peek behind-the-scenes, with many of the actual dancers from the New York City Ballet being featured throughout this show. The production design is impeccable, the acting is off the charts, and the choreography is sublime. I absolutely luxuriated in all eight episodes of this show, and the second season cannot come soon enough.

Your Friends & Neighbors: Created by Jonathan Tropper, this show stars Jon Hamm as Andrew "Coop" Cooper, a man whose life is falling apart in every possible way. He got divorced after he found his wife sleeping with his best friend, and then he subsequently got fired from his high-powered hedge fund job. He and his family were accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and Coop is now scrambling to keep up with the payments for all the bougie things that have becomes necessities, like private school, tennis lessons, and country club memberships. One day, he realizes that because he and his friends all live in a gated community, everyone is very lax about security, and he could probably make a lot of money if he selectively stole from his friends. These people just stash priceless heirlooms in random drawers and forget about them, so no one will even realize they've been robbed. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, you guessed it, a lot goes wrong. Ultimately, this is a show about how money can't buy happiness, and the many ways in which people who try to keep up with Jones's will remain in a never-ending spiral of debt and unhappiness. Coop partners with a local housekeeper, Elena (Aimee Carrero), and the episodes where we get to learn more about her life and the stark contrast it makes to that of her employers are always great to ground this show and make it clear who the real villains are. The cast, featuring stalwarts like Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn, is fantastic, and the overall plot is compelling and kept me invested through all nine episodes. It was well-paced for a weekly offering, but might be too bloated for a binge, so I do recommend you savor this one over a period of time, doling it out to yourself like a little treat when you need a dash of mystery and intrigue. Or just want to mock some rich people.

May Movies Part 3: The Wedding Banquet & A Nice Indian Boy

Want a great way to either celebrate the end of AAPI Month or the beginning of Pride Month? Watch two cute movies about queer Asians getting married!

The Wedding Banquet: Written by James Schamus and Andrew Ahn (who also directed), based on the 1993 Ang Lee movie of the same name, this is a movie about two gay couples who are close friends and are about to become a lot closer. Lee and Angela (Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran) are trying to have a baby via IVF and facing biological and financial challenges. Meanwhile, Chris and Min (Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan) have been together for years but still haven't made a solid commitment. Min is from a rich, traditional Korean family, and while he has been in the US all this time on a student visa, it's about to expire, so his conservative grandfather is threatening to cut him off from his trust fund unless he joins the family business. Min initially proposes to Chris, but for reasons, everyone decides it would be a better idea for him to marry Angela instead. It's convoluted, but it all makes sense. Kinda.

Youn Yuh-jung plays Min's grandmother and delivers a standout performance as an older Korean woman who has always known her grandson is gay and will now try to help him out of his predicament. A lot of hijinks and misunderstandings ensue, but you can rest assured that at the end of the day, this is a sweet tale about found family and how queer friends can come together to support each other. It's a charming movie with a great cast, and while it's fairly predictable, it's a nice, gentle watch, particularly if you have been watching nothing but gory action movies for the past month.

A Nice Indian Boy: Directed by Roshan Sethi and written by Eric Randall and Madhuri Shekar, who adapted it from Shekar's play, this is a cute little love story about what happens when a lonely Indian-American man named Naveen (Karan Soni) falls in love with a white man named Jay (Jonathan Groff) and has to introduce him to his parents. Jay was a foster kid who was adopted by an older Indian couple, so he is well-versed in Indian culture, but he is still white, which comes as a shock to Naveen's parents (played by the delightful Zarna Garg and Harish Patel), who were expecting Naveen to bring home "a nice Indian boy" after he told them that he met Jay at the Hindu temple. Oops.

There's not much plot here, but it's a heartfelt romance that delves into culture clashes, family dynamics, and Bollywood. It also astutely comments on the differences in Asian families between mothers and fathers - Naveen's dad is very uncomfortable discussing his son's sexuality, while his mom watches queer shows on TV in an effort to keep up with her son's life. I was surprised that Naveen was even out to his parents to begin with, but it's a half-hearted coming out, where he just told them he was gay, and then never discussed his life with them after that. That really tracks for most immigrant children. There's also a great parallel with his sister Arundhati (the lovely Sunita Mani), who was a good Indian daughter who had an arranged marriage and is now annoyed at all the acceptance and leeway her brother is getting from their parents. This movie is nothing revolutionary, but it will certainly bring a smile to your face, and sometimes, that's all you need.

May Movies Part 2: Fight or Flight, Final Destination Bloodlines, Novocaine, The Ballad of Wallis Island, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

I've had a very busy few weeks at the movie theater as well as catching up on streaming, so if you need suggestions for Memorial Day viewing, here are my thoughts on some action films, a very gory horror comedy, and a gentle British musical movie. There's something for everyone!

Fight or Flight: Written by Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona and directed by James Madigan, Josh Hartnett stars as Lucas Reyes, a disgraced Secret Service agent who has been disavowed by the US government and stranded in Bangkok for several years. However, he then gets a call from his ex-girlfriend and former partner, Katherine (Katee Sackhoff), who needs his help on an urgent mission. She needs Lucas to get on a plane flying to San Francisco and find out who on board is the Ghost, an elite hacker who has been responsible for numerous cyberattacks around the world and has evaded capture at every turn. No one has any information on who the Ghost is or what they look like, so this is already going to be a very difficult mission. However, once Lucas boards the flight, he also learns that a slew of assassins are also passengers. They are all determined to kill the Ghost and reap the many bounties that have been offered on this kill. So, Lucas not only has to find the Ghost, but also protect them from a plane full of deadly killers. 

It's a bonkers plot executed to bonkers perfection. The identity of the Ghost was truly a surprise to me, and what followed was a very hilarious bloody action film, where more and more people were creatively killed on a plane. If that sounds like the kind of thing you would enjoy, go forth. It's good, mindless, long weekend fun.

Final Destination Bloodlines: I have never seen any of the Final Destination movies, but this one was certainly a great introduction to the franchise. Written by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor and directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, the film stars Kaitlyn Santa Juana as Stefani Reyes, a young woman who keeps having a recurring nightmare about her grandmother, Iris, in 1968, going through a deadly experience in a restaurant where everyone keeps getting killed in increasingly elaborate ways. Stefani decides to find Iris and ask her what this dream might mean. Well, turns out that dream is actually identical to a premonition Iris had when she was a young woman at that restaurant, and because she warned everyone about what she had seen, she saved them all from a certain death. Except, you can never evade Death. Over time, she realized that everyone who didn't die at the restaurant was getting killed, in the order in which they died in her premonition, and she subsequently became a recluse, trying to evade death at every turn.

Well, spoiler alert, Iris dies after meeting Stefani, and now Stefani realizes that everyone in her family is going to die in hereditary order, because they were all never supposed to be alive in the first place. What follows is a series of deaths via intricate Rube Goldberg-like chain reactions of events, which are insanely gruesome, but utterly comical. Your eyes will be wide open trying to figure out how each person is about to get killed, and let me tell you, these deaths are so convoluted that you will never see it coming. It's a silly, laugh out loud reminder that yes, Death comes for us all.

Novocaine: If you need even more blood and gore, perhaps you will enjoy this bizarre little tale written by Lars Jacobson and directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. Jack Quaid stars as Nathan, a man who has an extremely rare (but real!) genetic disorder that means he cannot feel any pain. While this may sound like a good thing, it's extremely dangerous, because pain is a vital biological response that protects us every day. As an example, Nathan needs to set an alarm to remind him to pee every few hours, else his bladder might explode. 

One day, some robbers burst into the bank where he works, steal a bunch of money, and kidnap Sherry (Amber Midthunder), the girl that he really likes. The police are delayed, and Nathan decides he needs to singlehandedly chase down these men and rescue Sherry. What follows is an extremely violent but funny action caper, where Nathan's body is battered and bruised in a myriad ways that he cannot feel. There's a lot of body horror here, so you're not gonna be able to stand this movie if you're squeamish, but much like Final Destination Bloodlines, all of this is played for laughs rather than horror. This movie should have been edited down to a tight 90 minutes, but Quaid is a charismatic lead (playing a role that is the polar opposite of his character in Companion), so this is a very entertaining way to spend an afternoon. As long as you don't mind a LOT of torture.

The Ballad of Wallis Island: Don't want any action at all? Then how about this quiet British comedy written by Tim Key and Tom Basden and directed by James Griffiths. Key stars as Charles, a man who won the lottery twice and lives on remote Wallis Island. His wife is now deceased, but when she was alive, the two of them were big fans of a folk duo called McGwyer Mortimer. So, Charles decides to invite Herb McGwyer (Basden) and Nell Mortimer (Carrie Mulligan) to the island for a private concert. Except the duo split up ages ago after a romantic breakup, and Herb has no idea Nell was invited. 

This movie is heavy on the vibes, with gorgeous shots of this craggy, wild island and lots of melancholy and beautiful folk music. None of the story beats will strike you as particularly surprising or innovative, but Charles is quite funny as a hapless man who is just trying to get his favorite band back together, while Herb is grumpy and angsty, and Nell is just trying to make some money and sing some beautiful harmonies. It's a somewhat forgettable film, but it's quite pretty and poetic while you're watching it, and sometimes that's all you really need to be content.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning: If you want to celebrate Memorial Day like a true American, then head over to the theater for the latest Tom Cruise blockbuster. The final film in this franchise is here at last, written by Erik Jendresen and Christopher McQuarrie, who also directed. While I absolutely loved Dead Reckoning last year, this film needed some sharper editing and a lot more humor. The first hour was interminable, with a lot of talking and scene-setting and discursions on the AI known as The Entity, that is the main villain of the piece. The only reason I come to a Mission: Impossible movie is for the action set pieces, so I was terribly bored in the beginning.

Thankfully, the second half kicks into high gear, and we get all the trademark Cruise insanity. The stunt work is off the charts, with all manner of shenanigans on land, underwater, and up in the air. The plan is terribly elaborate, with multiple moving parts where every member of the team gets to contribute in some fashion to Ethan Hunt's hare-brained scheme, and they pull it all off with aplomb. Despite the shaky start, the film is ultimately quite satisfying, but it also makes it clear that it is time for this franchise to end. There are plenty of montages of events from the prior films, and nothing could serve as a starker reminder that while Cruise might be a perfect physical specimen, he really is getting too old for this shit. The man needs to quit while he's ahead, and this film is a perfect swan song.

May Binges Part 1: North of North, The Four Seasons, Conan O'Brien Must Go

There has been a staggering amount of new TV on streaming services lately, and I've been making my way through them all, alongside catching up on the many returning seasons of my favorite shows. Phew. It's been an onslaught of TV, but it's all so good, so dive in with me!

North of North: This is probably the buzziest show this year - everyone I have recommended it to says, "Oh yeah, I've heard of that!" But I'm here to convince you that you need to go ahead and watch it. Created by Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alathea Arnaquq-Baril, this Canadian show stars Anna Lambe as Siaja, a young Inuk woman who lives in the fictional Arctic town of Ice Cove, in Nunavut. It may be one of the coldest places on earth, but this sweet sitcom will make your heart go warm and fuzzy. And with only eight half-hour episodes in the first season, you'll binge it all in one glorious afternoon.

The show opens with Siaja realizing that maybe she got married and had a child way too young and needs to find a new identity for herself. She gets a new job with the town manager, Helen (Mary Lynn Rajskub), who is a well-meaning white lady who neds more help providing valuable services to the local Indigenous population. Over the course of eight episodes, we also reckon with Siaja's relationship with her mother, Neevee (Maika Harper), who raised her as a single mom, and has a lot of baggage of her own. I won't spoil any further details, but let's just say Siaja meets a lot of interesting new people, while learning lessons from all the regular folk around the town, and while a lot of the subject matter is deep and painful, everything is told with a light, comic touch that makes this story sing. The beats may seem familiar, but the setting and the people represented on this show are unlike anything you've seen before. Get ready to spend an absolutely delightful time in Ice Cove.

The Four Seasons: This miniseries is based on a 1981 movie written and directed by (and also starring!) Alan Alda. As a huge Alda fan, I had already watched this movie many years ago, and had no idea Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield had turned it into a miniseries until my friend Laura told me about it. I figured I would check it out and then promptly binged all eight episodes in one go. Damn does this show go down easy.

The premise is simple: there are three couples who are great friends and like to go on vacation with each other four times a year, in every season. However, one year, when one of the couples goes through a divorce, this causes some significant turmoil in the subsequent vacations, as you can imagine. The show is sharply written, with each season being covered in two episodes, with a massive cliffhanger in the middle that will make it impossible to not keep watching. And the couples are played by Tina Fey and Will Forte, Steve Carell and Kerri Kenney-Silver, and Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani. That cast is just excellent, and they play off of each other beautifully, fully capturing the little foibles and annoyances between longstanding friends and their partners and their shared history over the years. It is an extremely funny show, but it can also be extremely incisive and real and sad. There is no Netflix bloat and each episode is a perfect little morsel that tells the right amount of story, develops these characters, and quits while it's ahead. I heaved a great big happy contented sigh when I finished watching, and I'm certain that you will too.

Conan O'Brian Must Go: I have always been a big Conan fan and particularly loved his travel show on TBS, Conan Without Borders. So, I was delighted when (HBO) Max decided to throw some money at him to fund this new travel show. Currently in its second season, the show features Conan visiting a new country each episode to meet fans who called into his podcast, explore the local culture, and get up to many silly shenanigans in typical Conan fashion.

Those shenanigans are obviously not to everyone's taste (certainly not my husband's, who refuses to watch this show with me!) so I understand that your mileage may vary. But man, I'm just captivated. There are only three episodes this season, so I've watched him ravage Madrid with Javier Bardem, and do the haka with Taika Waititi in New Zealand. But if you've never seen the show, you can explore the entire back catalogue (Max also will let you watch Conan Without Borders) and indulge in some absolute silliness. Conan's fans are often as weird as he is, so they can do some pretty ridiculous things when he's in town, but there are also often moments of real wonder, punctuated by Conan's deep love of world history. There was a particularly powerful episode in 2019 when he visited Ghana with Sam Richardson, but then there are also hilarious episodes in Japan or Korea when he is faced with a completely unique culture and will not be able to fit in as a 6' 4" gangly Irishman. It's the perfect show for those days when you just want to travel away to far-off climes from the comfort of your couch and chuckle.

May Movies Part 1: Thunderbolts*, Another Simple Favor, All We Imagine as Light

It's only the first week of May but I've already enjoyed three movies in the theater and on streaming. Whether you're into anti-superheroes, foreign film, or wacky thrillers, one of these films is bound to whet your cinematic appetite.

Thunderbolts*: Marvel is back, baby! After a recent series of lackluster films, I left this movie with a decided spring in my step. Written by Joanna Calo and Eric Pearson and directed by Jake Schreier, this outing gathers up a ragtag crew of burnouts that you may or may not remember from prior movies and assembles them into a motley crew that will eventually call themselves the Thunderbolts. And yes, there's an asterisk on the title for a reason, that you'll get to at the very end of the movie, though it's certainly not a major spoiler.

Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, and Sebastian Stan are all excellent as they play somewhat existential superpeople trying to figure out what their next steps should be. They are reluctantly united when they have to deal with Bob (Lewis Pullman), a dangerously unstable man who underwent an experimental trial to become invincible and is now (unsurprisingly) causing some major problems. The best part of this movie is that while Bob is purportedly the "villain" of the piece, this is actually a movie about mental health and tackling depression and trauma, topics that are the especial forte of these particular superheroes. There are some great set pieces, including a return to New York that reminded of the first time I watched The Avengers with awestruck glee in 2012, and foolishly declared that no one even needs to make a superhero movie again because we had reached the pinnacle. Marvel has gone through a lot since then, and while this movie is now treading through well-worn grooves that are no longer so novel as they once were, this is a well-crafted and fun film that genuinely tugs at your heartstrings and perfectly sticks the landing. This is the Marvel we all love, and this movie represents an excellent return to form before we launch into the millionth phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Another Simple Favor: Written by Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis and directed by Paul Feig, this is a sequel to A Simple Favor, a movie I loved in 2018 but no longer remembered anything about. So, after doing a quick readthrough of the plot in Wikipedia (which was not so quick because, damn, that plot was twisty and insane), I pushed Play and settled in for a truly wacky sequel.

Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively are both back as Stephanie and Emily, women who started out as best friends in the last film and then quickly had a bit of a falling out after Emily turned out to be a murderer. Oops. Now, Stephanie has written a book about all the drama that went down in the first movie and has moved on with her life, but then Emily shows up on bail from prison and asks Stephanie to be her maid of honor since she's getting married to a wealthy Italian. So, we all whisk off to Capri, where, of course, some murders happen, and Stephanie has to figure out what on earth has gone down again. The costumes are simply stunning, the scenery in Capri is gorgeous, and the script is ridiculous and will make you roll your eyes so hard they might fall out. But listen, this movie is only on streaming, so just sit back on the couch, relax, and gaze at all the beauty on the screen while sparing your brain from the actual plot. There are worse ways to spend a weekend!

All We Imagine as Light: Written and directed by Payal Kapadia, this movie won the Grand Prix at Cannes last year and I was devastated when I couldn't figure out how to catch it in the theatres. Thankfully it's now available on streaming, and I ate it up with a big ol' spoon, like I knew I would. Set in Mumbai, this movie follows two Malayalee nurses, Prabha and Anu (the remarkable Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha). They are roommates who work at the same hospital, but Prabha is older and wiser, while Anu is more of a starry-eyed youngster who hasn't had the hope knocked out of her yet. Over the course of the film, we follow these two women's love lives, or lack thereof, as well as their friendships and adventures in this bustling and bewildering city. 

This is not a Bollywood movie - nothing is glamorous about their lives, and throughout the film, we get multilingual voiceovers from the ordinary working-class people who make up the bulk of this city, all struggling to make a living and who talk about Mumbai like it's a fantasy. This is a city of dreams - people come here in the hopes of making some money to send back to family members in rural villages, and to make a better life for themselves. But so many of them are reduced to just anonymous, miserable lives, and even after decades of living here, they are chewed up and spit out without a care in the world. In the midst of all that, it's a wonder to watch how Prabha and Anu navigate their lives, and the final shot of this movie, which tellingly does NOT take place in Mumbai, is truly one of the most beguiling and beautiful scenes portrayed on cinema. This is not the kind of Indian movie I'm used to seeing, but it reminded me a lot of Dhobi Ghat, another Mumbai-centric movie I adore. Movies about the "ordinary" people of Mumbai always end up being the most extraordinary, and this film is a true masterpiece.

April Binges: Dying for Sex & Dope Thief

If you're looking to settle in on the couch for a spell, I have two very different shows you could watch. A comedy about sex and death or a drama about drugs and corruption. Pick your poison.

Dying for Sex: Created by Kim Rosenstock and Elizabeth Merriwether, this show is loosely based on the podcast of the same name by Molly Kochan and Nikki Boyer, who here are played by Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. The show kicks off when Molly receives her terminal diagnosis of Stage 4 breast cancer that has metastasized to her bones. Faced with this knowledge and the realization that she has never had an orgasm, she decides to leave her husband, Steve (Jay Duplass), and finally explore her sexuality. Which is complicated, for many reasons, as you can imagine.

While this is a show about a woman who is trying to live out some sexual fantasies, that plot is entirely secondary to the true story here, which is that of the depth of her friendship with Nikki. Molly is dying, and rather than relying on a husband or romantic partner, the person who she is depending on in her final days is her best friend. I was entirely ambivalent about the sexcapades on this show (though the introduction of Rob Delaney as Molly's neighbor and potentially something more thrilled me to no end), but what will truly make you weep is the relationship between these two women and the deep familial bond they share.

This is just a miniseries, because, spoiler alert, Molly will in fact die at the end of the eight episodes. But you will go on a stunningly moving journey that is equally funny as it is sad and embraces a very positive and wholesome view of death that more Americans need to consider. The final episode involves a character played by the magnificent Paula Pell, who is absolutely the person I want at my deathbed, explaining why death is a normal, natural bodily process, all with a big, excited smile on her face. I'm sure most people will avoid this show like the plague because of their own neuroses about the subject matter, but for those of you brave enough to wade into these waters, I promise you will be amply rewarded.

Dope Thief: Created by Peter Craig, based on the novel by Dennis Tafoya, this show stars Bryan Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura as Ray and Manny, two small-time crooks in Philadelphia who have hit upon the brilliant scheme of dressing up as DEA agents and breaking into the houses of drug dealers, pretending it's a raid. Once there, they "confiscate" all the drugs and money, which of course makes for a nice haul for them. But things quickly go south when they decide to raid a meth house that undercover DEA agents were already working in. People are killed, a lot of money goes missing, and now Ray and Manny must go on the run.

That premise sounds exciting, and the cast is excellent, but I could NOT get into this show at all. I begrudgingly binged my way through all eight episodes, sort of hoping that maybe something would happen that would hook me, but that moment of revelation never came. This is a dark, gritty, serious affair, occasionally lightened up with the Henry's deadpan comic timing or Moura's frantic confusion, but this felt like the kind of involved plot about drugs, prisons, and vengeance that makes for a fantastic read, but a thoroughly dull TV show. If each episode was a tight half hour, maybe I would have resented it less, but I got really tired of sitting down for 45 minutes to an hour each week. Perhaps others who love crime shows would enjoy it, but this show was emphatically not made for me. It easily slots into the category of Apple TV+ shows that have great actors, high budgets, and are thoroughly forgettable. You are welcome to convince me otherwise, but for now, I am not planning on tuning into Season 2; I have suffered enough.

April Movies Part 2: Sinners

It feels like the only movie out right now that everyone is talking about is Sinners, so let's get into it!

Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, this movie in set in 1932 and stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as twin brothers nicknamed Stack and Smoke, aka the Smokestack twins. The twins have returned to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi after spending some time in Chicago, presumably doing nefarious things with gangsters. They are a bit of a mystery, and they have a reputation for being bad boys in this town. They also have some romantic entanglements with women played by Hailee Steinfeld and Wunmi Mosaku to deal with over the course of the film. But most importantly, the twins have arrived with a ton of cash and buy up the old sawmill, looking to turn it into a juke joint so the Black folk have some place to unwind every weekend after a long week's toil in the plantations of the Jim Crow South. 

Their cousin, Sammy (Miles Caton, in a debut role that will certainly not be his last), is the son of a preacher, but the twins gave him a guitar before they left town, and he is now an aspiring musician. So, the twins pick up Sammy, against his father's wishes, and recruit him to play the blues in their fine establishment. They also hire a number of other former associates to help with music, food, liquor, and security. It's a lot of work, but everything in this movie takes place over the course of one day, which is rather startling when you sit back to consider what happens over the course of those 24 hours.

If you've heard anything at all about this movie, or seen the trailer, you're aware it's technically a horror film and involves vampires. If you're really into that genre (like my husband), this movie will be an absolute dream for you. If you're mid on vampires, perhaps tread with caution? But again, with this cast and Coogler at the helm, even people who don't care for horror will be pleasantly entertained. The vampires are like some additional seasoning on an already delicious meal.

When the end credits rolled, I was a little surprised to see that the composer, Ludwig Goransson, was listed as an Executive Producer. But then I realized it made complete sense. Visually, this movie is the complete package, with impeccable production design by Hannah Bleacher, sumptuous costumes by the incomparable Ruth E. Carter (I wanted every dress I saw in this film, particularly an astonishingly slinky one worn by Hailee Steinfeld), and gorgeous cinematography by Autumn Durald Arkapow. But the most unsettling and unique aspect of this film is its score, a weird and often discordant jumble of genres that leads up to this film's supernatural reveal. It would be spoiling too much to discuss further but just pay attention to that score when you go see this movie.

Sinners is a bold, weird, innovative, original movie amidst a sea of adaptations and sequels. "Weird" really is the word that kept coming to me when trying to describe it, and I can't say that this was my absolute favorite movie of the year. But did I have a whale of a time watching two Michael B. Jordans running around attacking vampires? Of course, I did.

April Movies Part 1: Snow White, Warfare, The Amateur, Drop

I have spent a very erratic few weeks at the movies, watching a real mishmash of films that vary in terms of genre and quality. If you're ready for some cinematic whiplash, let's dive right in!

Snow White: Oof. I know the reviews were terrible, but I needed to see it for myself so that I could have my own opinion. Turns out my opinion was the same as everyone else's - this movie is awful. Also, I had somehow completely missed the controversy around the dwarves, so imagine my horror to discover they are played by CGI characters, instead of what I had been expecting, something more akin to the sexy hobbits from The Hobbit. Yeesh. 

There's nothing spectacular happening here. The costumes and production design are expectedly lovely, but the songs fall flat, the script is mediocre, and while Disney have done their usual thing of trying to make the Princess more of a feminist icon who is getting things done rather than waiting around for her Prince, it all feels pretty strained. I did enjoy how Snow White (Rachel Zegler, trying her best) is basically advocating for socialism during this entire movie, while the Evil Queen (played so woodenly by Gal Gadot) is a capitalist who is trying to hoard the people's riches for herself, but other than that, there was nothing particularly entertaining about this two-hour slog. 

Warfare: Let's take a hard turn to this remarkable movie that is tough to watch but absolutely extraordinary. Written and directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, this is a movie based on an actual US Navy SEAL encounter Mendoza and his platoon experienced in 2016 in Ramadi, Iraq. For a tense 90 minutes, we are embedded with these soldiers (played by an incredible cast of actors like Will Poulter, Jospeh Quinn, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, and Charles Melton) and get to experience what they went through. 

The opening scene of this movie is simply perfect and grabbed my attention from the get-go. Which was important, because the next 15-20 minutes felt so slow, concerned purely with these soldiers hunkered down in a building, looking through scopes at the neighborhood to assess potential threats, continuously offering up monotonous updates on the radio. But then things escalate quickly, and watching these men in action as they attempt to extricate themselves from an extremely volatile situation is both harrowing and grisly.

If you're squeamish (or a pacifist), this is not the movie for you. And if you are an Iraqi civilian who had their life summarily upended by American forces, this is also not the movie for you. This is definitely a rah-rah pro-US military movie, because that is who is telling the tale, but they do briefly capture some of what their impact was on ordinary civilians. But of course, those civilians don't get any say in this narrative, and we have no idea what subsequently happened to them. This is only a story about these soldiers, so your mileage may vary. But as a piece of cinema, it is powerful, tense, and searingly shot, capturing the psychological trauma these men are subject to in addition to the physical toll. To someone like me, it's a powerful condemnation of the horrors of war, but I'm sure to someone who plays Call of Duty 24/7, this move will offer up a completely different experience that only further glorifies what these admittedly brave men do on the battlefield.

The Amateur: If you are looking for more fictional action, you may turn to this film. But beware, the action is going to be more of the hacker variety, where you spend time learning about codes and surveillance systems, rather than getting caught up in gun battles. This was a plus for me, but a minus for my husband who was expecting more fights, so be forewarned. The trailer will basically tell you everything you need to know about this film, and with a two-hour runtime, it definitely overstays its welcome. But if you like Rami Malek and the genre of mindless spy thriller, this might help you while away an afternoon.

Malek plays Charlie, a CIA boffin who is distraught when his wife is taken as a hostage and killed during a random attack in London. He asks his CIA overlords to give him field training so that he can find the four men responsible for this attack and avenge his wife's murder. Obviously, the CIA thinks this is a ridiculous request, as Charlie has only ever sat in the basement poring over his computer. But, for reasons I won't spoil here, they accede to this request, and Charlie gets some light training from Colonel Henderson (gamely played by Lawrence Fishburne) before he sets off on a European revenge spree. Based on that premise, this movie really should be a lot more exciting, but unfortunately it just feels a bit rote and predictable, and at one point I found myself wishing Charlie just had to kill three men instead of four so we could be done already. This movie had a lot of promise but doesn't live up to expectations. Do you still want to give it a shot?

Drop: Based on the trailers, I thought I didn't want to see this movie. But then the reviews of it were so ecstatic, that I decided to give it a shot. And it was a 90-minute delight. This is one of those films that suffers from having a trailer that gives away too much, but despite that, I found myself thoroughly engaged in the central performances of Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar, who play Violet and Henry, a couple that are meeting up at a fancy restaurant for a first date after months of texting back and forth. Unfortunately, this is going to be the worst first date ever because Violet keeps getting memes dropped to her phone from some unknown person (who must be in the restaurant - who could it be?!) and then starts to get threatening texts. She left her five-year-old son behind with her sister to babysit at home, and it becomes increasingly clear that her family is in danger if she doesn't follow the commands that this mysterious stranger is texting her.

No more spoilers - as you can imagine, this is a tale of a plucky heroine who is trying her best to save her family while not wreaking any extra havoc on the people in the restaurant. Meanwhile, her noble date is thoroughly confused about what's going on but gamely trying to play along and be a gentleman. Honestly, the true horror of the movie is how it captures the madness of a bad first date. Fahy and Sklenar have great chemistry, but it is amazing to see how much Henry is putting up with towards the end, as well as the hapless waitstaff, who are initially rooting for this couple and then discreetly asking if they need some help extricating themselves from what is clearly a disastrous night. With a tight script by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, and impeccable direction by Christopher Landon, who really elevates many of the shots in the film to high art, this is a funny, clever, and thrilling movie that will thoroughly entertain you from start to finish.