June Movies Part 1: Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse, The Blackening, Elemental

June is proving to be a busy but fruitful month at the movie theater. So gather round while I tell you about all the amazing movies you need to be checking out!

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: What a visual spectacle. The original film was an absolute revelation in terms of the animation style and this sequel has levelled up into a whole other stratosphere. It still feels like you're watching a comic book, with so much color, humor, action, and emotion bursting out of every frame. It's indescribably beautiful and even though I did find myself getting a little squirrelly towards the end of the 140-minute runtime, I was never able to tear my eyes away from the screen. 

Here's a very brief plot description. Miles Morales, aka Spider-Man, is going about his day in Brooklyn, on his version of Earth, trying to fight bad guys and still keep up his grades in high school to appease his loving but clueless parents. But Gwen Stacy, aka Spider-Woman, shows up, and there's lots of inter-dimensional drama that leads them into a world with a Spider-Society composed of all the different Spider-Man iterations, some of whom me met in the last movie, and many of whom are brand new to this film. It's all twisty, inventive, and mind-blowing, particularly during one particular escapade that takes place in Mumbattan, an Indian version of Manhattan that felt like it was written just for me. When you've got an Indian Spider-Man berating people for saying chai tea and naan bread, you've made all my wildest dreams come true. So watch this movie right now and get hyped for the sequel.

The Blackening: The minute I saw the trailer for this film, I knew I was going to watch it on opening day. And now I have, and boy was it worth it. As longtime readers know, the only horror I like to watch is comedy horror, and this film delivered in spades (it literally does involve a lot of characters playing Spades). The premise is that a group of Black college friends turn up to a house in the woods that their friend rented out as an AirBnB so they could have a ten-year reunion on Juneteenth. There's a game room in this house, and it contains a very racist-looking boardgame called The Blackening. Turns out that when you play this game, the stakes are quite literally life or death. 

What follows is a raucous 90 minutes of these people trying to play this game that requires them to outdo each other in Black-themed trivia and prove whether or not they are the "Blackest person" in the friend group. Some of them are biracial, some are married to white folks, some have parents who are actually from Africa. They are dark-skinned and light-skinned, straight and queer, and they need to band together to fight against this creepy killer. I will confess, many of the jokes in this movie sailed right over my head, but the two Black women sitting next to me were quoting lines and hooting with appreciation at a number of references that I clearly was not privy to. So if you're Black, this movie is a must-watch, but if you're not, you must still prepare for a thoroughly entertaining time at the movie theater.

Elemental: Set in Element City, this is the tale of Ember, a woman made of Fire. Ember's parents immigrated to Element City from their homeland and had a rough time adjusting to this new place that was never built with Fire in mind. They faced a lot of discrimination, but her father persevered and started his own shop, which he hopes Ember will take over when he retires. However, one day, some pipes burst in the basement, water starts leaking into the shop, and things are looking dire. Ember ends up meeting Wade, a man who is made of Water and serves as a Water inspector (natch) for the City, and they have to team up to help save the shop. Ember has always been raised to believe that "Elements cannot mix," but as she spends more time with Wade, that message starts to feel less true.

As you can tell from that description, this is a movie that is dealing with a lot of themes. There's an immigrant story, there's a love story, there's classic Pixar parent-child dynamics. And the animation is so wildly colorful, inventive, and fun. Every frame of this movie is winsome and clever, and while yes, the plot is fairly predictable, it's never boring. The music by Thomas Newman (aka my favourite movie composer) is also rather gorgeous, a weird blend of Indian and Middle Eastern influences to try and capture the foreign background of the Fire people that made everything start to feel very Bollywood. Which is probably why I liked this movie way more than most critics. If you've liked other Pixar movies, this one should be a slam dunk because it has everything you've come to expect - great animation, inventive storytelling, and plenty of heart.