#2,443: Ocean's Eight

First Reformed - ★★☆☆☆
I think this movie feels more mysterious than it actually is, but I was really into the feeling that I might not be following everything that's going on.

It’s possible that my favorite part was the woman in the row behind me that said “ugh, we should’ve gone to see Book Club” as soon as the lights came up.

Avengers: Infinity War - ★★★★★
On first viewing, this movie could have gone on for another hour or two and I would have loved it. I wondered though, what would feel less exciting on repeat viewings, and now I know: It’s the stuff with Gamora, and scenes where Thanos is doing stuff mostly by himself. I sure wouldn’t’ve guessed that I would be wishing for more screen time for Captain America or Hulk in my superhero movies ten years ago, or even after their first individual movies, but here we are.

Other stuff: 
- Nobody else ever seems to enjoy that “Do you concur?” joke. It’s a shame.
- Also, how is the star forge intended to work? Those handles seem like a real OSHA violation just waiting to be filed.
- I've read a lot of comments online where people say 'why does he have to snap his fingers, why isn't it just a thought?' I like that it's a snap. I like that Gamora does the same gesture he does when he talks about it. I bet he's been talking about it for fifteen years, it's one of these projects he's been meaning to get around to for ages and he talks about it at family dinners and everyone's sick of hearing about the snap.

Ocean's 8 - ★★½☆☆
I liked this very much at the beginning, and gradually less as it went on. It’s great that we just dive into the mission, no time wasted on discovering the plot or refusing the call. Adding the last member of the team is a nice nod to theme. But I was really hoping that the ending would have been twistier.

The parts where they define Debbie by the men in her life were weak. I would have helped out the running time by cutting every reference to Danny and his movies, and dropped a bunch of that stuff with the ex that undercuts what a good criminal she’s supposed to be. Setting him up could have been one of the fancy reveals at the end.

#2,441: Upgrade

Circle - ★★½☆☆
Not so compelling on a re-watch. Maybe what I liked best about it last time was how it stacked up against The Exam.

Moon - ★★★★☆
Quite compelling on a rewatch! Happily, I’d forgotten the finer points of this movie and was delighted by them all over again.

Upgrade -★★★½☆
This is a movie with you pick up in a video store in the 90s because of its crazy box art, constructed around a minimum of actors, a couple rad action sequences, and a bad guy with a weird moustache. It’s the kind of crazy fun action flick something like Kung Fury wishes it could be.

Also, even though this is the, like, eleventh Logan Marshall-Green movie I’ve seen, if you told me this movie starred Tom Hardy I would believe you.

#2,440: Deadpool 2

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - ★★☆☆☆
The studio didn’t want a movie like this to come out to promote Man on the Moon because they didn’t want their star to seem like a jackass. Not out of any particular feeling for Jim Carrey, but in order to protect their bottom line. In the years since, the film company has either managed to grow as a person, or they've found a way to reboot a movie without remaking anything.

Avengers: Infinity War - ★★★★★
Still dug it. It’s weird how the pop culture moment around this is everyone “discovering” the Harry Potter-ness of the MCU (In brief: the movies assume familiarity with the world’s biggest franchise)

I hope that the next movie won’t be about someone else wielding the gauntlet to undo everything because it's obvious, and I hope it’s not that the dusted are actually the living members of a new reality, because it seems like so many people came to that idea fairly quickly. (I do think it would have been inappropriately funny if Thanos had immediately died as part of the unlucky fifty percent.) I can accept that they might be in the soul gem, but I’d think I could be on board with the boldness of everyone just really being dead.

Deadpool 2 - ★★☆☆☆
Kind of boring. A lot of the gags felt kind of old to me. Like they should have been in a movie that came out just over two years ago. Because they were. The inconsequential X-Force was the best part. Shame they don’t do anything except make an overly long movie longer.

#2,438: Avengers: Infinity War

Girls Trip - ★½☆☆☆
I’m too white or too old or too not-a-movie-theater-full-of-people to appreciate this movie properly. Also, separately, in addition to that, I can’t remember the last time I was so faked out by an ending. This movie ends, and then, just, like, goes and goes and goes.

The Death of Stalin - ★★½☆☆
It’s perhaps the mark of a truly black comedy that it’s so consistently silly and yet never fun.

Avengers: Infinity War - ★★★★★
Loved it. The cast-of-thousands battle scenes stand in such contrast to the standard lasers-and-noise DC movie endings; it’s probably a testament not only to the directors ability to establish and maintain geography, but all the years of getting to know and care about the characters.

I’m so happy to have gotten my predictions wrong, because it’s way more fun to be surprised than to go ‘ah, I knew it!’ The closest that anyone I know got to the truth of things was with a guess that Thanos was the Red Skull. Wrong, but I was still happy for the guesser when we saw that red smiling face. For my part, I'd been spending my valuable time trying to convince people that Thanos would die in the first act of this movie and Iron Man, mad with power and other infinity stones, would be the real villain. That's not how it shakes out, of course, but I hope that in the back of certain minds during a certain scene, someone might have been worried that I was right!

#2,435: Love, Simon

Ready Player One - ★½☆☆☆
This is what you get when you make the whole movie out of the last act of Tomorrowland.

Credit where credit’s due, my audience loved the Shining references.

Pacific Rim: Uprising - ★★★☆☆
Pacific Rim 2 feels a bit like it maybe should have been a straight-to-video sequel, but it's fun, it knows what was good about the original (robot fights), and next to Ready Player One, it shines.

Much like the original, this movie is a thin connective web of scenes you'll skip past on netflix designed to vaguely justify a bunch of robot fights. See it if you’re into robot fights. Although, if not if you’re *too* into robot fights and going to end up complaining about something. If you're that guy, maybe give it a pass.

Love, Simon - ★★★★★
Man, this was great. We're still early enough in the year that pretty much everything that comes out is on the top ten list for the year, but for now this is topping the list.

I just like when a smaller (let's say under $200m) movie like this can come out and stand in contrast to the past few months of robot fights, and manage to do it with significantly deeper stakes and tension than something bland and abstract like the fate of the world. Best high school movie since Bad Genius, and a fun way to do a mystery.