13: Elemental

 I am 9000% times more interested in Fireland culture and the culture of (Little Fireland?) than 90% of the movie.

9, 10, 11: John Wick / 2 / Parabellum

 An engaging world full of style, that shows you can still have adult characters in a stylized world full of punch and flashy appearance.

8: Polite Society

 An impressive twist on what you think it might be, with enough grounded heart to resonate across demographics.

7: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

 Quite spoiler heavy.

I felt that the filmmakers were under the pressure to do something so much bigger, so much more bombastic than the first movie, which was a surprise hit, that the movie kind of falls under its own weight. 

We know there's going to be a third part, coming out sometime next year (thank goodness they were smart enough to make both of these movies at the same time) but it's really just the story lines that, are good, they don't have enough room to breathe. Well, they do, that's what makes the movie a lot longer than it really needed to be.

I will say I love Daniel Pemberton's score for this, and the variety that still has a link to the droning theme that usually signifies triumph in this world. A lot of his scores are still on rotation for me, especially Founders Pier from Birds of Prey.

The first movie had some original songs by some people, and those songs were interspersed in the movie equally. Here I think there's only about two or three in the first maybe 45 minutes and then I don't remember hearing any lyrical songs ever again. 

 

They blended in, but they blended in almost a little too well. Now look, again, the filmmakers are smart enough to not try and go beat for beat like the original movie. Nothing was ever going to touch the what's up danger sequence.

 

 I know this, you know this, they know this. So they didn't try to replicate it, which I definitely appreciate it, but even the songs I don't listen to from the original soundtrack, I remember what they're called. I remember the melody.

 

 I don't remember any of the lyrical songs in this one. 

For all the advertising that it got. The spiders society is a small part of the actual movie.

 

 I definitely understand why you didn't want to have literally a thousand different variants of Spider-Man on screen for more than about 20 minutes. 

 

But the spider society actually had the plot that we needed to focus on in the story, the plot of you don't necessarily need people to accept you, you don't need them to tell you who to be to be one of them so to speak. 

 

That's the story that actually should have been told a bit more than. I don't want to say "whatever was they were doing ", because Gwen's story is actually really good in heartfelt, even though yes it does veer into the realm of copaganda. They definitely could have acknowledged the tie in on how miles treated the spot to how Miguel treated miles. 

The movie is basically outside forces pushing upon miles and him doing little to push back until the 2099 chase sequence and beyond. 

 

It's not better than the first one. It's not even my favorite movie of the year, but it is still a great, beautiful movie. 

6: The Little Mermaid (2023)

 

 Halle is great, but I feel there's a bit less Ariel than we need underwater. We need a little more.

You can hate the man's theater kid personality, but Lin-Manuel Miranda is very good at what he does, and I am a fan of everything outside of Hamilton (Sans "The Room Where It Happens", that slaps).

 I love "The Family Madrigal", "Dor Orugitas", "We Don't Talk About Bruno", and from "Vivo", "One of A Kind", "One More Song", "Inside Your Heart".

Here, he wrote several new songs for Eric, Scuttle (Oh no) and Sebastian (who already has the second best Disney song in "Under The Sea", so), but they're pretty good! I genuinely like the Scuttle and Sebastian duet.

Melissa McCarthy ATE, absolutely killed it in a good way.

5: Chevalier

 I have it on somwhat good authority that a lot of this movie is not only inaccurate, it paints Joseph as a far more forgotten figure than he was, rewriting the story to reflect more contemporary racist than the flavor of racism he dealt with in his time in France.

I also completely forgot to write this until a week later, so that says that.

1: M3GAN

 Yeah it's a little out of order.

As someone who is very familiar with both aspects this movie prides itself on (tech and dolls), it didn't scare me. I mean, it is PG-13, it's not like "Annihilation" or anything.

Honestly this review is 4 months late and the movie wasn't that impressive anyway. Did love the "Walk The Night" sequence.