- Marriage Story (Netflix) - Wow. What a great film. Amazing acting. A poignant story. Two super memorable scenes for me. I loved the director's ability to really give you the feeling of contrast between New York / LA, and posh lawyers / budget lawyers. It's also a great movie for the more complicated family structures we increasingly see in our day.
- Parasite (98) - Another amazing film. So memorable, and so tense. This never happens to me but there were scenes in there where I had to step away as I couldn't bare to watch anymore due to the tension. This movie was almost ruined by a fierce debate Val and I had afterwards, but then, I think that's part of its allure--it's moral ambiguity which forces the audience to debate who's right.
- Knives Out (21) - A very pleasant discovery when we watched it. A fun and comical adventure, and a well-executed murder mystery.
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (18) - Good movie. Strange plot. It had some real moments with some all-star acting.
- Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (6) - My review / ranking of this film gets into some complexities with the whole reboot. I loved the reboot generally. Episode VII was a great film which held so much promise for the new trilogy, and Episode VIII, despite having some lame side stories, was a good movie in its own right, with some intriguing plot directions. But then Episode IX pretty much made a mess of earlier story arcs and kind of ended in a cliche way. I enjoyed this film when I watched it, but the less I think back on it the better.
- Frozen II (4) - I'm here for it.
- Toy Story 4 (3) - I think my least favorite of the bunch, but it was still good.
- Ford v Ferrari (27) - A decent airplane movie. Some of the acting is a little hammy, but maybe they were trying to appeal to young kids so it's cool. The title is very accurate.
- The Addams Family (30) - Fun enough.
- Ne Zha (175) - A big hit in China, apparently. This was a fun superhero cartoon movie for our family to watch.
- Aladdin (8) - I am conceptually against the whole live-action remake thing. Super weak on Disney's part to just have close to zero creativity like that. It's made worse by the fact that they generally try to stick so closely to the old movies. Like, that would impress me if you had a YouTube short of replicating a classic scene from one of these old cartoon treasures, but when you dogmatically stick to that throughout the whole film it makes it kind of an emotionless experience. I must state for the record that I only watched this film (and Lion King below) since they were free on a family Disney Cruise. I liked the actors and the singing, but the enjoyment was only at the margins.
- The Lion King (2) - See #11 above.
Movies I Didn't Much Care For
- Avengers: Endgame (1) - *Grumpy rant forthcoming* - I can't even remember if this was the Avengers movie I watched, but I think it was this one. Even from watching it on the plane I just could not enjoy this movie. The CGI was so overkill that nothing felt real, and there are so many superheroes constantly on the verge of death or trying to prevent the galaxy from getting destroyed that the stakes feel so ridiculously grand as to be unimportant.
Movies I'm Eager to Watch (In Order)
- Uncut Gems (91)
- The Last Black Man in San Francisco (163)
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