Everything since beginning July. Spoilers.
Thor: Love and Thunder- 7.5/10. Solid but disappointing. Christian Bale, Natalie Portman great and Chris Hemsworth another good turn as Thor but everyone else gets left behind. Thought Crowe as Zeus was cringe and the comedy there didn't hit at all. Just a mess of a movie that doesn't live up to Ragnarok at all, but still some cool, the best being the black and white scene where Gorr captures and tortures them. Also, it was really dumb how Jane becoming Thor wasn't really explained or shown at all.
Train to Busan- 8.5/10. Wow, great movie and much better than expected. Dull/boring first 15 minutes then non-stop exciting thrills, one of the best zombie films I've seen. Great thriller. A little ridiculous how much the COO villain character was able to pretty much kill everyone and the end was silly (the army is really just going to shoot potentially safe humans just because they can't tell if they're zombies down a dark tunnel?). Every Korean film I've seen has been pretty violent/disturbing and this was no exception (I Saw the Devil, Oldboy, Parasite).
West Side Story- 6.5/10. Pretty solid musical, might be higher if I enjoyed musicals more. Thought some of music hit really well, other ones I didn't love. Ariana DeBose was good but not sure why everyone thought that such an awesome performance rather than a good one, thought Rachel Zegler's was better. The super fast transition to everyone getting killed could have been done a lot- rushed and a lot of deaths where people grieving went from upset to nonchalant very quickly.
War Dogs- 6.5/10. Seen this several times now. Entertaining throughout, but just solid all around.
Death on the Nile- 5.5/10. Pretty mediocre, but mostly entertaining at least. I guess Armie Hammer will never act again but he was pretty solid here. Not as bad as Murder on the Orient Express, but can't say the reveals were super satisfying here. It takes a long time to get to the action and most of it is underwhelming. Decent performances by Kenneth Branagh and Tom Bates, Russell Brand surprisingly not actually bad. Gal Gadot unsurprisingly very bad.
In the Heights- 5/10. Didn't love this one. I preferred the style of West Side Story where they'd have musical scenes and plot scenes, but here they'd just burst out singing at any time which I've never been a fan of. (Much prefer having a set number of musical pieces rather than just signing any time). I don't like singing their everyday casual lines- it doesn't sound good to me and comes off weird. Anyway, just didn't find this to be good or satisfying, I didn't like how he gave up on his dream of moving at the end when that was the whole plot of the movie.
Casino Royale- 9/10. Best bond movie, just can't beat it. So many fantastic action sequences and lines.
The Gray Man- 4/10. Trash movie, disappointing coming from the Russo brothers who have struggled post-marvel. I thought the Prague crazy action scenes were solid, but generally a big waste- bad characters, bad plot and mostly really incoherent and shaky, blurry action made this one a disappointment. Chris Evans was decent, Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas totally wasted on terrible and bland characters. The other villains were just awful and really cringe.
Dirty Harry- 7.5/10. Classic thriller, short and not an unenjoyable movie. Clint Eastwood kills it.
Lost City of Z- 7.5/10. Surprisingly good historical epic. There are slow bits but Charlie Hunnam is really good throughout, probably his best performance and really carries the movie. The points in the Jungle exploring are really fascinating and the historic setting is very well done.
Shows: Started the show "You". Not sure why, it's not high on my list compared to many other shows but it just seemed like something that would be really entertaining. So far, I'd say it's good but flawed on not great. Big issues- it's 75% romantic drama, 25% thriller. The thriller stuff is great but way too much time is devoted to cringe over the top drama that can be hard to watch. Another problem is that while Joe is great to watch the rest of the characters suck and anytime the spotlight is taken off Joe, it becomes a short to watch. The episode (E4) surrounding Beck and her Dad was just really tedious and unenjoyable. I just watched E6 and it was really uncomfortable to watch him sneaking around the house and eventually get caught due to his stupidity. Just frustrating to watch Joe, a smart character, be put in tough situations due to stupid decisions he absolutely would not make. Hated Peach, she was starting to ruin the show for me so I'm glad she's out. If the cringe romantic drama plots dominate so much of the show in S2, I'll probably switch to something else.
