John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum: Cool vibe, cool fight scenes, Keanu rules, legendary actors and actresses are hamming it up. This is good. ***1/2
The Day Shall Come: God damn, I was not ready for this. What starts as an amusing romp featuring Anna Kendrick as an FBI agent becomes a film about EVERYTHING: war, peace, racism, and all kinds of shit. It never gets preachy though – just a wild journey that’s funny, frustrating, tense, and all kinds of shit. ****1/4
Aladdin: Why? Oh, money. Right. Yeah. Good for them. This is a big movie where there was clearly so much effort put into a lot of things – costumes especially. But it’s just barely serviceable, a joyless re-imagining of a cartoon. Will Smith never feels right as The Genie and evil badass Jafar comes off as the weakest act in a local stage play. Aladdin and Jasmine are robots too. Fail. *1/4
Dark Phoenix: It sucks that these movies keep getting worse, because I really liked the first one and the cast really is outstanding. But ultimately this is just a low-end, forgettable bummer of a special effects superhero movie. I feel like Jessica Chastain really, really did not want to be there either. They always end with the professors happily teaching at the school, don’t they? **
Yesterday: Too much going on, a fun romp but a lot to of sci-fi explore that it just… didn’t. The music’s great and everything’s so pleasant, but I wasn’t satisfied with whatever the broader idea was here. ***1/2
