After the way I’ve been lax on movies recently, I made a concerted effort to make some progress this week. Of course, some of that involved background MCU movie watching in order to mentally get in the right space for Avengers: Endgame, but I swear that wasn’t all that I watched!
One film I wanted to see last year that didn’t make it to theaters near me ended up on sale on iTunes this week which meant I got to finally see Anna and the Apocalypse. I had fallen for the film based on the trailer and it goes even further in the film in every delightful way. I love musicals like this since it plays with things in an engaging way and combining what it does here definitely hits. It’s a goofy horror movie to be sure and the musical numbers are silly and fun but it has such a great time with itself that you’re easily on for the ride.
I also picked up a copy of Let’s Be Cops for $5 on iTunes because I really enjoy the film but also because I have a lot of fun watching Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans, Jr. interact with each other. They’ve got a comfort level from their time on New Girl that helps and while the film is dumb fun, the emphasis on fun works well for me. It’s close to an ’80s movies in a lot of ways so there’s a weird kind of nostalgia there for that.
One thing I did end up doing this week was trying to bang out a few Netflix movies that I’ve had in my queue for a bit. It’s easy to slap those into the queue but hard to sit down and just watch, especially when you know you’ve got a lot of series to get through. The first one I got on was Nappily Ever After, which looked interesting when I first saw the trailer but also because Sanaa Lathan is just a delight to watch. I do wish Ricky Whittle had a better role in it to some degree but this hit up the romantic comedy side well for me and enjoying the formula from start to finish.
I also finally put on Mute, which I had heard all the bad reviews for but was still curious because I like Duncan Jones and keep hoping for another Moon out of him. It’s just a weird mishmash of things that don’t work well at all but it did introduce me to Seyneb Saleh, someone I want to see more works from. Paul Rudd was just damn odd in this and I’ll admit, that’s half the draw because he does at times take some strange turns with roles that he’ll take. But, as I’ve said before, even knowing a film is bad, if I have an interest in it, I’ll check it out for myself.
I also recently added Land of Steady Habits to my queue because I like Ben Mendelsohn a lot and was curious to see him in something “normal” after his turns in Rogue One and Captain Marvel. It’s a fairly typical drama involving people with issues and it wasn’t all that memorable and is the kind of film that you’re not surprised gets kind of dumped onto Netflix. It’s not bad per se but it just lacked something to really make it compelling before it hits its weird turns with death and the like.
Beyond that, it was just some of the background rewatch material. I only had the two film pickups early in the week with Anna and the Apocalypse and Let’s Be Cops as I continue to wait for Spider-Verse and Aquaman to move past their release-day pricing into something I’m more comfortable with. And with the big backlog of things I have to watch, I don’t mind waiting.
What’s in your movie queue?
