July movie reviews

In theaters:

THE FORGIVEN

A rather boring drama about an English couple (Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain) who hit and kill an Arab boy while vacationing in Morocco. About halfway through the movie splits into 2 storylines, one somewhat compelling, the other quite useless. But the film keeps cutting back to the useless one, surprisingly the one with Chastain (who is good, but just has a nothing character). For no reason the credits appear (backwards) at the start of the film, and then at the end it's just awkward.

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

A supremely charming movie about a tiny little pasta shell named Marcel (voiced by Jenny Slate). This is like if A24 made a Pixar movie. On a technical level it's a great film, a mix of live action, stop motion animation and a dash of CGI. The film is full of creative visuals showing how Marcel lives. It's funny, and disarmingly sweet. 

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING

A southern murder mystery drama that on one hand is a welcome return to a genre we don't see much of anymore (at least in theaters), but also sometimes feels like a Nicholas Sparks movie. The film centers on a young woman who lives alone in a house out in the swamps, and she is played by the fabulous Daisy Edgar-Jones, who I for damn sure will be checking out in everything going forward. The film around her never rises to her level. Many supporting characters are cartoons, the love triangle is pretty bad, and the courtroom scenes are just bad. 

NOPE

Jordan Peele is probably the biggest breakout star of a director in the last 10 years. Get Out and Us were excellent films and big successes. Nope is a success too, but this time I was disappointed. This is a bigger film, more ambitious, and pivots away from.horror into more of sci-fi. There is some great stuff here, with some sequences that could stand with the best things all year. But in between there.is a lot of slow wheel spinning. The pacing reminded me of early Shyamalan (this film is very Signs) but didn't grab me like some of those films did. I just didn't feel this was satisfying as a mystery or an alien movie. Really no standout performances. Keke Palmer does the most acting for sure, but I often found her grating. Nope is well made on a technical level, but I think Peele missed the mark on this one. 

VENGEANCE

A podcaster gets mixed up in a whole deal in Texas involving the death of a girl who may have been murdered, or maybe just overdosed. Oh but it's kind of a comedy. It has some fun performances, but writer-director BJ Novak should not have also starred. His bland presence at the center of the movie adds very little. Issa Rae is also completely wasted. 

Everything else:

MARRY ME

Has any celebrity ever spent so much time trying to convince people that they are a normal, relatable person than Jennifer Lopez? Half her songs are pushing this, and now we got this romcom, which might have had a chance if the star at its center was not so inherently insincere. Lopez plays a big pop star who is going to get engaged to another pop star (hmm, using your relationships for publicity? Sounds familiar),  but he cheats on her and so she ends up randomly marrying math teacher Owen Wilson. Like most romcoms you know where this is going, and I never once believed Lopez would go for this. But Wilson saves the movie from the scrap heap by being as effortlessly charming and funny as he has ever been. 

KIMI

A Steven Soderbergh film, starring Zoe Kravitz in a riff on Rear Window, where she is a techie type who may have hear an assault on an audio file. The film takes place during COVID, but implements that very well. Kravitz is great. 

NO SUDDEN MOVE

Another Soderbergh flick, this one is less good by a wide margin. It's a crime caper flick with some good performances, but the twisty, overly complicated plot equal parts lost and bored me. 

THE BAD GUYS

A pretty decent animated movie about a bunch of animal criminals who try to go good. It's not a classic or anything but it's fast paced, has some laughs, and Sam Rockwell is a lot of fun as the wolf.

KEEP BREATHING 

This is actually a Netflix series, but it's short enough to be a long movie. Tbh this should have been a movie. The gorgeous and magnetic Melissa Barrera is a woman who survives a plane crash in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. Nature survival stories are inherently compelling, and that stuff works here too. But for some reason this series gives equal screen time to an increasingly intrusive collection of flashbacks, dream sequences and hallucinations. Take out that stuff and you got a solid 2 hour movie with a fast rising star.