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Mar 30, 2022

"First came the darkness.
Then, the strangers. "

PINNED: this newsletter started as a way to highlight movies coming to theaters (see: the name). Then, "the bullshit" happened. And I started featuring movies in theaters, VOD or streaming (see: the +). Point is, if there's a movie worth checking out, you'll probably find it here.

*breathes in deeply*

*releases big sigh*

*moves on*

Extra Credit Movies: We have a lot of movies coming out this week, but only giving a feature to two of them, the rest are below...

You Won't Be Alone: a considerate, but also creepy and gruesome, looking horror movie set in 19th century Macedonia where a condemned spirit / witch creature possesses humans in order to discover what it is to be human. Reviews are fantastic. Playing in limited theaters Friday.

The Bubble: Judd Apatow made a goofy movie during "the bullshit" about what it's like to make a big budget action movie under lockdown. Lots of notable actors (Keegan Michael-Key, Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal, David Duchovny and more). No reviews, but maybe looks a bit too(?) goofy. Streaming Friday on Netflix.

The Contractor: a straightforward looking redemption/revenge action flick pairing Chris Pine and Ben Foster again (they were excellent together in Hell or High Water). Not great reviews, but not terrible. Should satisfy a need if you have it. Playing in some theaters and streaming Friday.

Better Nate Than Ever: a sweet looking musical about a kid obsessed with starring in Broadway musicals. Stars Lisa Kudrow as the kid's aunt. Streaming Friday on Disney +

Moonshot - a predictable looking, but potentially satisfying (if mis-titled) stylized rom-com about a stowaway on a trip to Mars so he can continue pining after a girl he likes - whooooo happens to be visiting her bf. Streaming tomorrow on HBO Max.

MORBIUS

This is a movie I feel like I have to feature. I mean, I don't, this is my damn newsletter. But it's a big budget superhero action movie starring a notable name in Jordan Cata..., er, I mean, Jared Leto (yes, we're still doing that "joke." Hell, they just referenced My So Called Life on TV's hottest show Euphoria, so I feel justified) and is likely to top this weekend's box office. Soooo, I wanna let you know. Plus, this can technically be called a "Marvel movie," and boy does Sony really mine that in all their paperwork - the movie poster tagline is "A new Marvel legend arrives." Right.

While what they're saying is true, Dr. Michael Morbius aka The Living Vampire, does act as foil to Spider-Man in the Marvel comics dating back to the character's first appearance in 1971, what they're really, and not so subtly, drafting off of is the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) - the Iron Mans, the Thors, the Black Panthers, The Guardians of the Galaxys, the... Spider-Mans.

See, if you haven't been paying attention, while most Marvel characters are owned and operated by Disney, there's still this contingent whose movie rights are controlled by Sony - basically any characters in Spider-Man's orbit. Thing is, with the recent Tom Holland instances, Spider-Man himself has been integrated as a part of the Disney controlled MCU, whereas the secondary characters like Venom and now Morbius are in a separate Sony Marvel universe. It's all rather quite confusing. But then it got more so when the idea of "the multiverse" was introduced in the first Dr. Strange and fully realized in last year's Spider-Man: No Way Home, (where *SPOILER ALERT* Venom was briefly transported to the MCU) allowing for the two universes to every so slightly overlap.

I mean, that all sounds kinda fun, so why am I reticent to feature? Especially after I just want to all the trouble to explain it's place in the world.

Um, I guess cuz it kinda looks like a snoozefest? But Latham, you always say movie quality is subjective! Yeah yeah yeah. I do. And in my subjective opinion this looks pretty bland. 😅 Reviews just started popping up today and while they don't shit all over the movie, taken in total, they detail a movie that is bereft of reasons to make you remember its existence 5 mins after leaving the theater. But hell, critics didn't enjoy Venom and that movie made that moneyyyyy.

And sure, maybe it portends some link ups with that crowd favorite goofball Venom (mostly thanks to Tom Hardy) as well as Spider-Man after his MCU stay, which could be fun, but in the mean time, you'll be getting yet another superhero origin story. A genre unto itself which is getting increasingly hard to innovate.

Vibe: superhero or superzero

Out Friday
Watch Theaters
The Trailer | 1 hr 44 mins | PG-13 | 🍅: 21%

APOLLO 10 1/2:
A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD

Movies where "nothing happens" are a sort of speciality for Richard Linklater, the director of the Before series, Dazed and Confused, Boyhood as well as the the criminally under-seen Everybody Wants Some!!.

Sure, he's made more traditionally straightforward movies like School of Rock or Me and Orson Welles, but when people think Linklater, I'd bet their mind conjures images of a wandering, almost meandering story where there's no major third act finale, just a lot of vignettes that are stitched together so as to be enjoyable. And they generally very much are! It's almost as if what's on screen are memories yanked from the filmmakers brain and slapped up there. And Apollo 10 1/2 takes this even further by not only taking images formed by recollection, but souvenirs of imagination.

This rotoscoped story (an animation style the director also used on Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly) looks to essentially be a nostalgia-fest of the late 1960's - the summer of '69 to be exact - where the main character acts as stand-in for a young Linklater.

Jack Black narrates what initially seems like revisionist history of the moon landing, but ultimately acts as way to showcase all the things Linklater enjoyed about his childhood. Now, most "in the old days" diatribes often bend towards the bothersome and tiresome, but critics say the way the pieces come together makes for a very enjoyable sojourn.

You could mine plenty of cliches or metaphors to describe this style of amplifying the lesser things to a larger place of prominence, or you could just say, what Linklater does is showcase, well, life.

Vibe: well isn't this nice, let's just stay here a while, shall we?

Out Friday
Watch Netflix
The Trailer | 1 hr 30 mins | PG-13 | 🍅: 93%

(called out from top, left to right)

I think we're finally really totally maybe hopefully going to be able to watch Top Gun: Maverick. But a lot can happen between now and Memorial Day...

The director of the well liked The Art of Self-Defense Riley Stearns has another movie coming out; it's called Dual, which acts as a double entendre as Karen Gillan literally has to duel herself in a to the death fight after she cloned herself because she thought she was terminally ill. Just watch it.

The Michael Bay camera movement fest that is Ambulance has another trailer and I'm still sitting here unconvinced it's worth watching.

And what is becoming a mini-trend, there's another trailer for a "kids movie" I can't add to the playlist - it's for Minions: The Rise of Gru, which like many movies, was delayed by oh, a couple years.

What's In Theaters +

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