By holiday, I mean Thanksgiving weekend. I could have definitely fit more in but, oh well, this is what you get.
Bones and All – I think like most people, I was late to Luca Guadagnino’s work with Call Me By Your Name, but I’ve been fully on boar since then. So that means I was obviously going to see this cannibalistic love story. I mean, kind of poor timing with what ended up coming out about Armie Hammer, but still. People are kind of dense. This film is based on a fictional novel, so calm down. In it, Maren no sooner becomes an adult and then is abandoned in the world to deal with her very strange hunger. Along the way she meets some other, even creepier people just like her but the real connection comes with Lee. She definitely helps make her better, but honestly, Hannibal has more cannibalism AND romance.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery – I won’t say much here because that will totally ruin it for people waiting for its Netflix release next month, but this latest iteration of Knives Out is just as fun as the original. While there are a lot of similarities, the world in which the mystery takes place is also completely different. Detective Benoit Blanc gets invited to a private island where things soon take a turn for the worse. It’s fun to see Blanc a little out of his element, and everyone really looks like they’re having fun with their characters. Lots of twists, and this time around there are some very, very fun cameos. A must-see if you enjoyed the first or just murder mysteries in general.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – A bout with the rona prevented me from seeing this the weekend it came out, but it was worth the wait. I was a little bit nervous about how this story would end up and also that it was inching close to the three-hour mark. Luckily, the action and softer beats wove together and held my attention until the end. Obviously, the Blank Panther is dead. We see the family mourn and try and get back into some sort of rhythm when a new foe, or maybe friend, emerges from the waters of Wakanda. It was cool seeing Shuri take the reins, but it was also smart to see her struggle in different ways than T’Challa did. Since the future of this particular character is in a sort of limbo, no need to stick around to the very end of the credits, though there is a very surprising mid-credits scene!
Rogue Agent – Clearly I only picked this movie because Gemma Arterton and James Norton were in this movie I thought was about spies. Well, I was kind of right. The film starts by telling us about a period in the early 90s where the Irish Republicans were attacking the British. In turn, MI5 recruited civilians to become spies to help them gain information. Thus, we meet Robert Freegard recruiting some young teens for the job. Soon after though, he needs to extract them as they’ve been compromised. Cut to almost a decade later and we see Robert working a new job at a car dealership where he woos lawyer, Alice Archer. From there, things took a turn I did NOT see coming. And honestly, that’s on me. After I was finished watching this I read the blurb available on AMC+ and it said this was a story inspired by real-life conman, Robert Freegard. Still, the stuff this guy managed to do was insane. A must-watch!