Spring Break Movie Break Down: Part 1
Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire: I have enjoyed the recent Legendary Monster movies. However, after "Godzilla Minus One" last year, their faults have become magnified. The biggest of those are the human characters. In this movie, the only purpose they serve is as deliverers of exposition: mostly pointless exposition. We know Kong is lonely when we see his response to what he thinks is another one of his kind, which turns out to be the noise a weird frog-like creature makes.
The Unknown Country: I have repeatedly said that Lily Gladstone was the best part of Killers of the Flower Moon. The streaming service MUBI has a few of her other movies up right now. "The Unknown Country" follows her as Tana as she drives to Texas after her grandmother's death. This is one of those "slice of life" movies where the plot is secondary to watching these small moments she has with the people she meets along the way.
Cocktail: Every month, the Criterion Channel puts up different collections of movies. This past month was Razzie Winners. The Razzies are given out just before the Oscars for the Worst of the Year. "Cocktail" was made when Tom Crusie was still a rising star, so I assumed it would be a good movie and that the Razzies were wrong, but they were not. My one takeaway from this was that nothing makes sense in this movie.
Elevator Game: I love horror movies. That is why I subscribe to Shudder. Every time I launch the app, I hope to find some hidden gem horror movie. This is not one of them. The acting is terrible, and the story is threadbare. It is based on a viral challenge where you can travel to another world if you follow a sequence in an elevator. The movie and the challenge are dumb.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version): Love her, hate her, or think she is a deep-state agent, you have to respect her hustle. Watching this three-and-a-half-hour concert movie made me appreciate her and her career. She created this awe-inspiring show with fireworks, colossal set pieces, and incredible visuals. While watching it, I looked up the Eras Tour date, and the fact that she could do this two or three nights in a row might be the most impressive thing about her.
