On DVD & Blu-Ray: October 23, 2018

I didn't see the first movie in theaters and I hardly remember a thing about it, but I'll be damned if Mama Mia! Here We Go Again didn't win me over from the moment Lily James stepped on screen.

Sure, some of the musical numbers are worse than an amateur karaoke night, but at least this time around Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, and Pierce Brosnan are playing up how bad they are at all this singing and dancing stuff. Furthermore, the emotional beats don't feel nearly as cheap as the sets and despite a complete lack of stakes one could do much, much worse if in search of something light, frothy, and full of pure escapism.

I mean, seriously though, if Lily James wants to do a movie about young Julia Child I'm all the way there for that. B-

Boots Riley is not a fan of the system or "the man" and if he hadn't made that abundantly clear through the music he's made with The Coup then you'll certainly know how the man feels coming out of his directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You. This assessment of corporate America though and how it addresses labor and capitalism is only one layer of Riley's feature as he's also here to integrate ideas of activism, of art, and of the importance placed on the individual in our society rather than that of what is for the greater good of the people as a whole. There's a lot more than this too, I'm sure, but it's difficult to try and narrow down or consolidate one's thoughts on Sorry to Bother You because the film itself feels so sporadic and surreal.

Despite that, here we go...

While watching Sorry to Bother You I couldn't help but to come to concentrate on what Riley's thesis must have been for this piece. It is beyond evident that the guy has an objective and something to say that he wants to communicate in an effective and aesthetically pleasing way, but when you get down to it and clear away all of these facets that give off this impression of being just batshit crazy what is it that Riley really wants to spark a conversation around? By the time the film came to an end it seemed it was this idea as phrased by a line in the movie that goes, "if you're shown a problem and have no idea how to solve it, you just get used to the problem" that really cuts to the heart of it all. Given where Sorry to Bother You goes and the actions that occur within this company run by Armie Hammer's coke-snorting maniac Steve Lift known as Worry Free Riley is posing that as crazy as what this corporation is doing seems if our society were to become conditioned to such expectations there wouldn't be a second thought given to it. This crazy ass evolution of the story could also be seen more metaphorically than as a literal way to say America is always sacrificing individuals and/or certain demographics for the sake of profit, but as the movie pretty much admits it seems it's meant to be that of a literal analysis. Full review here. B-

Elle Fanning, Peter Dinklage, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Paul Giamatti star in the sci-fi drama/mystery, I Think We're Alone Now, about Dinklage's Del who is alone in the world after the human race is wiped out. Del lives in a small, empty town, and is content in his solitude and the utopia he's created for himself - until he is discovered by an interloper whose history and motives are obscure. And to make matters worse, she wants to stay.