I was so darn excited for this series. The first trailer was fantastic, the Christmas setting and fun-focused action being right up my alley. The final product just never hit me quite right.

I never felt much in the way of stakes. Alaqua Cox's Maya Lopez hardly wowed me. Clint Barton didn't get that dramatic an arc, and that's coming from someone who's always been a Hawkeye er from the movies alone. And the plot was a little too predictable.…

Spider-Man: Don't Stay Home may not be a subtle movie, but my oh my does it land as a story.

The only things keeping me from giving this mammoth movie five stars on my second viewing is a few VFX shots I noticed being surprisingly weak (namely Aunt May getting rag-dolled by the glider and the establishing shot of Peter in front of the billboard after her death), the plot convenience of Ned's portal-making abilities coming from nowhere and cheapening…

Am I high on this movie? Yes. Does it really deserve five stars?

FOR GIVING ME THIS FEELING, THREE THOUSAND TIMES YES.

It's imperfect, its flaws are easy to notice. But my goodness do I not give two shitake mushrooms.

No spoilers, but I teared up HARD twice, clapped and shouted at least five times (and got the theater going with me just about every time), and was completely swept up. My friends all said they wish they'd recorded my…

Yeah, I suppose that was pretty good.
My biggest critique was that I didn't get to play "Him" with Sadie Sink right there, but I don't know if I could have been OK making Sadie Sink feel that way towards the end so maybe it's for the better.
The chapter titles were a bit redundant since what was going on was already so clear but that's no biggie. I do feel bad for Jake Gyllenhaal; everyone's the hero of their…

I needed this after Darkness, Light, Darkness so that I could sleep peacefully.
I'd been meaning to see this ever since they announced it since I loved Soul, and now I've finally gotten around to it. It's cute and all the humor works really well, but it's ultimately unnecessary to the story of Soul, and it would be a bit weird if it existed for its own sake.
Was that joke at the end also in Soul? I've definitely seen…

Anderson has hit his 4:3, animation-laced stylistic stride so forcefully that it can no longer produce coherent sentences - decidedly unlike The French Dispatch itself, whose structure and characters both present themselves in some of the more lavish and enthralling phrases ever put to screen.

So yes, Mr. Anderson, of course I'll be in the theaters day one for your next [European-based people-oriented business]-focused installment in the WCC ("Wes' Cinematic Continent").

(A weightier through-line is more my personal cup of…

After this second watch, my thoughts feel a lot more digestible to myself, so hopefully they're easy to write - and be read.

World-building: top-notch. Arrakis makes Tatooine look like a vacation destination because of the culture of survival built around it.

Acting: with the exception of Jason Momoa (he makes "the closest he's come to dying" sound about as intense as almost picking an oatmeal raisin cookie instead of chocolate chip), everyone is stellar. Rebecca Ferguson in particular stands…

I don't really have my thoughts sorted about this one yet, but I know it was a huge thrill.

Hans Zimmer's score is the first of his that I actually wanted to check out the moment I walked out of the movie. It rocked in the normal musical sense, as well as rocking my chair and the whole theater.

Besides one brief water sequence (and it seems like a lot of recent movies have struggled with CG water), the special…