Yesterday (2019)

Director: Danny Boyle. Cast: Himesh Patel, Lily James, Ed Sheeran. 116 min. Rated PG-13. Drama/Musical. UK/USA.

Boy ... this movie works on so many levels. Whether you should live a lie, or stay the course for the common good. Whether stick with the logic, or throw everything away and follow your heart. Whether we could’ve lived without the music of a certain band from Liverpool, or we already lack the genius of a person or people in a parallel world. But all aside, there’s a moment towards the end (you’ll know which one), that I was suddenly disconnected from this world, thinking: what if ... that long lost friend was still alive. The wonders of cinema.

Mo says:

MoMagic!

Toy Story 4 (2019)

Director: Josh Cooley. Voices: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Keegan-Michael Key, Christina Hendricks, Jordan Peele, Keanu Reeves, Joan Cusack, Bonnie Hunt, John Ratzenberger, Carl Weathers, Don Rickles, Laurie Metcalf, Mel Brooks, Carol Burnett, Betty White, Carl Reiner, Bill Hader, Patricia Arquette, Timothy Dalton. 100 min. Rated G. Animation.

Another Pixar animation, almost entirely targeting adults. The whole story of an old band of toys getting together to save another toy made of trash who feels like trash, may have a subliminal message of "you are worthy of love and respect" for kids, but the real message hits you at the end, where our hero must choose between staying and taking care of those who depend on him ... or setting his guilt aside and moving on to do what is best for himself. Must've been the creators' own first-hand dilemma. Not as powerful as Toy Story 3, but powerful.

Mo says:

Pink (2016)

Director: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury. Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Amitabh Bachchan, Kirti Kulhari. 136 min. India. Drama.

In modern day India, a young women may or may not have been assaulted, and the legal proceedings put the country's attitude towards woman to light. But then you think ... is the attitude really just limited to India? Isn't a man's drunkenness by alcohol considered pitiful, but a woman's a sign of her "availability" ... even by U.S. norms? This courtroom drama, boasting some seriously engaging acting headed by the legendary Amitabh Bachchan, will make you think, and doubt your own stance towards the story's social dilemmas. Great discussion-maker.

PS: This movie has one of the best post-credits scenes - putting any Marvel movie to shame.

Mo says:

Men in Black: International (2019)

Director: F. Gary Gray. Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Kumail Nanjiani, Rafe Spall, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Rebeca Ferguson. 114 min. Rated PG-13. Fantasy/Action/Comedy.

You'd think with a somewhat well-established franchise such as Men in Black, producers (Spielberg at the helm) wouldn't add another episode - unless they had a strong or engaging concept to add (as they did in MIB3). Here, you wait for 2 hours, and other than pairing up Hemsworth and Thompson for a second time around after Thor: Ragnarok (with a cool Mjolnir joke in-between), and the following note-worthy line, there's not much else to see.

- "The universe has a way of leading you to where you are supposed to be at the moment you are supposed to be there."

Mo says:

The Dead Don't Die (2019)

Director: Jim Jarmusch. Cast: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, RZA. 104 min. Rated R. Sweden/USA. Comedy/Fantasy.

Excessive polar fracking tilts the Earth on its axis, and as result, the dead rise from their graves. I know ... makes no sense. But that's exactly the point. Bill Murray and Adam Driver deliver this deadpan comedy with such a self-assured aura, the most outrageous moments become entirely plausible - and ever more so funny. And Tilda Swinton's sword-wielding Scotswoman adds to her career collection unforgettable characters. The events here are so unexpected, I defy you to predict what comes up, even in the next scene. One of Jarmusch's best.

Mo says:

Border (Gräns) (2018)

Director: Ali Abbasi. Cast: Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff, Jörgen Thorsson. 110 min. Rated R. Sweden/Denmark. Fantasy/Drama.

In this Cannes award winner, a female customs officer who senses, and, ahem, looks like an animal, meets another male of "her kind" - and embarks on a quest to discover why she's able to perceive the world as no other. The story (including the weirdest pedophilia bust subplot) has major sociological implications; mainly, which comes first: ethics, or your tribe? While some moments will make you cringe, this is a movie you'll never forget - even if only for its bizarre but unique makeup (recently nominated for an Oscar).

PS: Watching this, curious how similar the script structure was to Let the Right One In, the child vampire love story. Of course, now I realize were both written by the same writer. 

PPS: Thanks again, Ali S.! Nice surprise.

Mo says:

Khartoum (1966)

Director(s): Basil Dearden, Eliot Elisofon. Cast: Charlton Heston. 128 min. UK. Adventure/War.

Another of the "mad-man-in-the-desert" myriad of movies made in the wake of Lawrence of Arabia's success - including Charlton Heston on a crusade to "save his people", the Egyptians, through the Nile ... again (I kid you not). But when it came to panoramic desert spectacles, David Lean had already set the bar too high. So the only mention-worthy element, is one performance, so brilliant, that even with a mid-movie discovery of the actor’s identity by mere chance, I still couldn’t recognize him. Yes ... that good. See if you can guess without looking at the cast list.

Mo says:

Rocketman (2019)

Director: Dexter Fletcher. Cast: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard, Gemma Jones. 121 min. Rated R. UK/USA/Canada. Musical/Biography.

Obviously, to be compared with the other recent singer/musician biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody. But this is another entity. Rocketman, as opposed to Bohemian, is a musical, and characters breaking into song and dance in the middle of a serious conversation, drains the dramatic pull of Elton John’s life story - already much less colorful than Freddy Mercury's (hello? Elton is still alive). The movie does create transcendental moments of musical glory befitting the songs being sung, but even those aren't as awe-inspiring as Bohemian's rare but mentionable ones. Career-defining act by Taron Egerton.

Mo says:

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

Director: Michael Dougherty. Cast: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn. 132 min. Rated PG-13. USA/Japan. Action/Fantasy.

An exercise in stupidity. Monster battle after monster battle after monster battle, decimating cities and making the apocalypse look fun, connected by a story-less story. After we learn (spoiler alert yeah sure ha ha ha) except for Godzilla all other monsters came from outer space, as a companion viewer chided, you wonder how aliens always decide to unleash their carnage on none other than the capitals of each country. The saving grace, are a multitude of great actors who deliver insane dialogue while apologizing to us from the bottom of their hearts, that hey ... someone needs to pay the bills.

Mo says:

Christopher Robin (2018)

Director: Marc Forster. Cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell. Rated PG. UK/USA. Adventure/Comedy.

Comparable to how Spielberg showed us the dilemma of Peter Pan growing up in Hook, Marc Forster illustrates another fictional character's adulthood tragedy, and how elements of the past try to pull him back into the innocence of childhood. The reason Spielberg’s narrative worked and Forster's doesn't, is that the great auteur told a cautionary tale for adults, while this movie is a warning for ... kids? When they haven’t even experienced the complexities growing up entails? There are some funny correlates from Pooh stories in a fictional Christopher Robin's adult life, but overall, this is a misdirected message.

PS: Okay, there are some memorable Winnie the Pooh quotes in there: "I always get to where I’m going by walking away from where I’ve been."

Mo says:

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019)

Director: Alex Gibney. 119 min. Documentary.

The fake-it-to-make-it story of Elizabeth Holmes, the twenty-something entrepreneur who set out to revolutionize medical lab testing, was already told in John Carreyrou's fascinating book, "Bad Blood'. So when prolific documentarian Alex Gibney directs, you expect greater use of the visual tools film offers - not just a first half reveling how Holmes impressed others, and a second half disproving how she failed them. What irked me, was showing how another documentary grand-master, Errol Morris, promoted Holmes by filming some of her ads, and in effect, making him look like an idiot. Trust me - there's much more intrigue to this tale.

Mo says: