Thank you, Spider-Man.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — 3.5/5

I enjoyed it!! I enjoyed it the most of all the Ant-Man movies, even. The movie realizes Paul Rudd's Scott Lang's Ant-Man works best as the side character in an ensemble, and so it surrounds him with a team of people to react to. I still don't buy Paul Rudd as an actor who can do anything more than be a joke trying to play itself seriously; he can't carry an emotional weight. But the people around him help to share the burden. Even though it's a team effort, not everyone is given their equal moment to shine, which I would say is the movie's major flaw. Beyond that, I think people are uncomfortable by the constant tone-shifting in the movie, from Jonathan Majors' "serious actor" sensibilities and Kang's high-stakes drama standing next to a giant face with tiny arms, but I found it fun. It allowed the movie to be surprising, leading up to Marvel's most interesting villain yet: anxiety. Did Scott do the right thing? Did he do the wrong thing?
¯\ _(ツ)_/¯ 

None end happily.

Three Thousand Years of Longing – 2/5

A movie about the expansiveness of stories, and we're stuck in a hotel room for at least half of the runtime. It never really gets out of it. There are hints of interesting ideas to be explored, but no chemistry, no elevation. No magic.

If you can't win,

then all that's left is play.

Do you want to crash your car?

I swear it will change your life.

She doesn't take up too much room.

Free Solo – 3/5

It's an amusement park VR ride. You feel the tension of the ride jerking you up and down and around all over, but the actor at the center is just going through the motions. Alex Honnold is calm while the world around him is screaming. The tension is fun, and the movie lucks into an emotional conundrum at the center. She loves him. He loves her. But not as much as it. Their loves are in competition with each other. The world isn't always torn apart by hate, but by loves that don't quite match up. Best of luck to them.

You see, I expected complexity.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery – 3/5

Better than the first, in that the movie knows not to make its best character a side character. The first was a lovely set of actors who were given no character to play, while its one real personality sat at the edges. Here, Benoit Blanc has been set free to be Foghorn Leghorn and the rest of the movie sings along to his looney tune. He's Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote all at once, painting a false exit on a wall and waiting for others to run into it. But while better, still not great. The mystery is, self-admittedly, dumb, and the suspects still don't rise to the level of Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck. The whole movie could use a few more stinkers. 

I can't believe you're making this about you.

Bodies Bodies Bodies – 2/5

I'm not sure everyone was aware that they were meant to be making a comedy. An interesting idea in the center; I'd say give it a few years and let someone else take a crack at it. 

Every time you touch the system,

it sticks to you.

— Fiona Apple

We are only temporarily

who we are.

A show about everything.

Fleishman Is In Trouble – 4.5/5

What starts as a show about divorce and when does a divorce actually start? and when does your responsibility to another person end? slowly shifts into a show about the gentle pains and and not-so-gentle pangs of growing old, of expectations upended and accidental awakenings, of your true self being hidden within the myriad of all that you do; a blurry snapshot that you can't quite make out because of the speed in which you're moving. You're holding onto a vibration in the air and you get mad when it slips through your fingers. It always will. There's no good, no bad, just... you know, whatever (waves hand offhandedly into air). It's ups, it's downs, it's a circle that keeps going 'round. It's not that we're just, you know, figuring things out, it's that we are perpetually figuring things out. We gain, but lose something we don't realize until later. We lose, but gain in the same unwitting way. And on and on, forever. Every choice leads to a new path, and there's no guarantee of where it takes you; even the choice to choose to be better can lead to worse. All you can hold onto is this: you chose this. Does that make it hurt any less? Does that absolve the universe of its own responsibilities? What do you do with all that? Where can you put it? What space is big enough to hold the ineffable? In the end, we're all just going through it, and **it** just keeps going. Whatever it is (waves hand offhandedly into air). There's light at the end of the tunnel; it's not our salvation, it's a reminder that it will end. So then: grace, and patience, and gratitude. We're all just as lonely as each other, just not always at the same time. And as air moves aside to let us pass, we ask the same of you. 

Poems

are just fucked up sentences.

We already discovered the answer.

We just found it boring.

More important than life or death.

Welcome to Wrexham, S1 – 4/5

Light entertainment in the best way, traveling from person to person and thing to thing to tell stories of this town and this thing they do, never really grasping the high stakes that underpinned every episode. And then the end comes! Those last two episodes are masterclasses in 1) having an opinion built on everything we've seen thus far and 2) tension built on top of everything we've seen so far. It builds a great world of "familiarity"; like moving to a new town, not knowing if you really like it, not giving it as much credit as it's due; perhaps taking it for granted, until the prospect comes that it may be taken from you. 

Sports ¯\ _(ツ)_/¯ 

The last

of the olds.