July was easily the busiest month I've had this year. It wasn't close, really. While I returned to the office at my grown-up job, I also returned to the gym to begin what I'll call my rehab from the Achilles tear I suffered in June. Things have been picking up in the entertainment world as well, as we saw a few new albums and a lot of new movies hit theaters this month. I'm still behind on my reading, so we may have to put more of a focus on that throughout August. In the meantime, here's what made its way to my eyes and ears in July. Enjoy!
What I Watched
Zola I saw Zola about a week after I saw F9: the Fast Saga, a movie that truly tested my "I'll go to the theater to see any movie" mantra. Thankfully, Zola was exactly what I needed to restore my faith in the film industry. For every contrived reboot and unnecessary sequel, a movie like this comes along and proves that you can make a good movie about anything if you have talented, dedicated people making. Case in point, this movie, based on a viral Twitter thread, is a slick representation of the late late-night life in Florida, and unflinching performances from Taylour Paige and Riley Keough. Despite a movie whose characters constantly say that its plot is "kinda long, and full of suspense," this feels like a breeze to watch.
Black Widow Marvel's return to the big screen after three consecutive successful series on Disney+ wasn't without controversy, but Black Widow certainly brings the goods we're used to from the film industry's most important and successful franchise, just as we've come to expect. Despite the movie's large ambitions of giving Scarlett Johanssen's run in the MCU a proper sendoff, introducing Florence Pugh as a major player in the franchise's future, introduce David Harbour and leave him with an ambiguous enough fate that he can show up unexpectedly in the future as well, and still fine enough time to keep Rachel Weisz occupied, this is a great example of how to create a movie that keeps the energy up throughout with some slick action. While it's important that if I dinged F9 for making non-super-powered people immortal, I also mention that there's no way Natasha should have survive the first third of this movie, but once those scenes pass, you're left with the story of a dysfunctional family trying to make the best of what their lives have become, despite all their shortcomings. Are you listening, Vin Diesel? This really is possible.
Old Of all the movies M. Night Shyamalan has made, this is certainly one of them, and you wouldn't mistake it for anything else. It's got a weird premise that's not fully explained until the very end, some truly horrific acting, and a twist that tries to tie it all together that would have made the movie way better if they focused on it more throughout. While the explanation for the "spell" that causes all the beachgoers to age so rapidly is pretty ridiculous, there's more to the reveal that I found really interesting, and there's definitely worse ways to spend a couple hours. That's not what we should be striving towards, obviously, but given how some of Shyamalan's movies have gone, it could have been a lot worse. Also, not that it matters, but I've been asked to suspend disbelief a lot this year, but I have to draw the line somewhere, and that line was drawn when I was asked to believe that Thomasin Mackenzie and Alex Wolff are siblings. I haven't bought it, and I'll never buy it.
Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins One of the worst mistakes I've made in my life was trying to cook too much at once. I always end up messing up one thing, or all of it at once. That's what Snake Eyes ended up doing. It sacrifices what was a pretty interesting dynamic between Snake Eyes and the man who would become Storm Shadow, but there's too much lifting to be done in rebooting the GI Joe franchise that bogs down the movie too much. While I'm a huge Henry Golding fan, and Samara Weaving does a great job with what she's given, it's yet to be seen if there's enough interest in the studio to keep trying to make these things. At least they tried to make it right by assembling a promising young cast, I guess?
The Green Knight Come for Dev Patel's millionth consecutive great performance (if you've forgiven him for The Last Airbender), stay for the gorgeous and intricate world-building that David Lowery puts to film in another A24 darling of a movie. A slow-burn of a knight's tale that runs a few dozen yards ahead of you rather than holding your hand down the path, you'll be thinking about The Green Knight long after you've finished watching it, and you'll likely have its imagery in your head even longer.
What I Listened To
The Maine - xoxo: From Love and Anxiety in Real Time In the midst of their own career's emo revival, The Maine's third-consecutive release on their self-made 8123 Records is buoyed by monster pre-release singles like "Sticky," "April 7th," and "Pretender." Sadly, though, those singles proved to be the album's highlights, and the best songs on the album by a considerable margin. The Maine are going for a emo-tinged powerpop sound at times, which might seem redundant considering the band we're talking about, but they end up going over the top a few too many times for my liking. Still, "April 7th" is one of the best songs released this year, and it's likely you'll find a few more tracks you'll like if you give it a shot.
John Mayer - Sob Rock John Mayer's always been in on the joke and able to point fun at himself, but just like I mentioned with The Maine's album, there's a few times on Sob Rock that he takes it a bit too far. Sure, "Last Train Home" was an instant-classic single, but I can't get over the fact that one of our generation's most talented musicians actually named his song "Why You No Love Me" and even sings the title as the chorus. It's so disorienting that it kind of ruined listening to rest of the album for me. I think I need to give this another shot, but on my first few listens, it's another single-driven album as I'm hearing it.
Billie Eilish - Never Been Happier Just kidding.
Looking forward to next month
August is my birthday month, so let's hope the media that's released is worth celebrating. I'm very excited to see that James Gunn's The Suicide Squad is getting rave reviews, so that should be a great time at the theater. Meanwhile, Ryan Reynolds's Free Guy has some sneaky good buzz going for it right now, so I guess I'll be checking that out too. The MCU's first animated series What If... will premiere, and I'll be interested to see to what degree, if any, that it ties into the narrative being revealed in Phase 4. The albums released will be headlined by Deafheaven, when Infinite Granite is released on the 20th. I've also got my ears primed for the new CHVRCHES album Screen Violence, which will be released a week later, and has been providing a lot more social commentary than we've been used to hearing from the band, too. Plus, who knows? Maybe Kanye will put his time in the dome in Atlanta to good use and actually release Donda.
One last housekeeping item! In 2019, I made a list of all the movies that I saw and ranked them, which was an insanely fun exercice. 2020 kind of threw that practice out of whack, but I've just updated my list for 2021, so if you'd like to keep track of my running list of the best movies of 2021, you can check it out below. See you in September!
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