Raya and the Last Dragon

At its best, this movie is charming, fascinating and even moving. At its worst, it is superficial, silly and sometimes downright stupid. So I guess you could call it a mixed bag. The strengths: beautiful to look at, emotionally true, and effective in its use of its Southeast Asian cultural milieu (at least as far as a total outsider can tell). The weaknesses: the story, though overall fine, has some real holes in it, not the least of which being, why isn’t everyone immediately on the same page once the dragon shows up, given she is otherwise treated like a god? A lot of the conflict should just melt away once everyone knows who they’re dealing with. Also, the secondary characters, though eventually integral to the climax and resolution, are at first really annoying (and kind of stay that way, to be honest). Given the foregoing, one might expect this to be a mid-range movie—but that would be grading on too steep a curve. After all, I did enjoy much of the film, and what I didn’t appreciate—besides the plainly-selling-to-toddlers silliness—may have been just me missing something culturally. So let’s let this one squeak in just at the barest lower echelon of the PURR range, and declare it a qualified success.

Don't Worry Darling

The Stepford Matrix. Sorry for that sorta spoiler, but one must acknowledge that this kind of thing has been done before. Which is not to say this outing is automatically inferior to its antecedents. Indeed, this flick has a lot going for it, including a powerful performance from lead Florence Pugh, a shrewd choice by director Olivia Wilde to use the trappings—and especially the music—of mid-century, golden age (of a sort) America as the staging for this investigation into what’s what in a given life, and a tight, well-crafted presentation that grips the viewer's interest throughout. Life may be but a dream—or more likely, a nightmare—but at least you can be assured that these two hours are hardly the worst you’ll ever have.

Eternals

Childish fancies plus relentless, fairly cynical mandatory diversity equals a silly, mostly absurd movie. More interesting storylines immediately suggest themselves to the viewer in the first five minutes; none are realized. Instead, we get a mostly tepid end-of-the-world scenario that relies on cliches for resolution. The main issue here is the attempt to be all things to literally all people, resulting in a story the comes across as less an artistic vision and more as the notes from a committee meeting. As many boxes are checked as possible, lest someone should feel left out and accordingly take to social media with profit-killing vengeance. A sequel is clearly set up, but I can’t imagine anyone actually wanting to watch it--certainly not anyone wanting to pay for it. You might just wind up eternally grateful if you skip this one.