Been a busy couple weeks getting value for my unlimited pass this month before heading home for the holidays
Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes- This was certainly a movie. Mostly competently made, albeit a bit bloated. Also felt like a weird character arc for the protagonist, given that he becomes the big bad of the main trilogy
Thanksgiving- An efficient and at times brutal little slasher. Eli Roth isn't always to my taste, but I enjoyed this one.
Napoleon- This felt both too long and too short at the same time. It felt like every major event/story point got a quick, surface-level treatment before they were jumping ahead a couple of years to something else. Joaquin Phoenix was good, even in the more absurd moments (i.e. me audibly laughing at his shouted "boats" line).
Godzilla Minus One- I'm not familiar with practically any of the Godzilla movies but this was excellent. Koichi was both well-written and well-acted, the ending might've felt hamfisted if not for the journey he went on over the course of the movie. The effects were solid, and Godzilla's appearances were sparse enough to feel special. Anecdotally, it's unusual for there to be more than 10-12 other people at most in most of the screenings at the theater I go to, but there were a solid 30-40 people at my Saturday afternoon Godzilla showing and people were laughing at certain lines and/or facial expressions, cheering for the parachute, and clapping when the credits started rolling. So glad I saw this on the big screen.
Silent Night- This was interesting, it might have succeeded more as an experiment/challenge than as a movie. Joel Kinnaman is shot in the throat in the opening scene of the movie and as such there's not one spoken line of dialogue. There's the occasional noise or single word from a character onscreen, a little bit of AM or police radio chatter, and a couple of brief text message exchanges shown, but that's it. It helps that it's a very straightforward revenge story that you've seen seen done in plenty of other action movies before, but the cast and crew also do a decent job of conveying things without words. Plus, it's John Woo, so you know the action's not going to suck.