Continuing my look at the films currently making up slots 11 through 50 on my 2021 list, today I’m focusing on a grab bag of titles from the comedy, family, documentary, sci-fi and horror genres.
My opinions of these movies, and all the movies I’ve mentioned this week, vary widely, but I can say that at the very least I recommend seeing all of them. Tomorrow, I will cover some movies that fall on the other side of the ledger.
In alphabetical order…
I last posted an installment of my ‘What the Kids Are Listening To’ series more than a year ago, before the coronavirus had even reached U.S. soil. The final song back then was The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights,’ sitting at #15 prior to the release of his album After Hours.
‘Blinding Lights’ is at #11 now, after setting a record by becoming the first song in history to spend a full year in Billboard’s Top 10. It holds the record for the most weeks spent in the Top 5, Top 10, Top 20 and Top 40. If only the rest of the world could have had as rewarding a year as that song.
It took the breakup of Ariana Grande’s engagement to land her her first Billboard #1 single. Just minutes before the episode of Saturday Night Live where Pete Davidson acknowledged the unlikely couple’s split, Grande dropped this sweet ode to her exes.
In the first verse, she namedrops her four celebrity mates: Davidson, rapper Big Sean, dancer Ricky Alvarez, and late rapper Mac Miller. She doesn’t specify which taught her love, patience or pain, or why one of the four apparently didn’t teach her anything.
Is it possible to not like James Corden? In addition to his immense talent as a comic and a singer, he seems like the most genuinely nice human being on earth.
He’s so likable that, in his ‘Carpool Karaoke’ segments and other skits, he has the ability to make anybody next to him — even Justin Bieber — instantly likable too.
Ariana Grande’s new album, Sweetener, is still a month away, but she just dropped one of the more impressive and aggressively bizarre videos I’ve seen in awhile. It’s kind of the apolitical pop diva version of Child Gambino’s This is America in that its every frame invites dissection.
The premise of the song ‘God is a Woman’ is that Grande’s sexual prowess will make her lover believe that, indeed, God is a woman. The video depicts Grande in a series of visually arresting scenarios that symbolize this divine status.
Meet Me In Montauk 