If you’re a movie lover like me, you’ve been going to the movies a lot in the last two months. In the late fall and early winter season we’re bombarded left and right with “Oscar movies” that are releasing just under the wire so they can be top of mind for voters come award season. This also comes at the same time as the holidays when seeing everything is hard and writing about them afterwards is even harder.  Fret not though, because I still managed to see a lot of movies and I have some reviews to share. I’ll cover things in the order I saw them and I’ll condense them down a bit so we can stuff more reviews in here. So let’s go! Wonka Starring Timothée Chalamet as the titular chocolatier, this was a fun little musical that was full of both whimsy and heart. This really shouldn’t surprise you if you’re familiar with director Paul King who also made the Paddington movies. Despite adoring Paddington 2 though, I still went in with some reservations but quickly got over them as the movie got going. The supporting cast is great here too and I especially loved seeing Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa.  Chalamet as Wonka I thought was good, but not great. Having just watched both Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory before seeing this one I felt that, while charming and great in the musical numbers, Chalamet lacked the same weird and goofy energy that Gene Wilder and even Johnny Depp brought to the role. Overall it was just the least memorable of the three portrayals that I have seen. To contrast that with my friend Abby, she thought Chalamet was unbelievable! Verdict This was a sweet little movie that while it may not linger in my mind as long as the others, is still a great option for a little family trip to the theatre! Ferrari This was the next movie I saw and honestly I don’t have much to say about it. When the credits rolled, I felt pretty underwhelmed. I’m not a car guy at all, but I can enjoy movies about them for sure (I really enjoyed Ford v Ferrari a few years ago) so it wasn’t that.   The movie was directed by Michael Mann and starring Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, two things which actually had me pretty excited for this one, but the issue that stood out to me was the time in which the movie focused on. The impression I got from the movie was that the more interesting things about Enzo Ferrari’s life happened either before or after the events this movie covers. For example, the characters in the movie talk about how big the Le Mans race is so I was expecting us to build to that, but instead it shows a smaller race with less stakes. Now it becomes clear later into the race why it was important, but up until that moment, I felt less invested in what I was watching.  Another aspect that didn’t work for me is the heavy focus on Enzo Ferrari’s relationships with his wife and mistress. I think I’m just over relationships in movies. I understand how important they are to us in the real world and how impactful they can be on our lives, but I’ve also seen so many movies that are either about relationships or a big part of the movie is about a relationship that I just find myself bored watching the same stories and beats over and over again. I mean when I was excited for the movie about Enzo Ferrari it wasn’t because I was looking forward to seeing two different sex scenes with him you know?  Anyway, as far as positives go, Adam Driver was great as Enzo Ferrari and the car sequences were brilliant, but Driver wasn’t enough to overcome the boring ground they opted to cover and the racing scenes were so few and far between that I just left feeling disappointed.  Verdict I also saw this one with Kelsey who is definitely more of a car guy and was very keen for this movie and we both walked away with the exact same feeling. This isn’t an all encompassing biopic that covers the story of Enzo Ferrari’s life. It’s just a section in the middle and the time it covered just wasn’t compelling enough for me.  The car scenes were great though and Driver was good enough that it saves it from getting an extra thumbs down from me. If you’re on the fence about this one, I think you can skip it without missing much.  American Fiction Holy moly did this movie come out of nowhere for me. I dodged every trailer and really only heard about it because Jeffrey Wright (who stars in the movie as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison) has been doing the press rounds for award season for his role in this movie. I went in expecting a very serious Oscar bait kind of movie and ended up watching one of the funniest movies of the year with some pretty cutting satire all bundled together in a family drama.  I want to say as little as possible because I knew exactly nothing about this movie before I saw it so I think you should too. To that end I would also not watch the trailer if I were you. I read reviews from disappointed people that said the trailer gives away a lot of beats and solid jokes and I agree. Jeffery Wright is absolutely excellent in this movie. In fact the whole cast is perfect and everyone plays their roles so well. I especially loved Sterling K. Brown who plays Monk’s brother.  The script was amazing and the story unfolds in such an interesting way too. If you don’t know the story already, I never once knew exactly where it was all going, which is not a common experience