Your Weekend Film Round-Up: What To See (And What To Skip) In The Theatres

By Original-Cin Staff

Hey, fellow ponderers! Did it ever strike you that if The Beatles had never existed, the Korean boy band BTS would probably use different initials?

A scene from Isabelle.

One thing’s for sure: rom-com specialist Richard Curtis (Notting Hill, Love Actually) and director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire) would not be making a speculative rom-com about a rip in the space-time continuum that causes everyone in the world, except for one struggling singer/songwriter (Himesh Patel) to forget the existence of Lennon-McCartney-Harrison songbook. Yesterday (Rating: B-) has a romantic interest (Lily James), and comedy (Kate McKinnon as a record company shark plus Ed Sheeran as himself) in a movie package that our reviewer Thom Ernst calls “improbable, imperfect and delightful.”

Otherwise, things at the movies are horrifying this week and not in a good-evil way. Annabelle Comes Home (Rating: C) the 666th umpteenth film in the Conjuring movie universe, featuring a malevolent pop-eyed Victorian doll who gets out of her display case in a paranormal museum and unleashes an assembly line of terrors on some adolescent girls, in what Liam Lacey calls a “just-competent-enough” feature.

Not even that much can be said for the Canadian-made Isabelle (Rating: D) starring Adam Brody and Amanda Crew as expectant new home owners terrorized by a demonically possessed young woman in a wheelchair. In 2019, seriously?

Finally, in this week’s extremely essential Original-Cin podcast, we preview Spider-man: Far From Home and Midsommar, the new Swedish-set horror film from Hereditary director Ari Astor (both opening July 2), as well as discussing the here-there-and-everywhere cultural legacy of The Fab Four.

Have a great long weekend.