Well it’s 5 years later and these jerks are ready to go again. I mean, it’s been 10 years since the last movie was released, but it’s been 5 movie years, and the gang’s all here, except not.
Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) has refurbished her mother’s Greek hotel, finally. Too bad her husband Sky (no I cannot believe that’s his actual name) (Dominic Cooper) isn’t around to see it. Is there trouble in paradise?
No matter. She’s planning a huge party to unveil the new space. Everyone’s invited: the 
three dads (Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard), Mom’s best friends (Christine Baranski, Julie Walters) – even Grandma (Cher)! But because one party full of old people is pretty lame (could someone tell Sophie that?), the movie is 80% flashback. Meryl Streep’s character is now played by the lush and nubile Lily James, and we get to watch her have all the unprotected, close together sex with three different men (at least!) alluded to in the first movie, which resulted in all the daddy confusion.
If you liked the first movie, you’ll probably find it in your heart to like this one. If you like ABBA but not their overplayed radio hits, which all sound the same, you’re going to love this sequel, which contains all the songs that were too shitty to make the first cut, plus a couple of weak recreations of the title song, which they just can’t get enough of. Plus, who doesn’t love the spangly, bell-bottomed costumes that go along with it? This second movie is even more contrived than the first, amounting to a less satisfying story. Basically, you’ve got a handful of unknown ABBA songs from deep in the back catalogue, and you’ve got to contort the script to make them fit (see ‘Waterloo’ for an excellent example of this).
Everyone else in the world has been swept away by the sheer joy of a second ABBA musical while I’m still not over the first. Call me grumpy cat – I don’t get the appeal.
what went wrong. So he does that thing where he circles the date on the calendar and his heart is filled with revenge lust and he has a beard so you know he’s morose and broody. His mentor (Andy Garcia) is more concerned for his love life and maybe his personal safety, and both of those might be threatened by a mysterious government agent (Sofia Vergara).
such. But he was more than gay or straight; he was fluid. He could wear a unitard on stage so confidently that he made people forget to be so judgmental. He won them over with his energy and stage presence. But after the show, Freddie was his own man. He did not lead a PG-13 life, so the PG-13 movie that attempts to immortalize it is of course sanitized. There is not much in the way of sex or drugs but the rock and roll – oh man.
much else; they mostly spend their days blending into the scenery. Literally. So when a beautiful woman (Catherine Zeta-Jones) arrives in town, they and the whole town are ripe for some shaking up. Rose is an intoxicating distraction until it turns out there’s an actual German spy in town and the home guard is too busy thinking dirty thoughts about Rose to notice his intelligence gathering, let alone catch him.
years of estrangement (her ex-wife didn’t feel Jheri should have any contact with the kids). Jheri helps another son, Wade, run his business, and is grandmother to his two kids, who don’t know Jheri is transgender. After hiding her true identity for so long, this lying in reverse doesn’t sit well with Jheri either, though she wants to spare her grandkids any pain or bullying.
The main events in Bad Times at the El Royale unfold over the course of one rainy night on the Nevada-California border. The El Royale is literally split in half by the state line, so the first challenge for each guest is to decide in which state they’d like to stay. Unfortunately, things have gone downhill at the El Royale ever since it lost its Nevada gaming licence, so the hotel is essentially deserted. Ringing the bell doesn’t summon the desk clerk; it takes several seconds of beating on the “staff only” door to wake him. Once he’s up, the guests are able to check in – there are four at first, and two more will show up before the night is done. Hardly any of the guests are what they seem, and only a couple of them will live long enough to check out in the morning.
recognizable, following in steeply descending order by Becky G, Josh Peck, and Tara Strong, if those names mean anything to you. The animation is okay, but let’s just point out the elephant in the room: there’s already an animated franchise wherein garden gnomes come to life. Not only does this stink of plagiarism, it’s just annoyingly unoriginal. This is animation, people. You can draw anything. You could have made a retro Tupperware set come to life, or some grubby fridge magnets, or discarded winter parkas.
class, wherein they dissect a human cadaver for the first time. We get to know a handful of students – who they are, how they got here, what inspired them. We get appreciate their differing cultural and religious backgrounds, and how that influences how they view science, medicine, human remains, life beyond death. Curiouser still, we get to know the cadavers in some way. Their human identities remain anonymous but their bodies become a tree of learning, a gift to the thousands of patients each of these future doctors will one day encounter.
