Nostalgia, silliness and oddly placed innuendos meld to make Trolls Band Together

In this newest installment of the Trolls franchise we find Poppy, queen of a large gathering of adorable trolls, and Branch, her eternally sour but also sweet boyfriend prepping to celebrate a wedding between their unlikely friends King Gristle and his sweetheart Bridget, both being the once-hated Bergens. Celebrations are halted when Branch’s older brother John Dory crashes the party to ask for his help to save Floyd, their sibling whose been kidnapped by a nefarious pop duo. John Dory believes the only way to save Floyd is to bring all the brothers back together to reform BroZone, their long-since dissolved boy band.

In Top Gun: Maverick the sky is no limit

Two years after it’s initially-scheduled release, the Top Gun sequel fires up its afterburners and buzzes into real, live, actual movie theaters this Memorial Day weekend. A rare case of a sequel that surpasses the original, this cinematic airshow was worth the wait. As much as a dose of propagandist fantasia might’ve tided us over during the spring 2020 “lockdowns”, this spectacle of military prowess rendered in air ballet really does benefit from the huge screen, big sound, rowdy audience experience. If you can set aside the many obvious reservations, give your brain a little vacation. The sky is dope, revel mindlessly in its majesty.

Cow provides a clear-eyed look at the other side of the dairy aisle

In her clear-eyed documentary, Andrea Arnold and her camera follow a “nice-faced dairy cow with a strong attitude” named Luma to depict several years of the animal’s life on a mid-sized British farm. It’s not all bad — polite caretakers, grazing outside, warm summer nights sleeping under the stars — but no narration is needed to accentuate the complete weirdness of modern animal husbandry.

SIFF 2021: There Is No Evil & Under the Open Sky

Official Competition films There is No Evil and Under the Open Sky had found a perpetual spot on my “watch later” queue, but when I saw that they secured top spots among the audience awards, I knew that I had to use the waning hours of SIFF Privilege to make them my Closing Night double feature (with apologies to Rosa’s Wedding).