First Christmas Under the Orange Moon

Welp, if nothing else, there's happiness amongst the Kasdans this weekend: Lawrence, because his baby of many fathers Star Wars did well at the box office again, and son Jake, because the Jumanji sequel came in a close second.  Just saw the original Jumanji on sale at Walmart!  Couldn't bring myself to buying it, though.  Sorry, Robin... I guess I was just more of a fan of your talk show appearances to push the movies you were in.
But dayamn, man!  We got FIVE debuts this week!  That's like... half of the top ten!  We got Pitch Perfect 3... these days no one wants to risk a fourth installment of anything, but really, the "Pitch Perfect" idea will probably live on and re-manifest itself somehow, sometime in the future.  Meanwhile, Hugh Jackman's non-Wolverine-related latest looks like it's on its way to bombing... and hard.  But hey!  It's got that La La Land magic attached to it!  You don't usually see that, a film that says "From the Academy Award winning lyricists of..."  Move over, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber... La La Land lives on!
There's also Matt Damon's latest, as well as Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor's latest called Downsizing.  One of my more jaded friends pointed out that it's basically a knock-off of... The Incredible Shrinking Man?  One of those.  Of course, that one was an homage to Edgar Allan Poe, as well as a searing commentary on the Blacklist... probably.  I'm confident that Downsizing is more of a searing commentary on Capitalism of these, the late 2017s, the post-Amazon world where Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are jockeying for first place; meanwhile the rest of us have to go to extreme measures like that just to make ends meet.  Apparently, too depressing a premise this weekend.  Also, they're trying to sweep up Damon in this next new wave of powerful men getting toppled because of charges of sexual harassment.  My favorite new one is that Miss America pageant guy... not Trump, but a different guy.  He sent out a bunch of nasty emails, but they can't throw him out on harassment charges... at least, not against any of the women.  He doesn't go that way.