3 Idiotas
Fist Fight
Baby Driver
This movie has an memorable soundtrack, and some of the best set pieces in recent memory. The car chases are exhilarating enough on their own, but the fact that they are actually choreographed to music pushes them to another level - the car is always an extension of Baby's (Ansel Elgort) eyes and ears. I obviously enjoyed Wright's signature comedic quick cuts and splashy color palate. The ending ultimately dampened the film for me. Doc's (Kevin Spacey) heel turn from being completely ruthless to having a soft spot for young love was way to sudden. The idea that he would be totally ok with his entire operation crumbling and not bear any ill will to Baby, the one that brought it all down, contradicts everything the film has told us about him up to that point. Also, if Doc's past love really gave him so much empathy for what Baby and Debora (Lily James) had, then why did he threaten to hurt Debora in order to coerce Baby into continuing to drive? As much as the other elements of the movie worked, this was a glaring flaw.
Spiderman: Homecoming
I generally enjoyed this movie; I appreciate that it wasn't a third attempt at Spiderman's origin story (although I don't get how they could go two hours without a single reference to Uncle Ben). This movie is well-cast (although it's inexcusable that Marissa Tomei for the sole purpose of being ogled by half of Queens). The Vulture (Michael Keaton) is easily one of the MCU's best pre-Killmonger villains. I love that he is given clear motivations from the start. I did think his turn to evil was taken a little too far though; if the movie is partly about Peter embracing his place in the world and passing on a place with the Avengers to focus on protecting his community, then I would prefer the Vulture's actions not escalate to the point of being monitored by Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.) and the FBI. My main issue though, and the reason why I don't think this film will endure like Sam Raimi's trilogy, is Peter's character arc with the Spiderman suit. Midway through the film, after Peter recklessly tries to stop Vulture from making an arms deal, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) gives Peter the line: "If you're nothing without this suit, then you shouldn't have it". It's sort of the converse of the classic great power/great responsibility line: If Peter can't be responsible, then he shouldn't possess great power. At least, that's what I thought the movie was saying. But in the climax of the movie involves Peter taking on the Vulture just as he tried to do before, and the turning point occurs when Peter summons the strength to lift up a piece of rubble that is crushing his body without physically wearing his Spider-man suit. If, as I originally thought, the suit was a metaphor for power that must be earned through responsibility, then I'm not sure how Peter actually learned the lesson Tony wanted him to learn. On the other hand, if Peter's arc was just to learn to be powerful without literally wearing the suit, I think that's pretty hollow and juvenile.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I believe The Force Awakens is an extremely well-made movie with very little to say. Rogue One is the opposite: the editing is a editing is a complete mess, but it has interesting themes about war and rebellion. I think The Last Jedi is the first of the new movies that succeeds on both a technical and storytelling level.
I'll get the flaws out of the way first. This movie is way too long - there is absolutely no reason it needed to be 2.5 hours. It has almost as many endings as Return of the King. The tonal shifts, specifically undercutting serious moments with bad jokes, were jarring, almost Martian-esque. Almost all of the twists (except for Luke being a projection) were fairly predictable. Finn and Rose being the only ones to survive the giant ship-crash was pretty silly. Rose's (Kelly Marie Tran) line about saving what we love, and not fighting what we hate, was complete nonsense, and it contradicts literally everything else that happens in the movie.
All of these flaws are low-hanging fruit. The movie is does a great job with its themes, namely the importance of looking forward and not backwards. One of my issues with The Force Awakens is how much it panders to nostalgia. Conversely, one of my favorite aspects of The Last Jedi is the reverence and adulation the movie has for its next generation of heroes. Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega) are talked about as heroes in their own regard, while Leia (Carrie Fisher, getting the chance to kick ass and take names the way she always deserved) gracefully cedes control to Admiral Holdo, and then, after he absorbs lessons on tact and restraint, Poe. Luke only manages to find closure when Yoda burns the ancient Jedi texts; this eventually gives Luke the realization that, rather than dwell on his past failures, he can let failure teach him how to ensure a better future. Even Kylo Ren gets an interesting arc when he decides to take out Snoke and forge his own path rather than continuing to try to be Daarth Vader 2.0. I also love that Rey's parents are revealed to be nobody, emphasizing that heroism is about who you are, not who your parents were.
I've listened to a lot of the criticism of the film: almost of all of it is nitpicking, or a "plot hole" that the film actually addresses.
- "Why doesn't Holdo just tell Poe the plan?" Because she sees that Poe is (at that time) impulsive, and won't be careful enough with that information. She's right - Poe tells Finn and Rose, which allows DJ (Benicio del Toro, creating the galaxy's most memorable side character since Lando Calrissian) since to find out the plan and out the rebellion to the First Order.
- "Why is Luke not the same Luke from the original trilogy?" Because he is haunted by guilt, and he's spent decades alone on a distant island. The same thing happened to Yoda after the Clone Wars.
- "How dare they make Luke drink that milk?" "How dare they make Leia look like Mary Poppins?" I literally cannot believe anybody was bothered by this for more than ten seconds.
- "Leia isn't that strong with the force! And that's not even how the force works!" This franchise has literally made up the rules as it went along regarding the force. Nothing about what Leia did seems is any less logical than the other things past characters have done with the force. Leia is force sensitive, and once she learned that fact in episode 6, it makes sense that she would hone her skills with the force over 30 years until she could float back into the ship.
- "I expected them to reveal Snoke's back story!" To be fair, I would've liked to see how Snoke started recruiting Kylo Ren, but I don't think the movie absolutely needed this, because it does enough to motivate Kylo's turn to the dark side. If anything, blame J.J. Abrams for setting up mystery boxes rather than telling a complete story.
- "There was no point to the casino planet!" I will concede this part could have been shorter; I would've preferred if they were looking for DJ from the start. But I love that the the stables scenes, and Rose's exposition, illustrate the human toll that war and tyranny have taken on the galaxy.
The Last Jedi isn't perfect, but I think most of the criticisms miss the forest for the trees. I know that for future Star Wars marathons, this is the one I'll most look forward to re-watching after the original trilogy.
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Both of these movies cover the battle of Dunkirk, and Britain's decision to refuse conditional surrender to Germany. But they cover different perspectives of this moment in time, and I responded to them completely differently. I really wanted to get into Darkest Hour, and Gary Oldman's disappearance into the role drew me in for awhile, but I think it made a couple of mistakes that took the air out of the movie. First, the battlefront itself is made into an abstraction. We see very little of the actual pain being endured by the British citizens (which makes the subway scene feel especially hollow and one-sided). I feel like the parliamentary debate would have been much more compelling in the moment if juxtaposed with the cost of continuing to fight. Second, I never felt any tension from Neville Chamberlain's (Ronald Pickup) subterfuge subplot. Pickup's performance is way too nonchalant - he plays it like he just wants to go home, heat up a cup of tea, and leave Churchill to deal with the war. The result for me is a movie with a lot of bluster but few dramatic stakes.
Dunkirk had almost no bluster whatsoever - and yet I'm hooked from second we see a soldier desperately drinking water out of a hose and tucking away a "we surround you" flyer before sprinting away from sudden gunshots that we can't see, but can hear all too well. The menacing ticking clock, and Tommy's (Fionn Whitehead) terrified face as he just barely avoids friendly fire, foreshadow that this won't be your typical war film. Personally, I love that Christopher Nolan made a war film that says it's more than OK to be afraid, and that there's virtue in mere survival (The Last Jedi makes this same point, but much more clumsily).
Dunkirk tells its story in three timelines (the land, sea, and air), that operate on three different time scales (one week, one day, and one hour, respectively). Despite this incongruity, the film's editing makes each timeline feel equally urgent and perilous - no matter how much time these soldiers have, it never feels like enough. This urgency is magnified by depth of the horizon in all the shots (home is so close you can almost feel it), the amount of soldiers that are packed into the frames, and drowning scenes in which the water cuts the frame in half (it makes you feel like you're drowning, and reminds you of how little water is separating everyone from life and death). The film doesn't offer much traditional character development, but it earns your empathy by immersing you in the same sheer visceral terror.
Cillian Murphy and Kenneth Branagh are excellent, as usual. Farrier (Tom Hardy) gets almost no words, and yet his eyes alone create a sense of palpable dread and urgency from the cockpit. But the character that elevates Dunkirk from good to great is Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance). I wasn't a huge fan of Rylance's Oscar-winning performance, so naturally I was floored by his performance in a year when he didn't even sniff a nomination. The second time I watched Dunkirk, I listened carefully for any hints to for any hints into Mr. Dawson's past, but nothing is explicitly given. The script mentions that his son died earlier in the war, but Rylance's assured direction, knowledge of the fighter planes, and warm empathy for Cillian Murphy's trauma, lead me to believe he fought in World War I. In any case, Rylance is a magnetic presence. He simultaneously fills every scene with hope and grit that never teeters into bravado. He represents a generation who stood up to Germany when surrender would have been easier, and he takes pride in helping the next generation learn to do the same. He's not your typical war movie action hero, but he's exactly the hero every soldier on that boat needed on that day.
Wonder Woman
Logan
These are two superheroes for grownups, exhibiting a level of maturity that simply isn't there in the other DC films and most pre-Black Panther Marvel films.
Wonder Woman's script is pretty messy at the start, with the stilted dialogue and clumsy foreshadowing. Some of the action scenes (the battles at Themyscira and No Man's Land) are exhilarating, whereas others (the battle at Veld, and the final battle with Ares) were somewhat confusing to follow. The final battle has so many unnecessary special effects that I could barely follow the actual participants. But these issues don't matter, because the film is powered by a consistent emotional message: humans (most often men) have a horrific capacity for destruction, but an equal capacity for love and compassion when given a push in the right direction. The movie has humor that arises organically, but it never deliberately undercuts its moments of emotional vulnerability with humor.
I really loved that how well movie showcased the power of Diana's shield, bracelets, and lasso of truth more than her sword. I also loved all the side characters: Etta Candy (Lucy Davis) vying for respect in a male-dominated world, Sameer (Said Taghmaoui), whose skin color prevented him from pursuing an acting career; and Charlie, a discharged soldier suffering form PTSD. All this emphasizes that Wonder Woman is not a superhero defined by her aggression, but her commitment to defending anyone who has ever been disenfranchised or oppressed. Of course, none of this would work without Gal Gadot's performance as Wonder Woman. She's just so earnest in her amazement with the human world, while maintaining steely conviction in her pursuit of Aries.
If Wonder Woman is unflinching in its hero's optimism, Logan is unflinching in its hero's cynicism. I love how James Mangold draws inspiration from one genre (the spaghetti western) to explore another genre (the superhero movie) from a new angle: what happens when a superhero is forced to to confront his/her own mortality? Logan (Hugh Jackman) is initially fed up with the world, and wants to run as far away from it as possible. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), has come to terms with his limited time, and would rather fully experience the world rather than continue taking medications that sedate his present just while delaying the inevitable future. Jackman and Stewart create such palpable tension between these two characters that we don't need any exposition to understand just how much the Westchester incident strained their relationship.
The movie has incredible action throughout (especially when Laura (Dafne Keen) first shows her primacy at the smelting plant), but it never loses sight of this dramatic conflict between Logan and Charles. Everything from the plot flows naturally from this conflict: Logan always wants to run away and fend for himself; Charles insists that they have an obligation to help others when they can, first with Laura and then with the Munson family. Logan's character arc is a slow burn, but that makes it all the more satisfying in the end when he realizes that you can't let the possibility of pain or loss stop you from caring about those around you. The movie starts with Logan wanting to leave the world in spirt but not in body; As the X on his grave symbolizes, it ends with him leaving the world in body but not in spirit.
This performance is the perfect swan song for Hugh Jackman; at this point he can play Wolverine in his sleep, putting on a stoic face while struggling to hold back layers of rage and frustration. Patrick Stewart is just as great in making the most of his limited time. But the real revelation is Dafne Keen. The sheer physicality of her performance is impressive enough, but she's even better when she's expressing her curiosity, childish impulses, and above all, her heartbreaking disappointment with Logan. I can't wait to see her carry on the Wolverine legacy.
The Shape of Water
If Guillermo del Toro's masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth, was Alice in Wonderland for Adults, then his latest film is Beauty and the Beast for adults. As hilarious as the fish sex memes are, I think it would be really stupid if this movie were remembered just for that. This movie has dazzling cinematography, and one of the best scores of the year. I think this movie's reverence for classic cinema is a subtle plea from Guillermo del Toro to watch movies actively, and pay attention not just to the dialogue, but what the director communicates visually. All of the supporting actors are perfectly cast (especially Michael Shannon and Octavia Spencer) and give great performances. But none of this would work if Sally Hawkins didn't give the performance of her life as Elisa Esposito; she can't talk, but her eyes and her feet tell us everything we need to know about what is going on in her mind. The way she emotes the monotony of her life at the start before lighting up around The Creature makes the romance feel beautiful rather than comical.
The Shape of Water is about learning not to silence marginalized groups (as Michael Shannon literally does during the horrifying sex scene with his wife), and instead affording them the same humanity we do ourselves (as Elisa does in the aforementioned sex scene with monster, one of mutual compassion and tenderness). The movie contrasts the point of view of a straight, able-bodied white man (Shannon) with that of a mute woman (Hawkins), a black woman (Spencer), a gay man (Richard Jenkins), and The Creature (Doug Jones). Colonel Strickland (Shannon) assumes that he is successful who deserves the car that successful men drive and the perfect nuclear family you see depicted in art. To him, the other characters are beneath him, and the monster is merely his prized asset. Strickland brutally tortures The Creature until its health deteriorates, leading Elisa to plot to free it. Elisa, and eventually the other characters, come to see The Creature as deserving their empathy by drawing on their experiences of being seen as less human during the 1960's. Strickland is never able to arrive at this place of understanding; his eventual death comes when, instead of letting The Creature go free, he tries to shoot Elisa and The Creature, forcing The Creature to slash him out of self defense. The Creature may not be human, but it is Strickland who is the true monster.
Get Out
When Chris travels to meet the family of his white girlfriend, many familiar horror tropes emerge: the bizarre accidents, creepy suburban hellscape, people who seem a little too forward, and people who seem downright robotic. But none of these tropes appear in a vacuum. When Chris and Rose run into a deer that seems to appear out of nowhere, a cop suspiciously asks to see Chris's ID even though he wasn't driving, immediately establishing his outsider status in this community. The suburban hellscape has all white residents and all black servants, evoking images of antebellum plantations. Rose's brother and the family friends that show up aren't jsut too forward - almost everything they say not so subtly references age-old narratives which emphasize the utility of black bodies and feebleness of black minds. Every black person that Chris meets seems to be oblivious to his attempts to make a connection it the midst of obvious discomfort. As we later learn, all this is because Rose's family systematically abducts her string of black boyfriends, hypnotizes them, and implants the brains of older white men into them.
Even without the social commentary, this movie is creepy and gruesome enough to work as a pure horror movie. The twists are genuinely shocking, and Chris's escape always keeps you on the edge of your seat. But this movie works so well as a metaphor for the way America abducted slaves from Africa and exploited their bodies for profit. Peele draws a link between the racism that fueled the slave trade and the every-day racism, both casual and aggressive, that African Americans still face today. He doesn't just tell you these things - he shows you that living in a racist society feels like being the victim in a horror film; the difference here is that Chris (and Andre) already knows he is doomed from the start, but no amount of well-placed vigilance that would have saved most horror protagonists will save him from the sunken place. This is a simple, but beautifully haunting metaphor. Peele argues that we cannot outrun our racist past - we have to confront it head on.
I was lucky enough to see this in theaters twice (and I would've seen it a third time if I could!), and the movie gets even better on repeat viewings. There are a lot of lines with double meaning that foreshadow the twist. My favorite is when Rose's dad notes that his dad "almost got over" losing to Jesse Owens in the Olympics. Daniel Kaaluuya is great at keeping up a polite face for the white crowd while letting the audience in on his burning discomfort. Jut as Chris's eyes tell stories through his photographs, Kaluuya's eyes tell the audience the story of how weary he is of this world. I was also pleasantly surprised by Alison Williams. I was never a fan of her acting on Girls, but here I found her believable. On re-watch, there aren't obvious cracks in her facade, and you can see why Chris would assume ignorance rather than bluffing malice during her painfully misguided attempts to stick up for him. I also love how this movie is shot and edited during Chris's escape; there's no unnecessary camera work - every frame gives us all the information we need about what Chris sees and what he is thinking.
Get Out isn't perfect. I would've liked it better if they didn't show any of Rod's investigation; it would have made his re-appearance that much sweeter if you hadn't seen him for an hour and had perhaps even forgot he existed. I also prefer the ending in which the police show up and Chris accepts prison as the price for saving future black men from the Armitage family. But I understanding wanting to leave viewers with a sense of home. But those are minor complaints compared to everything Get Out gets right. This is the movie of the year.
Molly's Game
All the elements are there for this movie to work - and there are parts of it that do! As you would expect, the film is magic when Molly (Jessica Chastain) and Charlie (Idris Elba) are spitting Aaron Sorkin's dialogue back and forth. Unfortunately this movie spends way too much time having Chastain giving us exposition through voice-over. A little of this would have been fine to introduce and transition between scenes. Instead, I was baffled by how many scenes contained more voice-over than actual dialogue. This might have at least made some sense if the movie had set this up as Molly narrating her story to Charlie, but it didn't even do that. At the very least, it would have been nice to cut down on the voice-over during the poker scenes; voice-over before and after the hand is fine, but having Chastain talk through the hand rather than letting the players sweat it out prevented the tension from building up.
I also thought the ending, in which Molly's dad (Kevin Costner) shows up out of nowhere to mansplain Molly's motivations to her, was pretty clunky. I can certainly buy that her complicated relationship with her father played a huge role. But I couldn't agree with his outright dismissal of the idea that she started her own poker game because she was tired of men, such as Dean (Jeremy Strong) and Player X (Michael Cera), controlling her livelihood; everything Molly said in her flashbacks seemed to provide convincing evidence that this was, in fact Molly's prime motivation. The movie either doesn't understand its subject, or it doesn't understand its conclusions about its subject.
Phantom Thread
Mother!
Phantom Thread is about a fashion designer, Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis), and the women in his life: the seamstresses that file in every day to make his clothes, the girlfriends he exchanges like outfits, and his sister Cyril (Leslie Manville) who manages both his business and personal life. Woodcock is a slave to routine; any disruption makes turns him into petulant child (as we learn during a hallucination, this is mostly because he misses his dead mother, and rather than dealing with this grief in a healthy way he demands that the world coddle him in her place). It's not hard to read this movie as a critique of the egotism and obsession of (male) auteurs in all types of creative fields.
I really enjoyed watching the push and pull between Reynolds, Cyril, and Reynolds's new girlfriend Alma (Vicky Krieps) for control over each other. As great as Day-Lewis and Leslie Manville are, Krieps was the real stand out to me. I marveled at how well she could go between being goofy and buoyant, painfully uncomfortable, and outright horrified with the system that Reynolds created. I really thought the scene in which Reynolds sized her up for a dress was going to push her to the Oscar nomination. Unfortunately, the ending kept me from loving the scene. If there's one thing the movie wants us to know about Reynolds, it's that he is a helpless control freak. He wants to be coddled, but feel like he is the one in control. Thus, it didn't really feel right that he would completely submit to Alma's authority.
Mother! is, first and foremost, a biblical allegory. The house is Eden; Javier Bardem is God; Jennifer Lawrence is mother(!) earth, whose heart beats throughout the house; her baby is Jesus; the various unannounced guests (including Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhall and Brian Gleeson, and Kristen Wiig) re-enact stories such as Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the plagues, the last supper, crucifixion, and eucharist. In that sense, the way in which all the guests devolve into untamed violence can be seen as a deconstruction of Christian fanaticism. But the reason all the guests show up - Bardem's poetry - suggests that this movie is also a critique of auteur theory. Bardem's ego leads him to equate his creative work with Creation itself. He doesn't just allow the guests to stay - he welcome it. It doesn't matter that they attack his wife and destroy the house she built - he can't pass up on feeling like a god among men. The final reveal is particularly brutal; like Reynolds Woodcock, Bardem cycles through women, (literally) ripping out their hearts, crushing the heart to produce fuel for his creative process, and promptly replacing them. I think on a larger level, Darren Aronosky is cautioning against overly zealous hero worship in general, whether that be of artists or religious figures. Such zealotry just inevitably descends into madness. As much as I appreciate Phantom Thread's subtlety and acting, I think I prefer the deep allegory of Mother!
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Despite all the controversy surrounding this movie, there are parts of it that work. There's no denying the quality of the acting performances, especially the Frances McDormand's unwavering rage as Mildred Hayes. The movie great when it's talking about how for so long our society tried to bottle up female anger in order to protect male power structures. When people in the town try to tell Mildred to take down the billboards, they always mention the same refrain: "Chief Willoughby is a good man". They're more concerned with protecting the good ole boy network instead of dealing with her daughter's rape and murder. In Mildred, the movie explores the cathartic power of unfurled rage, but also the limits of rage in solving our problems.
Of course, the controversy exists for a reason. This movie has been thinkpiece'd to death, so I won't go into my issues too much, but I basically agree with a lot of the backlash: this movie is really tone deaf on the subject of institutional racism. In the movie, Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell) throws around racial slurs like a frisbee, and he is rumored to have tortured a black man in police custody. The man he tortured is never shown - he only exists in the abstract. The way we learn about this incident is when Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones) and later Mildred use this rumor to try to anger and provoke officer Dixon. The movie essentially treats this police brutality as a joke. The movie has three black characters. Two of them exist for no reason other than do Mildred's bidding; the third, Chief Abercrombie (Clarke Peters) is seemingly brought in to brought in to clean up the police department's image, and yet he never actually investigates the alleged torture incident (and curiously, he fires Dixon for literally throwing Red out of a tall window, but never actually prosecutes him for the assault). But the biggest issue is that as the movie winds down, it sends Dixon on a redemptive arc in which he decides to help Mildred look for her daughter's rapist/murderer. People have debated whether he has truly been "redeemed" by the movie's end, but to me it's beside the point; the movie never forces him to reckon with his own racism in a meaningful way, which is a problem for a movie that wants to make him a sympathetic figure.
In addition to the movie's issues handling race, I didn't care for the jarring tonal shifts, or the way it made fun of Peter Dinkelage's stature (only to later try to shame viewers for laughing at this). This movie isn't nearly as moronic as Crash, but the comparison is well-earned.
Blade Runner 2049
Confession: I am not a huge fan of the original Blade Runner. I don't think the performances from Harrison Ford and and Sean Young are nearly what they need to be; scenes that are supposed overflow with emotion, such as Rachel's replicant test, are incredibly stilted and awkward; the sex scene always read as a rape scene to me, which I don't think was the intent. The text of the movie provides strong evidence that Deckard is a replicant (Ridley Scott has confirmed this) and I think this is the wrong choice. The movie grapples with the question of whether empathy is what separates humans from robots; if so, it would be much more interesting if Deckard were a human, given that he exhibits so much less emotion and empathy than many of the replicants he is chasing (Harrison Ford felt the same way during the filming).
Because of this, I tempered my expectations going into Blade Runner 2049, and I ended up being pleasantly surprised. For starters, this is a much better-acted movie than the original. Harrison Ford conveys a sense of aching pain and regret that was sorely lacking in the original. Ryan Gosling is perfectly cast; I love how the movie slowly but sure chips away at his stoicism as he grapples with which side of history he wants to be on. Robin Wright is unsurprisingly great playing an efficient, no-nonsense Lieutenant. The real standout might have been Sylvia Hoeks; every time she's on screen you can feel her menacing presence, and tremble at what might happen next. The cinematography also improves on the original; I love how every frame is crafted to make certain colors pop against the faded backgrounds. But ultimately, what I love is that this film casts the replicant struggle as a metaphor for the struggles of all types of oppressed groups. The comparison to slaves was always there, but Niander Wallace's plot to take advantage of replicant breeding to manufacture a larger workforce mirrors society's insistence on controlling womens' reproductive rights. I think K's decision to let Deckard go rather than kill him for the rebellion made sense, but personally I would love to see a sequel about the impending replicant revolt.
Mudbound
This film's symbolism is subtle, but beautiful. Two families, one white and one black, live side by side on their Mississippi farms - a symbol of the two Americas forced to exist side by side. The three McAllan men are characterized to mirror the reckoning about to take place in America following the war: Pappy (Jonathan Banks) represents our ugly past; Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) a hope for a better future; and Henry (Jason Clarke) our uneasy present, with one foot in each direction. Henry McAllan is shameless about asking for help from the Jackson family without offering any in return; it's certainly not the first time white America took advantage of black labor. Ronsel Jackson is hailed as a hero while fighting in Europe - but unfortunately he must come home to an America that is still at war with its own black population. Unfortunately, progress often moves at a frustratingly slow pace - as if it's dragging through mud.
The Boss Baby
Coco
The Breadwinner
When a baby comes into a family, it feels like the baby is the new boss. And when you're a kid, it can feel like parental love and attention are finite resources, with the boss baby commanding the highest salary. This simple but elegant metaphor is the premise of Marla Frazee's picture book, and I think it could have worked extremely well as a short film. Unfortunately, it fails spectacularly as a feature-length movie. I won't go into all of the non-sensical plot contrivances (there's way too many to count), but almost all of them can be summed up as follows: this movie exists in a world in which every adult (as in, literally every single adult) is a complete idiot. The movie tries to get around this by suggesting that the events of the movie aren't what literally happened, but rather a story that adult Tim (Tobey Maguire) told his daughter to teach her about learning to share her parents' love with her new baby sister. If that is the case...why on earth would he tell a story that is so convoluted? I haven't seen The Lego Batman movie but I have no doubt it is more worthy of a nomination than this mess.
Like pretty much everybody, I really liked Coco. I really enjoyed the depiction of the afterlife as its own form of stratified, bureaucratic society. The immediate theme is the importance of following your passions, but for me the most resonant message was that can keep our beloved family members alive through our memories. I did have one huge issue with Coco though. The premise of the movie is that music is forbidden in the Rivera family, after the patriarch Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal) abandoned the family to pursue a musical career. The main conflict is that Miguel wants to play music, but his family refuses. However, in the end, it is revealed that Miguel's Hector meant the world to Miguel's great grandmother Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguia); Coco cherished all the times she would sing with Hector as a child, and the movie makes it seem like she bore no ill will towards her father for not returning home. If this is the case...it makes sense why Coco's mother would hate music, but it makes no sense to me why Grandma Coco would not pass her love of music down the family tree. This reveal, while satisfying in the moment, felt like it undercut the central conflict that drove the movie in the first place. This didn't ruin the movie for me (like I said, I liked it!) but this incoherent characterization definitely weakened it.
I loved The Breadwinner, and a couple days after seeing it I finally figured out why: this movie is Pan's Labyrinth set in Afghanistan. By having Parvana draw strength from the story of Sulyman when the going gets tough, the movie celebrates the immersive power of storytelling, how it gives us courage, wisdom, and hope even when we are surrounded by unspeakable terrors. This film, Like Pany's Labyrinth, is also about disobedience, as seen by Parvana (Saara Chaudry) dressing as a boy to support the family, Idrees (Noorin Gulamgaus) resolutely adhering to Taliban law, and Razaq (Kawa Ada) disobeying Taliban law to help get Parvana's father Nurullah (Ali Badshah) out of prison (he was arrested for teaching his daughters how to read). This movie argues that, just like Sulayman, women rise to the challenge - because they need to; it shows how rote obedience to partriarchal power structures breeds toxic men Idrees, but that the kind of disobedience displayed by Nurullah and Razaq can make a better world for all of us. I will concede that the animation quality of The Breadwinner doesn't remotely compare to that of Coco (or even Loving Vincent, which unfortunately I didn't see); but I think The Breadwinner has the superior story.
Call Me By Your Name
This is without a doubt the most beautiful looking movie I saw this year. Lush Italian scenery fills out the frames, and golden sunlight drenches them. It creates a surrealist, almost dream-like mood - which is probably how Elio (Timothee Chalamet) feels when navigating the thrill and heartbreak of first love.
I love some of the little things Luca Guadagnino does to tell us how much this means for Elio. At first Elio complains about having to share his room with the new guy - which makes it all the more meaningful later when Elio introduces Oliver (Armie Hammer) to the creek where he usually goes when he wants to be alone. The way the sex scenes are shot is also telling. When Elio is with Marzia (Esther Garrel), Guadagnino lets see it unfold in all of its awkwardness and comedy; the only exception is during the second sex scene, which in which it occasionally cuts to show Elio looking at the clock in anticipation of midnight (Guadagnino also leaves little of the infamous peach masturbation scene to the imagination). When Elio and Oliver begin having sex, the camera immediately pans away, recognizing how much more intimate this is for Elio and giving him the appropriate privacy.
Timothee Chalamet's performance reminded me a lot of Shameik Moore's in Dope - he conveys so much information with the smallest facial tics and expressions. In playing a teenage boy reckoning with his first love, Chalamet has to run through a gamut of emotions - cocky, confused, lustful, jubilant, heartbroken, anxious, humuliated (often at the same time). Chalamet handles all of these with ease, always giving what is needed to make every scene work. I also love how well Armie Hammer can transition between being so confident and assertive around others, and yet so vulnerable around Elio. If Elio is discovering new feelings, Oliver is re-visiting what I conjecture he had locked away out of guilt and shame. Elio's parents (Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar) both bring empathy and wisdom to every scene - I really like that they seem to understand exactly what is going through Elio's mind, and give him guidance while still allowing him the space to sort through his emotions on his own. As great as Stuhlbarg's monlogue was at the end (he reveals that he once denied himself a fling with a friend, and encourages Elio to appreciate what he and Oliver had rather than mourn what they lost), I think I actually was more impressed by Casar's performance when I watched it the second time. She knows all of the right buttons to push with Elio - from the poem reading, to confirming to him that Oliver reciprocates his feelings. I think it's telling that it is his mother whom Elio calls when he needs a ride home from the train station. All in all, this movie is feels as beautiful as it looks.
The Post
This movie, while certainly not as good as All The President's Men or Spotlight, is solid with timely themes. The movie's main theme is about the power and essentiality of a free press as a check on government deceit, but I appreciate the smaller themes that Spielberg communicates visually. The shot of Meryl Streep as the only woman in a packed boardroom isn't subtle, but it's effective in showing how pioneering Katherine Graham (Streep) was. I also didn't expect that the movie would tackle choices that Graham was forced to make between her social status and her professional status. I especially love when Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) comes to Graham's house while she is hosting a party; the movie pans from left to right, across one of the walls, showing Katherine moving from talking to her socialite friends on one side to Bradlee on the other side. Again, this not subtle, but effective. Spielberg uses this kind of framing to illustrate just how strong Katherine's relationships are with many upper class friends and politicians, and just how much Katherine is sacrificing when she decides to publish the pentagon papers against their wishes.
The Post isn't close to the best of Spielberg, Streep, or Hanks. But for that trio, even their B game is enough to make an enjoyable movie; I wouldn't have nominated it, but I can't complain about its nomination either.
I, Tonya
The best biopics don't just tell us about a person or event - they ask what that person or event tells us about the world we live in. To that end, I like that I, Tonya has a simple, consistent message: Tonya Harding's story illustrates the the way we, more or less by default, vilify poor people in America.
While I am familiar with the Kerrigan/Harding incident, I won't speculate on how much Tonya Harding really did know and whether the movie understates her role in the attack. I will say, I wish the movie hadn't made Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver) into a complete abstraction, and I think the movie gives Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) a little too much of a pass for suggesting sending Nancy death threats. But as the movie states, this is all based on interviews of highly dubious veracity, so I don't think the movie necessarily means to suggest that it believes Tonya is completely innocent - rather, it's depicting how Tonya sees things (and perhaps arguing that truth is in the eye of the beholder, for better or worse). The film shows us how Tonya was constantly vilified - by her mother, by classist skating judges, by her abusive boyfriend (side note: can we talk about how crazy it is that a guy with a restraining order against him was even allowed to own a gun??????) - so it would make sense that she would try to revise history to so as to, for once, not be the villain.
Whether you accept this framing device, or the tonal shifts (I actually didn't mind this: the movie shows how routine violence was for Tonya, and how humor was basically her only coping mechanism), there's no denying how great the two lead performances are. Margot Robbie is really great at selling us on how much skating means to Tonya, and how much it hurts that her economic class force her to constantly be skating from behind. But Alison Janney is even better as LaVona - she keeps leading you to believe she might just be about to show some hint of compassion and then knocks you down with another corrosive barb. She is a devastating tour de force.
The Florida Project
I know some people find Sean Baker's aesthetic gimmicky, but I really feel that his cinematography has functional, and not just stylistic purpose (I was a big fan of his movie Tangerine). In this movie, he consistently makes the people look small, and the buildings look gigantic. To the adults these buildings look garish and run down; but to the children the Magic Castle, the ice cream shop, the diner, and the grocery store truly feel like a palaces, every bit as majestic as the Magic Kingdom down the street (this is the rare movie in which the child actors nearly as good as the adults). By contrast, these shots of the motel emphasize the weight that Bobby Hicks (Willem Dafoe) is bearing, like Atlas. I absolutely love Dafoe's performance in this; he puts on a gruff exterior, but you can see clearly see the pain he carries in his face. He didn't ask to be anyone's caretaker, but he understands that he needs to. Just like in Tangerine, Baker does a masterful job of earning your empathy for characters - even when Halley (Bria Vinaite) makes poor choices, you always understand why; she's choosing what she really feels is the best from a series of bad options.
The ending was divisive, but I liked it. I thought it made sense to shoot it on an iphone, to emphasize the spontaneity of the moment. And whether it is real or just Moonee's (Brooklyn Prince) imagination, it fits with the movie's themes about making the best of bad situations.
Lady Bird
Columbus
Most of the praise for Lady Bird has emphasized the witty dialogue and the rangy acting performances. I love that the movie constantly tells us how different Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan, who may well surpass Kate Winslet as the actress with the most accents in her toolbox) and Marion (Laurie Metcalf) are through their arguments, but shows us how similar they are through their shared stubbornness and the repeated use of shots that frame them together. To me, the editing is what really stands out: nothing ever feels extraneous, and we get in and out of scenes with efficiency.
I have to be honest though, I didn't feel the same profundity in this movie as other viewers. The biggest take-home message that I got was the idea that home is just as special as anywhere else - if you let it be so. At first, Lady Bird doesn't realize this, declaring herself to be from the "wrong side of the tracks", pretending to live at a different address to impress a friend, and constantly talking about her pressing need to go east. The turning point to her arc, and my favorite shot of the movie, is the one of Lady Bird and Julie (Beanie Feldstein) on the bridge with the beautiful skyline - on this night, Sacramento can be Lady Bird's Paris or New York, a message that fully takes hold at the end when calls her mother at the end.
Lady Bird is a great movie about the complicated nature of our relationships with our parents. In my opinion, Columbus is an even better one. In many ways, Cassandra (Haley Lu Richardson) is the opposite of Lady Bird. She's reserved, constantly questioning her abilities, and loves her hometown and is afraid to step away. Her relationship with her mother is inverted: Cassandra hasn't been able to leave for college because she feels the need to stay home to care for her mother Maria (Michelle Forbes), a recovering alcoholic. In Lady Bird, Marion constantly tells us how disappointed she is in Lady Bird; by contrast, Columbus shows Cassandra's mother constantly disappointing her, and let's Richardson's face do all the talking.
Jin (John Cho) is the opposite: he's in Columbus while his father is in the hospital. His father is a famous architecture scholar, and he is in Columbus to give a talk, as Columbus is renowned for its modern architecture. Jin hadn't spoken to his father in over a year, in part because he felt like his father never showed him much affection. This movie beautifully explores the frustration of never being able to get out of your father's shadow; i love Cho's layered performance - he mourns, but with reservations, and also guilt about having those reservations. Even though Jin and Cassandra have very different relationships with their parents, it's really beautiful to see them bond over their pain, and over the architecture that towers over them.
If there's one message on this film's mind, its that human relationships are infinitely more complicated than the neat, structured nature of buildings and architecture. I absolutely love how Kogonada's use of static frames. It forces you to admire the buildings, accentuates movement within the frame (in one case, to great comedic effect), but most importantly: it makes you feel just as trapped in the city as Cassandra and Jin are.
All the Money in the World
I like how this movie explores our culture's obsession with money. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) equates money with happiness, and thus no amount is ever enough, compassion be damned. It is painfully on the nose about this, but it works.
Mark Wahlberg is unsurprisingly mediocre; he emotes his change of heart all at once, rather than gradually the way the movie seems to call for. Michelle Williams is surprisingly mediocre; it seemed strange that she was so reserved in her confrontations with Paul, or in her reunion with her son Paolo (Charlie Plummer). But the movie works because Christopher Plummer still a titan. He does his best Charles Foster Kane impression; he is menacing, uncompromising, and ruthless in the exact way you would expect from a robber baron. I am so glad that he was re-cast into the movie, in part because Kevin Spacey is a monster, but also because Plummer couldn't have been more perfectly cast.
The Disaster Artist
It's hard for me to talk about this movie objectively, given how big a fan I am of The Room. But here goes...
I would have been fine with this movie simply being a rehash of the making of The Room - I still would have laughed for two hours straight and gotten my money's worth. But I was pleasantly surprised by this movie's loving treatment of its subject. The movie doesn't just mock Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) - it really explores his psychology with curiosity and empathy, but also fairness. The movie shows us all the people who mock him, laugh at him, and tell him he will never be the hero of anybody's story. This gives us a better understanding of where he is coming from when he writes The Room: he sees himself as a the upstanding, all-American hero whom the world doesn't appreciate. No one will ever understand The Room's execution, but after watching The Disaster Artist, you cannot deny the sincerity of vision behind The Room. The Disaster Artist celebrates those who are willing to be vulnerable in order to earnestly explore the human condition. At the same time, to my relief, the movie does depict how cruel Tommy was to his cast and crew during the making of the movie; the movie doesn't go overboard in lionizing its subject.
I both loved and hated the ending. First of all, in real life, Tommy never accepted the interpretation of his movie as a comedy until years later, when he realized the movie only had a shelf life as comedy. But more importantly, The Disaster Artist strongly emphasized just how much this movie meant to Tommy - he really thought it would be his Shakespearean drama; on a basic storytelling level it is disingenuous that he would be so quick to embrace the movie as a comedy. At the same time, the ending worked on a thematic level. The movie argues that movies aren't machines; you can't just judge them by whether they are constructed "correctly". Movies aren't made in a vacuum - they're watched by people, people who often want to be entertained and bond over shared experiences. If The Room makes people happy and brings people together, well, who is anybody to say it's not a success?
James Franco is a creep. I repeat - James Franco is a creep, he should probably be in jail, he definitely should be cast in movies anymore, and nothing that follows is an endorsement of his sexual harassment of young girls. But I believe it is possible to separate the artist from the art. And Franco the actor is at the top of his game in this movie. Having actually met Tommy Wiseau before at a midnight screening, I can tell you that A) There is nobody who could ever give a perfect impersonation of Wiseau and B) James Franco comes as close as possible. He doesn't play a caricature; he plays a 3-dimensional character, one who is, cocksure, possessive, socially oblivious, and manipulative, but above all persistent to a fault. You don't always agree with this persistence, but Franco gets you to admire it.
Animated Shorts
Dunkirk tells its story in three timelines (the land, sea, and air), that operate on three different time scales (one week, one day, and one hour, respectively). Despite this incongruity, the film's editing makes each timeline feel equally urgent and perilous - no matter how much time these soldiers have, it never feels like enough. This urgency is magnified by depth of the horizon in all the shots (home is so close you can almost feel it), the amount of soldiers that are packed into the frames, and drowning scenes in which the water cuts the frame in half (it makes you feel like you're drowning, and reminds you of how little water is separating everyone from life and death). The film doesn't offer much traditional character development, but it earns your empathy by immersing you in the same sheer visceral terror.
Cillian Murphy and Kenneth Branagh are excellent, as usual. Farrier (Tom Hardy) gets almost no words, and yet his eyes alone create a sense of palpable dread and urgency from the cockpit. But the character that elevates Dunkirk from good to great is Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance). I wasn't a huge fan of Rylance's Oscar-winning performance, so naturally I was floored by his performance in a year when he didn't even sniff a nomination. The second time I watched Dunkirk, I listened carefully for any hints to for any hints into Mr. Dawson's past, but nothing is explicitly given. The script mentions that his son died earlier in the war, but Rylance's assured direction, knowledge of the fighter planes, and warm empathy for Cillian Murphy's trauma, lead me to believe he fought in World War I. In any case, Rylance is a magnetic presence. He simultaneously fills every scene with hope and grit that never teeters into bravado. He represents a generation who stood up to Germany when surrender would have been easier, and he takes pride in helping the next generation learn to do the same. He's not your typical war movie action hero, but he's exactly the hero every soldier on that boat needed on that day.
Wonder Woman
Logan
These are two superheroes for grownups, exhibiting a level of maturity that simply isn't there in the other DC films and most pre-Black Panther Marvel films.
Wonder Woman's script is pretty messy at the start, with the stilted dialogue and clumsy foreshadowing. Some of the action scenes (the battles at Themyscira and No Man's Land) are exhilarating, whereas others (the battle at Veld, and the final battle with Ares) were somewhat confusing to follow. The final battle has so many unnecessary special effects that I could barely follow the actual participants. But these issues don't matter, because the film is powered by a consistent emotional message: humans (most often men) have a horrific capacity for destruction, but an equal capacity for love and compassion when given a push in the right direction. The movie has humor that arises organically, but it never deliberately undercuts its moments of emotional vulnerability with humor.
I really loved that how well movie showcased the power of Diana's shield, bracelets, and lasso of truth more than her sword. I also loved all the side characters: Etta Candy (Lucy Davis) vying for respect in a male-dominated world, Sameer (Said Taghmaoui), whose skin color prevented him from pursuing an acting career; and Charlie, a discharged soldier suffering form PTSD. All this emphasizes that Wonder Woman is not a superhero defined by her aggression, but her commitment to defending anyone who has ever been disenfranchised or oppressed. Of course, none of this would work without Gal Gadot's performance as Wonder Woman. She's just so earnest in her amazement with the human world, while maintaining steely conviction in her pursuit of Aries.
If Wonder Woman is unflinching in its hero's optimism, Logan is unflinching in its hero's cynicism. I love how James Mangold draws inspiration from one genre (the spaghetti western) to explore another genre (the superhero movie) from a new angle: what happens when a superhero is forced to to confront his/her own mortality? Logan (Hugh Jackman) is initially fed up with the world, and wants to run as far away from it as possible. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), has come to terms with his limited time, and would rather fully experience the world rather than continue taking medications that sedate his present just while delaying the inevitable future. Jackman and Stewart create such palpable tension between these two characters that we don't need any exposition to understand just how much the Westchester incident strained their relationship.
The movie has incredible action throughout (especially when Laura (Dafne Keen) first shows her primacy at the smelting plant), but it never loses sight of this dramatic conflict between Logan and Charles. Everything from the plot flows naturally from this conflict: Logan always wants to run away and fend for himself; Charles insists that they have an obligation to help others when they can, first with Laura and then with the Munson family. Logan's character arc is a slow burn, but that makes it all the more satisfying in the end when he realizes that you can't let the possibility of pain or loss stop you from caring about those around you. The movie starts with Logan wanting to leave the world in spirt but not in body; As the X on his grave symbolizes, it ends with him leaving the world in body but not in spirit.
This performance is the perfect swan song for Hugh Jackman; at this point he can play Wolverine in his sleep, putting on a stoic face while struggling to hold back layers of rage and frustration. Patrick Stewart is just as great in making the most of his limited time. But the real revelation is Dafne Keen. The sheer physicality of her performance is impressive enough, but she's even better when she's expressing her curiosity, childish impulses, and above all, her heartbreaking disappointment with Logan. I can't wait to see her carry on the Wolverine legacy.
The Shape of Water
If Guillermo del Toro's masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth, was Alice in Wonderland for Adults, then his latest film is Beauty and the Beast for adults. As hilarious as the fish sex memes are, I think it would be really stupid if this movie were remembered just for that. This movie has dazzling cinematography, and one of the best scores of the year. I think this movie's reverence for classic cinema is a subtle plea from Guillermo del Toro to watch movies actively, and pay attention not just to the dialogue, but what the director communicates visually. All of the supporting actors are perfectly cast (especially Michael Shannon and Octavia Spencer) and give great performances. But none of this would work if Sally Hawkins didn't give the performance of her life as Elisa Esposito; she can't talk, but her eyes and her feet tell us everything we need to know about what is going on in her mind. The way she emotes the monotony of her life at the start before lighting up around The Creature makes the romance feel beautiful rather than comical.
The Shape of Water is about learning not to silence marginalized groups (as Michael Shannon literally does during the horrifying sex scene with his wife), and instead affording them the same humanity we do ourselves (as Elisa does in the aforementioned sex scene with monster, one of mutual compassion and tenderness). The movie contrasts the point of view of a straight, able-bodied white man (Shannon) with that of a mute woman (Hawkins), a black woman (Spencer), a gay man (Richard Jenkins), and The Creature (Doug Jones). Colonel Strickland (Shannon) assumes that he is successful who deserves the car that successful men drive and the perfect nuclear family you see depicted in art. To him, the other characters are beneath him, and the monster is merely his prized asset. Strickland brutally tortures The Creature until its health deteriorates, leading Elisa to plot to free it. Elisa, and eventually the other characters, come to see The Creature as deserving their empathy by drawing on their experiences of being seen as less human during the 1960's. Strickland is never able to arrive at this place of understanding; his eventual death comes when, instead of letting The Creature go free, he tries to shoot Elisa and The Creature, forcing The Creature to slash him out of self defense. The Creature may not be human, but it is Strickland who is the true monster.
Get Out
When Chris travels to meet the family of his white girlfriend, many familiar horror tropes emerge: the bizarre accidents, creepy suburban hellscape, people who seem a little too forward, and people who seem downright robotic. But none of these tropes appear in a vacuum. When Chris and Rose run into a deer that seems to appear out of nowhere, a cop suspiciously asks to see Chris's ID even though he wasn't driving, immediately establishing his outsider status in this community. The suburban hellscape has all white residents and all black servants, evoking images of antebellum plantations. Rose's brother and the family friends that show up aren't jsut too forward - almost everything they say not so subtly references age-old narratives which emphasize the utility of black bodies and feebleness of black minds. Every black person that Chris meets seems to be oblivious to his attempts to make a connection it the midst of obvious discomfort. As we later learn, all this is because Rose's family systematically abducts her string of black boyfriends, hypnotizes them, and implants the brains of older white men into them.
Even without the social commentary, this movie is creepy and gruesome enough to work as a pure horror movie. The twists are genuinely shocking, and Chris's escape always keeps you on the edge of your seat. But this movie works so well as a metaphor for the way America abducted slaves from Africa and exploited their bodies for profit. Peele draws a link between the racism that fueled the slave trade and the every-day racism, both casual and aggressive, that African Americans still face today. He doesn't just tell you these things - he shows you that living in a racist society feels like being the victim in a horror film; the difference here is that Chris (and Andre) already knows he is doomed from the start, but no amount of well-placed vigilance that would have saved most horror protagonists will save him from the sunken place. This is a simple, but beautifully haunting metaphor. Peele argues that we cannot outrun our racist past - we have to confront it head on.
I was lucky enough to see this in theaters twice (and I would've seen it a third time if I could!), and the movie gets even better on repeat viewings. There are a lot of lines with double meaning that foreshadow the twist. My favorite is when Rose's dad notes that his dad "almost got over" losing to Jesse Owens in the Olympics. Daniel Kaaluuya is great at keeping up a polite face for the white crowd while letting the audience in on his burning discomfort. Jut as Chris's eyes tell stories through his photographs, Kaluuya's eyes tell the audience the story of how weary he is of this world. I was also pleasantly surprised by Alison Williams. I was never a fan of her acting on Girls, but here I found her believable. On re-watch, there aren't obvious cracks in her facade, and you can see why Chris would assume ignorance rather than bluffing malice during her painfully misguided attempts to stick up for him. I also love how this movie is shot and edited during Chris's escape; there's no unnecessary camera work - every frame gives us all the information we need about what Chris sees and what he is thinking.
Get Out isn't perfect. I would've liked it better if they didn't show any of Rod's investigation; it would have made his re-appearance that much sweeter if you hadn't seen him for an hour and had perhaps even forgot he existed. I also prefer the ending in which the police show up and Chris accepts prison as the price for saving future black men from the Armitage family. But I understanding wanting to leave viewers with a sense of home. But those are minor complaints compared to everything Get Out gets right. This is the movie of the year.
Molly's Game
All the elements are there for this movie to work - and there are parts of it that do! As you would expect, the film is magic when Molly (Jessica Chastain) and Charlie (Idris Elba) are spitting Aaron Sorkin's dialogue back and forth. Unfortunately this movie spends way too much time having Chastain giving us exposition through voice-over. A little of this would have been fine to introduce and transition between scenes. Instead, I was baffled by how many scenes contained more voice-over than actual dialogue. This might have at least made some sense if the movie had set this up as Molly narrating her story to Charlie, but it didn't even do that. At the very least, it would have been nice to cut down on the voice-over during the poker scenes; voice-over before and after the hand is fine, but having Chastain talk through the hand rather than letting the players sweat it out prevented the tension from building up.
I also thought the ending, in which Molly's dad (Kevin Costner) shows up out of nowhere to mansplain Molly's motivations to her, was pretty clunky. I can certainly buy that her complicated relationship with her father played a huge role. But I couldn't agree with his outright dismissal of the idea that she started her own poker game because she was tired of men, such as Dean (Jeremy Strong) and Player X (Michael Cera), controlling her livelihood; everything Molly said in her flashbacks seemed to provide convincing evidence that this was, in fact Molly's prime motivation. The movie either doesn't understand its subject, or it doesn't understand its conclusions about its subject.
Phantom Thread
Mother!
Phantom Thread is about a fashion designer, Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis), and the women in his life: the seamstresses that file in every day to make his clothes, the girlfriends he exchanges like outfits, and his sister Cyril (Leslie Manville) who manages both his business and personal life. Woodcock is a slave to routine; any disruption makes turns him into petulant child (as we learn during a hallucination, this is mostly because he misses his dead mother, and rather than dealing with this grief in a healthy way he demands that the world coddle him in her place). It's not hard to read this movie as a critique of the egotism and obsession of (male) auteurs in all types of creative fields.
I really enjoyed watching the push and pull between Reynolds, Cyril, and Reynolds's new girlfriend Alma (Vicky Krieps) for control over each other. As great as Day-Lewis and Leslie Manville are, Krieps was the real stand out to me. I marveled at how well she could go between being goofy and buoyant, painfully uncomfortable, and outright horrified with the system that Reynolds created. I really thought the scene in which Reynolds sized her up for a dress was going to push her to the Oscar nomination. Unfortunately, the ending kept me from loving the scene. If there's one thing the movie wants us to know about Reynolds, it's that he is a helpless control freak. He wants to be coddled, but feel like he is the one in control. Thus, it didn't really feel right that he would completely submit to Alma's authority.
Mother! is, first and foremost, a biblical allegory. The house is Eden; Javier Bardem is God; Jennifer Lawrence is mother(!) earth, whose heart beats throughout the house; her baby is Jesus; the various unannounced guests (including Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhall and Brian Gleeson, and Kristen Wiig) re-enact stories such as Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the plagues, the last supper, crucifixion, and eucharist. In that sense, the way in which all the guests devolve into untamed violence can be seen as a deconstruction of Christian fanaticism. But the reason all the guests show up - Bardem's poetry - suggests that this movie is also a critique of auteur theory. Bardem's ego leads him to equate his creative work with Creation itself. He doesn't just allow the guests to stay - he welcome it. It doesn't matter that they attack his wife and destroy the house she built - he can't pass up on feeling like a god among men. The final reveal is particularly brutal; like Reynolds Woodcock, Bardem cycles through women, (literally) ripping out their hearts, crushing the heart to produce fuel for his creative process, and promptly replacing them. I think on a larger level, Darren Aronosky is cautioning against overly zealous hero worship in general, whether that be of artists or religious figures. Such zealotry just inevitably descends into madness. As much as I appreciate Phantom Thread's subtlety and acting, I think I prefer the deep allegory of Mother!
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Despite all the controversy surrounding this movie, there are parts of it that work. There's no denying the quality of the acting performances, especially the Frances McDormand's unwavering rage as Mildred Hayes. The movie great when it's talking about how for so long our society tried to bottle up female anger in order to protect male power structures. When people in the town try to tell Mildred to take down the billboards, they always mention the same refrain: "Chief Willoughby is a good man". They're more concerned with protecting the good ole boy network instead of dealing with her daughter's rape and murder. In Mildred, the movie explores the cathartic power of unfurled rage, but also the limits of rage in solving our problems.
Of course, the controversy exists for a reason. This movie has been thinkpiece'd to death, so I won't go into my issues too much, but I basically agree with a lot of the backlash: this movie is really tone deaf on the subject of institutional racism. In the movie, Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell) throws around racial slurs like a frisbee, and he is rumored to have tortured a black man in police custody. The man he tortured is never shown - he only exists in the abstract. The way we learn about this incident is when Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones) and later Mildred use this rumor to try to anger and provoke officer Dixon. The movie essentially treats this police brutality as a joke. The movie has three black characters. Two of them exist for no reason other than do Mildred's bidding; the third, Chief Abercrombie (Clarke Peters) is seemingly brought in to brought in to clean up the police department's image, and yet he never actually investigates the alleged torture incident (and curiously, he fires Dixon for literally throwing Red out of a tall window, but never actually prosecutes him for the assault). But the biggest issue is that as the movie winds down, it sends Dixon on a redemptive arc in which he decides to help Mildred look for her daughter's rapist/murderer. People have debated whether he has truly been "redeemed" by the movie's end, but to me it's beside the point; the movie never forces him to reckon with his own racism in a meaningful way, which is a problem for a movie that wants to make him a sympathetic figure.
In addition to the movie's issues handling race, I didn't care for the jarring tonal shifts, or the way it made fun of Peter Dinkelage's stature (only to later try to shame viewers for laughing at this). This movie isn't nearly as moronic as Crash, but the comparison is well-earned.
Blade Runner 2049
Confession: I am not a huge fan of the original Blade Runner. I don't think the performances from Harrison Ford and and Sean Young are nearly what they need to be; scenes that are supposed overflow with emotion, such as Rachel's replicant test, are incredibly stilted and awkward; the sex scene always read as a rape scene to me, which I don't think was the intent. The text of the movie provides strong evidence that Deckard is a replicant (Ridley Scott has confirmed this) and I think this is the wrong choice. The movie grapples with the question of whether empathy is what separates humans from robots; if so, it would be much more interesting if Deckard were a human, given that he exhibits so much less emotion and empathy than many of the replicants he is chasing (Harrison Ford felt the same way during the filming).
Because of this, I tempered my expectations going into Blade Runner 2049, and I ended up being pleasantly surprised. For starters, this is a much better-acted movie than the original. Harrison Ford conveys a sense of aching pain and regret that was sorely lacking in the original. Ryan Gosling is perfectly cast; I love how the movie slowly but sure chips away at his stoicism as he grapples with which side of history he wants to be on. Robin Wright is unsurprisingly great playing an efficient, no-nonsense Lieutenant. The real standout might have been Sylvia Hoeks; every time she's on screen you can feel her menacing presence, and tremble at what might happen next. The cinematography also improves on the original; I love how every frame is crafted to make certain colors pop against the faded backgrounds. But ultimately, what I love is that this film casts the replicant struggle as a metaphor for the struggles of all types of oppressed groups. The comparison to slaves was always there, but Niander Wallace's plot to take advantage of replicant breeding to manufacture a larger workforce mirrors society's insistence on controlling womens' reproductive rights. I think K's decision to let Deckard go rather than kill him for the rebellion made sense, but personally I would love to see a sequel about the impending replicant revolt.
Mudbound
This film's symbolism is subtle, but beautiful. Two families, one white and one black, live side by side on their Mississippi farms - a symbol of the two Americas forced to exist side by side. The three McAllan men are characterized to mirror the reckoning about to take place in America following the war: Pappy (Jonathan Banks) represents our ugly past; Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) a hope for a better future; and Henry (Jason Clarke) our uneasy present, with one foot in each direction. Henry McAllan is shameless about asking for help from the Jackson family without offering any in return; it's certainly not the first time white America took advantage of black labor. Ronsel Jackson is hailed as a hero while fighting in Europe - but unfortunately he must come home to an America that is still at war with its own black population. Unfortunately, progress often moves at a frustratingly slow pace - as if it's dragging through mud.
The Boss Baby
Coco
The Breadwinner
When a baby comes into a family, it feels like the baby is the new boss. And when you're a kid, it can feel like parental love and attention are finite resources, with the boss baby commanding the highest salary. This simple but elegant metaphor is the premise of Marla Frazee's picture book, and I think it could have worked extremely well as a short film. Unfortunately, it fails spectacularly as a feature-length movie. I won't go into all of the non-sensical plot contrivances (there's way too many to count), but almost all of them can be summed up as follows: this movie exists in a world in which every adult (as in, literally every single adult) is a complete idiot. The movie tries to get around this by suggesting that the events of the movie aren't what literally happened, but rather a story that adult Tim (Tobey Maguire) told his daughter to teach her about learning to share her parents' love with her new baby sister. If that is the case...why on earth would he tell a story that is so convoluted? I haven't seen The Lego Batman movie but I have no doubt it is more worthy of a nomination than this mess.
Like pretty much everybody, I really liked Coco. I really enjoyed the depiction of the afterlife as its own form of stratified, bureaucratic society. The immediate theme is the importance of following your passions, but for me the most resonant message was that can keep our beloved family members alive through our memories. I did have one huge issue with Coco though. The premise of the movie is that music is forbidden in the Rivera family, after the patriarch Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal) abandoned the family to pursue a musical career. The main conflict is that Miguel wants to play music, but his family refuses. However, in the end, it is revealed that Miguel's Hector meant the world to Miguel's great grandmother Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguia); Coco cherished all the times she would sing with Hector as a child, and the movie makes it seem like she bore no ill will towards her father for not returning home. If this is the case...it makes sense why Coco's mother would hate music, but it makes no sense to me why Grandma Coco would not pass her love of music down the family tree. This reveal, while satisfying in the moment, felt like it undercut the central conflict that drove the movie in the first place. This didn't ruin the movie for me (like I said, I liked it!) but this incoherent characterization definitely weakened it.
I loved The Breadwinner, and a couple days after seeing it I finally figured out why: this movie is Pan's Labyrinth set in Afghanistan. By having Parvana draw strength from the story of Sulyman when the going gets tough, the movie celebrates the immersive power of storytelling, how it gives us courage, wisdom, and hope even when we are surrounded by unspeakable terrors. This film, Like Pany's Labyrinth, is also about disobedience, as seen by Parvana (Saara Chaudry) dressing as a boy to support the family, Idrees (Noorin Gulamgaus) resolutely adhering to Taliban law, and Razaq (Kawa Ada) disobeying Taliban law to help get Parvana's father Nurullah (Ali Badshah) out of prison (he was arrested for teaching his daughters how to read). This movie argues that, just like Sulayman, women rise to the challenge - because they need to; it shows how rote obedience to partriarchal power structures breeds toxic men Idrees, but that the kind of disobedience displayed by Nurullah and Razaq can make a better world for all of us. I will concede that the animation quality of The Breadwinner doesn't remotely compare to that of Coco (or even Loving Vincent, which unfortunately I didn't see); but I think The Breadwinner has the superior story.
Call Me By Your Name
This is without a doubt the most beautiful looking movie I saw this year. Lush Italian scenery fills out the frames, and golden sunlight drenches them. It creates a surrealist, almost dream-like mood - which is probably how Elio (Timothee Chalamet) feels when navigating the thrill and heartbreak of first love.
I love some of the little things Luca Guadagnino does to tell us how much this means for Elio. At first Elio complains about having to share his room with the new guy - which makes it all the more meaningful later when Elio introduces Oliver (Armie Hammer) to the creek where he usually goes when he wants to be alone. The way the sex scenes are shot is also telling. When Elio is with Marzia (Esther Garrel), Guadagnino lets see it unfold in all of its awkwardness and comedy; the only exception is during the second sex scene, which in which it occasionally cuts to show Elio looking at the clock in anticipation of midnight (Guadagnino also leaves little of the infamous peach masturbation scene to the imagination). When Elio and Oliver begin having sex, the camera immediately pans away, recognizing how much more intimate this is for Elio and giving him the appropriate privacy.
Timothee Chalamet's performance reminded me a lot of Shameik Moore's in Dope - he conveys so much information with the smallest facial tics and expressions. In playing a teenage boy reckoning with his first love, Chalamet has to run through a gamut of emotions - cocky, confused, lustful, jubilant, heartbroken, anxious, humuliated (often at the same time). Chalamet handles all of these with ease, always giving what is needed to make every scene work. I also love how well Armie Hammer can transition between being so confident and assertive around others, and yet so vulnerable around Elio. If Elio is discovering new feelings, Oliver is re-visiting what I conjecture he had locked away out of guilt and shame. Elio's parents (Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar) both bring empathy and wisdom to every scene - I really like that they seem to understand exactly what is going through Elio's mind, and give him guidance while still allowing him the space to sort through his emotions on his own. As great as Stuhlbarg's monlogue was at the end (he reveals that he once denied himself a fling with a friend, and encourages Elio to appreciate what he and Oliver had rather than mourn what they lost), I think I actually was more impressed by Casar's performance when I watched it the second time. She knows all of the right buttons to push with Elio - from the poem reading, to confirming to him that Oliver reciprocates his feelings. I think it's telling that it is his mother whom Elio calls when he needs a ride home from the train station. All in all, this movie is feels as beautiful as it looks.
The Post
This movie, while certainly not as good as All The President's Men or Spotlight, is solid with timely themes. The movie's main theme is about the power and essentiality of a free press as a check on government deceit, but I appreciate the smaller themes that Spielberg communicates visually. The shot of Meryl Streep as the only woman in a packed boardroom isn't subtle, but it's effective in showing how pioneering Katherine Graham (Streep) was. I also didn't expect that the movie would tackle choices that Graham was forced to make between her social status and her professional status. I especially love when Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) comes to Graham's house while she is hosting a party; the movie pans from left to right, across one of the walls, showing Katherine moving from talking to her socialite friends on one side to Bradlee on the other side. Again, this not subtle, but effective. Spielberg uses this kind of framing to illustrate just how strong Katherine's relationships are with many upper class friends and politicians, and just how much Katherine is sacrificing when she decides to publish the pentagon papers against their wishes.
The Post isn't close to the best of Spielberg, Streep, or Hanks. But for that trio, even their B game is enough to make an enjoyable movie; I wouldn't have nominated it, but I can't complain about its nomination either.
I, Tonya
The best biopics don't just tell us about a person or event - they ask what that person or event tells us about the world we live in. To that end, I like that I, Tonya has a simple, consistent message: Tonya Harding's story illustrates the the way we, more or less by default, vilify poor people in America.
While I am familiar with the Kerrigan/Harding incident, I won't speculate on how much Tonya Harding really did know and whether the movie understates her role in the attack. I will say, I wish the movie hadn't made Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver) into a complete abstraction, and I think the movie gives Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) a little too much of a pass for suggesting sending Nancy death threats. But as the movie states, this is all based on interviews of highly dubious veracity, so I don't think the movie necessarily means to suggest that it believes Tonya is completely innocent - rather, it's depicting how Tonya sees things (and perhaps arguing that truth is in the eye of the beholder, for better or worse). The film shows us how Tonya was constantly vilified - by her mother, by classist skating judges, by her abusive boyfriend (side note: can we talk about how crazy it is that a guy with a restraining order against him was even allowed to own a gun??????) - so it would make sense that she would try to revise history to so as to, for once, not be the villain.
Whether you accept this framing device, or the tonal shifts (I actually didn't mind this: the movie shows how routine violence was for Tonya, and how humor was basically her only coping mechanism), there's no denying how great the two lead performances are. Margot Robbie is really great at selling us on how much skating means to Tonya, and how much it hurts that her economic class force her to constantly be skating from behind. But Alison Janney is even better as LaVona - she keeps leading you to believe she might just be about to show some hint of compassion and then knocks you down with another corrosive barb. She is a devastating tour de force.
The Florida Project
I know some people find Sean Baker's aesthetic gimmicky, but I really feel that his cinematography has functional, and not just stylistic purpose (I was a big fan of his movie Tangerine). In this movie, he consistently makes the people look small, and the buildings look gigantic. To the adults these buildings look garish and run down; but to the children the Magic Castle, the ice cream shop, the diner, and the grocery store truly feel like a palaces, every bit as majestic as the Magic Kingdom down the street (this is the rare movie in which the child actors nearly as good as the adults). By contrast, these shots of the motel emphasize the weight that Bobby Hicks (Willem Dafoe) is bearing, like Atlas. I absolutely love Dafoe's performance in this; he puts on a gruff exterior, but you can see clearly see the pain he carries in his face. He didn't ask to be anyone's caretaker, but he understands that he needs to. Just like in Tangerine, Baker does a masterful job of earning your empathy for characters - even when Halley (Bria Vinaite) makes poor choices, you always understand why; she's choosing what she really feels is the best from a series of bad options.
The ending was divisive, but I liked it. I thought it made sense to shoot it on an iphone, to emphasize the spontaneity of the moment. And whether it is real or just Moonee's (Brooklyn Prince) imagination, it fits with the movie's themes about making the best of bad situations.
Lady Bird
Columbus
Most of the praise for Lady Bird has emphasized the witty dialogue and the rangy acting performances. I love that the movie constantly tells us how different Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan, who may well surpass Kate Winslet as the actress with the most accents in her toolbox) and Marion (Laurie Metcalf) are through their arguments, but shows us how similar they are through their shared stubbornness and the repeated use of shots that frame them together. To me, the editing is what really stands out: nothing ever feels extraneous, and we get in and out of scenes with efficiency.
I have to be honest though, I didn't feel the same profundity in this movie as other viewers. The biggest take-home message that I got was the idea that home is just as special as anywhere else - if you let it be so. At first, Lady Bird doesn't realize this, declaring herself to be from the "wrong side of the tracks", pretending to live at a different address to impress a friend, and constantly talking about her pressing need to go east. The turning point to her arc, and my favorite shot of the movie, is the one of Lady Bird and Julie (Beanie Feldstein) on the bridge with the beautiful skyline - on this night, Sacramento can be Lady Bird's Paris or New York, a message that fully takes hold at the end when calls her mother at the end.
Lady Bird is a great movie about the complicated nature of our relationships with our parents. In my opinion, Columbus is an even better one. In many ways, Cassandra (Haley Lu Richardson) is the opposite of Lady Bird. She's reserved, constantly questioning her abilities, and loves her hometown and is afraid to step away. Her relationship with her mother is inverted: Cassandra hasn't been able to leave for college because she feels the need to stay home to care for her mother Maria (Michelle Forbes), a recovering alcoholic. In Lady Bird, Marion constantly tells us how disappointed she is in Lady Bird; by contrast, Columbus shows Cassandra's mother constantly disappointing her, and let's Richardson's face do all the talking.
Jin (John Cho) is the opposite: he's in Columbus while his father is in the hospital. His father is a famous architecture scholar, and he is in Columbus to give a talk, as Columbus is renowned for its modern architecture. Jin hadn't spoken to his father in over a year, in part because he felt like his father never showed him much affection. This movie beautifully explores the frustration of never being able to get out of your father's shadow; i love Cho's layered performance - he mourns, but with reservations, and also guilt about having those reservations. Even though Jin and Cassandra have very different relationships with their parents, it's really beautiful to see them bond over their pain, and over the architecture that towers over them.
If there's one message on this film's mind, its that human relationships are infinitely more complicated than the neat, structured nature of buildings and architecture. I absolutely love how Kogonada's use of static frames. It forces you to admire the buildings, accentuates movement within the frame (in one case, to great comedic effect), but most importantly: it makes you feel just as trapped in the city as Cassandra and Jin are.
All the Money in the World
I like how this movie explores our culture's obsession with money. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) equates money with happiness, and thus no amount is ever enough, compassion be damned. It is painfully on the nose about this, but it works.
Mark Wahlberg is unsurprisingly mediocre; he emotes his change of heart all at once, rather than gradually the way the movie seems to call for. Michelle Williams is surprisingly mediocre; it seemed strange that she was so reserved in her confrontations with Paul, or in her reunion with her son Paolo (Charlie Plummer). But the movie works because Christopher Plummer still a titan. He does his best Charles Foster Kane impression; he is menacing, uncompromising, and ruthless in the exact way you would expect from a robber baron. I am so glad that he was re-cast into the movie, in part because Kevin Spacey is a monster, but also because Plummer couldn't have been more perfectly cast.
The Disaster Artist
It's hard for me to talk about this movie objectively, given how big a fan I am of The Room. But here goes...
I would have been fine with this movie simply being a rehash of the making of The Room - I still would have laughed for two hours straight and gotten my money's worth. But I was pleasantly surprised by this movie's loving treatment of its subject. The movie doesn't just mock Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) - it really explores his psychology with curiosity and empathy, but also fairness. The movie shows us all the people who mock him, laugh at him, and tell him he will never be the hero of anybody's story. This gives us a better understanding of where he is coming from when he writes The Room: he sees himself as a the upstanding, all-American hero whom the world doesn't appreciate. No one will ever understand The Room's execution, but after watching The Disaster Artist, you cannot deny the sincerity of vision behind The Room. The Disaster Artist celebrates those who are willing to be vulnerable in order to earnestly explore the human condition. At the same time, to my relief, the movie does depict how cruel Tommy was to his cast and crew during the making of the movie; the movie doesn't go overboard in lionizing its subject.
I both loved and hated the ending. First of all, in real life, Tommy never accepted the interpretation of his movie as a comedy until years later, when he realized the movie only had a shelf life as comedy. But more importantly, The Disaster Artist strongly emphasized just how much this movie meant to Tommy - he really thought it would be his Shakespearean drama; on a basic storytelling level it is disingenuous that he would be so quick to embrace the movie as a comedy. At the same time, the ending worked on a thematic level. The movie argues that movies aren't machines; you can't just judge them by whether they are constructed "correctly". Movies aren't made in a vacuum - they're watched by people, people who often want to be entertained and bond over shared experiences. If The Room makes people happy and brings people together, well, who is anybody to say it's not a success?
James Franco is a creep. I repeat - James Franco is a creep, he should probably be in jail, he definitely should be cast in movies anymore, and nothing that follows is an endorsement of his sexual harassment of young girls. But I believe it is possible to separate the artist from the art. And Franco the actor is at the top of his game in this movie. Having actually met Tommy Wiseau before at a midnight screening, I can tell you that A) There is nobody who could ever give a perfect impersonation of Wiseau and B) James Franco comes as close as possible. He doesn't play a caricature; he plays a 3-dimensional character, one who is, cocksure, possessive, socially oblivious, and manipulative, but above all persistent to a fault. You don't always agree with this persistence, but Franco gets you to admire it.
Animated Shorts
- As a basketball fan, I thought it was pretty cool that Dear Basketball was nominated. What really elevates it is the end, in which Kobe's body can no longer keep up with his mind. It's here that Kobe gets to show how much it hurts to lose the game you love so much.
- The only short that I didn't really care for was Garden Party.
- My favorite short was Revolting Rhymes. I love the idea of re-imagining Red Riding Hood and Snow White as lifelong friends, not dependent on men (with Red Riding Hood being a badass to boot). I also love re-imagining Red Riding Hood and The Wolf as an ever-evolving game of cat and mouse.
Live Action Shorts
- I enjoyed every live action short. My personal favorite was The Eleven O'Clock; the twist was pretty obvious, but I still was impressed by the cleverness of the word play.
- My close second favorite was The Silent Child; it argues that hearing is not the same thing as listening, and we need to do a better job of listening to deaf children. It would be pretty cool if this won in the same year that The Shape of Water won best picture.
- In the wake of our gun violence epidemic, Dekalb Elementary pleads with us to give more support to those with mental health issues so that they won't see violence as their only outlet.
- All of Us shows the absurdity of using religion to justify violence; rather than letting our differences divide us, we should let the commonalities of the human experience unite us.
- My Nephew Emmett is a nice complement to mudbound, in depicting the horrors of Jim Crow Mississippi.
Last Flag Flying
In this movie, Vietnam veteran Doc (Steve Carrell), accompanied by his regiment mates Sal (Bryan Cranston) and Richard (Laurence Fishburne), travels to from New Hampshire to Delaware and back to retrieve and bury his son who was killed in the Iraq war; on the return trip they are joined by one of his son's regiment mates Charlie (J. Quinton Johnson, who was fantastic in Everybody Wants Some!! and hopefully shows up in all of Richard Linklater's future movies). As they go, they reminisce about their times in Vietnam, and question the meaning of all the narratives of patriotism and heroism that they were served during their time in combat.
This movie questions the way we keep passing down war from one generation to the next. One thing I noticed was how, when Doc is making decisions, he is often flanked by bartender Sal on one shoulder and pastor Richard on the other; intentional or not (probably not), it actually reminded me quite a lot of devil/angel imagery. I have a half-baked theory that Linklater was trying to argue that war is America's religion; it's the doctrine that has guided us throughout our nation's history, for better or worse, one which we follow for reasons that often have to do with faith more than logic.
While this movie is far from Linklater's best work, it still has what makes his other movies so wonderful - it feels like we're dropping in on real people, whose lives and relationships continue to exist even after we leave the theater.
The Beguiled
I will start off by saying, it is inexcusable that Sofia Coppola excised the black maid when translating the source novel to the screen. Not only is this disappointing from the perspective of inclusivity, it is just a poor artistic choice; I haven't read the novel, but there's no doubt such a character would have had a very different relationship to Colin Farrell's union soldier than the white women in the house. It would have enhanced to movie to explore extra set of conflicts and tension this would create.
Having said that, what actually made the screen is an incredible film (and the best movie of the year to feature poison mushrooms). When an injured union soldier (Colin Farrell) shows up at a confederate boarding school, all of the women (Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice, and Oona Laurence, Emma Howard, and Addison Riecke) take him in; they plan to nurse him to health before giving him to the confederate army; unfortunately, his presence brings out repressed sexuality and desire in all of the women. The movie explores the eternal conflict between the head and the heart.
Sofia Coppola's photographic eye is put to great use here. In every scene, and every frame, you can ascertain the state of interpersonal conflicts by the way the characters are blocked - who shares the frames or where characters are positioned in relation to each other within the frame. She really makes it look easy. All of the performances in it are great, but Kirsten Dunst is my favorite. There simply aren't many actresses who can convey sadness, longing, and melancholy better than she can. I really wish Hollywood would give her more roles.
War for the Planet of the Apes
No movie disappointed me more this year. The visuals are splendid, as usual, but the story doesn't work for me. The main premise is pretty stupid, there are smaller plot holes elsewhere, the movie tries too hard to make allusions to war movies and biblical figures, and only has vague ideas about mercy and humanity without a coherent theme. But what bothered me most was the avalanche; this should have been the best part of the movie. Here's how it should have gone; the humans keep building technology to crush the apes without caring about the environmental cost. Right as they're about to wipe out the apes, the humans' shortsightedness comes back to bite them, with human technology causing the avalanche that only apes are built to survive. Instead this avalanche is basically a deus ex machina. Because of this, the avalanche looks cool, but doesn't really mean anything - like this movie.
The Best of the Rest
- I often thought Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 was too on the nose with its themes (fatherhood and family are defined by love and sacrifice, not blood), but I still enjoyed it a lot.
- The Big Sick was fun, even if weighted down by bloated scenes that are all too typical of Judd Apatow films. It really captures the idea that, for children of immigrants, your life can sometimes feel like an arranged marriage of two disparate countries.
- Atomic Blonde was utter nonsense, and I loved every minute of it. I think the nonsensical nature of its plot could charitably be interpreted as commentary on how the cold war distorted our notions of the truth.
The Picks
Best Film Editing
5. Get Out
4. Baby Driver
3. The Shape of Water
2. Lady Bird
The Pick: Dunkirk
The Prediction: Dunkirk
Best Animated Feature
negative infinity: The Boss Baby
2. Coco
The Pick: The Breadwinner
The Prediction: Coco
Best Animated Short
5. Garden Party
4. Dear Basketball
4. Dear Basketball
3. Negative Space
2. Lou
The Pick: Revolting Rhymes
The Prediction: Dear Basketball
Best Live Action Short
5. All of Us
4. Dekalb Elementary
3. My Nephew Emmett
2. The Silent Child
The Pick: The Eleven O'clock
The Prediction: Dekalb Elementary
Best Adapted Screenplay
5. The Breadwinner
4. Mudbound
3. The Disaster Artist
2. Call me By Your Name
The Pick: Logan
The Prediction: Call me By Your Name
Best Original Screenplay
5. Lady Bird
4. Blade Runner 2049
3. Mother!
2. The Shape of Water
The Pick: Get Out
The Prediction: Lady Bird
Best Supporting Actor
5. Armie Hammer (Call me By Your Name)
4. Patrick Stewart (Logan)
3. Christopher Plummer (All the Money in the World
2. Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project)
The Pick: Mark Rylance (Dunkirk)
The Prediction: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards)
Best Supporting Actress
5. Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread)
4. Kirsten Dunst (The Beguiled)
3. Octavia Spencer (The Shape of Water)
2. Alison Janney (I, Tonya)
The Pick: Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird)
The Prediction: Alison Janney (I, Tonya)
Best Actor
5. Ryan Gosling (Blade Runner 2049)
4. James Franco (The Disaster Artist)
3. Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out)
2. Hugh Jackman (Logan)
The Pick: Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name)
The Prediction: Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour)
Best Actress
5. Haley Lu Richardson (Columbus)
4. Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman)
3. Frances McDormand (3 Billboards)
2. Saiorse Ronan (Lady Bird)
The Pick: Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water)
The Prediction: Frances McDormand (3 Billboards)
Best Director
5. Sofia Coppola (The Beguiled)
4. Jordan Peele (Get Out)
3. Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)
2. Kogonada (Columbus)
The Pick: Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk)
The Prediction: Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)
My Favorite Movies
10. The Breadwinner
9. The Shape of Water
8. The Beguiled
7. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
6. Call me By Your Name
5. The Disaster Artist
4. Logan
3. Columbus
2. Dunkirk
1. Get Out
Best Picture
10. Mother!
9. The Beguiled
8. Lady Bird
7. Mudbound
6. Columbus
5. The Shape of Water
5. The Shape of Water
4. Call me By Your Name
3. Logan
2. Dunkirk
The Pick: Get Out
The Prediction: The Shape of Water
