1. Blue Bayou-Filmed, directed, and starring South Korean Justin Chon, the story of a Korean immigrant born and raised in Louisiana facing deportation is difficult with glimmering vestiges of human triumph. I was floored by the sentiment.
2. House of Gucci-Very
Shakespearean in all its delicious tragedy and back-stabbing. These people were
larger than life and the story takes on that grandeur.
3. West Side
Story-The degree of difficulty to adapt a classic and make it your own is high,
so many great decisions went to make a fuller and richer story and put
character developments in historic context
4. Last
Night in Soho-I admire that a director who has always had comedy in each of his
pictures was able to do something entirely without it. It was a great mystery,
time capsule and comic of age story and I was overwhelmed with the kinetic
frenzy. My one minor complaint is I didn’t love the horror elements.
5. Licorice Pizza-There was an
extremely icky age difference but I enjoyed so much of the nostalgic drench and
vignette-like nature of the story.
6. Nightmare
Alley-This visually beautiful tragic tale of a drifter is very rewarding on
second viewing
7. Concrete
Cowboy-Idris Elba played the hard black dad like Denzel Washington in Fences but
convincingly added the layer of empathy and caring for his child and that
vulnerability in their relationship really got to me. I didn’t understand what this
horse stable was doing in the middle of Philadelphia but I also got that it was
important to them
8. Last
Duel-Slightly slower than ideal in terms of authenticity but the trade-off is
authenticity.
9. Power of
the Dog-An incredibly strong attention to detail, great performances, and, in
my opinion, a thematic thrust worthy of a Best Picture win.
10. Free
Guy-Yes, it's fun, but a lot of world building and the kind of detailed storyline
that could transfer over to a robust sci-fi film
11. Jungle
Cruise-More just fun, but I found the central relationships moving enough, and
I'm a sucker for Amazon stories
12. Courier-It
had a first half that was markedly different than the second (kind of like the
Dev Patel film Lion) that was tonally a bit jarring, but it was a spy film that
moved at the speed of life.
13. Mayday-Very
eerie and quiet film that sneaks up on you about a violated teenager who's
taken away to a fantasy land where she can be in the protection of woman but
she's also lulling men to their deaths
14. Don’t Look
Up-Yes, it was depressing, but it was sharp
15. Queen Bees-Another entry into the "Old People Team Up to Make a Movie" genre with Jane Curtin, Ellen Burstyn, Loretta DeVine, Ann Margaret, Christopher Lloyd, and James Caan. Very sweet and tuned into the twilight years
16. Moxie-A
high school melodrama directed by Amy Poehler (maybe a companion piece to Mean
Girls?) that's sharp and funny at times. Navigates the current climate well
without casting feminism or men as villains.
17. Woman in
the Window-A Hitchcockonian mystery that oozed suspense and mystery
18. Val-The
only documentary I watched this year about Val Kilmer. A very self-conscious
look at fame and coming to terms with his physical demise
19. Ride the
Eagle-An impressive small-scale production about a guy (Jake Johnson) coping with
the death of a mother (Susan Sarandon) he barely knew
20. Eyes of
Tammy Faye-A nicely focused biopic which picked the right parts of Tammy's life
to focus on and had a good villain in Vincent D'Onofrio's Jerry Fallwell. There
was a tremendous amount to appreciate in Tammy Faye's arc as evidenced by
Jessica's Oscar BUT I would've liked a litle more development to Andrew
Garfield's character
21. Coda-It
was sweet and it did show us a world we hadn't seen before, but I felt the
music part itself was full of plot holes and the piano teacher to the rescue at
the audition is an old trope. Still I'm happy it won in an odd way: The Oscars
are extremely predictable with the glut of precursors so a bizarre upset is
welcome.
22. Passing-Well-shot
and acted and I’d even buy the score on CD. The conversations were really
interesting as well but at times they felt a little theatrical as if they were
playing for a small art-house audience.
23. Ice Road-I
love the guts of whoever pitched this film: “Speed but twice as slow and they’ll
be going on ice.” Amber Midthunder could be a star down the road.
24. Space Jam
2-I love the Looney Tunes though they feel a little off in the looniness
department and, even in the first Space Jam, Bugs, Duffy and Lola had bigger
roles which set them up to fuel more of the comedy (Michael Jordan/LeBron James
is the straight man). Still, the film was fun, the plot felt updated in clever
ways (taking a page from the e-sports world and lampooning entertainment’s
overemphasis on IPs), and I enjoyed the greater focus on the son-father
relationship that the original Space Jam should have also been about.
25. Beckett-It's
a contextless action film like the Bourne series where we're just shown a guy
doing lots of amazing fighting but we don't know the why of anything. Tonally,
the film held but barely.
26. Worth-The
film was executed well, but it was kind of dull. At the same time, it's not
that easy to make a film about an accountant making risk assessment calculations.
27. Cruella-Beautiful
to look at and Emma Stone's iteration of the character was a fun underdog to
root for. Paul Walter Hauser and Joel Frye also make excellent sidekicks. Still
it went on way too long and there’s a such thing as too many twists.
27. Pig-It's
nice to see Nicholas Cage celebrated for his acting, but the film is a bit
self-serious. It’s just food seasoning, guys: No need to start a fight club
over it or build an organized crime empire around it.
28. Legend of Shang-Tsi and the Ten Rings-I could predict
almost every plot development five minutes in advance, and what I couldn’t
predict, I didn’t care about. I was also
bothered that the film expected me to know who Trevor whatever-his-name-is, F---
Off Marvel, I don’t care about crossovers. And shouldn’t side kicks have some
use? (I’m looking at you Seth Rogen as Green Hornet, who punched out maybe 2
people in comparison to Kato single-handedly fighting dozens of goons at once).
But, that sky scraper fight scene was
next level.
29. Flag Day-This
was a film…..that I watched…..sorry, I barely remember watching this..
31. Being the
Ricardos-Aaron Sorkin had been on a really good streak—Molly’s Game, Trial of
the Chicago 7—but this is like “Studio 60” backwards in terms of egotistical
awfulness. Yes, the actors handle the smug material well, but the material is
all about praising the ego of the creator at the expense of others (the
producers, writers and co-stars are secondary to Lucy’s brilliance) and had
little to do with Lucy who was funny.
32. French
Dispatch-The only Wes Anderson film I wouldn’t recommend. There is such a thing
as too bloated of an ensemble and too much attention to detail.
33. Electric
Life of Louis P Wain-Too cutesy-wutesy and by the numbers.
34. Lost
Daughter-Slow and dreary. It might have all the right moves to offer but it
didn’t hook me.
35. Mitchells
vs Machines-Don’t know if I remember this too much either. That’s not a good
sign.
36. Tomorrow
War-Sooo much uncanny valley and ugly creatures on the screen and this is probably
one of the few times when there’s no debate that a time travel film makes no
sense. Normally that genre can hand-wave a lot of plot holes.
37. Barb and
Star Go to Mar El Vista-I know it had its fans, but I found this overly low-brow
and couldn’t find a single scene that screams “Brilliant!.” Maybe Barb and Star
being fired from their jobs comes close but that’s in the beginning of the
movie and front loads with lots of expectations. You realize that these two made Bridesmaids? It’s
mostly standard mix-em-ups and a comedy of doors.
This felt like when Mike Meyers or M.
Night Shyamalan refuse to listen to studio notes about a bad idea.
38. Thunder Force-Because
it stars Melissa McCarthy, one might assume it’s a send-up to superhero tropes but
the film plays the superhero story pretty straight despite the film still
having the outlines of a comedy. It’s a pretty awkward clash. At least Jason
Bateman seemed to know he was in a comic film.
39. Breaking
News in Yuma County-A dark comedy that feels as if someone read cliff notes on
the Coen Brothers films (people fabricate dumb schemes, people get blackmailed,
people are violently hurt, etc) and tried to make a film solely off that. It
probably doesn’t help that the scheme is not just dumb but uninteresting.
Allyson Janney pretends to know details about your husband’s death because she
likes being on the news and the fame it brings her, but do people really like
being a talking head on the news?
40. Kate-Like Beckett, it’s a
contextless action film (we’re not meant to know much about the hero) but, it’s
also a contextless shoot-em-up and it’s too high in the ratio of violence to
context for me to not see it as gratuitous.
41. Stowaway-Boring
attempt at sci-fi and it’s lifeboat ethics weren’t anything I agreed with.
No comments:
Post a Comment