Capsule Reviews of first 15 Films I saw in 2018

1. The Death of Stalin-This comic retelling of the aftermath of Stalin's death is at least five times better than anything else Armando Iannucci has ever done. To do crack-pace dialogue with Julia Louis Dreyfus in the present day sort of writes itself: Just take two parts Aaron Sorkin and add one part dysfunctional workplace comedy. To take your style of screenwriting and work it into one of the most historically villainous regimes in history while staying true to the real-life tics of historic characters and maintaining overall lightness required for a comedy is downright operatic.

2. Disobedience-Rachel Weisz stars as a Rabbi’s daughter returning to an Orthodox Jewish community that has shunned her because she has chosen not to adopt their austere lifestyle. The film has a brilliant pseudo-horror vibe with the voyeuristic looks that others gaze upon her with, as she sits with them at dinner or walks through the streets alongside them. The film is advertised as a film about a lesbian relationship, but it's really a film about free will because being in a pre-marital sexual relationship, dating a secular jew, even having secular Jews in your friend circle or getting an education all lead to the same end result of shunning anyways. Perhaps it’s my experience in this type of community, but the film is beautiful, spot-on, tense, sexy (spoiler: the two Rachels get it on) , and treats each of the three leads (Rachel McAdams and Allesandro Nivola) with the respect to round out their character arcs..

3. Tag-Nope, it’s not a drama on any level, but it’s ok to have popcorn comedies high on your lists. This is funny on every level. The timing of the jokes, the rounding out of character tics, the multiple layers of the jokes and the call backs all work. Like “It’s Always Sunny”, there’s a lot of humor where we get joy in watching adults act childish in front of baffled adults who just don’t know how to react to what they’re seeing. Only complaint in the humor department: The attempt to Sherlockize Jeremy Renner’s character wore out its welcome as a repeating joke. The film is also sentimental at just the right level and speaks to how growing old doesn’t mean you need to stop having fun. A good lesson to any critics who didn’t appreciate this film. 

4. Ocean’s 8-To the people who think it’s too much of a feminist statement or not enough of a feminist statement: Shut up, both of you! It’s just a good movie with a legitimate sense of tension and flow, and a good cast that it utilizes well (also, there isn’t really a wrong way to utilize Rihanna or Helena Bohnam Carter for that matter). Sandra Bullock isn’t someone I would think of as a self-assured cat burglar type but I liked the sentimentality she bought to the role. When she toasted to her brother’s grave, it was a more meaningful moment than anything in the original Ocean’s series which was really just an overt self-congratulations of smug rich actors and Soderbergh’s “look at how good of a director I am” flashy stuff. James Corden is perfect as a bumbling foil. I had a couple minor problems with how things unraveled, even after suspending my disbelief and going with the absurdity of it all.

5. Leave No Trace-Best described as a less pretentious “Captain Fantastic”. Ben Foster, an underrated actor, plays a guy ill-at-ease with mainstream life so he lives off the grid with his daughter. The movie twists and turns in a few unexpected places and each of those defines the enigmatic protagonist better without revealing too much about him.

6. Ant Man and the Wasp-For someone who never cared about "The Avengers" or "Captain America", there was a distasteful amount of catch-up involved but nothing detrimental for me enjoying this film that largely knows it's about summer fun and not extended mythology. Paul Rudd is so solid at playing a "cool dad" type that I wouldn't be surprised if a whole generation of young viewers view him as the new archetype. The film works in humor at an extremely organic level and for that alone, I'd be extremely comfortable recommending this film to anyone who has been searching in vain for that comic action film that captures the feeling of the original "Indiana Jones" or "Star Wars" franchise. This is especially true for the micro-microscopic universe which had the feeling of a 1950's B-movie. Credit has to also go for TI, David Dastmalchian (ironically, TI is named David while Dastmalchian is named Kurt, how confusing), and Michael Pena which have graduated from background noise in this movie to a genuinely entertaining band of side kicks. 

7. Tomb Raider-Alicia Vikander and Anjelina Jolie both have the same number of Oscars, but as far as I can tell, Anjelina Jolie was mostly sold to audiences in the 2000s like waitresses at Hooters are sold to potential diners. I’m a sucker for archeological jungle adventures and while the McGuffin was ridiculously weak, the Alicia Vikander character was progressive without being obnoxious, compelling, and was a unique style of action star (mainly crashing into objects with minimal impact). The races and set pieces were pretty solid.

8. Black Panther-The hype and much of the cheering from the left was pretty annoying considering it was a pretty nuanced film about the dangers of not being militaristic in your civil rights movement. In other words, the film was more nuanced than what people were taking from the films. There were good and bad white and black guys, after all. I thought the plot stretched a bit thin, but the narrative flowed smoothly from point to point so not a lot of wasted space while still doing a lot of world-building. The Afro-futurism angle is just a cool hook simply from the perspective of reimagining a world that’s so different but kind of plausible. Congo, for example, has natural resources found nowhere else in the world; the natural healing powers of African shaman medicine has been better than Western medicine in some points in history.

9. Set It Up-Up until the last 20 minutes, this much-praised romantic comedy is formulaic but watchable. In the last 20 minutes it finds a way to upend itself without being cheap or forced and that’s when it sticks with you much longer. Zooey Deutsch is a bit cutesy but she checks the boxes of a progressive feminist cheerleader so the critics are on board. Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs play strong villains and Pete Davidson (currently getting a lot of attention for being in the most high-profile relationship in SNL history) is surprisingly decent.

10. Ibiza-Every plot point here abides by the formula of “group of guys/women go wild and lose themselves for a night” and it’s getting slightly old. Despite a complete lack of anything original, it’s a good showcase for the three actresses.

11. Ready Player One-Like the “Transformers” franchise, it’s about shiny manly toys for the most part and doesn’t really sketch out this vision of the future as much as I would have liked but it’s a fairly compelling story. It’s definitely of a go-big-or-go-home style of Spielbergian artistry without being awful. I have a feeling I’ll look back on this a while and find it even less memorable.


12. Red Sparrow-A bit gruesome and repetitive but a largely coherent plot and less nihilistic than the female spy thriller I saw last year “Atomic Blonde.” Spy thrillers like these often have too many twists and turns and that can lose viewers at light speed, so that this is a coherent story is a major accomplishment. I also imagine a master’s level sociology thesis can be written about everything this movie has to say about sexuality and society. 


13. Racer and the Jailbird-I thought this was a sexy action film. Instead it’s a dark film about a couple who both go through extended periods of chronic illness and incarceration. Just a sad, sad story. This might be unfair to judge the film based on the package of information available to the me before the film, but if I was prepared for a sad story, my assessment might be different. At the same time, I do believe the film was legitimately depressing without having more of profound approach.


14. Game Night-I hardly see a reason to justify this film’s existence. A couple (Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman) like playing games? That’s the hook? The violent take on comedy has been done a million times and it just feels tacked on here. The “when is this real, when isn’t this real” tension is stripped of its meeting when we know the plot is “thing that they think isn’t real becomes real.”


15. A Whisper in Time-This children’s film doesn’t treat its mythology as something worth caring about yet asks us to endure excruciatingly boring technobabble about said non-interesting mythology. The film is too tonally bizarre and its character dynamics too uninteresting to care about anything at all that’s happening on screen. Maybe we should just admit that Ava DuVerney (despite being a woman of color, yay!) is just not that good of a film maker. Selma" was "important" but not particularly captivating.

My Top Ten (Plus Five HM) for 2009

      In an effort to stretch my critical muscles, I thought I'd pick a random year and write up my top ten. Check here for my top 25 performances of 2009

       Film of the Year: Up in the Air-The opening montage of borrowed aerial shots lets us know that this is going to be an apologetically modern story for our modern times. Jason Reitman’s third film is a spiritual successor of sorts to his debut, “Thank You For Smoking”, in looking at grandiose themes with cutting satire. This time Reitman looks at the glitzy but ultimately unfulfilling life of corporate travel as well as the soullessness of human resources. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) travels around the country firing people with dignity. His social needs are taken care of by the occasional rendezvous and the familiar faces of gate attendants and airport lounges are the closest thing he has to a home. Through Bingham, Reitman looks at modern detachment from the inherent contradictions of the firing of employees with dignity, and a telescope view of at the loneliness such a job would entail. Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick both compliment in roles that deservedly won accolades.

2. Inglourious Basterds-Quentin Tarantino’s gleeful take on the World War II film is less beholden to history than having a good time. The film is marked by Mexican shoot-outs, explosions, and memorable characters of both the good and evil variety. From the polyglot colonel played with theatricality by Christophe Waltz to the egotistical sniper with a voyeuristic streak played by Daniel Bruehl to the larger-than-life German actress played by Dianne Kruger, this is a movie where the action isn’t second to performances.

3. The Soloist-This film, about the relationship between a human interest reporter and a homeless cellist with Julliard training, came and went without making much of a dent but there’s a lot to recommend about this film. Being a human interest reporter for seven years and having a fascination with what makes classical musicians tick certainly helps enjoy this film, yes, but it’s also a more universal story of two people symbiotically rediscovering themselves with Robert Downey Jr’s stoical performance keeping the film from dripping out any excess sap. Lisa Gay Hamilton, Catherine Keener and Tom Hollander all provide great supporting roles.

4. Star Trek-My cynical attitude towards franchise reboots quickly dissipated from “why?” to “why not” within a few scenes. J.J. Abrams’s sleek visuals and fully-realized action scenes are complimented by one of the most perfectly selected casts I’ve ever seen. Sure they all look unrealistically pretty compared to their predecessors but I’m willing to let that slide.

5. In the Loop-Armando Iannucci’s political satire is populated with fast-talking characters straining to be taken seriously who ultimately have little clue what they’re talking about. If you’ve seen “Veep”, the pace of dialogue and humor won’t surprise you (and I can’t say I’m qualified in any comparative analysis having only seen a couple episodes of "Veep") but it’s a joy to see this type of energy in cinematic terms. It might even be said that the one-off nature of the plot makes a sharper point about the directionless bureaucracy that guides politics considering that serialized television has to take a direction sooner or later.

6. Up-While not Pixar’s most ambitious movie concept, there’s a lot to be said for the execution. Ed Asner gives, for my money, the best voice over performance in history, the film rightfully gains recognition for its emotional punch of an opening montage, and a balloon trip to South America lends itself to visuals that dazzle in a whole new light. More than that, it’s a story with a sense of non-stop adventure backed by a pair of characters one gets easily invested in.

7. Sin Nombre-Cary Fukunaga explores the bleak life choices of people in the middle triangle of Central America whether they decide to risk their lives emigrating northward or live under a lawless void that’s pervaded by the lure of gang life. The story finds its heart in a gang member who makes a decision to do something decent (stop a brutal rape) and follows his impending doom.

8. 500 Days of Summer-Tonally, this love story is wispy fairy tale but it’s also an unflinching look at unhealthy romantic expectations. Wide-eyed Joseph Gordon-Levitt (matched in charm and cuddliness by a flighty Zooey Deschanel) is a man with a wide-open heart but is doomed by his unwillingness to face the reality of what his partner wants.

9. The Blind Side-The true story about a homeless teenager who gets adopted by an affluent white family in Tennessee is a classic sports film with unusually quiet and somber notes and a focus that takes place mostly off the field. It’s not the post-racial declaration of coexistence people might be looking for but it’s told with nuance and anchored by strong performances.

10. District 9-Neil Blomkamp’s regionally specific version of dystopia is so gritty and visceral, one can feel its otherworldly landscape. The film plays with P.O.V. and format to maximum effect. Set in a future version  of South Africa, the film parallels the struggles of apartheid without hitting the allegory angle too hard.

Runners-up:

Stephen Soderbergh’s  The Informant isn’t particularly coherent on a first viewing but it’s a very clever playing out of the “unreliable narrator” trope and has some curious casting.

The Invention of Lying is a classic man-environment mismatch comedy: In this case it’s lying man vs. honest society, an inversion of 1997’s Liar Liar. It doesn’t deliver on Ricky Gervais’s trademark cringe humor but it gets maximum comic mileage out of its premise and has a surprising amount of heart.

Extract is an underappreciated Mike Judge film that once again takes on his familiar themes of working class frustration but delivers its “the right workplace for you is waiting out there somewhere” parable with a bit more conviction and heart than his previous films. The film deftly juggles a pair of intersecting hair-brained schemes while leaving room to fill out the quirks of its auxiliary characters with a strong sense of place.

Funny People is the only Judd Apatow (or Judd-Apatow-by-association) film I’ve seen that seems like a genuine attempt to move people with humor than a quest to inject moviedom with as many dick jokes as possible.

The Hangover created a sizeable dent in the pop culture sphere due to its lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry between and the gut punch value of its reveals as three friends try to piece together what happened the night before. With a naked Ken Joeng popping out of a car and Mike Tyson’s (with pet tiger in tow) extremely random cameo, the film kept audiences in an anything-can-happen trance that still holds up today.

Veep

Veep- If you can forgive Matt Walsh for not measuring up to Peter Cipaldi’s foul-mouthed bully, then it’s virtually the same ensemble transplanted with different faces. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays the part previously occupied by Mimi Kennedy and Timothy Simmon’s White House liaison character is a clear variation of Chad (Zach Woods). To minimize any further confusion for “In the Loop” fans, Anna Chlumsky pretty much plays the same character. She has a higher position (chief of staff to the VP) so maybe it’s the same character in the same universe farther along in time where she got a promotion?

Honestly, there’s not too much else to say except to compare it with “In the Loop” and I would presume the television series which it’s based on. You would think that because Ianucci’s distinct style is more about the rhythm of the dialogue than the plot, that the format is more conducive to television. However, when condensed into 23 minutes, I found the plot to be so much less meaty, that it felt entirely expendable to me.

I loved In the Loop enough that I would not mind tuning into this show again (oh that’s right, I don’t have HBO) bur my point is there’s something to be said for versatility and  it might have been nice if Armando Ianucci’s hyped show wasn’t so predictably similar to past work.