Silence

★★★★★★★★☆☆

It's interesting that Silence, an astoundingly religious film, was released relatively well into the 21st century. As I watched, I wondered if it would grate against certain modern sensibilities. Western Christianity, in particular, has been understandably linked to a lot of pain. Liberal philosophy seems split between itself as it recognizes the need for freedom of religion, while also fighting against certain beliefs held by the religious. So I wondered if seeing these Christians sharing their gospel to a foreign population would make the Christian protagonists rather unheroic to a portion of the audience. When Spotlight was released last year, a film dramatizing the journalists who exposed the Catholic church’s long attempt to cover up rampant child molestation by its priests, no one had a problem with the way the church was presented because the horrors in the film were true. And the notion of a seedy religious establishment is comfortable to us. What Scorsese does, like in Spotlight, is stick to the truth of this story, which is more loosely based on real events and men. What Silence becomes is something powerful, religious (in the best sense of the word), and beautifully cinematic.

Silence's biggest accomplishment is that it's a film about religion; not in a general sense, nor in a vague, New Age way. It's specifically about Jesuit priests, Catholic missionaries, and ultimately Jesus. Making a good film about religion, especially in 2016, must be one of the hardest things to do. There's been a rise in religious films lately, some of which I've seen. The main critique of them is that instead of getting its audience to think, they proselytize. Martin Scorsese has created a film that allows his art to directly comment on religion in a way that allows its audience to consider things critically. It’s sophisticated because of this. It’s art for adults.

Scorsese has apparently been talking about making this film since at least the late '80s. He read “Silence” by Shûsaku Endô, the film's source material, and felt that it was a story that needed to be told. It's not his first foray into religious film territory, but this one puts faith front and center. While Silence certainly explores what makes faith, particularly bringing over one to another country, problematic, it also casts faith, having it, in honorable light.

The film begins by following two Portuguese priests on their journey to Japan. Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver) are on a fact-finding mission to learn the fate of their spiritual mentor Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). News has been brought back to them that after seeing and experiencing the persecution of Japanese Christians, Ferreira has denounced the faith. Rodrigues and Garrpe cannot believe it, so they go to Japan to learn the truth. Once there, they become the spiritual leaders to pockets of secret Japanese Christians who are persecuted for converting. Soon Rodrigues and Garrpe confront the same decision that Ferreira allegedly faced: allow these Christian converts to endlessly suffer, or denounce their own faith.

The film feels deeply personal to me, first as a person of Christian faith. The exploration of doubt and the feeling that there's silence from on high is something I imagine everyone who exercises spiritual faith of any kind must battle. Not to mention it's personal because, though I'm not Catholic, there's a special place in my heart for the Jesuits as my high school was run by that order of priests. I also was once an international missionary of sorts, in significantly different and less hostile circumstances than these 17th century priests find themselves. But I think even without these connections there’s power to this film because it touches on things that are universal. On a general level we can all shutter at the brutality of religious persecution. We can ask ourselves questions about the value and potential for harm in exporting a faith tradition, or more broadly, any ethical standard, to another culture. But more specifically: How long do you hold on to your beliefs? If you aren't wholly true and devoted to anything, how can you be honorable or decent? What do you do when those you look up to and love cause you pain? Do you truly believe in anything at all?

Scorsese's film is reminiscent of 1957’s The Bridge Over River Kwai. Of course we see Japanese aggression in both films, but beyond that they are similar structurally. Both films are quite long and at times repetitive and difficult to watch. Both leave you wondering exactly where we're headed until we reach the destination. Only when we reach the end do we see why what came before was so necessary. Though Silence is long and arduous even, it's never boring.

Finally, I should mention the excellent performances by Andrew Garfield, who turns in a remarkably strong lead performance, and Japanese actor Yôsuke Kubozuka in a hefty supporting role.

Fences

★★★★★★★★​☆☆

When a film features a performance that seems to leave you breathless, the tendency can be to focus on the actor without recognizing how phenomenal the project is in its entirety. I feel that is happening, to a degree, with Jackie. How that film was not nominated for a Golden Globe for its score is beyond me, and I think Pablo Larraín deserves to be in the conversation for best director. The same can be said for Fences. It features not just one, but many powerful performances from Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, and the cast at large, but its true power is in the story written by playwright August Wilson and brought to the silver screen by director Denzel Washington.

Fences, adapted from the stage play of the same name, takes place mostly in Troy and Rose Maxson’s backyard. Both Washington and Davis won Tony Awards for playing the same characters on stage, which I had the privilege to see. They’re a working class black couple surviving day to day in 1950s America. Despite having difficult lives in many respects, they are full of energy, particularly Troy, who fills up a room with his personality, which at times is too much. Troy struggles to be decent, a decent husband and a decent father. Ultimately he fails in both respects.

The film, and the play it’s based on, skillfully explores what made Troy the way he is. He’s a man, like all of us, shaped by a series of social forces. He’s on the short-end of systemic and outright racism. Troy, along with his community, is perpetually behind, restricted from reaching his full potential because any small advancement requires a fight and incredible risk. He’s the victim of unchecked capitalism. The celebration of greed goes hand-in-hand with racism, which causes him to fiercely guard what little he has, and makes him a limiting factor in his son’s life, just like society has been for him. He is also influenced by patriarchy. He could be seen as a victim of a patriarchal society because of his experience with his own father, his insecurity about his own manhood and his son’s future as a man. But it’s probably more accurate to say that he’s been morally corrupted by patriarchy because he still actively perpetuates it. Troy is also industrious, quick-witted and possesses a kind folkloric spirituality.

What’s amazing about the piece, and many pieces written for the stage, is that we learn all of this, over the course of two hours and 15 minutes, through dialogue. There are no flashbacks or dream sequences. Just well written conversation that teaches us what we need to know about these characters. This means Troy is a talented storyteller and Rose has a knack for explaining exactly how she feels.

This amazing aspect of how the story is told leads me to my main critique of the film. Fences feels encumbered by the fact that it was written for the stage. Instead of feeling like a film, it feels like a play captured by cameras (outside of the few times we leave the backyard and home where almost everything happens). This is a problem because film, like any other art form is unique. It has a distinct set of possibilities for how it can be used and those boundaries are pushed all the time. That makes it exciting. An artist decides to sculpt something instead of paint it for a reason. Fences doesn't feel improved or changed by its presence on the screen, so it feels like it never needed to leave the stage. When film isn’t used to its fullest potential then you diminish the medium, the art form, to a vehicle for wide distribution. Film, then, is no longer art, it’s utilitarian.

That being said, it cannot be denied that Fences is a prolific piece of storytelling.

And about those performances… they were excellent from the Maxsons’ youngest son, Cory (Jovan Adepo), to Troy’s best friend, Bono (Stephen Henderson). But it is Davis and Washington that sink their teeth into these characters.

Davis, like Washington, is proving to be one of this generation’s greatest American actors. She is in top form as a black woman doing the best she can with the life she’s been given. In plays characters are more likely to outright say how they feel and to explain the broader implications for those feelings. You can’t slowly zoom in on a character's face on stage to reveal their emotions. So in a pivotal scene when she appraises her life, she’s in danger of coming off a bit too on the nose for a film. But Davis, the master that she is, makes every word believable. You believe that her character is this self-aware. It’s as if Rose has thought about these things but never had the courage to say them before. This really could be Davis’ year to win the Oscar.

And as outstanding as Davis’ performance is, it’s Denzel Washington that shows his range. Washington’s performance is one of deep understanding and care. He really knows this man, which means he knows Troy is despicable at times and burden to everyone around him. But Washington also empathizes with him. He sees that Troy is not a total monster. Washington can feel why Troy has become this way. You can tell he cares about this complicated man.

I Am Not Your Negro

★★★★★​★★★★★

I Am Not Your Negro is based wholly upon the words of the most prolific writer about race in America, and one of the most important nonfiction writers of all time. It’s not so much a documentary about James Baldwin (there are no expert professors or family members here to dissect his every word), but rather a film essentially by James Baldwin. In fact, Baldwin is given a writer credit with director Raoul Peck.

The whole film comes from Baldwin’s own words, much of it from his final book entitled “Remember This House,” a book he never finished. We get to hear excerpts from his notes for the book and from his letters to his publisher about his plans for the project and how it was taking shape. The film serves as a sort of visual book, a beautiful way to memorialize the man and some of his last written words, and now is certainly a time we need to hear from him. “Remember This House” was supposed to tie together the lives of Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X— three civil rights leaders who were assassinated for fighting for their freedom— three men that Baldwin knew personally. These men’s lives, and equally as important for Baldwin's purposes here, their deaths, are jumping off points for him to write so powerfully (once again) about what he has understood to be the black experience in America.

To outline all his points would require unlimited time on my part and yours, and I'm not even sure I was able to soak in every nugget of truth from his final book, unfinished as it was. What I will say is that Baldwin's words are poetry. Whether they are filled with rage, power or incredible sophistication, they’re always poetry. We see him flexing his muscles as the foremost writer (and speaker) on the black experience and furthermore why it seems so hard for so many Americans to understand it. This is not to let the ignorant off the hook, but to indict them for being so willfully blind and foolish. 

Baldwin is a personal hero. He articulates what I simply cannot because I lack the sophistication of speech. I also lack the willingness to sit and think endlessly about this horrific history and the pain that continues to be thrust upon portions of the American population. That's not to say I don't think about these things. I spend a considerable time reading and contemplating how illusive the concept of justice is to most. To think on this for the amount of time that I do devote to it fills me with so much anger. Baldwin confidently and famously stated, "To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” At times, for my mental health, I just have to press pause. What’s remarkable about Baldwin is that he never allowed himself to stop thinking, or talking, or writing about these things for as long as people needed to hear it (which is 'til the end of time it seems). It's why he returned from the life he built in Paris, away from the country that he loved, but hurt him so. This is when he begins writing “Remember This House” and re-examining the men around which the book centers.

Writing about these men causes him to wrestle with his role in the Civil Rights movement. He wasn't present at every march, nor was he constantly thrown in jail. He wrote, and lectured, and wrote some more. That was his contribution. With this film, what we're left with is a kind of audio-visual capsule of the pain of being black from the beginning of these United States through to this day.

The film itself is concise. It masterfully and humbly allows Baldwin to do the talking, with the help of Samuel L. Jackson who acts as a vocal vessel when reading from Baldwin's notes and excerpts. To fill out what may have been missing, Raoul Peck seamlessly splices Baldwin's lectures and television appearances. He also compares the plight of black people during the height of the Civil Rights movement to the plight of that same group today by including scenes from recent tragedies and protests, diminishing any argument from those who, despite having no compassion for the Black Lives Matter movement or the very real complaints from black citizens today, think they're somehow on the same side of history as Martin Luther King Jr.

There's a moment in the film when Baldwin discusses Bobby Kennedy's comments about the struggle for Civil Rights. In 1968, with remarkable accuracy, the younger Kennedy said that things aren't perfect, but they're getting better, and that perhaps in 40 years we'll even have a black president. The attendees in the small theater showing a special preview of the film snickered, myself included. As we sat there we were experiencing the tale end of that black president’s two terms, a president who faced resistance for any and everything, and was berated by those who doubted his American-ness while in office. We also sat with the reality that the man who most vocally doubted his citizenship would be the man to succeed him. So it turns out Mr. Black President, though prophesied by Bobby Kennedy, wasn’t the John the Baptist-type figure ushering the country into a post-racial society as so many expected Obama's election signaled, and as Kennedy seemed to suggest back then. What Baldwin so eloquently dissected is how two groups in the same country listening to the same speech interpreted Kennedy’s statement differently. White people, at least the liberal leaning, saw things how Kennedy saw things. Hooray! In a mere four decades we could really have this amazing thing happen. That’s so soon. Baldwin greeted that statement with the disdain is deserved. So you're telling black folks, whose ancestors were brought and sold here, were the backbone of the economic system because their labor was exploited, that we have to wait a little longer, and maybe, just maybe, a black man will get some sort of meaningful power? And perhaps no one could have known, though it could have been predicted, how forcefully that power would be undermined. Throughout this film, the idea of these two separate realities is something Baldwin so clearly illuminates.

The black child, or any child for that matter, isn't born with the awareness of these separate realities. Baldwin describes how painful it is for a young person to discover he or she is black. In one of the many masterful uses of popular film as a reflection of culture, Baldwin explains how power is illustrated in westerns. John Wayne is often the hero fighting against the Indians. So a black child takes that and grows up seeing Wayne heroically. Then he returns from the movies to his neighborhood to notice that the adults that look like him are treated like the Indians in those movies. Suddenly he comes to know the historical context of these westerns— that the antagonists, who aren't actually Indian at all, had their land stolen. By all reasonable accounts, as a race, they are legitimate victims of horrific violence. So he learns that power, not justice, is celebrated in this culture, and his power, as a black man, is in short supply. What our strides for equality, certainly notable, have in fact done is put off this discovery for some black people. For me, this realization didn’t truly begin until I got to college. The last blinder fell after the man who killed Trayvon Martin was found not guilty in a Florida court. When I was a child I did not think about these things. I actively pretended the inequality didn't exist or the accounts of injustice were just isolated experiences, despite hearing terrible first-hand accounts from my own family.

It was when watching a documentary that I came across James Baldwin for the first time. (It's a shame that we don't learn about him in school.) Only a brief portion of a lecture he gave was included in the piece, but I remember writing his name down and knowing that I needed to look him up later. I learned that his words, like this film, have the potential to break open a person’s understanding if that person is exposed to it.

This is less a movie review than a brief reflection on just some of the points Baldwin makes in the film. But to touch on the filmmaking a bit more I’ll say it's a documentary unlike any that I've seen. It feels more like visual literature. It's well researched and that research is seamlessly integrated. But the crux of the film is really the singular voice at the center, Baldwin's, which is why this film review probably reads more like a book review.

Baldwin makes another point worth noting. I Am Not Your Negro, like Baldwin himself, refuses to surrender any great sense of hope to the audience. Baldwin suggests that what the country must do is recognize that the plight of black Americans is the he plight of the country. And if this is not understood soon enough, it could lead to something like revolution and even systemic collapse.

La La Land

★★★★★★​★★★☆

The type of folks who have the time to comment on internet articles like to complain that there are no good or original movies these days, all while never taking a chance to see anything unconventional. There really are a lot of artists creating good work, and now more than ever, it’s easier to access. That being said, even among the movies that aren’t sequels or part of extended cinematic universes, it’s still rare to find a film that is so different, so new, that there’s nothing out there like it. La La Land is that type of movie. Certainly it borrows elements from other films and genres that came before, but still it breathes fresh air into the cinema landscape standing in a category all by itself.

In a way, La La Land is a film divided. It’s partly a sobering look at a romantic relationship, grounded in real emotions and hardship. It’s partly a dreamlike and colorful musical— a true musical where characters sing for no apparent reason. The world is whimsical and surreal and that’s where the story begins.

Act I opens with Mia and Sebastian living their separate lives in L.A. Right from the start it’s a rip-roaring extravaganza. Writer/director Damien Chazelle, only 31 years old, uses color and light to decode the world we’ve entered. While it’s one of broken dreams, Mia, a struggling actress, and Seb, a “starving” jazz pianist and purist, still have some hope and fight left in them. They meet several times by accident, then sing and tap their way to friendship. But their relationship develops into something more. I’m talking grand old Hollywood sweeping romance. The seedlings of love become a whimsical dream that leaves us floating on air. And because Chazelle has built this world of wonders from the start, we, the audience, eat it up.

The first Act closes and we enter Act II, no longer floating in the clouds, but still pretty happy. There’s a saying among some Christian communities: “The reason the good news is so good, is because the bad news is so bad.” The idea is that you can drive by a number churches and be reminded that “Jesus Saves.” But that good news is only good because the first part of the story details how utterly depraved and hopeless you, and everyone else, are. La La Land uses this theory, but in reverse. The crack in our lovers’ romance is so hard to bear because moments earlier we were viewing the magical, otherworldly, romantic buildup that brought these two together.

This act is more rooted in something resembling reality. Sure, the characters still sing for no apparent reason, but the songs are more subdued and most of the music actually is a product of a given scene. I really can't stress enough that this movie shouldn't work. The reason La La Land is so unlike other movie musicals is because Chazelle treats his characters like the real, three-dimensional, 21st century people they are supposed to be. Usually a director must sacrifice an amount of realism in his or her characters to create a world that doesn’t operate by the rules of our reality. But what’s so remarkable is that Chazelle defiantly has it both ways. His characters live in a strange world of whimsy, without being caricatures.

At this point, I desperately want to dissect every frame of the grand finale right here in my review, but in an effort to not spoil the movie, I won’t. All I’ll say is that after Act II, we end on not so much a third act than, if I can borrow a music metaphor, a coda. Suffice it to say that this final push balances both the realism and wild whimsy we’ve seen in the film. It’s here that everything comes together and Chazelle’s vision is realized. We learn that Chazelle’s use of surreality isn’t just whimsy for whimsy’s sake. It is the feeling of uninhibited happiness. So in the moment we unexpectedly revisit his whimsical world, it’s like the feeling of weightlessness after reaching the very top of a roller coaster as you begin to free fall to the earth below. This is what the film miraculously manages to accomplish. Beyond an examination of love and love lost, it’s a joyride of emotion brought to you by an artist with a clear vision for the story he’s created.

I thought La La Land was just about perfect. There are two sequences that I don’t think need to be there, but that’s of little consequence when met with such a risky film that pays off so gloriously. And this is what the best movies are—from Citizen Kane, to The Godfather; from Star Wars to Guardians of the Galaxy; from Pulp Fiction to Psycho—they are films that when released you scream, “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life!” That’s how a film becomes iconic, whether in cult circles or in the larger pop culture lexicon. And La La Land is here to stay as 2016’s gold standard of groundbreaking filmmaking.

Jackie

★★★★★★​★★★☆

Jackie gets better and better the more time you spend thinking about it after its over. And it's certainly one of those cinematic experiences that will stay with you. As someone who wasn't even close to being alive when President Kennedy died, I was not aware of the myths that swirled and surrounded his passing. Predominantly the one about Camelot— the idea of the special, never-to-be-duplicated, nature of JFK and his presidency, like a line in the Broadway musical: "There will never be another Camelot." Jackie Kennedy created this myth with Theodore White (Billy Crudup), a journalist she invited to her home to interview her after her president-husband's assassination. She needed Jack to be remembered as not just some president in an ever-growing list of leaders of the free world, but a president like no other, a martyr for a righteous cause. Surely Jackie is a story about grief, pain and preserving a legacy, but that description sells the film short. To properly explain it I can only think of two words.

The first, transcendent. The movie seems to hover just above reality at a place where this story, though rooted in true events, becomes something of its own entirely. It's a movie derived from a context, and that context only strengthens the material. Learning about the Camelot myth after watching the film only made it richer. But even as it stands alone it feels like a completely original and independent story conceived by writer Noah Oppenheim and director Pablo Larrain. Its import is felt beyond representation of facts or even interpretation of those facts, but digs deeper into the psyche, which is why it can't be altogether truthful, because we can't fully know what Jackie Kennedy was feeling or her motivations for what she did in the aftermath of her husband's death. The film doesn't just take a perspective on true events. That would be simply explaining the facts and ascribing some motivation and feelings. Instead, it creates a whole other woman who by her nature couldn't help but do what we see her doing. It's character building in the highest form. This isn't Jackie Kennedy, it's truly Larrain's Jackie.

The second word to describe the film is lucid. Visually speaking it glides and feels dreamlike. It moves back and forth between days and parts of conversations so much that it would be jarring if it weren't done so smoothly. As it slides along, you begin to see that the film is a tapestry wherein each moment connects to the next in a way that's more meaningful than chronology. A moment at JFK's funeral ties in with a moment on the day he died, which connects to part of Jackie's conversation with a priest that takes place between his death and funeral. This effectively shirks the problem that kills biopics the most, the chronological minutiae of a life, but also hones in on themes without being tactlessly on the nose. 

To create this masterpiece certainly was a group effort. Three people deserve immense credit for being so in synch. It's as if they shared a brain during the filmmaking process. I can only be sure they shared the same clear, bold vision for the film, which is especially spectacular because it's like nothing we've seen.

Taking the reins was director Pablo Larrain. His camera whirls around capturing his leading lady and those around her, and visually constructing a way to feel. Then at the perfect moments he lets his camera rest, honing in on Natalie Portman, leaving no doubt that she alone is our singular concern. He made it possible for this film to come together so powerfully and transform into something beyond what we normally experience at the movies.

Then there's Mica Levi with her incredible score. I don't know at what point she wrote the music, but it conveyed the same lucid sense of dizziness and disorder, while also transmitting this sense of wonder. I've been listening to the score this week after watching the film and it's nothing short of haunting, though not in a dark way. Instead of darkness, it feels like learning to fly in a dream.

Finally, Natalie Portman, who, after all I've seen this year in films (71 new releases at the time of this writing), deserves her second Oscar. Sure, she nails the voice, the often uncertain smile, and the poise, but remember, this isn't just the Jackie Kennedy we know. This is Larrain's Jackie, a concept Portman seems to understand totally. With a slight lift of her chin you can feel the desperate aching she feels without saying a word. And her eyes, still shimmering, convey a deep worry, like she's unsure if she'll make it through the next moment. She's not one thing, but multi-faceted. She goes beyond what ‘60s coverage could tell us and leans in to being this character in a way that so distinctly belongs to this film.

Manchester by the Sea

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Certain actors have kind of created their own film genres surrounding their onscreen personas. Most are aged male action stars. Liam Neeson has a type of movie he’s in now, post-Schindler’s and Love Actually. Stallone and Schwarzenegger always play the same characters. Most recognizable in 2016 is the Jason Statham movie. Matt Damon and the Afflecks have, in essence, carved out their own genre in the film industry, not by virtue of their onscreen selves, but by forming the definitive Hollywood image of Boston and its people. They project their gaze upon the city, one of compassion and certainly romance even when presenting the grittier side of Boston. Matt Damon was one of the producers of Manchester and it stars Casey Affleck. And while the elder Affleck was not involved in this particular project, Damon and the Affleck brothers are still Boston’s biggest champions, and with their collection of films, Good Will Hunting leading the way, they have created a world in which their characters live, not unlike Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or Seuss’s Whoville. The argument can be made that the Damon/Affleck Boston is more rooted in reality, though.

To add a dose of freshness to their canon of Massachusetts movies, Manchester by the Sea stars Casey this time and mostly takes place about 40 minutes outside of Boston, in Manchester-by-the-sea, MA. We meet our protagonist, Lee Chandler, in Boston where he’s moved to live the majority of his adult life. The film introduces us to the man and gives us a sense of his character, then peels off the layers, one at a time, revealing how Lee became the man he is. By any measurement Lee is alone, and though he may say he’s fine with it, it’s obvious he’s not. He’s hostile toward people though in his eyes you can tell that he wants to be with them. He’s either hiding something or hiding from something.

Like Lee, the film is incredibly quiet as it captures everyday Massachusetts. The argument can be made that it’s all a little too everyday and too quiet, but I think that’s an unwarranted criticism once we reach the end.

Lee is forced to interact with other people when he learns of his brother’s death. He drives to Manchester-by-the-sea to deal with the funeral arrangements and to care for Patrick, the teenage son his brother left behind. Patrick and Lee are men we’ve seen before in the Boston collection of films: men who feel the need to assert their masculinity, men who wouldn’t dare wear their hearts on their sleeves, men very much shaped by Boston. But like in those other films, these aren’t men that are judged for any of that. These two already have trouble communicating, but that trouble is only exacerbated by the fact that Lee refuses to let much of anything affect him. It’s his way of pleasing the crowd, by refusing to make decisions and to care too deeply.

But Lee wasn’t always this way. The film, expertly crafted by writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, jumps back and forth through time in an almost jarring way, filling the audience in on past moments that are directly related to a moment in the present that we have just witnessed, or a scene that we are being brought back to repeatedly as we jump from present to past to present again. Everything is all so cleanly done in these sections so that the story is easy to follow for everyone (save for the mother-daughter pair sitting closest to me in the theater. The elderly mother kept loud-whispering questions to the daughter to figure out what was going on).

In addition to these flashbacks, the film included these absolutely marvelous lyrical passages. They were almost pastoral, like movements in a symphony. That metaphor comes readily because during these times classical music played creating a break from the quietness of the rest of the film, illustrating the intensity of the moment, and cueing the audience to the poignancy of what was being revealed. These stretches were my favorite parts of the film. They were deeply moving and cinematic. These moments felt so different from the rest of the film. Part of me feels that they came too scarcely in a film that is a touch too long, but I don’t think that’s actually the case, because when they did come, they really meant something.

The greatest achievements of the film, despite excellence in every aspect, were found in three of the lead performances. First, Michelle Williams plays Lee’s ex-wife. Williams isn’t in the movie a ton, but she uses her screen time awfully well. She’s one of those actresses that can make you believe not only every word, but every movement she makes as a character. Then there’s Lucas Hedges, who plays teenage Patrick. Not only is he funny, but he’s also the ultimate real-life teenager. As an actor he seems to grasp all the nuances that have shaped his character’s personality, without overtly showing us the behind-the-scenes work he must have done. Then there’s Lee himself, Casey Affleck in his best performance. There’s so much to good to say about him here, but at the top of the list is the way he glides between the present-day Lee, lonely and disaffected, and the Lee of the past, who was bursting with youthful male energy. The film is Lee's journey of slowly moving in the direction towards his old self. Affleck's work is so crisp that he never for a moment feels like a different man, just a man who’s been forced to change and continues to change in real time.

Rules Don't Apply

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

Warren Beatty has been researching the life and times of Howard Hughes for years, decades even, and that's all well and fine, but when a film as perfect as Martin Scorsese's The Aviator is out in the world, it means the task of capturing even an iota of the character of a person, so excellently portrayed by another, becomes that more daunting. So Beatty, I assume, decided to do more research and wait even longer so he could get it just right. How we ended up with the humorless and incoherent Rules Don't Apply is baffling. Even more baffling still is that the film doesn't stop at just not measuring up to any standard of good; it's actively bad.

Films with a single artiste at the helm, this one was written and directed and stars Beatty, have the potential to go two ways. They can be the culmination if that artist's vision. A sharply focused picture is brought to life without interruption or the disease of "too many cooks in the kitchen." The other possibility is self-indulgence. An artist believes in himself or herself so much, too much, that he can't see the mess he's making.

Rules Don't Apply swings heavily in the second direction. Even if you disregard that Beatty plays it fast and loose with the historical facts, the story is still so convoluted that the audience can't even decide where to focus.

It begins in a changing Hollywood. The fictional Marla Mabrey (Lilly Collins) arrives with her mother in Hollywood awaiting her moment to meet and audition for Howard Hughes (eventually played by Beatty). He tests her patience, but she's steadfast. As she waits, she becomes friendly with Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), her young and handsome driver. He too has yet to meet Hughes and has a business proposal he'd like to run by the famed moviemaker and pilot. Marla and Frank begin to strike up a forbidden romance before we ever even see Hughes. Their romance goes against Mabrey's strict religious beliefs. For a moment the story seems to be, in part, some sort of comment on that. It also goes against Hughes' direct order that his employees not get familiar with the talent.

By the time we meet the mysterious (played insane) Mr. Hughes, his role in the unfolding narrative is altogether unclear. Surely he's a secondary character to the more down-to-earth, relatable young lovers. Wrong! In a move more disorienting than Hughes himself, the film shifts to being all about him, his idiosyncrasies, and his demons. Any attempt at humor at this point comes far too late. No one has patience for it because for the next hour or more we'll be forced to remain in our state of plot confusion without a hope for rescue in sight. Any attempt at heart becomes even more futile than the flat jokes.

The simple truth is that Rules Don't Apply is not charming, engaging, or even mildly entertaining. Calling it confusing even seems too generous because it suggests that there are pieces of the puzzle to put together. It may have been the hope that the rules of story arc and character development need not apply to this film. It certainly didn't earn any of the necessary avante garde points for this to be true. After watching the film, one would beg that at the very least the rules of coherency would apply, but sadly, they do not.

Allied

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Allied is a movie that starts well. The problem is pretty much everything else. Perhaps, I’m being too harsh. It’s not that the heart of the film is even bad. It’s not. The story is clear. It moves in a distinct direction, never leaving the audience behind. What makes it feel lost is the lack of poetry. The film rids itself of the tone and cinematic vision set up by an engaging opening.

Our story begins when Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) reaches Casablanca during the height of Nazi occupation there. A movie can’t help but be utterly cinematic in that setting thanks to the classic film named after the city. He meets his accomplice, the French operative Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard), who plays the part of his wife. The two are charged with blending in for the next ten days until they are to attend a gala where they will assassinate the German ambassador. Since it’s only the two of them, it’s essentially a suicide mission, so why not start a romance if odds are that one, or even both won’t survive.

When set in Casablanca, Allied is gloriously old Hollywood. It’s lush, dangerous and sensual.

Both Marianne and Max survive the mission and end up getting married in real life, having a child, and starting their life in London. A year into their whirlwind romance, trouble starts, but it’s not your typical lovers’ quarrel. In fact, the two seem very much in love when Max is informed that his wife may not be Marianne Beauséjour at all, but a German spy gathering intelligence as his wife and sending it to the Nazis. Initially Max can’t believe it, though he comes to consider it a possibility, because his wife, like himself, is trained in the art of deception.

The biggest thing Allied got right was the casting of Cotillard. She has this ability to play duplicitous and dangerous (The Dark Knight), but also possesses a warmth and innocence (The Immigrant). Her performance is so good in the role that it’s never really any of the new revelations Max comes across that make us wonder which side Marianne is playing at, but Cotillard herself never lets us in on the answer until the very moment when the truth is revealed. Director Robert Zemeckis also deserves credit for keeping us guessing.

As we move from Casablanca to London, the film mirrors the setting: gray, gloomy and devoid of color. What was once fun becomes laborious. The direction becomes more standard and the action is far less intriguing. Max is forced to work with British intelligence to set a trap to figure out if Marianne is really who she says she is, but Max hasn’t the patience to wait three days to learn the answer. So he goes about exhausting all the avenues he can think of to figure out what is true about the woman he loves. He traipses around from place to place showing people pictures of his wife and asking if she is the real Marianne Beauséjour to no avail. In fact, for all Max’s wanderings, he only finds out the truth about Marianne mere moments before British intelligence.

Ironically, the best decision the Allied filmmakers made, the casting of Cotillard, leads to the reason the film never lifts off. While Pitt’s Max seeks answers, Cotillard’s Marianne is left with just about nothing to do. I almost wish that instead of leaving Max and the audience in the dark about Marianne’s true identity, the filmmakers had let us know what was going on. This would open the door for us to see Marianne doing something more than sitting around at home watching a hopelessly confused Max come and go. Sure she went to a pub, played with her kid, and threw a party, but mostly she is resigned to sitting down and acting the crap out of the role with her eyes.

Allied even ends well. But unfortunately a film with a stellar start and good ending isn’t enough to make up for the meat of the story being undercooked.

Nocturnal Animals

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Nocturnal Animals is one of those films that really shouldn’t work. Because I review so many movies, I begin to pick apart the problems as they unfold. As I watched, I could imagine myself writing a line like: “This film seems as though it’s a movie split into too many parts to ever be properly mended into a cohesive story.” But somehow it does all come together despite the fact that two storylines unfold at the same time. The film only makes sense because of the brilliance of designer-turned-director Tom Ford.

Truthfully, three storylines, not two, unfold simultaneously in Nocturnal Animals. There’s Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) in the present tense. She’s a wealthy woman working as some sort of director at an L.A. art gallery. Her intense chic-ness is only heightened by her unhappiness. She is married to a stereotypically philandering businessman. This part of the film is defined by its lushness, echoed in the strings-heavy score during these parts. It feels like what you could expect from Tom Ford the designer. The second story comes in when Susan’s ex-husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), a writer, sends her a manuscript of a new book he’s written. As she flips the front page, she sees the dedication, “For Susan.” Throughout the film, we see the action of the book as Susan reads it. It’s the story of a Texas family, a husband (also played by Gyllenhaal) a wife (Isla Fisher), a very convincing stand in for a shadow of Amy Adams’ character, and a daughter. For the sake of not giving away too much, I’ll just say they encounter trouble. This second storyline feels like a modern western. It’s imbued with a certain grittiness, unlike Susan’s real life, and is rather unexpected from, though equally well-done by, Mr. Ford. It’s in the book that we’re introduced to Detective Bobby Andes, played by Michael Shannon, who turns in an absolutely magnetic performance. Lastly, the third storyline, like the first, takes place in real life. As Susan reads her ex-husband’s manuscript she remembers the past. We’re treated to flashbacks of Susan and Edward in New York, when he was a struggling writer and she was an art history student trying out la vie bohème in an attempt to escape the privileged lifestyle of her bigoted parents. We’re treated to scenes of their romance and their eventual end as a couple.

So we’ve got all this going on at once, and by just explaining it, it’s easy to see how this film could turn into a soggy cereal. But it all works because of Ford’s singular vision. The film was not only directed, but also written by him. And this is the only way it could work. Ford is a man on mission with a clear sense for what this film should be. He takes the different textures of each period of time and story, and makes them distinct while seamlessly connecting the tissue of the greater story. Without a strong artist at the helm, the movie would have spiraled out of control.

If there’s one complaint, it’s that sometimes, one story would be so engrossing that when it was time to press pause to experience another, I didn’t want to. The action of the book was so absorbing, that when that story was interrupted by a close-up of a Susan in the present, startled by what she has just read, you hardly want to leave the book to enter real life.

Nocturnal Animals smartly and oh-so-elegantly explores what it would be like for an author to use his life as fodder for his art. As Susan reads, she begins to see the indirect and disturbing parallels and metaphors to her past life with Edward. She is devastated by the soulfulness of the book, the choices she’s made, and the way she treated Edward when she left him. She begins to wonder if she can go back and make up for what she did. Though the end isn’t particularly fulfilling, in that it didn’t tidily wrap things up with a bow, it couldn’t have ended more perfectly, allowing us to feel the devastation Susan must feel, but also knowing that, perhaps, she deserves to feel this way.

Alone, each part of the film wouldn’t quite be enough. The present would be too melodramatic, the past would be too predictable, and even the goings on in the book, which is the most gripping storyline, isn’t quite enough on its own, but together all three parts make for a thrilling film experience.

Arrival

★★★★★★★★★☆

There's more depth to the opening three minutes, a quick montage of Louise (Amy Adams) and her daughter's life, than there is to the whole of many lesser films. You almost forget you came to the theater for a sci-fi experience as you lose yourself in the mother-daughter relationship. From those opening moments, the film challenges the mind to a race to put all the pieces together. What's happening? Why is it happening? What's it all mean? It feels like a race against time.

Director Denis Villeneuve sets the pace perfectly, mirroring the anxiety the characters must feel. Twelve mysterious spaceships land (well kind of... they don't actually touch the ground) at twelve locations around the world. Each nation that receives one of the ships, boarded by giant aliens (nicknamed Heptapods), scrambles to figure out what to do with the aliens and their ships. Attack? Wait for them to move first? Try to give a peace offering? This is uncharted territory. Scientists, military personnel, and politicians from the US. decide not to attack, and instead try to communicate with the Heptapods in an effort to figure out what they want. (A democrat must've been president that year). They set up open lines of communication with the other countries involved and bring in a linguist, Louise, to decipher the aliens' language to better understand what they want. Louise is starting from scratch. She can't study the language, has no base of reference, can only see and talk to them in their spaceship while separated by some glass-like barrier, and yet she is under intense pressure, as is her partner, a mathematician named Ian (Jeremy Renner), to produce meaningful headway. As time passes, the other countries cooperate less and it becomes clear that Louise is the only one who can stop a catastrophe from happening.

The premise is inventive. It strays from the conventional "lost in space" movie we've been treated to at least once each of the past three years at this time. This one's quieter, more introspective, character focused. Ultimately it's incredibly powerful. This ride ends up being so much more thrilling than the high-flying space adventures of Gravity and The Martian (which is highly overrated).

Without giving the film away, it totally bends the mind, playing with our concept of time in an even bolder way than Interstellar did. The Heptopods long to communicate and they want to give something. Though we can't understand them, somehow we're able to sense their desperate need to explain their purpose. They hadn't attacked, so why would they come they come if not to communicate something incredibly important? I can't explain how big of a triumph it is to get the audience to feel deeply for aliens. At a point I wept, not completely knowing why, as Adams placed her hand up to the glass and the alien splayed its tentaclic hand-thing mirroring Louise's movement. Though the Heptopods are alien, it is deeply human to want to be understood.

We're left with a beautiful experience that is utterly exhilarating and easily one of the best films of the year. There are questions left unanswered, but even that mirrors my inability to completely express exactly why this film was so moving.

Loving

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Jeff Nichols seems like an odd choice to direct a film about the Loving v Virginia case, a Supreme Court battle which essentially legalized interracial marriage across the United States and made any attempts to obstruct that right illegal. None of Nichols' past films would support the notion that he would take on this kind of civil rights romance, but what his films have proven is that he’s a very capable director.

If I had to describe his style, though there’s no better description for a director’s work than the work itself, the first word I would use is patient. His films move with an ascending sense of urgency. It feels like building a house brick-by-brick, a motif used in Loving, until it reaches its climax. We have to wait, but you know Nichols is taking us somewhere. His movies are filled with scenes, one following another, and each building our concept of what is to come. So many things happen in his films and with each happening the tension grows.

This can be seen in Nichols' most recent film, before Loving, Midnight Special. The characters are on the move, going from place to place, interacting with different people along the way, experiencing a new physical phenomenon in each new setting. It all moves toward a momentous ending.

So Loving follows Nichols’ style. We already know what the end will be, so the film must be more about the journey. And with this, Nichols seems to not know what to do. Like his other films, we jump from scene to scene where the characters, Richard and Mildred Loving, do this and do that, and go from here to there. The problem is all the movement doesn’t seem in service to the given end.

Nichols could have gone several routes, but seemed to never land on any one way to navigate his way to the end. Based on the trailer of the film, it’s easy to forget that it’s a Nichols picture at all. From the trailer you get the sense that the movie will detail the ups and downs of the court battle that will vindicate their love. Nearly every court-related scene is crammed into the trailer, though those scenes in the film are few and at times feel incredibly out of place.

Neither was Loving a grand, sweeping romance in the style of Pride and Prejudice. These are pretty salt of the earth type of people who don’t make speeches professing their love. They didn’t organize a march or even clamor to be in the spotlight unless Mildred felt it was necessary for the case’s success. Again, to forego this route makes sense given the director’s style and the nature of the characters. Nichols didn’t want to go the way of the grand civil rights film and didn’t let a hint of Hollywood romance slip in, which perhaps was smart. He chose to follow a more understated path.

The film could be a character study— a kind of pulling back of the veil on the lives of the humble people who were front and center in a case that would alter history. But Loving can’t be described this way either. With all the movement, and scene changes, and the busyness of so much happening all the time, you don’t really get to know a whole lot about Richard and Mildred. Nichols has them doing a lot, but things feel as if they mostly stay on a singular plane instead of ever digging down into the souls of the Lovings. 

We do get the sense that they love each other, which is important. The film works in these small and poignant moments when we feel their love. There’s a scene in which Richard is hanging out with a group black men. They begin talking about the case, when one black man speaks about the malleable nature of Richard’s problem. He suggests that if Richard ever became so burdened by his situation, he could simply divorce Mildred and end his sorrows. The man contrasts that with his lot as a black man, who can never stop being black even if he wanted to. (It’s not an illogical point to make) Richard is deeply moved, perhaps even disturbed by these words, but when he returns home to his wife we enter into the most beautiful and moving moment in the film, a moment that, though effectively used, was diminished by its inclusion in the trailer. It made the audience see that the love they fought for wasn’t optional, and was as unchangeable as the color of either of Richard or Mildred’s skin.

Despite this, a few other meaningful moments, and excellent performance by Ruth Negga and especially Joel Edgerton, it wasn’t enough to carry the film. Loving never quite captures the weight of the situation.

Doctor Strange

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

“The Hollywood Machine” of the 20th century got a bad rap. The common conception, among the elite European artistes at least, was that the studios systematically doled out films of mass appeal, that were therefore dull and devoid of any true art. Marvel studios, with Disney’s help, is a well-oiled movie-making machine. They’ve figured out out a way to perennially make these comic book movies into huge blockbuster spectacles that generate a lot of money. But as of late, these movies from the Marvel camp have been so good, even as standalone films, you forget each one is part of this kind of 21st century Hollywood machine. Doctor Strange, though, reminds us of said machine, showing that not every film on the conveyor belt is going to be perfect.

And while it was a weaker film than many of the Marvel movies from the last 5 years, it is by no means, a disaster. This first Strange film is an origin story, not surprisingly, but one that is much harder to tell. Unlike most other superhero movies, the filmmakers must not only introduce us to the main players, but completely redirect the audience’s thinking about the world they’re watching. It’s no small feat in this mystical version of our reality, one of endless dimensions and untold magic. Director Scott Derrickson, along with the writers, do a good job guiding us along the way.

Dr. Stephen Strange is a neurosurgeon suffering from the ego complex, long before he suffers the physical effects of a bad car crash. The accident leads him to Nepal to seek healing from The Ancient One (who is somehow Tilda Swinton, all is explained, kind of). Strange gets more than he’s bargained for, but wouldn’t dare leave behind the new truths to which his eyes have been opened. As Strange learns, we learn what we’re to understand as true and real. As Dr. Strange transforms from a crippled egomaniac to a slightly less egomaniacal sorcerer, evil abounds, which he and his new pals must battle.

The ride is nothing short of fun and funny. Benedict Cumberbatch plays his part convincingly and Tilda Swinton takes on this comic book role just as boldly as she would any other. The movie is solid. It simple doesn’t soar.

It is belabored by some downright silly things that are hard to concede to the film, even though we’ve entered a world where just about anything can happen. Without spoiling too much, there’s a fight scene that is a little too Casper the Friendly Ghost. An item that Strange comes to possess is reminiscent of a certain sentient rug in Aladdin. And parts are reminiscent of the 2007 Fantastic Four film and 2011’s Green Lantern, two comic book movies of which no one wants to be reminded. As I write this, I realize the paradox of calling Guardians of the Galaxy my favorite Marvel film. Are not the talking raccoon and the tree man-thing silly? Sure they are, but in GotG you get the sense that they earned those things. What I mean is that Guardians more effectively created a world in which these ridiculous things happen, thus making the ridiculous more believable within the framework that film. The GotG crew simply did a better job of world building.

In 2000 when the first X-Men movie really kicked off the resurgence of the comic book film, no one could have imagined that a fringe character like Dr. Strange would have his own movie. What’s more surprising is just how good these movies have gotten. Surely if Doctor Strange were released before, say 2010, it would have benefitted from a lower bar. But now it fits somewhere toward the bottom of Marvel/Disney’s cannon of films. It should also be given credit, though, for being significantly better than anything the DC Extended Universe has given us so far.

Perhaps this is the rare occasion when the Marvel/Disney machine popped out a less than stellar product. But all in all it’s a product worth using, even if it won’t change your life. And with that, I end this very stretched metaphor.

Christine

★★★★★★★★☆☆

I love movies about journalists, in part, of course, because I am a one, but also because there are so many ways to make a good one, unlike, say, a film about a boxer. I once tweeted, and I stand by it, if I went the rest of my life without seeing another movie about boxing, I’d be all right. Those movies are pretty much all the same.

But a journalism film can take so many different shapes. Christine ventures into dark and twisted territory like 1976’s Network. It was believed that the true events portrayed Christine actually inspired Network, though it’s been reported that Paddy Chayefsky started writing the script for the film months before Chubbuck’s death. Either way, the similarities are inescapable. Not only was it similar to Network in mood, but, like that great film, Christine is able to capture the audience and take them for an unsettling ride. It also resembled Network in a visual sense, from the shadowy shots to the simple fact that both take place on a 1970s TV news set.

Of course, very unlike Network, Christine is wholly based on a true story. It’s the story of Christine Chubbuck, a 29-year-old TV news reporter under pressure to break away from her coverage of zoning meetings and strawberry festivals in her little Florida city, to "jucier" crime reporting. The mantra “if it bleeds, it leads” was gripping the country’s broadcast stations and the little affiliate in Sarasota was not immune. Christine shares some bare-bones similarities with 2014's Nightcrawler too. After trying and failing to spice things up, Chubbuck actually killed herself on air, but before she did, she said, “In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in 'blood and guts', and in living color, you are going to see another first—attempted suicide.”

BANG!

It’s surprising that no one has ever dramatized this story in film before this year. In 2016 there's renewed interest sparking the twin film phenomenon. What’s the twin film phenomenon? It’s when two movies come out the same year and are essentially the same thing. For example: Deep Impact and Armageddon, White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen, or my personal favorite, Gordy and Babe. Two talking pig movies in the same year is CAZY, am I right? Not only did Christine debut at Sundance earlier this year, but so did Kate Plays Christine, a documentary about an actress preparing to play Christine Chubbuck in an upcoming film. I don’t know what the film captured in the documentary will be called, but it’s going to have a tough time surpassing Christine. Also, actress Kate Lyn Sheil, from the documentary’s title, has her work cut out for her if she wants to match the phenomenal performance from Rebacca Hall in this film.

When it’s all said and done, this was Hall’s movie and her moment to shine. She completely alters her stance, transforming into the awkward and virginal 29-year-old reporter. She's convincingly quick-witted and full of convictions, while also being emotionally unavailable and not all there, as inwardly something almost evil lurks. Hall makes us believe that Chubbuck’s mind was an unknowable cloud. How she captures this enigmatic woman so perfectly that it isn't far-fetched that she would kill herself on live television is beyond me. I didn’t have time to think about it as the movie played. I just watched this dazzling character Hall created for us to marvel at. Though the film is incredibly dark and what I’m about to suggest would be a serious long-shot; if the filmmakers and production companies can convince somebody who matters that Christine is a kind of dark comedy, I could see Hall walking away with a Golden Globe. I think she’s in contention for Best Actress in a Drama, but I don’t see it happening with a film that has almost no buzz surrounding it.

It's also worth noting Tracy Letts' solid performance. Here he plays the unendingly irate station manager pushing Christine over the edge. It’s the latest in a string of welcomed and understated Letts performances in film and television this year, from Weiner Dog, to HBO’s Divorce, to his great role as an insufferable dean in Indignation.

While Hall and Letts turn in a pitch-perfect performance, the one thing that the film needed was a stronger sense of itself. When you watch Network, it’s unmistakably clear that the filmmaker had a vision and the film is like nothing else. I wished for Christine to be a bit more stylized from its choice of music to how it was shot. For example, when we reach the film’s crescendo, the moment we’ve all been anxiously awaiting and dreading, I was begging for the shot to, at the very least, linger a bit longer as Christine lie motionless on the floor. I kept longing for Antonio Campos to make a choice with the boldness of David Fincher, infusing the picture with an energy that made it its own film, instead of one of several very good movies in 2016. It’s the difference from a critic calling it “one of the best of 2016,” to that critic forgetting about all other movies while writing his review.

Denial

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

If Zack Snyder is the ultimate example of the complete lack of restraint in filmmaking, Mick Jackson’s Denial is perhaps 2016’s example of too much of it. Snyder had lost the audience well before the ridiculous space monster ripped apart Metropolis in Batman v Superman, but that didn’t stop him from continuing his visual onslaught with that sequence. Denial suffers from the opposite; a total lack of bold choices, diminishing what could have been a more emotionally resonant piece.

The film opens with historian and professor, Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz), in her classroom at Emory University asking how one could prove that the Holocaust happened. One of her students replies, “With photographic evidence.” But Lipstadt quickly informs the student that there are no photos from the deadly war crime because the Germans were sure not to document it. Within the first minutes we are shown the impetus for Holocaust deniers, giving even the sane and moral some pause. Denial centers on a 2000 London libel case that, in effect, put the truth of Holocaust on trial. David Irving (played by a pompous and slithery Timothy Spall) sued American historian Deborah Lipstadt because she called him a "denier," among other choice words, in a book she wrote refuting those who deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Irving chose to sue Lipstadt in London because British libel laws, unlike American ones, put the burden of proof on the accused in defamation cases. This meant Lipstadt and her team of lawyers had to prove that the Holocaust happened and that Irving intentionally misrepresented history. Irving, of course, is an anti-Semite who commiserates with skinheads, and alt-right extremists, but he also wants to be taken seriously as a historian and planned to use the trial as a way to bring credibility to not only his cause, but his name. The trial became highly publicized. There’s a scene where Irving  speaks to the press, based on his real-life words, that elicited a wide range of audible reactions from the audience from spritely laughter to exhalations of disgust. No matter the reaction, they all were the result of Irving sounding terrifyingly similar to one of current candidates running for president of the United States.

Reviewing films is not only about appraising the merits of a given film’s subject matter. Denial certainly is an important story that deals with important themes. Too often, though, we forget that cinema is art and that it took a lot of convincing to get to a place where people considered it so.

Denial doesn’t even come close to using the filmmaking medium to its full potential. It lacks a sense of drama, emotion and a certain soulfulness. Though it’s never boring, the stakes feel incredibly low. David Hare’s screenplay attempts to drum up emotion on several fronts. This scattered approach is perhaps part of the reason why nothing quite lands. Hare and Jackson most likely realized that the events of the trial itself, unlike, say, the O.J. Simpson trial, which was brilliantly dramatized in this year’s American Crime Story series, is not interesting enough. First, we focus on Lipstadt’s conflict with her team of lawyers. They refuse to let Holocaust survivors testify and seem callously unconnected to the horrific events that took place at Auschwitz. Second, we focus on Lipstadt’s struggle to remain quiet during the trial as her lawyers tell her she won’t be testifying either. These things are interesting, but not enough to really give the film enough weight. Then there's a last minute effort to make a question the judge asks feel like a game changer, but we quickly realize that it's not.

Technically the film its proficient, but there’s nothing transcendent about the filmmaking or the images we see. It’s all just a bit too standard of a motion picture.

Speaking of the O.J. trial, which is destined to be to talked about and dissected until the end of time, in addition to the dramatized series, O.J.: Made in America, the docuseries, was a phenomenal achievement from earlier in the year. It makes me wonder, as we seem to be in the year of the documentary, if this story would have been better told as a documentary rather than trying to dramatize it.

The Magnificent Seven

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

I have a bit of an arduous relationship with the Western. I love action films, pulpy films, films with violence. Some of my longest reviews are about disappointing comic book movies (I had a lot to say). With westerns, the brutish and one-dimensional version of man and his honor doesn’t appeal to me. Often women are no more than helpless caricatures themselves. But what really makes them hard to enjoy is that fact that they implore the audience to only consider the immediate action without providing an understanding of the wider context.

In the case of The Magnificent Seven, a rich and powerful gold miner named Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) comes in to take over the town of Rose Creek. The humble folks of the village just want to live in peace with their families, but Bogue won’t let it be so. He gives them three weeks to move out before he takes Rose Creek for his own. The wife of a man Bogue shot and killed sets out to find someone who can protect the town and help them fight for their land, which is apparently the only thing of value in this world. Enter Denzel Washington, or Sam Chisolm, a bounty hunter who agrees to help without too much convincing. He enlists the services of six others from across the west to help the simple townspeople learn to fight and defend themselves.

The problem with westerns, this one included, is that the main players are always trying to right a wrong. But it’s hard, for me at least, to speak of injustice, moral absolutes and the claim to land, when we know that the land for which the humble and honorable townspeople fight, was taken from others (Native Americans in case you were wondering). The fact that this, the most recent version of The Magnificent Seven, was made for a 2016 audience means that in a more liberal film landscape, this 1960s story requires us to hone in on the immediate context all the more, lest it should offend.

Of course there are westerns that take the broader historical context into account when written. Tarantino’s westerns come most immediately to mind. Similarly, Hell or High Water one of this year’s best films, speaks directly to the irony of railing against an evil system when you're part of another. The fact that the irony is lost of The Magnificent Seven means that Tarantino’s films, and those like it, simply operate on a higher plane.

So we must take The Magnificent Seven for what it is. And with that in mind, the film accomplishes all that it sets out to do. It starts off a bit slowly as Chisolm and his new cheeky right-hand man (Chris Pratt) travel around to gather the crew that makes up our seven heroes. Things pick up when they meet. Each one has his unique quirks and when mixed together they’re a lot of fun, possessing a kind of cartoonish humor. Vincent D’Onofrio is a particular stand out as the heavy set, high-pitched, Christian man who will either shoot you or slash you based on whichever is more convenient. Washington brings a bit of gravitas as he leads the motley, multicultural, and dare I say, magnificent crew. Director Antoine Fuqua not only hearkens back to the earlier versions of the story, but pays homage to the genre as a whole, really playing up dramatic camera angles and anything resembling a quick-draw contest. By the end it’s clear, that given the circumstances, you couldn’t really ask for more from this film and you leave satisfied as the men lead the town in a triumphant battle to save Rose Creek, though perhaps the land’s original owners would never experience such satisfaction.

As a parting thought I’d like us to consider something. Each year we can expect an acclaimed, and depressing, film about slavery. In 2016, we have a whole TV show about it. These films remind the country, whether it wants to be reminded or not, of a centuries-long dark period of American history that is often cleaned up for schoolchildren despite its continued effects today. What if we had annual filmic reminders that the land that is these United States was taken from others; that this idealistic image of the all-American is horribly misguided. It would be a reminder of who the Native American really is and what he looks like. These films need to be from the Native perspective, so sorry, The Revenant does not count. If this were to happen, it would be far too uncomfortable for many, but perhaps that’s a good thing.

Southside with You

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

I remember returning home to St. Louis from college in Ohio one winter or summer break and seeing that a school in my hometown was renamed to something like the “Barack Obama Elementary School.” Obama was still in his first term. I remember thinking this was kind of a premature move. He hadn’t even been elected twice, and what if he did something controversial that leads to his impeachment? Then the school would have to scramble to remove any traces of his name. I was simply thinking practically.

Some will complain that Southside with You, like the elementary school’s renaming, is a premature release, but I actually think it couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s the tail end of Obama’s historic presidency. More than ever, he’s risen above the tackiness of politics. And the distributors got lucky releasing the film at the end of week during which both major candidates are hurling accusations about the other’s bigotry, which only serves to make Obama look like the best option we no longer have. Some have argued that Obama is responsible for sparking the flaring racial tensions in the United States. It is, of course, more plausible to believe in a nation whose foundational first century was based on slavery, followed by intense segregation, which only nominally ended, kind of, 50 or so years ago, that the election of a black man really pissed some people off. And the honest conversations about how black people, even the most successful, deal with being black in America are sure to make a contingent of the audience upset. Southside with You, though, with its spritely spirit and understanding of the black perspective, and the diversity of that perspective, is welcomed entertainment for adults this summer.

Despite being about two political figures, who at this point are about as famous as any celebrity, the film plays like an indie romance— something like  Richard Linlater and Julie Delpy's Before series of films (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight). Linklater and Delpy, like writer/director Richard Tanne here, write with a cultural awareness lost in most films for the sake of mass appeal. Also like those Before films, the action of Southside with You takes place in a single day. It follows the first date, though Michelle Robinson would be hard-pressed to call it that, of the couple that would become the first lady and president of the United States. Barack was a summer associate at the corporate law-firm where Michelle had been working for two years. Barack invited Michelle to a community meeting in Chicago’s primarily black south side of the city— the side of the city both lived. Michelle lets Barack know up front that this is not a date and that she’s just interested in going to the meeting. Of course, by design, they end up at an art exhibit, eating and drinking together, at the movies, and taking many strolls. What was meant to be a quick hop-in, hop-out meeting about getting a community center built, turned into a full day of “getting to know you.”

The earlier part of the film was a bit forced before it hit its stride, but perhaps that’s indicative of what a first date is really like. They stopped by an art museum where they had an impossibly erudite, and altogether unsexy conversation.  Tanne’s Michelle and Barack possessed the impeccable manners of 18th century aristocrats, and believably so. As Michelle mentions, she has to work doubly hard just to get noticed at the firm because she is a woman, only to have that worked be erased by the fact of her blackness. She couldn’t afford to make mistakes, and she was beginning to think coming out at all with Barack was one. Tika Sumpter embodied Michelle’s discomfort with going out with a practical intern. She really went with the decision to over enunciate, hitting every syllable between a syllable. As Barack eased into a more relaxed way of speaking, she didn’t. While Sumpter was good, it was Parker Sawyer who stood out with his layered performance as the young, future president. Of all the comedic caricatures of the commander in chief, I imagine it would be hard to carve out a space for a more believable version of the man. But Sawyer did it, embodying Obama’s coolness with a touch of insecurity. It also helps that there’s something about the quality of his face that really is reminiscent of the real Barack. Most impressive was the way Sawyer interpreted Barack’s would-be behavior when the pair finally made it to the community meeting after dancing in an African drum circle and eating turkey sandwiches. Barack was asked to speak at the meeting and suddenly his cadence changed. Before our eyes, as he gave his extemporaneous speech, he transformed into the hopeful, inspiring presidential figure with which most people are familiar. He spoke of his belief that the majority of folks are ultimately good, and made the people in that meeting believe, just like he did with a country in 2008, that change can really happen. It takes a certain kind of worldview to be a politician, a warped one in my much more cynical opinion, to believe that people are good and that change can happen. But whether those things are true are not, even the most cynical of us can be inspired by an Obama speech.

Though the performances of the two leads were noteworthy, the film's two biggest accomplishments rested outside of the actors. First, at its core the film is about how the seeds of love are planted. As I mentioned, at the end of the day Southside with You is an indie romance.We surrender to the film’s premise that on that day on the south side of Chicago, Michelle and Barack fell subtly in love. Second, the film only works in context— the context of knowing that Barack and Michelle would lead the land of the free. And with that context, the film resonated in a way I wasn’t expecting. Through their day of conversation, they kept circling back to the idea that they wanted to do and be more than just a corporate lawyer in Michelle’s case, and more than just a Harvard student and future lawyer in Barack’s case. Where they would end up, they didn’t know, but if there was only one reason why she fell for him and he fell for her, it was something beyond attraction or the kind gestures Barack made to woo his future wife. Instead it was, according to the film, because they both longed to do more in the world. It’s a longing that every ambitious person feels, especially when young. That belief that you can really do something, but being completely lost as to what that something is and how exactly to do it. As Barack and Michelle contemplate this, we the audience, get to play the part of God, knowingly smiling down upon the future First Lady and President of the United States.

Hell or High Water

★★★★★★★★☆☆

I am more and more convinced that the heart of a great film is built on genuine, believable relationships— relationships of any kind, really. My go to example of pure, convincing, romantic love is last year’s Brooklyn, but the relationship doesn’t have to be so serious. Charismatic groupings are just as critical in sweeping romances as they are in a buddy cop comedy. Though not critically lauded, it’s undeniable that Pitt and Jolie had palpable chemistry, for better and worse, in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

In Hell or High Water, on top of just being a thrilling film from the first bank robbery to the last, it’s successes rest upon two kinds of relationships. First is the friendship between a soon-to-retired Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) and his partner, Alberto (Gil Birmingham). Though characterized by a barrage of off-color jokes about Alberto’s race, the two really care for each other. Then there’s the bond between brothers played by Ben Foster and Chris Pine. Though their personalities clash, they’d do just about anything for the other.

Hell or High Water is a modern western, one outfitted with 2016 sensibilities. Every tasteless joke reflecting sexism or racism is treated as shameful without being used to broadly paint the vulgar character as only bad. It feels more honest this way. Even the subject matter, a kind of west Texas Robin Hood scenario where our band of brother bank robbers steal small sums to stick it to the predatory community bank fits well into the political ruminations of the day about the one percent. There’s even a moment of deep self-awareness where the Native American ranger talks about the plight of poor whites in Texas losing what they once owned, while putting it in the context of his ancestors having lost what once belonged to them.

Brothers Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) Howard go around robbing branches of Texas Midland Bank stealing small amounts of cash in 20 dollar bills or less. They plan to pay the bank the money they owe them with the same money they steal from them with just enough time before their family land gets foreclosed. The Texas Rangers are on their trail trying to prevent the two unknown thieves from stealing any more. It’s a kind of Bonnie and Clyde cat and mouse with both sides of the chase having their character flaws and endearing qualities. It’s really great movie making here. A compelling story with even more interesting characters. There’s not much to say other than it’s quality work without a single dose of flash or overproduction.

There’s also no overacting. Jeff Bridges is reliably enjoyable, all but reprising his role from the True Grit remake. It’s the Howard brothers, though, that really drive the film. Ben Foster is an under-hired talent. He’s so good here as the riled up brother who drinks too much. “Who gets drunk off beer?” he asks. He’s having fun robbing the banks and perhaps takes a few too many risks. Foster’s Tanner falls in the long line of film and television hot heads, who are unreliable and even repulsive, yet magnetic all at once. Ben Mendelsohn’s character in Netflix’s Bloodline comes to mind most presently as do, say, Brando’s Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar and The Godfather’s Sonny Corleone.

Then there’s a really surprising turn by Chris Pine. He usually relies on his winning charm in his roles as a leading man, but here he exhibits the perfect restraint. His performance is of a hurting man with good intentions plodding along determined to make right his wrongs as he appraises them. Together Pine and Foster have something of an unconventional dynamism. It’s as if together they crafted these characters into a sort of unit that builds the ongoing tension throughout. With each new robbery, you never quite know if the two will manage to keep it together as brothers, or do their own individual thing. Of course so much of the credit belongs to writer Taylor Sheridan, writer of last year’s Sicario (and an actor from Sons of Anarchy), and director David MacKenzie, who both, like Pine, bring a perfect dose of restraint.

Kubo and the Two Strings

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Time and time again it has been proven that some of the most inventive and engaging storytelling is born and realized in the animated film genre. This is partially because of the freedom animated filmmakers have to create an unconventional world. True freedom is tied to the ability to make. It’s why artist seem like the freest of all people. Consequently, it’s why our freedom, as humans, no matter how hard we try, will always be limited— because we are limited and always will be in terms what we can create. The second reason animated films are so remarkable, particularly within the last 10-15 years, is more straightforward. These filmmakers have devoted themselves to forming some of the most compelling characters in the most surprising places.

Kubo and the Two Strings excels for a different reason. It is one of the most visually stunning films ever. And in a crowd of animated films that all tend to look “Pixarified,” be they Pixar or not, this intricate stop motion film is really something to behold. In fact, it gives you the feeling as if it’s one of the milestones in film history like Citizen Kane, the introduction of the dolly zoom in Vertigo, or even, though surely it pains anyone with a heart, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. The way in which this film was created and the resulting work are simply awe-inspiring. The filmmakers have created a visual feast worth watching over and over.

The story opens in the middle of an ocean. A magical woman is caught in a tempest and barely survives with what we learn is her baby son tucked away inside of a satchel of some kind. Her son is Kubo. As Kubo grows into boyhood, he lives with his troubled mother in the mountains. He has apparently inherited some powers of his own and uses them to get the attention of his fellow townspeople as he tells stories using origami objects that don’t move at the touch, but instead take on life as Kubo wills with the strum of his guitar. You just go with it because it’s really cool. Kubo is soon hunted by his two evil aunts and his grandfather, known as the immortal Moon King. Kubo’s grandfather stole one of Kubo’s eyes before he and his mother fled, and the evil Moon King wants to take the other eye for reasons only later revealed in the story. A fierce warrior monkey and a large and lovable beetle-man accompany Kubo on a quest to locate the three missing pieces of golden armor that will allow him to defeat the Moon King once and for all.

Though this film reaches new heights visually, the story doesn’t quite soar. It gets off to a strong start, steeped in folklore, piquing the interest with every visual flourish, and very funny. But as it goes along it transforms into something more conventional— more conventional than the writers would like believe. Sure, there’s novelty in its bizarreness, but the themes explored are nothing new and don’t particularly resonate. Some parts seem too short, while others seem to drag on testing the patience of the young boys the movie is aimed at (I’m talking about 25-year-old me).  The Moon King isn’t so terrifying, and if you really think about it, his motives aren’t so menacing. Also, one personal thing that bothers me is the nature of the magic. The boy can do just about anything. His powers seem boundless without explanation, so why can’t he just confront the Moon King from the start? Also, we learn that his quest for the three magical pieces of armor, the motive for the meat of the film, is ultimately inconsequential.

So, though it is perfect in terms of the film making, the storytelling, an art form of which this film so desperately wishes to prove the importance, doesn’t reach the heights of other recent animated features including ones from earlier this year.

Indignation

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Marcus Messner is in the 1951 freshman class of the fictional Winesburg University in Ohio. He’s recently moved from Newark, New Jersey out of his parents’ house to attend college with hopes of going on to law school. He’s a quiet kid, not too social. Though he’s Jewish, he prefers not to practice religion as he is an atheist. This makes the required chapel times at his college unbearable and even, as he describes, unjust. He always looks sad, and he’s very anxious. See, he’s a very good kid, with great grades, and though inwardly he knows he’s special, outwardly he’s rather square.

I started writing this review by explaining how I thought Marcus was hard to relate to as a character, but came to understand that, at least to me, he’s simply unlikable.

The Dean of Winesburg, though a ridiculous man who intrusively antagonizes Marcus, is really on to something about him. He’s not just quiet or anti-social. He has a superior attitude, which no matter if you agree with Marcus or not, is bound to rub somebody, me in this case, the wrong way. (In 2016, Marcus would be one of those introverts who never stop talking about how they are introverts on social media.) Yes he’s young, naïve sometimes, and virginal— all things that usually make a young character boyishly charming, but his smugness wipes away anything endearing about him. So we spend the majority of the film trying to figure Marcus out— who is he, what drives him? We do this despite the fact that a more interesting character is almost always nearby in the person of Olivia Hutton.

Olivia is a beautiful young student who captures the attention young Marcus. She’s oddly open, it seems, from the start. She sees something special in Marcus, probably validating a deeply held belief about himself. Olivia is definitely more interesting than the other girls Marcus has met, probably because there’s something lurking just beneath the surface with her. If you think about it, we don’t really learn that much about her, though, when all is said and done. Indignation, a story based on the novel by Philip Roth, is completely from Marcus’ perspective.

As Marcus interacts with his parents, fellow schoolmates, the Dean, and most importantly, Olivia, the audience is left to guess what it the point of it all. This isn’t a bad thing. The film is interesting enough to keep you hanging on every word and glance.

Ultimately, and maybe surprisingly, it’s supposed to be a love story. But where this film fails is where last year’s Brooklyn achieved so much success. In Brooklyn you intensely felt the pure love between Eilis and Tony. No bells, no whistles. You didn’t even have to be told that they loved each other in the truest of ways. It was visceral. To be sure, making love believable is one of the hardest things to do in film and storytelling in general. It’s probably harder when one of the lovers is unlikable.

I didn’t really know I was supposed to know they loved each other until I was told. The problem lies in the fact that Marcus is incredibly selfish in nearly every area of life. Whenever anything happens Marcus spends no time thinking about how others might be affected. He only speaks of himself, only experiences the pain of others by evaluating how it makes him feel (pay attention to his reaction when his mother is in distress), even thinks only of his own thoughts when anything happens. Every sexual experience shared between Marcus and Olivia only serves to satisfy him, and he seems perfectly okay with that. So I didn’t feel a real connection between the two. Sure he cared for her, but when he finally spoke of love, it came as a shock to me.

Though the film fails in it’s main objective, it is masterfully well-made. Logan Lerman puts in a great performance as Marcus. He has an incredibly sad face. Sarah Gadon is magnetic, convincingly hiding secrets behind her piercing eyes and breathy words. There is a long scene between Marcus and the Dean (Tracy Letts) that is one of the best I’ve seen in a film so far this year. It really is a good movie, but the story doesn’t lend itself to the given end.

Suicide Squad

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

The making of film trailers is such an under appreciated art form. Sometime the job is to transform the work of another into something entirely different altogether. Imagine the difficulty.  In some respects it's the most important job in Hollywood. After the casting is done, all the music is recorded, each shot is filmed, the film edited and most everyone is paid, that's when the trailer makers work their magic. And it really is a magic act. They have to convince you to watch. How on earth was I lured into seeing Jupiter Ascending on my birthday? Because the makers of the trailer led me to believe that maybe, just maybe, it could be the new Star Wars. (For the record, it is not) And we were treated to such beautiful trailers for this film. Margot Robbie shined bright like a diamond, and Suicide Squad looked gritty yet fun. Everything Dawn of Justice, from the same studio and comic book house, was not. I was sure that Suicide Squad would be DC/Warner Bros’ saving grace. I mean what a cast, what characters, what fun. But it was all smoke and mirrors, and for that, the trailer makers should be commended. For a full year they convinced us that this film about villains forced to save the world would be, simply put, amazing. 

It was not.

Suicide Squad walked a difficult tightrope. So many characters were involved, each hoping to command the screen for at least a little while. But balanced, it was not. After every single other character on the squad was thoroughly introduced, they threw another character on the team of misfit anti-heroes, flippantly said his name and he was pretty much gone 60 seconds. The filmmakers get points for trying. They gave us a little something of a back story about nearly every character, but the attention to each was so varied that when we only learned a little about a character it felt like we were being short-changed.

Of all the characters, the second worst was Killer Croc, half man half crocodile. He was the equivalent to those "ghetto" robots in Transformers 2, only he spoke at an utterly glacial pace instead of at the speed of light. He watches BET and says stupid things that are supposed to act as comic relief. He jumps into a pool of water at one point like a frog, lending to one of the many laughable moments that weren't supposed to be funny. To add to the horror, he looked like a model on that cable reality show Face Off, where contestants show off their over the top film makeup skills. 

But the prize for worst character was the witch, Enchantress, played by Cara Delevingne. (Spoilers) She was significantly more prominent than the trailer suggested— call it mystery if you will, I call it trying to cover up your mistakes. She actually drives the plot, the horrible, dumb plot that puts a damper on the whole parade. When not possessed by a witch, Delevingne is an archaeologist who's in love with the army brat leader of the villainous team, who's main purpose is to explain every detail of what's going on before our eyes. To be honest, the movie started off just fine, but it devolved into a weird, nonsensical circus with Delevingne at the center. To be clear, I don't mind these movies being ridiculous. If I did, I'd have no stomach for the genre. Here though we speed past ridiculous into cringeworthy, which is the result of laziness. The script on a micro level, meaning line by line, was unbearably corny, and on a macro level, story-wise, was uninteresting and uninspired. 

The film was led by Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn and Will Smith's Deadshot. Robbie was weird and wonderful. Yet because one's patience wanes as the film gets worse and worse, her little one-liners become less endearing. Harley is being followed by her boy toy Joker (Jared Leto), who perhaps feels a bit over the top compared to Heath Ledger's Oscar-winning portrayal, yet restrained when compared to Jack Nicholson's version. 

But what truly suffered was the heart of the film, which was supposed to manifest itself in two characters. First, the reformed gangster flamethrower Diablo was given a lot of screen time to explore his back story. It felt too emotionally leading. Then there was Deadshot, a hired assassin who loves his daughter. Will Smith's charisma makes it believable. His performance reminds us why he was once the most bankable star in Hollywood. But any effect his story could have had on our heartstrings was lost because the poor plot sucked all the joy from the film. 

The problem of course with trailers is that when we're talking about franchises and movie universes, you simply can't fool audiences for too long with a fresh new trailer. Bad movies ultimately speak louder than any good trailer could. This is why the final chapter of the Divergent series will be a TV movie. Ouch!

Circling back to the idea of laziness for a moment; it’s a really bad look for the studios. It all begins to feel like a bunch of producers in suits, who’ve been reading “The Art of the Deal” since middle school and never picked up a comic book, sat around a table and devised this whole plan to create a universe of comic book movies to make a bunch of money. Of course we know that Disney and Marvel are raking in the dough with each film featuring an Avenger and we know it’s pop entertainment, but they’re fun and heartfelt, and the characters obviously matter to the writers and directors, if not the producers. Without this connection, everyone involved just looks greedy.

Café Society

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Love, the meaning of life, older men with younger women­­— these are the things that Woody Allen likes to make movies about, usually for better, sometimes for worse. And they are all present in Café Society, 2016’s addition to Allen’s large and brilliant cannon. I am huge fan of Woody Allen’s movies, so lets’ just get that out of the way.

The film is beautiful, stylish and oh, so Hollywood, and not just because part of the movie takes place in that world. But what’s more is that the film, though a comedy, has a gravitas to it that can be felt at the heart level, tugging every step of the spritely way. You can bet Café Society bounces along. It seems there's something about the modernization of film technology that has made Allen’s latest efforts (Irrational Man, Magic in the Moonlight) feel lighter than air. But something about this one feels a bit sturdier, heartier. It kind of feels like the movies that he brought us in the late '70s. (Annie Hall and Manhattan) But what it most resembles was 1987’s Radio Days. From the Allen narration track, to the cramped Jewish kitchen, to the family of hilarious characters, it was a distinct nod to that earlier work. I guess you know you’ve been around a while when you can allude to yourself. Most notably, Café Society and Radio Days are alike in that they effortlessly fuse the comical with some heady, yet relatable conversations.

Jesse Eisenberg plays a stand in for Allen’s normally frantic, small and timid man. Eisenberg’s Bobby, does exude a bit more confidence than most of Allen’s comedy characters, particularly sexually, though he is naïve. Bobby moves away from his family and home in 1930s New York to try out life in Los Angeles where he plans to meet up with his uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a big time Hollywood producer. While there performing menial tasks for his busy uncle, Bobby is whisked into the fast lane. He slows down enough to meet and fall for an enchanting secretary, Phil’s secretary, Vonnie. Kristen Stewart has never been more magnetic on screen playing a down to earth girl who wanted to be an actress, but since moving to L.A. has kind of grown tired of all the pretenders. There’s only one problem. Vonnie is seeing someone, which stands in the way of what could be.

They each grow up, Bobby back in New York rejoining the cast of characters he left behind in the Bronx to run a nightclub with his brother, who’s a bit of a gangster. If the scenes Vonnie and Bobby share in L.A. are a glamorously quaint whirlwind, then the scenes back in New York are the funniest. The film is an equisite advertisement for New York City, suggesting in no uncertain terms that L.A. is but a shadow of New York’s glory. Allen does not allow the audience to believe for a second that part of Vonnie and Bobby’s magic rests in their West Coast setting, because when they reconnect later in life in the Big Apple, not one ounce of their magic has dissipated.

Café Society is about unrequited love, then a lifetime of love left unexpressed. As the adage goes, "it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." What a ridiculous notion, especially now that it’s become a big fat cliché. When you consider the pain and anxiety of love lost, love hardly seems worth the trouble. Yet Café Society makes you believe it. Similarly, though on a separate note, the film also makes a New York transplant never want to leave his home again.

One thing that the film may have gotten wrong was the casting of Blake Lively. She comes in late the game as a romantic alternative for Bobby. I think they didn't want to make her simple or less attractive, because from a visual perspective it might seem like Vonnie was just the better looking choice instead of the choice of the heart. The problem is the Lively oozes charisma and her role just seemed too small.

Additional props should be given to the wardrobe department, who reportedly worked with Chanel. Everything everyone wore (particularly Eisenberg, Lively and Stewart) only added to the magic of the film.

Captain Fantastic

★★★★★★★★☆☆

(potentially minor spoilers)

In a seminal scene in Captain Fantastic, Ben (Viggo Mortensen) visits with his wife’s sister, Harper. Harper, her husband and two sons gather around the table with Ben and his kids. One of Harper’s sons asks how his aunt, Ben’s wife and mother of six, suddenly died. Harper and her husband say she was ill and sick people often die. Ben cuts in with a more complete picture. He concisely and clearly explains the intricacies of his wife’s mental illness, thus illustrating the lead up to her eventual suicide. Harper becomes furious. She explains to Ben that it’s not right for him to expose her young teenage sons to the details of death. The camera then cuts to the same two sons in a different room, eyes glued to the screen, as they play a video game where one character is slashing the other.

Ben and his six kids live in the forest where dad acts as caretaker and teacher. They are remarkable children, not simply by birth, but because their father has groomed them to be. They know how to hunt and scale a cliff. They’re also rather erudite, always reading around a nighttime campfire. They are separate from what everyone else keeps calling the “real world,” despite the fact that these children are more connected to the natural world than most any American child. In a way they act as a collective foil to the other world, the audience’s world, to us.

Harper thinks the way Ben lives is absurd because its atypical, but Ben shows Harper, and writer/director Matt Ross shows us, that we are, in fact, the absurd ones.

Everyone is absurd. This is the working philosophy in Captain Fantastic, one of the better films of the year so far. And it doesn’t stop at the idea that someone else will perceive each person, with his or her individual practices and viewpoints, as absurd. No, everyone is actually absurd, extreme, over the top, critically flawed. This is a philosophy I very much believe, so it’s fun to see it in film. By pointing out how the normal people in the “real world” are absurd, Ross points a finger at the audience.

The seven forest-dwellers are forced to venture into our world of malls and Kmart because they’ve taken on the mission of attending their mom’s funeral. They go to thwart a ceremony in direct opposition to everything Ben’s wife stood for, which was planned by Ben’s pharisaical father-in-law. We see that Ben especially is at odds with the “real world” he left behind. The kids don’t fit in, but they don’t altogether reject it because they’ve never been part of society.

What the children lack in societal understanding, they make up for with their intellect. Each child, down to the youngest, has a grasp of big concepts like fascism, world history and the music of Bach. They celebrate the birthday of philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky, a day on which they sing and receive gifts. Ben teaches his children to be free thinkers, to fight “the man.” He wants to form his children into the antithesis of the sheep living in the “real world.” This need to mold and control them is where his absurdity oozes out.

Ben’s two oldest sons hold a mirror up to their father most effectively. Bo wants something beyond what his father wants for him, and Rellian directly rebels against his father. Ben has become “the man” they stick it to. But what really drives the stake into his heart is Ben’s unfolding awareness that his dead wife, whom he assumed was in lock-step with him at every turn, also wanted something different, or something more than he gave. The weight of this becomes too much for him.

The heart of the story, though, is one of redemption and hope for the future. It’s a beautiful portrait of deep love, and there’s no doubt that Ben loved his wife and loves his children deeply. But when it seems like those relationships are picked off one by one, it hurts. It leaves the audience stuck in the middle, on one hand experiencing how crushed the father must feel, especially since we know he only wants the best for them, but also understanding that he hasn’t and maybe even can’t give his children everything they need. After all, he couldn’t give his wife what she really needed either. It’s a gorgeous film, fun and, like last year’s Brooklyn, rooted in a very visceral understanding of love. And though the love in Captain Fantastic is not romantic, it’s just as strong.

Fun fact: You might be surprised to know that writer/director Matt Ross plays douchebag CEO Gavin Belson on the show Silicon Valley!

Finding Dory

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Every time Tom Hanks is in a movie in recent history he feels so much like Tom Hanks playing a ship’s captain, or a war hero, or symbologist (in The Da Vinci Code). Is it a bad thing? Kind of. It makes it harder to really feel the character. Rather, you feel the actor. But of course, this is how Hollywood stars are made and what studios, especially in the studio era, really bank on. Basic audience members are often more interested in the actor’s persona than the characters he or she plays. The similar thing is true here in Finding Dory with Ellen Degeneres. Her voice is so unmistakable, especially with the popularity of her daytime talk show, but what animation provides is a sort of visual distance that makes Dory soar (or swim) all on her own. There’s a comfort in the familiarity of Ellen’s voice, but when watching either of the “Finding” movies, you never feel disconnected from the little blue tang fish.

Finding Dory tells the story of a fish we met 13 years ago in Finding Nemo, suffering from short-term memory loss. That earlier film proved that Pixar was a factory of magic, convincingly transporting us beyond the land where toys can talk, to the vast ocean to witness the secret life of sea creatures. While Dory, who we get to see as the most adorable little baby fish in regular flashbacks, is equally as endearing in this feature, Finding Dory doesn’t quite capture the same wonder of the first film. That doesn’t mean it isn’t very good. In Finding Dory, Dory begins to remember the parents she lost, so she enlists the help of her friends Marlon and Nemo to travel across the ocean to help her find them. She meets new and old friends along the way, one of which is Sigourney Weaver, who help her in her quest. It explores the themes of family and home, common ground for Disney and Pixar, and tugs at the heart almost as much as it makes you laugh.

So if Dory is looking for her parents, why is it the movie called "Finding Dory?" Well, because Marlon and Nemo lose track of Dory along the way and must find her as she’s finding her parents and finding out more about her own childhood.

We’re introduced to some great pairs along the way. Dory meets a sly "septopus" named Hank who helps her when she promises, though she can hardly remember it, to help him. We meet one of Dory’s childhood friends, a nearsighted whale named Destiny (seriously who comes up with this stuff?) who drafts the help of a beluga who’s struggling to get his echolocation to work right (for real, who?). There’s also a pair of weird sea lions thrown into the mix. The last pair is Nemo and Marlon, father and son, who for the majority of the first film were separated. It’s nice to see their dynamic this time around.

What the film lacks, though, is the relationship that helped make the first film iconic, and that’s Marlon and Dory. Dory’s hope despite her forgetfulness rubbed Marlon, the uptight clownfish, in every wrong way. Still, as they traveled across the ocean, their friendship blossomed into something so true. In Finding Dory, adventurous Nemo acts as Marlon’s foil this time, but Marlon’s patience is never so tested because Nemo is his son. If there were a third movie and it was just Marlon and Dory fast-talking like the Gilmore Girls, I would watch that with my full attention.

Now You See Me 2

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Now You See Me 2 can be best described as forced. It’s a forced and unnatural sequel for so many reasons. It follows the, perhaps surprising, success of 2013’s Now You See Me, about a troupe of performing illusionists. That one, though not particularly critically lauded, went down smoothly with audiences. It is a charming flick with, dare I say, a bit of magic mixed in. But in the sequel, coming three years later, the magic is gone and it all feels like the studio is money grabbing.

The first problem is that of the “girl magician.” Isla Fisher played Henley in the first film, but she was pregnant during filming and couldn’t participate in this one. So the filmmakers found a replacement in Lizzie Kaplan, who was a fine addition, but it also meant that they had to explain Henley’s complete absence in this new movie. The explanation was lazy and Kaplan’s initiation into the group was immediate. Though Kaplan didn’t directly replace Fisher, the switch felt about as subtle and clean and the switch to “light-skin Aunt Viv.” (If you don’t get the reference you can look it up on a little website called Google)

All that considered, Kaplan was a nice choice, adding a screwball energy to the movie with her funny and feminist witticisms. Still it felt like the magicians were a group of strangers with no rapport despite this being the second film.

Then there’s the plot. It wasn’t bad, but it just felt tired, like the title. I mean they just threw the number two at the end. Not a colon in sight. I would have liked the title to be Now You’ve Seen Me Twice or Now You See Me [colon] Back in the Habit (another reference for you to Google). There wasn’t the same sense of excitement or real sense of surprise like the first one. Honestly, I think Now You See Me worked because we hadn’t really seen a film like it before. Now You See Me 2 felt like riding a roller coaster for the second time­­— it’s just not as fun.

The magicians finally emerge from hiding after a year, only to learn that they’re not in control. They’ve been exposed more than they wanted and somehow end up in Macau, China. They’re enlisted by Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe), a rich tech savant, who gets them to steal a program chip he’s designed from his nemesis and former tech partner on pain of death, of course. This chip could break into any computer and could diminish all privacy in the world. So they go to steal the chip, but they can’t give it to Mabry knowing what the program can do. The movie is like if Edward Snowden could pull a bunny out of a top hat. All the while the three original magicians have a growing distrust for their leader, Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo), who doubles as an FBI agent. Dylan is in contact with “The Eye,” some sort of secret magician organization that sees everything from afar. Somehow the contradiction of raging against a privatized version of the national security state, yet being aided by a mysterious, all-seeing organization of illusionists didn’t dawn on the filmmakers. It also doesn’t help that The Eye’s symbol would naturally be an eye reminiscent of the all-seeing eye that is the symbol of the Illuminati, a supposed powerful secret organization rumored to be out to rule the world. Not to mention our performing magicians are known as the Four Horseman, as in of the apocalypse, warning of the end times. There’s supposed to be a third one of these movies, and I really think the filmmakers should explore the idea that The Eye and the Four Horseman have been evil all along. They should just go ahead and re-write the franchise, because it wouldn’t be the first time.

And that brings me to the most ridiculous part of the whole film, which a complete re-writing of Morgan Freeman’s character. Through the first film, Freeman’s Thaddeus Bradley was an antagonistic truther ruining everything. At the end, Dylan Rhodes finally gets the better of Thaddeus by landing him in jail after holding a 30-year grudge. [SPOILER ALERT] Suddenly at the end of Now You See Me 2 we learn that Freeman’s been good all along, never revealing the truth about himself for the most ridiculous reasons. They completely turned this character on his head and added another lazy explanation as to why.

Though the film’s not all bad, there’s a fun sequence where the horseman use an outrageous winding card trick to steal the computer program, the whole enterprise is unnecessary. Now You See Me 2 is “exhibit A” in why originality needs to be rewarded in Hollywood and by audiences. If not, studios will keep giving us remakes and sequels that not only stink as stand alones, but also diminish what came before.

Maggie's Plan

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Maggie’s Plan is a quirky independent comedy about generally unlikable academics. They all have their flaws, pretentiousness only being the tip of the iceberg, but this doesn’t stop the film or the characters themselves from being enjoyable to watch.

First there’s Maggie (Greta Gerwig) who’s always got a plan. She’s some sort of business school administrator at The New School. When we meet her she’s settling the particulars to be inseminated by her weird yet lovable friend because she’s ready to be a mother and doesn’t want to wait for love to find her, because, as she says, she’s never been in a relationship for more than six months. She doesn’t seem to realize that her incessant need to control everything and everyone around her could contribute to the short-term nature of her romantic escapades. Her initial plan is thwarted when she meets John (Ethan Hawke), a visiting professor at the university who wants to break into fiction writing and ends up asking Maggie to help him as he finds his voice. Maggie and John fall for each other despite John’s wife Georgette. Georgette, also an academic, is played by Julianne Moore wearing chic rug-like clothing, a thick European accent and a smugness that’s off the charts.

Maggie and John set plans to make a life together, leaving Georgette with nothing more to do than psychoanalyze the demise of their relationship and her desertion in a new book. Like Georgette's without him, Maggie’s new life with John doesn’t quite go as planned. He’s lazy, demanding and suddenly his fiction doesn’t seem so interesting. So Maggie devises a new plan, the one from the title, to get John and Georgette back together to assuage the guilt she would feel if she breaks things off with him while knowing that having partnered up with him in the first place caused great pain. The only thing is, she’ll need Georgette’s help to make it happen.

Maggie’s Plan features a really great cast. Gerwig’s Maggie, is believably controlling and clueless at the same time. As always she’s an irresistible oddball on screen. Not to say she always plays the same character, only that she is able to bring an obtuseness out of each character she plays while making the audience love them. Julianne Moore’s performance is a gateway to the biggest laughs as she devotes herself to her witty and rather rude character. The plot is fun and whimsical, it energetically moves along, but you come away with the feeling that the film is inconsequential. Before you can even forget the film, you get the sense that soon you will forget it. The film, though filled to the brim with pretentious characters, is not too pretentious in and of itself. That being said it seems to lack depth. There’s an attempt to explore Maggie’s need for control, which comes from her truth-talking friend at just the right moment, but it's particularly climatic or momentous.

At the end Maggie’s Plan you get the sense that this is one of those book adaptations that is too small for the big screen and could have remained on the page and bound.

Love and Friendship

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Love and Friendship is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s earlier novella, ‘Lady Susan.’ But if you’re looking for sweeping romance and love’s true kiss you won’t find it here, though what you will find should come as a pleasant surprise. It’s a short and spritely comedy with a female lead not unlike Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennett in that she’s independent, but certainly unlike her when it comes to moral character.

Susan is a woman in transition. After her wealthy husband’s death, she joins his brother and his wife at their country estate far from society. Her sister-in-law has a young brother, Reginald, staying with them at their Churchill Estate where Susan moves in with the help of a hand maiden, who she says she would pay if offering such a payment wouldn’t be such an insult to their friendship. Moving from one estate to another ensures that she, a woman with no personal wealth and beyond the usual age for marriage, maintains her posh station in British society, making it easier to secure a profitable future for herself and her quiet daughter. But she moves to her in-laws' estate with a plan in mind. In society Susan has a somewhat unkind reputation, which would certainly be worse if her most heinous indiscretions could be corroborated, but for now she’s simply known as a flirt. Susan uses everyone around her, manipulating her loosely related family with a coy smile. She’s good at what she does. She so crafty, in fact, that those who see Susan’s manipulation for what it is, like her sister-in-law who worries that her young brother is falling for the conniving schemer, come away looking jealous and petty.

Love and Friendship is a great vehicle for Kate Beckinsale to shine. She is daintily laugh out loud funny, hurling cruel and underhanded insults so fiercely and off the cuff. Beckinsale’s Susan discusses her plans with an American in Britain, Alicia Johnson, played by Chloe Sevigny, who somehow manages to be just as Chloe Sevigny-ey as ever in 18th century Britain. Together they proudly laugh when their schemes work out and dig deeper when their plans do not. Another standout is Tom Bennett, the hopelessly witless suitor courting Susan’s daughter. His malapropisms and general lack of knowledge deliver the biggest laughs in the hour and a half film. Then there’s director/screenplay writer Whit Stillman, who’s transformed Austen’s novella into a farcical theater piece .(I’d actually love to see this on the stage) For a film that is literally people talking in one place or another, he manages not only to capture the audiences attention, but to keep it.

What’s most interesting is that, though Susan possesses such dastardly qualities: cunning manipulation and a general steely selfishness; Susan is quite likable and not simply because she’s the cunningly antagonistic protagonist. She is actually, sort of, a feminist hero when you consider the context of the times she lived. She makes a way for herself using men within their own rigged system to achieve her goals and to do what she wants. She’s compared to her sister-in-law who hopes to expose Susan for her younger brother’s sake and to vindicate her poor opinion of the woman. The sister-in-law at the same time is fighting to maintain society’s status quo, where a woman is allowed to do very little and is literally defined by her relationship to men.

The film is really funny once you get accustomed to the language used and figure out who and how everyone is related. This information is all given in a bit of a blur at the beginning. It’s an unexpected but welcomed take on Austen sure to intrigue more than her usual film fan base. The end though, is the main problem. After all we’ve seen, Love and Friendship closes as abruptly as a Melvillle story begins. The film leaves you wanting some sort of conclusion and some sort of take away.

X-Men Apocalypse

 ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

What all the X-Men films have been able to do, well before plans were conceived for super-pumped superhero team-ups from Disney and Warner Bros., is balancing an array of characters. It’s a tradition that characterizes X-Men storytelling from the comic books to the cartoon series. This has been achieved not by simply placing several characters on screen, but by choosing how and who to highlight when. X-Men Apocalypse is the very first time this balance was missing. This iteration is, as many critics and viewers have pointed out, overcrowded. Though this weakened the structural integrity of the film, it didn’t ruin it.

In my view, what really contributed to the film’s messiness was the overt studio decision to make Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique forcefully central in the story. This, of course, was a smart business decision. Jennifer Lawrence is one of the most bankable and beloved young stars on the planet. Her turns as Mystique in the two films leading up to this one were as slippery and delicious as Rebecca Romijn’s in the original installments, yet imbued with significantly more depth. When she first put on the blue paint and scales in her first turn as the mutant, her star was rising at lightning speed, but she had not taken her place as young Hollywood’s sun quite yet. And while it was a good studio choice to feature her as much as possible, it didn’t necessarily feel, well, necessary to see her as much as we did. One reviewer said that Jennifer Lawrence deserves better than the mess that is X-Men Apocalypse, but truthfully her prominence contributed to the messiness more than anything. At the heart of the problem was that there were too many moving parts from the onset that the film had to bring together, essentially creating four lead characters all operating separately for the first of three acts.

The second story line after Mystique’s was led by Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), who tracks down his old CIA friend from X-Men: First Class, Moira McTaggert. While not particularly revealing in terms of character development, it’s the vehicle through which we learn about everything that is going on, and therefore necessary. Plus it’s at Charles’ mansion that we meet young Cyclops and young Jean Grey. Then there’s Magneto, who, after causing all sorts of catastrophe in the last movie, has moved to Poland to live a quiet, family-centered life. This story line builds upon the most interesting character in the film, and maybe the franchise. He’s a troubled man who has given up on his grand ambitions of seeing mutants live boldly and freely on the earth, but he’s found a way to live contently in the shadows until he’s no longer allowed to do so. Michael Fassbender’s performance is so stirring that he seems in a league of his own, providing gravitas to a film that is chiefly about thrilling the audience. The final story line we follow is led by Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), the blue-hued, first-ever mutant who’s been resurrected after many centuries and now seeks to destroy the world, as his name suggests. When Apocalypse appears on screen all momentum is lost. Particularly when moving from the rich scenes with Magneto in Poland to our villain traipsing around the world, Apocalypse is on the cusp of coming off as too ridiculous.

Of the four lead storylines in the first act, Lawrence’s reveals the least. Sure she saves Nightcrawler allowing him to find his way to Xavier’s institute, and she’s certainly more interesting to watch than Apocalypse, but when you take the movie as a whole, what the character Mystique accomplishes doesn’t warrant the amount of screen time she’s given.

What the film lacked in its structure it makes up for with several moments that are its salvation. Though perhaps the film was not, these moments were expertly constructed, allowing a film bogged down with too many characters to feel a bit lighter on its feet. I’ve already praised Magneto as the most interesting character. In his story alone rest several moments that artfully elevate the superhero flick. Just like in the last X-film, Days of Future Past, a mutant with super speed (Quicksilver) stole the show in a slow-motion sequence that is pure gold, this time set to sweet 80s synth sounds. Olivia Munn, though only speaking about two words, was one of the coolest mutants to appear in any of the films. We all needed more of her. Then there were the teenage versions of heroes we’ve come to know as adults in the first films. Seeing young Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm and Jean Grey is incredibly pleasing for fans. The youthful energy they provide helps make the film fun. Dare I suggest that what makes this movie better than, say, Batman v Superman, was that it definitely did not take itself too seriously. That phrase has become so repeated in reviews for good superhero movies now, that it seems like a cliché, but it really is a true asset in the genre. Last but not least, without spoiling too much, there is a scene with young Jean Grey that is so gratifying that it’s nearly impossible to keep your jaw from dropping.

So yes, X-Men Apocalypse has problems, serious ones even where storytelling is concerned, but as possibly the final X-film ever, or at least for a while, none can deny that director Bryan Singer and friends went out with a bang.

The Lobster

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

The Lobster is a dark comedy. And it gets darker as it goes on and on. However it starts and maintains its sense of surrealism and absurdity from the moment the film begins, starting with a whacky, but intriguing, premise.

In the not too distant future, people who are not married are sent off to a bizarre hotel with other single people. They are given 45 days to mingle and find a mate, or else they will be turned into the animal of their choosing. Then they will have a supposed second chance at love. This hotel is where David (Colin Farrell, who is very good in this role) finds himself after splitting with his wife. He decides if things don’t go well at “The Hotel,” then he’d like to be turned into a lobster for a myriad reasons. Each day the hotel guests are sent out into the woods for the hunt, where they use tranquilizer guns and try to shoot as many fellow guests as possible. Each person they shoot equals an extra day at The Hotel. There’s a particularly severe woman who has upwards of 150 days at The Hotel left. Not surprisingly, she’s having a tough time finding someone to love.

The film uses the crass, plus incredible violence and cruelty, to prove how messed up the system at The Hotel, imposed by the law of “The City,” is. If a single person is found alone in The City without his or her marriage license, then they will be arrested. It’s a metaphor from the mind of Greek writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos. He draws a comparison between this insane world he’s created to the world we inhabit, where people are expected to frantically search for love at almost all costs. He seems to suggest that as a society we force this life upon everyone causing undo stress and holding people to a ridiculous expectation, not so unlike being forced to find a mate in 45 days among a limited pool of people on pain of being turned into an animal. No one in society can speak with ease, showing that the desperate need of a companion actually leads, ironically, to antisocial behavior. The film will be hard to digest for the wider audience more used to straight-forward storytelling. It’s not that this film isn’t story driven, it’s that it requires real-time interpretation, plus some after thought, making the end of the film, not the end of the experience, and therefore not immediately satisfying.

Lanthimos uses the search for similarities in a mate symbolically. For example one man at The Hotel, who David befriends, deliberately bangs his head against hard objects to bloody his nose. He does this to show that he’s similar to another guest who naturally gets bloody noses all the time. The two end up getting together, but their relationship is built upon a lie. So as they go along, The Hotel’s program adds a child to their relationship because, “that usually helps.” While the idea of having a child to improve a relationship or to make someone stay in one is a direct reflection of people in society, the symbol of forced similarities, which persists throughout the whole movie, and may be even the chief symbol upon which the film rests, is not nearly as clear. I think these similarities stand in for real similarities that actually should be present in a relationship. For example, does the bloody nose actually stand for a certain type of free spirit that another free-spirited person would need to find in a mate? If so, then maybe Lanthimos is saying we force and lie about compatibility in our desperate search for love, which leads to broken relationships. That being said, there are moments in the film when I’m not sure if this is the correct interpretation. Is Lanthimos actually saying that, as a society, we base a relationship on ridiculous notions of comparison, which we assume make two people compatible? I'm not totally sure.

Eventually David runs away from The Hotel into the woods and comes upon of group of rugged individualists who agree to be uncoupled on pain of horrific punishment, perhaps less severe than being turned into an animal, but perhaps not. Of course, without the 45-day clock rolling, this is where David falls in love (with Rachel Weisz). At this point in the film any built up energy or momentum completely deflates, like letting go of a fully blown balloon. Things become long and arduous. The pace feels like trying to stretch play-doh that’s been allowed to harden outside its container for several years. Once we move away from The Hotel, the film is really not the same, which is quite a shame with such an inventive start.

What I have to say going forward is less about the film itself an more about the film's theory.

Maybe it’s because of my youth, but though this film takes place in the near future (according to IMDB), it feels like it’s actually talking about societal norms of the past. Surely for older people who are unmarried, they may feel this pressure to couple up or maybe even to settle into singleness and stop searching for love, but the film doesn’t seem aware of the changing nature of western ideology. The society on which Lanthimos is commenting is most likely not what the near future will be like at all. Honestly with the way things are headed, the stigma surrounding people who wait “too long” to be in a long-term relationship, will not persist as strongly, for better or worse.

I also find the fact that this commentary is about society a bit confusing. Lanthimos seems to suggest that people have this urgent and desperate need to couple up because society says so. But the question that’s unanswered is why does society feel this way. Maybe he’s not interested in answering that question, but the film begs it nonetheless. Maybe for him he feels that it’s religious pressure, or the notion of doing things right within the marriage context for fear of stigma. But again, these notions don’t really affect society nearly as much as they used to and are heading toward obsolescence.  The reality, from my view, is that these things play out less on a societal level and more on an individual level. They may be pervasive in people across western societies, but the pressure is more or less applied by the individual. My generation uses the phrase, “the thirst is real.” It means that there’s a person who is so desperate for something, often a mate, that they’re willing to do almost anything to get it. It’s an individual thirst, not a societal one. Since Lanthimos doesn’t really explain why he thinks society is the way he sees it, I will explain why I think individuals, not society, pressure themselves to be on this frantic search for a mate. I think it’s two major concerns. First, the fear of loneliness, which for the few of us who rarely (or never) experience this emotion, doesn’t phase us. The second is an individual’s desire for consistent sex. While many people in society may have these concerns, these concerns, and the resulting desperation, are imposed on the individual self by the individual. In modern times, societal norms and standards have a much smaller role. What I’m saying, in the context of the film’s premise, is that if a hotel were created to give single people 45 days to find a mate, it would not need to be enforced by The City or society. Instead the limit may actually be individually self-imposed because the thirst is real.

A Bigger Splash

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

A Bigger Splash is an art film reminiscent of the French and Italian films in the early days of the medium that explored character and themes more like literature than story-driven Hollywood films. During these early days, critics found these motion pictures more important artistically than what was produced on studio lots, but with the shift in the 60s to more of an appreciation of Hollywood films and genres, the critic's idea of which films could be considered art expanded. (Source: Introduction to Film Criticism, 1989) Few of us interact with art films regularly, but to understand A Bigger Splash it must be viewed as one, otherwise it will come off as pretentious and partly unintelligible.

A Bigger Splash is a modern art film, not only because it’s set in modern times, but also because it is affected by the complications of modern life and technology. The film follows four characters. Marianne (Tilda Swinton) is a seasoned rockstar who has settled down a bit. She’s taking some time off in Italy, staying in a villa recovering after a surgery to remove vocal nodules (like Adele) to regain her voice. Save for a few flashbacks, she mostly speaks in a whisper if at all. This is the first metaphor, outside the water motif indicated in the title. It suggests that Marianne is without a voice. She doesn’t, and maybe even is unable to, speak for herself as she is safely under the care of Paul. Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts) is Marianne’s partner. He appears to adore the rockstar and waits on her hand and foot hoping to make her happy in every way. He’s doting. He has a dark, not-too-distant past, which makes him more of a mystery. Enter Harry (Ralph Fiennes) who drops in like a parasite on Marianne and Paul’s vacation. Harry is the excitable former lover who produced Marianne’s music. He joins them at their villa. His grating personality particularly bothers Paul, who sees him as a threat, despite the fact that Harry introduced the two. Why Harry shows up is unclear, but he brings a young girl. While Harry is a philanderer, the reason for his and Marianne’s split, the young girl here is his recently discovered daughter, Penelope (Dakota Johnson). She too is a bit of a mystery, probably even to herself. She’s beautiful and sultry, but feels lost among the grownups and always begs for attention as if she’s much younger than she says, not unlike her father.

Conversations and visuals are used to tell us more about the characters. Water for instance represents the way the two men interact with the world. Harry is regularly seen jumping into the villa pool sans clothes, running and squealing like a little boy around the rectangular perimeter. That is juxtaposed with the restrained way Paul stands beneath the evenly distributed water from a showerhead. When Penelope invites Paul to join her by the lake, she’s inviting him to be more like her and her father, reckless and impulsive. She’s inviting him to shed his more cautious nature.

Marianne seems drawn to the daughter but not threatened. This bothers Penelope and is probably the reason Penelope tries to seduce Paul. Marianne knows that she’s the object of affection for both Paul and Harry and she likes the attention. She’s drawn to Penelope, not for her youth, but because she begins to see the way in which she’s similar to her father, Harry. The truth is that Harry may be Marianne’s true love, but as she mentions, she likes the way Paul “puts a collar” on her. He’s dependable and takes care of her. In a way he tames the rockstar and she likes it.

Paul, the documentarian, observes and worships Marianne, the rockstar. He treats her like an object of adoration, which, because of her certain type of neurosis, is the way she wants to be loved and viewed, like a star. She wants her lover to also be a fan. She doesn’t need to speak, she needs to be obsessed over, which is why she constantly reminds Harry that she is staying with Paul and is why she has his back when Paul does terrible things.

Still Harry is a liberating force for Marianne, unpredictable and wild, Paul’s foil. When everyone goes out beside Paul who decides to hang back at the villa, Marianne allows him to pick her dress for the evening. Instead of going with the dress he picks, though, she chooses something else, something for Harry. Yet when Harry is gone and trouble comes, Marianne puts on the dress Paul picked despite it feeling a bit out of season.

Harry’s true reason for dropping in becomes clear. He wants Marianne back. After the mess Paul made a year ago, Harry thinks this is an opportune time as she is, in a small way, taking care of Paul for a change. Paul’s hold is weaker, so Harry waltzes in, more literally shucks and jives, to make his moves, which shed a layer of subtlety with each passing hour.

Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes are electric to watch and dissect. Schoenaert’s Paul was less captivating. In his defense Schoenaerts, who was great in last year’s Far From the Madding Crowd, had a difficult character to portray— one that was troubled, has some sort of magnetic hold over Marianne and is still altogether restrained. His hold over Marianne is neither palpable nor plausible next Harry’s energy.

Captain America: Civil War

★★★★★★★★☆☆

It seems like one of the cosmic and unexplainable things that makes life fun. I mean when two very similar movies are released the same year: Deep Impact and Armageddon, Babe and Gordy, Antz and A Bug’s Life. Just last year the French released Yves Saint Laurent and Saint Laurent. The list goes on.

So it seems silly to start anywhere other than with a comparison between Captain America: Civil War and Batman V Superman. Though less similar than the aforementioned, both pit one hero against another. In the case of Civil War, a group of heroes fights another. I mentioned in my review for Batman V Superman (see 5 reviews down) that the character elements of the film are what fanboy dreams are made of. If those dreams went unrealized in that film, and they most certainly did, then conversely, every dream came true in Captain America: Civil War. I’m a believer that a filmmaker should tell his/her story the way he/she wants to, but why kid ourselves, these films are for mass consumption, so the keen attention paid to what will make fans totally geek out is much appreciated. Sure nearly everyone involved is going to make boatloads of money, but it shows that they care about the characters that they are charged with bringing to life and that they care about the audience. They even seem to care, on a micro level, about the New York audience. I can’t say it was intentional, but as our heroes traipse across the globe giant white letters fill the screen alerting the audience to where the following action will take place. So by time QUEENS flashes across the screen in giant sans serif font, the New York audience, with whom I saw the film on the night before the official release, went nuts.

I usually go see films alone, but I tell you, a bunch of strangers were meant to share this moment. (For the record, I did go to the movies by myself, the theater was just packed with fellow super fans.) The thing is, even for those who aren’t fans, it is not hard to get the sense that when Spiderman appears on screen, or when Hawkeye and Ant-Man return midway through the film, that it is an exciting moment to be celebrated. You don’t need the cheers of the audience to tell you that. Excitement is expertly crafted. Just compare these appearances to the indelicate and belabored appearances of Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg in BvS. Instead of feeling excited, you check your watch because the segment seems to drag on.

Civil War is a long movie. A lot happens, making the film feel like four or five acts instead of your standard two. But it’s really no problem at all, because with nearly each new scene comes a new surprise. Civil War works so much better than BvS simply because it features more compelling characters in a compelling story. It’s really that simple. It’s fun and campy, never taking itself too seriously, yet it achieves more depth and pathos by the end than BvS could hope to, despite that film being dark in feeling and literally dark. (A friend pointed out that very little of BvS takes place in the daytime)

Additionally, directors Anthony and Joe Russo are able to balance a ridiculous amount of characters better than any of the other films in the franchise. More was revealed about characters like Scarlet Witch and Vision, who was introduced in the last Avengers movie. Falcon, trusted ally of Captain America, finally felt like he was on the path to being actualized outside of his role as sidekick. (He had a hilarious and venomous line about Mark Fuhrman.) But it was the new recruits who shined brightest, in terms of secondary characters. Yes, the film was mostly about Iron Man and Captain America, but two heroes who join this cinematic universe for the first time nearly steal their thunder. First Spiderman, who was perfectly cast as the young Tom Holland, was a boatload of fun. This was the ultimate gift to fans. Then there was Black Panther, who won’t have his own stand-alone film until 2018, but my-oh-my, were we given an exciting window into this promising character. Chadwick Boseman gives the finest performance as the African hero. As a colleague points out, he’s the moral center of a film, where we are caught in the middle of an uncertain debate that rifts the team apart. Also as a hero his movements are agile and dynamic.

Black Panther is after The Winter Soldier because he thinks he killed his father. Captain America, longtime friend of said soldier, wants to bring him in to the authorities to get to the truth, but to do so he will have to act against a new line drawn in the sand that puts the Avengers under the oversight of the United Nations. The Captain does not agree to this oversight, the subject of an argument that has caused a dichotomous rift in the team. Some of our heroes believe in this oversight, while others are worried about the would-be overseers’ potentially tainted motivations. The chasm between the team, most notably between Captain America and Iron Man, only grows to the point where it leads to an explosive head to head that is almost too much to handle. What I mean is that the clash of this team torn asunder is so perfect it hurts.

Yet surely all will be resolved as there are approximately one billion more of these movies that Disney still plans to make, right? Plus, they’re the Avengers. They have to stay together, right? That’s where the common enemy comes in. It would make sense that someone so evil could repair the broken relationships. Zemo (Daniel Brühl) is a villain on a mission whose aim, whether his intention or not, we don’t know for most of the movie, manages to drive the wedge deeper instead of bringing the team together. Zemo, is the film’s weakest link, in my opinion. I’m not convinced that his motive is compelling enough for him to have gone through so much trouble. He seemed to be in control of forces impossible for him to even know about.  Additionally, there is so much turmoil with our heroes all while it’s necessary for the evil plot to press forward and unfold, so the film’s earlier parts feel a bit distracted and it takes a while to gain momentum. But these are mere after thoughts once we are well into the film.

Whether Zemo is compelling or not is surprisingly unimportant because the film, even through to the end is not about him at all. It is wholly about the deep fissure that is ever widening. Each of the heroes is stuck with a choice to limit their power. It feels like a choice between freedom and responsibility and because of the circumstances, the audience, like some of the heroes, can’t definitively say which option is right. Furthermore Captain America, who was frozen and awakened in a new era, a new world, feels more lost than ever. He must choose between his oldest friend, The Winter Soldier, who knows everything about him, and his new friends, The Avengers, who have acted as a guide for him in the modern world. These are impossible existential questions, which require very real answers that leave tangible consequences for our once united team.

Sing Street

★★★★★★★★★★

Sing Street is a film that reached out its hand, plowed into my chest, grabbed my heart and squeezed it. My every emotion was wholly at the mercy of the movie. It turns out that films, good ones, turn in me into a theoretical romantic. I cried through the majority of the final 20 minutes of the film, and not that single-tear-down-the-cheek crap. I’m talking about a breaking of the dams.

I picked up a book about film criticism at a second-hand store last year. The book talks about the difference between film reviewing and actually critiquing the visual art form. I like to think of myself as a critical thinker. Breaking down plot structures and analyzing characters is fun stuff. But when a movie unearths a deep well of emotion, I can do nothing more than write about how it affected me and take some guesses as to why.

The movie starts from a great place. It builds itself on the indisputable fact that 80s music is great. Music from the decade was often an infectious blend of rock ‘n’ roll, pop and other genres, with a measured addition of digital sounds that aided the musical experience instead of making it unnatural. But this film is about more than amazing music. I believed in essentially every feeling and perspective writer/director John Carney (Begin Again, Once) suggested in this, his best film yet. It’s about how real life is not the way you imagine it should be, but doing what you can to make something, like music that infects every inch of your body and, if you’re lucky, infects others. This viral quality seems easier, though not easy, to create in a song than in film, but Carney does it in both the film and the songs he co-wrote.

The year is 1985 and people are leaving Dublin and heading to London in hopes of finding work and a purpose. Our main character is a timid 15-year-old boy, who eventually goes by the name Cosmo. His parents are going through a tough time financially and otherwise, to the chagrin of Cosmo, his older brother and younger sister.  Cosmo is forced to transfer to Synge Street, an all-boy Catholic school run by the Christian Brothers, who, at least in Dublin, are decidedly more ruthless than the Jesuits, the Catholic order of priests who ran the school from which he transfers. (As a former student at a fine Jesuit institution, I can attest to their educational talents) He has a tough go from the start with the boys at his new school, who are rough around the edges to put it politely, and with a priest who’s on his case. The only bright spot is a girl, Raphina, who lives across the street from the school and stands on the steps looking cool and confident. She’s older, only by a little, but looks like she’s older by a lot. She’s planning on going to London like all the others leaving Dublin, and she’s to be a model. Cosmo enlists Raphina to be in his band’s music video. She agrees since she has some time before she leaves. The only problem is Cosmo doesn’t actually have a band or even a song. So he and his one school friend, a tiny, brace-faced, red-headed fellow, decide to form one and record a song so they can actually have a video to shoot for Raphina to star in. They enlist a guitar player, a guy on keys, drums, and a bass player. Cosmo would sing and braces would be their manager and de facto video shooter. Next up, writing a killer song and becoming a band. This is where Cosmo’s brother, Brendan (Jack Reynor), comes in. He’s a college dropout, turned burnout who’s still living at home. He’s got a big vinyl collection and becomes Cosmo’s musical sensai of sorts. With every new song they write, Brendan gives Cosmo an education in great music. See, though they’re self-proclaimed futurists who would rather create than nostalgically play covers, they’re aware that to move forward they need an understanding of what came before. Enter a tantalizing series of great 80s music. With each new influence, they’re sound evolves and the band’s look takes a new shape. It’s a coming of age story, but what makes it special is that the band and Raphina are all growing in tandem steps. Isn’t that the best way to grow?

The band goes by the name Sing Street, a play on the school’s name, and with every song they write they breathe life and joy. Cosmo grows fonder of Raphina, though she has a boyfriend, and he becomes more confident, standing up to his bullies of all ages and not being afraid to get a little weird. It’s a confidence that he always had (he is the one who stepped up to the beautiful Raphina), but before he kept it under wraps.

At the same time the movie is filled with a beautiful pain. We learn more about Raphina and Cosmo and the hardships they endure despite their youth. Cosmo’s brother is also hiding a broken heart beneath the surface. This brotherly love becomes one of the most powerful through lines in the film.

The movie is certainly John Carney’s creation and he deserves so much of the credit for this masterpiece. To that credit list also belong the young actors, chiefly Lucy Boynton who plays a funky, breathy, captivating Raphina, and total newcomer Ferdia Walsh-Peelo who plays Cosmo. Walsh-Peelo has created a sensitive character who emanates a palpable energy from his heart. To say Cosmo or the film is endearing seems too light a statement. His, in addition to Boyton’s, performance holds a sort of low-key magic. He, as the embodiment of Carney’s words, invites us into Cosmo’s imagination.

The music is not only fun, but deeply moving, almost surprisingly so. In the world of Beyonce’s Lemonade, Sing Street acts as a true visual album, including some amazing music from the time: Joe Jackson, Hall and Oates. There’s a gorgeous, stripped down piano version of “Take On Me” by A-ha in the background of a scene Cosmo and Raphina share. I can’t wait to watch the film again to discover more of these hidden nuggets. Then there are the band Sing Street’s songs themselves. Some are absolute up-tempo jams like “Drive It Like You Stole It,” and then some are beautifully poignant songs. For example the song “To Find You," would be lovely in a vacuum, but what this visual album– this film provides is a context that makes these songs mean so much more.

The songs, in the context of the visuals and this story can absolutely wreck you, if you let them. By far Sing Street is one of the best films of the year!

Fun Fact: In the movie the band sings a song called "A Beautiful Sea." In it there's an allusion to "Lost Stars," the Oscar-nominated song from Begin Again.

Nina

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

I have to say this from the start. Zoe Saldana is my favorite actor. Like normal people obsess over sports teams, athletes, or the Kardashian clan (klan?), I think Saldana is just about as close to perfect as humans can be. She’s beautiful, talented and her Instagram is full of joy. I am willing to see anything she’s in. (Yes, I’ve even seen Crossroads).

The biggest headline for this film has been the controversy over her casting as the famed soul singer and the way they darkened Saldana’s skin and widened her nose with a prosthetic for the role. To provide context, it’s not the exact same issue as, say, Scarlett Johansson being cast as the Japanese lead in the upcoming Ghost in the Shell. Nina Simone was black and Zoe is too. It’s not that she’s taking a role from another black actress, which, like for Asian actors are often scarce and pithy in Hollywood. Instead, it’s what the casting suggests in the context of the history of Hollywood and the broader category of American history— the idea that lighter and thinner is automatically more beautiful, that dark skin doesn’t have broad appeal. These deep-seeded issues that plague minority communities are, of course, a product of the mistreatment and total denigration of these groups from the beginning of this country’s history (the history we so readily forget) by the race in power. Yet it seems that the conversation hardly affects those whose ancestors were the culprit and who still benefit from that ideology today. But that’s a story for a different, much longer post. This problem is only magnified when you think about what Nina Simone stood and fought for.

The makeup was a mess. In different scenes she appeared darker than in others. The filmmakers seemed to feel it was necessary to have Saldana in the shower and in a pool to prove that they did a good job with the makeup because it was waterproof. The fact that Saldana was opposite David Oyelowo only excerbates the unnatural hue she was given for the role. And while I agree that the casting decision was probably a mistake, I think my unabashed love for Zoe allowed me to give the film a chance. It provided a tabula rasa, because, as aforementioned, I even gave Crossroads a chance.

What I come away with is that the makeup, though the major talking point, is actually the least of the film’s problems. To begin with Saldana’s portrayal, the most egregious discrepancy is her singing voice. Who knew Saldana had such vocal chops? She sounds lovely, but like Simone, she does not. All the gravitas, rage, passion is not there, or at least does not show itself in a Simonian way. Saldana’s voice isn’t low or distinctive enough. The vocal gap stares us in the face the entire film. All the soul and power is gone. And that can really be said about the entire film.

Much more than Saldana’s part, the whole film itself is a disaster. The idea was to begin the action where Simone hit rock bottom. She’s paranoid, alcoholic and wayward. She meets Clifton Henderson (Oyelowo) and hires him to be her assistant as she prepares to move her life to France. She’s moody with Henderson and no one wants to work with her, but she’s still talented and wants to return to America in hopes to sing again in the country she abandoned because she felt abandoned by it. My last sentence captures more about Nina Simone than the whole film did.

This later-in-life setting serves as a way to float back to very loosely related flashbacks that have little to no bearing on what is happening in the film’s present. A passing question about Simone’s daughter takes us back to a flashback emptily examining her relationship with that daughter. There’s a tiny mention of her civil rights activism and a more than gratuitous flashback involving Richard Pryor (Mike Epps).

Here’s the problem: The writers, directors and producers of biopics, a desperate film genre, seem to have finally learned that these films can’t hope to capture a life from start to finish. They will end up being overlong and excruciatingly humdrum. But this idea that you pick a moment in a person’s later years and use it as a springboard for flashbacks doesn’t always work so well either. This is exactly the structure of Miles Ahead, the recent Miles Davis biopic. (see two reviews down) Just because you jumble up the order of things and dismiss linear storytelling, doesn’t guarantee it will work. All the flashbacks absolutely suck any sense of urgency out of the main action. Let Selma (2014) be the archetype. That film took a great historical figure, and instead of telling his whole life story, honed in on one, granted one of the most prolific, of his many battles for justice. Choosing this focal point also gives the film focus and a message can more reasonably be derived. Now if they had chosen a better point in Simone’s life, just imagine all that could have been explored. Yet they didn’t touch any of the juicy parts of her ripe life with any kind of depth. Where was the examination of her abusive husband, her life as a civil rights leader on the, what was considered, more militant side of the spectrum, or a deeper understanding of her absent relationship with her daughter? Sure each of these things were hinted at in a lackluster flashback, but with no real relation to what was happening in the primary timeline, which in itself was made stale by the filmmakers. It’s unbelievable just how bad this film is to begin with, but especially after considering the wealth of potential material. If any musicians’ life could be a film, Simone’s could.

As Simone plays more shows and begins to get her act together, Henderson notices her transcendent talent. We know this because of a series of slow zooms when she sings “Wild is the Wind” and because after that performance he says, “you’re different.” It’s not enough to even begin to convey this woman’s true magic and magnetism. That feeling was completely lost, and it’s more than just because Saldana’s voice, albeit lovely, is incomparable to Simone’s.

Cynthia Mort’s direction is bland— 100 percent saltless. The script is a failure only to be outdone by the producers (Saldana and Oyelowo were among this group) who gave the script the green light.

A friend once pointed out to me that Matthew McConaughey, no matter the role, still feels like Matthew McConaughey. You get the sense that he really, even after his personal acting renaissance, can't escape just being himself, from the inaudible (yet somehow still poignant) mumbling in True Detective to every “Alright, alright, alright” he utters. Similarly you can’t get lost in Saldana’s Nina. It’s not that Zoe always feels like Zoe, though. No, she feels like a character, just not Nina Simone. At best it’s a caricature.

Saldana seemed to get better as the film went on. Now if this were a play it would make sense because you sink into the role as the story progresses. With a movie this is less likely because things aren’t filmed in story order. The only explanation is that over time a suspension of disbelief takes a stronger hold. The audience settles into the idea that, yes, this is what this character is like. This may seem like a good thing, but it is actually unfortunate, because instead of being reminded, we forget who Simone really is— her heart and personality altogether.

Nina is not an awful film because of Saldana or the controversy surrounding her casting, though that no doubt colored my overall impression, probably to a smaller degree than others. The true fault lies in the lean script and uninspired direction, which leave the dynamic musician and activist absent in a film to which her name was given.

Everybody Wants Some!!

 ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

A story takes us on a journey from point A to point B with stops along the way guiding us toward an eventual end. The reason movies have the potential to be breathtaking storied adventures is because with them comes the opportunity to show instead of tell. It makes it more mysterious because along the way a filmmaker doesn’t have to spell out where he or she is taking us. Even when we approach the climatic moment of truth, we can see and hear and feel the end rather than be told why everything on the journey matters.

In Everybody Wants Some!!, writer/director Richard Linklater doesn’t reveal where we’re going. I don’t believe a director has to give us an abstract of sorts from the outset, outlining what lies ahead. This mystery is more like what life is. And who can deny that Linklater has mastered putting life on the screen after his absolute masterpiece, Boyhood? (Some do deny this, but they’re wrong) In Boyhood, we’re viewing a boy’s life from year to year and things happen to him and those he’s closest to. What the end is, or the ultimate point, we don’t quite know until we get there, but the journey is filled with these honest moments that show us, not tell us, what life is. So by time we do get to “The End” and discover to what end Linklater was working, it feels less like the revelation of some overarching thesis, and more like a culmination of all we’ve seen up to that endpoint– point B.

Linklater tries to reproduce a similar kind of journey in Everybody Wants Some!!

Instead of covering the span of 12 years, we get well acquainted with these characters, a much larger group, over the span of 3 and a half days. Everybody Wants Some!!, Linklater’s love letter to Dazed and Confused, a 1993 film by Richard Linklater, follows the lives of a college baseball team as they party hard the days before the school year begins. The film is enjoyable. It’s funny with a few standout comedic moments. As the audience learns more about each team player, we begin to develop our favorite characters. The way they interact with one another, their brotherhood, is endearing, after getting past their initial misogyny.

Like in Boyhood, Linklater doesn’t give much away about why what we’re seeing is important. But it doesn’t work as well here. Yes, we are guided along a journey of self discovery, but the film lacks the same kind of moments, with the same kind of energy that get you from one point to the next. This lack of energy makes going along for the ride, without the knowledge of where we are going and why, much more difficult.

We principally follow Jake (Blake Jenner), a freshman pitcher who is new to the off-campus baseball house and college. He’s the one who drives the film and ends up learning something about himself and about life. But oddly, he’s the character that seems hardest to identify with. Sure he’s supposed to be most likable. I mean, during his first trip to the club, he dances with the black girl. (The black kid doesn’t even do that!) He’s the everyman, yet there’s a distance between him and the audience for which he acts as a pair surrogate eyes. His other teammates are more colorful and flawed, while Jake seems too perfect to stand in for the audience.

There’s a kind of similar end like in Boyhood, where our protagonist has an epiphany while talking to a girl he likes. The difference is in what I mentioned earlier. Here it does not feels like the culmination of all that has come before, but more like a life secret Linklater is letting us in on– like the final chapter of a self-help book. It’s less delicate, as if Linklater is speaking through the characters directly to the audience and saying, See, here’s my point. The comparable moment in Boyhood feels more natural because it not only has to do with the words the characters say, but the space they’re in, the feelings invoked, how he’s relating to this girl. In Boyhood it’s a moment filled with the force of everything we've seen in the film before this moment. That's not case with this film.

Still, Everybody Wants Some!! is a film worth watching. It's fillled with youthful energy, a strong sense of time and place and gives you a lot to smile about.

Miles Ahead

  ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

I’m generally wary of any biopic not released in the final quarter of a given year. It suggests a lack of confidence in the final product. You see, biopics are obvious awards bait. Half of the acting nominees in from this year’s Oscars were characters based on real people. Yet so often these films are soulless. Every year, though, a few biopics really break through. 2015’s breakthrough’s include Straight Outta Compton, Steve Jobs and Love and Mercy. Miles Ahead will not go down as one of the breakthrough biopics of 2016.

Each time I review a biopic I rail against the genre. It’s a tough undertaking and it requires more creativity than I think is realized at the onset of a project. The main problem with a lot of average to bad biopics is the chronological structure. Screenwriters and producers try to fit an entire life linearly into a couple hours and it ends up being as boring as being forced to watch every waking moment of someone's real life. Like fiction, stories based on reality are better when they are focused and finite, honing in on one or a specific series of events. So why so many biopics insist on telling the story of life from birth to death is beyond me.

The thing is, Miles Ahead has avoided this trap. It’s primarily set in the 70s when Davis is a washed up icon fighting with his record label, trying to hold on to his latest recordings, to which legally Columbia Records has the rights. The film porously floats to flashbacks of Davis’ glory days and his burgeoning then fledgling relationship with Frances (Emayatzy Corinealdi). Similar visual references in one period give way to another moment in the past. So technically, yes, Miles Ahead does bypass the biopic’s normal pitfalls of linearity and overexpansion.

Still a film, no matter the genre, must adhere to the basic tenants of storytelling (unless it’s a Terrence Malick film. We just let him do what he wants.). These include, characters, the area in which this film shines brightest with Don Cheadle at the helm, plot, and a logical endpoint. The latter is missing here. What is the ultimate point? It is not that Miles Davis fought for his return to music, though the filmmakers try to suggest that is, in fact, the point with the film’s final scene. We don’t quite grasp the depth of his exodus from music until the last 15 minutes of the film. So his return cannot be it.  The film doesn’t really go anywhere and therefore doesn’t mean a whole lot. And along with the absence of meaning comes the absence of grit. Despite the presence of drugs, domestic violence (not particularly novel stuff in the lives of artists) and a sprinkle of racism and backstabbing, the film severely lacks teeth.

We we see Davis’ boundless narcissism, his struggle for peace within himself, and we see him as both villain and hero. But for what end? Like writing a eulogy to capture a person's entire life, it can be hard to extract a concise list of final takeaways— a moral of the story. So though Miles Ahead gets points for some good performances and trying for a more inventive storytelling, the fundamental problem with most every biopic remains— that is the answer to the question, what’s your point? If the filmmakers fail to convincingly answer that, then what was the point of the entire project, indeed?

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

 ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

I have a hazy, half-conscious memory of being a child tiredly slinking down the carpeted stairs on my bum from the third floor to the second with a white trash bag trying to gain the strength to empty all the trashcans in my house at six in the morning. See, my parents had changed the rules of the game. I was suddenly required to finish my Saturday chores before watching cartoons in the morning. Cartoons began at 7 a.m., which meant that I needed to empty the all the trashcans before then. I only remember doing this one Saturday, so my guess is that my parents reverted to the old rules, as I probably woke them up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday, bumping into tables and stubbing toes on bed frames with eyes half shut.  

I loved watching Saturday morning cartoons. It’s the reason I’m a morning person to this day. Among them was Batman/Superman Adventures one of the many animated superhero shows I watched religiously as a kickoff to my two days of rest at week’s end. Additionally, I grew up reading comic books. I was more of a Marvel Comics guy, but Batman is my favorite DC Comics character. I believe Bob Kane reached to the darkest corners of his soul, that is the true Batcave, to create such a cultural icon. What I’m trying to say is, that with all my heart I wanted to love this movie. It was the convergence of Batman and Superman in a live action film. This is the stuff of childhood dreams.

I refused to be swayed by the critics. I make it a habit to not read any reviews until I see a movie. I tell people not to read my reviews until they form their own opinion. (This is not hard for people to do as they had no plans to read my review anyway) It was, though, impossible to not hear the negative chatter, so I did enter the theater with less than high expectations.

About an hour into the film I was ready to cry out, “death to all critics” from the rooftops. I thought the movie was building quite nicely. I loved Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, part reprisal of his role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, part sleazy Trump-like lunatic with a clear hunger for power beyond our world. Batman was brooding just like I wanted him to and Gal Gadot as Diana (Wonder Woman) was simply stunning. Most importantly, Superman, the all-powerful hero, had real problems. He had to defend his heroic actions as some of the normals had a hard time believing his altruism, chiefly Bruce Wayne, while others worshipped him as a sort of messianic figure. This struck me as incredibly true. It’s exactly the reaction Superman would elicit should he really exist. The best contribution director Zack Snyder has brought to the franchise is his majestic vision of Superman.

Then, in an instant, and even as it happened it felt like a shift marked with devastating consequences, the film changed. It is the moment the whole film went south, never to recover. Batman was all of a sudden in a desert without any explanation. It quickly devolved into a bizarre whirlwind of happenings, a blur of action, weird creatures. When the wild scene finally ended, it was like regaining consciousness from a comatose state. It was clear that we were thrust back into a world where things made sense again, but I, along the whole theater, was reeling from the completely jarring detour we had all just taken (against our wills).

It was as if that scene opened the floodgates for the all the other problems the movie would have, the main one being that by time our heroes finally meet for their showdown, the stakes feel shockingly low. Up to the point where the two meet to duel, there had just been too much going on. There seemed to be a gazillion characters hopping from one place to another. It’s not that the build up to the caped crusaders’ tête-à-tête was missing, it’s just that there was so much else being set up beyond the Batman/Superman showdown. 1) Lex Luthor was dallying in an alien spaceship creating an evil monster that was obviously his plan B should Batman and Superman not actually kill each other. Knowing this CGI concoction was in the wings sucked some of the energy out of the heroes’ quarrel. 2) They were building up to the future films in the franchise. This was remarkably indelicate. Instead of being woven into the fabric of the story, most nods to future films and Justice League characters were less an allusion than the filmmakers saying, “Look at this! Isn’t this going to be cool?” Don’t get me wrong, I was super excited about it as a comic book fanboy, but from a storytelling perspective, it was all too messy and gratuitous.

To quote my sister after the film, “It’s as if they tried to lay so much foundation, without laying much foundation at all.” I think what she meant by this, if I may probe the meaning of her thoughts, is that though so much happened in the two and a half hour movie, there was hardly any character development. Nothing made me care about the mountain of characters and celebrity cameos in this film. And that is the reason so many people take issue with superhero summer blockbusters. The truth is we’re in the golden era of comic book movies, but the detractors can add this to their arsenal of proof in their arguments against the genre.

Director Zack Snyder has probably taken the most blame for the missteps in this film. I place some blame on him because he has this seemingly uncontrollable urge to destroy every CGI building his animators create. Seriously, that aforementioned monster at the end of the film is both exhaustingly ridiculous and unoriginal. Still, I believe it’s the writers that deserve most of the blame. They created a mess of a story that no director could salvage without major rewrites.

Yet I maintain hope for the Justice League franchise of films to come. There was a glimmer of hope in the first hour. Maybe the filmmakers will learn from their mistakes, or better yet, the producers will replace some of those whose hands were too deep in the mud, ruining the legacy of such iconic characters for younger viewers perhaps encountering these heroes for the first time.

Hello, My Name is Doris

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Doris is a woman in her 60s. She works at a young, hip (yet quite homogenous these days) New York office job in the accounting department. She's goes by-and-large unnoticed. But what her coworkers don't know is that she has a very active imagination. She gets lost in her daydreams. Like when she imagined that the new, 30-something manager who joins the company, whisks her onto the office kitchen counter to have her. She's rendered helpless by her wandering mind, which in this moment has left her standing hunchbacked and all but drooling in front of the object of her fantasy.

Sally Field is a remarkable Doris, partly because it's so against type. If I were a casting director first reading the script, my mind would have gone to someone like Susan Sarandon. But Field turns out to be a perfect fit and undeniably funny. Like funny and heartfelt enough to win the Golden Globe for best lead actress in a comedy, barring a non-comedic entry such as Jennifer Lawrence in Joy doesn't steal her thunder. (Thought J. Law was great in Joy, but funny she was not.)

Doris has two obsessions. The aforementioned boyish manager, John (Max Greenfield) in her office, who she unwittingly, through a tragic and continual misreading of signals, plus the disadvantage of receiving dating advice from a high schooler, believes she can have a relationship with. Her second obsession is hoarding "meaningful" objects in her recently deceased mother's house. She finds things and keeps them forever. These two obsessions converge when Doris steals a pencil from John to obsess over when they first meet in a crowded elevator.

Doris is quirky, but lost. She takes the clichéd mutterings of self-help gurus as gospel truth. (If you break down the word “impossible,", it’s really, “I’m possible) She has a dearth of close connections, a group to which her brother and sister-in-law only belong out of obligation. And she only truly has one friend, that is before meeting John and her high school Facebook guru. Yet despite the delusional element of her relationship with John, Doris starts to really live when she sets her sights on seducing her young office mate. She goes to concerts, dresses up in her own weird and colorful way, she's excited about new things and she even allows herself to open up to a person she hasn’t met over two decades ago.

But Doris' delusions keep her from seeing reality. She's living in squalor, neglecting her one true friend and has real life questions that she hasn't dealt with that are especially pressing since her mom has died. Hello, My Name is Doris goes for poignance, but isn’t quite as meaningful as it is funny.

There’s a disconnect between what Doris is experiencing and what’s really beneath the surface. I think the filmmakers were trying to say that the new circumstances Doris finds herself in (hanging with John and his onslaught of young and silly Brooklynite friends) helps her break out of her shell, while at the same time revealing deep, unresolved issues that Doris must face. It all seems to make sense on paper, but it comes off as a bit paradoxical. There’s the further disconnect between Doris’ delusions about a future relationship with John and her hoarding problem. When a character has two problems like these, one would think they point to a deeper issue that’s the source of those other problems. We don’t learn enough about her mental state to make any assumptions about the root cause of her crumbling life.

Notwithstanding, Hello, My Name is Doris, is the first motion picture I’ve seen this year where character work really shines through more than anything else. I hope this is the beginning of a whole new Barney Bag of surprises from Ms. Sally Field.

Midnight Special

★★★★★★★★☆☆

In Midnight Special writer/director Jeff Nichols teams up with his muse, Michael Shannon, once again like in Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter. And the successes of this mystical film rest firmly in these two gentlemens' hands.

Nichols has a way of leaving his audience completely in the dark. His style here is a Melvillian technique of dropping us in the middle of the story. When the first images flash on the screen we already feel behind. Who are these people? What are they doing? Where are they going? We have no clue. Nichols only gives away little nuggets of narrative information when he wants to, but those questions beg to be answered, so we watch, unable to look away.

In the film Roy (Shannon) and Lucas (Jeol Edgerton) are on the run from a ranch-based cult with a kidnapped little boy, Alton (Jaden Lieberher, the same kid who played opposite Melissa McCarthy and Bill Murray in St. Vincent). We learn early on that there’s something special about Alton because the ranch has completely adjusted their whole way of living based on the idea that this boy is their savior. Slowly we learn more about who these people are. We find out that they have to be at a specific place at a specific in time, for some specific end goal to which the film is, no doubt, building. The fleeing trio picks up Sarah (Kirsten Dunst) along the way as they flee from lethal ranch hands as well as federal government agents, who wish to contain the boy.

It’s all a cloud of mystery and the audience is joyously at the mercy of the man who really holds the power, Nichols, to shed any light on what’s happening.

Then there’s Michael Shannon, an actor who, for too long, has gone unnoticed by the general public. There is something about Shannon’s performance that keeps you rapt. If it’s important to Roy, then it ought to be important to me, is the feeling. Roy, the father figure in every way, has his own magic in his eyes, so that you never doubt for a moment that what he’s doing is right, despite some questionable and harsh decisions he makes along the way. There’s an ultimate benevolence beneath the hardened exterior— a character that’s both a leader, yet a student of this remarkable boy.

The only problem with the film is the pinnacle, the culmination of all the questions that have gone unanswered for the larger part of the film. Because of our patient waiting, the end needed to be so spectacular, so magical. It was meant to be grand, but it required more than a grand idea. It required the feeling of grandeur, enough to make the characters look, and the audience feel, small.  What it needed was that unexplainable Spielberg magic—cinematic magic that leads genuine awe. It almost makes it, but just misses the mark.

Deadpool

★★★★★★★★☆☆

I entered the theater with some pretty heavy reservations about Deadpool because I knew that the success of this movie rested nearly 100 percent on this superhero flick (although his heroism is debatable) actually being funny. And I knew that it needed to achieve this without our mutated protagonist being a grating personality. And Deadpool nailed it from the opening credits, which alone are laugh out loud hilarious.Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson, who gets transformed into Deadpool (the film essentially pretends that Wolverine movie didn’t happen and even addresses its poor critical reputation) is a constant wisecracker. Like in the comics and cartoons, Deadpool constantly breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience or just to pop off another round of witticisms outside of the scene in which his character resides. In the opening credits the writers are called “the real heroes here” and that is 100 percent tru.  I suppose it was nice that Deadpool wears a full-face mask, which theoretically could allow the producers and writers to “dub over” a joke if it fell flat with test audiences. Whatever the process, they ended with an hour and forty-five minutes of nearly endless verbal and visual quips. It seemed nothing went untouched. The film degraded Ryan Reynolds the actor, his former superhero turn in the truly awful Green Lantern movie, Hugh Jackman, the fact that both actors were People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" at one point, the bureaucracy of film studios that produce comic book movies and the list goes on. It was a referendum on the genre in general, constantly setting itself apart, not only by reminding us that Deadpool is no hero, but also by pointing out the ways in which these films can take themselves too seriously. And no one can accuse Deadpool of taking itself seriously. That being said, from a storytelling perspective, the film was successful too. It's an origin story, and not particularly novel, but it was well constructed, avoiding the bores of chronological “pilot” films that set up franchises. Wade meets a girl (Morena Baccarin, who’s having more success than Reynolds did in the D.C. Universe with her character on the T.V. show Gotham) whom he loves. He finds out he has a terminal disease when a mysterious man approaches him and offers to cure him and make him very powerful. Wilson goes for it only to find out that he’s actually being groomed to be a super soldier. In the process of his transformation his whole body and face gets disfigured turning him into a bit of a Frankenstein, though still with a better bone structure than most. His disfigurement becomes the reason he doesn’t return to “his girl” as he constantly refers to her. At first, though it seems like a ridiculous idea that a guy would stay away from the woman he loves for vanity, and we may even accept this as just part and parcel of the general ridiculousness of the whole glorious experience, this plot point actually brings an element of heart. It touches on the insecurities connected with masculinity and the fear and shame of not being enough, even physically, for the one you love. Outside of this, which very well may have been the only thing connected to any sense of reality as we know it, the film was a total foul-mouthed pulpy romp and it did not apologize for it. My only complaint may be that it felt disconnected from the X-Men universe as established by the seven (soon to be eight this Spring) films in the X-Men franchise. Save for a couple shots of the X-Men mansion, brief mentions of mutants and a reprise of the X-Men film score in a scene where Colossus is taking a beating, it hardly feels connected to that world, though it claims to be. This is a highly forgivable offense because Deadpool has created a new world for a comic book film, which I think fanboys, fangirls, and regular moviegoers will be excited to explore in the future.

Hail, Caesar!

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

In Federico Fellini’s 1963 Italian classic film 8 ½, a film director/writer, named Guido, still struggles to solidify his idea for his next film even though his production crew and actors are assembled and ready to shoot. Guido asks a critic to read his script and offer some words of advice. The words of the critic best explain the problems with Hail, Caesar! He says: “On first reading it’s evident that the film lacks a central conflict, or philosophical premise, if you will, making the film a series of gratuitous episodes perhaps even amusing due to their ambiguous realism. One wonders what the authors point is.”Hail, Caesar! is about the 1950s film studio era. The Coen Bros. latest comedy features many characters inhabiting a world that is rooted in realism and the surreal all at once. Some of the characters are directly connected, while most do not interact with most others, which gives the film an episodic feel. In fact, when operating within many of the detached scenes the film is hilarious. There is a laugh out loud scene where Ralph Fiennes is trying to get an actor, who had exclusively starred in Westerns up to that point, to play a refined gentleman. He has limited success. The film works as a series of satirical episodes about this time and place, but it suffers when the directorial duo try to connect the dots.The central character is Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a Hollywood studio fixer who is trying to keep the wheels turning on multiple productions, including his studio's big investment, a story of Christ’s Passion called Hail, Caesar!, featuring big-time star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney). Mannix has to deal with the stresses keeping the studio together all while deciding whether keeping this job, which is a combination of extinguishing fires caused by temperamental artistes and babysitting, is worth the emotional toll as he is being courted by another enticing job offer in an completely different industry. Just like with Guido’s script, the sense of central conflict is missing because it fails to tie together all the moving parts.These moving parts include a story line with Scarlett Johansson’s rough talking starlet whose pregnancy Mannix needs to keep quiet. Then there’s that aforementioned Western star (Alden Ehrenreich, a relative newcomer who stands out in this film cluttered with famous folks). The most important problem to fix is the problem of Baird Whitlock, who has been kidnapped by an ideological group. Without giving too much away, the Coen Bros. poke fun at both ends of this ideological spectrum, though without much conviction, rendering any critique tepid and inconsequential. To again borrow a line from the critic in 8 ½, this leaves a lack of a philosophical premise. The film featured plenty of star power to distract from the film’s lack of cohesion. There were so many cameos. Some were perfect, like Frances McDormand’s, and others were too thin to warrant the appearance of a recognizable actor, like Jonah Hill and Alison Pill. To make matters more confusing, some appearances inhabited a purgatorial space between cameo and character, like Tilda Swinton’s gossip columnists. (But who really cares when Tilda Swinton is playing two characters?)All in all it was a harmless, fun ride, though its unclear vision makes it forgettable.