→ April 12, 2018
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Isle of Dogs.

Wes Anderson might be the most divisive director making movies in English today, as his fans love his work, and everyone else hears his twee dialogue and heads for the exits. He’s been on a critical roll lately, with The Fantastic Mr. Fox (good, but not very faithful to the wonderful book by Roald Dahl), Moonrise Kingdom, and the Oscar-nominated Grand Budapest Hotel. I had only seen two complete Anderson films, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Bottle Rocket (somewhat annoying), and turned off Rushmore (insufferable) after about 20 minutes. So when I tell you Isle of Dogs, Anderson’s new, animated film from an original script, is excellent, perhaps it means a little more than when an Anderson fanboy critic says the same. It’s just great, no qualifier needed.

Isle of Dogs gives us an alternate-history Japan, ruled by the Kobayashi clan, which hates dogs based on a centuries-old grievance. The current Mayor of the city of Megasaki, also a Kobayashi, comes up with a scheme to banish all dogs from the city to Trash Island, while scapegoating the dogs for numerous public health problems and overcrowding. Trash Island becomes a concentration camp, looking more like one as the scheme and the film progress, with dogs organizing themselves into packs and fighting over scraps of food.

Atari, the 12-year-old ward of the Mayor, who is his distant uncle, hijacks a tiny plane and flies to Trash Island to find his dog, Spots, the first canine exiled to the island. He lands near one group of five dogs who, despite not understanding Japanese, figure out why he’s there and resolve to help him – especially since he is the only owner who has tried to come rescue his lost pet. This leads them on a quest the length of the island, all the while the Mayor and his henchman Domo try to recapture him and advance their plans to eliminate all of the dogs forever. At the same time, an American exchange student named Tracy Walker, boasting a comically round head of curly blonde hair, leads her Japanese classmates in starting a pro-dog resistance movement, during which she develops a crush on Atari, who has become a folk hero to dog lovers in Japan.

Anderson’s conceit here is to have all of the human characters other than Tracy speak Japanese, with translations appearing in subtitles as needed, while the dogs’ barks are ‘translated’ into English by the voice actors (or magic, I’m not sure which). This lets Anderson set a movie in Japan while using most of his favorite actors, and this one has a whopper of a cast – Bryan Cranston, Frances McDormand, Scarlett Johanssen, Jeff Goldblum (playing himself in dog form), Tilda Swinton (as a pug, which just made me laugh every time she spoke), F. Murray Abraham, Bob Balaban, Yoko Ono, Fisher Stevens, and, as “Mute Poodle,” Anjelica Huston, with narration by Courtney B. Vance. It’s also lighter on the twee-talk than the other Anderson films I’ve seen, perhaps because the script is credited to four writers, and I can only assume someone in the room pointed out, “You know, nobody talks like this in the real world, Wes. This is why everyone thinks you’re a fuckin’ weirdo.”

The story is totally over the top, so if you have problems with absurd plots in animated films – the octopus driving the truck in Finding Dory or the baggage-cart sequence at the end of Toy Story 2 come to mind – you may find suspending your disbelief hard here. Anderson et al compensate by populating the island with so many unique and surprisingly well-defined characters (given how little dialogue some of them get) that I found it easy to just roll with the story, even when Atari and the dogs built a fleet of boats to get themselves back to the mainland for the final confrontation. But there really isn’t any avoiding the fact that Kobayashi and his group are Nazis, the dogs are Jews being rounded up and sent to concentration camps to suffer and die, and oh by the way doesn’t this resemble stuff happening in the United States right now?

Like The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Isle of Dogs — say that out loud, if you haven’t caught the pun — is a stop-motion animated film, and the animation quality here shows a marked improvement from the preceding film. Several sequences are just visually enchanting, like the preparation of a bento box of sushi, or Atari giving the dog Chief a bath. The use of what looks like cotton batting to depict fight scenes is a great touch, and the details on Trash Island, while occasionally a bit gross, are meticulous and often look surprisingly real.

There has been much debate over whether Anderson is appropriating Japanese culture, or doing it well enough to get away with it, in this film, a debate in which I feel unqualified to participate, so I will merely link to film critic Justin Chang’s piece on the topic and walk away. Anderson puts numerous works of Japanese art in the background of the film, including The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai (several times, with dogs added) and Evening Bell by Hiroshige, both major figures in the Edo period of Japanese art; he based Megasaki city’s design on metabolist architecture from the Japanese architect Tanga; and he makes use of classical Japanese drumming several times as part of the score. (It’s much better than the mumblemopey song “I Won’t Hurt You” that besets the film like a frightened skunk in two different scenes.) There’s a clear affinity for Japanese art and culture, but whether it is done in a sensitive or appropriate manner here is not really for me to say.

I took my daughter, who is nearly 12, to see this, since she loved Mr. Fox and does indeed love dogs (and all animals, as far as I can tell). She thought much of the movie was sad, and had a hard time seeing references to dogs that died off screen. There’s also one death of a human in the film, and a lot of tears from human and dog characters. Her final verdict was that it was good, but she preferred Mr. Fox, which isn’t so graphic and which keeps dark elements in the dialogue rather than in the imagery. It’s animated, but it’s not a kids’ movie. We both laughed quite a bit, although I think I laughed more than she did, perhaps because I caught more of the subtle jokes about dog behavior and a few references she didn’t catch. (Yoko Ono’s character name is one; don’t look it up till you see the film.) With The Incredibles 2 coming out in two months, we might actually have a real fight for the title of best animated film this year.

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→ April 6, 2018
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Black Panther.

I’ve never been a big fan of the superhero genre of fiction, whether it’s comic books, TV cartoons, or the recent wave of movies set in the Marvel or DC universes. (I never collected or read comic books as a kid.) The characters never really work for me as fully realized individuals; the “it’s hard to have super powers” theme always felt rather silly, yet it keeps coming up in this corner of fiction. The Dark Knight is the only major superhero movie I’ve seen in the last decade, and I thought it was fine, but overlong and probably too ambitious for its execution. I never saw its sequel.

So I originally figured Black Panther would be another big hit that I skipped because it’s just not my kind of story; only when the critical praise was as effusive as the public’s reaction did I figure I should check the film out. There are two major elements here that I feel like I’m unqualified to discuss – how it compares to other superhero films, and the script’s attention to detail and and authentic depiction of sub-Saharan African culture – but I can at least break it down as a movie like any other work of fiction, and it is, of course, very good, with performances and visuals strong enough to overcome some flaws in the second plot and a sudden loss of momentum partway through the film.

Black Panther is both superhero and king of the (fictional) African kingdom of Wakanda, which appears to be located somewhere in the Great Lakes region of Africa near present-day Rwanda, a utopian society with technology well beyond that of any other country thanks to its location on top of the world’s largest deposit of the (fictional) metal vibranium. Wakanda has sealed itself off from the world, cloaking its location and its riches so the world doesn’t show up at its door with hands out or guns aimed. The story opens with a brief prologue showing the former king seeking out a traitor, his own brother, in Oakland, after which we see the coronation of the new king and Black Panther, played by Chadwick Boseman (42), and the first plot, around the theft of a half-ton of vibranium and the assassination of his father, kicks into gear.

That first storyline takes up about half the film, and it’s a chance for some great special effects and superhero-style combat, although the enemy, named Claue (no relation), is just a madman and not terribly interesting. That turns out to be a red herring of sorts, as the second half of the film involves a different, more politically-oriented plot, with a threat to the king coming from an unexpected outside source with connections to Wakanda, forcing the Black Panther to defend his throne and eventually retake control of the kingdom in a giant battle reminiscent of that in The Return of the King.

Boseman is solid as the title character, and apparently the ladies very much approve of his casting, but I thought he was overshadowed by the three leading actresses around him: His former lover, Nakia, played by Lupita Nyong’o; his sister, Shuri, played by Letitia Wright; and the head of the (all-female!) presidential guard, Okoye, played by Danai Gurira. are all more dynamic and fill roles more commonly filled by men in action films, especially Shuri, the tech expert who gets to make all the fun gadgets for Black Panther to wear, and who also gets the best one-liners in the movie. (“No, it’s Kansas,” was second only to the joke about vegetarians if I’m ranking the quips in the movie.) This isn’t just a movie that stars African-American actors in nearly every significant role, but it’s also one of the most female-forward action films I’ve ever seen, and never stoops to jokes about their femininity or contrasts their toughness with their gender. Boseman himself has somewhat less to work with, even in the titular role, because of what he has to be – the even-keeled statesman who sometimes puts on a mask and funny suit and kicks some ass – and there’s very little room for him to work beyond that, even when he tries to convince Nakia to stay in Wakanda and be his queen. Their chemistry is much better when they’re plotting and scheming than when they’re supposed to be in love.

The story itself starts to drag around the 2/3 mark, when Black Panther has been deposed by the usurper, even though we know he’s going to come back to fight to reclaim it. (Otherwise, there wouldn’t be much of a movie here.) The loss of momentum in the action comes as the script tries, with modest success, to delve into more contemporary political themes and into some perennial philosophical questions. Does Wakanda, a nation of endless prosperity (and great health care!), have a moral obligation to share its technology or resources with the world? Should Wakanda open its borders to refugees from war torn or famine-struck nations around it? With black populations in U.S. cities like Oakland (where the real Black Panther Party started) caught in a cycle of poverty and crime, does Wakanda have any responsibility to help its brethren?

The usurper arrives and all but promises to Make Wakanda Great Again with a “Wakanda First!” speech and belligerent mentality, arguing that Wakanda should show the world its greatness by force. His arrival and his words split the ruling council of tribal leaders, some of whom are rather quick to abandon their king’s pacificist-isolationist policies in support of the upstart. We know how this is likely to end, although the final battle is drawn out to try to infuse some drama into the inevitable outcome; there are few surprises, unless you still have a hard time seeing these badass women in every fight scene.

The cast is really strong across the board, with solid supporting performances by Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Martin Freeman (yep, that’s Watson, with an American accent), and Michael B. Jordan, and smaller but still notable contributions from Angela Bassett as the queen mother and Sterling K. Brown as the first King’s brother. (His name, N’Jobu, is a little unfortunate if you grew up with Major League, which I don’t think bothered as much with cultural accuracy or sensitivity.)

I’ll be very curious to see if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences considers Black Panther seriously for any non-technical awards, given its critical reception and awareness of the awards’ tendency to overlook African-American films and actors in several recent slates of nominees. Star Wars earned a Best Picture nod in 1977, one of ten nominations for the film that year, and it’s probably the best historical analogue to Black Panther as a sci-fi action flick. It shouldn’t hurt that the cast includes two Oscar winners for acting (Nyong’o and Forrest Whitaker) and two more past nominees (Bassett and Kaluuya). If I had to bet money right now on one non-technical nomination, it’d be for Best Original Screenplay for Ryan Coogler (who directed this and also wrote and directed Creed and Fruitvale Station) and Joe Robert Cole (The People v. O.J. Simpson). I also wonder how many voters would check off Octavia Spencer’s name if she made the original ballot, even though she’s not actually in this movie.

As I said at the beginning, I’ve largely avoided superhero films because their stories just don’t speak to me, and I don’t think Black Panther will change that – it is so exceptional in the depth of its setting and back story while also bringing together as strong a cast as you could assemble that it’s not something other films in the genre could easily replicate. Even with that jarring momentum shift while Black Panther is temporarily off the throne is just a brief setback, one that made me more conscious of the film’s running time (a little over two hours) but didn’t truly detract form the experience. I will predict, however, that it ends the year as one of the top ten English-language movies I see.

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→ April 3, 2018
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Ranking 2017 movies.

So I finally saw Loveless, the one film I thought I had to see before I could put together a ranking of all the 2017 films I saw, which can also serve as an index of my reviews. I still have a few I’m waiting to see in theaters or on demand, including The Insult, Foxtrot, In the Fade, The Other Side of Hope, and Mary and the Witch’s Flower, which I’ll add to this post when I see & review them. I have seen all nine Academy Award for Best Picture nominees, all five Best Animated Feature nominees, all five Best Documentary Feature nominees, and four of the five Best Foreign Language Film nominees. All links go to my reviews on this site; there are a few animated films I never bothered to review near the bottom.

1. The Florida Project.
2. Dunkirk.
3. Loveless.
4. A Fantastic Woman.
5. The Shape of Water.
6. Columbus.
7. Phantom Thread.
8. The Big Sick.
9. Call Me By Your Name.
10. Get Out
11. Logan Lucky.
12. The Girl Without Hands.
13. Lady Bird.
14. On Body and Soul.
15. City of Ghosts.
16. The Sense of an Ending.
17. Coco.
18. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
19. In This Corner of the World.
20. A Ghost Story.
21. The Wound.
22. Icarus.
23. The Breadwinner.
24. Faces Places.
25. I, Tonya.
26. Graduation.
27. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.
28. Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
29. Dealt.
30. Marjorie Prime.
31. Ethel & Ernest.
32. Our Souls at Night.
33. Last Men in Aleppo.
34. The Square.
35. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.
36. The Beguiled.
37. The Lego Batman Movie.
38. The Post.
39. Loving Vincent.
40. Darkest Hour.
41. War Machine.
42. In Search of Israeli Cuisine.
43. Good Time.
44. The Lost City of Z.
45. Ferdinand.
46. Birdboy: The Forgotten Children.
47. Strong Island.
48. Baby Driver.
49. My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea.
50. Boss Baby.

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→ April 1, 2018
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The Wound.

The Oscars’ process for determining nominees for the Best Foreign Language Film is a little strange, and I don’t think it’s very widely understood – I only came across it within the last few years because I decided to see as many of the nominated films as I could. Any country can submit one film released in its market between October 1st and the following September 30th (so twelve months) in the year leading up to the awards; for the 2017 Academy Awards, a record 92 countries submitted films. The rules mean that a country with a long history of producing critically-acclaimed films, like France, or a country with a huge population and a large native film industry, like India, gets to submit the same number of films as Iceland, which was the smallest country (by population, 348,000) to submit a film this year. Last year, the South Korean film The Handmaiden, among the most critically acclaimed movies of the year, wasn’t even its own country’s nominee. This year, Loveless nearly lost out on a nomination because of political objections to its content.

The Academy changed their process about a decade ago to release a shortlist of nine films before they announce the final list of five nominees, which gives another little boost of publicity to four more films that would otherwise be shut out. This year’s shortlist included Félicité, the first-ever submission by Senegal; In the Fade, from Germany, which won the Golden Globe in the same category; Foxtrot, from Israel, which is just getting a U.S. theatrical release now; and The Wound, from South Africa, which is available now on Netflix. With dialogue primarily in the Bantu language Xhosa, with occasional Afrikaans and English, this 88-minute film feels like a thematic cousin to Moonlight, looking at a closeted gay man in South Africa as he tries to hide his identity from a traditional culture that sees homosexuals as less than men.

Based on a 2009 novel by the South African author Thando Mgqolozana, The Wound tells the story of Xolani, known to his friends as X, a quiet, lonely worker in a South African warehouse who is asked by a family friend to come serve as the ‘caregiver’ to the man’s son in the amaXhosa circumcision ritual known as ulwaluko, which marks the passage of young men, called initiates, into full manhood. The ritual takes place over several weeks on ‘the mountain,’ where X meets his old friend and secret paramour Vija, who has a wife and family at home. X’s charge, Kwanda, is seen as ‘soft’ (I think that’s code for gay) and pampered both by his father and by the other initiates, who also suspect that he’s gay, but while he’s not ‘out’ in the western sense, he’s certainly less willing to wear the mask that X does and fights back against the bullying of the other boys. Kwanda quickly grasps what X and Vija are up to, and that X is far more emotionally invested in the relationship than Vija is, eventually pushing X in a student-teaches-the-teacher twist to demand more for himself, if not with Vija then with someone else. The wound of the film’s title refers, of course, to the wounds of circumcision – treated in ghoulish fashion with traditional ‘herbs’ and techniques rather than modern medicine – and what X presumably has carried inside him his entire life as a gay amaXhosa man whose family and culture would view him as a degenerate and less than a man if they knew his orientation.

The South African film ratings board caved to public pressure and gave the film an X18 rating, akin to labeling it pornography, even though there’s nothing explicit in the film and any sex scenes are shown either in silhouette or at a distance. This only reinforces the story’s point, that the tyranny of these traditions actually serves to dehumanize men who are born gay into a world that won’t accept them. Kwanda has a dryly humorous rant towards the end of the film about how the ritual just shows how men are obsessed with their own genitalia – not long after one of the other initiates is showing off his “Mercedes-Benz” circumcision, which, fortunately, is not pictured – and serves as a sly, figurative criticism of the importance placed on a traditional ceremony focused on one physical manifestation of manhood that tells us nothing about the man within.

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→ March 31, 2018
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Loveless.

Loveless was one of the five nominees for the most recent Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the latest film from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Leviathan), after it won the Jury Prize at Cannes and earned a nomination for Best Film at the European Film Awards, where it lost to The Square. It is a grim, intense, misanthropic film that expresses the director’s extreme discontent at the decline in his home country’s society under Vladimir Putin, and despite how painful the film can be to watch, it’s also one of the best films I’ve seen from 2017.

Loveless skips the prologue, so when the film opens, the couple Zhenya and Boris are already divorcing and at each others’ throats, trying to sell their condo and dispose of their unwanted 12-year-old son Alexey (also called Aloysha within the movie). An early, harrowing scene shows the two insulting each other while trying to avoid taking responsibility or custody of their son, whom Zhenya wants to just ship off to boarding school; unbeknownst to them, Alexey is hiding in the next room, caught in a silent scream as he cries and hears how neither of his parents wants anything to do with him. Both have already moved on to new relationships, Boris with an attractive and very pregnant young blonde named Marsha, Zhenya with a slightly older but very fit and successful man named Anton, and the first 40% or so of the film shows them happily adjusting to their new lives and having lots of sex.

The film’s tone turns abruptly when Zhenya calls Boris to say that Alexey’s school called and that he hasn’t been seen in school for two days. Both parents were so busy screwing their new partners that neither noticed he was missing. The remainder of the film follows the search for Alexey, from disinterested police to the volunteer crew that helps find missing people to the virulent acrimony between the two parents, neither of whom seems all that broken up over their son’s disappearance.

The story takes place against a backdrop of a literally and figuratively cold Moscow, full of abandoned and decaying buildings, denuded forests in midwinter, and people who can barely bother to care about anything but themselves. Boris’ employer is a fundamentalist Christian who requires his employees to be married with kids, and he fears losing his job if his divorce is discovered; Zhenya owns a beauty salon where her employees all seem to have similar stories of faithless ex-husbands. When the investigating police officer and then the head of the search-and-rescue force both come to talk to the parents, the two reveal that they know little about their son’s life, struggling to identify any more than one friend or to say what his interests might be. Characters often disengage with the people around them by mindlessly scrolling social media sites – none more so than Zhenya, who can’t even pay attention to Anton, the man she supposedly loves, for a full dinner.

Zvyagintsev’s disaffection at the state of his country extends beyond the mere callousness of its citizens to the manipulative autocracy established by Vladimir Putin. (There was even a political campaign against this film before the Russian board chose to submit it as the country’s nominee this year.) We hear radio and TV news broadcasts that decry fake news while also disseminating heavily one-sided reports on the country’s invasion of eastern Ukraine and the Crimea. The state is useless to its citizens; the police can barely be bothered to look into the disappearance of a 12-year-old boy, and the officer dismisses the parents’ half-hearted concerns by discussing the stats on runaways and suggesting that the kid is probably just hanging out at the mall.

The long shots of empty buildings, bare forests, and peeling trees give the movie a dystopian feel, as if we’re in the Eurasia of 1984, even though there’s nothing overtly dystopian about the plot. Zvyagintsev keeps the overt political references to a minimum until the very end of the film – which, mild spoiler, there isn’t going to be a happy ending to this story – instead depicting the individuals in the story as selfish to the point of sociopathy, including the two parents and Zhenya’s lunatic, paranoid mother, who seems to loathe her own daughter and thinks that this is all a scam to try to con her out of her house or whatever meager possessions she might still own. The question that lingers over the story, unstated but strongly implied, is what kind of state might lead its citizens to such savage ideas even when their material needs are met.

The two lead actors, Aleksey Rozin (Boris … why is it always Boris) and Maryana Spivak (Zhenya), are superb, but Matvey Novikov steals the few scenes he has as Alyosha/Aleksey, even though it’s his first credited role. Alexey Fateev also shines as Ivan, the head of the volunteer force, the only truly ‘good’ character in the film, bringing a convincing blend of command and empathy to his role, which involves leading the search and dealing with these two feckless parents who didn’t even notice their kid was missing for two days.

A Fantastic Woman won the Oscar over Loveless, and the Chilean film is a more entertaining movie with a more important message and a command performance from Daniela Vega, a trans woman playing a trans woman, to power it. That’s a movie I could recommend to just about anybody. Loveless is, in a way, like a great Russian novel of the peak period in that country’s literature: It’s brilliant, searing, overwhelming, and yet bleak and incisive enough that many viewers would likely rather turn away than fight through to the mirthless finish.

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→ March 30, 2018
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Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

I’m a bit late to the Star Wars party, but I finally watched The Last Jedi (now available to rent/buy on amazon or iTunes) on Thursday evening, which I believe makes me the last person in the United States to see this movie. I have seen The Force Awakens and would agree with what I think is the consensus that this movie is better than that one was; if TFA was the greatest hits album, TLJ is the album after that where the band tries to recapture the sound of its best output, and intermittently succeeds.

I imagine most of you have seen this already, so here’s a briefer than usual plot summary. The movie picks up right at the end of TFA; Kylo Ren is still Mad in Space, Rey is still with Luke Skywalker on the island planet, Finn is still boring, Leia still kicks ass, and the Rebels are still lucky to exist given the firepower and numbers the First Order brings to the fight. After a Pyrhhic victory to open the film, the Rebels find themselves chased even through lightspeed travel, which we’re told is impossible (the tracking through lightspeed, not the lightspeed part, which is actually impossible), and must thus find a way to disable the First Order’s tracking capability so they can escape to a safe hiding spot to regroup. Meanwhile, Rey wants to grow up to be a Jedi and find out who her parents were, and Poe Dameron still has problems with authority and is a poor judge of what constitutes acceptable losses in battle.

The women absolutely carry this film, and I don’t think that’s entirely by design. Daisy Ridley stole the first film in this trilogy as Rey, apparently to the surprise of the studio, and she remains a riveting, central figure in this film. Kelly Marie Tran debuts as Rose, another character like Rey – it’s hard to imagine these films without them – and just underscores the point that casting more women even in roles that studios would historically have handed to men adds something, rather than just avoiding negative PR. Creating female characters who are tough and resourceful, who can fight but who also think well on their feet, isn’t any harder than creating male characters who are or do these things, and it’s no less credible. If anything, The Last Jedi gives Rose short shrift by dropping her into the film without much character development, but it’s possible she’ll play a larger role in the next installment, too. Carrie Fisher’s final turn as Leia may come across as even more powerful because we lost her before the movie was even released, but the increased role the writers of these last two films gave her character has also helped put them above The Phantom Menace trilogy. Laura Dern also appears as Admiral Hodor … er, Holdo, another Resistance leader who takes over when Leia ends up in a coma, and while Holdo’s plan is kind of terrible, Dern, a generally tremendous actress in any role, does a superb job of threading the needle between stern by-the-book authority to contrast with Poe and presenting herself as a thoughtful, strong leader willing to do whatever it takes to keep the Rebels alive.

This was also the funniest Star Wars movie by a wide margin, with some dopey physical comedy (that still made me laugh because inside I am just a 12-year-old boy who laughs when people in movies fall down), a good bit more sarcasm than I’m used to from these films, and an utterly brilliant nod to the now ancient Star Wars parody short “Hardware Wars.” Johnson is absolutely playing with viewers’ expectations throughout the film, and where TFA gave viewers the answers they wanted, The Last Jedi goes in the other direction, setting up an obvious answer and then responding to it with sarcasm or a twist. Given the reverence afforded to this saga, a little nose-tweaking here is warranted and does help avoid the self-seriousness that permeated both TFA and especially The Phantom Menace.

The Force Awakens was a perfectly cromulent film – entertaining, but nothing new beyond the special effects. We got our cantina scene, our flying through narrow passages battle scene, our light saber fights, Jedi mind tricks, a Kessel Run joke, and too many other allusions to the original trilogy. It worked, but it felt too much like a nostalgia play, and perhaps a plea to forget the intervening trilogy of films. The Last Jedi is less derivative of the series, but now we’re devolving into this pattern of “let’s put the heroes in extreme jeopardy, kill off a bunch of redshirts, and save the characters with names” over and over in the films, and that becomes a bit tiresome. It invokes adrenaline fatigue and tends to come at the expense of story and/or character development. There’s a real lost opportunity here when Rey is with Luke Skywalker and, in theory, learning about the Jedi religion and traditions; the biggest revelation she gets about her character comes not from Luke, but from Kylo “my parents didn’t love me enough” Ren.

And that’s the other aspect of both of these new films I haven’t really bought. I’m all for changing up the archetype of a villain in space epics, but “goth kid” isn’t all that compelling, and Driver’s mopey delivery comes across as depressed, not depraved. This script does a better job than its predecessor in explaining Ren’s backstory, and how the son of Han and Leia could become the most dangerous person in the known universe, so I’m holding out hope we’ll get more of his character development in the third film. This film was replete with plots and subplots and probably more named characters than it could really handle in 150 or so minutes, but there were still arcs that could have used more exploration.

They also could have cut Finn’s story substantially to make room for further depth in the narratives around Rey or Kylo. I know Finn is a popular character and John Boyega is likable, but I don’t think he has any charisma at all in this role – certainly not next to Oscar Isaak’s Poe, who is drawn with some very sharp lines but that at least let Isaak tear up the proverbial fucking dance floor. I’m still unclear on what Finn’s role in the greater story arc of these two new movies is, and the side plot where he and Rose go off to the gambling planet to find a master codebreaker (master … breaker?), played in fine scene-chewing fashion by Benicio del Toro, is the weakest part of the film by 12 parsecs.

This movie looks incredible, as you’d expect given the studios behind it and the money invested in it, but Rian Johnson has also clearly given consideration to how he can use things like color or establishing shots to contribute to the feel of the story. There’s a lot of red in the film, including Supreme Leader Snoke’s henchpersons and the tracks left in the salt on the rebels’ disused hiding planet. (I know we’re supposed to think ‘blood,’ but it kept making me think of Australia’s Simpson Desert, where iron oxide in the sand turns the entire landscape a deep red.) There’s also a lot of moving water in the film, including some stunning waterfall shots, designed to give you the sense of descent and to feel several characters fighting the current, especially Rey as she resists the dark aspects of the Force within her and the pull of Kylo’s own darkness. Such small, subtle additions to a script that often feels bombastic and certainly doesn’t shy away from huge battle sequences or grand gestures by its characters may be lost on viewers caught up in the extensive plot, but they do help set the tone and, I think, establish a more complex worldview than any of the preceding films offered.

At 153 minutes, The Last Jedi is probably both too long and too short; Johnson had enough thematic material to go three-plus hours, but the repetitive nature of some of the plot details wore on me by the end, and there really isn’t much doubt who’s going to live to see the end of the film and who’s not, so the question becomes “how will Johnson write them out of trouble this time,” rather than the more intense question of “who’s going to survive?” Unfortunately, Johnson isn’t involved in the as-yet untitled Episode IX, which will be written and directed by JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio, which I don’t interpret as a positive sign given some of their recent projects (The Cloverfield Paradox, Batman vs. Superman) and the wealth of material bequeathed upon them by The Last Jedi. With principal photography set to begin in just four months, it’s probably vain to hope that they’ll get another voice in the room to help give these arcs the resolution they might deserve.

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→ March 19, 2018
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I, Tonya.

The very dark comedy I, Tonya, based somewhat loosely on the memoir by Tonya Harding with many winks and nods to the audience, garnered acting nominations for lead actress Margot Robbie and supporting actress Allison Janney (who won) as well as a nomination for film editing, with some critics anticipating a Best Picture nod as well. It is a perfectly solid film, a B+ or a grade 55, funny in several parts, disturbing in a few others, and benefits from a tremendous performance not by Janney (who’s fine, but one-note) but by Robbie, as well as a story that is itself just really damn good. You can rent or buy it now on iTunes or amazon.

For those of you too young to remember this fiasco, here’s the quick recap: Tonya Harding was one of the best ladies figure skaters in the world in 1991, and only the second woman ever to land the jump known as a triple axel. She went to the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, finishing fourth, and might not have skated again for the U.S. were it not for the IOC’s decision in 1988 to move up the next Winter Games to 1994, awarding them to Lillehammer, Norway. (The film screws with this timeline to make it appear that the IOC decided to move the next Winter Games up after Albertville.) In the lead to those games, someone in Harding’s circle hatched the cockamamie idea to kneecap her primary competition for a spot on the Olympic team, Nancy Kerrigan. That knocked Kerrigan out of the Nationals; Harding won the event and a spot, while the USOC awarded the second spot to Kerrigan. Meanwhile, because the men behind the kneecapping scheme were some of the dumbest hoods imaginable, they were all caught rather quickly, and Harding ended up taking some of the blame even though at the time she claimed she had no knowledge at all of any plan to injure Kerrigan. She had a disastrous performance in Lillehammer; Kerrigan earned a silver medal, as Ukraine’s Oksana Baiul won the gold.

The movie version focuses as much on what came before the 1994 Olympics as it does on what every character in the film resignedly calls “the Incident.” Harding’s mother (played by Janney) gets the Mommie Dearest treatment; she’s depicted as verbally and physically abusive, chain-smoking, day-drinking, and just generally an unlikeable battle-axe who, for all her flaws, will push for her daughter to get the training and opportunities to succeed as a figure skater. Harding, it turns out, was born with great strength and athletic ability, but never had the ‘grace’ that characterized so many figure skaters of the time – and the scoring system prior to the 2002 Salt Lake City Games’ vote-trading scandal was a corrupt, impenetrable joke, so judges could and did play favorites with various skaters. The film makes it clear that judges penalized Harding for being (in the script’s words) white trash, because she wasn’t dressed in expensive costumes and didn’t skate all pretty-like as Kerrigan did. (I always found Kerrigan to be technically skilled but boring to watch; Surya Bonali, who was a contemporary of those two, was by far more entertaining, and would often perform illegal backflips on the ice, which I interpreted as a sort of fuck-you to the judges who seemed to just plain dislike her for being big, or strong, or black.)

Robbie is incredible here as Harding; I’ve said this a few times, but 2017 was an absolute banner year for performances by actresses, with Robbie joining the list of at least five I’d say were worthy of Best Actress in a typical year. The hair and makeup are amusing enough, but Robbie nails a certain tenor to her voice and movements that reflects Harding’s background – or at least the version of Harding’s life that she wants us to hear. Janney was considered a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actress from early on in the process, but I thought the character was monotonous, and I don’t think she faced the challenge that Laurie Metcalf did in playing a more complex character in Lady Bird. (I’d probably also put Janney behind Lesley Manville for Phantom Thread.)

Sebastian Stan plays Jeff Gillooly, Harding’s abusive husband, looking like Rivers Cuomo with a taped-on mustache, and provides a dueling and somewhat differing narrative alongside what Harding tells the camera. Stan is superb, and both he and Robbie make the film’s core gimmick, of having characters break the fourth wall mid-scene, often with a moving camera shot, to explain that what we’re seeing didn’t happen or provide other details, work far better than I would have expected. That fourth-wall bit could go very wrong, but here it makes the film funnier and gives the script some more rope for scenes that seem a little beyond the pale. The movie also benefits from a hilariously spot-on performance by Paul Walter Hauser as Shawn Eckhardt, the fat, nerdy friend of Gillooly’s who hired the doofus hit men, and later gave an interview to Diane Sawyer where he claimed to be an international counterterrorism expert and otherwise showed that he was out of his mind. (He died about ten years ago; Gillooly later changed his name to Jeff Stone and disappeared, although Amy Nelson, writing for Deadspin, tracked him down in 2013.)

Harding’s story may not be true; other participants in it have denied her versions of events, and she even implied in an interview this January that she knew “something” was up, even if she didn’t actually order the hit. What seems beyond dispute, however, is that she was a victim of abuse, likely from both her mother and then Gillooly (which fits, as childhood victims are more likely to end up in abusive relationships as adults). In the script, Harding keeps telling us how various things aren’t her fault, and her mother tells us and tells Harding that she keeps blaming setbacks on everyone but herself. If, however, Harding is a trauma victim, then … well, yeah, that’s something trauma victims do to cope. And sometimes they lie, because dealing with the truth means revisiting aspects of past trauma. And of course they make bad decisions. I, Tonya may not have explicitly set out to make viewers feel sorry for its subject, but I certainly did. Whether she deserved the de facto death penalty she received from U.S. Skating – which I notice hasn’t commented on the film, unsurprising as its judges are made out to be snobbish, elitist asshats – is a bit beside the point, as she wasn’t going to the ‘98 Olympics anyway. The question is how history should view Harding; she says she turned into a punch line, while I think other accounts view her as a villain. If you accept nothing more in this film but the general gist of her life prior to Lillehammer, however, you have to see her as a victim first before she’s anything else.

I was a little uncomfortable with how I, Tonya used that violence for occasional laughs, or would shift its tone mid-scene from abuse to sight gag or fourth-wall-breaking, even when the switch was there to allow viewers to empathize more with Harding. There are many parts of this story that are genuinely funny – anything involving Eckhardt and the two nitwits he ‘hired’ to do the job – but the parts with Harding and her mother are truly horrifying, as is much of Harding’s time with Gillooly. The script also assumes too much on the part of the viewer around Harding’s marriage and why she stayed in that relationship, which risks putting too much blame on Harding (“why didn’t she just leave?”) when the answer isn’t that simple. The secondary theme, about how the U.S. Skating oligarchy wanted no part of a woman skater who came from outside their infrastructure and wasn’t a dainty waif dressed in frills, is also underplayed in the script; it’s less salacious than a dimwitted conspiracy to break Nancy Kerrigan’s knee, but it’s more insidious and wasn’t addressed at all until a global scandal blew up the biased scoring system. Harding’s life plays out for plenty of laughs in I, Tonya, but in the final reckoning it’s just not that funny.

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→ March 15, 2018
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Ethel and Ernest.

Ethel and Ernest is a delicate, loving portrait of the animator-author Raymond Briggs’ parents, from their first courtship until their deaths after 40-odd years of marriage, a relationship which Briggs concedes in the opening was rather unremarkable. There really isn’t much ‘action’ in this movie, and as such it’s probably not going to appeal to viewers who need something to happen. It is so tender and so realistic a depiction of two lives that you should watch it anyway. It was eligible for the 2017 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature but was not nominated even though it is #BetterThanBossBaby. You can currently rent or buy it on amazon or iTunes.

The film opens with a quick look at Briggs in his studio, where he explains the film in an almost dismissive way, after which the remainder is animated, starting with the happenstance meeting between Ernest (voiced by Jim Broadbent, aka Horace Slughorn), riding his bike, and Ethel (Brenda Blethyn, Secrets & Lies), a lady’s maid whom he sees as she leans out a second-floor window to air out some linens. The story follows their courtship to marriage to years of hoping for a child, only to have the doctor tell Ernest after Ethel gives birth with great difficulty that they should not have any more children. They survive the Blitz, with Raymond sent to the country twice in the Evacuation, and then worry over their son becoming an artist and a hippie. Then they grow old and pass away within a few months of each other.

If that sounds thin for a 90-minute movie, it is, yet the film works because of the beautiful flow of the script from minute scenes of domestic life through even crises like the bombing of London. (It also leads to a number of jokes about historical events, including the ever-optimistic Ethel, when told that new German Chancellor Adolf Hitler will be selling his book in the UK, saying, “That’s nice of him.”) The couple’s love for each other is contrasted with tiny cracks in the relationship, like Ernest’s blue-collar roots and concerns over anything that’s too “posh,” while Ethel aspires to higher standards of class and wishes to see Raymond do the same through schooling. Ernest’s consciousness of his modest upbringing drives him to buy a television, a phone, a car, all of which seems to dismay Ethel, who doesn’t see why they need any of these trappings of modern life and often delivers some unintentionally humorous responses.

Broadbent and Blethyn are delightful and both are so thoroughly in character that it was easy to forget the famous names behind the voices. The animation mirrors that of the graphic novel on which the film is based, with a quaint, hand-drawn look to the characters – all of whom have impossibly rosy cheeks – and an idyllic backdrop of interwar London before the Blitz sets in. Briggs may not have set out in any way to make a great movie, but by telling the story of his parents’ lives with such love and affection, he’s done just that. Perhaps that is the key: He didn’t try to do too much, so the result is just right.

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→ March 9, 2018
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In This Corner of the World.

In This Corner of the World is a Japanese anime film based on a manga of the same name, and I present it here as part of our ongoing #BetterThanBossBaby series, looking at films eligible for the 2017 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature that were passed over in favor of that unfunny, unimaginative, big-budget film. This one, as with The Girl Without Hands, is critically acclaimed in its own right, and features some gorgeous animation that draws on both conventional anime styles and alludes to many painters of the western canon, while also telling an epic drama that has much in common the works of great Japanese authors like Junichiro Tanizaki and Yasunari Kawabata.

In This Corner is narrated by Suzu, a young girl who loves to draw and who grew up in Japan between the wars, turning 18 in 1944 when a young man, Shusaku, arrives at the house and asks her parents for her hand in marriage. The bulk of the film takes places between that point and the end of the war, and follows Suzu through what first looks like it will be a traditional story of a young woman struggling to adapt to life with her new family, but what then becomes a broader tragedy when the town where they live, Kure, is raided with increasing frequency by Allied forces. Suzu endures several calamities that would break the spirit of many people, but she is fortunate in one sense, as her home town, where her parents still lived, was Hiroshima. It’s available to rent now on iTunes or amazon.

Suzu’s drawings form a critical through line in this film even as its tone and her circumstances change dramatically, and even when she can no longer draw as she once did, recollections of those drawings and the memories associated with them continue to drive the narrative forward. This thread is critical because there is no traditional story arc in this movie; the war and time push us towards the conclusion, but the movie lacks a second, entirely fiction plot that might have been grafted on top of this. The marriage between Suzu and Shusaku is not depicted as some great romance; there’s even a one-that-got-away subplot that appears a few times in the film that underlines how Suzu was not the master of her own destiny. She’s put through the ringer – the film doesn’t stint on the horrors of war, and serves as an inadvertent but potent reminder of how awful our actions in Yemen have been – but continues to grow and evolve as an adult because life forces her to do so.

The backdrop and Suzu’s artwork are really stunning, and easily form the film’s best attribute, given the somewhat aimless plot – although I think this is all aimless by design. I caught allusions to Van Gogh and Monet, at the very least, and I’ve mentioned before what a philistine I am when it comes to art. The renderings of the landscapes, buildings, and even warships are gorgeous and meticulous, giving the film a lush, textured feel like you’d expect from CG (think of the verdant backdrops in Tangled) but with the hand-drawn look of anime.

That aimlessness in the plot, however, seems rather deliberate. We think we have control over our lives, but that’s only the case until some greater force comes in and reminds us that we are merely fighting for control against a tide we can’t stop. The war isn’t there, and then it’s a tangent, and then it subsumes their lives, becoming a daily threat and leading to food shortages and rationing. Keiko, Suzu’s widowed sister-in-law, arrives not long after Suzu moves in with her in-laws, and serves as a figurative harbinger of what’s to come, pushing Suzu out of her new role as the dutiful daughter-in-law and taking out her own grief on the younger girl, who is powerless to defend herself given her age and the gender roles of the time. She’s pushed along by forces well beyond her, often that she doesn’t understand, and becomes the hero because it’s that or perish.

I know one of you commented recently that this was the best animated film of last year, and I wouldn’t necessarily argue against that, but I did have a few quibbles with the production, especially the abrupt ending to many scenes. Some of those scenes only last a few seconds, as in a few showing the family eating their meager dinners, which interrupts the moderate ebb and flow of the story in a way I found annoying – you can’t maintain a mood or atmosphere like that. The young men are also drawn too similarly, and there were a few points in the script where I was fairly sure I missed some detail because they jumped too quickly to the next speaker or scene. If you’re thinking of this for family viewing, there are a few scenes of violence that are quite graphic, and the content as a whole is not appropriate for kids. The bombing of Hiroshima is seen from a distance, but the effects are described in a few ways that would also likely disturb younger viewers.

While the story was imperfectly told in In This Corner of the World, it also has the broad scope you might expect to see in a highly regarded live-action film; if you made this into a ‘regular’ movie with famous actors (the English voice work is all done by folks who are not household names here), it would be discussed as a Best Picture hopeful. That makes it so much more ambitious than many animated films, even many live-action ones, and that along with the remarkable, beautiful animation have it rivaling Coco and The Girl Without Hands for the top spot among animated films last year. And I think you know what’s in last.

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→ March 4, 2018
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Oscars preview and picks, 2018 edition.

If you haven’t heard it yet, Chris Crawford and I recorded a podcast previewing tonight’s Academy Awards, but I also wanted to be able to put my predictions here for everyone to see, as well as links to all of the nominees I’ve reviewed so far. As always, bear in mind I am not a professional film critic in any way, and I have no inside knowledge at all of who or what is likely to win any of these awards. I just have opinions.

I’ll do a full ranking of all of the 2017 films I’ve seen once I get Loveless.

Best Picture

Who should win: Of the nine nominees, I would probably vote for The Shape of Water over Dunkirk but would be fine with either winning.

Who will win: I think The Shape of Water is going to edge out Three Billboards given the blowback against the latter’s mishandling of a police brutality subplot that’s treated as a joke. I still think there’s maybe a 5% chance Get Out shocks the world, though.

I haven’t seen: Got ‘em all this year.

Who was snubbed: The Florida Project was my #1 movie of 2017, with only a few films left for me to see to put a bow on last year. I don’t assign letter grades to movies a la Grierson & Leitch, but that would be my only A, I think.

Best Director

  • Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan
  • Get Out, Jordan Peele
  • Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig
  • Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson
  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro

Who should win: Nolan.

Who will win: I said in the podcast with Chris that I could see Gerwig (first woman) winning, but I think I’d probably still bet on del Toro.

Who was snubbed: Sean Baker for The Florida Project, making a masterpiece with a cast of largely non-professional actors.

Best Actor

  • Timothée Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name
  • Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
  • Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
  • Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
  • Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Who should win: Day-Lewis gave the best performance. I think I’d prefer to see Kaluuya win, and it was a real breakout role for him, but DDL is just a master.

Who will win: Oldman, who should win for Best Impersonation, but that’s not really the same thing, is it?

I haven’t seen: Roman J. Israel, Esq..

Who was snubbed: John Cho for Columbus, a wonderful movie almost nobody has seen.

Best Actress

  • Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
  • Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
  • Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
  • Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
  • Meryl Streep, The Post

Who should win: Of the three I’ve seen, I’d give it to Hawkins.

Who will win: Everyone seems to think McDormand has this locked up. She’s good, but I think her role was much less demanding than Hawkins’ or one of the actresses I think was snubbed.

I haven’t seen: I, Tonya.

Who was snubbed: Daniela Vega for A Fantastic Woman, and perhaps Alexandra Barbely for On Body and Soul or Vicky Krieps for Phantom Thread. This was the strongest category of all this year.

Best Supporting Actor

  • Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
  • Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards
  • Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water
  • Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World
  • Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards

Who should win: Dafoe.

Who will win: Rockwell.

I haven’t seen: All the Money in the World. This seems like an acknowledgement of the effort rather than the performance.

Who was snubbed: Michael Stuhlbarg (who appeared in three Best Picture nominees this year) for Call Me By Your Name.

Best Supporting Actress

  • Mary J. Blige, Mudbound
  • Allison Janney, I, Tonya
  • Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
  • Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
  • Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water

Who should win: Of the three I’ve seen, Metcalf.

Who will win: Janney.

I haven’t seen: I, Tonya or Mudbound.

Who was snubbed: Holly Hunter for The Big Sick.

Best Original Screenplay

  • The Big Sick
  • Get Out
  • Lady Bird
  • The Shape of Water
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

      • Who should win: I’m torn on this one, but I think I’d vote Get Out here.

      Who will win: I have no idea. I’ll guess Lady Bird.

      I haven’t seen: None.

      Who was snubbed: The Florida Project and Columbus.

      Best Adapted Screenplay

      • Call Me By Your Name
      • The Disaster Artist
      • Logan
      • Molly’s Game
      • Mudbound

      Who will win: Call Me By Your Name.

      I haven’t seen: Call Me is the only one I’ve seen.

      Who was snubbed: The Sense of an Ending, another very good, quiet film that almost nobody saw last year. It’s adapted from the Booker Prize-winning novel by Julian Barnes.

      Best Animated Feature

      Who should win: Coco.

      Who will win: Coco.

      I haven’t seen: Ferdinand.

      Who was snubbed: This category has become a disaster thanks to the change in voting rules I mentioned yesterday, favoring big studio releases over indie films. But there were a ton of eligible films that were #BetterThanBossBaby, including The LEGO Batman Movie and The Girl Without Hands.

      Best Short Film – Animated

      • ”Dear Basketball”
      • ”Garden Party”
      • ”Lou”
      • ”Negative Space”
      • ”Revolting Rhymes

      Who should win: Three of these are great; I’d probably vote “Revolting Rhymes,” which is on Netflix. I reviewed them all in one post.

      Who will win: I assume “Lou” because it’s Pixar. It’s also great, as is “Negative Space.” I am really hoping “Dear Basketball,” easily the worst of the five, doesn’t win on the basis of Kobe Bryant’s involvement.

      I haven’t seen: None.

      Best Documentary Feature

      Who should win: This really depends on what you want from your documentaries – should the film really expose or explain something, or can it just show you a slice of life? I liked four of the five nominees and would probably vote Faces Places by a nose over Icarus.

      Who will win: I think Faces Places so they can put Agnes Varda – or a cardboard cutout of her – on the stage.

      I haven’t seen: None.

      Who was snubbed: I did not see Jane, but given the wide critical acclaim of that film (about Jane Goodall), I was shocked it didn’t get a nod. I also thought City of Ghosts would get a nomination over Last Men in Aleppo.

      Best Short Film – Documentary

      • ”Ethel & Eddie”
      • ”Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405”
      • ”Heroin(e)”
      • ”Knife Skills”
      • ”Traffic Stop”

      Who should win: Of the three I’ve seen, “Knife Skills” is a wonderful watch but “Traffic Stop” (on HBO) and “Heroin(e)” (on Netflix) are both so incredibly important.

      Who will win: I really don’t have a guess on this one.

      I haven’t seen: “Ethel & Eddie” and “Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405”. The latter is on YouTube but I couldn’t get through a few minutes of it because it was so upsetting right at the outset.

      Best Foreign Language Film

      Who should win: Of the three I’ve seen, A Fantastic Woman, which also would have been worthy of a Best Picture nomination.

      Who will win: I think A Fantastic Woman gets this.

      I haven’t seen: I’m going to see Loveless this week, weather permitting, and it has earned critical plaudits on par with the best movies of the year. I also missed The Insult.

      Who was snubbed: I haven’t seen either of these, but thought In the Fade (which won the Golden Globe in this category) or Foxtrot (that trailer looks amazing) would sneak in here.

      Best Short Film – Live Action

      • ”DeKalb Elementary”
      • ”The Eleven O’Clock”
      • ”My Nephew Emmett”
      • ”The Silent Child”
      • ”Watu Wote/All Of Us”

      I’ve only seen “DeKalb Elementary,” which is superb, well-acted, and unfortunately very, very timely. I haven’t been able to find any of the other four online in any format.

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