BlackkKlansman

Last year I saw an intense movie, BlackkKlansman, by Spike Lee. It is about a black man in the 70s who joins an investigative unit in Colorado. He ends up posing over the phone as a white man interested in joining the KKK and he manages to infiltrate the organization, with a white officer standing in for him in person. This movie makes racism terrifying and brings to the surface the violence undergirding this oppression. It is an incredibly tense, fascinating film. Tight and brilliant. The acting and directing are phenomenal.

Vice

Last year I saw Vice, the biopic about Dick Cheney. I really liked this. Yes, it's about a depraved torturer. The movie made him into a pure villain, and it was presented in an fast, inventive way that made his villainy entertaining. How can you laugh and enjoy this? It was the combination of the horror and the pure drive of his character that gave it a kind of momentum. Vice didn't explore any of the key scandals he was involved in in much depth, but drew them with broad strokes. I remember the Bush administration well enough that I could fill in the blanks. As history this is mediocre movie, but if you understand that and you are up for a colorful portrait of evil, this works pretty well.

The Favourite

Earlier this year I saw The Favourite in the theater. I loved it. It's by the same director of The Lobster, and has a similar feel to it, even thought it's very different. It is weirdly comical, but also incredibly dark, about power games and distrust. The leads are three hard, ambitious women who are in command of themselves, and this is unusual to see in movies. Queen Anne is less in command of herself than the other two, but because she is the queen she holds all the power that everyone gravitates around. I very much liked this movie.

Wine Country

I love Amy Poehler and all the actresses in Wine Country. As a GenXer I was really looking forward to this. There were a handful of truly funny moments, and it's good spirited. But in the end it was only meh. Formulaic, obvious, strained, and at times depressing.

Us

The other night I saw Us, a horror movie by Jordon Peele. It has a kind of cool story -- about a lower world of "tethers", our shadow selves, that come to destroy us. It's scary but not unbearably so. It follows a lot of traditional genre tropes, but has a fresh, eloquent take on them. It is visually arresting in parts, very well filmed. The lead family's doubles were scary and the idea of a horrific mirror image of yourself is powerful. When the double family first establishes themselves, the son of the "real" family says, in awe, "it's us" -- perhaps my favorite moment. Some of the odd and stark images echoed The Shining, but it was in no way derivative. I'm going to be thinking about the idea of tethers for a long time.

Mary Shelley, the movie with Elle Fanning is pretty good for a bio-pic (I don't usually like them too much). It covers her passionate relationship with Percy Bysshe and her coming into her own as a woman and a writer. What I really loved was how the language of Frankenstein came alive (no pun intended) and the way her writing was presented.

Lady Bird

Lady Bird is a watchable, somewhat dark but definitely pleasant movie about a teenage girl dealing with her angst and her troubled relationship with her mother. I liked it but there is nothing new here.

Get Out

Get Out is a horror movie that explores racism, examining manners and hypocrisy. Sinister and creepy, it is a smart movie that exposes the brutality of racist social control.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is kind of brilliant. It is a dark story of a woman's deep, unrelenting rage about the murder of her daughter and the effects of her blind determination. The focus of her ire is the police chief who never found the murderer and she puts up stark, menacing billboards on a town road that call him out.

This seems like it's going to go in a creepy direction of searching for serial murderers or something. Instead it draws out many of the characters in this small town in surprising ways. I thought maybe it was going to show the mean small-mindedness of them. But instead it shows a great deal of compassion for everyone. Almost all of them, especially France's McDormand's Mildred, have unattractive harsh sides to them, yet almost all of them are shown as suffering, and pretty much all of them show kindness and sympathy for others. The solid heart of the movie is Woody Harrelson who plays the police chief with humility and dignity.

There is violence. And there is a sense of dread and potential violence in most of the scenes. But the director manages to mix this lurking sadism with humor. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is extremely funny. The awkward dialogue, the little tricks of facial expression, the unexpected edges of the characters are all hysterical. In the end this is a very heartwarming movie.

Barton Fink

Barton Fink is fantastic. It's the story of a humorless playwright in LA in the early 1940s. He is a fish out of water in Hollywood on contract to write a wrestling movie. He is staying in the second creepiest movie hotel (next to The Shining), and befriends a nervously goodnatured neighbor, which is where things go very wrong. Classic Coen Brothers.

Inception

More Christopher Nolan! I watched Inception, a complicated film a la The Matrix, where the action takes place in the alternate world of collective dreams. I liked the conceit, the way the dream landscapes were constructed, the logic of the dream "levels". But the key storylines -- helping a rich businessman bring down another business; and one of the dream experts finding a way to resolve his issues with his dead wife -- were not that interesting to me. So I didn't care much how things worked out, in spite of enjoying the world of the movie.

The Prestige

After seeing Dunkirk I was interested in watching more Christopher Nolan movies and started with The Prestige. The premise sounded laughable to me: two rival magicians... But it was tense and kind of fascinating. The obsessive rivalry reminded me a little of Amadeus, and I always like movies set in the 19th century. The acting was good, the narrative layered and chronologically complex, and there was a twist I didn't see coming.

Dunkirk

Dunkirk is so intense. Almost too much so. It's about the evacuation of nearly 400,00 British troupes cornered on a French beach during WWII. It takes place over a couple of days. The movie jumps right in to the action and it is frightening and tense pretty much from beginning to end. I thought it was masterfully done, beautiful at times.

Cafe Society

Woody Allen's Cafe Society is a breezy fluff piece of nostalgia that has an enjoyable pace and is nice to look at. The characters are not drawn very well and do not really stand out. The story is simple and fairly straight forward -- with a few distracting side plots and irrelevant scenes. I wasn't particularly into it and felt bored by Allen's chronic plays with love triangles, but I thought the ending was very sweet and it kind of made the whole thing come together for me.

The Exception

The Exception is not an exceptional film but it's solid. Interesting, well-acted, focused. It concerns events that take place in Holland where Kaiser Wilhelm is in exile during World War II. It's a spy story where a german officer (there to guard Wilhelm), a Jewish servant (they don't know she is Jewish), and the Kaiser himself become entwined. I liked it and am curious if it's based on true events. Some of the plot points were predictable, but the tight plot and relatively restrained acting made this okay.

Boyhood

I was disappointed with Boyhood. I had heard so many good things about it. I think what people like is the gentle touch of watching the boy grow up year by year, and the simplicity of the scenes, the ordinariness of life. But I felt it was too ordinary. I wanted more emotional conflict, more drama. That's not what Boyhood is about so it's kind of an unfair expectation. I could appreciate the loveliness of it, and thought every scene on it's own terms was very good. I just wasn't that connected or invested or riveted.

Beatriz at Dinner

Beatriz at Dinner is a dark comedy of manners, but more complex. Beatriz is a Mexican massage therapist and healer whose car breaks down at a wealthy client's house and is invited to stay for a fancy dinner party.

Salma Hayek plays Beatriz as a quiet, intense, solidly grounded woman whose mere presence stands out against the dazzling, fast talking, superficial women around her and whose forthright gaze makes the men uncomfortable. This contrast highlights the others blase social  callousness in ways that are hilarious and intensely cringe-worthy.

But it's more than just hilarious. Beatriz carries and absorbs the pain around her and faced with such an onslaught of unrelenting indifference her anger quietly grows to the point of confrontation. It is mostly directed at John Lithgow's wealthy real estate developer's character, and the tension and crisp dialogue between them is delicious.

It's a great movie. All the acting is spot on, and every scene crackles. Mike White is the writer and I think he's a genius, particularly at writing complex, pained, and alienated women characters.

Before I Go To Sleep

Before I Go To Sleep is a ridiculous movie. Frustrating and strangely predictable. It's a thriller about a woman who wakes up every morning with no memory of who she is or anything from the past. She is living with her husband who must remind her of her life every day. She starts keeping a video diary to help her remember and things become sinister as she questions the identity of her husband and the circumstances of the accident that led to her amnesia.

It's slightly gripping but sort of annoying. You want to figure out what's going on but the twists here and there get in the way a little bit and it's hard to care about any of the characters because the plot and concept dominate.

Wizard of Lies

I am never a fan of biopics and have to learn to lower my expectations with them. That said, Wizard of Lies, about Bernie Madoff, was pretty okay.

It didn't cover new ground or offer new insights from all the intense coverage the story got in 2008-2009, but it was interesting to revisit it. I thought the acting was pretty good. Like in all biopics I felt something of substance was missing, some dramatic core.

At the end he asks if he's a sociopath and I couldn't help feeling that his awful nefarious actions are no worse than the legal actions of the Republicans who are currently trying to pass budgets and bills that will have vast and cruel effects. And I think he was right that during the 2008 financial crisis focusing on one evil-doer was more satisfying to the public than trying to grasp the systemic injustices in the system.

The Verdict

I think I saw The Verdict in the 80s when it came out and I remember thinking it was a very good movie. Boy does this shit not hold up. Such a long winded cliche. The legal drama around a medical malpractice suit is tired and unnuanced. The odd romance is sexist and ridiculous. The acting is melodramatic and tiresome.