The Top 10 Films of 2018

When thinking about 2018, it’s difficult to identify a unifying theme or direction that's indicative of the overall mood of the pictures that I saw. What was 2018? It wasn’t a bad year for movies at all. There are a lot of films that deserve to be on any year’s list, but there aren’t as many that demand to be crowned the movie of the year. Rather, there were many films that exist as pillars of their own particular niche. Sometimes that makes for a more varied and interesting year in movies.

10 – Tully - Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody reunite to tell the story of an exhausted mother (Charlize Theron) who is reeling from post-partum depression. Mackenzie Davis as the titular fairy-godmother/wet nurse lights up the screen with what should have been a star-making performance. But it's the turn towards magical realism that helps distinguish this film from the usual indie-drama Sundance slosh bucket.

09 - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Who doesn’t like a good anthology movie? Scruggs boasts a competent buffet of short stories depicting the myth of the American western, as presented by the Coen brothers with the perfect amount of post-modern side eye. Every tale explores themes of death, redemption, and the pitfalls that come with the Western mentality of the self-made man.

08 – Hereditary – Ari Aster’s demonic melodrama about a family torn apart by grief is as emotionally draining as it is terrifying. Toni Collette balances a difficult performance that asks her to simultaneously anchor the story in an emotional reality and to sell the spectacle of the horror/supernatural elements. Hereditary is a heavy and bleak movie-going experience but its nuance and masterful direction demand thorough consideration.

07 – Thoroughbreds – Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke play a twisted game of master manipulation in Cory Finley’s directorial debut. Finley's stage-like thriller is tinged with just the right amount of black comedy as it explores the notion of two teenagers who plot to kill one of their stepfathers. Brewing beneath this premise is a clever satire about medically induced teenage apathy and anti-social affluenza.

06 – Spider-Man into The Spider-Verse - This is exactly the kind of kick in the butt that the word of animation desperately needs. The mix of three-dimensional CGI modeling with tactile illustration explodes with the color and creativity that’s usually limited to graphic design and comic books. The out-of-the-box plot managed to tell a compelling story while introducing us to six new spider characters and establishing a new movie universe for them to play in.

05 – Bad Times at the El Royale - Drew Goddard’s period noir that takes place at a tourist-friendly Tahoe hotel is probably the most slept-on wide-release movie of the year. This fantastically directed thriller pulls together multiple plot threads and a big cast into a slowly unfolding, tense game of shag carpet Clue. The performances are finely tuned, and Goddard’s considerate use of subjective camera helps to bait the audience into every exciting reveal.

04 – Annihilation – Not since Ridley Scott’s “Alien” has a science fiction horror film so effectively crept into my consciousness. This hellish "Through the Looking Glass" is experienced from the perspective of a team of female scientists who are biologically altered as they explore the interior of a psychedelic radiation bubble that has formed around the landing site of a meteor. The film effectively taps into the fears we have about our own bodies as well as our fears about the vastness of the galaxies. 

03 – Eighth Grade – Millennial stand-up comedian Bo Burnham has made with his first feature what is probably the most accurate portrayal of awkward pre-adolescents. Elsie Fisher is heartbreakingly perfect as the fragile and emotionally underprepared Kayla Day; a teenager who is desperately trying to navigate a world of ever-changing social cues, as she herself is still settling into a new life after exiting childhood.

02 – Blindspotting - Hollywood has explored racial tensions in America through the power of filmmaking over the last few years and many new voices have emerged. Carlos Lopez Estrada’s film deals with the social woes of racial injustice, police brutality, and gentrification. Daveed Digs and Rafael Casal as the leads are both relatable and engaging and the hipster-infested Oakland that Estrada shows us feels just as recognizable as when we watch our own neighborhoods change over the years. The experimental rap-like dialogue within Casal and Dig's near-perfect screenplay is a bold stylistic choice that pays off.

01 – Sorry to Bother You – While “Blindspotting” deals with racial injustice and gentrified Oakland through the interpersonal struggles of the main characters, Boots Riley’s take on the same subject uses absurdism and broad satire to explore the political and social reasons for said inequalities. This audacious comedy about telemarketing, workers strikes, and unions delivers big laughs while also skewering the corporate structure of the Silicon Valley industries that have kicked out the bottom rungs of the social ladder. No other film this year has spit this amount of venom while also experimenting with tone, genre, and visual storytelling with the same amount of punk rock gusto.

Honorable Mentions: If Beal Street Could Talk, Avengers: Infinity War, Mid 90s, Blackkklansman, Crazy Rich Asians, A Star Is Born, A Quiet Place, The Favourite,

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2019

Ibiza review

It’s increasingly obvious that Netflix doesn’t care what’s in their library of original content, so long as they can expand on and broaden said library. Who needs classic films and the hidden gems of cinema’s history when we can have fresh, direct-to-streaming movies like Adam Sandler’s tone-deaf western spoof “The Ridiculous Six,” the misguided fantasy/cop-drama hybrid “Bright,” or this year’s cold, dead fish of a buddy comedy “Ibiza.” Every once and while Netflix will treat us to a genuinely tasteful experience like the heart-breaking war drama, “Beasts of No Nation,” but more often then not, I scroll through my choices and see more and more dreck like “Ibiza.” Built on the dated premise that ‘female Hangover’ is still a winning hook to use in a Hollywood pitch meeting, “Ibiza” is at best an extended travelogue and at worse a silicon valley executive’s excuse for a tax write-off.

Gillian Jacobs plays Harper, a New York advertising agent who’s brimming with jittery affectation and professional neurosis. Harper’s supposedly evil boss (because the movie tells us to hate her) sends her to Barcelona to score a big deal with a client, but she decides to take her two selfish friends Nikki (Vanessa Bayer) and Leah (Phoebe Robinson) along with her, where they spend the trip dancing in clubs, popping pills and talking to hunky European guys. When Harper becomes obsessed with hooking up with a famous DJ (Richard Madden), the girls decide to move their party to the island of Ibiza. Can Harper get into the exclusive club to reconnect with her fantasy love-boat, dance all night and make it back to Spain early enough to prepare for her big meeting?

I don’t have a principled stance against an all-female comedy about girlfriends cutting lose and indulging a wild weekend getaway, but I do have a bias against hacky comedies in which the actors are tossed in front of the camera and forced to generate material on the spot because the screenwriter couldn’t be bothered to construct actual scenes. In the many sequences that meander in no discernable direction, three leads seem desperate to generate humor from the deep black void that is this movie, doing over-mannered impressions of who I assume are the most annoying people they ever met.  I’ve seen Gillian Jacobs play prickly and damaged in the Netflix series “Love,” as well as cute and bubbly in the sitcom “Community,” and I’ve seen Vanessa Bayer create interesting sketch characters on Saturday Night Live. Their performances here are so severely unfunny, but if I didn’t already know better, it would have been inconceivable that these people make their living in comedy.

It’s obvious the director (Funny or Die alum Alex Richenbach) lost complete control of the shoot when over forty percent of the runtime is devoted to techno dance montages and barely connected plot points that only exist to get the characters from one location to another. The story doesn’t advance so much as it changes the setting every ten minutes. I suppose the theme here is about friendship and self-discovery, but that’s almost entirely lost when the protagonist’s journey is based on hooking up with a vacuous EDM Prince charming that we barely get to know, and her friends constantly use each other for personal gain. “Ibiza” completely lacks in anything approaching reality, humanity or anything remotely recognizable as a true human emotion.

Grade: F

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/June-2018

Solo: A Star Wars Story review

There are usually two types of “Star Wars” fans; the people who watch it for Darth Vader and the people who watch it for Han Solo. Nobody watches for Luke Skywalker (Sorry-not-sorry). Because we already have two trilogies essentially devoted to the rise and fall of Darth Vader, it was almost a foregone conclusion that someone would build a story around the cocky flyboy turned space outlaw originally played by Harrison Ford. Ron Howard, who previously worked with George Lucas on the 1988 fantasy film “Willow,” directs “Solo: A Star Wars Story, “a tangential prequel that helps fill the gaps between the larger sagas, primarily focusing on Han as a youthful runaway.

Father and son writers Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan begin this movie showing Han (Alden Ehrenreich) escaping an enemy occupied planet without his lover Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). Proclaiming that he will one day return to save her, Han assumed the moniker Solo and joined the Imperial military to steal something large enough to buy a ship and return to his girl. There he meets up with a group of competing smugglers led by the cynical Beckett (Woody Harrelson). After joining, he makes a deal to help the group steal a volatile weapons payload for a dangerous arms dealer named Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).

 As the film progresses, we get to see the young Solo’s first encounters with the Millennial Falcon, the vein gambler Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), and his destined lifelong partner Chewbacca. We should expect the character’s greatest hits and catchphrases within this style of conceptual universe building, but it also smells a lot like fan-service, and as each of these moments pass, you can almost hear Kasdan’s red pencil drag a line through the list of directives ordered down from Mount Disney. That’s why I felt slightly guilty by the big grin that came over my face as the movie plopped these elements into the story like farmer filling the trough for his hungry pigs. I’ll be the first to admit that even as I acknowledge the pandering here, I enjoyed almost all of it.

Howard handles the sci-fi/western themes and the action sequences well. Hints of Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” and the cult television series “Firefly” feel present here, even as those properties wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the influence of “Star Wars” in the first place—a classic example of the pop culture snake eating its tropes.  Handheld shaky cam obscures some of the ground combat, and the runtime feels about 15 minutes too long, but any motion picture that gives us a train heist, a prison escape and an aerial dogfight all within the same theater experience at least has a good understanding of what populist filmmaking should be.

Is “Solo: A Star Wars Story” essentially Star Wars fan fiction? Yes, but that doesn’t automatically make it bad, even if it doesn’t move the needle very far within the overall mythology. Ehrenreich carries everything adequately, even if his boyish take on the character isn't the spot-on Harrison Ford impression people are expecting. The supporting cast is all given enough to do to keep us invested in their place within the story as well.  There’s almost nothing that’s essential or impactful about this franchise mortar of a movie, but it’s highly entertaining and full of characters (new and old) that we want to spend our time with, which is more than I can for almost half of the other entries in the Star Wars cinematic universe.

Grade: B

Originally published in Idaho State Journal/June-2018

Paddington 2 review

Many adults were pleasantly surprised when 2014’s live-action adaptation of "Paddington" turned out to be watchable. Given that most of the animated properties of our past that are revamped into live action/animation hybrids (ala  "Smurfs,” “Garfield,” “Chipmunks") are usually mind-numbingly obnoxious, the warmth and wit of Paul King’s "Paddington" films have become a healthy change in the kid-vid diet. “Paddington 2” manages to improve on the previous entry by grounding the visual gags more effectively in storytelling while also managing to be even more ambitious when it comes to its many Rube Goldberg-esque action sequences.

Here King and his co-writer Simon Farnaby simplify the plot by focusing on a few tangible goals for the characters. Paddington (voiced by Ben Wishaw) wants to buy an antique pop-up book about London for his dear aunt Lucy who’s still living as a cultured bear in Peru. Things go wrong when our cuddly protagonist is framed for the robbery of the book by an actor/vaudevillian/magician named Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant), who happens lives down the street from Paddington’s adopted family. After the polite and naive bear is sent to prison, he has to convince his family to prove his innocents while also doing his best to make friends with the other hardened inmates.

Paddington is a believable character because the animation that brings him to life is surrounded by terrific actors who are as naturally animated in their expressions. Irish tough-guy Brendan Gleeson as the prison chef Knuckles pulls faces in the camera that shouldn’t work as broadly applied as they are, but somehow they do. Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins are given more to do in the plot this time other than arguing whether or not they want to keep a clumsy bear in their attic, and by giving them more proactive roles they have more weight in the plot. Grant as the vein and foppish villain is camping it up with zero abandon, but King’s control of the movie's tone keeps every wild gesture and zippy one-liner contained in the context of our hero’s journey.

This installment of weaves together the title character’s mission through a series of creative and wildly visual set-pieces, such as the robbery of the antique store, a window washing montage and the many exploits of Hugh Grant’s master-of-disguise sleuthing. The film also indulges many beautiful sequences that imagines Paddington’s London as a flipbook come to life.  This is 3D cinema accomplished without the need for the annoying glasses and these sequences successfully welds together the CGI character with his modern, live-action environments. There are a few set-pieces that register as stock or somewhat familiar, such as a prison escape sequence that involves a laundry hamper and a final battle on a steam train. Neither of these scenes is executed poorly, though they lean into their clichés rather than subverting them. But hey, this is a picture about a talking bear that’s obsessed orange marmalade, so…

King obviously has a vision for this silly franchise and his ear for dry comedic dialogue, combined with a creative visual sense and big heart for his characters elevates this experience beyond its base expectations as an electric babysitter.  It’s only a shame that content geared towards children has become so dumbed down and so cynical that a movie as effortlessly positive and crowd-pleasing as "Paddington 2" has become the exception to the rule.

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2018