The Green Knight Licorice Pizza The French Dispatch Dune
WINNER: West Side Story
Best Production Design
Dune The French Dispatch Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar The Matrix Resurrections
WINNER: Mad God
Best Costume Design
The Matrix Resurrections House of Gucci Cruella West Side Story
WINNER: Dune
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
The Eyes of Tammy Faye Pig Dune The Matrix Resurrections
WINNER: Titane
Best Visual Effects
Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time Old Malignant Mad God
WINNER: Dune
Best Editing
Dune The Power of the Dog The French Dispatch Licorice Pizza
WINNER: Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Best Original Song
“Guns Go Bang” – The Harder They Fall “No Time To Die” – No Time To Die “Edgar’s Prayer” – Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar “One Last Kiss” – Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time
WINNER: “So May We Start” – Annette
Best Original Score
On-Gaku: Our Sound Dune The World To Come The Green Knight
Late-period Wes Anderson has, for me, become the most artistically fruitful period of his entire career. The melancholy that always italicized his conceptions of his worlds and his characters has blossomed into a constant meditation into being something of a man out of time. Now that he’s something of the last remaining indie auteur of his generation still making at the same level he always was, his work feels constantly grappling with the idea of what it means to tell his stories and what they will leave behind.
In The French Dispatch, we are treated to three main vignettes and a short aside, each framed as stories told in an issue of a New Yorker-esque magazine, completing its final release following the death of its founder Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Billy Murray).
Anthology films have a tendency to be inconsistent, often shades of their filmmakers full-length features or ideas that could not have a full completion. Here, Anderson avoids that pitfall. Each of these feels as though they are a complete thematic work, telling part of the larger whole. His form, designed to pick images and points of emphasis relentlessly, feels wedded to function, telling the story as precisely chosen as a writer would select their words and as editor would ruthlessly trim away.
Whether the story of a violent artist (Benicio Del Toro) and his muse (Lea Seydoux), a revolutionary teen (Timothee Chalamet) and the overly involved journalist (Frances McDormand) chronicling their uprising, or a man of considerable eloquence (Jeffery Wright) recounting a fascinating encounter with a chef (Stephen Park), The French Dispatch stays laser-focused on the humanity at the core of these stories.
It’s about the connections we make and the stories we tell about those connections. What’s important, what do we leave in and leave out? Are we even totally sure what the most important part of our narratives are or is that something that only others can really give to us? The stories of writers are here because these are people, by their nature, who observe human experience, but who also rely on others to tell them what matters. At its core, The French Dispatch is the story of the editor, what remains when we get away from what ultimately doesn’t matter.
Anderson’s filmmaking is often sad because he knows things end. This magazine ends, our time somewhere ends, people die. But it is what we do before those endings that matter. Take Jeffery Wright’s food writer and James Baldwin-expy Roebuck Wright, giving the highlight performance of the film. Roebuck is a master of recollection, recalling every word that he’s ever written. But it is Anderson emphasizing for him that at every step, it’s the people around him that he remembered. The connection of a father and son and the skill and presence of a chef. The gruff kindness of an editor giving him a second chance. Jeffery Wright gives an extraordinary tenderness to the character, showing the warmth this man really does have for his subjects.
Ultimately, The French Dispatch is a continuation of the humanist Wes Anderson work. A story about people and what they tell and experience in the world around them.
5/5
Also, I got through that whole thing without the word “twee,” “precocious,” or wanking poetically about Wes Anderson’s going more and more into his style, so the rest of you can too.
Spencer
Kristen Stewart must be exhausted from carrying this movie on her back.
Look, it is to be expected. Spencer, Larrain’s latest hypnotic biopic of a powerful political woman, is basically a direct submission to the Academy to win Best Actress in a Leading Performance. It is a film that exists for a virtuoso leading performance, the cinematic equivalent of a backing band for Steve Vai. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is.
And let us be clear, Kristen Stewart 100% fully earns that submission and, most likely, that win. This is an absolutely towering work of acting. Less playing the historical Diana and more a character based on Diana (think Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde) that draws on Stewart’s own experience in front of the paparazzi, Stewart is absolutely astounding, a woman constantly on the edge without ever leaping quite over, one who’s decided to let the stiff upper lip not get the better of her.
Stewart plays her Diana as a woman who was clearly once happy. She knows how to wear the motions of somebody going through the motions who knows the contours of what happy people do. It’s depression, it’s anxiety, it’s the paranoia that comes from not being able to trust anybody with your life. Stewart’s constant microexpressions, a million thoughts racing as she tries to simply keep it together, that is this movie.
And the direction gives her every opportunity. The phrase “the camera loves you” here means that the camera follows her like a puppy dog. Larrain knows she’s the star. The camera swirls and swoops and brings us to the brink of darkness right along with Diana.
Every bit of this film serves that central purpose. Claire Mathon’s gorgeous photography gives a foggy darkness even in the light and Jonny Greenwood keeps you from relaxing with every screeching string.
The only person who doesn’t seem to quite get the memo here is Steven Knight, writer of Serenity (2019), who turns in a clunky script that nearly threatens to sink the film. Absolutely no metaphor is turned away at the door here. The ending is a choice that I’m still chewing on. There’s a lot put here and the film vacillates wildly between functioning and not functioning. It is every moment that mostly rests on Stewart and Larrain and Greenwood and Mathon that works, but when we get back to the plotting, it strains. There’s also not enough bold choices. A few reasonably weird things don’t get past the sense that you’re simply checking boxes to give Stewart “ACTING” to do. This film feels desperately in want of a few bolder story choices.
But hey, Kristen Stewart is definitely getting Best Actress this year, so in that way, total success.
3.5/5
Capsules
The Harder They Fall: A debut that you’re gonna be able to say “boy, I saw it all there right from the start.” Jeymes Samuel’s dizzying Western is long on style and short on substance. But with that much style and a phenomenal cast that looks to be having a barrel of fun every time they’re on screen, one can forgive it. Jonathan Majors particularly earns his bonafides here, the kind of performance that should have everyone ready to cast him in their action movie. If only this wasn’t made for Netflix, it wouldn’t look so flat. The ceiling ends up getting lowered on this movie with the sheer lack of mood the lighting and style is allowed to have. A dizzying camera shooting flat landscapes, that’s Netflix, what are you gonna do?
3.5/5
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain:
Cumberbatch gives his all-time best performance this year in The Power of the Dog, so naturally he must accompany it with a performance that certainly ranks among the performances that he has given. The most you can say about any of this is that nobody and nothing is outright awful, but rather that it all feels perfectly competent. The least would be that the film takes an awfully long time to get to anything anyone may care about (read: the thing about the cats) and spends far too little time once it’s there. Otherwise, it’s Cumberbatch playing someone who would probably be on the spectrum if diagnosed with a cast around him in petticoats where at the end you can go “huh, I guess.” A Wikipedia entry through and through.
KING OF THE HILL SEASON 12, EPISODE 22 and SEASON 13, EPISODE 1-3
King of the Hill is one of the greatest adult animated sitcoms of all time, even rounding into the final season. Giving Lucky some development is a good thing, even if Mike Judge can’t allow Hank to be wrong anymore. The HD animation really picks up here, “Square-Footed Monster has some gorgeous shots. No new wells here, Bill is sad, Luanne is tragic, Strickland is a prophetic pre-Trump grifter, Hank leads a rebellion against the petit bourgeois. The show is what it is, not at its best, but better than most.
MARIO 64 from MARIO 3D ALL-STARS COLLECTION
Went in expecting Citizen Kane, a historical trendsetter that’s still a blast to watch. Got Forrest Gump, a technical achievement with rapturous reception that’s been ravaged by time and advance. The first draft of history is frustrating to edit and the 56th time you’ve died because the camera lied to you about the depth and won’t adjust like you need to is frustrating. I don’t think they should have remade it, video game history is so thin as is. But some things are probably better as memories than as your little fella sliding off another mushroom.
HADES
Usually not a roguelike guy, but Hades finally manages to make that work for me. Building it into the story progression is beautiful, piecing fractures of memories, and creating the actual feeling of getting better run by run is even better. Character design is amazing, perfect intersection of American anime influence with western comic style. Combat rules, you never feel like you have too much to choose from and the enemies are a blast to kill. I can’t say enough good things about this game, it’s already in the category of games I can’t stop thinking about when I’m not playing.
JOJO’S BIZARRE ADVENTURE: DIAMOND IS UNBREAKABLE, EPISODES 3-5
This season clicks for me right here, which is honestly faster than Stardust Crusaders. Doing a 3-parter right off the top is a bold move, but this season in general feels like it knows that it’s following up something insanely popular and doesn’t have to spend a lot of time selling you on a new concept. I heard Twin Peaks comparisons and I see what they mean now. This seems like a season of small town tragedies and the sadness and fear that underly idyllic surfaces. Already love Josuke, giving him an adventure away from Jotaro establishes his character quicker.
NARUTO SEASON 2, EPISODE 97
Is this the first proper story filler episode of Naruto? Resources say yes. Feels a little thin even for filler, but whatever, I know how the game works. I’ll take any time I can get with Jiraiya and Tsunade, my two favorite characters on the show (yes, I had a BLAST with Shippuden). A little thin of a plot, even for filler, but whatever, it happens. The animation was actually fairly nice on this one, so kudos to them for that, I loved the Naruto and Tsunade parade.
THE BOYS SEASON 1, EPISODE 4 and EPISODE 5 (incomplete)
I’ve been bouncing off this show a little bit, as impressed as I am with it technically, and this episode finally helped me figure out why. I don’t actually give a shit about The Boys. I’m in this show for the Supes drama, the dudes trying to hunt them down, Hughie, all this stuff feels peripheral to the actually engaging central satire of American society centered around The Seven. Every show these days has one more plotline than it needs. Give me more Starlight slowly losing her faith in America. Antony Starr continues to kill it, his Homelander is the most genuinely terrifying portrayal of recognizable evil on television.
WANDAVISION TRAILER
Kind of a bold shot for the first official Marvel Studios TV show. We’ll see if this is something for them to change up the formula, or if it’s genre clothes on Marvel formula. Either way, glad to expand these two, love them in theory, little done with them in practice. Glad to see Kathryn Hahn! Hope it’s as weird as the trailer suggests.
I’m getting back to blogging because I’ve lost all other sense of purposedon’t want to bother my wife with endless talking about opinions I think there’s no better time to start a side hustle than now!
But considering the overwhelming sense of anxiety and dread so permeating our society, I figure I need an actual goal to keep up with doing this regularly so I don’t slide into run after run on HADES and episode after episode of anime to distract from the ennui (pay $200 a month in student loans to know how to use that word properly).
So I’ve decided to use the latter to keep up with the former. This blog, at least for now, is going to be daily capsule reviews of any and all media that I’ve watched, read, or played and any news stories that interested in the previous day. It will literally be ANYTHING I want to talk about, so get ready for a wild smattering of content. No individual review will be over 200 words, no matter how much or how little I watched. I’ll group chapters of things and episodes of shows into the groups of the day (i.e. Season 13, Episodes 2-5).
This is not intended to be a serious thing, I will probably not get into like…the real shit. There are people far more qualified to tell you to go vote and why, but go vote. It’ll mostly be irrelevant bullshit that scratches my brain itches. That’s what I’m here for.
There isn’t much to say here because everything has already been said. Joker exists solely as whatever you want to observe it to be, a trick of the eye that holds pretensions of being a film by one of the great filmmakers. That is precisely because the thing knows what it is imitating, a changeling that misses a few key details.
Let us quickly dispense with something. This is a film that is pro-incel, the poor downtrodden virgin getting his revenge. It is a film that is also leftist, the working class masses led by the emblem of their dismay, taking revenge against the rich and powerful. This is a film about how social services and compassion for the marginalized could easily improve society. This is an edgy film that isn’t afraid to go there. It is about everything because it is about nothing.
The storytellers here don’t have the courage of their convictions. This is a film by cowards, bringing up everything that they know will push buttons but running with their tail between their legs the second they would actually have to try and make a point.
I wish they had attempted to make a point of some kind. The moral panic surrounding this film’s existence at least posited an interesting cultural artifact. The Collapse of America embodied in the clown who fights Batman? Think S. Craig Zahler’s cryptofascism but with a budget. At least there, we’ve bones to pick, meat to rend.
Joker gives us everything so that no one is TRULY offended. Product on this scale doesn’t get to be offensive. The appearance of edge is the same thrill as a roller coaster or a haunted house, something to tempt us so that we get the thrill of feeling transgression. You can pick whatever flavor you want, be reinforced or be enraged, it’s on offer. Think Netflix, purveyor of both Nanette and one hundred specials by men in tight button-downs called “Triggered.”
Sound and fury signifying nothing is a cliche phrase but it is what Joker ultimately amounts to. There is a certainly a level of technical sheen that impresses. Thank the Gods for a real on-location shoot, rather than having to pretend the Chinese place 10 minutes down the road from me is in Portland. There is certainly a grimy realness created here, a physical world that actually creates an atmosphere to hold on to.
Director Todd Phillips‘ talent is in how he’s saying it, not what he’s saying. The last act is a thrill, tense and controlled. Its poor choices (the lazy punching down at a dwarf that undercuts the closest thing to a point this movie has and the use of a song by a convicted pedophile) and bum notes (truly one of the worst lines of dialogue I’ve heard since David Goyer) are ably danced around by the visceral thrill that perhaps this movie has finally figured out how to entertain right before it ends.
Of course, that could all be on the shoulders of Joaquin Phoenix. The vast majority of this film rests on his shoulders, both by choice and by the sheer electricity of his screen presence. This is a phenomenal performance, no caveats there. The camera uses lingering shots of his face as a crutch, but only because Phoenix has so much to give. He is horrifying and sorrowful in equal measures. His body twists and turns in ways that seem to come from outside him. He sells everything that is asked of him. You can’t imagine a world where anyone else played this.
But that is truly all there is. That performance gives the movie its weight. God knows no one else is given the time to add. This is a central performance looking for a movie to aid it. Phoenix has the power to make this feel important. Which after all is the trick of the whole thing.
*SPOILERS FOR US. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE, SEE IT AND RETURN*
As an adolescent, I used to hate discovering that I was alone. Not for anything so rational, but for fear that the Rapture had come and I was, in the parlance of the times, “left behind.” The series with that title was the hottest thing in the Evangelical world, any child raised in a Protestant church had either read those books, read the YA version, seen Kirk Cameron “act” it out, or had at least heard their pastor try to describe it to them. There was an intense preoccupation with the End of Days, and I rest assured that I was to soon see them come.
There’s a uniquely American preoccupation with the End of Days. Sure, all cultures have their version of eschatology and their sidelined street preachers. But Americans seem to so often believe that history began with them, that it seems simply impossible that history wouldn’t also end with us there.
And yet somehow it now seems more and more believable. Wars and rumors of such, climate change beginning to gently ravage the coast as if phoning ahead that it’s on our street. We’re living in the first generation that has some shared psychic knowledge that perhaps this time it really is all over.
That’s what perhaps so unnerved me about Jordan Peele’s Us. In getting at the buried darkness underneath the American surface, he hits on perhaps the most vital American truth of all. At its core, Us preoccupies itself with the great American narcissism that things must finally end with us and the great American fear that we will eventually be right.
Early in the film, we catch a look at a disheveled prophet/homeless man holding a sign with “Jeremiah 11:11” scrawled on it. The verse, from the KJV, reads as follows:
Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.
Those of you who didn’t pay ungodly sums of money to learn this should know simply that this comes of a warning from God to the Jewish people. It was a warning to those who turned their backs on Yahweh and had chosen to worship false idols. One of many promises of punishment that God would ultimately follow up through.
While it’s lovely double doubling of numbers makes it the perfect verse for a doppelganger film, it more importantly puts the film squarely in the mindset of punishment.
In eschatological visions, the punishment of those who sin is often as, if not more important, as the reward of the faithful. The Christian version promises those who are left behind (caveat: if you subscribe to the Rapture) will face 7 years of torment, all manner of plagues and natural disasters and man turning against man.
The Tethered, the film’s name for the doppelgangers, are buried beneath the surface of the country, a mistake by the government that rose up to take revenge on Americans. Their mistakes and their flaws rise up to retake the country.
Us seems to posit the Tethered as the extremeness of American sins. Arrogance and hate and violence, nothing specific. Peele wants us to be unable to distance ourselves from what they’re doing, recognizing our nature rather than our actions.
In essence, Peele wants us to be very clear that yes, things are to end soon. Whatever we’ve done, it will be our fault. The evil within us, the damage to the climate, the hate we’ve spread, that’s finally coming home to roost.
Us gets into the underlying subtext of current American society. The end is here and we’ve reached the apotheosis of what we are. We can’t shove it under the rug anymore and it’s time for it to tear us apart. There’s no misanthropy in this, rather a clear assessment of the idea that the end is here. Maybe not for everyone, but certainly for us.
We are Americans and we’ve come to punish America.
It seems common knowledge these days that Moviepass, the company that charged a pittance to see a movie every single day, was something of a scam. Yet, as it begins to pass, let’s be clear about what kind of scam it was.
It was the Robin Hood of tech scams. No blood-sucking Theranos or bafflingly conceived Juicero, Moviepass took from its swiss-cheese-brained venture capitalist investors and a series of fooled folks who thought they’d be in on the ground floor of the future (in a way they were) and redistributed their income to the deserving masses who simply wanted to see films.
We could poke holes in their business plan, but whatever could go wrong with a company that loses money when their service is used more than twice a month? Or what could be possibly be wrong about the assumption that people are willing to go to the movies about as much as they go to the gym? And who gives a shit? They did a public good and as they let out their slow death rattle and deny that the ship is sinking, they deserve a tribute.
I had the service for 3.5 years, from about February 2015 to August 2018. I’ve paid everything from $7.95 to $45 a month. I went through every single fuckup and innovation and finally got too frustrated with my inability to see a single movie in Atlanta, Georgia.
In that time, I saw 204 movies with Moviepass. That’s about 69 (nice) movies a year. The average for my demographic is 6.5 (I too walk out of movies, I get it). This should give you a rough idea of what something like Moviepass did for the cinematic experience and what a company not run by beautiful morons could do.
Because I’m an insane person, I of course, ranked them, listed in descending order from worst to best.
204
The Book of Henry
203
Jurassic World
202
The Snowman
201
Hacksaw Ridge
200
Entourage
199
Fantastic Four
198
Tulip Fever
197
Pixels
196
American Pastoral
195
Chappie
194
Alice Through the Looking Glass
193
Ratchet and Clank
192
Live by Night
191
Wilson
190
Masterminds
189
Suicide Squad
188
Ready Player One
187
The Dark Tower
186
Aloha
185
Sing
184
The Circle
183
Baywatch
182
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
181
Transformers: The Last Knight
180
X-Men: Apocalypse
179
Warcraft
178
Bad Santa 2
177
Downsizing
176
The Birth of a Nation
175
Independence Day: Resurgence
174
The Greatest Showman
173
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
172
Wrinkle in Time
171
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
170
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them
169
Detroit
168
Florence Foster Jenkins
167
Pan
166
Justice League
165
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
164
Jupiter Ascending
163
The Legend of Tarzan
162
The Light Between Oceans
161
Jason Bourne
160
Hardcore Henry
159
Money Monster
158
The Infiltrator
157
Leap!
156
Now You See Me 2
155
Assassin’s Creed
154
San Andreas
153
Kingsman: The Golden Circle
152
Ted 2
151
Storks
150
Ride Along 2
149
Battle of the Sexes
148
The Free State of Jones
147
Me Before You
146
Darkest Hour
145
Murder on the Orient Express
144
Snowden
143
Free Fire
142
Early Man
141
The Beguiled
140
Sully
139
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
138
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
137
Southpaw
136
A Monster Calls
135
Spectre
134
Central Intelligence
133
The Fate of the Furious
132
Sisters
131
Miss Sloane
130
Frank and Lola
129
Denial
128
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
127
The Post
126
Café Society
125
I, Tonya
124
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows
(Quick note: This trailer is definitely not representative of the style of the film, though certainly of the feel. It’s a slower film than this presents and the stuff you see is even creepier and weirder in the actual film proper.)
Who’s This For?
Sci-Fi aficionados, anyone who wants to support strange and unique big budget filmmaking, anyone who really liked Ex Machina, fans of Andrei Tarkovsky, people who want to see something legitimately new on screen.
Who’s Gonna Be Turned Off?
Most general audiences, any fans of the book who expect total devotion, anyone who expected a traditional horror or thriller flick, anyone who’s not ready for a slow flick, anyone who’s watching right before bed
My Feelings!
It’s important first and foremost for those introduced to this through Jeff Vandermeer’s brilliant book to understand that this is ABSOLUTELY in no way similar to the book. While it maintains the spirit of discovery and wonder and terror, the film takes an entirely different narrative direction. One that is equal parts easier to grasp narratively as it is harder and scarier to grasp thematically and more disturbing in its imagery. This is not guaranteed to be loved by those who loved the book, but I think anyone who enjoyed that will enjoy this movie as well.
The actual movie itself is a rare sort of achievement. Seeing it makes it very easy to understand why Paramount was so nervous about its release (especially after their insanely ambitious and artistically brilliant mother! so famously crashed last year [not before becoming my favorite film of 2017]). This is not an easy or pleasing film. It is ambiguous and difficult to comprehend and disturbing in a way few major films ever are.
The best comparison (beyond things like Stalker that this film directly cribs on or Arrival that this film shares a space with) is the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft is infused in this film through the depiction of things that should not or could not be. Annihilation is filled with images of creatures and places and phenomenon that seem wrong, like their existence is a challenge to humanity. Terror in this film comes from trying to wrap your brain around how something might exist and the rejection of the forms that you see.
It is to director/writer Alex Garland’s credit that I can legitimately say that there are things in this film that I have not seen before, even a few things I actually don’t have the vocabulary to describe. Think the end of 2001, an ending this film’s last 20-30 minutes sits comfortably alongside. Garland’s incredibly steady hand (influenced heavily by Tarkovsky) keeps things carefully trained and unfolding just slowly enough to wrap your head around before you get a new challenge that plunges you deeper in. You may be confused, but you’re never lost, and that’s the sign of the great work Garland does here.
This is not a character-based movie, these characters exist as archetypes inside a world that’s engulfing them. There is no character development, they exist to serve a larger purpose. The cast does amazing with that, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Gina Rodriguez being marked as particular standouts. But if you’re seeking grand heroes, it’s gonna be hard to discover how little they matter but as vectors to something stranger and grander than they are.
This is maybe the best set of visual effects I’ve seen in a movie in sometime. What’s created feels natural to the world without ever looking obviously CGI’d while still maintaining just enough distance from reality. Kudos to the SFX and Production Design and Camera teams all around on this one, this is an impressive world they’ve created and some of what’s here still lingers with me.
Should You See It?
Yes.
I think it’s worth supporting any film made on this scale with this budget and this many ideas in its head. You want more things that are new and weird and fantastic? It requires your dollars. Moreover, it’s worth showing Paramount that things like this don’t have to be relegated to Netflix.
But beyond that, it’s worth it as long as you know what you’re getting going in. You’re getting something difficult and disturbing and divisive. Something that’s new to fans of the book and even newer to the general audiences coming in fresh. A whole lot of folks are gonna stream out hating this movie and you may be one of them.
But if you’re not, you get one of the most singular, jaw-dropping, chilling and mind-blowing cinematic experiences of the year so far. You get new images and new thoughts. You get something that will leave its print on you long after you’ve left the theater.
The most important question that any film must ask itself and that any filmgoer must ask themselves is “Why?” Why tell this story in this way? Why did I leave my house to go see this specific story being told? Why did I like that, why did I find that important to my life, why did I keep thinking about it? Why this film, this year?
For 2017, I had a fairly simple criteria. The “why” had to be “Because no one else could tell this story.” I looked for films that felt unique and exceptional. I looked for films that went above and tried to reach beyond what is to what could be. I looked for escapism in fantastic worlds, intense thoughts, and deep emotions. I looked for films to transport me to another world, to another mind. I looked for films that took a swing to land among the stars. These 15 did that.
15) Brigsby Bear
Creativity can and should be an act of kindness. Sharing some part of ourselves with the world around us is both asking for empathy and attempting to provide it. It’s a way of understanding the world and trying to work out our part in it, it’s that core belief that undergirds Brigsby Bear and makes it such a wonderfully remarkable little achievement.
Your mileage will of course depend on how much of writer/star Kyle Mooney’s anti-comedy shtick you can bear. There’s an awkwardness that feels genuine to every part of his interaction, a knowledge of how those truly isolated from society feel trying to interact with it, but it can be painful to watch someone on screen going through those growing pains.
But that’s what works about the film. It understands those growing pains as universal and finds the specificity in its bizarre little alternate world. The titular Brigsby Bear is a work of surprising cleverness and its steady outward growth and development provides a constant delight. It’s also rare that a year can boast two great Mark Hamill performances, but that’s what this film is good enough to give us.
Brigsby Bear is for people who don’t quite fit in anywhere but want to show people where they do.
14) Your Name.
The next Miyazaki is kind of a reductive term in Japanese animation (like calling anyone the next Disney), but let’s just say that I think Makoto Shinkai at least deserves the chance to carve the same path that Miyazaki had.
While he’s well into his career by now (and has made many great piece of animation), Your Name is the first movie that really stands to prove the great future potential of Shinkai. A fully realized and gorgeous work that feels like an old genre (body swap) made wholly original (now that would be telling), you see clearly why this film was the smash in Japan that it was.
It’s a rare accomplishment to write a story that goes from the intimate to the truly epic without ever feeling like it’s taking a wrong step. A tale across space and time that never loses sight of what’s on the ground, the snapshot of a time in your life where every possibility lays before you and you have no idea, where you uncover a world that’s larger than you could ever imagine.
Your Name tells a story we all feel on a scale we could only imagine.
13) Personal Shopper
Grief is an ever-changing process. It is something that no one can move through the same way, that no one has the same experience, but it is something that we must move through.
Personal Shopper shows one process of grief. Yours may not involve texting with a hostile-ish ghost, beautiful designer dresses, or being a medium. But Olivier Assayas’ haunting meditation is deeply recognizable in raw experience, in trying to move past something that has its claws dug into you, how to understand a loss that you haven’t reconciled with.
It helps that it has an all-timer of a performance by Kristen Stewart at its core. It’s important to never forget how much she’s turned her career around since the awkward early-20 something years to develop into one of our finest actresses. There’s an envelopment of the character, an internalization that she moves through in her own specific way to create something dazzling. She’s not creating the character, she is the character.
Personal Shopper moves through grieving in a way that makes us all understand.
12) Logan
America is heading towards collapse. We imagine it’ll look like The Road or maybe Escape from New York, but I know we won’t be that lucky. It’s more horrifying to imagine a world where things get steadily worse, but history keeps moving on. Humanity gets replaced, things get more desperate, the tentacles of control seize us without us knowing, the marginalized are shoved off.
Perhaps that’s the ultimate darkness at the core of Logan that has made it so resonant. James Mangold’s sweaty, fever-dream send-off to Hugh Jackman’s defining character posits a future where technology has increased late-capitalist desperation and where our own prejudice ends up swallowing up society whole. Jackman wears the weight of all that and the decades of violence that he has committed into his best performance, every moment and motion is a new agony informed by old pains.
Yet despite all that sorrow, Logan is at its best in the moments where it slows down. The moments of family, where Logan and Stewart’s Xavier get to just talk or enjoy a moment with Laura, Logan’s ersatz daughter. It’s a movie of atmosphere, willing to wear the weight of generations on its sweat-soaked shoulders.
Logan is a look into a future that we can prevent and a goodbye to the past we can learn from.
11) Colossal
It’s kind of rare that a movie ages well within the year it comes out. But as Hollywood had its dark underbelly turned up, Colossal‘s story of male entitlement and putting the pieces back together loomed larger and larger, much like the monsters contained within its movie.
Now, it is safe to say that no movie handled the Me Too moment (or pre-handled the moment) with more off-kilter wit or fun than Colossal did. Writer/Director Nacho Vigolando reamed a lot of bizarre humor out of Anne Hathaway’s exemplary performance and the increasingly strange situation she finds herself in. He manages to explore the actual sci-fi ramifications (she did technically kill people!) without ever feeling like it’s getting too lost in though, a deft handling of a difficult tone.
It’s that ability to handle tone that becomes more and more important as the film goes on, as Sudekis’ Oscar begins to become a more sinister presence and the film becomes a good v. evil story where one side is every dude who ever said the phrase “ethics in gaming journalism.”
Colossal is a story just a few months ahead of its time that’s funnier and weirder than it has any right to be.
10) Baby Driver
As a resident of Atlanta, I spend SO much time these days watching my city play anything but itself. It’s New York, it’s L.A., it’s Lagos. It’s hard to ignore that the Chinese restaurant that was down the street from me for 3 years has suddenly picked up and moved to Portland, Oregon. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you Edgar Wright for letting Atlanta be fucking Atlanta and showing the whole world why this is the coolest city.
Of course, it helps that the rest of Baby Driver is about as cool as movies get. Edgar Wright has carved a breathless blast of high-energy cinema, slick as a 70s Steve McQueen and singular as 60s French auteur. Baby Driver has every beat of film cut to a perfectly curated soundtrack, every bit of action designed like fine clockwork.
No film this year felt so alive and exciting and like a shot in the arm for popular cinema. Elgort’s Baby is gonna be in the heads of every young film fan getting behind the wheel for the first time.
Baby Driver is the kind of film that makes it a little more dangerous to drive down I-85, blasting “Bellbottoms” and trying not to get caught by the law.
9) The Shape of Water
Guillermo del Toro probably has done more for my love of film than anyone else. There’s a part of me that will always be the kid meeting him during the promotion for Hellboy in awe and just a little confusion.
But it’s the slow delve into his filmography and his love of monsters that pushed me forward. Del Toro is a filmmaker of supreme empathy, seeing the good and the beautiful in the grotesque. The Shape of Water is in someways the ultimate fulfillment of this, a movie where the outcast and the monster is the object of empathy and the beautiful lover and the man of society is the twisted murderer.
A film borne of a young boy wondering why Creature from the Black Lagoon didn’t end up with the damsel ending up with the monster, The Shape of Water certainly makes some bold choices (including the one you’re wondering about). But the magic of the film is that it helps you understand all of those choices, believe in them, and become enveloped in them.
The Shape of Water believes in the good of monsters and the beauty of their love.
Untitled Film Blog Project 