2017: the Year in Film: "Get Out" Review

So it's no mystery to anyone who's ever read this blog that I'm not exactly a big horror movie fan. I don't think I've loved a horror film since Cabin in the Woods. (So maybe I only like horror movies with Bradley Whitford/Josh Lyman in them?) I'll get down with a thriller any day of the week - but the trappings of the horror genre generally strike me as manipulative and cliche. But the word on the street about Get Out was such that I felt like I needed to give it a chance. Plus, I'm a Jordan Peele fan - so why not?

Get Out features Chris (Daniel Kaluuya - memorable to me as Emily Blunt's partner in Sicario and the Fifteen Million Credits episode of Black Mirror), a talented photographer living in New York City, and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams - also known as the 2nd most obnoxious character on Girls) as they are heading up her parents' home (played memorably by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) for the weekend. It's clear that something is amiss - but is it due to the awkwardness of a black guy meeting a white girl's parents in the country, or something more nefarious?

The Good: this film is incredibly smartly written. There's simply no wasted space here. Everything included is there for a reason, and the racial commentary is biting in the absolute best way. Somehow at once sending up race relations and attitudes and creating a smart, scary and effective horror/thriller film is a serious feat. Jordan Peele of Key and Peele fame wrote and directed this film - and it's quite the achievement. I'm not sure that I've seen something quite this smart and biting in a long time.  The best way I can think of to describe it is equal parts Chappelle's Show, Black Mirror, and horror film. Incredibly creative, smart and well done, this is a film well worth watching, even if you aren't a horror fan. I won't get into too many spoilers, but the most effective thing the film does is cast everyday awkward racial interactions as simultaneously cringeworthy awkwardness and signs of nefarious horror-style threats. Kaluuya is great. He gave one of the more memorable performances in all of Black Mirror's run, and he carries this film, bringing just the right mix of charm and skeptical humor to an absurd situation. Allison Williams is very good, as are Whitford and Keener, but the scene stealer is LilRel Howery, as Chris' best friend Rod/comic relief.



The Bad: above I described the film as equal parts Chappelle's Show, Black Mirror and horror film, and that's ultimately the worst thing about the film. Despite how creative and smart it is, it ultimately feels familiar and derivative. It seems to be missing a next level that could have potentially carried it over into GREAT status. Don't get me wrong, this film is an absolute blast and incredibly layered and memorable.

Honestly - maybe don't watch that trailer. It's a little spoiler-y, and maybe you're better off just watching the film. Trust me, you won't regret it. It's a brilliant recasting of race relations and one of the smartest pieces of media I've seen in quite some time. Congrats to Jordan Peele - I look forward to seeing what's next.

8/10

2017: The Year in Film: "Lion" Review

Since bursting onto the scene in Slumdog Millionaire, the darling of the 2009 Academy Awards, Dev Patel has 100% not had enough work. How much of this is due to a dearth of roles for actors of Indian descent (let's be real, probably almost all of it) and how much is due to his own choices is anyone's guess, but I was glad to see him have a lead role in an acclaimed film again.

Written and directed by a pair of relative unknowns (this is director Garth Davis' first feature film), Lion adapts the somehow actually true story of Saroo, a young child who after being separated from his family in India finds himself adopted by an Australian family and his subsequent journey to find his home as an adult.

The Good: full stop - I've never been in a movie theater before where every single person was crying. Every single person. Just wet cheeks. It's never happened. Is creating a powerful emotional response out of your entire audience a good thing? It seems like it. The narrative would be written off as too far fetched to possibly be true if it were a work of fiction - so the remarkable subject matter makes the filmmaker's jobs comparatively easy.  The film is structured in a way that helps it escape cliche and convention and really rise above what could have easily been a Lifetime movie. The cast is brilliant. Dev Patel rises to the challenge of the part, as much of his struggle is entirely inside his head, its up to him to express a lot of the film's emotional heft through his expressions alone. Sunny Pawar, the small boy who plays Saroo as a child, is a revelation. The film simply doesn't work without him, and he gives one of the best child performances that I've seen. Rooney Mara is strong as Saroo's love interest (even though I want to hate her because she's a billionaire's daughter she IS a talented actress), and Nicole Kidman is great as Saroo's adoptive mother. Faramir from Lord of the Rings plays his adoptive father, and it's great to see him again.  With a great cast and a powerful story all the filmmakers need to do is give them room to work and not screw it up, and gladly they deliver. It's easy, as a privileged American, to focus on our own struggles and issues and completely forget about the reality of life for the majority of humanity - Lion's themes - home, family, love, hope, are universal, and translate across culture, language and time as effortlessly as any myth or legend. Lion is a beautiful film.



The Bad: it's hard to criticize the plot because again, it's a true story, but it really does feel like a high budget Lifetime movie in parts. It avoids wholly falling into this trap, but there are moments of high melodrama that risk feeling exploitative - which is the worst thing that an emotionally powerful film can do.

Ultimately - this a powerful and deeply intimate film. The universality of its themes, its message, and its journey make this a deeply emotional film. Not unlike Slumdog Millionaire (is it bad to compare Indian-set films to Indian-set films? Maybe - but they both touch on impoverished children in desperate conditions so I think the comparison is apt) by showing us darkness, the light can shine through even brighter. While it risks Lifetime movie territory it never falls victims to the trappings of cliche. Sunny Panwar (he's so good!) and Dev Patel alone are worth the price of admission, and this ultimately uplifting film is one of the year's best.

8.5/10.

2016: The Year in Film: "Hidden Figures" Review

I talked about the genre of the "issue" film back in my review of Moonlight, and all films that deal with face, class, gender, sexuality, religion, or other issues of identity or political interest need, in my estimation, to avoid falling into the trap of existing ONLY for the issue. I feel that cheapens the message being sent by turning your work into an easily parodied message delivery system and makes your message more easily written off if its being delivered via transparent manipulation. So all films need to avoid this trap - message is important! crucial! more important than films by any possible measure! - BUT, if your film doesn't stand on its own merits as a film audiences will easily dismiss what you have to say and your message will suffer as a result.

So when I first heard about Hidden Figures my concern was that it would fall into the "bad" category of the "issue" film. The advertising looked cheesy and it appeared to risk falling trap to the temptation to let the message overwhelm the film itself. The good news - it didn't! But it's always something that comes to mind when I see a film like this.

Hidden Figures covers the - 100% true! - story of African-American women working for NASA in the early days of the American space program. These women are patriots, role models, brilliant figures who never got their due to the unfortunate realities of American society in the 1960's. The film focuses on three women among the many who worked in various roles, all of whom left their mark on the space program.

The Good: the performances across the board are solid. Taraji P. Henson (Katherine), Janelle Monae (Mary - making her transition to acting she was in 2 best picture nominees this year, also playing a supporting role in Moonlight) and Octavia Spencer (Dorothy) all rise to the challenge that the material presents and do it with aplomb. The always solid Kevin Costner and my man Mahershala Ali are solid as well. The best thing that this film did was making the plot revolve around the space program itself as NASA races against the Soviets as opposed to any of the personal struggles of the protagonists. This allows the film to be MORE than a message movie and roots its important message in a fundamental patriotism and commonality that is all too rare in the 21st century. It's Apollo 13 meets Selma and that is in no way a bad thing.



The Bad: some of the obstacles to the advancement and success of the protagonists and the space program itself are painted with an overbroad brush, as Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons seem more like mustache-twirling villains than real people. The line between "good" white people and "bad" white people in this film surely oversimplifies reality and ultimately detracts from the larger narrative. Additionally, as good as the performances and the story are - the film itself feels derivative (Apollo 13 meets Selma, remember?) and doesn't do anything to distinguish itself from films of a similar vein - which does a disservice to the remarkable story it's telling.

 Ultimately, this is an uplifting, deeply patriotic and hopeful story that needed to be told decades ago. We can only hope its style of patriotic optimism returns to the forefront of American culture and replaces the undercurrent of bitterness, antagonism, anger and ignorance that is seemingly underlying so much of our public life today. This film is well worth watching, both for the story itself (which takes some liberties with the real story as all "based on a true story" films do) and for the quality of the acting, pacing and plot therein. Log off of Twitter and watch Hidden Figures if you want to remind yourself of what the indomitable American spirit could be once again. It's certainly a family friendly and uplifting time at the movies. Probably the most hopeful of all of the acclaimed films released this year.

8/10. A well done and incredible story that ultimately doesn't do enough as a film to put it over the top into true greatness.

2016: The Year in Film: "La La Land" Review

Writer/Director Damien Chazelle (he was born in 1985. I LOATHE him) made his Hollywood debut with a bang back in 2014 with one of my favorite films of the last few years, Whiplash. I LOVE that film. So needless to say, despite my jealous loathing, I will be seeing every Chazelle film for the rest of forever. (Unless he starts making animated movies based on video games but I digress)

Enter: La La Land, a musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone! Are there more likable A-listers? Honest question because I'm not sure that there are in 2017. Gosling's Sebastian is a struggling jazz pianist with an eye towards the past and Stone's Mia is an aspiring actress who doesn't quite fit in with the typical Hollywood scene.

The Good: I WANT to not like Ryan Gosling, I really do. Especially in this movie. A white dude self-appointed as the guardian of all things jazz? Uhhh, what? He's smug and often seems insincere... but damn it if the guy isn't charming as hell, CONSTANTLY.  He won me over within 10 minutes of this film starting. Emma Stone is pretty much constantly and disarmingly sweet and funny and charming as well. She's come a long way since she was Jonah Hill's (what??) love interest in Superbad, guys. This film wasn't what I was expecting, and I mean that in the best possible way. I was expecting it to be an homage-filled throwback to the musicals of classic Hollywood, and while there are parts of that, it's ultimately a creation all its own. Part dissertation on the nature of creativity, part love story, part musical, it's at once heavy and melancholy and whimsical and saccharine. I'm convinced that in the hands of a lesser director this whole endeavor would have collapsed under the weight of its own pretension and ambition, but Chazelle makes it something memorable and all his own. This is the sort of film that Hollywood (and the Academy) absolutely LOVES, as it romanticizes L.A., the arts, movies and their value, but there's plenty here for anyone to love. I like both the fact that the plot is simple enough to sum up in a paragraph but that there's room to defy convention and that Chazelle borrowed from musicals without making his film a slave to the traditional musical structure. The use of flashbacks, dream sequences and musical numbers really lends the film a whimsy and an absurdist, even romantic angle that gives the whole thing a playful feel.



The Bad: ultimately, the film just isn't as smart or as meaningful as it would like you to think it is. There are some absolutely cringeworthy scenes involving a certain band and a certain John Legend that nearly collapse into self-parody. While these issues aren't enough to derail the film, they do ultimately detract from what is otherwise a smartly constructed love letter to the arts.

In the end, this film is absolutely well worth watching, and absolutely one of the year's best. It's a fun, well-crafted, well-acted ride. Gosling and Stone are simply impossible to dislike (well... apart from that one time Cameron Crowe tried to make Emma Stone Asian but that's not entirely her fault...) and their easy chemistry and comfort level with one another makes this film a sweet and often times innocent story of dreams and love and creativity and compromise. It's not the best film of the year (Moonlight or Arrival deserve Best Picture), but it's just the right combination of creative, sweet, smart, fun, whimsical and melancholy to place it firmly among the year's best.

8.5/10

2016: The Year in Film: "Manchester by the Sea" Review

I'm going to momentarily nerd out here. We're in the midst of a revolution of sorts (that briefly autocorrected to "shorts" and I considered leaving it just for the lulz) in the production and distribution of traditional media. The longstanding power players are seeing their ability to put a stranglehold on what's produced and released diminished by a combination of factors - new media players, a decreased market share of the traditional power brokers, increasing options for distribution and so on. All of that is a long way of saying that Manchester by the Sea is interesting not only because it's a very good movie, but also because Amazon Films produced it and the shaking up of the existent studio system can only be a good thing as far as filmgoers are concerned.

So writer/director Kenneth Lonergan has been around for a while now - he wrote Analyze This and Gangs of New York back in the day, but he's never really worked all that much.  This is only his third directed film since 2000. Casey Affleck has, for my money, long been the better acting Affleck. (Ben is a great director though guys!) So Casey getting some awards bait fare can only be a good thing as far as fans of quality acting are concerned.

In Manchester by the Sea Casey plays Lee Chandler, a hard drinking loner working as a janitor in Boston when he gets the call that his brother has passed away. He finds himself tasked with caring for his teenage nephew and trying to pick up the pieces.

The Good: the writing is great and the acting is tremendous, from all corners. Affleck, newcomer Lucas Hodges (who plays Patrick, the teenage nephew) and Michelle Williams (who plays Lee's ex wife) all earned much deserved acting nominations for their work here, and if any of all of them won it would in no way be an injustice. My man Kyle "Coach Taylor" Chandler plays... Joe Chandler (I'm not sure why if you're going to cast a dude already named Chandler you just change his first name but whatever) and is solid in all of his scenes. Affleck, whom I've always been a fan of, gives the performance of his career, with layers of grief and regret underlying an outward humor and bitterness. One of the things I appreciated most about this film was the subtle surprises and twists from the way that a traditional narrative of this type would unfold. I won't say more than that in order to avoid spoilers, but I'll just say that this film turns out to be much more than the trailer would have you expect. By mixing grief with flashbacks, humor, and scenes of real bonding and affection, this film is a very real, poignant, and human look at very ordinary people in an extraordinary situation.



The Bad: there are parts of this film that are just DEVASTATING. Like a nuclear weapon of grief. That's not necessarily a bad thing - but there are parts that are just too much. Egregious even. Plus, and I say this as someone who's obsessed with The Departed, I've had enough with Bahhhhstan accents, guys. I seriously laughed every single time someone said "gahhhdian" and I don't think that's what the film was going for.

In all, this is a tremendously acted, well crafted, well written story of very human grief and growth featuring two tremendous performances at its heart. Its well worth watching for the performances alone, and this one will stick with you. It deserves its Oscar love.

8/10.

2016: The Year in Film: "Rogue One" Review

So surely at this point we can all agree that Disney buying Star Wars from George "Jar Jar Binks" Lucas was the best thing that could've conceivably happen for the franchise, right? Who (other than alt-right Pepe Nazis who are upset that women and brown people are in them now of course) could possibly have any complaints about the direction that the greater Star Wars universe has taken over the last 2 years compared to the unmitigated disasters that were the prequels?

With that being said, Rogue One is something new. To this point, all of the Star Wars  films have been episodes or chapters within a single long narrative. (Ignore all of the contradictions and continuity errors therein, please) Rogue One represents an effort to create a standalone story within the larger cohesive universe not unlike the way that say Ant-Man is in Civil War but Civil War is not an Ant-Man movie.

We're introduced to Jyn Erso, a young lady who finds herself at the crosshairs of the brewing conflict between the Empire and Rebellion. Set before the events of the original Star Wars (1977), this flick shows us a side to the universe that we haven't yet seen. Jyn and her companions are faced with trying to stop a new and horrible weapon - the Death Star.

The Good: part Dirty Dozen - style commando movie, part Saving Private Ryan - style war epic, this flick fits squarely within the Star Wars universe with all of its epic glory and idiosyncratic weirdness. I'll admit that I had some concerns about director Gareth Edwards following the dumpster fire that was the 2014 Godzilla but he turned out to be exactly the choice needed. Rogue One manages to both be completely and utterly recognizable as Star Wars and yet totally different from anything that's been done in a Star Wars movie thus far. The cast does everything they're asked to do and adds a few memorable contributions to the Star Wars mythos along the way. Felicity Jones is great as Jyn. The criminally underworked Diego Luna is memorable as well, but the real showstoppers are Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang, whose buddy cop act really brings levity to what is ultimately a pretty dark affair. Alan Tudyk's K2S0 steals every scene he's in. Ben Mendelsohn, Forrest Whittacker and Mads Mikkelson are all memorable, if underused in spots. Ultimately, the real draw of this flick is the intense plotting and smartly choreographed action sequences.



The Bad: there are a few plot holes and shortcomings that honestly seem amateurish in comparison to how good the rest of the flick is. The decision was made to plug in CGI characters and honestly, that seems like a mistake. The rest of the flick looked SO great that the CGI characters looked cartoony and cheesy. I also feel that Mads Mikkelson and Forrest Whittacker were underused. It seems like a shame to bring them on board to a Star Wars movie and not make the most of them.

In all though, I really enjoyed this one. By fitting squarely within the Star Wars universe but making pains to rely on wholly new, diverse and different characters, the film enriches what Star Wars is and can be. Serious kudos to Disney too for not pulling punches. If you've seen it, you know what I mean.

8/10

2016: The Year in Film: "Moonlight" Review

 There's a certain genre of film that's emerged in the last decade or so... let's call it the "issue" flick. Think, Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" on screen. They seek to draw attention to their issue through often emotionally manipulative means - I'm thinking of the likes of Crash or Dallas Buyer's Club here. Now it's a very specific thing - as films that have a greater reason for existing than merely exposing the issue at hand don't quite fit - 12 Years a Slave doesn't fit here because of the beauty of the filmmaking and the depth of character development. So when I first heard of and saw the trailer for Moonlight, my concern was that we'd be looking at another proud entrant into the school of emotionally manipulating your audience on the silver screen. Thankfully, that's not what we got here. Though no doubt this film touches on multiple issues of social concern, endemic poverty, sexuality, race, crime and more, it's not ABOUT any one or even all of those things.

In Moonlight we meet Chiron, a quiet boy living in extremely hard conditions in urban Miami. His mother's a drug addict, he's poor, friendless and struggling to find his way. We follow Chiron through three separate phases in his life, as a young boy, as a teenager, and as an adult man, and follow what it means to BE through his eyes.

 The Good: this is Barry Jenkins' 2nd feature film (and I've never seen his first) so I wasn't sure what to expect, but this film is gorgeous. The use of color, the framing, the score and the lighting lend the film a fundamental artistry that mark Jenkins as a filmmaker to watch. The use of different actors and different times means that this film rises above any one time and place and becomes much more personal, much more intimate as a result. We don't need to know every detail of Chiron's life. We see it. On his face. In his voice. In his relationships. (or lack thereof) It reminded me of Boyhood in its intimate and often whimsical tableau of life events and attention to detail. Fundamentally, this is a film about self, about love, about struggle and injustice, but mostly it's about one boy and his struggle to become a man. It's incredibly intimate, and haunting. It doesn't offer answers - merely observations, and sometimes that's all we can expect. Mahershala Ali (this dude is everywhere nowadays, and his charisma, physicality and screen presence have never served him better than they do here) was rightfully nominated for an Academy Award for his performance here - and his performance is truly transcendent here. In all, this is a personal and humanizing look at individuals who are often overlooked or painted in broad strokes. That can be more powerful than any statement of political purpose.



The Bad: there isn't much here - if I am to criticize it's that maybe the three actors portraying Chiron don't resemble each other all that much, but ultimately the film didn't require it. If anything, the film could have been longer. The ending is maybe not as satisfying as it could have been, but I'd argue that the vagueness fits with the... poetry of the film.

In all, this is one of the best films of the year. It was nominated for all those Oscars for a reason. It's haunting, gorgeous, perfectly crafted, well-acted and powerful. It's not exactly an uplifting time at the movies - but it's an important one.

9/10