Reviews

This is one of the best films I've seen this year & left the theatre with the same feelings toward the political system as I did after BlacKkKlansmen (2018) & Sorry To Bother You (2018). A pseudo-documentary/dramedy biopic that tells the story of Cheney's political career while skewering the Republican Party & Washington DC politics in general, from the Nixon administration to today. It brings to light how politicians will sell-out everything in the pursuit for power, just how much sway one person can hold in politics, how media was forever changed under the Bush administration, & how all of this is still effecting us today. It's a film that has as many laughs as it does moments of bitter truth, many of them bleeding into each other. Again putting his body through a drastic change for a role, Christian Bale is absolutely incredible as Dick Cheney with his mannerism & glare down perfectly. I'm just as impressed with Amy Adams, Steve Carell, & Sam Rockwell. The editing is fantastic & the narrator was an interesting touch, especially once it's revealed who he is in relation to Cheney. And the mid-credits scene perfectly expresses what the reactions to this film will be.

If Steve Carell doesn't get an Oscar nomination for this role I will be shocked. A fantasy drama that brings to life a lot of Zemeckis' strengths as a film maker, including the heart of Forrest Gump (1994), the hope of Cast Away (2000), the drama of Flight (2012), & the wonder of The Polar Express (2004). It explores loss, recovery, & love through the reality of PTSD, substance abuse, & escapism. The woman of Marwen are a group of strong individuals who represent different aspects of what Mark needs to recover from his attack & to ultimately face his attackers. The cast does a great job, especially when you take into account that they are playing animated doll versions of themselves for most of the film & you still feel for them. My biggest complaint is that I feel like the emotional punch of the courtroom scene was stolen from me from having seen the trailer several times. That being said there are plenty of heart wrenching & heart warming scenes throughout.

While not perfect, I would put this one at the top of the DCEU alongside Wonder Woman (2017). An underwater story of King Arthur, borrowing elements from Thor (2011) & Black Panther (2018), that brings us an entertaining adaptation of the New 52 Aquaman storyline by Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis. It's impressive how much Atlantean history they were able to include without bogging down the narrative. The underwater sequences are really impressive with the scale of this aquatic world brought to life, with nearly every bit of the film shot in IMAX. The acting was fine, although the stiff & expository dialogue made it obvious how much they are banking on the foreign market for this film. The CGI is well done, but it still suffers from some shoddy green screen work that seem to plague the DCEU. The score by Rupert Gregson-Williams stands shoulder to shoulder with his work on Wonder Woman, but some of the soundtrack choices are distracting. All in all, an impressive entry from DC Films & a fun super hero flick.

My favorite live-action Transformer film since the 2007 original, with more character & heart than any of the other films in this franchise combined. Still featuring plenty of transforming robots fighting other transforming robots, but with cinematography that works to showcase the action instead of creating a mess on screen. Hailee Steinfeld brings believability to a tomboy finding herself in the 1980s while acting opposite a CGI robot car, and John Cena is the perfect addition to the franchise. The soundtrack is killer and is used by Bumblebee to communicate while adding some humor, which is what I love most from the first film. The opening sequence on Cybertron is awesome & it is really nice to have some new villains who aren't just Megatron. The writing is tight with payoffs for all of the setups & feels like The Iron Giant (1999) as an 80s flick, where the only thing missing is Corey Feldman.

About equal parts comedy & drama that shows the budding friendship of a white man & a black man by seeing the Jim Crow South first hand. It deals with racism & prejudice by exploring a man's attempt to make it in the world when he isn't fully accepted by either community, asking how someone can be black but not "black enough." It shows how these two people from vastly different walks of life come to understand & care about the other while highlighting the dichotomy of the American South in the 1960s, where a black man could perform for a group of white people but couldn't eat in the same restaurant with them. The performances are phenomenal here with both Mahershala Ali & Viggo Mortensen completely selling the changing relationship in this situation. Linda Cardellini gives a much more subtle but just as spellbinding performance as Dolores Vallelonga. Shot well & with an amazing soundtrack, this film is as important as it is entertaining, like Driving Miss Daisy (1989) in reverse.

A drama woven with dark comedy, much like Lanthimos' past films The Lobster (2015) & The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), set in 18th century England yet feeling just as relevant today. The locations & costuming are impeccable while utilizing natural light to give the film the feeling of a Caravaggio painting come to life. Wide-angle lenses are used in many shots to show the entirety of a room, displaying our subject small in the frame as if trapped inside something bigger than themselves. The fish-eye lens also gives the audience the view of peeking into this world we don't belong to see all that it has to offer, from its glamour to its garbage. But where this film truly shines are the performances by the three female leads: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, & Rachel Weisz. Each of these actresses do an incredible job of making us love & hate them at different times throughout the film, for all of their plotting & positioning for power. But no matter how high you might rise in the system you will always find yourself under someone else's heel.

I had no idea what to expect going into this & really just wanted to see what the next Peter Jackson produced project was going to be. This film is like Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), BioShock Infinite (2013), & Pacific Rim (2013) had a strange Howl's Moving Castle (2004) shaped baby. The steam-punk universe that the story creates is interesting & impressive to explore. Reminding me of the scope of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) but taking its time to explore the world instead of rushing through everything. The cast is made up of mainly new faces, with Hugo Weaving doing his normal thing & Stephen Lang portraying the most interesting character in the film, Shrike. This character also brings the most compelling plot point to the story, as a reanimated cyborg who is hunting our main protagonist, Hester Shaw. Besides that the plot is super simple, with little to no surprises along the way, making it very clear that this was based on a YA novel. Over all it's a fine film with impressive visuals & a weak story. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with massive, mechanized, mobile cities.

The best animated film of the year. It just goes to show you that you can have a superhero film with 6+ heroes, 6+ villains, with plenty of fan-service & cameos that still is easy to follow while telling a compelling story. Comic fans can enjoy the amount of details included for them, while general audiences still understand who the good guys vs the bad guys are without a huge backstory for each character. The different Spider-People (Persons of Spider?) could all carry their own films, showing off drastically different art styles & a great voice cast. The animation is some of the most uniquely stunning visuals I've seen on screen, looking like comic book pop-art brought to life with newsprint texture, dialogue bubbles, & fluid motion. The writing is tight with plenty of heart & tons of laughs. It's a coming of age tale about a teenager who doesn't necessarily want to be a hero but feels that he's the only one who can in his realities time of need. I hope to see more from this animated Spider-Verse in the future.

It's amazing how much of Deadpool 2 you can show with a PG13 rating simply by cutting out the worst swears and getting rid of the blood. Deadpool literally bleeps out any use of the F-word, the nudity is pixelated, & the graphic violence is trimmed. It's a great experiment into what makes film ratings what they are and how this character could be utilized in the Disney owned Marvel Cinematic Universe without losing who he is. Ryan Reynolds & Fred Savage are great together in the wrap around story segments, blurring the line between film & viewer while poking fun at the whole experience. All of the best stuff from Deadpool 2 is still there, in a somewhat cleaned up way, with great action & laughs throughout. The Stan Lee cameo has a nice little added touch since his passing. And don't forget to stay for the after credits scene, even when you think it's over give it another minute. It is well worth the wait for any Marvel fan.

One of the most historically, socially, & politically important films of all time. For the 25th Anniversary of this Spielberg masterpiece, the film has been re-released in theaters for a short time remastered for Dolby Cinema and should not be missed. Based on a true story, shot more like a documentary than a feature film, it gives one of the most realistic & heart wrenching portrayals of the Holocaust put on film. It explores the depths of what makes someone good or evil, using its black & white color palette to further illustrate the grey middle ground that our protagonist walks. It is mind blowing that neither Liam Neeson nor Ralph Fiennes won an Oscar for their portrayals of Oskar Schindler and Amon Goeth, respectively. Nor Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern for that matter. John Williams' score is beautiful & haunting, exactly as it should be, adding to what is probably Spielberg's greatest film. It is too fitting a time for this release with today's political climate & the amount of hate being spewed by people in power toward "those" that are different than "us". Reminding us that if we do not stand up to this hate, it won't be long until we're back in this kind of situation again.

To be honest it took me a long time to come around to this film. I mainly decided to see it to support co-Director Scott Mosier. I wasn't sure why we needed another Grinch film, what more could really be done with that story. Truth be told not a whole lot, but it doesn't stop the film from being worth a watch. The story walks a midpoint of depth between the 1966 animated television special by Chuck Jones and the 2000 live-action film by Ron Howard. It delves into why the Grinch is unhappy, why he lives alone far from the Whos down in Whoville, and why he wants to steal Christmas. More than the animated special ever did, but not nearly as much as the live-action. The world of this film is amazing to look at with all of the whimsical architecture & gadgets that Seuss' world should have. The animation is beautiful with some of the best fur & snow textures I've seen to date. The voice cast is great with the standout being Kenan Thompson as Bricklebaum. All in all, this is a great family film that adapts the story of the Grinch for this generation. It may not be as enduring as the Boris Karloff classic or as cynical as Jim Carrey's take, but it still has the heart that makes the story of the Grinch so special.

While having a lot of the same flash & fun of the first film, with tons of video game cameos & references, the story takes a very different turn. Focusing more on Ralph & Vanellope's friendship and leaving the rest of the characters as little more than bit parts, while never having a real antagonist for our heroes. Stories need conflict to warrant telling in the first place & the problem is that the conflict here is weak. It's a bit like the conflict in a romantic comedy, with a misunderstanding that could easily be handled with a conversation. That being said, coming from the same team that brought us Wreck-It-Ralph (2012) & Zootopia (2016), this film does have a great message that I hope children can learn from. Sometimes friends can be too needy and it's okay to want something different, while still remaining friends. Everyone has their own path to take. The voice cast & references are as great as the first film and I'm glad to see Disney poke some fun at itself.

It's always fun to take another look inside the Wizarding World that J.K. Rowling has gifted us with, even when it doesn't feel as well put together as her Harry Potter series. I really think that this is a series that will get better as more is revealed in each film, as certain details don't seem to hold up under much scrutiny at the moment. The cast all do a great job here with the standouts being Jude Law as Dumbledore & Eddie Redmayne as Scamander. This one follows a similar structure as the first but we do see more familiar faces & hear familiar names this time around, giving us the strings that lead us to the wizarding stories we already know. The creatures are truly fantastic, drawing on a number of mythological beasts & giving Newt his moments to shine as he tames them. The political relevance is also important for what we are currently looking at in our world. To misquote Albus Dumbledore - History has a tendency to repeat itself, even in the wokest of times, if we don't bother to learn from past mistakes.

A war/sci-fi/horror in a similar vein as Dog Soldiers (2002), this film is a mixed bag of genres that work really well together. It pulls off the comradery & drama of a WWII war flick, with the scientific experimentation of a body horror, with a thrill ride pace. It walks a fine line on taking itself just seriously enough, while understanding exactly what kind of story is being told. A war film for the Wolfenstein generation that feels like a video game, with power ups, exploding barrels, and a boss battle along the way. Plus a hint at a possible sequel. The cast of mostly unknowns does a fine job of acting like a believable unit of soldiers, with each having their own issues & time to shine. The special effects are a great mix of practical prosthetics & CGI to make some memorable monsters, with plenty of gore & explosions throughout. The story takes a turn in the second act that could match the insanity of From Dusk Til Dawn (1996) for anyone who was yet to see the trailer. Maybe most importantly, in today's political climate I'm really happy to see a film about punching Nazis.

I've been excited for this film before the first trailer was shown and it didn't disappoint me. Much like Queen's discography, it plays all the big hits from their history. But since all of them were such big hits it leaves little time for the linear notes. And while they do gloss over certain things in Mercury's life and stray a bit from the historical truth at times, this film ultimately gives an entertaining portrayal of the dynamic history of Queen. The performances are where this film really shines. Rami Malek is electric as Freddie Mercury, with the most precision in replicating his mannerisms and presence. But I'm just as impressed by the rest of the cast, especially the other band members & Freddie's family. Seeing the interactions between the band mates while performing or while working in the studio were my favorite parts. To watch them work and fight with each other to create the songs that we all love is a lot of fun and I hope is close to how those decisions were actually made. The opening sequence shows us exactly where our story is headed and there isn't a better place for us to stop than with Queen back on top.

A reimagined, homage to the Dario Argento classic that does away with the bright primary colors while keeping the visually striking architecture. This film more fully explores the witchcraft storyline and gives a reason for why a coven of witches would run a dance company, which is not really touched on in the original. It also makes dance a much bigger part in the story instead of just a setting. The almost completely female cast is great and Tilda Swinton is amazing in her performances as always. The cinematography and 35mm film stock give it the look and feel of a '70s horror flick, which also play well with the setting of 1977. Plenty of free floating camera work that moves through the sets with quick whip-pans and snap-zooms for emphasis and surprise. The score by Thom Yorke (of Radiohead), unlike the dream-like Goblin score of the original, brings a thrilling tension throughout the film. The running time could probably use some trimming, but it works wonderfully as a slow burn which builds to an insane final act.