Monday, December 31, 2018
1. Roma
Roma
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de
Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey, Carlos Peralta
I loved this film!! It became for
me a close to portrayal of my own family domestic structure, although I didn’t
grow up in the Colonia Roma where the film takes place. Alfonso Cuarón's intensely
personal, dreamy black-and-white ode to his childhood in 1970's Mexico. It is a
profound act of empathy for his childhood housekeeper/nanny (as played by first
time actor Yalitza Aparicio), taking the story of one bourgeoisie family and
juxtaposing it with the revolutionary changes in the city at the time. The city
sequences are absolutely perfect, every detail is considered. The movie is
filled with comically inept or absent men, delicately choreographed long takes,
the intricacies of cleaning up dog poop, unforgettable set pieces (the New
Year's Eve party, the Corpus Christi Massacre), and the kind of lived-in
details that could only be drawn from memory. Some sequences like the one Cleo
is looking for her boyfriend reminded me of Fellini’s 8 ½. The movie, which
spans a tumultuous year in the family's life, sneaks up on you with a series of
moments, until the emotional weight of the entire thing crashes down on you
like the waves at Tuxpan in the climactic ocean scene.
The film is a technical craftsman
of the highest order, the Children of Men and Gravity director has an aesthetic
that aims to overwhelm -- with the amount of extras, the sense of despair, and
the constant whir of exhilaration. Cuarón's artful pans aren't just layered for
the sake of complexity: he's often placing different emotions, historical
concepts, and class distinctions in conversation with each other. What are
these different components in the painstakingly composed shots actually saying
to each other? The movie is filled with compositions like that, tinged with careful
ambiguity and unresolved tensions. I think is what I will call a greatly modest masterpiece.
2. First Reformed
First Reformed
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Amanda
Seyfried, Cedric Kyles, Victoria Hill
I have to confess I have been a
huge Ethan Hawke fan so I felt I was compelled to like it, the film really
stands on its own. Ethan Hawke plays an angry and bitter minister in a small
and historic upstate New York church, who directs much of his bitterness at
political leaders and much of it at himself.
This is Paul Schrader’s drama
about an alcoholic ex-military chaplain going through a profound existential
crisis. Ethan Hawke stars as Reverend Ernst Toller of the First Reformed Church
in New York in this thoughtful film, which tells the story of a church with a
dwindling congregation, striving to adapt to a new age. When pregnant
parishioner, played by Amanda Seyfried, asks Reverend Toller to counsel her
husband, a tormented radical environmentalist who doesn’t want to bring a child
into a world which climate change is poised to destroy, Toller is plunged into
dealing with his own tormented past, until he finds redemption in an act of
exceptional violence.
It’s been a long time since we
saw another great Paul Schrader’ smovie, and with First Reformed, the
writer-director provides a magnificent companion piece to that earlier triumph.
Also indebted to Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Ingmar Bergman,
Schrader’s religious drama) fixates on Reverend Toller ongoing crisis-of-faith
is accelerated by an encounter with an environmental activist beset by
hopelessness and anger. Toller’s ensuing relationship with that man’s wife as
well as the leader of a local mega-church forms the basis of Schrader’s
rigorously ascetic and occasionally expressionistic film, which is guided by
Toller’s journal-entry narration about his fears and doubts. Formally exquisite
and led by a tremendous performance from Hawke who can’t quell the darkness
within, it’s a spiritual inquiry made harrowing by both its mounting misery and
its climactic ambiguity. The ending, which almost veers into magical realism,
is a leap of faith for the audience and characters, adding up to nothing less
than the most moving shot of 2018. This is a true masterpiece I recommend
everyone check out.
3. Annihilation
Annihilation
Director: Alex Garland (Ex
Machina)
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer
Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson
This film is an unapologetically radical adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's hit book. Both visually and intellectually, it was nothing less than a psychedelic horror movie about aliens, communication, and people's capacity for self-destruction. It was also an environmental allegory in a way few films dared to approach, an unsettling and hallucinatory tale of destruction and transformation, division and replication—dynamics that Garland posits as the fundamental building blocks of every aspect of existence, and which fully come to the fore during a climax of such surreal birth-death insanity that it has to be seen to be believed. The film combines elements of numerous predecessors (Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Thing) to create something wholly and frighteningly unique, it dares to dream in a language we can't quite comprehend.
It is also
an environmental allegory in a way few films dared to approach, an unsettling
and hallucinatory tale of destruction and transformation, division and
replication—dynamics that Garland posits as the fundamental building blocks of
every aspect of existence, and which fully come to the fore during a climax of
such surreal birth-death insanity that it has to be seen to be believed.
4. Black Panther
Black Panther
Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael
B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira
Director: Ryan Coogler
The film is an amazing mythical,
cool superhero drama that confronts modern political agonies in complex and
resonant ways. Marvel's first black superhero finally gets his dues, leaping
from the page to his first solo movie. After debuting in Captain America: Civil
War, Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa gets the origin treatment in director Ryan
Coogler's standalone effort. With the Black Panther not only being a superhero
but also king of an entire country, stands to bring something new to the tone of
the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wrapping it all in fantastic afro-futuristic
visuals.
Coogler's skillful balancing of a
high-tech spy gadgetry, ceremonial palace intrigue, fantasy action mayhem, and
subversive political critique is unparalleled in the larger Marvel Cinematic
Universe that Black Panther springs from. In the same way Creed, his propulsive
and knowing reboot of the Rocky franchise, paid tribute to and upended boxing
iconography. Coogler's take on superhero-dom is both pleasing and probing.
Basically, he's got Soundcloud jokes, rhino battles, and takes on imperialism.
The larger ideological conflict between the new king T'Challa (Boseman) and the
American revolutionary Killmonger (Jordan) has been seen before in the pages of
history books and comics, but it's never been given this type of eye-popping,
brain-scrambling, heart-pounding blockbuster treatment.
5. BlacKkKlansman
BlacKkKlansman
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: John David Washington, Adam
Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace
Ron Stallworth was the first
black police officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department and in the late
1970s he went undercover to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. The story is
relatively straightforward on the surface, the cop skillfully played by
Washington, infiltrates the local chapter of the Klu Klux Klan by phone and
attempts to gather intelligence info on the organization. The officer teams up
with white officer Flip Zimmerman, who was a stand-in when a white version of
Stallworth was needed. The infiltration was a success with the duo being
invited to lead the Klan's local chapter. The film first debuted at Cannes where
it competed for the Palme d’Or and eventually won the Grand Prix.
This drama is among Lee’s most
politically passionate films. No movie better connected today's shameful social
and political realities with America's history better than Spike Lee's latest
movie. The fact he was able to do so using the prism of the (mostly real) story
of a black police officer who infiltrated the KKK is incredible. The fact it
was often righteously funny—even when it was interrogating race, religion, and
deep-seated hatred was even more remarkable. Often, the film plays like the
pilot episode of a TV show given an essayistic overhaul. In addition to drawing
connections to cinematic history, from Gone with the Wind and Birth of a Nation
to Super Fly and Cleopatra Jones, he makes more than a handful of knowing nods
to the political present, having characters mimic the catchphrases of President
Donald Trump and ending the film with actual footage from last year's Unite the
Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Lee's message is proudly, defiantly
blunt; his stylistic approach is multi-layered and tonally ambitious.
6.The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Cast: Tim Blake Nelson, James
Franco, Liam Neeson, Zoe Kazan
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
lavishes the classical genre with love while nonetheless dissecting it with a
sharp analytical eye. Laced with a fatalism that’s emblematic of their finest
work, the Coens’ six tales progress from jaunty to gloomy, although there’s
plenty of humor and pessimism to be found in each of these captivating
installments. A six-part Western
anthology, centered upon a common theme: the Wild West’s relentless cruelty,
wanton violence, deadly recklessness, and cavalier abuses of unchecked power. As
with much of their best work, the stories all revolve around absurd twists and
fatalistic endings, but with an uncanny visual sheen that gives it the weight
of beloved old folk tales. Even for experienced film makers like the Coen
Brothers, the anthology format, where a series of shorts are presented as a
feature, is a tough challenge to conquer.
A bountiful anthology of Western
tales, from James Franco’s desperado trying to rob a remote prairie bank and
Tom Waits’s prospector searching for gold, to Liam Neeson’s showman endeavoring
to make a living with an armless-and-legless performer, and Zoe Kazan’s single
woman struggling to survive during a wagon-train trip across the plains, the
absurd and the mournful constantly converge in unanticipated and striking ways.
That’s most true of the dazzling opening discharge, in which Tim Blake Nelson’s
crooning gunslinger Buster Scruggs proves a simultaneous homage to, and critique
of, the Roy Rogers archetype and, by extension, the myths of the West it helped create.
The chapter starring the title
character played by Tim Blake Nelson is a little ridiculous and the Franco-led
bank robbery tale is too brisk but soon enough the movie finds its footing. In
addition to finding death, cruelty, and despair in the West, the Coen's also
find romance in the people and beauty in the landscape. What's the best
chapter? Probably "The Gal Who Got Rattled," an achingly moving epic
in miniature starring Zoe Kazan as wayward traveler Abigail and Bill Heck as
soft-spoken cowboy Billy. In a movie that's not afraid to make you laugh or
make you ponder some deep existential questions.
7. Widows
Widows
Director: Steve McQueen
Cast: Viola Davis, Michelle
Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Daniel Kaluuya
The great director Steve McQueen brought his
trademark seriousness to a "fun" genre film, remaking a British TV
show and turning it into one part feminist movie, one part social and one
part Viola Davis acting showcase. It opens with a confrontational open-mouthed
kiss, and only gets bolder from there, with lots of twists piled up toward the
end. Daniel Kaluuya is spectacular in a supporting role as a psychopath. And it
was also an important reminder that Elizabeth Debicki is really tall and really
good at acting.
8. You Were Never Really Here
You Were Never Really Here
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina
Samsonov, Alex Manette, John Doman
Lynne Ramsay was the perfect
person to make a gritty hit-man thriller, as she upends every contrivance and
cliche of the genre. It was more intense, more visceral, more in tune with
psychological realism, and more hammer-ific. Whether it was Joaquin Phoenix
holding hands with one of his victims and singing a song, or the way the camera
artfully avoided showing the bloodiest set pieces inside a brothel, images from
this film still linger with me. Joaquin Phoenix reconfirms his status as his
generation’s finest leading man.
This crime story, adapted from a novella by
Bored to Death writer Jonathan Ames, is about an ex-soldier named Joe (Phoenix)
who finds himself tasked with recovering a kidnapped girl amidst a sinister
political conspiracy involving human trafficking. The tone of creeping dread
and fixation on violent revenge recalls Taxi Driver, last year's X-Men
shoot-em-up Logan, there should be nothing new to see here. Between Phoenix's
muted performance, Jonny Greenwood's string-drenched score, and Ramsay's
expressive jump-cuts, every image crackles with energy, style, and possibility.
It's a death-obsessed movie vibrating with life.
There’s plenty of bloodshed
throughout that underworld quest, yet Ramsay’s treatment of violence is
anything but exploitative; rather, her film resounds as a lament for the trauma
of childhood abuse, which lingers on after adolescence has given way to
adulthood. Reminiscent of Taxi Driver, and energized by Phoenix’s magnetic
embodiment of masculine suffering and sorrow, it’s a gut-wrenching portrait of
a volatile man’s attempts to achieve some measure of solace from his inner
demons sometimes via the use of a ball-peen hammer.
9. First Man
First Man
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Kyle Chandler
I love movies about astronauts particularly this story and I
wasn’t disappointed. With Steven Spielberg serving as an executive producer,
Ryan Gosling as the lead character, and a plot based on James Hansen’s
biography of Neil Armstrong, First Man was always set to be a winner and so it
proved. Back in a time when the idea of walking on the moon was as ludicrous as
flying cars or teleportation, the film follows the story of the man who
accomplished what seemed impossible. It is the tale of the giant leap for
humanity. But it’s not all about going down in history. Armstrong is also shown
as he has to face tough questions – a heartbreaking “Do you think you’re coming
back?” from his son – to show the human side of the national hero who went on
one of the most dangerous missions ever. It’s no easy game being an astronaut.
Damien Chazelle explored the emotional sacrifices artists
must make for their work. His latest, a flame-kissed Neil Armstrong biopic
starring a tightly coiled Gosling as the mythical moonwalker, is similarly a
film about emotional repression and simmering male anger, but this time the
canvas is bigger (Literally: The movie switches to IMAX mode when Armstrong and
crew hit the surface of the big rock.) Chazelle's cold approach to examining
individuals with an unhealthy work-life balance has often felt overwrought to
me, but here, with Gosling stoically burying his feelings in pursuit of
celestial glory, he's launched himself into a different artistic stratosphere.
The flight sequences are visceral; the domestic scenes are no less tense.
10. Isle of Dogs
Isle of Dogs
Director: Wes Anderson
I am a Wes Anderson fan but this
film is visually cool but not as compelling as others. This stop-motion
animated comedy, about children’s efforts to thwart the extermination of dogs,
is Anderson’s third film in a virtual trilogy of revolt. With none of the richness
of his Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s gorgeous new stop-motion tale is a
funny, touching, doggy delight. The
concept of sick dogs abandoned on a Japanese garbage island seemed so
self-consciously, yet Isle of Dogs is a delight: funny, touching and full of
heartfelt warmth and wit. With breathtaking visuals and an uncanny eye for
canine behavior, it transposes the kid-friendly charm of The Incredible Journey
to the post-apocalyptic landscapes of Mad Max via the Japanese cinema of
Yasujiro Ozu, and, most notably, Akira Kurosawa.
Despite its ghoulish details,
Isle of Dogs retains a soft, slapstick heart. The regular fights are animated
like a Tex Avery cartoon, with random limbs protruding from a swirling dust
cloud. Like the dogs themselves, the stop-motion has an endearingly scratchy
quality, a textured roughness contrasting with the symmetrical perfection of
the frame. Working primarily at London’s 3 Mills Studios, Anderson’s team of
animators keep things admirably physical with cotton-wool clouds and cellophane
rivers. Images on TV screens are rendered as old-school, hand-drawn cartoons. As
always, the imagery is the best part of any Anderson film. “Isle of Dogs”
engages an aesthetic of the ugly.
On one level, Isle of Dogs can be
read as a parable of disenfranchisement, a story of people (rather than pets)
being pushed to the margins. On another it’s a simple tale of a boy and his
dog, a heartbreaker with overtones of the much-loved Hachikō story. There’s
also an animal rights echo. Interpretations
are necessarily open-ended. While all barks are translated into English, the
human language, much of it Japanese, is largely unsubtitled. “You don’t
understand the words but you understand the emotion.” Some have argued that,
rather than foregrounding canine conversation, this technique casts the
Japanese characters in particular – rather than humans in general.
Perhaps a better question would
be “why aren’t the Japanese people translated?” Atari, who is the catalyst for
this story, remains untranslated until the very end, where most of his speech
is in deference to how hot he finds Tracy, with whom he has had no prior
interaction. I suppose Anderson thought he was being respectful toward Japanese
speakers by giving them something only they could enjoy. Instead, it only adds
an “Otherness” to Atari and his compatriots. Why can we understand Atari’s
canine cohort, but not him?
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