Review: Widows (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Steve McQueen
Starring: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell

Widows is more than the movie that you might be expecting, which stands to reason since it's directed by Steve McQueen, who is known for art films (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave) rather than crowd pleasers. Widows is, perhaps, the happy medium between the two. It's a heist thriller of no small amount of skill, filled with tension and action and reliant on some of the familiar tropes of the genre, but it's also a character piece about four women who are underestimated by everyone around them. Only three of them are widows (there is a fourth widow, but she takes a different path), but they are all women that the men around them take for granted can be walked all over. Now is the time of year when the studios release the last of their great big blockbusters for the year and the last of their great big award hopefuls, which might leave little time left to catch up on films that have already been in release for several weeks, but Widows is a movie worth making the time for.

Review: Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Marielle Heller
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant

Likeability is a very overrated quality in a protagonist. We don't need to like someone to find their story compelling and engaging. We don't even have to like them in order to root for them to come out of things alright. Good thing, too, since Can You Ever Forgive Me?'s Lee Israel, played with marvelously jagged edges by Melissa McCarthy, is pretty difficult to like most of the time. She's a nasty, misanthropic drunk who doesn't think twice about using people, screwing them over, and manipulating them. She's also a lonely person who tends to self-sabotage relationships because she fears connection/expects rejection, adores her cat, and is capable of deep compassion for people who are (somehow) worse off than she is. She's also pretty damn funny ("Oh to be a mediocre white man who doesn't realize how full of shit he is," she laments at one point and, lord, truer words have rarely been spoken) and the movie itself offers a great balance of seriousness and humor. It's one of the year's lowkey delights.

The Hate U Give (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: George Tillman Jr.
Starring: Amandla Stenberg, Russell Hornsby, Regina Hall

I don't know that there's an emptier platitude than when a white person states that they "don't see color." It's a statement that's intended to indicate to whomever is listening that the person making it isn't racist - is, in fact, so not racist that he or she doesn't even recognize that the concept of race exists - but which actually just announces that the person saying it is blind to the way that racism is so institutionalized that it's an inescapable part of day to day life. If you're going to say "I don't see color," you might as well just say "I can't be bothered to see what you're going through, even though it's happening all around me." White people and people of color experience the world in different ways, because the world experiences them in different ways. White parents don't need to talk to their kids about how to minimize the possibility that they will be shot by the police; black parents do. That's tragic and it's wrong and you can't solve a problem without acknowledging that it exists in the first place.

Review: First Man (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Damien Chazelle
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy

With First Man Damien Chazelle tells the epic story of the moon landing on a deeply intimate scale. At times it feels more like a domestic drama about a family suffocating under the weight of grief both real and anticipated than a retelling of the dangerous work of figuring out how to send human beings off of earth and onto another astronomical body and then bring them back - though, make no mistake, the film is nevertheless invested in showing the painstaking process of trial and error that resulted in NASA's triumph. Anchored by a great performance from Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, with the supporting ranks full of solid performances themselves, First Man is a thoughtful, sometimes even powerful, film about one of the defining events not only of the 20th century, but of human history itself.

Review: Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Jon M. Chu
Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding

You have to play to win, which is exactly what Crazy Rich Asians, adapted from the novel of the same name by Kevin Kwan, does. Proving a couple of important things right out of the gate - that the romantic comedy isn't actually dead if the effort is there and the product is good, that there is literally no good reason why a big studio feature can't be comprised of an entirely non-white cast - it doesn't buckle under the weight of its potential as a watershed film, focusing instead on just being a good film, period. Crazy Rich Asians is one of the cinematic highlights of 2018, an enchanting romantic comedy that relies on a good story and strong characters, rather than on the audience accepting dumb plot contrivances, in order to work. Crazy Rich Asians is a great way to bring the summer movie season to a close.

Review: Three Identical Strangers (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Tim Wardle

First comes shock and elation, then come the questions and, with them, the anger. Tim Wardle's documentary Three Identical Strangers tells a story so unbelievable, and ultimately so cruel, that even those at the center of it acknowledge that they'd never believe it if they hadn't lived it. Running at a brisk 96 minutes, Three Identical Strangers is intensely focused in its storytelling, which isn't always a good thing as the film hints at certain narrative threads only to quickly move away from them rather than explore them, but what it does explore is so compelling and fascinating that those omissions almost don't matter. Alternately funny and tragic (and sometimes both at the same time), Three Identical Strangers is a deeply engaging documentary and one which is probably most effective if you go into it knowing as little about it as possible so be forewarned that you may not want to read beyond this paragraph if you want to remain unspoiled about some of the story's twists and turns.

Review: Sorry to Bother You (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Boots Riley
Starring: Lakeith Stanfield

Sorry to Bother You is a work of surrealism that, like all great works of satire, manages to strike brutally close to home the more wildly it goes over the top. While the film's big, grotesque twist is pretty far outside the realm of possibility (at least, one desperately hopes so), the film's depiction of income inequality and the effects of unchecked capitalism feels familiar even in its most exaggerated elements. If things continue on their current trajectory, where the top 1% have 40% of the wealth and governments have been steadily dismantling all of the mechanisms that once kept income disparity more in check and maintained a path for upward financial mobility, certain elements of Sorry to Bother You's narrative don't seem at all far fetched. An assured, inventive, and thought provoking film from Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You more than lives up to all the hype it's inspired since its debut at Sundance earlier this year.

Review: Tully (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Jason Reitman
Starring: Charlize Theron

Although they've had success separately, it feels safe to say at this point that director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody function best as a team. 2007's Juno remains their big hit, both commercially and in terms of awards, while 2011's Young Adult remains one of the most criminally under-seen and under-appreciated movies of the last decade. Their latest film, Tully, is neither the heart-warming crowd pleaser that Juno was, nor does it possess the same acidic, take-no-prisoners attitude of Young Adult, but it's a sharply written and wholly compassionate film about a woman who is drowning in the responsibilities and expectations of motherhood. That woman is played by Charlize Theron, an actress who has no fear of leaning into a character's worst qualities without trying to soften them, which is exactly what the role demands. The performance is tremendous and the film itself rises to meet it.

Review: The Death of Stalin (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Armando Iannucci
Starring: Steve Buscemi

I'm sure the real story was even more absurd. All the pieces are there, after all: a brutal tyrant who is ultimately undone by his own short-sighted desire to protect his power by destabilizing everyone around him; the political cronies who are left jockeying for power, stabbing each other in the back and trying to think out their next moves, taking a few gambles on how circumstances are going to shake out; a citizenry terrorized by the whims of those in charge, making the difference between life and death as arbitrary as possible; a son who is desperately trying to hide the fact that the national hockey team has been killed on his watch and that he has replaced the players in the hope that no one will notice. Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin is comedy that's about as black as it gets and if it plays a little fast and loose with real history, well, I have to assume that that's because truth is stranger than fiction and that it would seem even less believable if it were all true.

Review: Black Panther (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o

Long live the King. To watch Black Panther is to be awed, not just by the film itself (though it is a work of incredible achievement) but by the tradition that it joins. As the opening credits unfold, highlighting the characters and films of the Marvel cinematic universe, it's hard to be unimpressed by what Marvel has accomplished, the way that it has brought together so many moving pieces, creating properties that are unique from each other but also complement and build off of each other as part of one large, unified tapestry. That this is not as easy as Marvel (barring a misstep in the form of The Incredible Hulk) has made it look is evident in the struggles of other would-be cinematic universes, from the struggling DC's superhero series to Universal's dead on arrival "Dark" universe. Eventually the series will start to be hit by the reality that you can only go so high before you start to come down, but that sure as hell doesn't happen with Black Panther, which joins Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and Thor: Ragnarok as movies that probably could not have been made 10 years ago (or, at least, not with the budgets and hype that they got) and continues Marvel's streak of just getting better and better.

Review: Call Me By Your Name (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer

To speak or to die. That's the question at the heart of Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino's adaptation of the novel of the same name about the intensity of first love, in all its confusion and terror and joy. It's a well-realized film that, despite being told via a deeply restrained and interior story, manages to bring the emotions up to the surface to create something insightful and quite moving. Nominated for 4 Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song), and arguably deserving of more, Call Me By Your Name is one of the best films of 2017. It's a thoughtful and beautifully rendered piece of work, even though it opts to be shy at moments when it might have been better served by boldness.

Review: The Post (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks

The Post is not a movie that will surprise you, but there's pleasure to be had in a classic tale told in a classic fashion. Is it accurate to the way things actually happened? I'm sure the New York Times would have something to say about that, and in the end I'm not sure that it matters, unless you want to split hairs over whether plot or theme represent what a film is truly about. What it tells is a well crafted story, one which is engrossing and often rousing, and which has been fashioned in a way to make it as relevant to the moment that we're currently living in as possible, even as it hits all of the expected beats. It leads with its talent - which is, of course, considerable both off screen and on, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks - and lets that do most of the work. After all, how wrong could a movie with that triumvirate go? I'd say it doesn't really go wrong at all.

Review: Get Out (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener

Better late than never. At a time of the year when movie pundits debate which film best encapsulated the cultural feeling of 2017, Get Out seems to have the edge on claims of capturing the zeitgeist, though it may have an uphill battle in terms of gaining actual industry recognition, given that Hollywood is a very conservative industry that just happens to be full of prominent liberals who represent the exact kind of "white liberalism" that this film so perfectly skewers. Even when the industry does embrace it, a la the film's two Golden Globe nominations (though the Hollywood Foreign Press Association may better be described as "industry adjacent"), it does so in a way that suggests it doesn't really get it. I mean, Musical or Comedy? Get Out's final dialogue exchange is actually pretty hilarious, but there's really nothing funny about what Get Out has to say about race and violence.

Review: The Disaster Artist (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: James Franco
Starring: James Franco, Dave Franco

Here's to the ones who dream
Foolish as they may seem
Here's to the hearts that ache
Here's to the mess we make

What The Disaster Artist accomplishes seems almost impossible. It could easily have been a very mean spirited movie in which a bunch of very rich, very successful people ruthlessly mocked the efforts of a bunch of not rich and unsuccessful people. Instead it's a film that manages to mine a grandiose personality for humor while still acknowledging that it's a very courageous thing to pursue an artistic ambition and open yourself up to the kind of ridicule that, in fact, met the film at the center of this "making of" story. The Disaster Artist is a film made with affection and it's one of the best, funniest comedies I've seen all year.

Review: Mudbound (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Dee Rees
Starring: Jason Mitchell, Garrett Hedlund, Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan

Societies are built on bodies. This fact isn't exclusive to the United States, though it may sometimes feel that way because the legacy of those bodies continues to echo so resoundingly through its contemporary social and political climate. Dee Rees' historical epic Mudbound opens by acknowledging this through two of its characters digging a hole and turning up a set of chains followed by the remains of a slave, and then builds by demonstrating how the condition of slavery is perpetuated in spirit if not in name as it explores the relationship between two families, one black and one white, in the years just prior to and just after World War II. It's a great achievement, a period film that does not just have the look of something important, but actually is important, speaking not only to the past but also to the present. It's a vital, brutal, and engrossing movie.

Review: The Florida Project (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Sean Baker
Starring: Willem Dafoe, Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite

It's kind of funny, but my reaction to Sean Baker's The Florida Project is sort of the opposite to my reaction to his last film, 2015's Tangerine. That film I felt was overall a decent movie with a great ending; this one I felt was a nearly great movie with a bad ending. Both films are about disenfranchised people living on the fringes of society and both stories are told in a way that manages to be non-judgmental, even when the characters are doing objectively terrible/harmful things, with Baker's objective being to explore rather than criticize how people get by when they have next to nothing and exist in that societal space that is essentially invisible. They're both films that are strong in character moments, with The Florida Project being the more free-floating of the two - though its casual, slice of life approach to storytelling shouldn't be mistaken for plotlessness. It's a skillfully made movie, often visually arresting, and centers on a performance that is likely to be talked about a lot as we head into awards season.

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: David France

History is written by the victors, which means that it's written by those in power. Even when the history in question is the history of a marginalized group, it tends to be written from the perspective of those members who most closely align with the majority in power, which is why the history of the gay rights movement often seems like the history of gay white men. Just look at the controversy surrounding last year's Stonewall, which failed to gain the support of the wider LGBTQ community due to its displacement of trans women of color in favor of giving ownership of the story of a white, middle class young man. The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson is about two of those women that Stonewall displaced, one of whom gives the film its title, the other of whom emerges as the documentary's most fascinating figure. Although not quite as focused as director David France's previous film, the brilliant and wrenching How to Survive a Plague, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson is an urgent and moving film about a segment of the population that is so often disregarded.

Review: Wind River (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen

Late in the film, a character remarks that the case at the center of the story is practically solving itself. The reason that this is true is because it's a story that's so depressingly familiar about men, women, power, entitlement, and the institutionalized racism that allows the law to cherry pick what kinds of victims are worth seeking justice for. Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, who's riding a hot streak after writing the screenplays for 2015's Sicario and 2016's Hell or High Water, Wind River is a sharp edged, fast moving thriller, although I don't think it's quite the advocacy piece that its final words might like to suggest. Wind River is less about giving voice to people traditionally treated as disposable by society and the media than it is a story about unforgiving men (in their most traditional form, at that) in an unforgiving land, but it's an absolutely engrossing film of its type and confirms Sheridan as one of the most exciting voices working in Hollywood today.

Review: Wonder Woman (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Patty Jenkins
Starring: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine

Twice in Wonder Woman the point is made that it isn't a question of "deserve." To that end, I'm not sure if this is a film that the world of today deserves, but I think it's one that the world of today needs. That might sound hyperbolic, it's just a movie after all, but a movie is rarely ever "just" a movie and the messaging of this one feels particularly urgent right now. It's not the gender issue of this being a film with a female lead or in this being a major blockbuster release directed by a woman that makes it so, nor is it the inherent relief in there finally being an unqualified success in the DC shared universe (if only to stop some of the repetitive debate about DC vs. Marvel). The issue and the message is more expansive than that, more inclusive, and deeply humane. It's not about deserve. It's about what you believe.

Review: The Lost City of Z (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: James Gray
Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller

To obsess over something for years, to work so hard, to be so close and find that it is just beyond your reach - it would be enough to drive a person mad. The Lost City of Z, based on the non-fiction book of the same name by David Grann and centering on Percy Fawcett's search for a lost civilization in the Amazon jungle, does not treat Fawcett as though it thinks he was mad for continuously returning to the jungle, but makes a fairly compelling case for how he might have been driven mad by everything outside of the jungle. The film features touches that are reminiscent of such films as Apocalypse Now, Fitzcarraldo, and, especially, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, all films that know madness well, and reunites writer/director James Gray with cinematographer Darius Khondji after 2014's The Immigrant. Mesmerizing and often soulful, The Lost City of Z is a beautiful and bewitching story about one man's unconquerable desire to know the unknown.