Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Director: Wes Ball

Starring: Owen Teague, Freya Allen, Kevin Durrand

When the "Caesar Trilogy" ended with War for the Planet of the Apes, I remarked that the end of that film played like a Biblical epic. The set of stories beginning here in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes picks up that theme, with a title card directly likening Caesar to Jesus and then the remainder of the film continuing to push that idea in a very explicit way that informs some of the relationships and conflicts of the film. I'm not entirely sure that aspect works, but it gave me a lot to ponder as I walked out of Kingdom, a film that kept me engaged and entertained from beginning to end. While some of it definitely feels like a retread of War, that also makes it a nice, soft reentry into this world, giving the audience a sense of the familiar while introducing a host of new characters and establishing how this world has moved on from where we left it.

Review: The Fall Guy (2024)

Director: David Leitch 

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham 

Tough guys have feelings, too, and who better to explore those than Ryan Gosling, spending a second summer deconstructing the idea of masculinity – albeit not in quite as overt a fashion as he did in Barbie. Nor quite as successfully, judging by the box office, which is a shame because The Fall Guy is a hell of a lot of fun. Combining action – and making the case for good, old fashioned practical stunts – comedy and romance, it’s the kind of movie that should have something for everyone.

Review: Aquaman (2018)

* * 1/2
Director: James Wan
Starring: Jason Momoa

Aquaman is dumb as hell and it doesn't even matter. It's fun and it's entertaining and demonstrates what Warner Bros/DC can do when it gets out of its own way and stops trying to reverse engineer a shared universe. At 143 minutes it's at least 30 minutes longer than it has any business being and it is way too over-stuffed with plot, but it succeeds largely on the strength of star Jason Momoa's charisma and on the fact that there's so much happening so fast that you never have the opportunity to be bored. It's not a great movie, but it's a pretty great watch, particularly on the big screen.

Review: Vice (2018)

* 1/2
Director: Adam McKay
Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams

132 minutes is a lot of time to spend saying absolutely nothing. While Vice may mock the post-Nixon Republican party for believing in nothing but the power of power itself, the film is just as intellectually, emotionally, and morally empty. Dick Cheney, pulling the strings of the Bush II administration, stripped away many of the checks and balances that are meant to keep American democracy from slipping into tyranny, destabilized the middle east by invading a country knowing that the reasons for invasion were specious, and just generally left the world in a worse place than he found it when he became Vice President. These are things that we already know, though I suppose it may be worth the reminder given the recent trend towards taking a softer view of the Bush II years in light of the mess that's now in power. Vice says nothing new, nothing insightful, and actually laughs at the idea that there is an insight to be had. "What do we believe in?" a young Cheney (Christian Bale) asks his mentor, Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), who can only burst out laughing in response. But nobody believes in nothing. Even the Joker believed in chaos, which is the absolute freedom of the individual to do as he or she pleases. A film that is content to argue that its protagonist believes in nothing is a film without a narrative rudder. It is sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Review: The Favourite (2018)

* * * *
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone

Most movies are lucky if they feature one really great role for an actress. Yorgos Lantimos' latest, The Favourite, can boast of having three. It's a delight that is nearly unheard of. Setting its action at the court of Queen Anne (played with entertaining petulance by Olivia Colman), The Favorite is all about the dangerous game of social dominance and power, of how leverage can be useful only insofar as someone knows how to use it properly, of how one might not even realize that they were gambling until they see how badly they've overplayed their hand. It's a dark comedy about two ruthless women, one of whom tells the other, "We'll make a killer of you yet" and lives to regret it when she sees just how good the other is at the game. It's fantastic.

Review: Roma (2018)

* * * *
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Starring: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira

Alfonso Cuaron's last film, 2013's Gravity, was a cinematic experience that captured the vastness of space while telling what is, ultimately, an intimate story about a woman working through her grief. His latest film, Roma, is a story told on a small scale that suggests the great, wide world going on around it (and, while Gravity was a film that practically demanded to be seen on as big a screen as possible, Roma, which has been released in theaters and Netflix simultaneously, is intimate enough that it's impact isn't lessened by watching in on a smaller screen). Though he's made only five films in the last seventeen years including this one (the others being Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men, and Gravity), Cuaron is one of the most reliably great filmmakers working today and Roma makes a strong case for being his best film to date.

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: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

* * *
Director: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Starring: Tim Blake Nelson, Liam Neeson, Zoe Kazan, James Franco, Brendan Gleeson

Ever since Netflix began acquiring and developing its own library of films the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has, with the exception of Netflix's documentaries, resisted recognizing Netflix pictures as legitimate, award worthy content. This changed last year when Mudbound broke through to get 4 nominations and one imagines that this year, with the release of Roma, already so thoroughly lauded with awards from critics, and with filmmakers like the Coen brothers turning to the platform with their latest, the notion that films released through Netflix aren't "real" movies will be obliterated. The Coen's latest, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a great challenge to the idea that Netflix removes the "cinema" from films, as it is a thoroughly cinematic piece of work even when viewed on a small screen thanks to the sumptuous compositions of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who previously lensed the Coen's Inside Lleweyn Davis. Telling a series of tales set in the old west, Buster Scruggs hearkens back a time when the Western was as big as all outdoors while being told in the wry, modern voice of the Coens.

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.

Review: Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

* * *
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Rami Malek

Early in Bohemian Rhapsody Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) argues that Queen shouldn't be conventional, a moment that, even at that early stage in the narrative, is hilariously lacking in self-awareness given how conventional the film itself actually is. Yet as formulaic as the film's opening stretch is, by the time it reaches its conclusion Bohemian Rhapsody has managed to overcome its flaws (of which there are many on a basic storytelling level) to become something deeply moving. Maybe it's the music, so familiar, so catchy, so capable of amping a person up. Maybe it's the lead performance by Malek, which transcends mere imitation and hits on something intensely and beautifully true. Whatever it is, once Bohemian Rhapsody gets going it doesn't just take off, it soars.

The Other Side of the Wind (2018) and They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018)

The Other Side of the Wind Director: Orson Welles
They'll Love Me When I'm Dead Director: Morgan Neville

Rarely has an artist been so astonishingly talented and so stunningly unlucky. Orson Welles was only 25 when he made Citizen Kane, a masterpiece among masterpieces, and while it certainly wouldn't be accurate to say that it was all downhill from there, his filmography boasting several great post-Kane movies, things certainly started to get a lot more difficult almost immediately. By the time of his death in 1985, his film work consisted of projects made just for the money so that he could fund his own personal projects, and those personal projects, which were largely left unfinished. One of those projects was The Other Side of the Wind which was filmed off and on from 1970 to 1976, embroiled in various legal battles for decades thereafter, and has now been completed by a team overseen by Peter Bogdanovich and Frank Marshall. They'll Love Me When I'm Dead is a documentary companion piece to The Other Side of the Wind, detailing its troubled production as well as touching on several of his unfinished projects. Both are available on Netflix.

Review: Outlaw King (2018)

* * *
Director: David Mackenzie
Starring: Chris Pine

Generally speaking, when a movie premieres and the only thing people are discussing is the star's nude scene, that's a bad sign. It usually means that there's nothing else that's particularly interesting about the finished project, and when the critical reception is mixed (in the case of this film, to the tune of a 56 on Rotten Tomatoes and a 60 on Metacritic) that only reinforces that idea. In the case of Outlaw King, a historical drama about Robert the Bruce, the salacious bent of the coverage and the lack of enthusiasm from critics doesn't really do the film justice. As far as the much discussed nude scene goes, I doubt people would even give it a second thought if it had been done by an actor less famous than Chris Pine or an actress of any level of fame (and, in fact, Pine's co-star Florence Pugh also has a nude scene in the movie, and one in which the camera lingers on her nudity much more than it does on Pine, but female nudity is so de rigueur in film that it doesn't even seem noteworthy). As far as its poor critical reception, well, it's not a masterpiece but it's a perfectly serviceable movie of the "Important Man Did Important Thing" variety and shouldn't be written off as nothing more than Braveheart-lite.

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: A Star is Born (2018)

* * *
Director: Bradley Cooper
Starring: Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper

One of the most pleasant surprises so far this year is how good A Star is Born really is. I doubt many people would have expected that when the project was first announced, and when the studio released the trailer, which to my mind is one of the best trailers of the year, I don't know that most of us would have expected anything more than an okay movie with a really good trailer. So here it is and it's not only as good as its pre-release hype would suggest, it's as good as its tremendous post-release hype has been. I don't remember the last time that a non-Marvel, non-Star Wars movie prompted such a wealth of posts on pop culture sites, burning bright like a supernova of publicity. It's difficult to say that any movie could live up to this much chatter, but A Star is Born comes close enough. It's just a damn good movie; it really is.

Review: Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)

* * *
Director: Michael Moore

The first 10 minutes of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 are brutal. Taking us back to the eve of the 2016 election, when for many of us it seemed inconceivable that a candidate who was openly racist, an admitted sexual assaulter, and who actively incited violence at his rallies could be elected President, the opening minutes of Fahrenheit 11/9 are awash in people gleeful at the prospect of a Democratic victory, having counted the chickens before they hatched. It's like seeing that two cars are about to collide and being utterly helpless to stop it. And in the end, it's far from the most upsetting thing in this documentary, a polemic that, despite the advertising's heavy focus on Trump, is not really focused on Trump specifically, but the political system that made his ascension to the United States' highest office possible. If you hate Michael Moore you aren't likely to be won over by this film, which is a shame because he makes a lot of solid points.

Review: The Children Act (2018)

* * *
Director: Richard Eyre
Starring: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Fionn Whitehead

The Children Act, based on the novel of the same name by Ian McEwan (who takes on screenwriting duties here), is a rare breed of modern film. Unlike so many films released now, which are designed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible because transcending the boundaries of demographics is the only way to recoup increasingly astronomical production costs, The Children Act squares in on a specific audience and is content to cater to it alone. It's a movie for adults, a drama about morality that centers on a woman in a position of power who comes to doubt the way that she has used that power. It's headlined by Emma Thompson, whose performance is reliably profound and raises the film up even in its weakest sections.

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: BlacKkKlansman (2018)

* * * *
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Topher Grace

I have something of a love/hate relationship with Spike Lee. I think that he's made two of the greatest feature films to come out in the last thirty years (Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X) and one (25th Hour) that deserves, at least, to be in any conversation of the greatest films to come out in the last thirty years. He's a gifted filmmaker and one who is unafraid to take a clear political stance in his work - a rare virtue in an industry that, more often than not, demands a certain amount of watering down in order to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. My problem with Lee is that, despite his extensive filmmography and 32 years of trying, he has yet to create a decent female character (don't even bring up She's Gotta Have It, which is sometimes cited as Lee's "feminist" film, even though it's anything but). His latest film, BlacKkKlansman, doesn't change that - on reflection I'm pretty sure that there are only 4 women in the entire film with speaking lines and one is just a disembodied voice coming from off-screen - but the rest of it is so good that I can get past that.

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.