Review: Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

* * *
Director: Taika Waititi
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Tessa Thompson, Cate Blanchett, Mark Ruffalo

Thor: Ragnarok isn't the best movie I've seen all year, it's not even the best superhero movie I've seen all year, but I'd be hard pressed to name a movie that I had more fun watching this year. There are a lot of things about Ragnarok that can be described as "awesome," from the delicious camp of Cate Blanchett's performance to the scene stealing of director Taika Waititi's performance as soft spoken rock creature Korg to the film's use of "Immigrant Song" in the climax to the relaxed chemistry between Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston that leads to some of the film's funniest moments to Tessa Thompson's hard drinking, hard fighting Valkyrie. But the best thing about it, from my perspective, is the simple fact that I don't think a movie like this could have been made even as little as five years ago, and certainly not with a budget of almost $200 million. It is weird and silly, like some marvelous fever dream guided by someone who's love of comic books, science fiction, and the '80s has converged into one sprawling and delightfully bizarre vision. So thank you to Guardians of the Galaxy and its surprise success in 2014 for paving the way for this anything goes superhero adventure.

Review: High-Rise (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Tom Hiddleston

Ben Wheatley's take on J.G. Ballard's High-Rise comes so very close to working that it's tempting to suggest that he just take it back, tweak it some more, and try again. But that's not how it works, and the film is what is it, which is a stylishly crafted and executed piece that is visually engaging and even, at times, daring, but which never offers much more than a surface perspective on its allegorical tale of income disparity and social inequity. It gets off to a good enough start, leading with the dark humor and element of the grotesque that will define so much of what is about to unfold, but somewhere around the middle it starts to sag, its storytelling style leaving its lack of depth exposed, and by the end it actually starts to feel a bit tiresome. There are a number of great images and individual scenes and moments in High-Rise, but taken as a whole it ultimately doesn't amount to very much.

Review: Crimson Peak (2015)

* * 1/2
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain

Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak is a triumph of crafts over storytelling. Its production design and costumes are some of the most glorious of any film I've seen this year, but though del Toro is able to build a creepy, effective atmosphere in the film's middle section, he's not quite able to sustain it for the remainder of the story. The story itself is a classic ghost/haunted house tale, though again, while the film nails the look of it, the actually telling of it unfolds in a largely predictable fashion. But, man, is it ever grotesquely beautiful to watch.

Review: Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)

* * * 1/2
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston

It seems only natural that it would take a Jim Jarmusch to make vampires seem even remotely cool again. Almost a decade after the Twilight series made vampires the go-to means of channeling the danger of teenage sexuality into a safer, schmoopier form of romanticism, and helped make vampires so ubiquitous in pop culture that any allure was slowly leached out of them, Only Lovers Left Alive comes along to show that it's possible to return the luster to our favorite breed of brooding fiends. Starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as a pair of vampires who have lived for centuries as observers and spent that time collecting knowledge and art while lamenting the ways that human beings don't quite appreciate what they have, Only Lovers has more in common with Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire than with most other vampire movies, and exists on atmosphere more than on plot (though a plot finds it eventually). But what a beautiful, dreamy, hypnotic atmosphere it is.

Review: The Deep Blue Sea (2012)

* * * 1/2 Director: Terence Davies
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston

Despite the fact that not much else was playing at the time, I had avoided The Deep Blue Sea when it was in theaters because a cursory look at its plot made it sound similar to The End of the Affair, the 1999 film starring Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes, which managed to be approximately a million years long despite having a runtime of only 120 minutes. Appearances can be deceiving, however, because The Deep Blue Sea is really very little like that film and is in fact a deeply engrossing drama anchored by one of the finest performances I've seen all year. It's also gorgeously photographed, which leaves me kicking myself for having missed the chance to see it on the big screen. Lesson learned.