Glenn Greening

[7.6/10] Solo has the scruffy confidence to be its own movie. Of the ten Star Wars films, it’s the only so far not to tie directly into the events of the main saga. That alone makes it interesting and laudable as the first real cinematic step of Star Wars ceasing to be a film series and starting to be a “cinematic universe.”

Which isn’t to say the film isn’t closely connected to its predecessors. Solo reveals how Han and Chewbacca first became a team. It features the first meeting between its title character in Lando Calrissian. It even shows how Han ended up with the Millenium Falcon. And that’s setting aside references to a “gangster on Tatooine” and hints of a growing rebellion and familiar characters popping up in unexpected places. Make no mistake -- the film is certainly interested in reminding its viewers where all these characters will be in ten years time.

But it’s also good enough not to be about that. Solo is part-heist flick and part coming-of-age film. It’s more interested in Han’s big adventure in this movie and how he gets to be the sarcastic smuggler we meet in A New Hope than it is in how he fits into the broader Star Wars Universe, to the film’s benefit. The promise of these “Star Wars stories” is that they can use the diverse, elaborate world that George Lucas and his collaborators created to spin all kinds of yarns untethered to the concerns of the Skywalker family. Solo still anchors its story on familiar faces, but tells its own tale, and comes out the better for it.

The big problem with Solo is that it has two modes: (a.) irreverent action/adventure flick filled with colorful characters and (b.) semi-serious interrogation of What Han Solo Is™, and it’s much more entertaining and effective at the former than the latter. The script, penned by Empire Strikes Back scribe Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jonathan, does a superb job at introducing all these figures, old and new, and then letting them bounce off on another in the confines of a rickety old ship and a job pulled at various rough-and-tumble locales. But it falters when trying to use that setup to get at its title character’s true nature.

The film’s thesis on that front is a solid one -- that he is unavoidably rough around the edges, and wants to be “bad,” but deep down he’s good. That is, after all, his essential arc in the Original Trilogy, where a seemingly good-for-nothing smuggler is revealed to have a heart of gold and sympathies to the cause of the Rebellion, or at least his friends. Solo retraces that arc a bit, and weakens Han’s progression in the saga films a little in the course of that, but the Kasdans get Han: the talk that’s bigger than his paydirt, the cocksure improvisational confidence, and the innate goodness that peaks through his rough-hewn if charming exterior which he’ll deny to the end.

The film just does a much better job of showing us those qualities through Han’s actions and attitude than in having various other characters ham-fistedly comment on it and wax rhapsodic about who he’s been and who he’ll be.

The best parts work, as they must, thanks to Alden Ehrenreich, who takes over the role originated by Harrison Ford in 1977’s A New Hope. Following in those iconic footsteps is a tall order, but Ehrenreich makes it work. He doesn't stoop to doing an impression of Ford, short of a few conspicuous mannerisms, but still manages to capture the character’s rakish charm and overconfident, anything goes spirit. Yes, it’s a little hard to grok that this guy becomes 70s era Harrison Ford in ten years, but Ehrenreich absolutely works as Young Han, and the movie wouldn’t work at all without that.

The other characters that populate the film vary a bit more, but are largely fun and entertaining. Woody Harrelson’s turn as Beckett sees him filling the weathered good ol’ boy niche he’s carved out for years now. Emilia Clarke does fine as Qi'ra, who manages to be a little bit more than just Han’s love interest, but only a little. Donald Glover’s charisma carries the day as he inhabits Young Lando, but occasionally he comes across like Glover doing his best Lando impersonation than a fully convincing character (though his chemistry with Ehrenreich sparkles over that nicely). And there’s plenty of other fun, if seemingly disposable side characters, like Paul Bettany’s genteel but menacing villain, Dryden Vos, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a delightfully irrepressible droid revolutionary named L3. Even relative newcomer Joonas Suotamo brings character beyond the fur to Chewbacca, alongside Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt’s traditional groans and growls.

When Solo deploys these characters well, it’s a hell of an action-filled romp. Seeing Han’s Oliver Twist-esque origins blossom into his up-and-down efforts to live on the fringes of both the law and the galaxy are fun and thrilling. The movie takes the viewer to new, scrappier corners of the galaxy, packing the frame with wild new creatures and settings that help make Star Wars feel big and diverse again.

Han’s goals and wants are clear; his compatriots are well-if-quickly sketched, and the set pieces are nicely chaotic and spontaneous, as befits the way any plan involving Solo should shake out. The pacing is off here and there, and certain action sequences extend to the point of exhaustion (likely a casualty of the hand off from the nixed boundary-pushers Phil Lord & Christopher Miller to steady hand Ron Howard). But the core setting of the film -- a band of well-traveled and wannabe outlaws does a job with pitfalls and smart remarks -- works like gangbusters.

Then, the final act hits, and the film stops being fun and starts being serious. There’s double-crosses on double-crosses, heavily sign-posted character-defining choices, and cliché, ponderous statements about who Han is supposed to be or can’t be or might have been that one time (we’re not really sure).

Solo, like its protagonist, has its heart in the right place here. It’s laudable to try to turn this adventure into something revealing about one of the franchise’s biggest characters and not just an empty-calorie escapade. But the film can’t support the weight of that introspection (not to mention all of that clunky extrospection) and becomes bogged down when trying to unravel both its less-compelling plot threads and its character study in one big convoluted finale.

But one thing is for sure. This movie is not about the Skywalkers. Despite an eyebrow-raising tie-in, it is not about the broader Star Wars Universe. It’s about Han Solo, and It is, for the first time, a genuinely independent Star Wars story. For most of its run time, Solo is a standalone (if franchise-winking) adventure from the days when Han was still cutting his teeth as a smuggler and outlaw. The film has its problems when it departs from that, but still shows the benefits, and the fun, of Star Wars movies that follow the lead of Solo himself and aim to go it alone.

Home Alone is a perfect movie, not in the sense that there is zero room for improvement or it's the greatest artistic achievement in human history, but in that it does what it sets out to do in a nigh-flawless fashion. It is impeccably paced, shot, and edited. It has the right balance of escapist fantasy, relatable family drama, humor, heart, and even slapstick comedy to keep the film lively without making it a piece of fluff. And miraculously, despite a cast full of ringers like Catherine O’Hara and Joe Pesci, the whole thing hinges on the acting talents of a nine-year-old boy who pulls it off with flying colors.

Because as great as O’Hara is as the mother desperate to get back to her son, as amusing as Pesci and Daniel Stern are as a pair of robbers who get more than they bargained for, as hilarious as the inimitable John Candy (who steals the show with less than five minutes of screen time) is as a polka-playing good Samaritan, Home Alone is, first and foremost, a story about Kevin McCallister, and even at that tender age, Culkin (with a huge assist from writer John Hughes and director Chris Columbus) sells that story like a champ.

That’s part of why Home Alone works so perfectly as a family movie that plays with both kids and adults. As a child, the more outsized elements of the story loom large. The iconic scenes of Kevin tormenting his pursuers offer a spate of perfectly deployed slapstick, worthy of Looney Tunes or The Three Stooges and apt to elicit any number of giggles from the younger members of the audience. By the same token, there’s an escapist fantasy for kids in the early part of the film, where Kevin jumps on the bed, eats junk, and “watches rubbish” without anyone being able to tell him otherwise. There is an incredible sense of fun to these scenes, whether it’s the ACME-inspired antics and great physical performances of the “Wet Bandits” or Kevin living out the immediate joy of his wish to be family-free.

But what makes the film more than just an insubstantial flight of fancy is the way it mixes that holiday mirth with enough heft, enough of the downside of that wish and a stealthily nuanced depiction of a young child maturing in both his ability to take care of himself and his understanding of the world.

When we meet Kevin in the film’s frenetic opening sequence, showing an entire household abuzz with cousins and uncles all in a state of pre-travel frenzy, Kevin cannot even pack his own suitcase. There’s recurring jabs from his siblings and cousins that his mom has to do everything for him. Over the course of the film, when pressed into service by being the all to his lonesome, Kevin becomes a surprisingly self-sufficient little boy. When not smothered by a score of other siblings, he shows a surprising resourcefulness, proving himself able to go to the store, do laundry, and even leave out cookies for Santa Claus when the time arrives. This culminates in the cornucopia of traps Kevin sets for the robbers, proving that he is even capable of defending his house from those who would do his family harm.

In the process, Kevin overcomes a number of his fears, which provides another thematic throughline for the film. Chris Columbus and Director of Photography Julio Macat help this part of the story tremendously by the way a series of normal things are made frightening by shooting them from Kevin’s perspective. From the low shot on the furnace in the basement as it seems to taunt and beckon Kevin while he’s doing laundry, to the scene in the store where Old Man Marley is introduced only by his big black boots, seeming to glower down at Kevin from high above, Macat’s camera keeps us inside Kevin’s head, seeing the terror in these otherwise quotidian interactions. That cinches Kevin’s transition when he tells the furnace not to bother – we understand what he’s overcoming.

The heart of the movie, however, comes through in the scene where he conquers his other big fear – his scary looking next door neighbor, whom his brother described as a secret murderer the cops couldn’t catch. When Kevin runs into him at church, he discovers that Marley isn’t some serial ghoul, but rather a kindly old man who offers him a bit of solace and comfort in a time of need.

It’s an incredibly well-written scene, bolstered by the stellar performance of Roberts Blossom as Marley and Culkin playing Kevin at his most precocious and worldly. Blossom sells the utter warmth and humanity of Blossom behind his icy visage. His sitting next to Kevin as a friendly presence, telling a small part of his life story, and speaking to the lad as something approaching an equal provides a big leap for the film’s protagonist. It’s part of that maturation process, the realization that he shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that he can’t necessarily trust his brother’s accounts, and that the people who seem the most unnerving can be the people you want in your hour of need. In one scene, Old Man Marley goes from being the film’s great threat to being its heart.

And he ties into the other big motif running through the film – an appreciation of one’s family. What could easily be a trite Hallmark card of a message from the movie has real force from the way the lesson is delivered. When Kevin wishes he had no family, the film helps us understand why, putting him in that relatable little kid situation of causing a scene, feeling you were goaded into it, and that nobody takes treats you nicely or appreciates you. And then when his wish comes true, it takes some time to let the audience, and Kevin, revel in his newfound freedom. But it also show’s Kevin slowly but surely realizing that he misses them, and that as much as they drive him nuts sometimes, having them back is what he really wants for Christmas.

That’s why the scene and story of Old Man Marley’s estrangement with his son is so important. It’s center on the idea that the issues Kevin is dealing with – fear, family discontent, loneliness around the holidays – are not unique to him or his tender age, but are universal obstacles that people of all ages confront at various points in their life. It’s a sign of Kevin’s broadening perspective, the way he’s being changed by this experience and learns that it’s possible to love your family even when you’re angry with them.

It’s also his realization that even in those impulsive moments, whether you’re an old man or a little boy, that you make grand declarations about not wanting to be a part of your family anymore, you may soon find yourself regretting it, yearning for the thing you were so ready to give up. Kevin starts to understand this in Home Alone, and it’s why his sincere plea to one of Santa’s “messengers” (who amusingly offers him tic tacs and can’t get his car started) to bring his family back has weight and meaning.

All of this is able to come together so well because so many of the technical, or less showy parts of the film are all done extraordinarily well. John Williams’s score expertly matches the mood of the film at every turn, whether he’s playing yuletide pop classics or an orchestral score that fits a grand escape or moment of tension. The writing has a clockwork quality to it. Hughes’s script accounts for the circumstances in which a nine-year-old would left alone by himself, unable to be contacted by his parents or the authorities in a nicely plausible fashion, and he constructs a series of events in which Kevin believes he wished his family away and then wished them back in a way that is equally convincing for the kid and the viewer.

And the film is shot and edited superbly, with amusing cuts like Kevin calling out for his mother with an immediate smash cut to a roaring airplane, or the frenzied fashion in which the McCallisters are depicted racing through the airport. Every part of this film works in sync, to deliver a visually exciting, narratively sound work that lets its humor, story, and message, land without a hint of friction.

So when we reach the end of the film and see Kevin’s reunion with his family, and Old Man Marley’s reunion with his, both moments feel earned. Chris Columbus tells a nigh-wordless story in the final scene, with O’Hara’s Kate McCallister silently marveling at how great the house looks and Kevin offering an expression of reluctance, one that suggests he might still be holding onto the anger he unleashed at this mother the last time they were face to face, before quickly sliding into a smile and running to embrace her. Their expressions tell the story, of the way both mother and child now see each other differently on this Christmas Day. The same goes for the expression of gratitude, of near-tearful camaraderie, between Kevin and Old Man Marley as Kevin witnesses his new friends’ reunion with a family of his own. Everyone here has grown; everyone has taken chances despite their fears, and come out better for it.

Throughout all of this, Home Alone manages to be cute, sweet, thrilling, funny, sharp, clever, and hopeful. For films set alone the holiday, it’s all too easy to lean into maudlin sentiment or cloying comedy, but Hughes’s and Columbus’s collaboration produced a film that manages to be nimble and amusing from start to finish, with enough meaning and mirth in it to make the story told feel as important as it is small. Home Alone tells the tale of a young man learning that despite his fear, his inexperience, and his familial resentments, he’s ready to take his first step into adulthood, and finds in the process that what he needs most are the people he was afraid of or wanted to wish away.

While the debates among the Star Wars faithful rage on about the proper ranking of the theatrical films, or the level of canonicity of various events, or who shot whom when, one simple truth remains. However high its highs, a franchise as wide-ranging as Star Wars with tentacles in television, novels, comic books, toys, games, and every spinoff and merchandising opportunity imaginable, is inevitably going to produce a fair amount of utter crap.

Most of that crap can be laughed off or outright forgotten because of how tangential it is to the anchors of the franchise. Ephemeral stories or characters, dreamed up by folks far removed from franchise czar George Lucas, who may or may not have been paying attention to one another’s work, can be easily derided and discarded.

But The Star Wars Holiday Special cannot be. Despite its status as complete and total dreck, despite the minimal involvement from Lucas, and despite its mostly disconnected pieces, the special has become an indelible part of Star Wars lore, the original misstep for the franchise, destined to live in disco ball-tinged infamy as long as the franchise persists.

It is, after all, the first on-screen glimpse of the soon-vaunted “Extended Universe” of the franchise, the first unofficial expansion of the world Lucas crafted outside of the films themselves. It features the original introduction of Boba Fett (who was designed by Captain America: The First Avenger director Joe Johnston). And most importantly, it has the imprimatur of legitimacy that comes from having nearly all of the major players from the original cast reprise their roles.

It’s true. That’s part of why it’s so hard to cast aside the holiday special. As tempting as it is to write off the bizarre psychedelic phantasmagoria/comedy throwback, there are Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford in all their phoning-it-in glory to remind you that, no, like or not, this really is Star Wars, and you’re just going to have to deal with it.

But given how thoroughly the flaws of The Star Wars Holiday Special have been documented, let’s start out by focusing on what’s good about it, however slim those pickings may be.

The highlight of the piece, to the extent something so dim can be said to cast and bit of illumination at all, is Bea Arthur’s “Goodnight, But Not Goodbye” number. Set at the famous cantina on Tatooine, the song (written by Ken and Mitzie Welch, parents of superb folksinger Gillian Welch) doesn’t exactly fit in with the spirit of A New Hope, but it has a sort of campy-but-sincere quality all its own.

The piece is a Cabaret-meets-Cheers setup that Arthur sells like a champ, wandering around the room and cavorting with any number of rubber mask aliens in a fashion that’s enough to make you believe she has the slightest modicum of affection for them. Again, it doesn’t really work in the context of Star Wars (though the way the song integrates the famous cantina theme deserves some recognition), but Arthur embraces the sweet-ish kitsch and delivers one of the special’s few winning segments.

The other saving grace of the special, and indeed the only part of it that Lucasfilm has ever officially released, is the animated segment at the halfway mark. The short piece was animated by the production company Nelvana, who went on to do the animation for two future Star Wars ventures on television: the Ewoks and Droids series. This segment does feel the most Star Wars of anything in the special, with a space-bound adventure, a shocking reveal, and a new planet bustling with unusual alien life.

But even this piece of the special, entitled “The Faithful Wookiee,” is mostly a dud. The designs and movements of the characters are bizarre, leading the viewer to wonder if the animators had ever actually seen A New Hope. Luke looks like an escaped mental patient who just got back from a makeover. Han’s nose is longer than his blaster. C-3PO bobs along on his coils in a way never seen before or since, and R2-D2 bends and wobbles like he was made via a droid-shaped jello mold. The reveal of Boba Fett’s true allegiance plays well, but the segment comes off as the fever dream of someone who caught the first half of Episode IV in a bar one night rather than the real deal.

There’s other merits to the film. As bizarre as it is to include a scene of Chewbacca’s elderly father watching holographic human pornography, Diahann Carroll sings the hell out of “This Minute Now,” a song that scans more like a forgotten Bond theme than a part of the Star Wars universe. There’s a mildly redeeming sweetness to the way Saun Dann (Art Carney) offers his affections to the wookiee family. And while it gives the special itself no greater credit, the 1970s commercials attached to the bootleg versions of the film floating around are endlessly fascinating as a time capsule of American culture and commerce.

But otherwise, The Star Wars Holiday Special is an onslaught of the predominantly dull, the overwhelmingly chintzy, and the occasionally bizarre. There’s an odd strain of psychedelia to the special, from a parade of Seussian acrobats, to the acid trip background of Carroll’s musical number, to a lite brite-colored performance from Jefferson Starship. The hideous Wookiee costumes look like they were later spray-painted and reused in the live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas film, which would match the set’s hideous green carpet.

The broad attempts at comedy (most of them from Harvey Korman in a variety of roles) are tepid and full of awkward and sometimes creepy dead spots. The long stretches of segments that include nothing but Wookiee growls quickly become exhausting. And the ending, which features a series of Wookiees seemingly walking into the sun and emerging on the set of the local community theater’s production of Eyes Wide Shut, where all the main Star Wars cast members are magically present for undefined reasons, is the cherry on the perpetually bewildering cake.

Still, The Star Wars Holiday Special lives on in the hearts and minds of the diehard fans, even if we’re not exactly clamoring for another celebration of Life Day. It’s a reminder that even just a year removed from the film that started it all, Lucas & Co. were ready to put their good name on a steaming pile of bantha fodder. The special is an insane combination of a space opera and a variety show, a monument to the fact that the merchandising and spinoff empire that’s spanned decades and mediums galore, started off with a stumble that makes The Phantom Menace look like The Empire Strikes Back. But it too is Star Wars with all the greatness, terribleness, and downright strangeness that title conjures up.

[8.1/10] Black Panther doesn’t have the aura of a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Yes, it has the allies and enemies we’ve met in prior movies like Age of Ultron and Civil War. It has the jovial vibe among its main cast. And it has the mandatory, climactic third act battle, draped in CGI and the usual fanfare.

But it also stands apart from the rest of the MCU’s offerings. It is unabashedly Afrocentric in its focus and its approach. It is a plainly political film, meditating on the legacy of colonialism, the oppression of people of color around the world, and the push and pull of isolationism vs. global activism. Though squeezed into the standard, three act superhero structure, Black Panther takes its audience to a different space, one untouched by the rest of the world and, in some ways, untouched by the broader cinematic universe the film acts in concert with.

It is a uniquely, profoundly black take on the modern superhero film, one long overdue, if for no other reason than how it breathes new life into the familiar formula. There’s nothing wrong with comic book movies hitting certain standard notes of uncertainty, challenge, and self-realization. But Black Panther is a cinematic argument for broadening the franchise, showing the renewed, distinctive character these common stories take on, when they’re told from a fully-formed, confident, and different perspective.

That distinct atmosphere is the best thing about the film, alongside the clear camaraderie among its cast and characters. No hero is an island these days, and while the title character has a notable arc that’s done well, the most enjoyable portions of the movie emerge when the plot mechanics of that arc are set aside for Black Panther to chat, spark, and laugh with his tech-wiz sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), his altruistic ex Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), and his fierce, principled guard Okoye (Danai Gurira). So much of these films depends on the chemistry and connection between the people the audience is asked to spend two hours with, and Black Panther soars on that front, building a rapport among those core characters that carries the day.

At the same time, Chadwick Boseman gives one of the best dramatic performances to grace a Marvel film. Thematically, the film centers on the notion of whether someone with a kind heart but also uncertainty about how and where to guide his people can be a good leader, and Boseman brings the inherent decency and heft to make these ideas land.

Black Panther constantly puts its title character between conflicting choices and impulses. T’Challa has to balance his inherent sense of mercy, shown to the leader of a challenging tribe, with his desire to deliver swift justice, shown when he threatens enemy of the state Ulysses Klaue in public. He has to reconcile his deep love for his father and his deep respect for his people’s traditions with his growing realizations that his forebears were men, not gods, who made mistakes, and that his homeland may need to change and evolve. He must square his country’s tradition of isolation, with the competing calls to share the nation’s wealth and knowledge in order to help those in need, or to use those resources to bring down the oppressors around the world who keep them in that state.

If there’s one area where Black Panther excels, it’s in creating a central character who’s pulled in multiple directions, on multiple dimensions, leaving him unsure what path to take and what sort of man to be, until the right direction is forged in fires of challenge and hardship. The film is a political story, a cultural story, a family story, and a personal story.

It’s just that Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole seem not particularly interested in it being a superhero story. That’s not necessarily a problem. Films as tonally diverse as Logan and Deadpool have shown you can use the superhero framework to craft a multitude of different films with different approaches within the superhero framework. But there’s a sense in Black Panther that the comic book-y elements are perfunctory, that Coogler and Cole had a compelling story to tell about legacy, power, and obligation, couldn’t tell it without including the de jure superhero fireworks.

Black Panther is at its best when it shows its title character confronting his responsibilities as a citizen, son, and leader, or finding strength, challenge, and affection among his friends and family. And it’s at its weakest when it shows him punching and kicking those things in comic book movies that inevitably must be punched and kicked.

At times, Coogler and director of photography Rachel Morrison capture the same sort of raw intensity of combat that hews close to a boxing match from Creed. The close quarters combat of the challenges for leadership are tight and visceral, giving an immediate sense of the personalities clashing at the same time bodies are, and a digitally-stitched but nominally unbroken action sequence early in the film has the energy and fluidity of a splash page. But too often, the film’s fight sequences are a big jumble, edited to bits and nigh-impossible to follow from one blow to the next. Worse yet, the CGI is especially in these sequence -- digital characters move without weight, animated creatures and vehicles disrupt the immersion of a scene, and climactic fights between fully computer-generated figures in a computer-generated world feel like gameplay clips pulled from Mortal Kombat.

Despite the strength of the story that ends in that skirmish, the film ostensibly breaks little new ground in terms of its narrative. Notably, Marvel’s own Thor trilogy covers much of the same territory, from the prince questioning his place as king, to far off lands debating the appropriate level of engagement with the outside world, to unruly yet sympathetic relatives with an appetite to conquer angling for the throne.

But what makes Black Panther so refreshing is the perspective from which it approaches this material. There is a richness to the cultural wellspring that Coogler and his team draw from, one underutilized in big budget filmmaking. The film is rife with different hues, different pleasures and sore sports, that inform the movie’s sensibilities even as it applies them to the smash-and-then-find-yourself routine that the Marvel origin movies have nigh-perfected at this point.

It’s the critic’s crutch to see a film’s story as a metaphor for the film itself. And yet it’s hard not to see parallels between the story of T’Challa deciding to bring Wakanda into the rest of the world, and Coogler deciding to bring his Black Panther into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One of the wonderful things about the MCU is the way that it can create a cohesive sense of place among different films, and foster the sense, through minor easter eggs and the occasional team-up, that all of these events are taking place in the same world.

But despite having a few of those continuity nods and connections, Black Panther feels like it occupies a world all its own, one full of its own color, character, and vibrancy. At the end of the movie, T’Challa opts for outreach, he decides to open Wakanda’s borders, and share his nation’s knowledge and culture with the world. With this film, Ryan Coogler & Co. do the same for Marvel, telling their own story in their own, but also bringing such a distinctiveness and a specificity to it that makes the world of these films a deeper, richer, better place for Black Panther’s presence within it.

[9.3/10] At first blush, Baby Driver writer-director Edgar Wright and fellow director Wes Anderson don’t seem like a natural pairing. Wright’s films, like Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead tend to be overtly comedic, include a good quotient of action, and bring an adventure-focused quality to the proceedings. Anderson’s, by contrast, tend to be quieter, more droll pictures, that are certainly funny and have their share of exciting moments, but which find their form in the more reserved, music box sensibilities of Anderson’s oeuvre.

And yet, Wright and Anderson’s films have something very much in common. They both create films where it seems like the world was built to fit their characters, rather than more typical films where the main personalities find themselves struggling in a world that’s indifferent to them or even more commonly, which doesn’t fit them at all. Whether it’s Anderson’s elegant dioramas or Wright’s “everything’s foreshadowing” rube goldberg machines, the environments of these films bend to our heroes, not the other way around, resulting in some wonderfully well-choreographed cinema.

Baby Driver is the apotheosis of this tack, brought to bear in the form of car chases, gunfights, and the best jukebox soundtrack this side of the galaxy (and any attendant guardians). Indeed, Marvel Studios’ Guardians is a nice reference point, as both films not only feature countless rockin’ tunes, but also center on roguish but decent young men, holding onto to the last holy artifacts of their mother, finding solace in music and falling in with a rough crowd before deciding to stand for something more. It’s kismet that star Ansel Elgort, who plays the lead (appropriately named “Baby’), is signed on to be the past and future Han Solo in the latest standalone Star Wars flick, a character who’s very much in the DNA of Guardians’ Peter “Star-Lord” Quill.

Independent of any comic book counterparts, however, Baby Driver doesn’t offer much in terms of an original premise. Baby is a badass driver and a decent kid, mixed up with some bad folks, tentative about the prospect of blood and his hands, wanting to start a new life with his lady love. There are a lot of tropes in the film: the quiet but effective young naif, the loose cannon gangster, the slimy mastermind, the ingenue who represents a beacon of hope, the inevitable moral dilemma.

But what the film lacks in originality in its setup, it more than makes up for in performance, texture, and execution. Baby Driver has a murderer’s row of performers who chew up and spit out Wright’s script and make what could otherwise be stock character come alive and compensate for any dearth of depth with the sheer vividness of their presence.

Kevin Spacey looks alive for the first time in ages, bringing a blasé menace as the organizer of each heist. Jamie Foxx is at his extroverted best, rolling through pointed monologues and bringing a lived-in flavor of crazy. Lily James has enough homespun, wanderlust charm to balance out her underwritten part. Elgort is necessarily more reserved, but equally endearing and a fine fulcrum for the movie. And Jon Hamm brings his Mad Men practiced-gentility in a fashion that makes him seem like that much monstrous when the scales fall.
But while the performances carry the film in its quieter moments, what sets Baby Driver apart is sequence after superlative sequence of breathtaking kinetic cinema. Not content to simply toss in explosive but empty action to keep the heart-pumping, Wright, cinematographer Bill Pope, and editor Paul Machliss create these elegantly constructed set pieces of gorgeous synchronous stunts, twists, and turns, the hum right along with the music, just like the protagonist.

That works whether Baby is blowing the doors off the film’s opening with a series of death-defying terms perfectly sequenced to his backing track. It works when the young man finds himself embroiled in a firefight where surprise shots and returned fire blast back and forth in time with the beat. It works in chases on foot as the rhythmic thump of the tune of the moment matches the energy of pursuers and pursued alike. Even when Baby goes to get coffee, the world moves with him; from the graffiti on the walls to the buskers on the street everything goes where he goes.

In the same way, the film doesn’t so much present action scenes as it does ballets of chrome and octane. Baby Driver oozes with style and tempo, knowing how to hold the audience’s attention through great escapes that and close scrapes that keep topping one another, and quieter scenes where the tension comes from sweet interactions juxtaposed with combustive elements, leading the viewer to wonder which will win the day.

It’s also a near perfectly-paced movie. Like a perfect mixtape, Wright knows when to kick things into gear and when to slow things down to let the audience catch its breath before putting his foot on the gas once more. While the film starts to feel a bit overextended at the very end, with the villain creeping into unkillable slasher territory, for the vast majority of its runtime it holds your attention from moment to moment and scene to scene expertly. In that, Wright matches the talents of his protagonist, directing and maneuvering this complex machine like it were a rough-and-tumble ballerina, full of slick thrills and inimitable grace.

He achieves this with a movie, a setting, and a lead character, that each move like clockwork in sync with one another. While Baby Driver is neither as quiet or twee as Wes Anderson’s work, it brings with it the film’s own sense of longing and melancholy beneath an intricately constructed world. Every scene is a dance, every moment a confluence of sound and imagery and movement, whether in the pulse-pounding races against cops or robbers, or gauzy imaginings of another life that might be. In Baby Driver, Wright has built his most elegant, intricate toy, and it’s a treat and a pleasure to see him play on the screen once again.

[8.8/10] I’m currently watching my fifth consecutive Spider-Man animated series. From the 1990s cartoon that I grew up on, to the Ultimate Spider-Man series that ended in 2017, Marvel and its licensees gave us five versions of the web-head in different forms. Some kept Spidey in New York, others sent him off into space. Some made him an untested kid in high school, others made him an accomplished young adult in college. Some narrowed Spidey’s world to a focused ecosystem of characters and conflicts and others expanded to encompass the whole of the Marvel universe.

But all of them starred Peter Parker as Spider-Man. And in the process of repeat adaptation, they can’t help but prompt the question -- what makes Spider-Man who he is? What is the connective tissue that makes all of these adaptations of a piece and recognizable as stories about the same character? Is it just the suit, or the web-slinging, or the quips, or is it something deeper than that?

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse aims to answer that question with Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino teenager from Brooklyn who took over the Spider-Man mantle in the “Ultimate” line of Marvel comics. Miles shares some of Peter’s qualities -- he’s young, he’s bright, he’s uncertain. But he also has his unique elements: his two loving parents, his being torn between two sides of his family, and the different culture he is a part of and represents. He is familiar to anyone who’s followed the Spider-Man character for years and years in his endearing efforts to figure out both his normal life and his superheroic one, and his youthful awkwardness and uncertainty at it, but he’s also distinct from the raft of Peter Parkers who’ve graced both the big and small screen in the last two decades.

And most importantly, this is his story. Into the Spider-Verse uses its combo-breaking protagonist and its parallel universe-hopping plot to ask the broader question of what makes a Spider-Man (or -Gwen or -Ham). But it is first and foremost a story about a young man being pulled in two different directions by the father he loves and the uncle he admires, about resolving the differences between the place that can help lift him up and the place he came from, about figuring out not just who Spider-Man is, but who you are, when everything’s counting on you.

Strip away the spidey-sense and supervillains. Strip away the interuniversal mashup and the flash and fury. At heart, Into the Spider-Verse is a coming of age tale for arguably the most compelling young protagonist the superhero genre has offered in a long time. And while it is yet another cape flick origin story -- something the film itself pokes fun at -- it has the smarts to make it much less about how a budding hero gets his superpowers, and much more about how a teenage boy decides who he wants to be.

That’s aided by the style of the film, which works in concert with the substance. The term “comic book movie” is thrown around willy-nilly to describe any cape movie (including by yours truly) but this is the first one to truly earn the designation. The entire film exudes the bumpy texture and tropes of the medium to firmly cement the movie as emerging, fully-formed, from the comic pages. It’s a tack that’s particularly effective when Miles gains his spider powers, and the prominence of thought bubbles and whirly onomatopoeia take over to cement the fact that something serious has shifted here. Honestly, you could halt the movie at around the half hour mark and still have a tidy and encouraging tale about Miles discovering his abilities that would work as its own thing and leave you hungry for more.

But that would deprive us of the ensuing hour of superheroic flash and fun. Into the Spider-Verse is a joy to watch, with kinetic, color-bursting action that captures the ebb and flow of Spider-Man’s balletic grace through the skies better than any adaptation to date. The stylized approach to character design and animation gives the whole movie a distinctive flavor from the first glance to the final scene. And the way the movie blends art styles to help connote the ways in which this is a crossover between Spider Men and Women from across the multiverse is funny and fantastic.

The films boasts almost as many web-heads per capita as a Spidey-themed Where’s Waldo book, but it works in the movie’s favor. Whether it’s the black and white stylings of Spider-Man Noir, the anime-influenced presence of Peni Parker, or the Looney Tunes-aping insanity of Spider-Man, one look at the horde of Spider-people on screen tells you what’s afoot.

At the same time, the film sketches out its supporting characters with complete arcs. A spider-powered Gwen stacy has tentative but inevitable romantic chemistry with Miles, but is a capable and vital part of the action, and slowly overcomes her reluctance to build friendships after what happened in her home universe. At the same time, an older Peter Parker from another world joins the fray to give us the “after” of the traditional Spider-Man to Miles’s “before.” There’s real juice in seeing a potbellied, battle-weary, and cynical Spider-Man being forced to rediscover his ideals through the eyes of someone who looks up to him (or, at least, a version of him), and needs him as a mentor. And the way the film not only reconstructs one Spider-Man in the background while it’s building up another for the first time, while baking in a story of growing comfortable with having children, is nigh-masterful.

But in the end, apart from the eye-catching art and dimension-spanning guest stars, Into the Spider-Verse is about Miles, and that’s where it’s the most engrossing. The film constantly draws a contrast between the life Mile’s policeman father wants for him, and the rougher-edged existence his black sheep Uncle has cut out for himself, with the freedom and style that Miles envies while trapped in his midtown magnet school existence. It depicts Miles as inherently uncertain, before and after he has the ability to stick to walls. He is undeniably capable of great things, something his family members and reluctant mentors all agree on. But he doesn't know what shape that’s supposed to take, how to be what he’s expected to be or who he means to be.

Then, through heart-rending but heartening trial and tragedy, he finds out. Into the Spider-Verse signposts it a little too heavily for my tastes, but with the encouragement of his uncle, the acceptance of his father, Miles finds his own path, his own style, that’s the true-to-oneself harmonization of the best that’s been passed on to him, from man and Spider-Man alike. He has his father’s inherent goodness and sense of doing what’s right, with his uncle’s talent for improvisation and determination, and his own creative spark that drives him to put his own signature on each move and choice he makes. The best part of Into the Spider-Verse comes not only from when our hero truly becomes Spider-Man; it comes from when he fully and firmly becomes confident, caring, self-actualized Miles Morales he wants to be.

With that, Into the Spider-Verse answers its animating question. In a preemptive strike against those who would claim that someone who doesn't share Peter Parker’s name, or his skin color, cannot be Spider-Man, it posits that the things that made the character so indelible through fifty years of stories go beyond moniquers or melanin. Through Miles’s journey, and his other universe counterparts, it declares that being Spider-Man requires facing down tragedy and knowing the pain of loss but having it embolden you toward justice rather than driving you to madness and cruelty like it does for the film’s villains. It means learning to trust yourself and what you’re capable of even when that tentativeness and uncertainty hangs over you like a cloud that you just have to thwip or leap your way through.

And most of all, persevering, getting up when you’re knocked down, and deciding not to quit. Time again, Miles is pushed back, beaten down, and all-around inclined to just give up. It’s the quality that inspires the most doubt, in his father, in his wall-crawling colleagues, and in himself. But when he overcomes it, when he finds himself and learns to believe in his own potential, he also refuses to stay down.

That’s the central idea of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The film was preceded by five decades’ worth of Spider-Man adaptations in scores of different mediums, and it will almost certainly be followed by five decades’ more. What unites these varying takes on the character, what makes them true and right and real despite their differences, is that indefatigable quality each of them shares, despite setting or style or sobriquet. And Miles Morales gives shape to that lesson, straining and striving to become Spider-Man, and becoming himself in the process.

[7.6/10] We want our villains to be lively and hateable. We want them to twirl their mustaches. We want them to show their evil loudly in public and harshly in private. We want them to be as thoroughly repugnant, devoid of human connection, that it’s clear to anyone watching how profoundly they’ve lost their way. Sure, we like a good complicated bad guy in our stories these days, but moviegoers still wants to be thrilled, chilled, and know exactly whom to root against.

Vice is a two-hour antidote to that want. It is a paean to the banality of evil -- half exposé, half resentful hagiography for a man who, on the film’s account, did more lasting damage to the world than any big screen nogoodnik imaginable, and did it all by being quiet, unnoticed, and boring.

It would be far too much to call Vice an admiring portrait of Dick Cheney. Writer-director Adam McKay clearly despises the man and all that he’s wrought, to where his film is as much a laundry list of misdeeds and power-grabs as it is a sort of unitary executive bildungsroman. McKay makes his perspective clear, both in the text and in the many direct asides to the audience in the film, which gives the viewer plenty of room to be wary of cherry-picking and slant, but which also puts the director’s cards on the table early.

And yet, there’s a sort of begrudging respect beneath the disdain at the core the film. McKay and company seem as impressed as they are aghast at what their subject accomplished despite little discernible personality and negative charisma. Vice depicts a bloodless coup, an assemblage of power for power’s sake, that flew under the radar despite being at the apex of government because it was mired in bureaucratic tedium, unshowy secrecy, and spotlight-shirking calculation. Even before Vice’s Cheney turns to the camera and delivers his A Few Good Men self-justification and non-apology, there’s a sense of bedrudging admiration next to palpable contempt at the way this superficially uninteresting guy remade our government in his image, due in no small part to seeming so thoroughly uninteresting.

That also’s the film’s grand warning. It presents the stone foundations of democracy and the firm protections of civil liberties crumbling unnoticed because the methods for their undoing are too mundane to grab people’s attentions. While the film’s depiction of partisan food fights and focus group subject more interested in the latest Fast and the Furious movie than in good governance comes off like a hoary, “get off my lawn” critique of political engagement, Vice is chiefly focused on the evil that prospers when good men do nothing, because the bad men are too steeped in jargon and wonkery to warrant much notice or care.

At the same time, it draws out the startling contrast in the staid environments in which these grand decisions are made, the lifeless conference rooms, generic offices, and bland pronouncements, with the hellfire, death, and destruction that burst forth halfway across the world. Like McKay’s last feature, The Big Show, one the biggest strengths in Vice is its editing. Nothing conveys the film’s point-of-view than when editor Hank Corwin shows the prosaic stroke of a pen or an eminently domestic family meal and juxtaposes them with the unflinching horrors of war and consequence. It emphasizes the distance between the pristine-if-unflashy world that Vice’s protagonist lives in with the muddy, thorny aftermath for the people who have to bear the brunt of his decisions.

That’s good because Vice is anything but subtle. Between the film’s narrator (who at least serves a thematic purpose in the story), the numerous title cards and chyrons, and the same type of explanatory segments used in The Big Short, the film is as much a visual essay, directly telling the audience what’s happening and how and why, and what McKay & Co. think the import is, as it is a self-contained story. To call Vice didactic would be a severe understatement, since it not only aims to straight up educate its audience, but resorts to visual over-explained visual metaphors that make The Simpsons’s Behind the Music parody look restrained.

Still, the style, while occasionally eye roll-worthy, mostly works for the film. There’s something to be said for adapting the life of such an ordinary-seeming, matter of fact man with such bombast and directness. And sometimes McKay’s predilection for playing with the form pays off, earning big laughs with a “what if” cut-to-credits and a Shakespearean interlude immediately undercut with the boring and mildly awkward reality. As amusing and showy as these moments are, they serve the film’s purposes, showing how different things might have been for want of a nail and how movies like this one dress up the decisions that change lives in the flourishes of the grandiose but which more often come down to less-than-dynamic, unphotogenic functionaries simply saying “yeah, sure.”

As much as Vice laments the consequences of that ocean of “yeah, sure”s, and harbors clear scorn for the man who uttered them, it also takes some pain to humanize Dick Cheney. It depicts him as a loving father who’s mercenary to a fault but who draws a “line in concrete” in front of his gay daughter, whom he loves and accepts unconditionally, regardless of the liability she creates for a conservative politician. And it shows him seeking power not out of some personal greed or avarice, but to live up to the best hopes of a wife that he loves, and with whom he has an ironclad partnership that balances out both some of his softer inclinations and his lack of telegenic spark.

That’s born out by the performances in the film, which toe the line between impersonation and parody on the one hand and live-in human being on the other. Christian Bale completes another startling transformation, not only gaining the girth (and the talented makeup team) to represent Cheney visually, but slipping so completely into the persona that you nigh-instantly forget that this same guy played Batman six years ago. Amy Adams more than holds the line as Lynne, Dick’s ambitious, rock-ribbed equal who communicates the conviction and determination that catalyzes and sustains the ascent at the center of the picture. Turns from Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell as recognizable figures from the Bush administration occasionally conjure up visions of a darker-edged Michael Scott or the mocking tones of producer Will Ferrell’s impression, but eventually blend undetectably into the world of the film.

It’s a world where elaborate symbolic sequences of board games and teacups are used to make sure the audience is keeping up with each development, where each of Cheney’s “greatest hits” is touched on and explicated, and where McKay attempts to attribute much, if not most, of the world’s problems in the last two decades or so one man and his particular brand of political machine. But it’s also a world where the film’s greatest villain offers no theatrical boasts or colorful schemes or boo-inducing fervor. Instead, he packs a head-down cynical pragmatism, a stultifying bearing and affect, and the slow grind of mundane, byzantine politicking that rarely makes for great stories, but which despite that, or because of it, can remake the world.

Cute, conceptually and emotionally rich adventures with a twist, brought to you by the folks who've basically built an industry of such stories. I speak of Team Pixar, of course, which harvests the fruit of high fantasy and pleases all manner of D&D geeks with their latest epic. Onward is about a number of things, from the illusion-crushing indifference of post-industrialization to the stress of graduating into adulthood in a single-parent household, but it's never so heavy as all that. At least, not for very long.

For most of its running time, Onward is a loud and loose road trip movie: a pair of essentially different siblings on the run, exploring the wild in search of the past. What shape the past happens to take, that depends upon the individual. Chris Pratt's elder brother, the live-at-home RPG burnout, seeks a taste of the old life, a genuine sense of romantic swords and sorcery in a world that's almost entirely moved on. Tom Holland, the uncertain soon-to-be high school grad, hopes to learn about the father he never met and, maybe, find himself along the way. Did I mention the half-reincarnated, animated lower-half of their dear ol' dad, blindly stumbling along for the ride? Well, that relates to both goals. Pratt and Holland are great together, poking and teasing like brothers often do, while retaining a sense of radiant familial warmth and compassion. Dad's legs, shockingly emotive for what's little more than a pair of slacks, socks and loafers, bring constant comic relief when the scenes threaten to grow too somber.

It's a quick, colorful film, proudly weird and effortlessly funny, with a witty sense of meta awareness and an intense personal message at the heart of it all. Good proof that, even without John Lasseter, Pixar is still in good hands.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, NOW THAT WAS AN AMAZING EXPERIENCE!!!!!!!

Having seen a lot of Broadway shows in person, I was sad that I wouldn't be seeing one this summer. But boy was I wrong as when they announced that Hamilton will be coming early to Disney+ I immediately was hyped and couldn't wait to watch it. This is just such an amazing experience with everything in the show being flawless and this might just be my new favourite show.

Every single actor in this show played their parts so perfectly it was unbelievable and the talent on and off stage was just off the scales, just to highlight a few Lin-Manuel Miranda (Alexander Hamilton / Writer), Jonathan Groff (King George), Phillipa Soo (Eliza Hamilton), Daveed Diggs (Marquis de Lafayette / Thomas Jefferson), Leslie Odom Jr. (Aaron Burr) and just so many more just killing it.

The story is so good as well as it gives you a lesson in some American history but with some of the catchiest songs I have ever heard, just to name a few that I love would be difficult, but my favourites are You'll Be Back and The Room Where It Happens.

I urge you to watch this as honestly, it is the perfect family entertainment (maybe 12A) and it will have something for everyone. To people who say they don't like musicals, please give this a try as I have suggested it to two people who are not hugely into musicals and they loved this.

[9.4/10] A good mystery has to do a lot to be, well, good. It has to have a satisfying answer to the “whodunnit” question. But that answer can’t be too predictable or the audience won’t have the thrill of following along. But it also can’t be too out of left field or it will feel like a cheat. So any mystery writer has to balance including enough setups and clues to where the payoff feel earned, but so many that the solution feels obvious or pre-ordained.

But there should also be something more at the heart of the mystery than just the answer to who the killer is. The answer should reveal something deeper about the story, about its major players, about the why and the who behind the mystery. In short, there should be...well...a good donut hole inside the smaller donut inside the larger donut.

Knives Out does it all with flying colors. Its mystery succeeds like clockwork. Writer-director Rian Johnson (of The Last Jedi fame) sets up every little detail to perfection. He lays out his suspects and their motives, establishes the victim and the investigators, and doles out subtle hints at just the right intervals to keep the audience guessing, but informed enough to craft their own theories and follow along.

But he also imbues all that mystery machinery with a larger theme that meshes perfectly with the ecosystem and the family he’s created. On a pure story level, that comes down to rewarding the person who works hard, who acts with kindness and altruism even when it could rip their lives apart, while the people who claim to be her betters are a hypocritical bunch who were born on third base and think they’ve hit a triple. But on a social level, it’s about the same hypocrisy in how we treat immigrants, in how people of every persuasion treat someone they think they’re above, how that treatment shifts markedly when it conflicts with their self-interest, and how that immigrant’s hard work, decency, and above all selflessness makes her more worthy than all the scratching, clawing simps she’s father above than she realizes.

But rather than devolving into didactic sequences to communicate these ideas, Johnson does it all with style and with good humor. Even for a murder mystery that mostly occurs within a single house, Johnson, cinematographer Steve Yedlin, and their superb team bring so much visual flair to the picture. Even before anyone’s said a word, the autumnal feel of the piece and the august old manor establish a sense of tone and place within the world of Knives Out.

Once the movie kicks into gear, that aesthetic virtuosity remains. Johnson and Yedlin set up any number of Wes Anderson-esque tableaus, arranging all the major players in a series of expressive group shots. The scene where the Thrombeys descend on Marta conveys the overwhelming chaos of the scene by switching to steadicam and putting us into the suddenly jostled world that the poor girl’s been thrust into. And the sequence where a faux-affable Walt all but advances on Marta, with the thump of his cane and his first tightening around its handle, communicates the intimidation at play.

Despite those moments of fear, and the tension that permeates the film almost from the jump, Knives Out is a rollicking good time. For as much as the movie is a taut mystery and broader sociopolitical commentary, it’s also an eminently fun laugh riot. Johnson knows when to puncture the tension with a big laugh, and bolstered by Daniel Craig’s performance of a colorful Hercule Poirot by way of Frank Underwood, he’s able to make his characters poignant, menacing, or hilarious on a dime.

But he also knows how to deploy them nigh-perfectly in his well-crafted whodunnit. Johnson and company structure and pace their film brilliantly. The opening act lulls you into thinking you know who the obvious suspects and likely motives for the murder of the Thrombey patriarch are. But then he turns the mystery on its ear, showing the audience exactly, and in elegant detail, how he died and who killed him. The opening police interviews turn out to just be a smart way to introduce these characters and establish their place within Harlan Thrombey’s world.

From there, we follow the tension of the knowledge that Marta is the murderer, but also enlisted to help Benoit Blanc discoverer who the murderer is. The devices that Johnson uses in that effort -- Marta’s lie-related nausea, Harlan’s mystery novel-writer expertise in fooling the authorities, the extra question of who hired Blanc -- all heighten the fun and the twisty excitement as the case progresses. This is, laudably, Marta’s story, and the way her position change, from bystander to inadvertent murderer to overwhelmed patsy to triumphant hero, is aided by the different ways the mystery bends around her.

But the most striking of all if the way that both friend and foe turn against her once it’s revealed that she stands to inherit Harlan’s entire estate. Even including the intricately-crafted mystery, it’s Knives Out best twist. Johnson spends so much of the first act accounting for the different ways the various Thrombeys treat Marta, from dismissive to patronizing to seemingly embracing and understanding. But the second that her financial interest seems to run counter to theirs, every one of them, even and especially the ones who seemed to be decent and kind to her, immediately view her as an interloper denying them of what’s rightfully theirs.

That’s powerful. Johnson and his team build a mystery that unfolds spectacularly, with twists and turns to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat, small clues that add up to big reveals, and variations on the usual form that make it both thrilling and seamless. And yet, it’s biggest strength lies in what the answers to the mystery novel questions Knives Out asks say about the answers to the societal questions it asks in kind.

Johnson’s film is populated with people who believe they are self-made, who built themselves from the ground up, but who are (with one notable exception), entirely hangers on to someone who truly rose to the top of his field through hard work. It’s that kind soul who recognizes his equal and successor not in the slew of self-siding progeny jockeying for position against one another (whom he “cuts loose” to wean them of their dependency), but in the one person they all consider themselves better-than. The Thrombey’s all think themselves superior by dint of birth and by right, but it’s the young woman who, through the good character, industriousness, and decency none of them possesses, proves herself smarter and more worthy than any of them to inherit his fortune, and his legacy. And that makes for one hell of a mystery.

There are a handful of movies that I have always wished I could have seen in the cinema when they first came out. Certain films feel so important and ingrained in the year that they were released that I feel tangible amounts envy towards the people that got to experience them at them at the time they were most relevant. Near the top of this list for me is 2007′s Superbad. I was 6 when Superbad was released and so naturally I didn’t get to see it until much later, the point of that film would have likely went over my head at that age as well, I wish I could have been leaving high school when that film was out so I could experience it at its most impactful. I can only image how emotional and relatable the story of two best friends trying desperately to make it to the last party before graduation would have been for teenagers who were going through the same types of situations at the time.

Well as I said, I was 6 when Superbad was first shown in cinemas. I am about to turn 18 and I honestly feel like I have just walked out of my Superbad. I left high school early but was still invited to my prom which I went to just 6 days before seeing this film, there was a strange feeling that filled the room as if it had only just dawned on a lot of my old classmates that meeting up and hanging out was going to made a lot harder after this summer due to everyone having different plans. Although I didn’t stay for my final year at that school I would be lying if I said that this wasn’t a feeling that hit me too at a certain point in the night after running into some old friends I hadn’t spoken to in a few months.

To get more to the point (and actually talk about the movie I’m meant to be reviewing) that is the feeling that I got while watching Booksmart. This film expertly captures the feeling of moving on after high school in a way that most films aimed at teenagers completely fail to do.

The characters feel like real teenagers, with real teenage problems. The performances are all fantastic especially from the two leads who are both destined to become stars after this. The tone is far from bleak despite what my intro may have had you think. I compared this to Superbad for a reason, it tackles it themes of separation and moving on in a mature way but it is still absolutely hilarious. The interactions between Dever and Feldstein are continuously funny, aided by what appears to be a heavy focus on imporv. The side characters also offer a lot of comedic potential that is rarely missed. Despite not appear much in the film Jason Sudeikis is at the top of his comedic game whever he is on screen however the best moments tend to come from Billie Lourd as Gigi. Lourd is a complete scene-stealer in all of the best ways as she commits 100% to a character that, if handled poorly, could have become insanely irritating. Honestly considering that I had only seen Lourd as Lieutenant Connix in the recent Star Wars sequels, a pretty forgettable role that she was given because her mother was Princess Leia, I did not expect her to be this great.

This is also the feature debut for actress turned director Olivia Wilde which you would not guess from how well this film is put together. I would not be at all surprised if Wilde decides to change course with her career much like Greta Gerwig seems to have opted to do.

I don’t see this film garnering much awards buzz at the end of the year but, with the risk of spoilers for my 2019 retrospective, this is absolutely my favourite film of the year so far. I only really had an issue with one scene in particular where the score takes over way to much but that is all I will say about that so as to avoid spoilers. I highly recommend checking this out although I do admit that this may have just been the right film at the right time for me personally, but Isn’t that the real joy of film?

Not perfect, but pretty darn close, considering it's ANOTHER "tale as old as timey whimey wibbly wobbly, time looping Groundhog Day-esque, exploration of what would happen if you got stuck in a temporal loop and couldn't get out. BUT, instead of just one person realizing they were caught in a loop, what if there were others there with you, to explore the possibilities, good, bad, light, or dark?

Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti are indeed a quantum match for this screwball take on a potentially played out premise. But, the supporting cast, rather than being mere detritus and fodder for various sight gags and miscues, actually add to the storyline.

As J.K Simmons mused later in the film, "you have to find your really good day, and try to be happy there". Well that's ONE solution, or, is it? Even if you were able to share that perfect day with the perfect person, would you want to be stuck there forever? An interesting question, that has been explored before, but, here, somehow is fresher, and more thought provoking.

Is the paradox resolved in the climax? I was left with questions, but, perhaps that was done purposely, perhaps leaving room for part 2.

Worth a watch.....

For those of us who remember the originals, we can breath a sigh of relief because the basic heart and soul of those still beats in the third outing of this trilogy. Yes Keanu, sans the John Wick beard, is just starting to show his age, and at times is just mimicking what the fans expect of this character, but, thankfully, he isn't phoning it in just yet. Amazingly, Alex Winter seems even more enthused than his arguably more successful (at least of late) partner in time, and seems to be having a blast just chilling with the old gang. William Sadler is as hysterical as ever, playing Death, who has been exiled from the band and injunctioned from even using the name, because of his 40 minute experimental bass solos, and, the make-up scene between him and the two front men is worth the time it takes to finally get there.

There had to be a hook, besides a mindless rehash of the previous two movies, and "Thea" Preston, and "Billie" Logan playing the oppositely named, female progeny of our intrepid hero's, provide that hook, as being raised by fathers tasked with, but never finishing, the EPIC song that would unite the world, have, in spite of outward appearances, somehow "rain manned" a Wikipedic knowledge and insight of all things melodic and musical. This comes in quite handy once their part of the story begins.

It is rumored that Samara Weaving holds no grudge toward Keanu Reeves for repeatedly killing her father, (Hugo Weaving) Agent Smith, in that OTHER Trilogy he made, nor at any time did she smirkingly call him..... MISTER ANDERSON,,,,,,

The ensuing RE-mash of the first two movies follows, with the daughters essentially retracing the journey of the first Bill and Ted movie, with the appropriate musical theme of course, while, the Dads jump time meeting future versions of themselves in the hopes of stealing "the SONG", from themselves, but discovering instead that perhaps living their mission focused lives, and repeatedly failing, caused them to miss out on all the great things in the one they were actually living. Also, they are now pursued by Rufus' daughters ex-boyfriend turned assassin robot, "Dennis Caleb McCoy'", sent by her Mother, Missus Rufus, and played with neurotic aplomb by Anthony Carrigan, in an inspired turn.

Fortunately, in the end, they do indeed get the band back together, and, as we are still here, (for now) the rest I guess, is history.

The best part of which will be said is they DIDN'T screw this one up!!

[8.0/10] I have to admit that I’m a little mystified by Midsommar, albeit in a good way. There’s a decent amount that goes unexplained (or at least under explained) in the climax of the film. The pieces are there to put a good amount of it together, but the close of the film is still a bewildering, unnerving experience, as it should be under the circumstances. But if I had to pinpoint what Midsommar is trying to say, I would center it on two big ideas: empathy and emotion on the one hand and life and death on the other.

The former comes through in Dani’s relationship with her boyfriend Christian. From the moment we meet her, Dani is clearly going through something difficult and feels like she can’t lean on her long-term boyfriend for emotional support for fear of scaring him off. When she tries to express her frustration or grief or anything other than “I’m cool,” he either begs off or turns it back on her to make it seem like she’s the one with the issue. And as the film goes on, we see Christian evincing a deeper lack of empathy, acting nonplussed at horrific scenes, stealing his friend’s work, and feigning only fleeting concern when acquaintances go missing.

At times Midsommar lays some of this Bad Boyfriend material on a little thick (especially him forgetting her birthday and how long they’ve been dating, which feels like something out of a sitcom). But it works to draw a contrast between Christian on the one hand, and Pelle and his “family” on the other. While Christian pays desultory lip service to Dani’s feelings, Pelle sees her is attentive to her and responds to how she’s feeling in a given moment.

So does his whole enclave, the small Swedish community whose midsommar ritual our cast of newcomers is experiencing. In one scene, an elder describes their scripture as “emotional sheet music.” Their society is built on emotion as a free-flowing, communal thing, with the climactic scenes involving the adherents of his culture imitating the expressions of joy or pain or horror until it crescendos into one crowd-wide emotional wave.

For most of the film, Dani is still grieving without even fully realizing it, having this well of pain and mourning she’s been unable to express given how her prime emotional outlet constantly deflects and shuts her down. It’s not until the end of the film, when she firmly discards him, that she can fully express that grief she’s had bottled up for so long, with a catharsis and a rejection that gives her the first genuinely smile we see in the whole picture. Through this lens, Midsommar is ultimately a story of emotional expression, where open processing of one’s feelings is encouraged, snuffing out those expressions is punished, and the consequences of both can be severe.

The other big theme, and this one is admittedly fuzzier from my vantage point, is the cycle of life and death. We witness elders commit suicide at a given age, with it treated as a blessing and a choice, with the idea that their names will be passed on to children not yet born and their lives lived again. One of the movie’s strangest interludes involves a ritual centered around conception. And the climactic set piece and lingering undercurrent of horror upon which the whole movie rests is a ritualistic killing to banish away the dark spirits and invite happiness and prosperity to their community.

I’ll confess my inability to fully articulate what all of this means, but the biggest takeaway I have is this. Dani is laboring under an unspeakable tragedy, with the suicide and murder of the rest of her family, with no good emotional support to help her get through it. This community offers a welcome alternative to that, not only its emotional openness, but in its treatment of death as part of that liberating cycle of nature. Dani sees herself more and more a part of both nature and that community (as represented by her “flower volcano”, as my wife put it, in the closing sequence), and that view of death as something both spiritually freeing and not cause for grief is uniquely inviting to her.

But that’s the great thing about Midsommar. Even if you’re not inclined to grapple with emotional repression or cultural views on mortality, it works as pure slow-spun, unnerving horror. The film shares a vibe with past horror classics like Rosemary’s Baby and Get Out with our protagonist ensconced in a warm and welcoming atmosphere and community, with subtle hints along the margins that something is wrong here.

Frankly, some of the film’s best moments come when you have a vague sense that something is off, but can’t put your finger on what. The film does a good job of escalation, introducing peculiarities that can be written off as foreign cultural practices, until it becomes undeniable and terrifying how this is not just a different society’s ways and rituals but something darker and more sinister. For a film that is not only long, but also languid in its pacing, Midsommar is never boring, gradually bringing the simmering horror to a boil.

Still, the gradualness prompts a confession -- if you could somehow scrub away all the horror elements, I would totally stay in the Harga enclave. Part of the way the horror works is by making their commune seem so warm and inviting, to where you relate to Dani’s feeling so content and at home there.

Much of that owes to the cinematography and beautiful images that director Ari Aster and director of photography Pawel Pogorzelski put together. The location itself is gorgeous, full of sweeping greenery and eye-catching structures strewn about their little grove. It’s a film rich with color, as Dani’s Mayqueen getup exemplified. The look of handsomely-set tables and maypole dances embodies the warm communal feel of the place before things turn deadly, as does the way the Harga seem to be one organism, always moving and feeling in stereo. Aster and Pogorzelski frame the images beautifully, playing with symmetry, different depths of field, and close-ups to convey the grandeur and intimacy of even the most horrifying moments. And there’s even some superb impressionism, with wavy backgrounds to subtly convey the effect of the drugged tea the main characters imbibe.

But part of it is just the smiling, empathetic atmosphere created by the Harga. The film uses that sense to its advantage, by both wrapping the strangeness up in “Well, I guess it’s just their custom,” and by luring Dani and the audience in with the slightly unnerving, unfailing friendliness of the whole thing. So by the time it becomes clear this is a death cult and not just a culturally unfamiliar enclave, both the protagonist and the audience are too wrapped up in it to turn back.

That transformation and relatability rests on the shoulders of star Florence Pugh, who does fantastic work here. The shift from low-key naturalism to over the top emotional exhortations could be jarring, but feels right coming out of her. More to the point, much of the film requires her to be bottling up her emotions until they explode, which in the hands of a lesser actor, leave Dani feeling flat. Instead, Pugh conveys the layers to the character, the internal roiling that makes the choices made in the end feel organic to what the viewer hasn’t seen, but feels through her, until it becomes expressed with lethal consequences.

There’s a lot of weirdness and even opaqueness to Midsommar. That makes the film a little baffling and hard to get your hands around at times, even when its cards are on the table. But it also uses that uncertainty to its advantage, lending an unknowable atmosphere to the Harga and their rituals, and a greater unspoken terror when their practices are laid bare. I’d be lying if I told you that I fully understood Midsommar, but that only heightens, rather than detract from, its horror, its themes, and its final exorcising transformation.

Almost the whole time I was watching this movie (including the bath-scene with Margot Robbie) I felt like the biggest idiot on the planet.
I'm not a numbers guy nor do I know all the terminology in American banking and mortgage systems and most of it looked like watching some kind of alien language. In the end though I knew what happened, I saw people warning us for what was about to happen and watched it all crumble down when it did happen.

All in all though it's an excellent portrayal of a system that is quite frankly a big con, stripping away money from those "below" with people at the help that don't really know what they are doing. An intricate web of rules, regulations, lingo, faces and characters who don't know the full picture. I think the movie quite nicely mimicks this chaos in the way it is set up, the catchy camera movements and often loud and noisy environments the scenes play out in. Here's a famous face that will teach you plebs what it's about, "let's simplify this for ya" so you're lured in.

Despite it's dry subject, the vast amout of stuff I personally didn't fully grasp it is a very enjoyable movie that will keep you hooked till the end.

Oh and it took me about at third the movie to realize Brad Pitt was that one guy.

They really set the tone for the 90s slasher film right from the get go; very Scream and Urban Legends style mixed with Goosebumps, and rightfully so because director Leigh Janiak did a couple of episodes of the Scream TV series. I find it to be a perfect fit for this three-part Fear Street film series based on the books by RL Stine. The pacing is great, keeps you interested throughout, but do expect the typical horror tropes of this era. I was able to spot a Stephen King novel and a few of the Fear Street books (as Robert Lawrence aka RL Stine :wink:) in that book store, a Nintendo Game Boy at school, Josh using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), wearing an Iron Maiden shirt, playing Castlevania on Sega Genesis, and soundtrack included songs from Nine Inch Nails, Garbage, Radiohead, Cypress Hill, The Prodigy, White Zombie. It was oozing with 90s nostalgia, even if they were inaccurate with them. I liked the use of colors reds and blues, and the lighting for the night time scenes. I won't say much about the story, but these three films do involve going through different periods of time which I find really intriguing. The end of 1994 got me really excited for the next two installments which will have us go to a 1978 camp setting :camping: and then 1666 when the cursed started :mage:. That's also what I noticed on the movie poster art is that each of the weapons represents the generation or year that each of films are set in. It's a fun one, so I recommend watching this (and the rest of the trilogy) with a friend who also enjoys spooky time if you can. :knife:

Wisely retaining the visual aesthetic of Azkaban, albeit with a little more colour, this does lack the visual flourishes and background details that characterised the previous entry. The filmmakers have also recognised the need to streamline Rowling’s novels and keep the focus largely on Harry, though Brendan Gleeson is also a great addition to the secondary characters as Moody. It’s a shame then that a large portion of the plot focuses on a tournament that offers very little except some fun set pieces and the coming of age themes involving teenage jealousy, friendship difficulties and attraction don’t feel as integrated into the plot as last time. Part of the problem is that much of this feels largely inconsequential to the impending return of Voldemort. His return has been teased for three entries and right from the start, it’s clear the film is building to it. Fortunately, the final portion of the film doesn’t disappoint and Ralph Fiennes is deliciously arrogant, evil and appears to be having a great time. There is an intensity and ultimately a sadness to the end of the film as the central trio are faced with mortality and death that takes the series forward into more uncertain times and a recognition that a darker more adult world awaits them beyond the seemingly safe confines of their environment.

The entry of Voldemort into the series at the end of Goblet of Fire means that this entry feels much less episodic and more of a direct continuation from the fallout of the last film. There is an even greater focus on jettisoning much of the extraneous plot and whimsy of Rowling’s world that mean even Ron and Hermione add little to the story. Harry’s guilt and trauma and his desire to isolate himself form a large part of the plot and Radcliffe manages to pull off Harry’s anger and frustration without ever making him unlikeable. That the film returns to the importance of Harry’s friends in his life is unsurprising, but the film balances this with the repercussions of Voldermort’s return on the wider world that Rowling has created - the ongoing thread of denial of the truth and control of information seemingly even more relevant than when the film was made and Imelda Staunton is a wonderful addition to the cast. The previous entry has also given the series a real sense of danger to the magical powers shown, and there is also a much stronger visual style to the film here than the rather flat Goblet of Fire, the final act in the Ministry of Magic being a great example. It’s a shame the final emotional beats of the film don’t hit home as strong as they should and it’s somewhat ironic that after complaints that previous entries tried to include too much of the books, this is the one entry in the film series that would have benefitted from more material to work with.

I wasn't a huge fan of this movie the first time I saw it back in theaters as it was very confusing and to be honest, without the understanding about how it fit into the overall story, it was kind of boring. However, I also hadn't read the book at the time, and that would have helped me a lot.

I just rewatched the movie yesterday after reading the book to my children and liked it a LOT more. I was actually impressed how the filmmakers took the 800+ pages of book story & made it fit into 2 hrs & 15 mins of screen time. Sure, it's not perfect & the kids were a little miffed at what they left out from the book story, but it gave me the chance to explain about choices filmmakers have to make when adapting a story that people know so well. Besides, all that stuff they liked was STILL in the book...it's not like it is erased from existence.

Having said that, even not having read the book, the character Dolores Umbridge was done perfectly. In my opinion, she is one of the great villains I've ever seen even though she's ignorant of her own villain-ness [villainity?]. I wanted to punch her in the face when I saw the movie, and only wanted to do it more after reading the book. That's a good character.

Favorite part of the movie: The duel between the Death Eaters & Order of the Phoenix. Would have liked the Dumbledore/Voldemort showdown to be a little longer or have been able to include more verbal back-and-forth between them.

But, if you're ONLY watching the movies without the added depth of the information in the book, this is one of the weaker chapters in the series.

The strongest entry since Azkaban, Half-Blood Prince begins to lay the pieces of the backstory that up to now has largely been hinted at. Memories are a key theme of the film and there is a melancholy feel to the story as characters old and young begin to realise that huge changes are imminent. Amidst all the darker threads however, the film also has a lot of fun portraying teenage angst over relationships and the central trio’s refusal to express their feelings. But it’s Harry’s relationship with Dumbledore that is brought to the fore and after fumbling a little with Sirius, here the filmmakers do a wonderful job of showing the respect and affection the two characters have for each other - it helps to have five films behind this, but Gambon is much warmer and caring towards Harry and there is a much stronger bond shown here that ensures the plot developments hit home when they should. This is also the first film to give Tom Felton something more to do than sneer at Harry and it’s great to see Draco develop into something more interesting than a childish foil to the heroes - his bravado unmasked throughout the film in small vignettes that show his uncertainty and fear. The reveal of the identity of the Half Blood Prince feels like an afterthought in many ways but this sets up the prospect of a great finale.

The maturation of the Harry Potter franchise is finally complete in this, the sixth go-round for Harry, Ron, Hermione and friends. Gone (or greatly reduced) are the Hogwarts Academy's whimsical little accents - jovial ghosts, talking paintings, animated plants, hidden chambers - replaced by a quivering mass of moody sentiment, rampaging emotions and stormy romances. It's sensible. The colorful decor we see in kindergarten doesn't usually match what's on the walls in high school.

That's been helped along by progressively better filmmaking, as we've slowly shed the flimsy special effects and inconsistent tones first introduced by Chris Columbus back in The Sorcerer's Stone. The series has struggled with long growing pains ever since, trying to bridge that tricky gap between childish wonder and adolescent gloom, and it's a relief to see the metamorphosis finally come to fruition. The Half-Blood Prince is a genuinely slick, professional presentation, well-realized as a fitting companion to the equally dark, funereal source material. It doesn't really stand alone, though, leaning on an expectant knowledge of novel-only details and events to fill in the plot's many, sizeable gaps. Too much going on in the printed page, I expect, as many well-remembered scenes and important bits of lore hit the cutting room floor. At least quidditch games are back on the agenda this time around; a much-needed (and exceptionally well-realized) break from all the death and doom that's been gathering.

[7.6/10] One of the best tacks a horror film can take is rooting its supernatural or outsized sense of terror in something real. That grain of truth at the core of a movie’s scares makes them more vivid and gripping than bare, spooky scenes or the usual collection of ghoulies.

It certainly works to the benefit of The Visit. The film tells the story of two young children, Becca and Tyler, visiting their estranged grandparents for the first time. “Pop Pop” and “Nana” behave strangely, rumbling and being ill in the middle of the night or sneaking out to a mysterious shed, in a way that unnerves their grandchildren.

The smartest choice the film makes is to walk the line between whether this is the sign of something sinister or wrong, or whether it’s simply a combination of dementia and unfamiliarity that’s disturbing the kids. It’s a horror movie, so it’s not hard to guess how things play out, but the film gains strength by playing with that ambiguity. Outside the confines of a Hollywood picture, kids can have trouble relating to their grandparents, understanding the physical and mental challenges their elders are going through. Using that natural anxiety, that natural misunderstanding, both serves as a means to muddy the waters of What’s Really Going On, and to elevate the frightening qualities of when Nana and Pop Pop are acting out.

If there’s a smarter choice, however, it’s in the casting of the two young leads who carry the film. Olivia DeJonge plays Becca, the older sibling who is a budding director, out to document this momentous and fraught family occasion, with a combination of precociousness and vulnerability. Ed Oxenbould plays Tyler, Becca’s colorful, freestyle-rapping little brother, who makes for an amusingly free-wheeling yin to Becca’s very deliberate yang.

Centering a movie around kids is hard, as the challenges of finding the core of a character and maintaining it from beginning to end can be difficult for young actors. But DeJonge and Oxenbould both give their characters a sense of realness in their childlike reactions to the world around them, but also deliver the emotional layers to that experience to make them compelling figures and not just props in this drama.

Much of that comes from the script penned by the famed/notorious M. Night Shyamalan, who also directs the film. He too captures the inquisitive, precious spirit of childhood, while making Becca and Tyler easy characters to become endeared to and fear for. The film also features one of Shyamalan’s tightest scripts. As much as Shyamalan takes time out to be a little loose and show the kids being kids, helping to establish character and tone, he also dots every “i” and crosses every “t” in terms of setting up the mystery and providing plausible hints, convincing red herrings, and a solid build to the truth about what’s happening with their grandparents.

If anything, the film’s narrative is a little too neat. Emotional beats or noted characteristics come back into play at just the right moment, to the point that the viewer can see the strings of why some detail or story was told in the prelude. The plot never feels too convenient, but at times it moves like it’s on rails.

The same cannot be said, however, for the cinematography. Shyamalan employs the “found footage” conceit here, and it gives him a chance to use perspective and the verisimilitude of that choice to accentuate his scares. More than anything, it allows us to better know Becca and Tyler. If we’re not literally seeing their perspective, hearing their voice and seeing their point-of-view from behind the camera, then we see them in confessionals, opening up in the piercing way only a camera lens can admit.

Shyamalan uses that choice -- having the kids “filming” almost all of the movie, for both terror and fun. The hand-held conceit turns a simple game of hide and seek, or a chance encounter with a bystander on a visit to an old high school, into terrifying episodes, filled with crawling figures or troubling confrontations. But it also gives Tyler the chance to goof off in front of the camera in the way a ten year old would, or for Becca to amusingly wax rhapsodic over not wanting to be too intentional in her zooms and cuts, with Shyamalan clearly having a good time poking fun at his profession through the eyes of the child.

The only problem, then, is that once Shyamalan has laid down that initial layer of humor and creepiness, the inevitable reveal leads to a bit of the air coming out of the picture rather than the terror being heightened. Once the scales fall and the ambiguity is no longer there to goose the scares, the film becomes more stock in its horror, and the emotional climaxes coincide with the horror climaxes a little too easily.

Still, The Visit isn’t content to merely offer a snootful of well-crafted horror and an endearing, if frightening kid adventure. There’s a heavily-underlined but potent theme about acceptance and processing anger for those who’ve hurt us, particularly family members. The film isn’t shy in the way it connects the feelings of Becca and Tyler’s mom (Kathryn Hahn, who makes a strong impression in just a little bit of screentime) toward the parents she hasn’t spoken to in a decade and a half, with Becca and Tyler’s own feelings about their absentee dad. As with the scary side of the movie, The Visit pays both of these internal challenges a little too easily, but still convincingly.

It’s hard not to draw comparisons with Shyamalan’s breakthrough film, The Sixth Sense, give both movies’ use of talented child actors and themes of making peace with difficult parts of our lives, but The Visit stands on its own. It’s a tidier film, more self-contained, more human and unvarnished, with its single-location focus and more conventional scares. And it finds the sweet spot between the real things that unnerve us, and the grander horrors of the screen, to make an effective vignette about two kids finding their way through one uncertain situation and resolving another.

"The broken are the more evolved"

"Split" isn't just a return to form from Shamalamadingdong, but an emotionally powerhouse of a thriller. Anyone who watched the trailer and think they have an idea of what it's gonna be, think again. Putting forward this guys history in films; this surprised the heck out of me.

The cinematography was excellent, same guy who did "It Follows" which was pretty neat. The film had the right balance of tone with comedy and horrific. One minute you're laughing at the intentional comedic scenes, but quickly change when you start to over think.

James McAvoy is absolutely fantastic in this movie. Every personality has a unique purpose to them and McAvoy makes the whole thing believable. Especially when he plays a little boy named Hedwig, who you actually care for and the childlike behavior McAvoy was done so perfectly. The scene when he starts dancing, had me laughing so hard when I saw it, but when I heard M. Night talk about the meaning behind it, it gave me chills. It's about a person dying and coming back to life.

Then again, "Kanye West is my main man".

Anya Taylor Joy was great in this too. Really impressing me from what I've seen from her so far, and might be the new face of horror movies. Her character arc was the most compelling part of the film and ties in very well with McAvoy characters. It's too bad Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula, the other captured girls, couldn't keep up with Anya. They performances were pretty bad and easily the worst part of the film.

It's not just them, some of the supporting actors who thankfully don't have much screen time, deliver such wooden performances. The film also suffers from M. Night's trademark, terribly written exposition. Other than that, this was a pretty solid film.

Overall rating: Welcome back M. Night Shyamalan, for real this time.

For those fortunate enough to know that this movie was the second of a trilogy, this may be a satisfying movie. The trilogy is M. Night Shyamalan's building his own subset of the superhero genre. His superheroes and villians don't have non-human powers (teleportation, invisibility, heat vision, etc.) but have enhanced human behaviours (survival instinct, empathy, intuition, a hero's heart). Once that is established, our expectations turn to psychological thrillers, as the personalities are explored and the extra- is added to -ordinary. For those looking for a horror movie, a fast paced thriller, or a superhero action movie, you will be thwarted by your genre expectations. Having said all that, here are my pluses and negatives: The acting is superb - James MacAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy and Izzie Coffey, especially. The premise and developing sub genre are interesting. The pacing is too slow for me, but that is Shyamalan's preferred pace in his movies, better than UNBROKEN but still too plodding for me (he writes for an intelligent audience, he should trust that they can keep up). There were some loose ends or lost opportunities for me, Casey Cooke's character, forged in torment, could have been the mirror superhero to our supervillain or at least she could have been enabled to finally escape from her abusive uncle. (Super up the girl's powers of observation and deduction, for Pete's sake). . I give this film a 6 (fair) out of 10. [Genisis of a Super Villain]

Unreal! I didn't expect 'Million Dollar Baby' to be so astonishingly brilliant.

I've said it many a time before but for full context, I do not read up about films before watching them - aside from making sure the film isn't part of a franchise, checking the run time and seeing the genre - so I was expecting this to be a cliché-filled, but still great, sports flick. It's so much more than that.

It's way more deeper and has an everlasting impact that I hadn't anticipated. Even across the opening chunk I was predicating the obvious cliché ending, but as the film progresses and, especially, as the final portion rolls around it just absorbed my total attention - I was fully engrossed... hook, line, and sinker. Some film!

The cast are simply stunning. Clint Eastwood gives an absolutely fantastic performance, Hilary Swank is truly sensational - especially at the end, damn - and Morgan Freeman is Morgan Freeman; what an actor and what a voice, using him as narrator was a great move. Elsewhere, and though less dramatically, Jay Baruchel, Anthony Mackie, Margo Martindale and Michael Peña also feature interestingly.

It's quite the journey the film takes you on, which I just found utterly enthralling to watch unfold. Perfect pacing, perfect acting. I loved watching every second of it and will undoubtedly be revisiting it.

I noted days ago that I was rather surprised to learn that Eastwood's 'Unforgiven' had been so heavily acclaimed, on this occasion with this 2004 film I am the complete opposite. I don't care much for awards et al., but I am delighted to see all involved receive their props for this. Chapeau!

Marvellous, just marvellous.

Between this and Cherry, it’s becoming more and more clear that the MCU’s best director is called Kevin Feige.
Netflix clearly spent a lot of money on this, you can feel the price of your subscription going up with every new set piece that’s introduced, but the end results are still unforgivingly bland and generic nonetheless.
It’s their attempt to compete with Bond, Bourne or Mission Impossible, but if anything this feels like a poser imitation of those superior blockbuster franchises. The plot is in fact literally ripping off both Skyfall and The Bourne Identity at the same time, but forgets about any of their depth in regards to story and character.
The Russos are clearly trying to recapture that same tone and spark from their Captain America: The Winter Soldier days, but they end up making something that’s more akin to the quality of Red Notice.
In terms of directing they kinda got outdone by their own second unit director with his Netflix action flick, as I’d argue that Extraction is a marginally better film than this.
The action’s poorly done and cheaply put together, lots of annoying editing choices (heavy overuse of drone shots, quick cuts and can the Russos pick a normal font for once?), corny dialogue, distractingly bad CGI, boring visuals and music (why is everything so low contrast, foggy and muddy?); not a lot to recommend about this one.
The acting’s fine, Evans is having a blast, but I have absolutely no idea why an extremely picky actor like Ryan Gosling chose this script in the first place. It seems like a paycheck movie for someone of his caliber. Just watch The Nice Guys instead of this if you want to see Goose in an action comedy, we don’t need these 200 million dollar direct to streaming action films.

4/10

It sure is pretty. And not much else. It is set up set up set up, and I get it, it’s a part 1. But even part 1 movies have to be movies in of themselves. The climax is the limpest one in recent memory. Zendaya literally tells us this is the beginning, in case we forgot the title card.

And again, I get it. This is based off a book from 1965. But the politics… there’s a fatsuit so fatness can represent greed and gluttony. There’s a mystic and duplicitous Asian doctor. Zendaya is an exotic object for the incredibly pale white savior messiah to be entranced by and lust after. The aforementioned climax is pale boy fighting against a growling, vicious, and dark skinned black man. I know, the book is from the 60s. But there are ways to update or confront that. But Villenueve chose to take on this film, and chose to adapt it as is.

What results in a pretty film that hits every beat you’d expect without making a case for what makes Dune different from Star Wars besides BBC nature documentary shots. The actors are good; Isaacs and Mamoa stand out. Isaacs is a great father archetype; I didn’t expect it from him beforehand but then seeing it in action he’s a perfect fit. And Mamoa has a looseness and natural charisma that livens up the proceedings and makes the world more lived in. But they aren’t enough to lift a film that’s everything I felt about Blade Runner 2049 amplified. All visual, no heart.

And they wasted my man Bautista! I’m sure he’d get more in sequels, but those might not happen! I was waiting the whole time for him to steal a scene and got nothing! He didn’t even wear tiny glasses! This film is lucky it didn’t get zero stars from me.

[9.7/10] Three different characters say the phrase “diamond in the rough” multiple times in the first fifteen minutes of Aladdin. While an age appropriate lesson, you would have to be dozing through most of the movie to miss its moral that a person’s worth comes from what’s inside them, rather from than their appearance or wealth or station in life. Aladdin is a rags to riches story, about a “street rat” whose inner-decency let’s him find love and fortune when he’s finally read to “beeeeee himself.”

But however trite that aesop may seem on the service, this crown jewel of the Disney Renaissance earns every bit of it. You’ll struggle to find a tighter script in all of the Disney Animated Canon. It quickly introduces each of its characters, giving them each struggles and goals; has each make choices that are self-flattering and those that are difficult, and lets the consequences of those choices lead to changes of heart and just deserts for everyone involved.

The meaning of what happens after Aladdin, and Jasmine, and even Jafar each choose to be themselves comes from how much time the film spends on exploring what happens when they try to be someone else.

Because Aladdin is also a story of wanting to control your own destiny, of having the agency and the capability to direct your own life, and about desperate people who feel they have to go great lengths to make that happen. The script underscores the point a little too neatly, but Aladdin and Jasmine each only see the limitations in their own lives and the possibilities in the other’s. The Genie’s central want in the movie is to finally be free. Even Jafar, with his power-hungry plotting, is that idea taken up to eleven -- the ability to throw off any restrictions on the life he wants, whether legal, romantic, or metaphysical.

That makes us care about the characters at the core of the film. Each of them essentially wants the same thing, while wanting very different versions of it, and their quests to get it conflicts and intersects in amusing, heartwarming, and occasionally frightening ways. Beyond the standard “true to yourself” messaging, Aladdin is just a cracking good story about characters with clear wants and wishes that drive the action, create the conflicts, and eventually provide a way through for all of them.

All the while, Disney is also offering the peak of its musical, visual, and comic abilities. Despite only boasting a few songs for a musical, Aladdin is all killer, no filler. From the mood-setting introduction of “Arabian Nights”, to the bombastic fun of “Prince Ali” to the coo-worthy duet of “A Whole New World”, each of the film’s tunes is at risk of getting stuck in your head. And the orchestration itself makes a perfect accompaniment to the scenes, whether it’s to heighten a tense moment in the marketplace or encompass Aladdin’s exaltation after his first kiss with Jasmine.

At the same time, Aladdin is a dazzling film to look at. The film mainly adopts a dusky blue palette for its desert setting, contrasting it with hot reds and oranges and yellows that flash and grab amid that azure landscape. The use of light is tremendous, creating shadows and setting moods as the two young paramours canoodle or the eponymous hero stalks his way through a torch-lit cave. And it’s characters are all expressive and move with an intuitive fluidity that marks a path between believable realism and the fantasy of this tall tale perfectly.

That’s all before you dive into the movie’s stellar action set pieces. Aladdin’s race into and out of the cave blends traditional animation and CGI better than most films released decades later. Little sequences like Abu being stranded amid lava or Aladdin needing to avoid a rolling turret are edited for maximum tension. And the final showdown with Jafar shows such imaginative visual verve, with a rapid-fire array of attempted saves and renewed threats before the street rat’s improvised trick that brings down the villain for good (or at least until the next movie).

But that creativity also extends to the film’s more comic character. Part of why the bits of sappiness or moralizing in Aladdin go down so easy is that at almost every turn, they’re undercut by some thoroughly enjoyable bit of comic relief. The animal sidekick trio of Abu, Iago, and Rajah each have their outstanding comic moments and bits of both exasperation and even pathos in connection with their human friends. The magic carpet is an understandably wordless character who not only fuels some of the movie’s most exciting sequences, but who manages to memorably express emotion and personality with nary a line of dialogue.

That’s all to say nothing of the tour de force performance that Robin Williams, and the stellar team of designers and animators, put in to create The Genie, one of the most stunning and memorable Disney characters of all time. The magical wish-giver is the perfect manifestation of Williams’s manic id style of humor, conjuring his impressions, fostering his rapid-fire wit, and even drilling down into that well of humanity he would put on display in more strictly dramatic roles.

It’s telling that The Genie doesn't show up until nearly half an hour into the film and yet he is one of its most iconic elements, carrying the humor, the moral, and even the emotion of the piece in the final tally. His and Williams’s presence in Aladdin are a nearly unrivaled achievement when it comes to the Disney Renaissance, and perhaps animated films writ large.

The Genie is, in many ways, Aladdin’s Jiminy Cricket and Blue Fairy rolled into one. He uses Williams’s panache to make Aladdin’s dream of being a prince to woo his princess possible, but he’s also the one trying to steer him toward the right choices beyond the costumes and cons that a little fairy dust can provide. Aladdin believes that there’s more to him than just his shabby clothes and denigrated position, but thinks that it’s the surface level bits of station and presentation that he lacks, rather than the utter decency and kindness that the movie takes pains to show, that will prove it.

His efforts are not academic. He wants to do all this to win the love of his life. As quickly as the film brings Aladdin and Jasmine together, it does a superb job of making them a root-worthy and intuitive likeable couple. There’s an instant rapport, an ability to improvise that brings them together. It’s easy to see them as each offering what the other wants -- the liberation of wealth and position vs. the liberation of no royal restrictions. But there’s also a sense that, as much as these two crazy kids really are from two different worlds, they’re joined not only by that hope for a particular kind of freedom and agency, but also by a desire to see and be seen for something that no amount of gold or titles or legal expectation can provide.

That’s all a little grandiose, but it’s the idea that powers the movie, and makes those moments so memorable and affecting. Jasmine is Disney’s most fully-realized princess yet, who goes after what she wants, rejects what she doesn't want, and cares about more than just her handsome crush. The Genie has weight beyond his uproarious comic asides because he too has hopes and dreams, the realization of which are not only heartwarming, but which come from a choice that marks Aladdin as being true-of-heart in a way that no narration or prophecy ever could. Even Jafar, as rankly evil as he is from the word go, has a fall that’s strengthened by the irony of his quest for unlimited power and freedom leading him to the same unexpected shackles everyone in the film is trying to escape.

That goes double for Aladdin himself, whose journey is as much a personal one as it is ridden with heart-pumping cave escapes and magic-boosted thoroughfare unveilings and international jaunts. He gets what he wants, as all characters must, but only after trying to get it the wrong way and paying the price for it. He stumbles, hurts his friends, out of an understandable insecurity that the truth will only keep him from the liberty and happiness that seem reserved for people with a different pedigree than he can offer. But he sets things right, and is rewarded for it, when he sticks to being the innately good, decent person he truly is.

There are worse lessons to pack in to a family film, particularly when it’s chock full of such memorable characters, melodies, and crowd-pleasing spectacle. There is no wasted second in Aladdin, with each moment perfectly-calibrate to make you laugh, cheer, sigh, or scream. It is the peak of Disney’s 1990s revivification, an endlessly stunning paean to the desire to chart one’s own path in life, and the true-to-oneself characters whose grace and decency earn them the right to that, and to share it with one another.

Every year I pick out one or two cheesy christmas movies as part of my holiday season. Last week I watched the mediocre Lindsay Lohan movie and this week I settled on this movie. More cheese, right? Um, no. This movie is good. I mean really good. Sure, there are the occasional reminders that it is the holiday season but it almost certainly is not a holiday movie (although I do expect that the christmas village scene in the middle of the movie was a wink at the audience from the director). First, the two leads have ridiculous chemistry. And it isn't the crappy syrupy kind that we see in so many other xmas movies. The supporting cast is also excellent, of course (Bonnie Bedelia should have been a bigger star). It is the rare movie that completely sucks me in and allows me to give myself up to it. I didn't want it to end. Some reviews were critical of the fact that there is a bit of a mystery in the movie. I don't agree with that sentiment. As I said earlier, this movie would have been just fine on its own if it hadn't gotten tagged with the "holiday" tag.

Finally, the best thing about the movie is that it is subtle. It didn't beat you over the head with the potential for romance. I would image that many people were disappointed in the last scene (probably the same group that hated the ending of the Sopranos) because they didn't show you exactly what happened. The best movies allow the viewer to fill in the blanks. We don't need to see everything on screen to know that something happened. That's not the point.

The worst part about the movie? I think that this movie ruined the Hallmark-ish kinds of movies for me. The movie started in a traditional way and for the first 20 minutes I had the mindset that cheese was on the way. Instead I was blown away. How do I go back to the traditional schlock? Damn you, Netflix.

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As the many professional reviews I read afterwards suggest, Fatman is a movie that doesn't live up to it's promise.

Fatman has a great premise about a gruffy slightly gritty Santa, a boy-child that feels wronged with his lump of coal and a Santa-obsessed hitman hired to kill him. I even think for the most part that tonally it mostly works. It's not overly gritty and it's not overly serious for most of it's runtime. It strikes that nice balance of casual surrealism.

The problem is that the movie knows what it wants to tell you and doesn't have any patience or subtlety in getting there. All the dramatic tension you expected from the trailer when you hear Mel Gibson's Santa yelling to the hitman about "You think you were the first to come for the Fatman?" the movie doesn't actually have much Fatman hunting. There's no series of hide and seek where we see that Santa is capable of defending himself. Even the tension the movie decides to try to generate of the Hitman even trying to FIND Santa in the first place isn't really tension. It's just a road trip without all the fun aspects of a road-trip movie. No interesting stops, No interesting road people. The movie just walks a straight lines from Point A to Point B. Nothing you see even really matters. Santa goes by Chris in this movie. In this small down he knows everybody and everybody knows him. There is however no payoff for this. He saves a woman from going home with a married man by casually reminding him of his wife and kids but while we see her again and she's clearly a friend there's no payoff. It's like a failure of the Chekhov's Gun trope.

There's a semi interesting plot line about Santa being underfunded and having to take a military contract to be able to pay his workers. In retrospect this entire plot line fails to have any narrative purpose other than world building Santa as a factory owner. In spite of their presence all over the final fight scenes these military security personnel plan next to no role in the violence. There's an even smaller plot line about Chris/Santa being grumpy because of his commercialized depictions compared to this underpaid status and while I like the characterization there it serves so little point to the plot that it feels kinda wasted.

Wasted is unfortunately the only way to describe this whole movie. I went into this hoping for a darkly humorous film with a bit of violence and while a lot of the scenes sans context imply that, this is no Ladykillers (either one).