2018 Capsule Reviews

Isle of Dogs

rating: *****

review: The movie that definitively made me appreciate Wes Anderson, his second stop-motion animated flick, about a nightmare scenario striking a Japanese city which exiles all its dogs to "Trash Island," and the courageous dogs (and humans!) who struggle to save the day.  Packed with Anderson's trademark ability to collect great stars to his projects, including what's now my favorite Bryan Cranston performance as Chief, the unlikely leader of this pack.  The whole film is amazing, including a perfect soundtrack.

The Death of Stalin

rating: *****

review: What do you get when filmmakers take the Monty Python approach to Soviet Russia?  I think the answer ought to be obvious: an instant classic.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

rating: *****

review: The media found a perfect storm of scandals to break the appeal of this series, whether it was J.K. Rowling, Ezra Miller, or Johnny Depp, who took center stage in this middle installment as Grindelwald, with Jude Law debuting as the young Dumbledore.  Competes with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as the definitive cinematic installment in the franchise, for me anyway.  Completely brilliant.

The Old Man & the Gun

rating: *****

review: For nearly everyone else David Lowery is still trying really hard to impress them, but for me he's very easily one of today's best filmmakers.  I really thought he'd reach that point with this latter-day starring role for Robert Redford, but 2018 in general was kind of a black hole, a transition, a singularity leading to the present day, in which the old rules simply no longer apply.  

Solo: A Star Wars Story

rating: ****

review: For most Star Wars fans, my opinions are the exact opposite of mainstream opinion.  Just recently, I thought Rogue One was basically an abomination, and the sequels were brilliant.  And I loved Solo, exactly what the character Han Solo needed to solidify his legacy, including an extremely clever interpretation of the old Kessel run record he bragged about in his first appearance.  If ever Star Wars truly became more than just the Skywalker saga (sorry, Mandalorian fans), this is what it looks like when Han takes center stage, and exactly how it ought.

Damsel

rating: ****

review: The Robert Pattinson career revival that led to his successfully starring in The Batman last year continued, quietly, with this oddball western, with Pattinson thoroughly embracing his inner Brad Pitt in a gonzo performance thoroughly worth experiencing.

Super Troopers 2

rating: ****

review: I didn't really get into the Broken Lizard boys until Club Dread, so the first Super Troopers had for a long time been a comedy milestone for other movie fans.  I was more than ready for this late sequel, however, especially thanks to all the Canadian humor infused into the shenanigans.

The Favourite

rating: ****

review: Director Yorgos Lanthimos first landed on my radar with his previous standout collaborations with Colin Farrell, including the classic The Lobster.  He had me without Farrell thanks to his including Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone in this one.  Dude knows how to pick, and showcase, his stars.

Dark Crimes

rating: ****

review: Jim Carrey's brief comeback began with this obscure thriller in which he commits to a serious character role, which he nails.  In career overviews, hopefully it'll garner more attention later.

Gringo

rating: ****

review: A classic ensemble farce lampooning corporate nonsense.  Another movie that demands a much wider and acclaimed reputation.  This year was full of 'em.

Tag

rating: ****

review: Famously the movie that broke Jeremy Renner's arms (he's had some terrible luck, okay?) and limiting his resulting chances to be featured heavily in the later Avengers movies (but was that really ever going to happen?), but well worth it.  A classic comedy.

Holmes and Watson

rating: ****

review: Ferrell and Reilly team together for another classic.  Reputation certainly suggests otherwise.  But...people developed increasingly poor taste.  Keep reading the list, okay?

The Yellow Birds

rating: ****

review: A who's who of great young actors (Alden Ehrenreich, Tye Sheridan, Jack Huston) power this war drama.

Woman Walks Ahead

rating: ****

review: Jessica Chastain's whole career kind of falls into the black hole of this era, and so this movie certainly was completely overlooked.  With a voice likes hers you'd think she'd only have so much range, but she always surprises.  If she's somehow not enough for you, there's also Sam Rockwell.

Operation: Finale

rating: ****

review: Sometimes it really seems that what people are telling you and what they possibly really believe are in fact two different things.  Here's another movie that should have been a huge deal, as Oscar Isaac goes Nazi hunting in South America.  Riveting, with a signature turn from Ben Kingsley to push things along.

Sorry to Bother You

rating: ****

review: LaKeith Stanfield had a breakthrough year (he also had a small but striking supporting role in The Girl in Spider's Web), headlined by this wicked satire.

Peppermint

rating: ****

review: If you'd asked me twenty years ago if it was at all possible to completely take Jennifer Garner for granted, I would never have believed you.  She attempts a comeback that strongly evokes Alias (or at least her acting in it), and that's how it's greeted.  Figures.

Paul, Apostle of Christ

rating: ****

review: Jim Caviezel's second biblical epic drew considerably less attention (here he's only Luke, alas, and by the end of the film really just a supporting player), but a pretty impactful experience, once you let it sink into you.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado

rating: ***

review: The opening scene is so mesmerizing, I really haven't been able to make it through the rest of the movie even now.  Seems more of a spotlight for Benicio del Toro than Josh Brolin.  I'm okay with that.  Will eventually experience the whole thing!

The Girl in the Spider's Web

rating: ***

review: Once I got into Lisbeth Salander, I saw her as a true modern icon.  Book buyers bought and then abandoned her, and this second of her two American movies didn't make much of an impact, and yet she remains compelling, for me.

Can You Ever Really Forgive Me?

rating: ***

review: The downslope of Melissa McCarthy's sudden wave of massive popularity was precipitous; this excellent dramatic spotlight was paired in 2018 by the movie that finally did it in, which you'll find later on in this list.

Vice

rating: ***

review: Adam McKay's biting political bio wasn't bold enough for the viewers who wanted him to really savage Cheney (and/or Bush), but I figure it did its job well enough.

Widows

rating: ***

review: I think ultimately its sprawling cast of standout performances overwhelms the overall experience.  But what a cast!

Stan & Ollie

rating: ***

review: Y'know, Laurel & Hardy.  This biopic is perhaps a little too depressing in its spotlight of their declining years.  But well worth experiencing as a tribute to their enduring appeal.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

rating: ***

review: Paul Rudd is such a great hand, it's easy to forget why he's generally not really considered a leading man.  This is even more obvious in the recent third installment, but in this second one, there's plenty of assisting parts, including an upgrade so Marvel could claim it used its female characters better than its record had really stated by this point. 

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

rating: ***

review: Ah!  Right!  The infamous Henry Cavill role that produced the mustache!  Tom Cruise had developed a nasty habit in this series to curb the wider appeal of any potential usurpers (Jeremy Renner, previous victim, Ghost Protocol), and Cavill's best scene, preparing for a fight in a restroom, showcased in the trailers, is relegated to much less impressive results in the film itself, and of course a reveal as one of the bad guys.  But I really do love this series.

Avengers: Infinity War

rating: ***

review: Elsewhere on this blog you can see where my original thoughts were considerably more positive, but hindsight places the best sequence, and the only one I really think fondly about, in Steve Rogers' dramatic comeback.  Otherwise, dramatically underscores all the failings of the MCU to be anything more than throwaway entertainment.  

Venom

rating: ***

review: Hey, I'll follow Tom Hardy anywhere!  Typically great performance.  Rest of the film around him...well, it's there, anyway.

Aquaman

rating: ***

review: I just haven't really gotten around to revisiting it.  I love Jason Momoa's Aquaman.  But he doesn't feel as electric as he does in (either cut of) Justice League, here.  Role of a lifetime all the same.

Deadpool 2/Once Upon a Deadpool

rating: ***

review: The novelty of Ryan Reynolds getting to have the first one made overlooks that the results are seriously obnoxious, without anything around the performance remotely capable of or interested in balancing it out.  This second one has Zazie Beetz as Domino.  It's pretty much enough.

Ocean's 8

rating: ***

review: Well worth revisiting the formula with an all-female all star cast.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls

rating: ***

review: Cate Blanchett and Jack Black as wizards in this kind of alternate take on Harry Potter (based on a book that predates Harry Potter, to be clear).  Well worth the look.

Tom Raider

rating: ***

review: Goodness, Alicia Vikander deserves a far larger legacy than she ended up getting.  This take on Lara Croft is far more credible than its two cinematic predecessors, and not just because it's based on later entries in the game series that grounded our hero more in the real world.  Last year's Uncharted shows where this one really fell short of the mark: besides Vikander, there's not much else to see.

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies

rating: **

review: Endure the stuff happening around it if you want to see Nic Cage officially as Superman!

Early Man

rating: **

review: A kind of disappointing creative follow-up from the genius creator of Wallace & Gromit.

Black Panther

rating: **

review: I still don't get why the character of Black Panther itself isn't considered hugely embarrassing, but it seems a sizable portion of both black and white audiences prefer a fantastical vision of Africa, and an African hero, to represent the best hopes of black people in America, than anything else.  In any other setting, this would work much better.  As the most famous and successful black superhero (at least at the movies), I just don't get it.  Might still end up the most enduring artifact of the MCU era.  If so, its legacy should grow accordingly.  As part of the MCU, it's just ridiculous.

Crazy Rich Asians

rating: **

review: Credited with raising the profile of Asians in American film (but somehow it took until last year's Everything Everywhere All at Once to have any kind of follow-up), but really just another fever dream of obscene wealth.

Robin Hood

rating: **

review: A fun update but decidedly a lower register than the Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe versions that preceded it.  I mean, is Taron Egerton ever going to be considered to portray a father figure to Superman???

Skyscraper

rating: **

review: The movie all those recent critics of Dwayne Johnson doing the same thing every movie most ignore (from his recent output), a decent effort at making him more human, but kind of focusing too much on the dramatic heroics to really qualify.

Death Wish

rating: **

review: Bruce Willis's last shot at a mainstream hit is a remake that doesn't really know how to spotlight him.

The Sisters Brothers

rating: **

review: A screwball buddy western that looks too grim to really soak in its comedic potential.  Or I just need to watch it again.

Mary Queen of Scots

rating: **

review: I probably really, really need to revisit this one, as it seems to waste both Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan.  How is that even possible???

Annihilation

rating: **

review: Much buzzed about, but mostly a wasted cast in a movie of total nonsense.

You Were Never Really Here

rating: **

review: Basically the exact experience of Joaquin Phoenix's Joker.  But worse.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

rating: **

review: Great animation (of the kind later put to equally stellar work in The Mitchells vs. the Machines), but otherwise lost in spastic storytelling.

A Star is Born

rating: **

review: The zenith of Bradley Cooper's star power from the unexpected huge success of American Sniper boils down to one really great song ("Shallow") and a spotlight for Lady Gaga, eating up with all her insecurities any decent chance for Cooper himself to stand out.  Well, she fits in House of Gucci much, much better.

BlacKkKlansman

rating: **

review: Spike Lee's comeback is by most rights a seminal experience with a number of great performances, from John David Washington and Adam Driver, but the results, at least for me, are completely sabotaged by the horrendous afro Washington sports throughout, which looks more like a turban than hair.  I mean...unless there was somehow a point being made, did nobody notice that?  At all?

Mary Poppins Returns

rating: **

review: Did no one notice in this one that the songs in it are not even remotely reminiscent of the ones in the original?  And if they're not...what is even the point???

Bumblebee

rating: **

review: A lot of viewers thought this one corrected the mistakes of the Michael Bay era.  But the results are basically exactly the same as the Michael Bay era.  But without the Michael Bay magic.  So...

The Happytime Murders

rating: **

review: I really, really wanted to like this.  But the absence of a truly sympathetic, comedic lead pseudo Muppet robs this Melissa McCarthy vehicle of rewatch appeal.  A fine thing for what it is, but in this case, probably rightly roundly rejected on release.

Ready Player One

rating: **

review: Modern Spielberg is desperate to please, and here's his shot at adapting a popular book.  It's not Harry Potter.

The Hurricane Heist

rating: *

review: My first viewing suggested a surprisingly amateurish experience.  Wanted to be kind of like the Fast & Furious films.  Fell well short of the mark.

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

rating: ****

the story: A black man encounters the full absurdity of the workforce.

review: Director Boots Riley was worried about comparisons to other black filmmakers, but I think Sorry to Bother You will enjoy its greater legacy in comparison to other workplace comedies, chiefly Mike Judge's Office Space (1999).

Riley's perspective stems from the fact that on its surface, Sorry to Bother You comes from the same recent surge of black filmmaking as Get Out (2017).  On the surface, its story arc is chiefly concerned with the role of black people in white society.  But it can be a universal message, too.  By the time the movie reaches the concept of equisapiens, I think my point has been proven.

I mean, equisapiens, right? 

Maybe my greater point is that you don't need to be black to enjoy the movie itself?  That seems needlessly reductive.  You don't need to be black to understand it, either, you don't need to be black to enjoy it, and you don't need to be black to get something meaningful from it.  I mean, on the one hand it seems to be satire from a black perspective, but it's also...just satire.  Hilarious satire.  I mean, equisapiens.  That's an iconic movie image regardless of context, but the context grounds it, too, even while it's so absurd that the whole movie might end up being remembered for it.

The cast is impeccable.  I caught Lakeith Stanfield in a supporting role in Girl in the Spider's Web (2018), and he was compelling even in a fairly limited capacity.  Here, in the lead role, he remains so.  Tessa Thompson is fast becoming one of my favorites.  She stands out in everything.  Armie Hammer has found new life as a supporting actor.  Danny Glover and Steve Yeun are among a strong supporting cast.  Patton Oswalt and David Cross are hilarious as a few of the "white voices" in another of the film's hilarious digs at society at large.

Basically, a movie that succeeds well past its initial goals. 

Operation: Finale (2018)

rating: ****

the story: The capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina by Mossad agents.

review: One of my favorite historical dramas, in fact one of my favorite movies in general, is Spielberg's Munich (2005), a triumph in pretty much every regard.  Operation Finale is a very different movie, but both share the idea of horror at the world their characters are forced to inhabit, which in both cases is the real world, and as such are both all the more compelling for it.  Operation Finale is a story of the Holocaust, but instead of focusing on the Holocaust itself (such as with, say, Schindler's List), it centers on the decades that lay ahead, of the people who were affected by it, or in Eichmann's case, helped make it happen.

The most stunning thing about the film is how Eichmann himself is presented.  Ben Kingsley is a famously charismatic chameleon.  He brings that quality to Eichmann, whom we catch up with already ensconced in his literally new life (with a new name and family) in Argentina.  We see an Argentina where Nazis still exist, holding rallies with the same hateful bluster, something history has tended to gloss over (the musical Evita covers a version of events).  The movie is mostly concerned with Eichmann himself, and the Mossad agent, played by Oscar Isaac, who finds himself in the unlikely position of convincing Eichmann to agree to stand trial in Israel.

Isaac has emerged in recent years as a reliable film presence, still searching for a truly breakout lead performance despite a wealth of interesting roles behind him.  He often appears as ambiguous figures, which is perhaps what allows him to pull off this particularly tricky part.  His scenes with Kingsley are the heart of the movie, and both actors deliver.  Will Eichmann agree to stand trial, despite every attempt to justify himself as a mere bureaucrat (in so many words)?

Director Chris Weitz (a bit of a chameleon himself, with a track record as varied as About a Boy and Twilight Saga: New Moon) is able to find the right balance, and is wise enough to give Isaac roadblocks, but remove them as necessary.  This is a rare trait in such storytelling, often wrongly pursued with the belief that increased use of roadblocks increases the drama, when it only proves how little faith there is in other elements.

(Among the supporting cast is Melanie Laurant, who appeared in another WWII movie, albeit a far different one, Inglourious Basterds.)

By the time Isaas is just another observer, as we glimpse the trial itself, we already know that Operation Finale has done exactly what it set out to accomplish: give audiences the outrage of the Holocaust at exactly the banal level Eichmann himself was said to represent.

2018

Viewed/Ranked

1. Isle of Dogs
2. The Death of Stalin
3. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
4. The Old Man & The Gun
5. Solo: A Star Wars Movie
6. Damsel
7. Super Troopers 2
8. The Favourite
9. Dark Crimes
10. Gringo
11. Tag
12. Holmes and Watson
13. The Yellow Birds
14. Woman Walks Ahead
15. Sicario: Day of the Soldado
16. The Girl In The Spider's Web
17. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
18. Vice
19. Widows
20. Stan & Ollie
21. Ant-Man and the Wasp
22. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
23. Avengers: Infinity War
24. Venom
25. Aquaman
26. Deadpool 2/Once Upon a Deadpool
27. Teen Titans Go! To The Movies
28. Early Man
29. Tomb Raider
30. Black Panther
31. Robin Hood
32. Skyscraper
33. Death Wish
34. The Sisters Brothers
35. Mary Queen of Scots
36. Paul, Apostle of Christ
37. Annihilation
38. You Were Never Really Here
39. Son of Bigfoot
40. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
41. A Star Is Born
42. BlacKkKlansman
43. The Happytime Murders
44. Dr. Seuss' The Grinch
45. Ready Player One
46. The Hurricane Heist

Other Notable Releases

1. A Quiet Place
2. A Simple Favor
3. Bad Times At The El Royale
4. Bohemian Rhapsody
5. Boy Erased
6. Bumblebee
7. Crazy Rich Asians
8. Creed II
9. Green Book
10. The House With A Clock In Its Walls
11. Incredibles 2
12. Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom
13. Mary Poppins Returns
14. The Meg
15. The Mule
16. Ocean's 8
17. Peppermint
18. The Predator
19. Ralph Breaks the Internet
20. Sorry To Bother You
21. Upgrade
22. Welcome To Marwen

The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)

rating: ****

the story: The focus shifts squarely to Lisbeth Salander.

review: Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy became a full-fledged literary phenomenon a decade ago, a Swedish sensation that made its way to Americans with the first entry becoming known as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is the name it went by for the 2011 Hollywood adaptation headlined by director David Fincher and actors Rooney Mara as Lisbeth and Daniel Craig, then still at the height of his 007 fame, as crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist.  Arguably Craig's Blomvist was the lead character in the movie.  Hollywood, unlike Sweden, never adapted the rest of the trilogy, which heavily swings the attention toward Salander, as with the later books written by David Lagercrantz, the first of which Girl in the Spider's Web adapts.  With popular phenomenons, you never know exactly what audiences are responding to.  I naturally assumed everyone else gravitated to Salander as an ultimately sympathetic figure, but now it seems attention was gained over morbid curiosity.  If more fans had been like me, Girl in the Spider's Web would've been received quite differently.

As it is, the second Hollywood Salander movie landed as a dud.  It's not because of the movie.  Blomkvist, as in the books, take a clear backseat to Salander this time, cast as with much of the film without a star in mind.  Lisbeth Salander is herself once again played by a relative unknown, a would-be star-making role for Claire Foy (as it more or less failed to be for Mara as well, somehow).  The biggest name in the cast is actually Stephen Merchant, who wears a number of creative hats, playing the guy who creates the program celebrated hacker Salander spends the movie trying to protect, as well as his son, while she battles her evil twin sister. 

The movie, as with its cast, seeks to present an authentic version of Sweden, moreso than its 2011 predecessor, and as such feels far more European than Hollywood.  It's otherwise a fairly standard stylish thriller, except that it centers on Lisbeth Salander.  The movie pivots but doesn't dwell on her real world mystique, hinging on all the familiar elements but more or less expecting audiences to care as much about Salander as they did a decade ago.  Clearly a miscalculation.  The trailer, featuring a hostile Salander attacking a man suspended upside down, didn't sell the story so much as the hope that Salander remained an icon, an archetypal feminist for a feminist age.  But I think she ended up seeing too hostile, too alienating.  This is a character who became increasingly humanized and sympathetic, as I said, in later book appearances.  I cried reading Larsson's final entry, when the justice system finally acknowledges her, vindicating her. 

But we don't really live in a world where we easily accept iconoclasts, rebels like Lisbeth Salander, and ironically a movie that celebrates her as her own worthy lead character ends up rejected, just as Salander was always envisioned by Larsson in his fictional tales, as just another eccentric outsider.  But she is compelling, and she is worth celebrating, and Girl in the Spider's Web does an excellent job conveying that, as well as her infinitely complicated family history.  Even heroes have sibling rivalry issues. 

Bottom line, this is a movie that will remind you of what made Lisbeth Salander so memorable to begin with.  You just have to remember that she was memorable, in and of herself, in the best possible way. 

Preliminary listing of favorite 2018 films

1. Isle of Dogs - I've gushed about this before; it's a brilliant, complete package of casting, storytelling, and moviemaking flare.
2. The Death of Stalin - I love that it's a challenge.  I love that it takes a nightmare scenario concerning a regime that couldn't be less likely to be the subject of a movie like this, and completely turns it on its head.  This is the textbook definition of farce, the opposite of what it seems it should be, and in that way illuminates the conditions and personalities with exquisite perfection.
3. Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald - After Goblet of Fire, I think this is about as perfect a cinematic experience from the world of Harry Potter that has yet appeared.
4. The Old Man & the Gun - A truly elegiac farewell to Robert Redford.
5. Damsel - A gloriously subversive western.
6. Gringo - A farce of a different variety than Death of Stalin, but even more delirious, if that's even possible.
7. Super Troopers 2 - I'm not actually even that big a fan of the first one, so much a fan of Broken Lizard in general.  But lampooning Canadians and America's current reputation helps elevate the material.
8. Widows - Moreso than BlacKkKlansman, I think this one nails the complexities of race relations in modern America. 
9. Solo: A Star Wars Movie - I'm that rare fan who loved this one.
10. Dark Crimes - Fascinating performance from Jim Carrey.

Final results may vary.  I've yet to see some heavy hitters, like The Other Side of the Wind and The Favourite.  Since it'll be getting a North American release in 2019, I'm not sure where The Man Who Killed Don Quixote will fall, but I remain confident that the journey will have been worth it.

Damsel (2018)

rating: ****

the story: In the Old West, a young man goes on a quest to rescue the love of his life.

review: I've been a fan of Robert Pattinson since he showed up for a minor role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).  He later made his name in the Twilight movies, and has been working steadily in low profile starring roles ever since.  With last year's Good Time, Pattinson started receiving some critical appreciation.  He's become a kind of new Leonardo DiCaprio, whom he most closely resembles in style in Damsel, although his role choices have started to look a lot like the young Brad Pitt.  Little wonder that he's gone in either direction; hard to find any actors with more interesting careers than theirs, in an era that has increasingly challenged the continued validity of the lead actor concept.

Damsel seems to have confounded most viewers.  Is it meant to be a straight western?  If so, why is Pattinson so buggy in the lead role?  Or is it supposed to be a farce?  Then why all the nasty violence?  This ain't exactly Deadpool.  So what's the deal?

A damn fine piece of filmmaking, one of the more interesting efforts I've seen in recent years.  Directors David(who doubles as one of the main characters, a parson who's consistently in way over his head) and Nathan Zellner have no previous widely-known films under their belts (I know movies pretty well; their work seems to have fallen in the extremely limited release realm before Damsel), but their work here is a true revelation.  Beautiful cinematography on top of everything else, it's their storytelling that most singles them out.

And what exactly is the story of Damsel?  Because about halfway through, it completely switches tracks!  Pattinson's character is dead, and everything the story had suggested about him turns out to be false, and...we're never really given clarification.  It ends up being about Mia Wasikowska's "damsel" as she struggles to reclaim her sanity.  Pattinson shows up out of nowhere, suddenly less a daring-do romantic hero and more a psychotic murderer, who kills her husband before committing suicide once it becomes clear he never really had Wasikowska's heart...Yeah! 

It seems to be completely nuts.  But in such a good way!  The lack of answers actually works in Damsel's favor, ambiguity that's far too rare in mainstream movies (unless you're Christopher Nolan).  Pattinson is positively magnetic in his role, seems to have been positively born to play it.  Wasikowska, who has yet to have been fully embraced by critics despite years of excellent work, more than carries the movie in his absence.  If this is an experience that confounds viewers, it's also one that is difficult to ignore, and hopefully helps everyone involved attract greater notice in the future. 

Of course, Damsel gets a lot of extra credit for me from the opening sequence with Robert Forster, who's somehow never gotten the attention he deserved from his rediscovery in Jackie Brown (1997), where he effortlessly commands the screen with his unique charisma.  Yeah, his presence also helps set the tone for this one.

But the movie itself is so peculiarly compelling, that Damsel ought to at least earn a cult following.  It's like Seth MacFarlane's post-modern western A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), but as a true work of art.

The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

rating: ****

the story: An old bank robber proves charm is his greatest weapon.

review: I've become a huge fan of director David Lowery.  Last year's A Ghost Story was a creative masterpiece and career highlight following previous films promising great potential (Ain't Them Bodies Saints, the live action Pete's Dragon).  However, he's one of the young directors of his generation who's found it tough to find much popular, much less visible critical success.  Scoring what's billed as Robert Redford's final role is probably a good way to get some attention.  The results are once again worthy of the potential.

Redford was at the head of another creative generation, one of the brightest acting talents to come out of the '60s, where he made one of his earliest standout films, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where he first teamed up with Paul Newman (they struck again with The Sting), and set the tone for what Lowery evokes with The Old Man & the Gun.  Redford made a career out of his effortless charm. His most recent mainstream role was as a bad guy in the MCU, the Marvel superhero Avengers franchise.  I feared that this was how younger moviegoers were going to end up remembering him, and maybe they still will, but at least now he gets to go out on a high note, one that's all his own.

The idea of the "good" rogue is at least as old as Robin Hood, the criminal as likable, even defensible.  Casey Affleck, who also appeared in Ghost Story and Ain't Them Bodies Saint, and as such has easily become a signature Lowery collaborator (he starred with Rooney Mara in them, and I wish she'd appeared in this one, too), plays a cop who eventually sympathizes with Redford's bank robber after spending most off the movie trying to catch him.  Tom Waits (arguably continuing to reap the benefits of being Heath Ledger's purported model for his iconic Joker in The Dark Knight) and Danny Glover play Redford's fellow crooks, while Sissy Spacek plays a woman who falls for his charms in a purely romantic sense.

By the time Lowery allows himself to become showy (the whole thing is actually his filmmaking as more accessible, beyond Redford's appeal, than he's been in the past), playfully chronicling Redford's many jailbreaks, setting up the ending, you can appreciate the subtlety of the storytelling even more.  A lot of other directors would've dwelt on that element a lot longer, and thus lost the point, and taken the focus off of Redford himself.  But we do get a brief look at vintage Redford screen footage during the montage, and that's another great way to help say goodbye.  In an era where we're suddenly resurrecting dead actors via CGI seemingly without batting an eye, remembering we have old footage available, and knowing how to use it, seems a lot more, well, artful.

And "artful" is what The Old Man & the Gun is all about, the art of moviemaking, the old charms, the timeless charms, and adding to them, explaining them, maybe. 

Gringo (2018)

rating: ****

the story: A ruthless company attempts to use one of its most loyal employees as a patsy in Mexico.

review: When I saw the trailer for Gringo, I thought it looked like a delightful farce.  I was interested in it anyway, as it starred Charlize Theron and Joel Edgerton, two of my favorite modern actors.  But more intriguing, from the trailer, was David Oyelowo, the would-be patsy whose reactions were hilariously over-the-top to the chaos happening around him.

And that's what you get the movie itself, too, and that's more than satisfying.  The best part is that it casts Oyelowo in an entirely new light, for me.  I was previously exposed to him only, as far as I know, in Selma, where I thought he was horribly miscast as Martin Luther King, Jr., and as a result I didn't think much of him as an actor in general.  But Gringo proves me wrong.  Selma's problems don't seem to have been Oyelowo's problems at all, its creative shortcomings a result of the creative process.  Gringo is what the creative process working the right way looks like.

At heart it's a massive criticism of how greedy the business sector continues to be, long after the supposed "greed decade" of the '80s.  Theron and Edgerton (whose brother Nash directed the movie) play the business colleagues trying to save their own skins at Oyelowo's expense.  Edgerton famously has a passive face, expressionless, and I think it held him back early in his career, but he's managed to work around it thanks to his considerable acting chops (best exemplified, I think, in Warrior and Exodus: Gods and Kings), to the point where he can guide his own career now.  His ruthless businessman in Gringo in particular uses his peculiar screen presence to full advantage, that passive face playing into is callousness as he tries to have his cake and eat it, too, backstabbing the haplessly loyal and trusting Oyelowo (until Oyelowo realizes that he's been had and turns the tables on him).

Sharlto Copley, who moreso than director Neill Blomkamp managed to parlay District 9 into a fascinating career, plays Edgerton and Theron's muscle who ends up siding with Oyelowo, and is another great presence in the movie.  There's also Thandie Newton (can't believe she was ever allowed to vanish from the forefront), Amanda Seyfried, and Alan Ruck in supporting roles.

Gringo is a movie I think could very easily settle into a cult favorite, and a career highlight for a number of its actors, especially Oyelowo.

Isle of Dogs (2018)

rating: *****

the story: A corrupt politician creates a conspiracy to exile all dogs, but his adopted son mounts a campaign to rescue them.

what it's all about: The exact parallels aren't there, and they don't need to be, but Isle of Dogs might be the first great cinematic response to Trump, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum.  Its plot can be seen as a response to Trump's immigration policies.  But regardless of all that, it's a great film, the crowning artistic achievement of Wes Anderson's career. 

Anderson has made a career of creating quirky movies.  He's become increasingly ambitious over the years.  2001's The Royal Tenenbaums was his first widely-acknowledged success, but Anderson took a giant leap forward with his follow-up, 2004's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which can be interpreted as a modern, absurdist's version of Moby-Dick.  2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox, a stylistic herald to Isle of Dogs, saw Anderson begin to break free entirely of conventions, while 2014's The Grand Budapest Hotel saw him emerge on a truly grand scale for the first time. 

Isle of Dogs, no matter how you interpret it, even if it's only to be understood as a generic cautionary tale, is a wholly contained accomplishment, a complete vision capable of being enjoyed on multiple levels.  The title itself is a nod and a wink; you can love it if all you are is a dog lover.  This is an era that relishes simple pleasures, after all.  You can relish it for the rich vocal cast, a true embarrassment of riches that continues Grand Budapest Hotel's most simple pleasure, all those small roles filled by well-known actors.  You have Bryan Cranston, still justifiably riding the wave of his breakthrough performance in Breaking Bad, in the lead role.  You have Edward Norton and Liev Schreiber just below him.  You have Bill Murray, you have Jeff Goldblum, you have Scarlett Johansson, you have Bob Balaban, Greta Gerwig, Harvey Keitel.  You even have Fisher Stevens!  You have Courtney B. Vance as narrator! 

You can appreciate it as a boy's quest movie.  You can appreciate it as the rare movie omitting subtitles despite heavy usage of Japanese characters speaking Japanese.  You can appreciate it for subverting the "white savior" concept, despite criticism that it plays into that concept.  Gerwig voices an American schoolgirl who leads a peoples revolution against the corrupt politician, but in the end it isn't her actions that produce the happy ending, but the adopted son's, who is Japanese, and the dogs, all of whom have plenty of reasons not to work together, but do.  And that's as much the message of the movie as anything else, that idea of putting aside differences that seems to have been utterly lost today. 

The music is intrinsic to all this.  Not just the taiko drumming.  Another criticism of the movie is that it takes a white man's poor understanding of Japanese culture and assumes it's being accurate.  The whole point of omitting subtitles is acknowledging the cultural divides that even the dogs represent, speaking English (dogs don't speak English).  It's metaphor, people.  There's nothing intrinsically Japanese about this movie, it's a creative choice, in a movie brilliantly bursting with them.  Very few directors in history have made as many of them, and as many of them as well, as Wes Anderson has in Isle of Dogs.  The constant drum beats, with or without taiko drums, and the anonymous indy-style songs, are incumbent of a talent who has been synthesizing the castoffs of film history for decades, and come up with a masterpiece from them.

I don't know if this is going to remain my favorite movie of 2018, but it's going to be difficult to beat.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

rating: ****

the story: Han Solo emerges from the ship-building grind of life on Corellia to become an intergalactic outlaw.

what it's all about: Incredibly, there seems to be a lot of discontent among Star Wars fans for a Han Solo origin movie.  It's franchise fatigue.  It happens to every franchise.  If this is how you feel about Solo, move along.  Move along.

In the new era of Star Wars movies, where George Lucas is no longer the guiding hand of the saga and there are movies that don't directly continue the saga...this might just be the first one capable of establishing it own legacy.  Maybe not right away.  Let pesky fans attempt to spoil it.  Give it time.  Pesky fans can't spoil the fun forever.  This is the second "anthology" movie of the franchise.  The first one, Rogue One, I thought was a horrible disaster.  Fans didn't.  They loved it.  I thought it came to all the wrong conclusions about what Star Wars is all about, and was lazy about...everything.  If that was what Star Wars was going to be for a new generation, I shuddered for the future.  But Solo makes things right.

There's a lot to unpack here.

One of the things Solo does is nudge what's at the heart of Star Wars, whether or not George Lucas envisioned it as a response to Vietnam.  That's one of the things Rogue One most misunderstood.  It mistakenly correlated opposition to Vietnam with...tacit approval of terrorism in the Middle East.  It really did.  Solo handles it very differently.  At one point Han has actually become a recruit of the Empire, and he finds himself in the latest in a series of campaigns he can't begin to comprehend, and he asks aloud what their objective is.  In the post-Vietnam era, that's warfare.  After WWII settled the last of the major international conflicts, the Cold War made it impossible for countries of comparable development to even consider engaging in open combat.  The threat of nuclear assault made it unthinkable.  Europe found itself depleted of real influence, and that left the US, the Soviets/Russia, and whoever wanted to be considered emerging powers, and this was usually determined with the achievement of nuclear weapons or the ambition to attain them.  If a country didn't have them?  So that's what Vietnam was, what Afghanistan was, what Iraq was.  It was different warfare.  Incomprehensible, to most perspectives.  Han doesn't really say it's unjustifiable.  Actually, he ends up with a group of thieves who are doing pretty much the same sort of thing as the Empire, just on a much smaller scale.  The Rebellion isn't depicted as terrorists, but as intermediaries interested in stopping the random exploitation of others.  I personally interpret that to take at least some of the edge off comparisons between the US and the Empire, whether or not you ever realized they were there.  And I see it as a direct response to Rogue One. 

Anyway, to return back to purely movie matters, Solo also is heavily engaged in reclaiming, well, Han Solo.  Everyone's Han Solo these days.  Tony Stark is Han Solo.  Peter Quill is Han Solo.  James T. Kirk is Han Solo.  Even Jack Sparrow is Han Solo.  So it only seems fitting that Han Solo gets to be Han Solo again.  We last saw him in The Force Awakens, the first of the new sequels, getting killed by his own son.  After the events of Return of the Jedi, Han seems to have backslid into the kind of life he had before A New Hope.  That, and the whole being-killed-by-his-own-son thing, kind of put a damper on him, and Star Wars in general.  Solo kind of explains what happened, how that could've happened, and it once and for explains what makes Han Solo, well, Han Solo, and what separates him from everyone else who wants to be Han Solo.

Han had a girl back home.  Han had to leave the girl behind.  Han eventually reunites with the girl.  Happy ending?  The girl doesn't die!  But no, that's not how the movie ends.  The movie ends with them deciding to go separate ways.  Along with everything else that happens to him during the course of Solo, Han seems to decide forming long-term attachments is probably always going to be difficult.  Chewie is different.  Chewie sticks around, it seems, because they both know if Chewie ever wanted to leave, he can.  At one point Han does say goodbye to Chewie in what he seems to think of as a permanent kind of way, but in pretty short order Chewie's back at his side.  The movie is really about Han's relationship with a mentor figure who does everything he can to give Han a cynical outlook.  By the time we catch up with Han again in A New Hope, that cynical outlook has taken a firm hold of his thought process, but by the end of Solo he doesn't have it yet.  Despite everything he experiences he's much closer to being the good guy he ultimately proves to be. 

But we're given every indication that refusing to be called a good guy, at the end of Solo, is what leads to that cynical outlook, refusing to accept that he can depend on others.  Losing the girl is that first chink.  Forget being betrayed by the mentor.  That's nothing! 

The movie otherwise presents itself as the modern era version of Han Solo.  Everyone who's attempted to be Han Solo, that's what this movie consciously evokes.  He gets a Guardians of the Galaxy crew around him, including a mouthy CGI guy (voiced by Jon Favreau).  Alden Ehrenreich gets to give his own performance.  Unlike Rogue One's horribly botched Tarkin, he isn't asked to imitate someone else.  Harrison Ford is Harrison Ford.  Instead, Ehrenreich feels a lot more like Chris Pine.  True, he's not much like Tony Stark or Jack Sparrow, but that's a good thing.  Those were much bigger departures from the archetype, took it places Han Solo ultimately never went.  They permanently rogues.  Han ultimately isn't. 

Emilia Clarke gets another shot at striking big in another franchise (she's the face of Game of Thrones; she didn't really replace anyone's idea of Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys) as Han's girl.  Paul Bettany is her boss, Woody Harrelson is Han's mentor.  Thandie Newton shows up, but it's hard to recognize her.  Donald Glover plays Lando Calrissian.  I love Glover, but he seems to have chosen to underplay the part.  Lando's droid plays up that unspoken aspect of Star Wars lore, the subservient nature of droids.  Ironically or not it gets plugged into the Millennium Falcon and pretty much forgotten.  Lando and Han's scenes seem inspired by Maverick.

I'll always be a Star Wars fan.  I love the original trilogy.  I love the prequels.  I love what the sequels have done so far.  I hated Rogue One.  I think Solo sums up, with one movie, what Star Wars is all about (minus the Force).  I love how it explains the famous Kessel Run.  Genius.  That alone makes the whole experience worth it.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

rating: ****

the story: Thanos collects the Infinity Gems and plows through superheroes left and right.

what it's all about: This is it!  This is what these movies have been working toward since Iron Man (2008) when Nick Fury strolls into the movie and talks about an "Avengers initiative."  And "these movies" includes...three Iron Man movies, three Captain America, three Thor, two previous Avengers, two Guardians of the Galaxy, a Doctor Strange, technically one of the Hulk movies, a third cinematic Spider-Man, Black Panther, and an Ant-Man...!  So, lots of material.  And aside from Captain America: Civil War, this is the first time since Avengers that there's been a real sense of momentum, and this is the most momentum these movies could possibly have built up.

And the movie delivers.  It's a perfect summation and justification of the whole thing.  I mean, not perfect.  Where Empire Strikes Back has its big moment at the end people will always point to as reason enough to declare it a classic even though it ends with a cliffhanger...ultimately Infinity War is all cliffhanger.  It's all big moments and clever quips and selling the concept of Thanos as the ultimate threat.  But it features no moment comparable to learning the truth about Vader.  The closest it comes is suggesting Thanos suffers at having to sacrifice his daughter, Gamora, a relationship we already knew about from Guardians of the Galaxy.  And that's ultimately a weakness.  If it were true masterful storytelling, Gamora would stand obviously at the center of Infinity War, but I can tell you the early response is that it's Thanos who does, and that is a weakness.  Thanos is not sympathetic.  He is a villain.  Black Panther introduced the concept of the supposed sympathetic villain.  That's one of the reasons I'm not eager to watch Black Panther, regardless of its rabid popularity, because it trades on responses that manipulate more than tell a credible story.  Infinity War itself sells Black Panther short.  Wakanda is just another in a series of weak superhero defenses.  In order to make Thanos look strong, everyone else has to look weak.  Actually, including Thanos himself.

So I am impressed with the results, and disappointed, too.  The best thing about the movie, because Gamora is held back, is watching all the various aspects of the Avengers movie landscape come together.  All the classic heroes are here, and nearly everyone else, too.  Since I still haven't seen Doctor Strange, this is my first opportunity to see Benedict Cumberbatch as Strange (a brief look from Thor: Ragnarok didn't impress me, and neither did the movie around it).  He comes off well.  I don't tend to like Cumberbatch's American accent, as he seems to be inclined to rob himself of his greatest asset, that deep boom in his voice, when he uses it.  Thankfully he pulls out the boom every now and then.  Zoe Saldana, robbed or not in the story, is the best actor in the movie, as Gamora.  She didn't really have such opportunities in the two Guardians movies to date.  Josh Brolin has been a favorite of mine since he started breaking out in 2007, and while some of his dialogue is clumsy he of course sells Thanos well.  Chris Pratt leads the rest of the Guardians as Star-Lord in typically Star-Lord material.  Chris Hemsworth has the biggest opportunity of the original set to stand out, and maybe because his work in Ragnarok was so recent the movie is inclined to give Thor useful material.  Robert Downey Jr, who has throughout the franchise been at its center, is strangely downplayed, for the first time ever, as Iron Man, despite having some fairly important things to do.  Chris Evans as Captain America has less than both of them but he still comes off as more immediately impactful.  Mark Ruffalo as Hulk (sort of) has strong character material.  Tom Holland's Spider-Man is about as good here as he was in Civil War, and better than he was in his own movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming.  I know Black Panther has been insanely popular, but I remain unmoved by Chadwick Boseman.  Of the many other actors in smaller roles, Peter Dinklage stands out (heh) as a dwarf (heh).  It's about time someone truly looks beyond his size.  And this movie, which like Justice League draws on the 21st century blockbuster legacies of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, was probably his best bet for such an opportunity.

For the first time, I find the results of an Avengers movie appropriately cinematic.  It's not ultimately just goofing around, but it's also not barreling toward seriousness like Civil War and its predecessor, Captain America: Winter Soldier.  Not that barreling toward seriousness is bad, but that it's always an awkward contrast.  So at least there's material that wants to be taken seriously that doesn't revolve entirely around Captain America. 

The other biggest problem?  The next Avengers movie really has to stick the landing.  If it doesn't, it makes everything else look weak.  Which, as Infinity War points out, is a bad thing.

2018: The Year Ahead

With all dates subject to change, here's a look at what looks interesting, as currently announced, in 2018:

• The Hurricane Heist (2/9) Featuring Toby Kebbell, fast becoming one of my favorite recent actors, and Maggie Grace.
• Red Sparrow (3/2) Featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton.
• Death Wish (3/2) Bruce Willis stars in this reboot from Eli Roth.
• Gringo (3/9) Another Joel Edgerton, along with Charlize Theron.
• Tomb Raider (3/16) Came a little late to the Alicia Vikander bandwagon, but glad I made it.
• Isle of Dogs (3/23) New from Wes Anderson, featuring Scarlett Johansson, Edward Norton, and Frances McDormand.
• Ready Player One (3/30) New from Spielberg.
• The New Mutants (4/13) The X-Men franchise expands before presumably contracting again thanks to the Disney deal.
• Super Troopers 2 (4/20) Excited for the Broken Lizards to return.
• Tully (4/20) Jason Reitman directs Charlize Theron, Ron Livingston.
• Avengers: Infinity War (5/4) Kind of a big deal in this franchise.
• A Star Is Born (5/18) Bradley Cooper directs and stars in this latest version of a classic Hollywood story.
• Solo: A Star Wars Story (5/25) Honestly pretty excited for this.
• Ocean's 8 (6/8) The all-girls team.
• Sicario 2: Soldado (6/29) Del Toro and Brolin made a terrific combo in the first one.
• Ant-Man and the Wasp (7/6) Should be an improvement over the first one.
• Alita: Battle Angel (7/20) The latest from Robert Rodriguez.
• M:I 6 - Mission Impossible (7/27) Durable series always worth a look.
• Christopher Robin (8/3) Latest from Marc Forster, featuring Ewan McGregor.
• Scarface (8/10) Remake featuring Diego Luna.
• The Happytime Murders (8/17) Brian Henson is doing a version of the Muppets.
• Captive State (8/17) Sounds like a fascinating new sci-fi tale.
• Smallfoot (9/14) Animated flick featuring Bigfoot.
• Robin Hood (9/21) Always game for this guy.
• The House with a Clock in its Walls (9/21) Another from Eli Roth, featuring Cate Blanchett.
• Boy Erased (9/28) More from Joel Edgerton, featuring Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman.
• Venom (10/5) Tom Hardy in another franchise.
• The Girl in the Spider's Web (10/19) Wish they hadn't rebooted the series.
• The Jungle Book (10/19) Not Andy Serkis's biggest fan, but he's got Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, and Benedict Cumberbatch in it.
• X-Men: Dark Phoenix (11/2) Probably the swan song of the franchise before a Disney reboot.
• Holmes and Watson (11/9) Another pairing of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly.
• Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (11/16) Always game for further trips into this realm.
• Widows (11/9) New from Steve McQueen, featuring Colin Farrell, Liam Neeson, Jon Bernthal.
• Aquaman (12/21) Was a definite highlight of Justice League.
• Mary Poppins Returns (12/28) Emily Blunt claims the role.