Redbox!

My obsession the past few years has been getting cheap movies from Redbox.  I did the same sort of thing from actual video rental stores when they still existed, so I'm glad Redbox has continued the tradition.  Sometimes I buy movies just because they're cheap and look interesting.  Here's a look at some that I bought in recent months (and have gotten around to watching):

• Annihilation (2018) - This was a much-buzzed-about movie last year that I found less interesting than others, notable mostly for its female cast than for the cheap horror thrills that pad out the story.  It's like the B-movie version of Arrival.
• Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) - Unlike a lot of MCU fans, I consider Ant-Man a huge highlight of the series.  This was one of the two entries released between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame (meant to write up something about Captain Marvel but I've been a bad blogger lately), and it's got just about everything going for it.  One of my favorite MCU movies.
• Darkest Hour (2017) - Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill isn't the only reason to watch this, but the sheer audacity of Churchill's existence itself, in an age that still wants us to believe personality trumps policy (or indeed has anything at all to do with it).  To watch British officials try and weasel their way out of WWII (which in hindsight is unthinkable) is itself worthy of documenting. 
• I Kill Giants (2017) - Based on a comic book (basically the reason the girl wears those rabbit ears), this is a low-impact version of the brilliant A Monster Calls.
• Passengers (2016) - You can always tell when there's a push against a movie, and there was a massive push against Passengers, I think mostly to try and derail Chris Pratt's popularity at the box office (this is an era that seems hell-bent on destroying the idea of movie stars).  I don't give a shit what people say about it (the whole notion that it's unintentionally creepy can only be defended by people who haven't actually seen it), it's a good movie.
• Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018) - The hook of this one was that it was Jim Caviezel's return to biblical filmmaking (following, of course, The Passion of the Christ, needlessly dismissed as controversial despite being a seminal work of movie art), depicting the early Christian era.  I confess to not having properly watched this one yet.
• Teen Titans Go! to the Movies (2018) Unlike the increasingly spastic cartoon series from which it derives, the movie mostly restrains itself as one long in-joke that's a fine commentary on our superhero-saturated movie era.
• Terminal (2018) - I got this one mostly because I've become interested in Margot Robbie's career but also because it's a rare recent film appearance of Mike Myers (who's indeed, based on an incomplete viewing, an expected highlight). 
• Woman Walks Ahead (2017) - What has continuously confounded me is how Jessica Chastain can be the best actress of her generation and be so consistently overlooked.  She gives yet another compelling performance in this one, a historical drama based on true events (any disputes about its accuracy only serves to confirm the maxim that ought to exist about not taking all your historical facts from movies), an unexpected relationship between a widow and Sitting Bull.  Sam Rockwell, also always worth following, provides a fine supporting role.
• The Yellow Birds (2017) - An Iraq War drama with some of the best young actors working today (Alden Erhenreich, Tye Sheridan, Jack Huston), deserves to be considered among the classics of its genre.

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.

2019: The Year Ahead

(All releases dates subject to change.) 

The Upside (1/11)
Starring Kevin Hart, Bryan Cranston & Nicole Kidman, one of those life-affirming movies that looks like it's also a lot of fun.

Glass (1/18)
M. Night Shyamalan completes a trilogy begun with Unbreakable and Split.

The Kid Who Would Be King (1/25)
The trailer instantly intrigued me.

What Men Want (2/8)
Apparently if someone were to star in the reverse of the Mel Gibson flick, it's Taraji P. Henson, who's beginning to look like she can do anything.

Alita: Battle Angel (2/15)
And hopefully this Robert Rodriguez flick is released this year!

Fighting with My Family (2/15)
Dwayne Johnson has a small role in which he gets to reprise his wrestling persona on film. 

Captain Marvel (3/8)
The future of the MCU might hinge on this.

Dumbo (3/29)
This latest Disney live action remake costars Colin Farrell, which makes it an automatic watch for me.

Shazam! (4/5)
Believe it or not, but the title superhero of this one was also known as Captain Marvel until recently.

Pet Sematary (4/5)
Still haven't seen It, but Stephen King has been one of Hollywood's favorite writers for years, with sometimes brilliant results.  This looks like one of those.

Breakthrough (4/12)
Directed by Roxann Dawson, whose own breakthrough was in Star Trek: Voyager, as an actor, but she's been working steadily for years behind the camera.  This appears to be her biggest project to date.

Under the Silver Lake (4/19)
Featuring Andrew Garfield.

High Life (4/19)
The latest from Robert Pattinson.

Avengers: Endgame (4/26)
Technically the fourth Avengers flick, but really the culmination of every MCU movie to date.

Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (5/10)
Ryan Reynolds seems to have found another perfect showcase.

John Wick: Chapter 3 (5/17)
The more of these that're made, the more I think I ought to be watching them.

Aladdin (5/24)
Another live action Disney remake I'm interested in mainly for one actor, in this case Will Smith.

Ad Astra (5/24)
It's been far too long since Brad Pitt had something interesting to do.

Brightburn (5/24)
A horror version of Man of Steel.

Dark Phoenix (6/7)
The latest and probably last X-Men flick from Fox Studios.

Men in Black: International (6/14)
Reinvention of one of my favorite franchises, which seems to have done it right.

Shaft (6/14)
Samuel L. Jackson gets so few spotlights, it's always worth celebrating.

Toy Story 4 (6/21)
I'm the only person on the planet who didn't like Toy Story 3.  I hope this one's better.

Ford v. Ferrari (6/28)
Pitting Christian Bale against Matt Damon?  Yes please!

Spider-Man: Far From Home (7/5)
I greatly preferred the Andrew Garfield interpretation to Tom Holland's first crack.  Hopefully this one's better.

Stuber (7/12)
Dave Bautista in his biggest starring role to date.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (7/26)
Tarantino is a perennial threat for directing my favorite movie of the year.

Hobbs & Shaw (8/2)
The Fast & Furious spinoff featuring Dwayne Johnson & Jason Statham.

The New Mutants (8/2)
A Fox X-Men spinoff.

Dora the Explorer (8/2)
Featuring Temuera Morrison, Benicio Del Toro & Michael Pena.

Artemis Fowl (8/9)
One of the many characters who sought to cash in on Harry Potter's success, coming to film much later than the others.  We're about to see whether or not that was a good thing.

Boss Level (8/16)
New from Joe Carnahan!  Featuring Mel Gibson!

Angel Has Fallen (8/23)
Another third in a series I have yet to see.

Joker (10/4)
Joaquin Phoenix in his highest profile role since Gladiator.  An absolute must-see.

Gemini Man (10/4)
New from Ang Lee.

The Woman in the Window (10/4)
New from Joe Wright.

Zombieland 2 (10/11)
Never really expected to see this happen.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (10/18)
Seems like a perfect role for Tom Hanks, right?

Sonic the Hedgehog (11/8)
The latest voiceover performance from Jim Carrey.

Margie Claus (11/15)
Melissa McCarthy ought to get an evergreen out of this one.

Frozen 2 (11/22)
Huge expectations song-wise for this one.

Knives Out (11/29)
New from Rian Johnson, featuring Daniel Craig and Chris Evans.

Star Wars: Episode IX (12/20)
The conclusion to the sequel trilogy.

And as always, I don't know when or if I'll get to see all these, and what I might add along the way.  You never know!

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.

Heat (1995)

rating: ****

the story: An epic showdown between cop and criminal.

review: Long billed as the long-awaited pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino onscreen together (they previously both appeared in Godfather Part II, but in separate sequences), Heat is actually an embarrassment of riches, in hindsight, full of actors who would populate the big and small screens for years to come.  And it's arguably the predecessor to The Dark Knight in terms of action movies.

Here's the talent assembled for Heat: De Niro, Pacino.  Val Kilmer and Natalie Portman.  Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd.  Jon Voight (who like Kilmer sports long hair for the movie).  Tom Sizemore.  Mykelti Williamson, who the year previous had his breakthrough appearance as Bubba in Forrest Gump, and would later play another cop in the underappreciated TV gem Boomtown.  Dennis Haysbert, years before playing a president in 24, or helping us be in good hands with All-State.  Danny Trejo.  William Fichtner, who still has yet to be properly noticed.  Wes Studi, Hank Azaria, Xander Berkeley (who also later appeared in 24).  And Jeremy Piven, another talent who deserves much greater recognition for his screen presence.

And they're all here!  Just spending the time enjoying them make their appearances, large and small, is worth watching this one.

Of course, it circles back to De Niro and Pacino.  De Niro is in subdued mode, not the outsize gangster he is in Scorsese movies but more as he appears in Tarantino's Jackie Brown, two years later.  Pacino, as he often does, chews a lot of scenery, but when it counts, he matches De Niro's mood, and it's everything you always heard Heat was.  These are screen giants, and their epic showdown is exactly what it was always supposed to be.

But Michael Mann, who made his name in television, including Miami Vice (which he later adapted to the big screen in the same mold as Heat), isn't merely interested in acting.  He's got a big action movie in mind, in the kind of scope he basically perfects, in the years before superheroes came to dominate the genre, in the years after the '80s saw them dominated by action stars.  This is an experience that crosses all boundaries. 

And yeah, it's exactly the kind of experience that Christopher Nolan later duplicated for The Dark Knight.  The hype and magnetism of Heath Ledger's Joker was what everyone talks about, but Nolan was the first director since Mann to nail this kind of action movie.  And at its heart, Dark Knight is more this kind of action movie than it is a superhero movie, and I think that's what Nolan realized, and was going for, and what audiences liked so much about it, too. 

If Heat doesn't get talked about enough these days as a milestone of the '90s, and filmmaking in general, it's because it's remembered now for the De Niro/Pacino pairing, and the fact that after this their careers were never quite the same again.  De Niro reached a dramatic peak, and went in the direction of comedy, and Pacino became dismissed for what's since become best illustrated by Nicolas Cage, the idea that acting style is suddenly a crime, where the idea of movie stars has slipped by the wayside.  Which is ironic, as the dawn of the modern blockbuster begins with a movie where the acting is, distractedly, the whole point, by observers who can't quite keep the whole scope of the experience in mind.

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.