2017 Capsule Reviews

Logan
rating: *****
review: One of the truly great superhero movies, the kind the genre will be able to tout among the classics in decades to come, at last treating Wolverine as the icon he is but also as the man he is.

Dunkirk

rating: *****

review: Christopher Nolan usually has some high concept attached to his films, and while stories play at different intervals, this one's merely a piece of WWII history at its most human level, tracking events related to a massive evacuation of the British army.  

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

rating: ****

review: A wicked satire of the age but unexpectedly poignant for the two characters you least expect, played by Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson.

A Ghost Story

rating: *****

review: A modern classic from David Lowery.

Gifted

rating: *****

review: One of those movies that hits hard on a personal level, and another sign that Marc Webb is a modern treasure.  Chris Evans in one of his finest roles as a brother whose sister dies, leaving behind a niece who needs caring for, brilliantly portrayed by Mckenna Grace.

Justice League

rating: ****

review: At this point a DC movie being trashed by critics and/or audiences (and an MCU being praised by both) is so old hat you just have to laugh.  I loved this one, but the later Snyder Cut is better.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

rating: ****

review: As far as esoteric movies starring Colin Farrell from this general period go, I liked The Lobster better, although this one does feature the secret origin of Barry Keoghan.

Star Wars - Episode VII: The Last Jedi

rating: ****

review: The period surrounding its release was a trying time for me, but even that didn't stop me from viewing Last Jedi very differently from its (un)popular reception.  Contains at least one definitive moment in the saga.

Wonder Woman

rating: ****

review: Took me a few viewings, but I eventually understood what everyone loved about it.

Murder on the Orient Express

rating: ****

review: The stellar cast led by director Kenneth Branagh makes this a statement on a classic.

John Wick: Chapter 2

rating: ****

review: I only got into the series later, so I was playing catch-up when I saw this one, but the ending brilliantly set up the next one, and as such sold me on the series itself.

Logan Lucky

rating: ****

review: What were the odds that two movies released in 2017 featuring "Logan" in the title would not only exist but be well worth watching?  This one stars Daniel Craig in probably the role that led to his far more famous turn as a Southern-voiced gentleman in Knives Out.  And a great cast around him, including Adam Driver.

I, Tonya

rating: ****

review: It wasn't just my sister who in later years carried the torch forward, but at the time these events played out figure skating was a huge deal, so you really couldn't help being aware, to the point where I have a distinct memory of a classmate acting out the programs that headlined the resulting Olympics, neither of which featured Tonya Harding.  This is a movie that will hopefully help you feel some sympathy for her.

Darkest Hour

rating: ****

review: Winston Churchill was a tough pill to swallow both before and afterward, but he was the hero Britain and the Allies needed, and Gary Oldman portrays him brilliantly.  

Wind River

rating: ****

review: Director Taylor Sheridan has become one of the voices of modern film, but at the time this was also one of the last headlining performances in film for Jeremy Renner.  Well worth experiencing for both.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

rating: ****

review: Sometimes people are just looking for disappointment, especially when they know there's something at stake, such as a potential franchise around this one.  But Charlie Hunham and company are a fine new version of the story all the same.  Also the movie that definitively made me a fan of Guy Ritchie.

Good Time

rating: ****

review: The Robert Pattinson renaissance began with this performance as a bank robber who makes one terrible decision after another.

The Beguiled

rating: ****

review: Sofia Coppola has been one of my favorite directors for years, and this is her take on a forgotten Clint Eastwood film, this time starring Coli Farrell and a host of famous actresses.

It Comes At Night

rating: ****

review: Joel Edgerton trumped, for me, the team of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt from the similar A Quiet Place.  I just couldn't bring myself to even let them compete.

Blade Runner 2049

rating: ****

review: Hey, I actually got into Ryan Gosling for this!  Probably a better film than its predecessor.  If Keanu Reeves can star in sequels to all his notable movies like Harrison Ford, he'll really have something.  

The Fate of the Furious

rating: ****

review: The one where everything starts blatantly hinging on Dom, which in this instance means that everyone thinks he's defecting (but he's really not).

The Hitman's Bodyguard

rating: ****

review: Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson.  I mean, do you really need a further explanation?

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

rating: ****

review: This really shouldn't have worked.  But it did!

The Only Living Boy in New York

rating: ****

review: Marc Webb's other offering.  Not as compelling for me, but it's still a testament to his talent, and probably his most conventional movie to date.

T2: Trainspotting

rating: ****

review: The fact that this happened at all is amazing.  The fact that it repudiates the ending of the first one is astonishing.  But, since there's a sequel now, is maybe to be expected.  

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

rating: ****

review: I actually think Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as disaffected space agents is a breath of fresh air in space opera filmmaking.

American Made

rating: ****

review: The fact that Tom Cruise even made a conventional drama at this point in his career should be celebrated.

Hostiles

rating: ****

review: Christian Bale as a soldier attempting to rebalance the portrayal of Native Americans after the hero worship of recent decades.

Molly's Game

rating: ****

review: Jessica Chastain navigating poker games and Aaron Sorkin.

Roman J. Israel, Esq.

rating: ****

review: Not quite the achievement Denzel Washington got out of Flight, but still noteworthy.

The Dark Tower

rating: ****

review: Another supposed bomb, but it really couldn't be with the perfect casting of Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, in exactly the opposite of the roles anyone would have expected, and all the more perfect for it.

Atomic Blonde

rating: ****

review: Charlize Theron stars in this straight up Cold War action flick from emerging director David Leitch.

Baby Driver

rating: ***

review: All style makes Edgar Wright lose some of his cool.

Get Out

rating: ***

review: A satire so wicked its point was completely lost.  

The Mummy

rating: ***

review: Tom Cruise starring in a would-be franchise starter that also features Russell Crowe.  Probably the only time these two will ever be in the same movie, which is itself fascinating.  A totally different tone from the Brendan Fraser movies, and that is itself refreshing.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

rating: ***

review: Its best moment, Yondu's goodbye, elevates the results.

Baywatch

rating: ***

review: It's definitely better than the TV series.

Daddy's Home 2

rating: ***

review: I haven't seen the first one, but I don't think that really matters.  Love how this one basically subverts it, though.

Split

rating: ***

review: Got people to like M. Night Shyamalan again, and ends with a surprise link to Unbreakable, not to mention being the secret origin of Anya Taylor-Joy, but Glass is better.

The Greatest Showman

rating: ***

review: Probably gets a little ahead of itself, but a rare original musical in film, starring Hugh Jackman.

mother!

rating: ***

review: Darren Aronosky can get a little too precious, but this is worth experiencing.

The Bad Batch

rating: ***

review: In what is otherwise strictly B-grade material, this is actually the start of Jim Carrey's comeback in a supporting role.

My Little Pony: The Movie

rating: ***

review: Anyone who's seen the show knows exactly what to expect.  If you like one you'll like the other.  If your niece has you watching, there's no problem.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

rating: ***

review: I think Ned as "the guy in the chair" cheapens the results, but he's there for at least the next two movies, so what am I gonna do?  Not as riveting as the two previous incarnations.

Thor: Ragnorak

rating: **

review: I'm being generous, here, as I honestly think this was a jump the shark moment.  Of course, it was otherwise popular.  And of course Love and Thunder, which I love, is considered the shark moment for everyone else.  This only figures.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

rating: **

review: I will forever have to revisit the fourth and fifth films in this series, trying to figure out what they really add to it, except more entries.  Not terrible.  Just not noticeably necessary. 

2016 Capsule Reviews

Arrival
rating: *****
review: This is the movie that for me defines the genius of Denis Villeneuve, turning a smart story by Ted Chiang into a brilliant movie starring Amy Adams about a new kind of first contact with aliens.  

Silence

rating: *****

review: Martin Scorsese in his most subtle piece of filmmaking (that I've seen; there's a huge gap following Raging Bull I haven't gotten around to filling yet) that explores Jesuit missionary work in Japan, starring Adam Driver in his first truly great film and featuring Liam Neeson in his most recent live action classic.

The Lobster

rating: *****

review: Colin Farrell is my favorite movie, meaning I'll be seeing whatever he does anyway, but it's always nice when critics enjoy his work, too, which is how they responded to this oddball romance.

A Monster Calls

rating: *****

review: I remember attempting to qualify my love of this movie when I first saw it, since it was released not so long after my mother died of cancer, and that's what it's about, but I'm not going to quibble anymore.  Liam Neeson's most recent vocal performance in a classic.

Collateral Beauty

rating: *****

review: Like Seven Pounds before it this is a Will Smith movie that's hard to comprehend but much more worth putting in the effort to do so than the utter lack of appreciation it's so far gotten.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

rating: *****

review: Ambition has been a bad thing in American film in recent decades, doubly so in superhero movies, where it's only begun to surface, and mostly in DC projects.  This one is a conceptual miracle that does the impossible: finally have the two most famous superheroes of any company meet, and figure each other out.  Plus the sensational cinematic debut of Wonder Woman!

Moana

rating: *****

review: I'd argue that modern animated films don't really get better than this.  Also featuring a career-defining (vocal) performance from Dwayne Johnson, including what will likely go down as his most famous singing performance.

Hell or High Water

rating: *****

review: No one has done more for the modern Western than Taylor Sheridan (who wrote this and also, among other projects, created Yellowstone), and in any other era, this would have been recognized as an instant classic, and perhaps cemented Chris Pine's career.

Free State of Jones

rating: *****

review: This incredible true story of the Civil War proves how much more rich material there is to find in it, and that as of 2016 (and later) we're apparently just not interested.  Matthew McConaughey in another great project, costarring (and this is how I know critics were paying attention but were just too stubborn to admit it) Mahershala Ali, who went on to become a critical darling.

Star Trek Beyond

rating: ****

review: The most recent entry in the film franchise in its best moments reached operatic heights of depth but didn't quite know what to do with Kirk or Spock, unlike its immediate predecessors.  Another typically great supporting turn from Idris Elba, though.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

rating: ****

review: A fine start for what's looking at the moment to be a trilogy, but lacking, apparently, that big boost the next entry got from focusing squarely on Grindelwald and, oh, some dude named Dumbledore.

Manchester by the Sea

rating: ****

review: Casey Affleck in his most accessible performance.

Passengers

rating: ****

review: One of the touchstones of modern culture, in all the wrong ways, as too few people bothered to actually watch to find out exactly how Jennifer Lawrence ends up with Chris Pratt.

Midnight Special

rating: ****

review: Jeff Nichols, had this and/or Loving (which I still haven't seen) been embraced as the landmark filmmaking it is, would be embraced as one of the modern masters of the medium.  

Snowden

rating: ****

review: Oliver Stone has driven himself to distraction in his efforts to be subversive to the mainstream, but at least he took the torch for a number of worthy causes, including public oversight of government activities, such as the story of Edward Snowden.  

Suicide Squad

rating: ****

review: Will Smith's Deadshot, Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, and a breakthrough performance from Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang all suggest a better film than its reputation suggests.

Ben-Hur

rating: ****

review: This latest adaptation of the classic story was a breakthrough for Jack Huston, latest of a Hollywood acting dynasty, in the lead role.

La La Land

rating: ****

review: I've had my difficulties appreciating Ryan Gosling, but apparently when he's singing and dancing opposite Emma Stone, it's easier.

Billy Flynn's Long Halftime Walk

rating: ****

review: A sober meditation on a soldier returning from modern war.

Central Intelligence

rating: ****

review: Dwayne Johnson's career took a while to reach its current status, but his comedic turn here helped.  Also starring Kevin Hart, who's becoming, for me, a reliable source of cinematic treasures.

Criminal

rating: ****

review: Kevin Costner's career revival sort of began with this.

Jane Got Her Gun

rating: ***

review: Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, and Ewan McGregor all star in this.  They were also all in the Star Wars prequels, although Edgerton didn't reach breakout status until after they were completed, so this is a film where the playing field is leveled.

X-Men: Apocalypse

rating: ***

review: Things don't really get good in this one until Professor X and Magneto realize they have a common enemy.  That makes this one a landmark in the film series.

Captain America: Civil War

rating: ***

review: Sort of the unoffical Avengers film between Age of Ultron and Infinity War, becomes the most blatant of the internal franchise starters with the MCU debuts of Spider-Man and Black Panther.  Loses the point of being, y'know, a Captain America film a little too easily in the process.  

Now You See Me 2

rating: ***

review: I still haven't seen the first one, but it was still possible to enjoy this one, which features a tongue-in-cheek turn from Daniel Radcliffe.

Zoolander 2

rating: ***

review: Sometimes when compiling these I have to recuse myself from including movies I don't remember well enough, but I knew I had to include this one when I realized while watching Anchorman 2  recently I kept thinking back to it, having confused the two.  It isn't the classic the first one is, but it's still nice that someone somewhere remembers that the first one was.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

rating: ***

review: No one ever goes back and rethinks their views, but after the success of Top Gun: Maverick you'd think some people would reconsider how dismissive they'd been of recent Tom Cruise projects.  This was his second Jack Reacher.  I still haven't seen the first.  I made sure to see this one, since it's probably the only real reward Cobie Smulders will get for being a prominent bit player in the MCU.

The Accountant

rating: ***

review: Director Gavin O'Connor has my lasting devotion thanks to Warrior (a modern classic), and he also directed Jane Got Her Gun.  This was Ben Affleck proving he wasn't just going to be Batman, but still in an action role.

Risen

rating: ***

review: Joseph Fiennes in a movie about the resurrection.  About as close as current Hollywood gets to be religious these days.

Fences

rating: ***

review: Denzel Washington struggles to be a family man and also respect himself while wallowing in past glory.  If Training Day was his On the Waterfront, this is his A Streetcar Named Desire.

Warcraft

rating: ***

review: At the time I really wanted to like this because it's directed by Duncan Jones, who knocked Moon and Source Code out of the park.  The problem here is that he's unaccountably generic, other than allowing the audience to become emotionally invested in orcs.

The Magnificent Seven

rating: ***

review: At the time I wanted to believe that Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt could make the Western popular again.  They didn't, but it's still a pretty good movie.

Inferno

rating: ***

review: The last of Tom Hanks and Ron Howard's Robert Langdon adaptations to date, still reliable entertainment, probably the one you'd show if you wanted to prove so to doubters.

Independence Day: Resurgence

rating: ***

review: The very belated sequel is great for world-building, but was never going to succeed in the realm of pop entertainment without Will Smith.

Ghostbusters

rating: ***

review: Apparently it's easy to forget that the first one was basically a Bill Murray movie.  This one proved nobody wanted to view the franchise as "just" a platform for funny people, of whatever sex.  Silly fun.

Deadpool

rating: ***

review: I get that it's great Ryn Reynolds got to make the faithful version of the character everyone wished had been in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but I don't think the concept really worked until the second one.  Obnoxious characters, for me, need a few counterbalances.

Doctor Strange

rating: ***

review: Although I'm a big fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, I think basically every appearance he's made as this character has been a disappointment, the true limits of the MCU personified.  He's become both the successor of Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man and his antithesis.  Nobody involved understands the role.  The results are basically the MCU version of Inception.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

rating: **

review: It seems even the prequel TV show Andor has fans believing otherwise, but for me Rogue One represents a total misreading of Star Wars.  This isn't what the Rebellion actually looks like.  We saw that in, y'know, the original trilogy.  This is a collection of oddballs, and incidentally some terrorists, and I am not at all prepared to accept that the good guys in Star Wars were terrorists, or would have knowingly supported them.  That's just not how it works.  That being said, I really like how the otherwise reprehensible results gave us Ben Mendelsohn as a breakthrough actor.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) Review

rating: ****

the story: Baron Munchausen dooms and then saves a European city thanks to his fantastical adventures.

review: I first saw The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in college some twenty years back, but eventually it took a backseat to other Terry Gilliam films (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote became my favorites, and Brazil became better known to me among his earlier efforts).  So in revisiting it, I've rediscovered it.

Munchausen, incredibly, based on a real historical figure, albeit one known for his incredible tales, which were themselves eventually written into fiction, was a famously troubled production that became a box office bomb, and so if you know of it at all, it's because of Gilliam, or your general interest in cult films.  And yet it was filmed in a decade full of fantasy productions chasing Star Wars, and is probably the best of them.  Probably?  It is.  It absolutely is.  How could the results be any different, with Gilliam at the helm?

Conceptually and artistically, there are few filmmakers who rival Gilliam's vision.  In order to achieve it, he usually goes all the way to hell and back (which is why Man Who Killed Don Quixote went into production twice, the first time producing only the documentary Lost in La Mancha, in which the epic collapse of the film is chronicled).  His old Monty Python colleague Eric Idle, who costars in Munchausen, had already gleamed such a reputation when he agreed to appeared in the film.  

Aside from Dox Quixote itself, it's hard to find a better, more natural story to showcase Gilliam's gifts than Munchausen, in which the world of the fantastic is superimposed on the real world by a charismatic and yet disconnected lead character, who in this case eventually has everyone believing in the same reality, mostly because there are supernatural elements that are so mythical they become accepted for reality, such as Idle's speedster.  (Although Idle's real talent is of course his voice; along with John  Cleese, who also hails from Monty Python, he has one of the most naturally hilarious voices of the past fifty years in film.)

The lead is played by John Neville, a fairly unknown commodity otherwise who nonetheless fills the fantastical shoes of Baron Munchausen regardless of depicted age (a sliding scale on par with all the other loose elements of reality).  He's got Gilliam's Brazil lead actor Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed (later best known for the role he died playing for Gladiator), Uma Thurman, and Sarah Polley, still just as a child, supporting him, plus a Robin Williams uncredited performance that seems like a preview of his Genie from Aladdin in hindsight.  

In fact, if I had never seen Tarsem's masterpiece The Fall, Munchausen would now stand as my favorite film in the fantasy genre.  Where Tarsem eclipses Gilliam, here, Gilliam would rally later to catch up (his Don Quixote was worth the wait).

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) Review

rating: ****

the story: Grindelwald tries to trick his way to political power, with Dumbledore standing in the way.

review: I've been struggling with how to view this one since its theatrical release earlier this year.  I continued to struggle after reading the screenplay published last month.  A large part of this is that Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was caught up in the continuing scandals surrounding J.K. Rowling, Ezra Miller, and Johnny Depp, which dampened interest in its predecessor, The Crimes of Grindelwald (which is otherwise my favorite movie in the Wizarding World cinematic saga, barring Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).  Depp's legal hassles continued into production of Secrets, as so he was replaced as Grindelwald by Mads Mikkelsen, and Rowling, previously lone scripter of the Fantastic Beasts films, was joined by Harry Potter veteran screenwriter Steve Kloves.  After being unabashedly wowed by Crimes, I knew I wasn't with Secrets on first viewing, and second viewing didn't change that, and reading the screenplay didn't, and I began to wonder, were my reservations justified?  Or was this simply a different movie experience?

I kept trying.  Eventually my conclusion was that this is perhaps the first film in the saga where the human drama is more important than the wizarding drama.  I understood this on one level.  It's the first time the material has acknowledged what had previously only existed in Rowling's tweets, that Dumbledore is gay, and his relationship with Grindelwald is complicated by that, and by extension, his ability to fight him.

The film opens with a quiet conversation between them, in which Dumbledore explains that he has moved past their youthful ideas, and this offends Grindelwald, because of course he hasn't, and has become a notorious figure in the wizarding community as he presses on with them.  The conversation, and the film, and the series (this is Dumbledore's second appearance in them, after Crimes), still ignores how Dumbledore could ever have shared them, except by extension through the complicated nature of his sister Ariana, and her death, which ties into the character of Credence Barebone, whose story began in the first film, and whose true lineage was revealed in Crimes, but explained here in Secrets: he's Aberforth Dumbledore's son.  Dumbledore is his uncle.

Grindelwald has been manipulating Credence, as we saw him operating throughout Crimes.  He trades on fear in order to achieve his goals.  He also won Queenie Goldstein to his side last film, shattering a relationship with muggle baker Jacob Kowalski.  Dumbledore maneuvers against Grindelwald as best he can throughout Secrets.  He recruits Jacob, an unlikely ally as ever, as well as the Scamander brothers, Newt and Theseus, as well as others.

Newt was ostensibly the star of these films, certainly in the first one, until Dumbledore appeared in Crimes and then dominated Secrets.  And it might seem as if Newt indeed takes a definitive backseat, here, especially with the near absence of Tina Goldstein, the American wizard he fell in love with previously (some reports are that Katherine Waterston's participation was diminished, this time, due to her stance against Rowling).

And yet his unabashed enthusiasm for the title beasts, and his otherwise bashful demeanor, remain the heart of these films, as he gets to spend time with his brother as an actual colleague for the first time, which along with Jacob and Queenie and learning the truth of Credence's existence moves original stories from the first film along nicely.  Newt and Theseus have the best sequence of the film as they enact another of Newt's trademark beast-centric performances, this time scuttling like a crab.

Eddie Redmayne's star has dimmed in recent years.  I'm hard-pressed to think of his work outside these films, and yet the films themselves remain clearly affectionate of his unique charms.  Callum Turner, as Theseus, has become a more distinguished actor (for me, anyway, as I discovered in Emma.), so it's nice to see him in an expanded role.  Alison Sudol has been a standout as Queenie from the start, and I doubt anyone could've been more quintessentially American for the time period than Dan Fogler's Jacob, who has threatened to steal all of the movies.

But is there any real doubt that Jude Law's Dumbledore is the center of Secrets?  He had better be, getting his name in the title!  By the time Dumbledore and Grindelwald duel, we've seen Dumbledore do everything possible to avoid that moment.  When it's suggested he become the new leader of the wizarding community, the moment becomes the heart of how to interpret the movie around it.  No attention is called to Dumbledore, until he's pulled from a crowd as it happens, and he talks his way out of it, the way Harry Potter once convinced the Sorting Hat to place him in Gryffindor, and the moment passes.  No one argues the point.  No one draws attention to him at all.  It happens.  And the story moves on.

How to interpret it, and the whole film, rests on how comfortable you are with the rapid ascent of Grindelwald, and his just as rapid descent.  As viewers we're privy to nearly every beat of how this is accomplished, so relentlessly, throughout the movie.  The opening scene of Crimes was said to be distractedly dizzying, when Grindelwald breaks out of prison, and yet this is a whole movie in which, to accomplish what it needs to, the viewer has to accept two hours of logic that makes internal sense, and yet also feels as if, in a different reality, would have played out over several films.  Possibly.  The studio has been expressing doubt for years.  I follow a website that breathlessly reported every negative aspect of production, cheering on the possibility of failure.  Was this what it was always supposed to be?

And perhaps so.  This is what we never got to see with Voldemort, after all.  The other arcs feel so natural, this must always have been in the cards, surely?  Crimes ends dramatically with Grindelwald having split the wizarding community in half.  Secrets suggests winning the right allies makes even the impossible possible (from criminal to candidate, which even the Star Wars prequels didn't dare attempt; Palpatine appears the innocent even after his drastic transformation).

And...the more I live with this, the more comfortable.  At no point does the film dwell on Grindelwald as a real threat, except as Dumbledore's opposite number.  This is all supposed to build (like the Star Wars prequels) to a legendary duel, against which the one that happens in Secrets is mere prelude.  In some respects, there are notes in Secrets that feel like a possible concluding note (Jacob and Queenie marrying), should the studio decide to end the series early.  And yet Dumbledore acknowledges Newt as a valuable ally, even as Grindelwald has lost his (Credence, whose arc concludes here, too), which ought to sound...ominous.  The fight isn't over.  Grindelwald only becomes more dangerous, once more on the loose, nothing left to lose, and he has already endlessly proven his inventive resilience.  

The conclusion, for me, of how to view Secrets of Dumbledore is as a quiet success, in much the character of Newt himself, watching as all the drama around him boils down to Dumbledore and Grindelwald, as they're forced to confront the reality that they will one day have to fight each other.  Forget everyone else, every thing else.  This really does hinge on that conversation, at the start of the film.  And that's actually refreshing.

One Shot (2021) Review

rating: ****

the story: A suddenly high value terrorist suspect is the subject of a highly coordinated extraction.

review: The concept of a film being, or appearing to be, one continuous tracking shot has apparently now reached the point where it can be taken for granted.  The likes of Birdman, 1917, Russian Ark, and Crazy Samurai have been joined by One Shot, which if it has been greeted at all, then as a glorified cinematic first-person-shooter experience, and yet the results are as thrilling as any other attempt of the technique yet attempted.

Part of the problem is that it stars Scott Adkins, best known as a stuntman or as the lead in direct-to-video releases, the bargain basement of the medium.  As far as I know, this is my first Adkins film, and I found him to be a riveting action hero, very much akin to Cole Hauser's performances in the TV series Yellowstone, the new "alpha male" template of popular entertainment, though Adkins achieves it mostly by surviving against all odds, being the de facto lead character, and engaging in at least one brawl that calls on his stunt experience.

Supporting him are Ashley Greene (billed here with her married name Ashley Greene Khoury) and Ryan Phillippe, a long way away from his potential as a new leading man some twenty years back, and not even getting to play a particularly heroic part (a glorified bureaucrat who stands in Adkins' way to get the job done).

The story is compelling and the odds are long.  The alleged terrorist in sympathetic in apparently the same way as the lead in The Mauritanian, claiming innocence deep into the film.  It doesn't even particularly matter to the actual terrorists arriving in a horde to break him free if he's what he appears to be.  They need him; it's that simple.  And so they throw their massive numbers (don't spend too much time worrying about how they amassed so many without anyone noticing), and it becomes a Black Hawk Down war incident.  Of course we'll route Adkins on!  We haven't had a guy like him in ages, and he's as close to an everyman there's ever been, although he's never less than compelling.

Bonus material insists there are points in which the footage breaks tracking, and yet it's virtually impossible to tell with the results.  If that's the only reason you choose to watch, fine, because it's impressive filmmaking by default, all the more given the constant fighting that necessitates constant choreography without ever bogging down.  Details lost in narrative are picked up everywhere else.

This is not a B movie.  In a different time it would've been a massive hit.  It should develop a following eventually.  It deserves one.

The Contractor (2022) Review

rating: ****

the story: A Green Beret is drummed out of the service, but ends up right back in the thick of it anyway.

review: Quite unexpectedly, a spiritual sequel to Hell or High Water.  Chris Pine stars as the Green Beret, who ends up drafted into a black ops outfit, although the results are less military maneuvering and more a spy game, in which Pine discovers he can't trust the outfit that recruited him.  Along the way, he's got to figure out if he can trust a colleague played by Ben Foster, his costar in High Water, which ought to be considered one of the key selling points of The Contractor.

Pine's charisma was a little long in coming to be recognized by filmmakers, but eventually, with his casting as Kirk in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, he at last became a movie star, and yet it ended up becoming a recurring problem: directors still had a hard time figuring out what to do with him.  Hell or High Water found a perfect fit, the rare antihero (a bank robber) who was actually sympathetic, a response to the Great Recession that cast the whole idea back to the feel of the Great Depression, or even Robin Hood.  Foster was the unambiguously less sympathetic cohort then, and he is again here, although he has a better shot at redeeming himself this time around.  Less so Kiefer Sutherland, in a rare bid to reclaim some of the shine he himself earned somewhat belatedly in the TV series 24, cast squarely as the villain.  Eddie Marsan, whose career often veers between such roles, has one of his welcome turns among the angels, although it's an unfortunately brief one, while Gillian Jacobs has a similarly thankless nod as Pine's wife.

But the compromise is worth it, as The Contractor works best as an atmospheric tour of Pine's troubles, spending little time worrying about things like dialogue, as he struggles along the labyrinth of doubt, accented frequently by the bum knee he needs to periodically inject just to keep functioning.  This is an aging action hero, after all, forced to control uncomfortable realities at every turn.

I think, given time, the results will garner greater interest, if only as a companion to Pine and Foster's previous work together.  At the moment it needs struggle against a shifting market, between a box office that is increasingly geared almost exclusively to big budget blockbusters and streaming services either desperately competing for the same aesthetic or proudly boasting the opposite, with everything else in between being ignored, such as the notion that movie stars exist and can carry their own material, same as they ever did.  

And Chris Pine, despite every adversity, is still standing, thank you.

Lincoln (2012) Review

rating: ***

the story: Lincoln pushes for the 13th Amendment.

the review: Gosh, so I spent a decade fearing I wouldn't like this one.  Sometimes, or perhaps very often, when you think you're going to have a certain reaction, whether good or bad, you end up having it regardless of the material.  In this instance, I ended up with exactly the reaction I always thought I would to Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.

Chalk this up to star Daniel Day-Lewis.  Beloved of Hollywood insiders but rarely outside of it, my first exposure to him was his Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, which was a wildly entertaining performance.  Then it was There Will Be Blood, a film I thought I would greatly enjoy, and was one of my most anticipated experiences of 2007, which instead became perhaps my greatest disappointment that year, when my impression of Day-Lewis greatly soured.  He's the kind of actor who immerses himself in his work, who reinvents himself with every performance, or so the story goes, and yet the disappointment of Blood was how much obvious connective tissue there was to Gangs, and none of it positive.  It was as if he dialed in on the villainous tones but lost all intonation.  Where his Bill chewed all scenery in delicious fashion, his Daniel Plainview was a lethargic inverse whose total dominance of Blood was unearned, with no chance at being checked.  He was among the antiheroes who came to dominate critical taste in the last few decades not because he deserved to, but because critics had fixated on the idea and wouldn't let go.

Lincoln is certainly no antihero, today.  Although in his time he was.  Which is perhaps one of the reasons Day-Lewis ended up playing him.  Spielberg's take is a riff on the popular history book Team of Rivals, which centers on Lincoln's political acumen, which the subsequent film zeroes in on as he desperately seeks approval for the amendment that will guarantee freedom for slaves.  He stoops to all available levels in the process, which is not to say his cause was not worthy nor his tactics justified, but nowhere is the inherent mythic nobility on display, and yes, that clip shown at the Oscars in which Lincoln exhorts his cabinet in an impassioned demand to fulfill the vision "Now! Now! Now!" really the central lasting impression...

In choosing such a narrow focus, and perhaps in selecting (there was much development of the project along the way, and so it really was a choice) playwright Tony Kushner over, say, Aaron Sorkin, who had made politics a truly operatic affair in The West Wing and would later become as well known a screenwriter in film, there is no chance to discover the man even as the myth is gently exploded, so that man nor myth, as the man lunges in one direction or another, receives proper focus.  At times it seems Day-Lewis is up to the challenge, when Spielberg, Kushner, and the actor are up to the challenge of the folksy charm of the man, but in their efforts to wring drama from him, they lose sight of it, and the wrinkly profiles they find of Day-Lewis, which are so often fixated on, are subsequently lost to clearer gazes, late in the film, in which Day-Lewis instead looks like, well, Day-Lewis.

Surrounding this is a host of incredible talent, from Tommy Lee Jones perhaps for the first time sinking into his aging gravitas, Sally Field asking no quarter as Mary Todd Lincoln, David Strathairn doing all the heavy lifting, James Spader playful in all the right ways for a change, Hal Holbrook, and a trio of young actors on the cusp of greatness, if film would let them: Joseph Gordon Levitt, the acknowledged preferential favorite; Lee Pace, so versatile and yet forever taken for granted; and Adam Driver in a thankless glorified cameo, years before anyone truly recognized his talent.

And there are others, curiously the black actors (Gloria Reuban, David Oyelowo) in roles Spielberg has no earthly idea what to do with among them, worth picking out.

The whole affair comes off as more a companion piece to Spielberg's earlier and far more triumphant Amistad, with far less historic grandeur to its credit and yet so much more power and cinematic achievement...This was the point where Spielberg really started to worry about his continued standing in Hollywood royalty, where he stopped trusting himself and instead just started doing what he thought his peers wanted to see, all the more bizarre from a director who had previously made his name on things audiences seemingly demanded...So much of modern film ignores the American heritage so passionately embraced in the past, it's all the more a shame that the most famous recent example has no idea what it's really trying to accomplish, other than demonstrate saintly Lincoln in his last desperate push for history, above and beyond, y'know, ending the pesky war around it.

And yet Spielberg's peers have been so driven to distraction concerning political maneuvering, I suppose, in the grand scheme, it's only fitting that such are the results of the effort.