In Which I Briefly Review Movies

[909]

At Eternity's Gate (2018), directed by Julian Schnabel

Reason for Watching: This is the last of the unseen movies where someone was nominated for Best Actor in 2018. I kind of have to watch this. Plus, it's van Gogh. I should mention that for films that were provoking me to think, I have lately been writing down thoughts. Sometimes I post them even though they're scattered. Other times they get edited.

At Eternity's Gate is the proverbial portrait of the troubled artist, but in this case the film's subject is THE troubled artist. At Eternity's Gate is not a film that entirely depicts the life of Vincent van Gogh (Willem Dafoe), this is a film that depicts certain things about his life. If you think you're gonna get a glimpse of him painting The Starry Night or some shit, this is not the movie for you. It's hard to describe this film because it is not the most accessible film in the world. The film begins with Vincent in Paris, in a room with a collection of artists including Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac). Vincent decides that he wants to leave Paris, and he tells Gauguin this. Gauguin recommends that van Gogh find a country town because that's better for him. With the help of his brother Theo (Rupert Friend), Vincent relocates to Arles, in the south of France. If you don't know, and there's good reason not to already know this, Theo funded Vincent's life for many years.

As already stated, At Eternity's Gate is not an extremely accessible film. There are scenes here I cannot quite describe, because they are very long and there are things that do not make sense unless you see them. There is a scene somewhat early on where van Gogh is sitting in a field for a long time, and while sitting there he picks up some dirt and throws it in his mouth. Then, after that, he starts painting and the movie completely pulls away from that to show him eating. This is obviously a glimpse into van Gogh's artistic process, but there's more to the film than this. Vincent is the kind of person who needs to be outside in order to paint. This is difficult for other people to accept. When you're a painter, people have expectations of you to do certain things. If you don't want to paint someone, they become cold to you. In the case of van Gogh, he is incredibly lonely. He needs his brother or another artist to be around, but nobody can be around him because of where he needs to be in order to paint. This is a dichotomy as I'm sure you're aware/

At Eternity's Gate is a film that decides at times to take us into the artist's eyes, to show his POV in certain situations where it seems more necessary than others. This can often by very disorienting. Van Gogh was plagued by vision problems throughout his life, there are many reasons as to why this could be. He may have been color blind. He may have been lead poisoned by the paint he was using. His alcoholism could have caused these problems or exacerbated them because of the aforementioned other issues. At Eternity's Gate is a film that challenges the idea van Gogh killed himself. There was a book written about this subject recently that did the same thing. If you care at all, the accepted story of van Gogh's death does not make sense. Of course, van Gogh was also insane. It is difficult to postulate based on things that he has said because his life is riddled with logical inconsistencies. Why would the man cut off his ear? His explanation of that is something inexplicable to anyone but him. Like, you know, the same as most people who draw or paint.

I think everyone knows of van Gogh from when they were in school and learned about art, but I would say that most people don't know a lot about his life. For me, its been so long since I learned any of those things, that I'd forgotten basically everything about him. How he lived and how he died are things that were but a footnote in my mind. I have to say I was not expecting to like this movie. I thought that this would be a boilerplate bio-pic, the likes of which I've seen many times before. There are not many movies that are released in this country that take this sort of approach. The things with his vision that I've already stated are portrayed through van Gogh's eyes at various times. If the man experienced it, so should the viewer. This logic is pervasive. When van Gogh had conversations that bothered him, they would repeat in his mind on loop before he'd have an impulsive reaction. There are a couple things I think the film needed, though. When van Gogh cut his ear off, that's something that can't be left out of the movie. You can't just cut to a scene with the doctor where they're talking about it. I think that's something they may have filmed and edited out.

Obviously, as you can tell, I liked this a lot. I understand why Dafoe was nominated for Best Actor, but there's no way I'd have nominated him. This was a strong performance in a year with stronger performances. The other thing is, I see that this movie got extremely good reviews from some ends, and middling ones on the other. I'm in the middle of that. Here's the deal, or the problem, I don't care about art. I am a typical American. The lack of dialogue is also an issue at times, but this is a nicely disorienting film. You could not just make a standard movie about van Gogh. There were people who have tried to do that with others, like J.R.R. Tolkien, of countless other authors, of artists, and of bands/musicians. You can't do that. The film has to have something more, and in this case the cinematography and use of first person viewpoint sell the whole thing.

7.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
38. Vox Lux
39. Bad Times at the El Royale
40. The Other Side of the Wind
41. Searching
42. Calibre
43. A Simple Favor
44. The Hate U Give
45. Unsane
46. Disobedience
47. Boy Erased
48. Bumblebee
49. Mary Poppins Returns
50. Creed II
51. Hold the Dark
52. The Land of Steady Habits
53. Halloween
54. The 12th Man
55. Upgrade
56. What They Had
57. Ant-Man and the Wasp
58. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
59. Blockers
60. Beirut
61. Roxanne Roxanne
62. Tully
63. Mary Queen of Scots
64. Aquaman
65. Ideal Home
66. Outlaw King
67. Overlord
68. Ready Player One
69. Ben Is Back
70. Monsters and Men
71. Colette
72. The Mule
73. On the Basis of Sex
74. Bohemian Rhapsody
75. White Boy Rick
76. Papillon
77. Game Night
78. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
79. Ocean's Eight
80. Alpha
81. Come Sunday
82. Borg vs. McEnroe
83. Instant Family
84. The Front Runner
85. The Predator
86. Apostle
87. The Oath
88. Uncle Drew
89. The Cured
90. The Commuter
91. The Angel
92. Tag
93. Beautiful Boy
94. The Nun
95. Operation Finale
96. The Equalizer 2
97. The Spy Who Dumped Me
98. Cargo
99. Yardie
100. Boundaries
101. Bird Box
102. 12 Strong
103. Venom
104. Skyscraper
105. The Meg
106. Assassination Nation
107. Adrift
108. Crazy Rich Asians
109. Backstabbing for Beginners
110. The Girl in the Spider's Web
111. Gringo
112. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
113. 22 July
114. Tomb Raider
115. Rampage
116. Hotel Artemis
117. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
118. The Little Stranger
119. 7 Days in Entebbe
120. Night School
121. The 15:17 To Paris
122. Den of Thieves
123. The Catcher Was a Spy
124. Peppermint
125. Mile 22
126. The First Purge
127. Hunter Killer
128. The Hurricane Heist
129. The Cloverfield Paradox
130. Breaking In
131. Welcome to Marwen
132. Second Act
133. How It Ends
134. Mute
135. Kin
136. Hell Fest
137. Action Point
138. Proud Mary
139. Robin Hood
140. Traffik
141. Tau
142. Winchester
143. Woman Walks Ahead
144. The Happytime Murders
145. The Outsider
146. Slender Man
147. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

Chappaquiddick (2018), directed by John Curran

Reason for Watching: Come on, do I really need to spell this out? It's a movie about a US Senator killing someone. I don't like to read books, so this is a much easier form of accessibility for me.

Chappaquiddick is a story that I think a lot of people are familiar with, but the details may be fuzzy or they may not know them at all. The overarching thing that people do remember, is the simple fact that Ted Kennedy (Jason Clarke) was in a car with Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara). Kennedy crashed the car and may or may not have attempted to save Kopechne's life. Ted may or may not have been drunk. The weekend in July of 1969 starts with Kennedy doing an interview talking about his two assassinated brothers. You know who they are. Ted subsequently phones his cousin Joe Gargan (Ed Helms), and asks him to book rooms on Martha's Vineyard for former staffers of Robert Kennedy. When Ted arrives on Martha's Vineyard, he meets Joe and his friend Paul Markham (Jim Gaffigan) for a sailboat race, which they lose badly. After that loss, they go back to a party, where these staffers are at with some other folks. Kopechne is one of these staffers. There's liquor involved and it appears that some of those people may have had too much, but Ted wants to leave the party to talk with Kopechne.

This, obviously, is where the events become very blurred. The only two people who now know are dead. Ted has had too much to drink, but he's driving anyway, without a care in the world. On the road, they see a police officer, but Ted quickly backs up and drives away very fast. The road is a dirt one, and he's driving much too fast for it. This leads to an accident, with Ted driving over the bridge, causing the car to land upside down in a pond. Somehow, Ted climbs out of the vehicle, though he cannot remember how he has done so. Kopechne does not. The film has two ways of looking at it. There's one version where he got out and walked back to the party. There's another where he tries to get Kopechne out of the vehicle and can't open the doors, which eventually leads to him going back to the party as well. Upon arriving at the party again, he tells Joe and Paul that they need to hurry up and drive out to the bridge. The two guys try to save Kopechne, or get her body, but they cannot. Ted is rather drunk and unable to move, he does not help them. The two men also tell Ted that he should report the incident immediately. They are both lawyers and know what they're talking about. Instead, they row Ted to another area, where there is a telephone he can use, but instead Ted goes inside for the night. Now what?

I don't even need to say this, although I guess I will. The story that Kennedy gives is beyond shady. He said they were driving, and the road they were supposed to be using was paved, while the one they were on was dirt. He said that he tried to get Kopechne out of the car, but he could not even though he was able to do so himself. The cause of death was disputed. An autopsy was not completed because things were arranged to take place in an accelerated timeframe. It was said that there may have been an air pocket in the car for two hours that Kopechke could use to breathe. There was a phone booth literally right there. Had Ted immediately reported the problem, it is possible that Kopechke would have lived. The Kennedy family also assembled an enormous team of people who would help Ted deal with this problem. Is this suspicious? You bet it is. The whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense. The film leaves you to feel however you feel. My opinion is that it seemed like Ted Kennedy did not make a full effort to save Kopechne, effectively letting her die. I'm not even sure he tried to open the car. After all, he was drunk.

I have mixed feelings about this movie. I just talked about this in a previous review, about good biographies tend to bring something else to the table that other movies do not have. Chappaquiddick does not have that. At the same time, this is a decent story about how power is such a corruptive, corrosive force. This is also the kind of movie that brought me to absolute confusion as to how Ted Kennedy continued to win elections. If this thing happened today, this dude would absolutely never win anything ever again. He would be shamed into disappearance regardless of his name or stature. This is something that I just don't get, I will never get it because I wasn't part of that era and don't understand. I'm also uncertain that this story is told in the best way possible, I feel like there were more salacious aspects that could have been leaned into. I think it's imperative to understand that this was a desperate attempt to allow Ted Kennedy to run for higher office in 1972. To that end, Joe Kennedy's (Bruce Dern) appearance in this film really works. Those moments are a bit surreal.

While I do have those mixed feelings, I think this is a good film. I think it's a bit out of place being released in these times though. The Kennedys have faded a fair bit in the mind of people these days, and even two years ago when this was released, that was the case. A lot of things have happened since Chappaquiddick. This was a crime, an absolute crime, there's no other way to look at things. At the time, and immediately afterward, people talked about this as if it was an unfortunate accident when it was not. The police couldn't prove that Ted Kennedy was drunk when driving, but that doesn't change that this was a crime. Someone died because this guy was driving like a fucking idiot, and he wasn't able to get her out of the car, nor was there any proof that he had even tried. This guy went back to his hotel room after that, and he only reported the crime once someone told him police had found his car. Ted Kennedy used his status as a Kennedy in order to evade being punished for that crime. You can't wash that kind of stain out. For a long time, and probably even still now, it was usually right wing conspiracists that would outright call him a criminal. If Ted Kennedy was a prominent figure these days, everyone would be calling him a criminal. Everyone would be right. All this fucking guy cared about, all his remaining family cared about, was if his career could be saved. That is a problem. I appreciate that Chappaquiddick is a film that doesn't try very hard to hit you with both sides of the story. There is only one side to this story.

7/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
38. Vox Lux
39. Bad Times at the El Royale
40. The Other Side of the Wind
41. Searching
42. Calibre
43. A Simple Favor
44. The Hate U Give
45. Unsane
46. Disobedience
47. Boy Erased
48. Bumblebee
49. Mary Poppins Returns
50. Creed II
51. Hold the Dark
52. The Land of Steady Habits
53. Halloween
54. The 12th Man
55. Upgrade
56. Chappaquiddick
57. What They Had
58. Ant-Man and the Wasp
59. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
60. Blockers
61. Beirut
62. Roxanne Roxanne
63. Tully
64. Mary Queen of Scots
65. Aquaman
66. Ideal Home
67. Outlaw King
68. Overlord
69. Ready Player One
70. Ben Is Back
71. Monsters and Men
72. Colette
73. The Mule
74. On the Basis of Sex
75. Bohemian Rhapsody
76. White Boy Rick
77. Papillon
78. Game Night
79. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
80. Ocean's Eight
81. Alpha
82. Come Sunday
83. Borg vs. McEnroe
84. Instant Family
85. The Front Runner
86. The Predator
87. Apostle
88. The Oath
89. Uncle Drew
90. The Cured
91. The Commuter
92. The Angel
93. Tag
94. Beautiful Boy
95. The Nun
96. Operation Finale
97. The Equalizer 2
98. The Spy Who Dumped Me
99. Cargo
100. Yardie
101. Boundaries
102. Bird Box
103. 12 Strong
104. Venom
105. Skyscraper
106. The Meg
107. Assassination Nation
108. Adrift
109. Crazy Rich Asians
110. Backstabbing for Beginners
111. The Girl in the Spider's Web
112. Gringo
113. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
114. 22 July
115. Tomb Raider
116. Rampage
117. Hotel Artemis
118. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
119. The Little Stranger
120. 7 Days in Entebbe
121. Night School
122. The 15:17 To Paris
123. Den of Thieves
124. The Catcher Was a Spy
125. Peppermint
126. Mile 22
127. The First Purge
128. Hunter Killer
129. The Hurricane Heist
130. The Cloverfield Paradox
131. Breaking In
132. Welcome to Marwen
133. Second Act
134. How It Ends
135. Mute
136. Kin
137. Hell Fest
138. Action Point
139. Proud Mary
140. Robin Hood
141. Traffik
142. Tau
143. Winchester
144. Woman Walks Ahead
145. The Happytime Murders
146. The Outsider
147. Slender Man
148. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

Hot Summer Nights (2018), directed by Elijah Bynum

Reason for Watching: I am trying to catch up on A24's movies. This one isn't supposed to be good, but I've watched too many good movies in a row.

Not looking forward to writing this one. Hot Summer Nights is the story of Daniel (Timothee Chalamet), a teenager whose father has recently passed away. Set in 1991, Daniel has been sent to Cape Cod by his mother, to live with his aunt for the summer. It has to be weird to do some shit like that, you know. When I was sent to Arkansas to live with my grandma for the summer, I got there before school had finished. So, I made some friends and shit and I was looking forward to things that I was doing with them. Daniel, on the other hand, he's sent there with nobody. Nobody and nothing. Hot Summer Nights is a film that is narrated by some young geek, and early on this provides some entertainment. Sometimes it does not. Daniel was not looking forward to this summer, and truthfully he didn't even want to go. He was made to get a job at a convenience station and all that, something he can do to get out of the house. Every once in a while he'll go to the beach too. Maybe he'll even hit up a party.

One day, while doing a shift at his convenience store, Daniel comes across Hunter (Alex Roe), who we have already been introduced to. Hunter tells Daniel that he better quickly hide some weed for him, as a cop is following him. Daniel complies, and the two hit it off as friends. As the narrator has told us, Hunter is a huge drug dealer. Everyone in the area knows they can go to him for their needs, regardless of their age. It's alright for old men to go see this guy, for teenagers, for anyone. The local cop, Frank Calhoun (Thomas Jane), he is really onto this shit. Eventually, the two both start selling weed together. First there's a little, then there's a lot. They come into contact with someone named Dex (Emory Cohen), who becomes their supplier. Dex will give them whatever it is they want. But there's what should be an interesting wrinkle here, pardon me if you've seen this shit before. Hunter has a sister, McKayla (Maika Monroe). You probably know how the actress looks. Daniel runs into her and is interested. Hunter doesn't know that she knows Daniel. McKayla doesn't know that Daniel knows Hunter. That, as they say, is that.

These fucking movies that spoil the plot with a teaser scene one minute in. I tell you, this shit is the bane of my existence. I don't want these, nobody wants these. The one in Hot Summer Nights shows Daniel getting t-boned while speeding away from something. This one scene entirely takes the tension out of the last 15 minutes of the film. Shitty movies have these scenes because the filmmakers don't believe people will stick with them otherwise. I will say that Hot Summer Nights has a very convincing display of geek going on here. This movie is full of style in a sense of ripping off from other directors, this is more derivative than most. There are funny things in this though. There's a part where this dude is looking at a hot chick and takes her chewed gum off the telephone booth she stuck it on. Really gross. Very funny. Unfortunately the film is short on this kind of thing. You'd think that the whole film would be like this, except it isn't, and things of this nature subside quite rapidly.

Hot Summer Nights is much more interested in taking Daniel into the drug dealing scene, which we've seen so many times before, and in this case many times done better as well. What we have here is a tonal issue. This also takes a turn going from that, to a romance movie. These changes didn't do it for me. As a result this is one of the longest 105 minute movies I've ever seen. There aren't good characters in this film at all, I'd say. There are good visuals, but that only matters so much. On a sustained level that's all the movie has at all. I don't give a fuck about any of these people, I felt nothing at really any point at all. I can't even say that I felt bad for someone. The shit sucked. This is a lame fucking movie, the narrator possibly being the worst part. A narrator should be in a movie when the movie is about important shit and needs someone to make sense of everything. The narrator is completely unnecessary here. It's some dweeb. Also, you know how I knew I wouldn't like this movie? When I heard yet another movie play "Space Oddity" completely out of context, that was it for me. I can't even tell you why this song is so overused in this medium. I genuinely don't know.

This movie is one of the worst of 2018, for a hell of a lot of reasons. There are so many things ripped off from so many good directors and placed into a film where it goesn't make sense for those things to exist.

3.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
38. Vox Lux
39. Bad Times at the El Royale
40. The Other Side of the Wind
41. Searching
42. Calibre
43. A Simple Favor
44. The Hate U Give
45. Unsane
46. Disobedience
47. Boy Erased
48. Bumblebee
49. Mary Poppins Returns
50. Creed II
51. Hold the Dark
52. The Land of Steady Habits
53. Halloween
54. The 12th Man
55. Upgrade
56. Chappaquiddick
57. What They Had
58. Ant-Man and the Wasp
59. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
60. Blockers
61. Beirut
62. Roxanne Roxanne
63. Tully
64. Mary Queen of Scots
65. Aquaman
66. Ideal Home
67. Outlaw King
68. Overlord
69. Ready Player One
70. Ben Is Back
71. Monsters and Men
72. Colette
73. The Mule
74. On the Basis of Sex
75. Bohemian Rhapsody
76. White Boy Rick
77. Papillon
78. Game Night
79. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
80. Ocean's Eight
81. Alpha
82. Come Sunday
83. Borg vs. McEnroe
84. Instant Family
85. The Front Runner
86. The Predator
87. Apostle
88. The Oath
89. Uncle Drew
90. The Cured
91. The Commuter
92. The Angel
93. Tag
94. Beautiful Boy
95. The Nun
96. Operation Finale
97. The Equalizer 2
98. The Spy Who Dumped Me
99. Cargo
100. Yardie
101. Boundaries
102. Bird Box
103. 12 Strong
104. Venom
105. Skyscraper
106. The Meg
107. Assassination Nation
108. Adrift
109. Crazy Rich Asians
110. Backstabbing for Beginners
111. The Girl in the Spider's Web
112. Gringo
113. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
114. 22 July
115. Tomb Raider
116. Rampage
117. Hotel Artemis
118. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
119. The Little Stranger
120. 7 Days in Entebbe
121. Night School
122. The 15:17 To Paris
123. Den of Thieves
124. The Catcher Was a Spy
125. Peppermint
126. Mile 22
127. The First Purge
128. Hunter Killer
129. The Hurricane Heist
130. The Cloverfield Paradox
131. Breaking In
132. Hot Summer Nights
133. Welcome to Marwen
134. Second Act
135. How It Ends
136. Mute
137. Kin
138. Hell Fest
139. Action Point
140. Proud Mary
141. Robin Hood
142. Traffik
143. Tau
144. Winchester
145. Woman Walks Ahead
146. The Happytime Murders
147. The Outsider
148. Slender Man
149. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

Destroyer (2018), directed by Karyn Kusama

Reason for Watching: I am doing my damndest to clear the last three years so that I can finally move backwards into the past. Destroyer is a movie I wanted to see at the time, but it did not make it into my theater. Wish I knew why, because I was pretty mad about that shit. Most of the movies I'm watching in the next few months are movies I thought I would be able to see at the time. I have to admit that I'm unsure about the role police movies play at this time. I don't know how I feel about it, and don't know how to talk about it right now. Maybe after I watch this, or some other movie, I'll know how I feel about this genre. Maybe I won't.

The answer after watching Destroyer was that I still don't. Anyway, let's move on. Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman) is a detective with the LAPD. We can see immediately during her introduction that she is a drunk fuckup. This isn't exactly subtle, but in the first scene of the movie that's completely acceptable. Stumbling onto a crime scene is certainly an interesting way to go about ruining your career, but I guess that's her deal. The crime scene I'm talking about is one where a man has been shot and killed. Money stained by a dye pack has been left at the scene, the man left near the LA River. If you've seen any movie set in Los Angeles, you know where this is. After Bell leaves the scene, she heads to her desk and opens an envelope containing another stained $100. This sets her on the hunt.

You see, a long time ago, Bell was part of an undercover case focused on Silas. She and Chris (Sebastian Stan) had embedded themselves in a seedy desert group headed by Silas (Toby Kebbell). Silas has a group of decent size, all of them providing seemingly similar functions. They're robbers. They want to steal shit. Arturo (Zach Villa) is tormented in seemingly numerous ways by Silas. One of these ways is to make Arturo play Russian Roulette with three bullets in a revolver. Somehow, he does not die. I have a hard time remembering the exact order of these scenes, I must admit. Here's the short version. Bell is going to make her way through this gang, whichever ones are left, in order to find Silas. Nothing else matters to her. She has a daughter, Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn). Even that doesn't matter too much. Former husband Ethan (Scoot McNairy) doesn't either. Get the point? She'll even jerk someone off if she has to in order to find Silas. The thing is, she also has a deep sense of shame and a terrible disposition. You don't find out why until much later in the film.

First things first, the ending of this movie was big lame and I didn't find that to be particularly satisfying in the least. The rest of the story is pretty strong, even though there comes a point where you can predict some of the things that may have happened. I could not predict all of them. This is a great performance from Kidman and you may not be surprised because she was nominated for a Golden Globe just a short time ago for this specific performance. The previously mentioned jerking off scene is really scummy and uncomfortable to watch, too. This isn't sugarcoated in a magical way or some shit. A lot of the things in this movie feel like a race to the bottom. I don't have a problem with that, though. Look at all the other stuff I like. I guess this kind of movie is an acquired taste. A lot of people seem to have specifically disliked Destroyer for this reason. Almost all of my problems with the film are based on things that happen in the last three or four minutes. I feel like that kind of ending is way too fucking easy. There are twists and turns in this shit, and all of them are good. Except for those very last minutes.

When making a movie like Destroyer, the lead character has to be believably authentic. For that to happen, the actor has to have incredible range, and Nicole Kidman has that. I'm not telling you anything surprising though. This is someone who can play every role, but probably hasn't played one quite like this. That's the whole sell of the movie, too. It's too bad the distributor thought that nobody would watch this. This is a movie that I will remember for a while, but because of the ending, I'm actually not going to be able to consider this as being a great film. I'm still mad about it. I sat on this review for a few days before posting it and nothing has changed. This was an interesting twist on the lone wolf detective movie, though. The movie really kicks up in the last hour or so, and it's worth watching even if you don't like the ending. After all, it's just a few bad minutes. It's a few too many bad minutes though, and as a result I feel like this is only a good movie. It's too bad because this could have been something more.

7/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
38. Vox Lux
39. Bad Times at the El Royale
40. The Other Side of the Wind
41. Searching
42. Calibre
43. A Simple Favor
44. The Hate U Give
45. Unsane
46. Disobedience
47. Destroyer
48. Boy Erased
49. Bumblebee
50. Mary Poppins Returns
51. Creed II
52. Hold the Dark
53. The Land of Steady Habits
54. Halloween
55. The 12th Man
56. Upgrade
57. Chappaquiddick
58. What They Had
59. Ant-Man and the Wasp
60. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
61. Blockers
62. Beirut
63. Roxanne Roxanne
64. Tully
65. Mary Queen of Scots
66. Aquaman
67. Ideal Home
68. Outlaw King
69. Overlord
70. Ready Player One
71. Ben Is Back
72. Monsters and Men
73. Colette
74. The Mule
75. On the Basis of Sex
76. Bohemian Rhapsody
77. White Boy Rick
78. Papillon
79. Game Night
80. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
81. Ocean's Eight
82. Alpha
83. Come Sunday
84. Borg vs. McEnroe
85. Instant Family
86. The Front Runner
87. The Predator
88. Apostle
89. The Oath
90. Uncle Drew
91. The Cured
92. The Commuter
93. The Angel
94. Tag
95. Beautiful Boy
96. The Nun
97. Operation Finale
98. The Equalizer 2
99. The Spy Who Dumped Me
100. Cargo
101. Yardie
102. Boundaries
103. Bird Box
104. 12 Strong
105. Venom
106. Skyscraper
107. The Meg
108. Assassination Nation
109. Adrift
110. Crazy Rich Asians
111. Backstabbing for Beginners
112. The Girl in the Spider's Web
113. Gringo
114. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
115. 22 July
116. Tomb Raider
117. Rampage
118. Hotel Artemis
119. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
120. The Little Stranger
121. 7 Days in Entebbe
122. Night School
123. The 15:17 To Paris
124. Den of Thieves
125. The Catcher Was a Spy
126. Peppermint
127. Mile 22
128. The First Purge
129. Hunter Killer
130. The Hurricane Heist
131. The Cloverfield Paradox
132. Breaking In
133. Hot Summer Nights
134. Welcome to Marwen
135. Second Act
136. How It Ends
137. Mute
138. Kin
139. Hell Fest
140. Action Point
141. Proud Mary
142. Robin Hood
143. Traffik
144. Tau
145. Winchester
146. Woman Walks Ahead
147. The Happytime Murders
148. The Outsider
149. Slender Man
150. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

Extinction (2018), directed by Ben Young

Reason for Watching: I feel like I need to watch ALL these similar movies on Netflix now that I've seen so many of them. Netflix has this weird formula, and they bought this movie from Universal because it fits into that formula. I'm surprised they didn't make it to begin with.

I'm going to be straight up, like I always am. I did not like Extinction and I didn't think this was a good movie. Peter (Michael Pena) is an engineer who has nightmares every night. Those nightmares largely consist of violent, alien invasion type of shit. When he has these nightmares, they vary in length and content, but the main detail is that everyone he knows is in these nightmares. His wife Alice (Lizzy Caplan) and their daughters Hanna (Amelia Crouch) and Lucy (Erica Tremblay) are in them as well, but they also have problems with how often Peter is at work. Eventually, they're all fed up with this shit. At Alice's behest, Peter is told that he needs to see the psychiatrist. When he gets to the office, Peter is told by another patient that he is also seeing these recurring nightmares. This is a problem, and Peter decides that because someone is seeing the same things as him, he should not be spending his time seeing a shrink.

That night, Alice is hosting a party. At this party, some spaceships come down from the sky and start shooting. You see? Some nightmares are of things that have the potential of actually happening. Almost all the time they're bullshit, though. These spaceships came down firing much more than just a few shots, this is apparently a full out invasion. Everyone runs and shit, and if I bother to talk about anything else, I'm talking about at least an hour of a movie that only lasts for 87 minutes. I should continue though. Extinction is a movie that's full of twists, regardless of whether or not they make sense. Some of them send this movie straight down the shitter.

It's interesting that in the end, this movie would turn out to be related to androids when I've been playing Detroit: Become Human. That's a good game, by the way. The android twist here is so surprising and unexpected, and I don't like it at all. I was thinking this was a perfectly average movie until that point. When they bring in androids, and you find out that all the characters in this movie were androids who kicked humans off the planet when the humans attacked them for no good reason, I don't really know how to make sense of something like that. The characters in this movie aren't exactly interesting or anything. As already stated, this is a Netflix movie. You know the deal, this is their formula. There's an apocalypse or some shit, and sometimes there's some alien shit, and maybe some space shit with people in uniforms, and there's your average Netflix movie. They have literally countless movies like this one.

I think the main problem with this, is that the movie is so focused on Michael Pena when I'm not entirely certain that he's capable of playing a lead character. I've never seen him as a convincing lead and probably never will. There's a lot going on in this movie and not very much of it is good. I can't even explain why I'm going to give this movie a 4. Extinction isn't offensively bad, that's the main reason. I actually can't think of any reason to say I fucking hate this movie. It just sucked and wasn't very pleasant to watch. It wasn't unpleasant either, the twists were more laughable than anything else.

4/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
38. Vox Lux
39. Bad Times at the El Royale
40. The Other Side of the Wind
41. Searching
42. Calibre
43. A Simple Favor
44. The Hate U Give
45. Unsane
46. Disobedience
47. Destroyer
48. Boy Erased
49. Bumblebee
50. Mary Poppins Returns
51. Creed II
52. Hold the Dark
53. The Land of Steady Habits
54. Halloween
55. The 12th Man
56. Upgrade
57. Chappaquiddick
58. What They Had
59. Ant-Man and the Wasp
60. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
61. Blockers
62. Beirut
63. Roxanne Roxanne
64. Tully
65. Mary Queen of Scots
66. Aquaman
67. Ideal Home
68. Outlaw King
69. Overlord
70. Ready Player One
71. Ben Is Back
72. Monsters and Men
73. Colette
74. The Mule
75. On the Basis of Sex
76. Bohemian Rhapsody
77. White Boy Rick
78. Papillon
79. Game Night
80. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
81. Ocean's Eight
82. Alpha
83. Come Sunday
84. Borg vs. McEnroe
85. Instant Family
86. The Front Runner
87. The Predator
88. Apostle
89. The Oath
90. Uncle Drew
91. The Cured
92. The Commuter
93. The Angel
94. Tag
95. Beautiful Boy
96. The Nun
97. Operation Finale
98. The Equalizer 2
99. The Spy Who Dumped Me
100. Cargo
101. Yardie
102. Boundaries
103. Bird Box
104. 12 Strong
105. Venom
106. Skyscraper
107. The Meg
108. Assassination Nation
109. Adrift
110. Crazy Rich Asians
111. Backstabbing for Beginners
112. The Girl in the Spider's Web
113. Gringo
114. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
115. 22 July
116. Tomb Raider
117. Rampage
118. Hotel Artemis
119. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
120. The Little Stranger
121. 7 Days in Entebbe
122. Night School
123. The 15:17 To Paris
124. Den of Thieves
125. The Catcher Was a Spy
126. Peppermint
127. Mile 22
128. The First Purge
129. Hunter Killer
130. The Hurricane Heist
131. The Cloverfield Paradox
132. Breaking In
133. Extinction
134. Hot Summer Nights
135. Welcome to Marwen
136. Second Act
137. How It Ends
138. Mute
139. Kin
140. Hell Fest
141. Action Point
142. Proud Mary
143. Robin Hood
144. Traffik
145. Tau
146. Winchester
147. Woman Walks Ahead
148. The Happytime Murders
149. The Outsider
150. Slender Man
151. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

Black '47 (2018), directed by Lancy Daly

Reason for Watching: I had seen a preview for Black '47 quite a long time ago now. Look, the thing is, when it comes to Ireland and things related to fighting in that country, I'm interested. Obviously I don't know how good this movie is, and only watching it will help me to find out. I've also read that this is like a Western even though it's set in Ireland and not the West.

Black '47 refers to the Great Famine of Ireland, which peaked in 1847, the worst year of the lot. Food was almost non existent. Feeney (James Frecheville) is a former British Ranger who has served in Afghanistan, he is now returning home from his service to the west of Ireland. Specifically, Feeney served in Kabul, which I know is bunk because his division was not deployed during the Anglo-Afghan Wars. Of course, I said that Feeney is returning home to Ireland, which brings up another obvious point. This is a man who had to serve with the British in order to make his way. The Irish did not want to do such things, they felt that they had to, and were met with bigotry from the British while doing so. When Feeney arrives home, he learns some news that is very disturbing. There have been laws passed that have led to evictions. Feeney learns that his mother has died of starvation and his brother was hung after stabbing someone during their eviction. Feeney has some family left, but not so much. Ellie (Sarah Greene) is his brother's widow, and she has three children. Feeney has suggested that they all need to go to America and should plan to do so.

You know how I talked about evictions? Well, Ellie is squatting in someone's house because they have no choice. It is bitterly cold and everyone needs a roof, so even though they may not have food they can stay alive. Before it's time to leave, Ellie is to be evicted. The way that the British police forces would do this in those days is to remove the roof from the house. This would in theory effectively force people to leave. While this is happening, Feeney is arrested for disobedience, and his nephew is killed after stabbing another evictor. Just like that kid's dad. When Feeney is arrested, he is extremely angry. After all, this guy served. But, he has also deserted from his post. The man is able to kill an entire barracks worth of police, but when he arrives back at the roofless house, his sister and one of her children is now dead. He doesn't know where the youngest went. While this is going on, Hannah (Hugo Weaving) is a veteran of the British army who works as an investigator for these police. One night, he freaks out and kills someone. He is released from jail with the task of finding Feeney and bringing him to justice. Accompanying him is an officer, Pope (Freddie Fox); a private, Hobson (Barry Keoghan); and an interpreter/scoundrel, Conneely (Stephen Rea).

I thought this was a good film overall, but one thing early on really struck me. There's one interesting bit of filmmaking at the start of the movie, where a man is riding his horse towards a very obviously painted background. I'm surprised I haven't seen that more from films set in this era. It's unique and I bet it doesn't cost all that much to do. Of course, what really hits me here is the idea of living in an era where you went to fight in the army and found out that your family died while you were gone. No notice, no awareness, nothing. On top of that, you know everyone died because they couldn't eat. That's the root cause of pretty much everything that happens in Black '47, after all. The killing in this movie is gruesome as a result of the experience given to the lead character. You would expect someone like this to be able to mow through people, and this man sure does. I was surprised that souperism was displayed in this movie. I thought that was more perceived as a conspiracy theory, but it did happen on some scale and is worth mention. If you don't know what souperism is, read about it.

Now, back to the start of this review. Is this a Western? Kind of. Lots of revenge going on here. People seeking the vengeful man, going around the west of Ireland trying to find him. The guy is ultimately on a huge mission of rage and determination. West Ireland is a frontier of its own, and in this case nobody has food due to the Great Famine. So, you know, yeah. There aren't many movies that cover this period. This isn't a perfect film, because after all the characters aren't extremely developed. This is a good cast, but the movie isn't all that long either. There isn't much in the way of exposition because character roles are to be assumed. The private is naive, the officer is too because he's young and has no foreign experience. These are the people tasked with hunting down a soldier. It is assumed that an Irishman cannot do anything of value. Wrong. It is also strange that this would be one of the few movies about Irish hunger and dedicate little time to that subject. Instead, Black '47 is about someone killing the people who helped contribute to that system. It's a good film, but you know, it's weird.

7/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
38. Vox Lux
39. Bad Times at the El Royale
40. The Other Side of the Wind
41. Searching
42. Calibre
43. A Simple Favor
44. The Hate U Give
45. Unsane
46. Disobedience
47. Destroyer
48. Boy Erased
49. Bumblebee
50. Mary Poppins Returns
51. Creed II
52. Hold the Dark
53. The Land of Steady Habits
54. Halloween
55. The 12th Man
56. Upgrade
57. Chappaquiddick
58. What They Had
59. Ant-Man and the Wasp
60. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
61. Blockers
62. Beirut
63. Black '47
64. Roxanne Roxanne
65. Tully
66. Mary Queen of Scots
67. Aquaman
68. Ideal Home
69. Outlaw King
70. Overlord
71. Ready Player One
72. Ben Is Back
73. Monsters and Men
74. Colette
75. The Mule
76. On the Basis of Sex
77. Bohemian Rhapsody
78. White Boy Rick
79. Papillon
80. Game Night
81. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
82. Ocean's Eight
83. Alpha
84. Come Sunday
85. Borg vs. McEnroe
86. Instant Family
87. The Front Runner
88. The Predator
89. Apostle
90. The Oath
91. Uncle Drew
92. The Cured
93. The Commuter
94. The Angel
95. Tag
96. Beautiful Boy
97. The Nun
98. Operation Finale
99. The Equalizer 2
100. The Spy Who Dumped Me
101. Cargo
102. Yardie
103. Boundaries
104. Bird Box
105. 12 Strong
106. Venom
107. Skyscraper
108. The Meg
109. Assassination Nation
110. Adrift
111. Crazy Rich Asians
112. Backstabbing for Beginners
113. The Girl in the Spider's Web
114. Gringo
115. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
116. 22 July
117. Tomb Raider
118. Rampage
119. Hotel Artemis
120. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
121. The Little Stranger
122. 7 Days in Entebbe
123. Night School
124. The 15:17 To Paris
125. Den of Thieves
126. The Catcher Was a Spy
127. Peppermint
128. Mile 22
129. The First Purge
130. Hunter Killer
131. The Hurricane Heist
132. The Cloverfield Paradox
133. Breaking In
134. Extinction
135. Hot Summer Nights
136. Welcome to Marwen
137. Second Act
138. How It Ends
139. Mute
140. Kin
141. Hell Fest
142. Action Point
143. Proud Mary
144. Robin Hood
145. Traffik
146. Tau
147. Winchester
148. Woman Walks Ahead
149. The Happytime Murders
150. The Outsider
151. Slender Man
152. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

Arabic, subtitles

The Insult (2017), directed by Ziad Doueiri

Reason for Watching: I'm trying to go through the last few years of Oscar nominations and Golden Globes nominations and watch some of the categories full of movies I have previously not seen. This one's first.

It's not every day I watch Lebanese movies, but I do have two racked up for the next few months. Like I said, I'm trying to watch these movies that got nominated. Anyway, The Insult is about Tony (Adel Karam) and Yasser (Kamel El Basha), two men who live in Beirut. Let's do some stage setting. Tony is a Lebansese Christian and he's a member of the Christian Party. He owns a garage that he and his pregnant wife Shirine (Rita Hayek) work in, and things seem to be going well for them. Yasser is a Palestinian construction foreman tasked with repairing problem sites in Beirut at the behest of their city government. Tony does not want anyone fucking with his house. Yasser has to fix the gutter of Tony's house, though. Tony decides that he's going to smash the gutter. When he breaks it, Yasser calls him a fucking prick, and Tony recognizes that Yasser is a Palestinian refugee because of his accent. It may not surprise you that a member of the Christian Party is all in on anti-Palestinian propaganda. The issue of Palestinians in Lebanon is a very complex one that I am not educated enough to talk to you about. It is an issue that requires a lot of nuance, and I don't have that. There have been wars. There have been massacres. Israel is not the only country to have conflict with Palestinians. You should know this.

When I said that Tony liked anti-Palestinian propaganda, I meant that he plays speeches on the TV in his garage. This is what the guy likes. I've come to the conclusion over many years that a lot of the problem with Lebanese and Palestinians, or whatever faction these groups are in, is that people are fucking pricks. Some people are right in feeling that they are owed something. Honestly, everyone's owed something in life. That's how I feel. The issue is that nobody wants to give a little bit on any end. A lot of this kind of shit won't end until the people who were alive when these bad things happened are dead. We're still quite a while away from that. The character of Tony is only 47 years old, and bad shit happened after that too. Tony would play these speeches in his garage, which incited him to hate people more, or maybe he felt this way already. Tony decides to tell the construction company that Yasser to apologize to him. Eventually, Yasser's boss Talal (Talal Jurdi) is able to convince Yasser to go down to Tony's garage and apologize. When Yasser arrives, Tony is playing another one of these hate speeches in his garage. Yasser cannot bring himself to apologize, which leads Tony to state that he wishes Ariel Sharon had exterminated all Palestinians. Yasser subsequently punches Tony, breaking two of his ribs. I don't want to tell you the rest.

The official Lebanese government disclaimer prior to this film is interesting, I tell you that. There's a lot of reasons why that's there and I don't really want to talk about them. Even though these was Lebanon's submission for an Academy Award, and even though it was nominated for one, I get the feeling that there's hardly any regular person who has actually watched this. I already said a lot of things about hatred and divisions, but what I'm thinking about right now is whether or not this will also pertain to the current situation in our country. Can we really make that huge progress before the people who were on the wrong side of Jim Crow are dead? With Lebanese and Palestinians it isn't so cut and dry. There is one distinctly right side in our country, but not in Lebanon. Lebanon is a country that fractured numerous ways and not merely one that was split in two. The film makes that clear as the events play out. Of course, there are some scenes here that really call a lot of things into question. At what point is it justified to attack someone? How can baked in viewpoints be overcome when they're because of things that happened when people were young?

I don't think The Insult is a perfect film, but it's one that's highly political. It doesn't handle that subject with very much care either. You are sent straight into it. I was at first unconvinced that this concept could last for nearly two hours at the rate things happened at the beginning of the film. I do think that the film would have been better had Tony's initial comment been less loaded. There are also some scenes that are straight out of an American court movie, but the thing that differentiates it from those movies is that the events are handled in a way that is not boilerplate. A lot of American court movies have issues that don't make sense in the context of our court system itself. There are movies that tell far too much of their tale through flashbacks. That is not the case in The Insult. The testimonies given here are not boring. There aren't a lot of good court movies of late, but Just Mercy was one of them. It was a film that did a lot of the same things that were done here, and it had heart. People who usually nominate movies for awards usually do so because the events of a film put a historical issue into context. While The Insult does do that, which makes the award nomination a bit of a trope, some of the things you hear about here are appalling.

In a strange twist, I will have to rent A Fantastic Woman if I'm actually going to watch the winner from this category at the 2018 Oscars, but I have too many good movies to watch to go ahead and spend money on one right at this moment. I will rent it later this year.

8/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. The Florida Project
8. Mudbound
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
10. Logan
11. Baby Driver
12. The Post
13. Wonder Woman
14. The Big Sick
15. Lady Bird
16. Wind River
17. Thor: Ragnarok
18. mother!
19. Logan Lucky
20. I, Tonya
21. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
22. The Insult
23. The Beguiled
24. Ingrid Goes West
25. Foxtrot
26. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
27. Brawl in Cell Block 99
28. Loveless
29. John Wick: Chapter 2
30. The Disaster Artist
31. The Lost City of Z
32. First They Killed My Father
33. A Ghost Story
34. Detroit
35. Gook
36. Last Flag Flying
37. Hostiles
38. Colossal
39. All the Money in the World
40. Molly's Game
41. Darkest Hour
42. Spider-Man: Homecoming
43. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
44. Sweet Virginia
45. It
46. Battle of the Sexes
47. Stronger
48. Brad's Status
49. Okja
50. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
51. Kong: Skull Island
52. It Comes at Night
53. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
54. Crown Heights
55. Split
56. 1922
57. Personal Shopper
58. Landline
59. Thank You for Your Service
60. Beatriz at Dinner
61. Chuck
62. Atomic Blonde
63. Shot Caller
64. Wheelman
65. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
66. Wonder
67. Brigsby Bear
68. The Lego Batman Movie
69. Megan Leavey
70. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
71. Wonderstruck
72. Only the Brave
73. Marshall
74. Menashe
75. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
76. Walking Out
77. American Made
78. Annabelle: Creation
79. Beauty and the Beast
80. Imperial Dreams
81. Gifted
82. Murder on the Orient Express
83. My Friend Dahmer
84. The Zookeeper's Wife
85. The Glass Castle
86. The Foreigner
87. Free Fire
88. Win It All
89. The Wall
90. Jungle
91. Life
92. My Cousin Rachel
93. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
94. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
95. The Fate of the Furious
96. Happy Death Day
97. Breathe
98. The Man Who Invented Christmas
99. Maudie
100. Patti Cake$
101. Sleight
102. Alone in Berlin
103. A United Kingdom
104. Trespass Against Us
105. The Mountain Between Us
106. War Machine
107. Lowriders
108. Justice League
109. To the Bone
110. Ghost in the Shell
111. Wakefield
112. Downsizing
113. Bright
114. Bushwick
115. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
116. The Hitman's Bodyguard
117. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
118. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
119. The Mummy
120. The Greatest Showman
121. Rough Night
122. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
123. Sand Castle
124. The Circle
125. American Assassin
126. CHiPs
127. Death Note
128. 47 Meters Down
129. The Belko Experiment
130. The Great Wall
131. The Bad Batch
132. Fist Fight
133. Baywatch
134. Snatched
135. Suburbicon
136. Wilson
137. The Dark Tower
138. Queen of the Desert
139. The House
140. Flatliners
141. Sleepless
142. Geostorm
143. All Eyez on Me
144. The Snowman
145. The Book of Henry
146. The Space Between Us
147. Daddy's Home 2

 

[909]

The Night Comes for Us (2018), directed by Timo Tjahjanto

Reason for Watching: I think this is an Indonesian martial arts movie? That's self explanatory enough. I had accidentally skipped this a year and a half ago. The Night Comes for Us also has a reputation for being extremely gory.

I usually put down what language these movies are in, but in this case this movie is in so many languages I didn't see the point. The Night Comes for Us is a martial arts movie in the vein of many, many similar works. Brothers betrayed, best friends put at odds, you know the deal with that kind of thing. The Night Comes for Us sets the stage for this film early on, explaining how the Triads have six enforcers that are not to be fucked with. They are the Six Seas, and Ito (Joe Taslim) is one of these guys. Ito has been tasked with exterminating a village because a few of the people in it stole drugs from the Triad. After much killing, Ito sees a young girl on the beach. He walks over to her to kill her, but he cannot do that and instead turns his gun on the lower ranking people he'd brought to help him with the initial job. After doing so, Ito heads back into Jakarta, to the house of his ex-girlfriend Shinta (Salvita Decorte). He has brought the girl with him, her name is Reina. Shinta is very surprised to see Ito, who collapses in her bathroom.

Ito betraying the Six Seas is a very big deal, as any betrayal in any gang movie would be. Chien Wu (Sunny Pang) is one of the Six Seas, and he's looking for someone to take Ito's spot. Of course, he needs Ito to be killed in order for that to happen. Arian (Iko Uwais) is a member of Ito's old gang in Jakarta, the one they both left in order to make something of themselves. He was sent to Macau by the Triads, and he runs a club there. We're introduced to him with a scene where he takes care of a group of guys who had harassed his waitress. Arian and Ito have history, a lot of it. He is tasked with killing his former friend. Meanwhile, Ito has taken Reina to a house occupied by three of the former members of his crew. Fatih (Abimana Aryasatya) is currently in a relationship with the previously mentioned Shinta, Bobby (Zack Lee) is a big guy who is heavily into drugs, and Wisnu (Dimas Anggara) is Fatih's cousin. They have what amounts to the whole city of Jakarta coming at them trying to kill Ito. These guys aren't just trying to come kill Ito though. The little girl has to go too. A message needs to be sent, but is Arian really down for this job?

Alright, so as far as The Night Comes for Us goes, this is a movie that has a couple things really going for it. One is not, and we'll start with that. The plot is the kind of thing that you've probably seen a lot, because if I have you sure have. I found that most of the scenes focusing on the plot dragged a fair bit. The thing is, there aren't a ton of those scenes in the movie overall. The film is primarly focused on people kicking ass and killing each other. The use of blood in this film is probably overboard all things considered, but all things considered it's also awesome. There's too much violence in this film to actually go into detail in any kind of way. Where would I even start. There are also good side characters beyond just the ones I mentioned. They have their own uniquely violent traits that aren't shared by any of the other characters. It's pretty cool. The final battle in The Night Comes for Us is also awesome. It goes on as long as I hoped that it would, and ultimately I felt satisfied with the film as a whole. I don't know why I didn't watch this sooner.

There's not a lot of depth to anything, this is a straight up action movie where people get fucked up. Nothing more needs to be said.

7.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. The Night Comes for Us
38. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
39. Vox Lux
40. Bad Times at the El Royale
41. The Other Side of the Wind
42. Searching
43. Calibre
44. A Simple Favor
45. The Hate U Give
46. Unsane
47. Disobedience
48. Destroyer
49. Boy Erased
50. Bumblebee
51. Mary Poppins Returns
52. Creed II
53. Hold the Dark
54. The Land of Steady Habits
55. Halloween
56. The 12th Man
57. Upgrade
58. Chappaquiddick
59. What They Had
60. Ant-Man and the Wasp
61. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
62. Blockers
63. Beirut
64. Black '47
65. Roxanne Roxanne
66. Tully
67. Mary Queen of Scots
68. Aquaman
69. Ideal Home
70. Outlaw King
71. Overlord
72. Ready Player One
73. Ben Is Back
74. Monsters and Men
75. Colette
76. The Mule
77. On the Basis of Sex
78. Bohemian Rhapsody
79. White Boy Rick
80. Papillon
81. Game Night
82. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
83. Ocean's Eight
84. Alpha
85. Come Sunday
86. Borg vs. McEnroe
87. Instant Family
88. The Front Runner
89. The Predator
90. Apostle
91. The Oath
92. Uncle Drew
93. The Cured
94. The Commuter
95. The Angel
96. Tag
97. Beautiful Boy
98. The Nun
99. Operation Finale
100. The Equalizer 2
101. The Spy Who Dumped Me
102. Cargo
103. Yardie
104. Boundaries
105. Bird Box
106. 12 Strong
107. Venom
108. Skyscraper
109. The Meg
110. Assassination Nation
111. Adrift
112. Crazy Rich Asians
113. Backstabbing for Beginners
114. The Girl in the Spider's Web
115. Gringo
116. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
117. 22 July
118. Tomb Raider
119. Rampage
120. Hotel Artemis
121. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
122. The Little Stranger
123. 7 Days in Entebbe
124. Night School
125. The 15:17 To Paris
126. Den of Thieves
127. The Catcher Was a Spy
128. Peppermint
129. Mile 22
130. The First Purge
131. Hunter Killer
132. The Hurricane Heist
133. The Cloverfield Paradox
134. Breaking In
135. Extinction
136. Hot Summer Nights
137. Welcome to Marwen
138. Second Act
139. How It Ends
140. Mute
141. Kin
142. Hell Fest
143. Action Point
144. Proud Mary
145. Robin Hood
146. Traffik
147. Tau
148. Winchester
149. Woman Walks Ahead
150. The Happytime Murders
151. The Outsider
152. Slender Man
153. Holmes & Watson

 

[Brooklyn Zoo]

Yeah the side characters weirdly had this depth that made some of their pivotal scenes emotional in the midst of all the violence

 

[Brocklock]

That movie was exhausting in a good way. I thought 2 hours was a little too long, but there's at least 3 fight scenes I would say are some of the best fight scenes of the last 25 years. I also loved how it took the gritty realistic violence of The Raid and took it to almost an absurd Riki Oh: The Story of Ricky or Dead Alive level. Great movie.

Also they need to make a movie where Julie Estelle is lead cause she kicks ass and has been fantastic in this, Headshot, and The Raid 2.

 

[909]

Never Goin' Back (2018), directed by Augustine Frizzell

Reason for Watching: This is another movie from 2018 that I'd seen a preview for, but it didn't come to my theater and as a result I didn't watch it. Never Goin' Back is also extremely short by film standards.

What we have in Never Goin' Back is yet another debut film, this one being many minutes shorter than almost any film I've watched in the last few years. Never Goin' Back was only about 80 minutes, so stage setting could prove difficult. Set outside of Dallas, Never Goin' Back is the story of Angela (Maia Mitchell) and Jessie (Camila Morrone), two best friends who dropped out of high school and may or may not be lesbians. They probably are. They work as a waitress at a shitty diner, they've done nothing with their lives and they aren't even adults yet. Things could get measurably worse. These two also don't live at home with their parents anymore. Angela has surprised Jessie with a trip to Galveston for Jessie's birthday, and in doing so she has spent their rent money and ensured they have signed up for more hours at their shitty job. After all, they have to pay their rent somehow and the money for it is now gone. Unfortunately, because Jessie's brother Dustin (Joel Allen) has spent his part of the rent in a drug buy gone bad, they're fucked. The next morning, Dustin's friend Tony (Kendal Smith) goes to their house and steals their television because Dustin has lost the drug money. When someone calls the police, the police discover Angela and Jessie's weed and coke, so off to juvi they go. I'll spare you the rest.

Short movies get really short reviews, that's just how it goes. Everyone in this movie is really stupid, and the movie is just not funny enough to make it worthwhile. At the same time, I feel like the representation of teenage life is accurate enough. Or, at least it was accurate to how things were when I was a teenager. I don't know about now. There's definitely not enough social media in the film if we're taking into account current times. The accuracy of being poor and on your own with some roommates is solid. Arizona iced tea's are definitely part of that life. They're only a dollar or some shit. Sometimes they cost half that. While the film is funny I think it's only mildly so. Perhaps my judgment is clouded because I watched a much better movie when I saw Booksmart last year. I don't think I'm wrong though. The story for a movie like this one has to have far more jokes. This is a movie that wanted to be a comedy but doesn't have anything to back that up. The gags at the end of the film also kind of ruined this for me. I don't need to see people shitting in buckets and I don't need to see them throwing up on perverted old men.

Maybe this movie is inspired by things that the director did, but if that was the craziest thing they did, they didn't have much of an exciting teenage life. I'm just being honest here. I could list a lot of the stuff I did, but I'm not sure if one of those stories is totally kosher to tell. I think this is a misfire, or the movie wasn't what I thought it would be and as a result I'm sour about it, something like that. At least there's some payoff and the girls do get the rent money they needed.

5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. The Night Comes for Us
38. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
39. Vox Lux
40. Bad Times at the El Royale
41. The Other Side of the Wind
42. Searching
43. Calibre
44. A Simple Favor
45. The Hate U Give
46. Unsane
47. Disobedience
48. Destroyer
49. Boy Erased
50. Bumblebee
51. Mary Poppins Returns
52. Creed II
53. Hold the Dark
54. The Land of Steady Habits
55. Halloween
56. The 12th Man
57. Upgrade
58. Chappaquiddick
59. What They Had
60. Ant-Man and the Wasp
61. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
62. Blockers
63. Beirut
64. Black '47
65. Roxanne Roxanne
66. Tully
67. Mary Queen of Scots
68. Aquaman
69. Ideal Home
70. Outlaw King
71. Overlord
72. Ready Player One
73. Ben Is Back
74. Monsters and Men
75. Colette
76. The Mule
77. On the Basis of Sex
78. Bohemian Rhapsody
79. White Boy Rick
80. Papillon
81. Game Night
82. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
83. Ocean's Eight
84. Alpha
85. Come Sunday
86. Borg vs. McEnroe
87. Instant Family
88. The Front Runner
89. The Predator
90. Apostle
91. The Oath
92. Uncle Drew
93. The Cured
94. The Commuter
95. The Angel
96. Tag
97. Beautiful Boy
98. The Nun
99. Operation Finale
100. The Equalizer 2
101. The Spy Who Dumped Me
102. Cargo
103. Yardie
104. Boundaries
105. Bird Box
106. 12 Strong
107. Venom
108. Skyscraper
109. The Meg
110. Assassination Nation
111. Never Goin' Back
112. Adrift
113. Crazy Rich Asians
114. Backstabbing for Beginners
115. The Girl in the Spider's Web
116. Gringo
117. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
118. 22 July
119. Tomb Raider
120. Rampage
121. Hotel Artemis
122. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
123. The Little Stranger
124. 7 Days in Entebbe
125. Night School
126. The 15:17 To Paris
127. Den of Thieves
128. The Catcher Was a Spy
129. Peppermint
130. Mile 22
131. The First Purge
132. Hunter Killer
133. The Hurricane Heist
134. The Cloverfield Paradox
135. Breaking In
136. Extinction
137. Hot Summer Nights
138. Welcome to Marwen
139. Second Act
140. How It Ends
141. Mute
142. Kin
143. Hell Fest
144. Action Point
145. Proud Mary
146. Robin Hood
147. Traffik
148. Tau
149. Winchester
150. Woman Walks Ahead
151. The Happytime Murders
152. The Outsider
153. Slender Man
154. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

See You Yesterday (2019), directed by Stefon Bristol

Reason for Watching: Another accidental Netflix skip is what we have here. This movie also seems to be extremely timely based on its description. I also saw that See You Yesterday is a short that became a film, so it isn't very long for that reason.

See You Yesterday isn't a movie for kids, despite what the picture I posted may show you. This is also not a movie for older adults, it's in a category of movies that don't really have an audience based on age. See You Yesterday is the story of CJ (Eden Duncan-Smith) and Sebastian (Dante Crichlow), two tech oriented teenagers from Brooklyn who have a fascination with using that technology and pushing things to another level. They have been trying to do a time travel experiment. I appreciate that See You Yesterday is a movie that does not get bogged down in the science of time travel. The story is far more important and it would be better if sometimes sci-fi films knew that. Their ultimate goal is simply to do this during the summer. Before doing so, they encounter Jared (Rayshawn Richardson) at a bodega. He is CJ's ex-boyfriend, and she can't handle listening to this stupid guy talk his shit. Sebastian is also a really small guy. She gets to slapping him, and outside the store her brother Calvin (Brian Bradley) is waiting, so Jared can't get the revenge he wanted to get.

Calvin walks CJ home, and in the process of that they encounter a police officer who wants to talk to them. You know how this kind of thing goes. It turns out that this specific officer was being investigated for having shot an unarmed black person. When Calvin and CJ get home, we learn that their father served in the military and died, leaving Calvin as the man in the house. The next day, it's time for a time travel experiment, which is able to last for about ten minutes. During this experiment, CJ and Sebastian go back to the bodega, but they didn't realize they would run into the versions of themselves from the day before. CJ throws some cherry slushie at Jared, then the previous versions walk into the store and Jared harasses them, and that ends with Calvin showing up like the day before. After that, CJ and Sebastian's time traveled ones cause Jared to get ran over, which sets off a chain of events that carries throughout the whole film. What's that chain of events? You go figure that out by watching the movie.

The movie hits hard knowing there is no true resolution to the story, that ultimately she may have to go back hundreds of times in order to fix things, and will probably fail in every attempt. It could have hit harder if the audience had received that resolution I was personally seeking. What I like about See You Yesterday is both that this film is timely and that the way this film is timely is woven into a story that feels like it has importance. It's an interesting way to look at things. If there was a way to reverse police brutality after the fact, most people would do it, but ultimately that requires solutions in some cases that people are powerless to achieve. This was one of those cases. It's easy for me to recommend this movie because of how short it is, and it's likely that people haven't seen it to begin with. In doing so I cannot describe the movie too much. I do feel like this kind of story really plays out in a way where if the film is longer than this one actually is, it becomes a little more grueling and difficult for people to watch.

It should be clear that even though this is a movie featuring people in high school, again, this is not a kids movie. I'm glad about that too. I don't usually watch kids movies nor do I want to. Anyway, I felt like this was a fresh take on time travel, and those movies usually have the same patterns that I don't like. I laughed at seeing Michael J. Fox in this too, if anyone had to be in a movie like this one, he sure did.

7/10

2019 Film Rankings

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Parasite
3. 1917
4. Midsommar
5. Ad Astra
6. The Lighthouse
7. Waves
8. The Farewell
9. Knives Out
10. Uncut Gems
11. Atlantics
12. Booksmart
13. Avengers: Endgame
14. Queen & Slim
15. Toy Story 4
16. Joker
17. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
18. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
19. The Two Popes
20. Clemency (had some stuff happen, couldn't review)
21. Us
22. Ford v. Ferrari
23. Gloria Bell
24. The Beach Bum
25. Just Mercy
26. The Art of Self-Defense
27. Dark Waters
28. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
29. Arctic
30. Spider-Man: Far From Home
31. Rocketman
32. High Flying Bird
33. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
34. Paddleton
35. Richard Jewell
36. The Peanut Butter Falcon
37. Honey Boy
38. Doctor Sleep
39. Hustlers
40. Blinded by the Light
41. Captain Marvel
42. Jojo Rabbit
43. Long Shot
44. Shazam
45. Ready or Not
46. See You Yesterday
47. A Vigilante
48. Late Night
49. Crawl
50. It: Chapter Two
51. Hotel Mumbai
52. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
53. Zombieland: Double Tap
54. Harriet
55. Hobbs & Shaw
56. Official Secrets
57. Always Be My Maybe
58. Cold Pursuit
59. The Laundromat
60. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
61. Shaft
62. Happy Death Day 2U
63. Ma
64. Terminator: Dark Fate
65. Greta
66. Annabelle Comes Home
67. Jumanji: The Next Level
68. Aladdin
69. Triple Frontier
70. Fighting with My Family
71. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
72. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
73. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
74. Brexit
75. The Dirt
76. Velvet Buzzsaw
77. Stuber
78. Little
79. Alita: Battle Angel
80. The Good Liar
81. The Current War: Director's Cut
82. The Kid
83. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
84. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
85. Good Boys
86. The Upside
87. The Lion King
88. Dumbo
89. The Hummingbird Project
90. Escape Room
91. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
92. Brian Banks
93. Tolkien
94. The Dead Don't Die
95. Captive State
96. The Highwaymen
97. Bombshell
98. Pet Sematary
99. The Intruder
100. Child's Play
101. 21 Bridges
102. Gemini Man
103. Brightburn
104. Never Grow Old
105. Rambo: Last Blood
106. Trial by Fire
107. Midway
108. Angel Has Fallen
109. Black and Blue
110. Yesterday
111. Anna
112. What Men Want
113. Them That Follow
114. Unicorn Store
115. The Curse of La Llorona
116. Miss Bala
117. Men in Black: International
118. The Red Sea Diving Resort
119. The Perfection
120. Hellboy
121. Glass
122. Dark Phoenix
123. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
124. The Kitchen
125. The Hustle
126. The Best of Enemies
127. The Prodigy
128. Polar
129. Serenity

 

[909]

I watched two documentaries that I didn't feel compelled to write long reviews of, but I do need to write something. It's very difficult for me to fill space over a documentary.

Free Solo

As you may know, Free Solo is the story of Alex Honnold, a rock climber who specializes in climbing huge cliffs like El Capitan. After climbing these with ropes and planning a route he's comfortable with trying, he progresses on to doing them without ropes. Like so:

So yeah, this guy is batshit insane. The real craft in this movie isn't just in the climb, it's because of what the crew does to capture Honnold's efforts. Every aspect of this film is seemingly a herculean task. Of course, because this documentary was released, you know how it ends. That doesn't change things. This is a once in human history kind of achievement, and I appreciated that the audience wasn't treated like dummies. It was explained exactly how Honnold would go over the most difficult parts of his route. In training, he fell off of some of them. I'm not sure how he was able to bring himself to do this.

9/10

Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Whew, talk about a huge shift in documentaries. Hale County is something that Jean-Luc Godard would make, which means either you'd really like this or you really wouldn't, and I fall more to the side of the latter than the former. The film is something I would describe as a collection of separate, often disconnected scenes following people around the predominantly black Hale County in Alabama. One group of those scenes is not disconnected, however. The film is best when it focuses on the couple of Boosie and Quincy, who have a young son and are expecting twins. The viewer is shown scenes of Boosie as a pregnant woman, as their twins are born, after they're born, and most unfortunately after one of their twins dies of SIDS. The death was very difficult for me to accept, and I'm saying that in the context of the current moment where people are dying en masse. I do not accept that as being a fact of life. The rest of the film was nothing special, even though everything is viewed from the abstract. I do not think I am capable of liking these kinds of movies.

The thing is, my inability to accept a death from SIDS as being part of life, is something that is going to stick with me for a very long time. I don't know when I'll stop thinking about it because of how wrong it is. I feel like this film could have greatly benefited from a storyline or explanations to connect all the other scenes. I also would not have nominated this for an Oscar, but what do I know? The series of scenes I keep talking about do definitely merit such consideration, though.

6/10

 

[909]

Gemini (2018), directed by Aaron Katz

Reason for Watching: When the geeks at IMDB massively downvote a movie that has a good Metascore, I know something's up. That kind of thing is alluring enough on its own. That doesn't automatically mean something will be a good movie, but it probably will be when that's the case.

I haven't written anything for a while as I've been busy, perhaps I also needed to be busy and to do something different for a few days. Gemini is a story set in Los Angeles, this is a film that was released and made basically nothing at all for an assortment of reasons. Jill (Lola Kirke) is Heather's (Zoe Kravitz) personal assistant and best friend. Heather is an movie star, she is very popular and needed for projects around town. Thing is, she is also kind of a diva. The first few scenes of this movie center around a movie that Heather is supposed to be doing with a director, Greg (Nelson Franklin). Heather and Jill are sitting in a car outside of a restaurant, and Heather wants Jill to go inside to tell Greg that she's dropping out of Greg's movie. This will effectively kill the project, so Heather and Jill are rather nervous about this, but it's done and the project is dead. Greg is rightly furious and leaves the restaurant in a huff, and after that Heather's agent Jamie (Michelle Forbes) calls and tells Heather they done fucked up. That's one way to start a movie.

While still in the restaurant, Heather appears to have a super fan, Sierra (Jessica Parker Kennedy). Sierra badly wants to have a picture and Heather really doesn't, but it's hard to tell people no. So, that's done. After that, Sierra asks some fucked up questions about Heather's life, and they tell her to go away. Sierra also posted the picture on social media, which leads to paparazzi at the diner as Heather is leaving. One of them is Stan (James Ransone), and I laughed hard at this choice of name. Because, you know, Sierra is a stan. Stan asks Heather about Devin (Reeve Carney), her ex-boyfriend, and then he asks about Tracy (Greta Lee), Heather's new rumored girlfriend. Heather and Jill don't respond to either of those questions. The thing is, Tracy really is Heather's new girlfriend. Heather also feels unsafe as a result of her relationships with the previously mentioned Stan and Devin, and having an actual stan seem to be following her makes that even worse. Jill has a gun, and she's going to loan it to Heather. I wonder what could happen when a famous person gets a gun in a movie that makes it clear she is paranoid for justified reasons.

I thought Gemini would be more amusing than it actually was, but the seriousness of the film is welcome. I was just surprised that the film ended in such a flat fashion. John Cho's introduction to the film is rather welcome, but his character wasn't what I had expected. You know, come to think of it, there were way too many generic characters in a movie that really shouldn't have been played that way. This is a film that has a strong lead acting performance, which is what it deserves. This is a normal chick who wanted to find out what happened to her friend. I also found the events of the film to be slightly predictable, but overall this is a pleasant movie to watch. The film needs a better ending, but I like what Gemini brings to the table. As a 90 minute movie, I find that 30 minutes of build and 60 minutes of mystery is rather appropriate. Mysteries that go longer tend to have scenes that pad them out, sometimes they're superfluous and sometimes they're great, but with this being an indie film odds are the former is much more likely.

I do find there to be some issues I've not yet mentioned, though. The main one is that it is very hard to care about one of these characters and what happened to them. Why would I care? I mean, sure. They're dead. The strange thing about this movie is that in setting up reasons that Heather could have cause to feel unsafe, the film does so by having her do something really bad to one of the people in the film beforehand. Leading someone along and dropping out of a project is objectively wrong, and she didn't even have the guts to do it herself. On top of that, Heather sends Jill to go tell a bunch of people she's not going to do reshoots for another film. I don't know. It feels like that could have been handled a little better. When I say that the ending should have been better, if you've seen this, I'm talking about everything that happens once the mystery has been revolved. I don't understand that scene at all.

6.5/10

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. The Night Comes for Us
38. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
39. Vox Lux
40. Bad Times at the El Royale
41. The Other Side of the Wind
42. Searching
43. Calibre
44. A Simple Favor
45. The Hate U Give
46. Unsane
47. Disobedience
48. Destroyer
49. Boy Erased
50. Bumblebee
51. Mary Poppins Returns
52. Creed II
53. Hold the Dark
54. The Land of Steady Habits
55. Halloween
56. The 12th Man
57. Upgrade
58. Chappaquiddick
59. What They Had
60. Ant-Man and the Wasp
61. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
62. Blockers
63. Beirut
64. Black '47
65. Roxanne Roxanne
66. Tully
67. Mary Queen of Scots
68. Aquaman
69. Ideal Home
70. Outlaw King
71. Overlord
72. Ready Player One
73. Ben Is Back
74. Monsters and Men
75. Colette
76. The Mule
77. On the Basis of Sex
78. Bohemian Rhapsody
79. White Boy Rick
80. Papillon
81. Gemini
82. Game Night
83. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
84. Ocean's Eight
85. Alpha
86. Come Sunday
87. Borg vs. McEnroe
88. Instant Family
89. The Front Runner
90. The Predator
91. Apostle
92. The Oath
93. Uncle Drew
94. The Cured
95. The Commuter
96. The Angel
97. Tag
98. Beautiful Boy
99. The Nun
100. Operation Finale
101. The Equalizer 2
102. The Spy Who Dumped Me
103. Cargo
104. Yardie
105. Boundaries
106. Bird Box
107. 12 Strong
108. Venom
109. Skyscraper
110. The Meg
111. Assassination Nation
112. Never Goin' Back
113. Adrift
114. Crazy Rich Asians
115. Backstabbing for Beginners
116. The Girl in the Spider's Web
117. Gringo
118. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
119. 22 July
120. Tomb Raider
121. Rampage
122. Hotel Artemis
123. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
124. The Little Stranger
125. 7 Days in Entebbe
126. Night School
127. The 15:17 To Paris
128. Den of Thieves
129. The Catcher Was a Spy
130. Peppermint
131. Mile 22
132. The First Purge
133. Hunter Killer
134. The Hurricane Heist
135. The Cloverfield Paradox
136. Breaking In
137. Extinction
138. Hot Summer Nights
139. Welcome to Marwen
140. Second Act
141. How It Ends
142. Mute
143. Kin
144. Hell Fest
145. Action Point
146. Proud Mary
147. Robin Hood
148. Traffik
149. Tau
150. Winchester
151. Woman Walks Ahead
152. The Happytime Murders
153. The Outsider
154. Slender Man
155. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), directed by Ron Howard

Reason for Watching: This was one of the few movies I didn't watch that was in the theater the summer of 2018. Plus, it's Star Wars. Even if it sucks.

It should be said from the start that I have no idea why it was decided to make this a movie. Didn't they know people wouldn't go see a Han Solo movie without Harrison Ford? Solo: A Star Wars Story starts on the planet Corellia, where a younger Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) and Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) are orphans looking to make their way towards a better life. They bribe an Imperial officer with stolen fuel, but Qi'ra is captured in the process and Han is not. Han promises to return to Corellia, and he has to join the Imperial Navy with the hope of flying ships. Three years later, that did not go so well for Han. Han is now an infantry soldier, he was expelled from the Imperial Flight Academy for being insubordinate. While in the midst of a battle, Han encounters some soldiers who are very obviously not soldiers. They are criminals of course, and they are led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson). Tobias has a wife, Val (Thandie Newton), and Rio (Jon Favreau) is the third member of their criminal trio. Their intention is to get off this rock after whatever it is they've found. Han wants to join Beckett's gang, but instead he is thrown down into a pit, where he is to be fed to...Chewbacca.

Han is able to understand Chewbacca well enough to convince him to cooperate with his escape attempt, and the two have to make their break from the Imperial camp. Once they do, they arrive at Beckett's ship and this finally leads to Beckett allowing the crafty Han Solo to join his crew. The reason? A Wookiee is very strong. Their intention is to steal some of the same fuel Han once stole, a shipment of coaxium on a snowy planet. It is being shipped via train, but the attempt to steal this stuff does not go so well. They are stopped by seemingly fellow outlaws attempting to get the coaxium themselves, and those outlaws do better than the outlaws we're following. In the process, Rio and Val die, none of the other outlaws eat it, and the coaxium is destroyed. After this, Beckett tells Han that he was ordered to steal the shipment for Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), a big timer in a crime syndicate. Han volunteers to help Beckett make up for his mistake. One reason? Qi'ra has joined this crime syndicate.

I had some weird feelings about this movie, I don't know how to properly place them in order. A Star Wars film should never start without the fanfare. You know the one. I was genuinely very mad about this. After that, I had a hard time getting into the movie. Once I finally did, I feel like I actually liked it. Sort of. I know it isn't a great movie, but I liked it more than Episode IX. The main reason is that this film isn't trying to beat you over the head with corny nostalgia. The nostalgia here is rather reserved even though we are seeing younger versions of beloved characters. This film shouldn't have been made because it was obvious it would never draw anything, but actually enjoying a Star Wars movie made in the last 20 years has proven very inconsistent and difficult for me. There are things about the movie that aren't so good, they are also mainly related to the way that in a lot of Star Wars movies the characters magically come up with answers to a seemingly impossible program. I never like that, you know. The twists and turns are also a little bit less predictable than the majority of Star Wars flicks.

Again, I find myself coming back to a Han Solo movie without Harrison Ford. This guy playing Han Solo is very difficult for me to see as Han Solo in any context. I do not want to see it. I feel like this is a movie that doesn't matter in the sense of being part of the Star Wars saga. Nothing is really resolved, and the appearance from Darth Maul ultimately means nothing because this movie will never have any follow up. There's still way more here that I like, enough that I can call this a decent movie anyway. Donald Glover makes a good Lando. The point where he enters the film is when the events become more and more enjoyable even though Solo takes too long to get to that point. In a lot of ways this isn't much of a Star Wars movie. There's no fanfare as I already stated. No Jedi stuff. All space Western heist movie stuff. Do I like it? I think I do. Everything before Dryden Vos appears kind of sucks though. Take that for what it's worth. I also think after having watched Episode VII a few more times, I like this movie better than that too. Re-orienting my ratings is something I need to make a primary goal for a lot of reasons, by the way. I should also note that 6.5 should not be an indicator of a bad movie. It's aight.

6.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Stan & Ollie
18. Green Book
19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
21. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
22. Annihilation
23. Private Life
24. Climax
25. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
26. Mid90s
27. Lean on Pete
28. On My Skin
29. Eighth Grade
30. Sorry to Bother You
31. Suspiria
32. At Eternity's Gate
33. The Death of Stalin
34. A Quiet Place
35. Vice
36. The Old Man & the Gun
37. The Night Comes for Us
38. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
39. Vox Lux
40. Bad Times at the El Royale
41. The Other Side of the Wind
42. Searching
43. Calibre
44. A Simple Favor
45. The Hate U Give
46. Unsane
47. Disobedience
48. Destroyer
49. Boy Erased
50. Bumblebee
51. Mary Poppins Returns
52. Creed II
53. Hold the Dark
54. The Land of Steady Habits
55. Halloween
56. The 12th Man
57. Upgrade
58. Chappaquiddick
59. What They Had
60. Ant-Man and the Wasp
61. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
62. Blockers
63. Beirut
64. Black '47
65. Roxanne Roxanne
66. Solo: A Star Wars Story
67. Tully
68. Mary Queen of Scots
69. Aquaman
70. Ideal Home
71. Outlaw King
72. Overlord
73. Ready Player One
74. Ben Is Back
75. Monsters and Men
76. Colette
77. The Mule
78. On the Basis of Sex
79. Bohemian Rhapsody
80. White Boy Rick
81. Papillon
82. Gemini
83. Game Night
84. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
85. Ocean's Eight
86. Alpha
87. Come Sunday
88. Borg vs. McEnroe
89. Instant Family
90. The Front Runner
91. The Predator
92. Apostle
93. The Oath
94. Uncle Drew
95. The Cured
96. The Commuter
97. The Angel
98. Tag
99. Beautiful Boy
100. The Nun
101. Operation Finale
102. The Equalizer 2
103. The Spy Who Dumped Me
104. Cargo
105. Yardie
106. Boundaries
107. Bird Box
108. 12 Strong
109. Venom
110. Skyscraper
111. The Meg
112. Assassination Nation
113. Never Goin' Back
114. Adrift
115. Crazy Rich Asians
116. Backstabbing for Beginners
117. The Girl in the Spider's Web
118. Gringo
119. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
120. 22 July
121. Tomb Raider
122. Rampage
123. Hotel Artemis
124. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
125. The Little Stranger
126. 7 Days in Entebbe
127. Night School
128. The 15:17 To Paris
129. Den of Thieves
130. The Catcher Was a Spy
131. Peppermint
132. Mile 22
133. The First Purge
134. Hunter Killer
135. The Hurricane Heist
136. The Cloverfield Paradox
137. Breaking In
138. Extinction
139. Hot Summer Nights
140. Welcome to Marwen
141. Second Act
142. How It Ends
143. Mute
144. Kin
145. Hell Fest
146. Action Point
147. Proud Mary
148. Robin Hood
149. Traffik
150. Tau
151. Winchester
152. Woman Walks Ahead
153. The Happytime Murders
154. The Outsider
155. Slender Man
156. Holmes & Watson

 

[Brocklock]

I missed your Hale County review. Glad you were kind of lukewarm on it, because I thought I was the only one that was missing something. The Godard comparison is perfect. I do like a lot of avant garde cinema, but this one really didn't land with me as much as it should've. If a baby running back and forth for five minutes (And that's the best moment of the doc) seems like it's your jam as a viewer I recommend it, otherwise steer clear.

 

[909]

Wildlife (2018), directed by Paul Dano

Reason: I don't skip Jake Gyllenhaal's movies for an assortment of reasons. Particularly one with the sorts of reviews that this one has. I would pretty much guarantee this will be good. This is also Paul Dano's debut as a director and you guys already know how I feel about that. I usually find that when someone is directing their first film, you see the truest version of themselves and what they want to put on the screen. Sometimes that's good, and sometimes it's bad, but it's real and it's what those people are feeling before criticism takes hold and people shape their vision based on what they're told to do.

Wildlife is the story of Joe Brinson (Ed Oxenbould), which was a massive surprise when I turned this on. I was thinking this would follow the other two actors around, but I was wrong. The perspective of the movie is nearly entirely Joe's, which is a much appreciated look at this sort of material. Joe is 14 years old, I should note. Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) and Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) are his parents, and they've recently moved to Montana because Jerry had gotten a new job. Wildlife is also set in 1960. Jerry's new job was as a golf pro at a country club, it is one he is dismissed of at the start of the film. Jerry had been wagering with some of the members while golfing with them, so even though the members greatly appreciated him, that doesn't matter to the people running the club. Being fired in 1960, with the societal expectations to come from a man having a job, makes matters very difficult. Jerry is called back soon after and offered the job once more, but he refuses out of principle. How dare they admonish him, fire him, and offer him his job back? There are a lot of people who can surely relate to this.

After having lost his job, Jerry is in a huge funk. Instead of trying to find work, he sleeps in his car or on the couch. The Brinson's TV is broken, but Jerry still attempts to watch coverage of a fire in the mountains near their house. He is clearly fascinated with this whole thing. Meanwhile, Joe is having a good time at school even though he's quit football. Joe and Jeanette have also both had to seek work in order to keep the family afloat. Joe's job is at a photography studio, and Jeanette has to settle for a position at the YMCA as a swimming instructor. Jeanette has previously been a teacher, and made comments indicating her interest once more, but she was shut down rather quickly. One day, Jerry wakes up and decides to take a shitty job fighting the fire. It's a dangerous job, it pays like shit, and his two family members don't want him to do it. He does it anyway. This thing with the fire does two things. It further strains Jerry's marriage with Jeanette, and the side effect of Joe's dad being gone ruins his school life a fair bit as well. It sure doesn't help Joe that his mom is starting an affair with an old bastard.

What I said about first time directing efforts really seems to fit with Wildlife. This is a film where Paul Dano made the distinct decision to not have any voiceovers where the parents justify their behavior to the audience. The film is literally entirely from the perspective of Joe. The only thing I remember happening where Joe wasn't part of the events was when Jerry was talking about bets with the people he'd played a game with. I can't think of anything else. This kind of thing is what I mean about a director staying true to themselves. The most interesting thing to the filmmaker in the story of an affair? The kid who has to experience it as an unwilling participant. In addition I should note that this was adapted from a book that Dano really enjoyed, and he did a Q&A where he said that he thought the kid was relatable. In addition his parents separated and he aged the kid down to the age in which his parents separated. You see where I'm going with this? This is a debut film where critique of one's style does not exist. It is the unvarnished vision of the director, and his is a story where a kid is thrown to the wolves by two parents who fucked up, the kid being forced to learn some shit about the world all by himself. This isn't a completely unique perspective, but it's unconventional and there aren't a lot of movies like this one.

It's obvious that I liked this movie. I feel like I didn't even need to say that. Movie-wise, one of the best feelings someone can have is the feeling of being unable to wait for what's to come next. Wildlife has that. Some of that is certainly a feeling of dread, but there's also one of anticipation, needing to know when Jerry's going to come back. Is he going to come back while his wife is having sex with this dude? Will anyone tell him? Those kinds of questions are what good filmmakers are able to answer without the road to those answers being predictable. I also just now realized that I hadn't watched a good narrative feature in about two weeks, so when something hits, it really does. The thing that got to me the most, was that the kid knew his mother was wrong the whole time. He is powerless to do anything about them, and he's 14 years old. There's a moment of desperation where he tries to drive his mother home. It matters not. The performances here are very strong, particularly that of Carey Mulligan. It is upon her to carry the film. If her scenes aren't interesting, that's it. It's over.

Is this a great film though? That's something I can actually answer immediately for once. When it comes to Wildlife I can comfortably say there are numerous things in it that are great. Most importantly is that this is a story about an affair that is told without narration and without lengthy expository scenes. It also bears mentioning that this is a film that made me feel something. You can't just buy that with money and that isn't guaranteed when sitting down to watch something. There are a lot of good films out there that don't carry that kind of weight, they're good for other reasons. Maybe they scare you, maybe they make you laugh, maybe the action in them is awesome. This movie just went straight to my core. The things that were happening were things I really didn't want to happen. I cared about what I was watching.

8.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Wildlife
18. Stan & Ollie
19. Green Book
20. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
21. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
22. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
23. Annihilation
24. Private Life
25. Climax
26. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
27. Mid90s
28. Lean on Pete
29. On My Skin
30. Eighth Grade
31. Sorry to Bother You
32. Suspiria
33. At Eternity's Gate
34. The Death of Stalin
35. A Quiet Place
36. Vice
37. The Old Man & the Gun
38. The Night Comes for Us
39. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
40. Vox Lux
41. Bad Times at the El Royale
42. The Other Side of the Wind
43. Searching
44. Calibre
45. A Simple Favor
46. The Hate U Give
47. Unsane
48. Disobedience
49. Destroyer
50. Boy Erased
51. Bumblebee
52. Mary Poppins Returns
53. Creed II
54. Hold the Dark
55. The Land of Steady Habits
56. Halloween
57. The 12th Man
58. Upgrade
59. Chappaquiddick
60. What They Had
61. Ant-Man and the Wasp
62. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
63. Blockers
64. Beirut
65. Black '47
66. Roxanne Roxanne
67. Solo: A Star Wars Story
68. Tully
69. Mary Queen of Scots
70. Aquaman
71. Ideal Home
72. Outlaw King
73. Overlord
74. Ready Player One
75. Ben Is Back
76. Monsters and Men
77. Colette
78. The Mule
79. On the Basis of Sex
80. Bohemian Rhapsody
81. White Boy Rick
82. Papillon
83. Gemini
84. Game Night
85. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
86. Ocean's Eight
87. Alpha
88. Come Sunday
89. Borg vs. McEnroe
90. Instant Family
91. The Front Runner
92. The Predator
93. Apostle
94. The Oath
95. Uncle Drew
96. The Cured
97. The Commuter
98. The Angel
99. Tag
100. Beautiful Boy
101. The Nun
102. Operation Finale
103. The Equalizer 2
104. The Spy Who Dumped Me
105. Cargo
106. Yardie
107. Boundaries
108. Bird Box
109. 12 Strong
110. Venom
111. Skyscraper
112. The Meg
113. Assassination Nation
114. Never Goin' Back
115. Adrift
116. Crazy Rich Asians
117. Backstabbing for Beginners
118. The Girl in the Spider's Web
119. Gringo
120. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
121. 22 July
122. Tomb Raider
123. Rampage
124. Hotel Artemis
125. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
126. The Little Stranger
127. 7 Days in Entebbe
128. Night School
129. The 15:17 To Paris
130. Den of Thieves
131. The Catcher Was a Spy
132. Peppermint
133. Mile 22
134. The First Purge
135. Hunter Killer
136. The Hurricane Heist
137. The Cloverfield Paradox
138. Breaking In
139. Extinction
140. Hot Summer Nights
141. Welcome to Marwen
142. Second Act
143. How It Ends
144. Mute
145. Kin
146. Hell Fest
147. Action Point
148. Proud Mary
149. Robin Hood
150. Traffik
151. Tau
152. Winchester
153. Woman Walks Ahead
154. The Happytime Murders
155. The Outsider
156. Slender Man
157. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

The Wife (2018), directed by Bjorn L. Runge

Reason for Watching: After watching The Wife, I will have watched every acting nomination from the 2019 Oscars. That's a lot of movies, let me tell you. Then, you can consider that I watched about 15 times more than that. There's no particular reason that I waited to watch this, I just had other things I needed to watch.

The Wife is a movie that a lot of people talked about a year and a half ago, but it quickly faded from the public consciousness soon after. There are a lot of movies that are initially claimed to be of the sort that will change the way people feel about cinema, but the only movies recently where that actually happened were Black Panther and Get Out. I think that's really it. I thought Parasite would be that kind of movie, but it wasn't. Before any other foreign language film could gain traction, the cinema shut down. Alright, so The Wife. As you probably know, this is a story featuring Glenn Close where she puts on an incredible acting job. This is the case, but I definitely do not think it was the best acting performance that year. This is a film with a classic case of flashback narrative. Where to start with a movie like that? After much internal thinking I finally decided.

Joan (Glenn Close) is the wife of Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), a now elderly man who is a very celebrated author, this section being set in 1992. Joan (Annie Starke) was also once a student in college, full of bright ideas and not yet seeing the world for what it is. Her professor in college was Joe (Harry Lloyd), who we've already met. Joe was married while teaching, and he left his wife in order to pursue a relationship with Joan. Other stuff happened too. In 1992, Joe receives a call from those who award the Nobel Prize in Literature. After waiting for Joan to be on the call, he is told that he has won. This is something certainly to be proud of. We also learn that the Castleman's have two kids, David (Max Irons) and Susannah (Alix Wilton Regan). Susannah is pregnant and David is an aspiring writer who has not yet received his father's approval. David heads to Stockholm with his parents, and on the flight they are approached by Nathaniel (Christian Slater), a biographer particularly interested in Joe's story. This is a story that needs to be told, but it is not the one that you might think exists. Now that I've said that, I bet you know what the story is.

The Wife is a good movie, but it is definitely not a great one and that's why it wasn't nominated for Best Picture or anything of the sort. This film is entirely predictable. The script is, the direction is, but Pryce and Close are able to elevate that kind of predictable story. I have seen a review that absolutely savaged this movie and if I'm being completely honest I do not automatically disagree with someone who would say that this movie sucked. Predictability in film is often a major problem. I don't think it was here, but being able to predict the events certainly stomps on the dramatic weight of the movie a little bit. There's a way in which the film isn't hurt, though. When you see the flashback that reveals the extent of the way in which Joe authors these books, there's really nothing that prepared me for that view. In addition, the last twenty minutes are not quite so predictable. While this is a movie that doesn't really come to life the way I'd have liked, it's still good. The Wife could have used some ingenuity in direction, and the movie doesn't have that. It's also quite short.

I know that I've said a lot of things about why I don't like this movie that much, so here's some things to counter that. The storyline is rather timely even though it's predictable as a result of being timely. It's also hard to turn away from this story because it feels like the end result of the movie will be rather satisfying, and one of the things near the end is also fulfilling and surprising. This movie is also built around Glenn Close and the entire point is seemingly to showcase her talent. There's still one thing left in question as well, and that not being resolved is probably for the best. Did Joan love her husband or did she use him in order to get her books published for all those years?

7/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Wildlife
18. Stan & Ollie
19. Green Book
20. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
21. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
22. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
23. Annihilation
24. Private Life
25. Climax
26. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
27. Mid90s
28. Lean on Pete
29. On My Skin
30. Eighth Grade
31. Sorry to Bother You
32. Suspiria
33. At Eternity's Gate
34. The Death of Stalin
35. A Quiet Place
36. Vice
37. The Old Man & the Gun
38. The Night Comes for Us
39. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
40. Vox Lux
41. Bad Times at the El Royale
42. The Other Side of the Wind
43. Searching
44. Calibre
45. A Simple Favor
46. The Hate U Give
47. Unsane
48. Disobedience
49. Destroyer
50. Boy Erased
51. Bumblebee
52. Mary Poppins Returns
53. Creed II
54. Hold the Dark
55. The Land of Steady Habits
56. Halloween
57. The 12th Man
58. Upgrade
59. The Wife
60. Chappaquiddick
61. What They Had
62. Ant-Man and the Wasp
63. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
64. Blockers
65. Beirut
66. Black '47
67. Roxanne Roxanne
68. Solo: A Star Wars Story
69. Tully
70. Mary Queen of Scots
71. Aquaman
72. Ideal Home
73. Outlaw King
74. Overlord
75. Ready Player One
76. Ben Is Back
77. Monsters and Men
78. Colette
79. The Mule
80. On the Basis of Sex
81. Bohemian Rhapsody
82. White Boy Rick
83. Papillon
84. Gemini
85. Game Night
86. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
87. Ocean's Eight
88. Alpha
89. Come Sunday
90. Borg vs. McEnroe
91. Instant Family
92. The Front Runner
93. The Predator
94. Apostle
95. The Oath
96. Uncle Drew
97. The Cured
98. The Commuter
99. The Angel
100. Tag
101. Beautiful Boy
102. The Nun
103. Operation Finale
104. The Equalizer 2
105. The Spy Who Dumped Me
106. Cargo
107. Yardie
108. Boundaries
109. Bird Box
110. 12 Strong
111. Venom
112. Skyscraper
113. The Meg
114. Assassination Nation
115. Never Goin' Back
116. Adrift
117. Crazy Rich Asians
118. Backstabbing for Beginners
119. The Girl in the Spider's Web
120. Gringo
121. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
122. 22 July
123. Tomb Raider
124. Rampage
125. Hotel Artemis
126. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
127. The Little Stranger
128. 7 Days in Entebbe
129. Night School
130. The 15:17 To Paris
131. Den of Thieves
132. The Catcher Was a Spy
133. Peppermint
134. Mile 22
135. The First Purge
136. Hunter Killer
137. The Hurricane Heist
138. The Cloverfield Paradox
139. Breaking In
140. Extinction
141. Hot Summer Nights
142. Welcome to Marwen
143. Second Act
144. How It Ends
145. Mute
146. Kin
147. Hell Fest
148. Action Point
149. Proud Mary
150. Robin Hood
151. Traffik
152. Tau
153. Winchester
154. Woman Walks Ahead
155. The Happytime Murders
156. The Outsider
157. Slender Man
158. Holmes & Watson

 

[Hawk 34]

Honestly all I will remember from that movie is that despite being nominated for an Oscar, for quite a while, you couldn’t find it anywhere in the country except for a couple airline on demand channels.

 

[909]

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), directed by Stephen Herek

Reason for Watching: It's possible, although extremely unlikely, that the third movie in this series will be coming out near the end of next month. I have not seen the previous two. I've seen Pauly Shore trash but I haven't seen this. Indefensible.

As I said, I have not seen this movie before. I assume I'm in the minority of people on the internet my age. I'm gonna write this like nobody's seen it before. In the distant future, humanity is a utopia because of the music of two kids, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves). The leaders of this society have hatched a plan in order to ensure that this future is preserved. Rufus (George Carlin) is to travel back to San Dimas, and help Bill and Ted so they can pass the history class they are currently flunking. Bill and Ted are exactly the kind of people from that era you'd think they are. This is a character we've seen a ton of times, but back in those days, only Spicoli was good enough to remain as memorable as these two clearly were. That is how a movie gets made about these characters nearly 30 years after the fact.

If Rufus is not able to accomplish his goal, Ted's father has planned to send his son to military school in Alaska. Failure is not an option, but these guys are too focused on creating music and trying to launch their band, the Wyld Stallyns. Ted's father is also a police officer and doesn't take kindly to his kid being this way. When Rufus finds Bill and Ted, the two are sitting outside of Circle K, struggling to finish their oral report they've been told they need to ace the following day. Rufus has also traveled through time in a phone booth to meet these guys. At first, Rufus has a difficult time convincing these two to come along with him in the time machine. During this conversation, another time machine arrives with versions of Bill and Ted inside of it. Their future selves convince them to go along this magic voyage. What are they to do? The idea Bill and Ted has, is to convince or capture historical figures to give their oral report the next day. They also have to get back to San Dimas in time to give said report. Time keeps on moving, after all.

When it comes to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, there are a few things that have to land in order for it to be a good movie in the lens of current times. This is a comedy, after all. Comedies are much less timeless than dramas are. Most importantly, to me anyway, is nostalgia. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure definitely has that. This is the kind of movie that could only have been made in the 80s. There's the unbridled sense of positivity and well meaning that could only come from entertainment that was made during that period. It is the only time, after all, where it was un-American to make much of anything that was critical of our society. People got mad about the smallest things. I also find that a comedy from the 80s needs to be very goofy, which this is. We're in the middle of a war, dude. The bit with the water park is also something that could only be in that kind of movie from years and years ago. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is also a movie targeted towards teenagers that has barely any inappropriate content in it. That wasn't common even a long time ago.

I do, however, feel like I should have watched this a long time ago. The thing is that I was more into comedies like this one about ten years ago. The movie is only funny to a point, and at about the hour mark this thing starts to run out of steam. The movie was great when they were building up to time travel and while they were in the middle of said time travel. When they get back to San Dimas and have to corral everyone all over again, it just isn't as good a movie. At the end, things pick up though. The oral report is funny, but I still feel like there's something preventing this movie from being more than just a cult classic. It could have been an actual one. The concept is something a person could only think of if they were extremely high. The concept is greater than the execution of said concept, of course. I don't want it to sound like I hate this movie or something. My last paragraph perfectly illustrated my feelings, and why I like this movie. I did feel like it could have been better though.

6.5/10

 

[SFH]

For as sophisticated of a reviewer and film consumer that you are, I feel you gave Bill and Ted a fair shake, better than I thought you would give. I didn't necessarily expect you to shit all over it, but I am happy to see you give it a 6.5. This movie is near and special to my heart and a lot of the people in my circle (one of our parties was 80s themed and my friend's wife was Ted). BUT I saw it in 1988/9 and have watched it at least once per year since, so I have a different lens than you as a reviewer. IF you decide to pursue the sequel, I'm mostly warm on it but I think if a person is lukewarm on the original (or less) then the sequel will NOT be appealing to a first time viewer in 2020. It was "okay" in the time it was made, and it does have some genuinely good moments, but as a whole it did not follow up the original as well as it could have. I think the cartoon might have even exceeded Bogus Journey.

 

[909]

In the Fade (2017), directed by Fatih Akin

Reason for Watching: In the Fade was not on the Academy's list for nominations, but it was the winner of Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes. Unlike most of the countries where these movies originate from, I have seen a German movie before. I strongly recommend watching it too, it was Victoria. Even still that was one of the best movies I've seen in the last few years.

In the Fade is a strong effort, although not quite on that level. The movie begins with clips from prison, where Nuri Sekerci (Numan Acar) is to be married to Katja (Diane Kruger). The prisoners are very happy for him, although there's definitely a reason he was in prison to begin with. After leaving prison, Nuri has resumed a normal life. Living in Hamburg, he and Katja have had a son, who is six years old. One day, Katja drops their son Rocco off at Nuri's new workplace, an office in which he helps people with their taxes, translates Turkish to German, and sells plane tickets to Turkey. It is an office of his own, one which he had rented after studying business while in prison. You know, rehabilitation. It's some shit we don't have here. I should also point out that Nuri is a Turkish Kurd, so his office is in a Turkish neighborhood of Hamburg. Katja has intended to go to the bath with her friend, Brigit (Samia Chancrin). While heading to her car, she tells a young woman that if her bike doesn't get locked, it'll be stolen. Apparently that is of no concern to her.

Katja heads back later that night, because she and her husband only have that one car and she has to pick him and their son up. Unfortunately, it appears the woman wasn't worried about her bike for good reason. There has been an explosion in front of Nuri's office, he and his son are now missing. There's plenty more bad news. When a DNA test is done at Katja's house, it is found that the remains of Nuri and Rocco are those of the two dead found inside the office. Nuri and Rocco are both now beyond recognizable. Katja, of course, is absolutely destroyed. I'm going to cut out some parts not worth mentioning along my way here. This is the kind of case that's a straight up whodunit. There's hardly any leads whatsoever. Katja said that she saw a woman walking away from a bike. That's it. Katja also falls into drug use. Nuri's old lawyer Danilo (Denis Moschitto) says that Nuri wasn't in any trouble these days, but Katja asks for drugs that he's willing to supply. She's drowning in her own grief, can she possibly help with an investigation? Danilo said he took those drugs from other clients to throw in the trash. What's going to happen with the case, though?

A movie like In the Fade needs to weave a good web, and that's exactly what I felt it did. The ending is also stronger than I'd initially thought it would be. When it comes to a movie like that, I feel like it's more often than not when good movies are wrapped up in completely unsatisfying fashion. There's a fine line to take with something like this. The movie could have played out in court for the rest of the duration, instead it did not. As a result there are three phases of the movie that require good execution. This isn't a perfect movie, because it's rather narrow in scope. The journey is entirely focused on one person who has suffered great loss. In the Fade is also a film that focuses on problems that are affecting us more and more because the lines of society have been redrawn. There are people who recognize racist actions. There are people who participate in racist actions. There are people who are now unable to recognize racist actions because the racists have been successful in blurring the line and confusing otherwise well meaning people. Of course, this movie was inspired by true actions. There was a bomb detonated by Nazis in Cologne in 2004, in a Turkish neighborhood, with the placement of said bomb being much the same. This is a case of successfully borrowing from real life to create good art.

The suffering of Katja, of course, is something I am not able to fully comprehend because its never happened to me. Hopefully it never does. The performance of Kruger is necessary to make this worth watching. Because of the nature of such racist acts, the film lacks in warmth. Everything is cold. The people who committed the murder border on lifeless. The ending is not a happy one either, but this is a film that talks about things that need to be addressed. Nazism is an increasingly resurgent problem in some part because people have not forcefully denounced those who brought radical ideologies back into the world in recent times. Another problem is that there are relatively normal people who have had false expectations of life planted into their head. I think that's the case with the Nazis here. People have a difficult time overcoming their failed expectations, and those kinds of people turn to things that are really simplistic to understand, easy to blame on someone else. To some extent the resurgence of Nazi belief is the failing of our current society. This kind of movie really bothers me because I find myself thinking at times "what would I do if everything was taken away from me?" The ending presents one of the solutions many people find to such problems.

7.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. The Florida Project
8. Mudbound
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
10. Logan
11. Baby Driver
12. The Post
13. Wonder Woman
14. The Big Sick
15. Lady Bird
16. Wind River
17. Thor: Ragnarok
18. mother!
19. Logan Lucky
20. I, Tonya
21. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
22. The Insult
23. The Beguiled
24. Ingrid Goes West
25. Foxtrot
26. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
27. Brawl in Cell Block 99
28. Loveless
29. John Wick: Chapter 2
30. The Disaster Artist
31. The Lost City of Z
32. First They Killed My Father
33. In the Fade
34. A Ghost Story
35. Detroit
36. Gook
37. Last Flag Flying
38. Hostiles
39. Colossal
40. All the Money in the World
41. Molly's Game
42. Darkest Hour
43. Spider-Man: Homecoming
44. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
45. Sweet Virginia
46. It
47. Battle of the Sexes
48. Stronger
49. Brad's Status
50. Okja
51. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
52. Kong: Skull Island
53. It Comes at Night
54. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
55. Crown Heights
56. Split
57. 1922
58. Personal Shopper
59. Landline
60. Thank You for Your Service
61. Beatriz at Dinner
62. Chuck
63. Atomic Blonde
64. Shot Caller
65. Wheelman
66. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
67. Wonder
68. Brigsby Bear
69. The Lego Batman Movie
70. Megan Leavey
71. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
72. Wonderstruck
73. Only the Brave
74. Marshall
75. Menashe
76. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
77. Walking Out
78. American Made
79. Annabelle: Creation
80. Beauty and the Beast
81. Imperial Dreams
82. Gifted
83. Murder on the Orient Express
84. My Friend Dahmer
85. The Zookeeper's Wife
86. The Glass Castle
87. The Foreigner
88. Free Fire
89. Win It All
90. The Wall
91. Jungle
92. Life
93. My Cousin Rachel
94. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
95. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
96. The Fate of the Furious
97. Happy Death Day
98. Breathe
99. The Man Who Invented Christmas
100. Maudie
101. Patti Cake$
102. Sleight
103. Alone in Berlin
104. A United Kingdom
105. Trespass Against Us
106. The Mountain Between Us
107. War Machine
108. Lowriders
109. Justice League
110. To the Bone
111. Ghost in the Shell
112. Wakefield
113. Downsizing
114. Bright
115. Bushwick
116. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
117. The Hitman's Bodyguard
118. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
119. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
120. The Mummy
121. The Greatest Showman
122. Rough Night
123. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
124. Sand Castle
125. The Circle
126. American Assassin
127. CHiPs
128. Death Note
129. 47 Meters Down
130. The Belko Experiment
131. The Great Wall
132. The Bad Batch
133. Fist Fight
134. Baywatch
135. Snatched
136. Suburbicon
137. Wilson
138. The Dark Tower
139. Queen of the Desert
140. The House
141. Flatliners
142. Sleepless
143. Geostorm
144. All Eyez on Me
145. The Snowman
146. The Book of Henry
147. The Space Between Us
148. Daddy's Home 2

 

[909]

Slice (2018), directed by Austin Vesely

Reason for Watching: A Halloween movie about a pizza delivery guy. Sounds great. This one also took a massive amount of IMDB downvoting for some reason. Who knows why, it's probably for the same reasons as everything else.

These are quite literally the hardest movies to review. The main reason? The film was fucking boring. Slice also only ran for about 75 minutes, so that makes it tough too. Slice centers around Perfect Pizza Place, a business in the made up town of Kingfisher. The setting is one where ghosts exist, and they've been thrown into their own neighborhood away from everyone else. One night, Sean (Austin Vesely) is delivering some pizza in the neighborhood of Ghost Town (very original), to a ghost who had ordered it apparently many hours earlier. During this delivery, his throat is slit by an assassin. The specifics of how people become ghosts are not made clear until much later in the movie. The mayor gives a press conference about the murder the next day, and the mayor is interrupted by Debbie (Kelli Simpkins) and Vera (Marilyn Dodds Frank), leaders of an activist group that wants a strip mall demolished. Said strip mall also just so happens to be where the pizza place is.

There are detectives looking into the murder, of course. Steve (Tim Decker) and Bradley (Will Brill) get this detail. Steve constantly wants to make fun of Bradley, for seemingly no reason at all. The main thing in this movie? Everyone wants to find out why people at the pizza place are getting killed. Perhaps I jumped ahead. Astrid (Zazie Beetz) is Sean's ex-girlfriend, and she wants her job delivering pizza back. Reason? She can find out how Sean got murdered. Said pizza place is managed by Jack (Paul Scheer), is also staffed by a ghost named Joe (Lakin Valdez), Heather (Katherine Cunningham), and Scooter (Rudy Galvan). You know what? I'm making too much of this. The main suspect is Dax Lycander (GET IT?) (Chance the Rapper), a well known werewolf who disappeared after this happened at a Chinese restaurant a few years ago. Said Chinese restaurant is where Perfect Pizza Place is now.

I have few positives for a movie that bores me as much as this one did. Slice is also a film that reminded me of the worst of True Blood. I could never get over that while I was watching this. I also didn't find basically anything in the movie to be even remotely funny, and I'd planned on watching this for two days. Why does that matter? It shows I wasn't predisposed to hating this movie as I was actually looking forward to it. I have a lot of movies to watch and shot this one up the list. Now I don't even know why. I don't want to say this movie was terrible, but I was so bored and disengaged. I felt like no effort was made to bring the viewer back should they have disliked any of the early portion of this movie, and that's nearly all I have to say about this. Obviously, this is a low budget movie so my expectations with effects and such weren't very high to begin with. That being said, the title sequence was the best part of Slice and I could have turned the whole thing off right after it.

4/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Wildlife
18. Stan & Ollie
19. Green Book
20. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
21. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
22. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
23. Annihilation
24. Private Life
25. Climax
26. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
27. Mid90s
28. Lean on Pete
29. On My Skin
30. Eighth Grade
31. Sorry to Bother You
32. Suspiria
33. At Eternity's Gate
34. The Death of Stalin
35. A Quiet Place
36. Vice
37. The Old Man & the Gun
38. The Night Comes for Us
39. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
40. Vox Lux
41. Bad Times at the El Royale
42. The Other Side of the Wind
43. Searching
44. Calibre
45. A Simple Favor
46. The Hate U Give
47. Unsane
48. Disobedience
49. Destroyer
50. Boy Erased
51. Bumblebee
52. Mary Poppins Returns
53. Creed II
54. Hold the Dark
55. The Land of Steady Habits
56. Halloween
57. The 12th Man
58. Upgrade
59. The Wife
60. Chappaquiddick
61. What They Had
62. Ant-Man and the Wasp
63. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
64. Blockers
65. Beirut
66. Black '47
67. Roxanne Roxanne
68. Solo: A Star Wars Story
69. Tully
70. Mary Queen of Scots
71. Aquaman
72. Ideal Home
73. Outlaw King
74. Overlord
75. Ready Player One
76. Ben Is Back
77. Monsters and Men
78. Colette
79. The Mule
80. On the Basis of Sex
81. Bohemian Rhapsody
82. White Boy Rick
83. Papillon
84. Gemini
85. Game Night
86. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
87. Ocean's Eight
88. Alpha
89. Come Sunday
90. Borg vs. McEnroe
91. Instant Family
92. The Front Runner
93. The Predator
94. Apostle
95. The Oath
96. Uncle Drew
97. The Cured
98. The Commuter
99. The Angel
100. Tag
101. Beautiful Boy
102. The Nun
103. Operation Finale
104. The Equalizer 2
105. The Spy Who Dumped Me
106. Cargo
107. Yardie
108. Boundaries
109. Bird Box
110. 12 Strong
111. Venom
112. Skyscraper
113. The Meg
114. Assassination Nation
115. Never Goin' Back
116. Adrift
117. Crazy Rich Asians
118. Backstabbing for Beginners
119. The Girl in the Spider's Web
120. Gringo
121. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
122. 22 July
123. Tomb Raider
124. Rampage
125. Hotel Artemis
126. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
127. The Little Stranger
128. 7 Days in Entebbe
129. Night School
130. The 15:17 To Paris
131. Den of Thieves
132. The Catcher Was a Spy
133. Peppermint
134. Mile 22
135. The First Purge
136. Hunter Killer
137. The Hurricane Heist
138. The Cloverfield Paradox
139. Breaking In
140. Slice
141. Extinction
142. Hot Summer Nights
143. Welcome to Marwen
144. Second Act
145. How It Ends
146. Mute
147. Kin
148. Hell Fest
149. Action Point
150. Proud Mary
151. Robin Hood
152. Traffik
153. Tau
154. Winchester
155. Woman Walks Ahead
156. The Happytime Murders
157. The Outsider
158. Slender Man
159. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

The Hero (2017), directed by Brett Haley

Reason for Watching: This was recommended to me numerous times. Sam Elliott is in this movie. That's enough reason. I have barely anything left from 2017, so this will be wrapped up quite soon.

The Hero is a movie featuring Sam Elliott that is supposed to make you feel like it's about Sam Elliott. Lee Hayden (Sam Elliott) is an actor who was in Westerns, only truly in one big important one, and he now works doing voiceovers for commercials. You know, like Elliott actually did. In the world of The Hero, Lee's best performances are long in the rear view mirror. These days, he spends time smoking weed with his neighbor Jeremy (Nick Offerman). Once upon a time, Jeremy was in a short lived show with Lee. In said show, Jeremy was executed by hanging. Now, he deals drugs. While Lee is at his house one day, Lee encounters Charlotte (Laura Prepon), who is also there buying drugs. Best for Lee, she's into old dudes. Lee once had a different life, one where he isn't banging forty year old women. He had a wife, Valarie (Katharine Ross), but he has long left Valarie. They had a daughter, Lucy (Krysten Ritter), but Lee has long since abandoned her too. The worst thing about all that? He has pancreatic cancer.

This is, oddly enough, a one paragraph film. I mean that it only takes one paragraph for me to describe it. I can't possibly fill two. Unfortunately, I can't help but shake the feeling that this movie is something a person would write if they were dying and wanted to write themselves to have a good ending to their life. The Hero fails to capture me from the start in part because of that. The movie is also heavily reliant upon Elliott to just make everything work somehow, which he is able to do massively in the second half of the film. The improvement this movie makes halfway through was rather remarkable to my eye. Perhaps it's because the story has a true purpose at that point. Perhaps it's because the story is initially about cancer and I have a hard time with that now because of what happened to my mom. I don't think that's the case, but it's something I have to consider and present as a possibility. The ending of the movie isn't conclusive enough for me either, I should note.

Because the film only takes one paragraph to describe, it's hard for me to fill space in this review. I don't know how. It's interesting that its taken this long for Elliott to be a lead in a movie of any value though. There is some cinematic value here, although there are things in this movie I plain out don't like. If you love Elliott, like most decent people do, and you already saw this, you probably really liked this movie. The problem is that I don't think this material is truly good enough for him. There are a lot of cliches, lots of things I don't like seeing in any kind of movie. When someone doesn't tell someone else that they're dying, you really need to have a hell of a hook to pull that off and make a movie or show interesting. Like Breaking Bad. Also, because BB did that so well, now it's almost impossible to top and I may forever see similar work through that lens. It's not like I finished watching the show all that long ago, after all. The only really surprising scene here is the one where Charlotte does a comedy routine centered around how old Lee is. She does it right to his face. I guess I didn't see that coming.

6/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. The Florida Project
8. Mudbound
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
10. Logan
11. Baby Driver
12. The Post
13. Wonder Woman
14. The Big Sick
15. Lady Bird
16. Wind River
17. Thor: Ragnarok
18. mother!
19. Logan Lucky
20. I, Tonya
21. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
22. The Insult
23. The Beguiled
24. Ingrid Goes West
25. Foxtrot
26. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
27. Brawl in Cell Block 99
28. Loveless
29. John Wick: Chapter 2
30. The Disaster Artist
31. The Lost City of Z
32. First They Killed My Father
33. In the Fade
34. A Ghost Story
35. Detroit
36. Gook
37. Last Flag Flying
38. Hostiles
39. Colossal
40. All the Money in the World
41. Molly's Game
42. Darkest Hour
43. Spider-Man: Homecoming
44. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
45. Sweet Virginia
46. It
47. Battle of the Sexes
48. Stronger
49. Brad's Status
50. Okja
51. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
52. Kong: Skull Island
53. It Comes at Night
54. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
55. Crown Heights
56. Split
57. 1922
58. Personal Shopper
59. Landline
60. Thank You for Your Service
61. Beatriz at Dinner
62. Chuck
63. Atomic Blonde
64. Shot Caller
65. Wheelman
66. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
67. Wonder
68. Brigsby Bear
69. The Lego Batman Movie
70. Megan Leavey
71. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
72. Wonderstruck
73. Only the Brave
74. Marshall
75. Menashe
76. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
77. Walking Out
78. American Made
79. Annabelle: Creation
80. Beauty and the Beast
81. Imperial Dreams
82. Gifted
83. Murder on the Orient Express
84. My Friend Dahmer
85. The Zookeeper's Wife
86. The Glass Castle
87. The Foreigner
88. Free Fire
89. Win It All
90. The Wall
91. The Hero
92. Jungle
93. Life
94. My Cousin Rachel
95. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
96. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
97. The Fate of the Furious
98. Happy Death Day
99. Breathe
100. The Man Who Invented Christmas
101. Maudie
102. Patti Cake$
103. Sleight
104. Alone in Berlin
105. A United Kingdom
106. Trespass Against Us
107. The Mountain Between Us
108. War Machine
109. Lowriders
110. Justice League
111. To the Bone
112. Ghost in the Shell
113. Wakefield
114. Downsizing
115. Bright
116. Bushwick
117. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
118. The Hitman's Bodyguard
119. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
120. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
121. The Mummy
122. The Greatest Showman
123. Rough Night
124. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
125. Sand Castle
126. The Circle
127. American Assassin
128. CHiPs
129. Death Note
130. 47 Meters Down
131. The Belko Experiment
132. The Great Wall
133. The Bad Batch
134. Fist Fight
135. Baywatch
136. Snatched
137. Suburbicon
138. Wilson
139. The Dark Tower
140. Queen of the Desert
141. The House
142. Flatliners
143. Sleepless
144. Geostorm
145. All Eyez on Me
146. The Snowman
147. The Book of Henry
148. The Space Between Us
149. Daddy's Home 2

 

[909]

American Woman (2019), directed by Jake Scott

Reason for Watching: Aaron Paul is in this movie. That usually does it. The thing I didn't know was that he didn't appear until 55 minutes into the movie. American Woman also has pretty good reviews.

American Woman is a movie set in much earlier times than I'd initially realized, which is usually a good thing. In 1998, Deb (Sienna Miller) is a quite young single mother who has just become a grandmother. Her daughter Bridget (Sky Ferreira) has had a son, Jesse. Jesse's father is not in the picture, but Bridget has a date with him shortly after we enter the film. When we enter the movie, Deb has a date with Brett, who it turns out is a married guy. Deb has been carrying on an affair with him for some time, and she wants to make sure she looks good for said affair. The next day, Bridget wants to go out with her son's father, Tyler (Alex Neustaedter). Tyler and Bridget don't really get along, and Deb generally complains about this quite a bit. She lives across the street from her sister, Katherine (Christina Hendricks), and Katherine's husband Terry (Will Sasso). Yes, Will Sasso is in this movie and it isn't a comedic role. Deb and Katherine have one of those sister relationships where one advises the other not to do shit, and they do it anyway. Deb is the one that does whatever she wants, and Katherine doesn't think that's such a good idea. Deb also has the same relationship with her mother, Peggy (Amy Madigan).

Anyway, that night, Bridget is supposed to go out as I've told you. Deb is going to watch her grandson. The problem is that Bridget doesn't come back the next morning. Or the next afternoon. Or even at all. Deb is really big mad about this shit at first. She busts into Tyler's house and questions him, which doesn't go well for her as he embarrasses her in front of all his friends. Tyler doesn't have answers in any case. Bridget supposedly went to another friend's house, and said friend tells Deb that Bridget walked home in the middle of the night. Certainly you can see the problem here. An investigation is launched, but no answers are received from that either. Deb, however, has had a complete mental break. She shows up at Brett's house to make a scene in front of his wife. When driving back home, Deb tries to kill herself by crashing her car into a ditch, but she emerges without any major injuries. After this, we jump forward many years. I didn't expect that. Deb's life is much different. Jesse is in elementary school. Deb has a new abusive boyfriend, Ray (Pat Healy), and she's just trying to make it through life. Most importantly, Bridget is still gone, answers not received. Will they come?

This movie is definitely not what I thought it was going to be, I tell you that. That isn't a bad thing, it's just different than what I thought I was getting into. American Woman is the kind of movie that sprawls through such a long period of time that the lead, in this case Sienna Miller, is able to fully showcase their range and ability as an actor. The script isn't as complex as I thought it would be, I thought this was going to be a movie where someone was searching for their daughter. It ain't that. What this movie is, is one where someone is solidly entrenched in the lower classes. The problems that come from being in that group are laid out throughout a rather compelling film. It wasn't compelling because I wanted to know what happened to Bridget. Any decent film, which this is, only has one conclusion. She was killed. It wasn't in question is what I'm saying. The filmmakers also pulled a really good trick on me towards the end of the movie. Didn't quite see that coming. When I see Aaron Paul in a movie, I can't unsee Jesse Pinkman. He will never be able to shake that role, that's part of being such a great actor and becoming one with the character.

I do think this is a good film and my enthusiasm to type out the last three paragraphs should certainly show that. The film isn't great or anything, it isn't complex enough for that. This is a story about the personal growth of a woman, through tragedy or hardship, with support of the people who love them. That's what matters here. A bad actress would have completely tanked American Woman, but that's not the case. The journey from immaturity to being a strong, self-reliant woman is one worth watching.

7/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Parasite
3. 1917
4. Midsommar
5. Ad Astra
6. The Lighthouse
7. Waves
8. The Farewell
9. Knives Out
10. Uncut Gems
11. Atlantics
12. Booksmart
13. Avengers: Endgame
14. Queen & Slim
15. Toy Story 4
16. Joker
17. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
18. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
19. The Two Popes
20. Clemency (had some stuff happen, couldn't review)
21. Us
22. Ford v. Ferrari
23. Gloria Bell
24. The Beach Bum
25. Just Mercy
26. The Art of Self-Defense
27. Dark Waters
28. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
29. Arctic
30. Spider-Man: Far From Home
31. Rocketman
32. High Flying Bird
33. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
34. Paddleton
35. Richard Jewell
36. The Peanut Butter Falcon
37. Honey Boy
38. Doctor Sleep
39. Hustlers
40. Blinded by the Light
41. Captain Marvel
42. Jojo Rabbit
43. Long Shot
44. Shazam
45. Ready or Not
46. See You Yesterday
47. A Vigilante
48. Late Night
49. Crawl
50. It: Chapter Two
51. Hotel Mumbai
52. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
53. Zombieland: Double Tap
54. Harriet
55. American Woman
56. Hobbs & Shaw
57. Official Secrets
58. Always Be My Maybe
59. Cold Pursuit
60. The Laundromat
61. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
62. Shaft
63. Happy Death Day 2U
64. Ma
65. Terminator: Dark Fate
66. Greta
67. Annabelle Comes Home
68. Jumanji: The Next Level
69. Aladdin
70. Triple Frontier
71. Fighting with My Family
72. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
73. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
74. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
75. Brexit
76. The Dirt
77. Velvet Buzzsaw
78. Stuber
79. Little
80. Alita: Battle Angel
81. The Good Liar
82. The Current War: Director's Cut
83. The Kid
84. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
85. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
86. Good Boys
87. The Upside
88. The Lion King
89. Dumbo
90. The Hummingbird Project
91. Escape Room
92. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
93. Brian Banks
94. Tolkien
95. The Dead Don't Die
96. Captive State
97. The Highwaymen
98. Bombshell
99. Pet Sematary
100. The Intruder
101. Child's Play
102. 21 Bridges
103. Gemini Man
104. Brightburn
105. Never Grow Old
106. Rambo: Last Blood
107. Trial by Fire
108. Midway
109. Angel Has Fallen
110. Black and Blue
111. Yesterday
112. Anna
113. What Men Want
114. Them That Follow
115. Unicorn Store
116. The Curse of La Llorona
117. Miss Bala
118. Men in Black: International
119. The Red Sea Diving Resort
120. The Perfection
121. Hellboy
122. Glass
123. Dark Phoenix
124. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
125. The Kitchen
126. The Hustle
127. The Best of Enemies
128. The Prodigy
129. Polar
130. Serenity

 

[909]

What Happened to Monday (2017), directed by Tommy Wirkola

Reason for Watching: This is one of those Netflix movies it seems a lot of people watched. However, more to the point, this is exactly one of those kinds of movies that Netflix specializes in. Checks the dystopian box quite well judging from the description.

Unfortunately, like most Netflix movies, What Happened to Monday is also kind of a hunk of crap. What Happened to Monday was released in countries other than this one, so the film made a fair amount at the box office. This is the story of septuplets named Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (Noomi Rapace). Their mother Karen had given birth to them, but she died while doing so at a shady doctor who would not report her multiple pregnancy. Set in 2073, this movie takes place in a heavily overpopulated world, which has led to a one-child policy being adopted worldwide. This is forcibly done, to the extent where every person is monitored with an electronic bracelet. The things done in order to create food for all these people has caused a huge rise in multiple pregnancies, so the parent usually has to live with the knowledge their children are going away. Every sibling bar the oldest is put into cryosleep, to be awakened at an indeterminate time. This concept is actually full of plot holes, but I also feel like there is a good concept here that could have been adapted into a good movie of some kind.

It turns out that the septuplets were subsequently raised by Terrence (Willem Dafoe), who gave them their names. He had an idea for how to keep them alive, and it was to train them to pose as a single child named Karen. With technological advances, it's possible to use wigs and the same makeup in order to make the children look all the same. This was done as adults too. Before that point, it was made clear that two or more of the septuplets could not be outside at the same time. It's too easy to catch everyone and ruin the entire thing. The problem is, there was a day Thursday snuck out of the apartment to skateboard. When doing so, she had an accident, and severed her finger. The end result of this is not good. You can figure out what Terrence did to them. Eventually, it's time to focus on the year 2073. Monday is to prepare herself to go outside, she is giving a presentation in order to get a promotion at her job, at the bank. She becomes Karen like they all must do to go to this job, and she runs into Adrian (Marwan Kenzari), a child enforcement agent at a checkpoint. They seem to get along well. At the bank, she is threatened with blackmail by Jerry (Pal Sverre Hagen). Then, Monday never returns home. What are her sisters to do? If Monday has been killed, and one of them goes outside, then what?

The concept here is far better than the execution, I assure you. As I was typing all these things out, I was remembering how good these parts of the movie were even when they didn't make sense, and eventually I came to think of the last thirty minutes of the movie. The last thirty minutes of What Happened to Monday are absolutely terrible. Beyond that, there are absolutely no ethical questions posed here. I don't even know who some of the side characters are, who they're supposed to be, or how they came to have such influence and power. This is a poorly written movie that is interesting for much longer than it actually should be. There is literally no time given to the famine that caused people to take such methods in creating food, even knowing the side effects. At no point in this movie does anyone even complain about there being too many people. Even though the proper focus of the movie is completely sidelined, it's still compelling to some extent. The action scenes are good. Noomi Rapace is really convincing in this movie while playing seven different roles. They are only just different enough from each other, but even this is given superficial treatment.

What Happened to Monday is a film that is geared towards action and building to intriguing moments far more than it is any other kind of film. This isn't supposed to make the viewer think or anything of the sort. Characterizations are legitimately fucking nonsense. There's a scene where someone survives a bomb that blows up in their face. There isn't a scratch on them from that explosion. Ultimately this is a plain out stupid movie. The problem is that it has redeeming qualities, all in those glorious action scenes. I am no liar. These are really good, good enough to make the movie average. The ending of this movie is so fucking bad though. A movie with an interesting concept like this one shouldn't focus on the most shit aspects of it. We don't even know some of these characters before they start dying.

5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. The Florida Project
8. Mudbound
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
10. Logan
11. Baby Driver
12. The Post
13. Wonder Woman
14. The Big Sick
15. Lady Bird
16. Wind River
17. Thor: Ragnarok
18. mother!
19. Logan Lucky
20. I, Tonya
21. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
22. The Insult
23. The Beguiled
24. Ingrid Goes West
25. Foxtrot
26. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
27. Brawl in Cell Block 99
28. Loveless
29. John Wick: Chapter 2
30. The Disaster Artist
31. The Lost City of Z
32. First They Killed My Father
33. In the Fade
34. A Ghost Story
35. Detroit
36. Gook
37. Last Flag Flying
38. Hostiles
39. Colossal
40. All the Money in the World
41. Molly's Game
42. Darkest Hour
43. Spider-Man: Homecoming
44. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
45. Sweet Virginia
46. It
47. Battle of the Sexes
48. Stronger
49. Brad's Status
50. Okja
51. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
52. Kong: Skull Island
53. It Comes at Night
54. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
55. Crown Heights
56. Split
57. 1922
58. Personal Shopper
59. Landline
60. Thank You for Your Service
61. Beatriz at Dinner
62. Chuck
63. Atomic Blonde
64. Shot Caller
65. Wheelman
66. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
67. Wonder
68. Brigsby Bear
69. The Lego Batman Movie
70. Megan Leavey
71. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
72. Wonderstruck
73. Only the Brave
74. Marshall
75. Menashe
76. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
77. Walking Out
78. American Made
79. Annabelle: Creation
80. Beauty and the Beast
81. Imperial Dreams
82. Gifted
83. Murder on the Orient Express
84. My Friend Dahmer
85. The Zookeeper's Wife
86. The Glass Castle
87. The Foreigner
88. Free Fire
89. Win It All
90. The Wall
91. The Hero
92. Jungle
93. Life
94. My Cousin Rachel
95. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
96. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
97. The Fate of the Furious
98. Happy Death Day
99. Breathe
100. The Man Who Invented Christmas
101. Maudie
102. Patti Cake$
103. Sleight
104. Alone in Berlin
105. A United Kingdom
106. Trespass Against Us
107. The Mountain Between Us
108. War Machine
109. Lowriders
110. Justice League
111. To the Bone
112. Ghost in the Shell
113. Wakefield
114. Downsizing
115. Bright
116. Bushwick
117. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
118. What Happened to Monday
119. The Hitman's Bodyguard
120. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
121. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
122. The Mummy
123. The Greatest Showman
124. Rough Night
125. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
126. Sand Castle
127. The Circle
128. American Assassin
129. CHiPs
130. Death Note
131. 47 Meters Down
132. The Belko Experiment
133. The Great Wall
134. The Bad Batch
135. Fist Fight
136. Baywatch
137. Snatched
138. Suburbicon
139. Wilson
140. The Dark Tower
141. Queen of the Desert
142. The House
143. Flatliners
144. Sleepless
145. Geostorm
146. All Eyez on Me
147. The Snowman
148. The Book of Henry
149. The Space Between Us
150. Daddy's Home 2

 

[909]

French and Polish, subtitles

Cold War (2018), directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

Reason for Watching: I should have watched this a while ago. Thing is, I've been busy, felt a little burnt out on writing reviews as well, so I haven't watched much of anything that got great reviews. Until last night. It may also not surprise you that I rarely watch movies filmed in black and white, so this is a little different for me.

Cold War is set in post-World War II Poland, a country that was ravaged by combat and filled with issues. The main one is that the country is now a Soviet satellite state. In this country, Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Irena (Agata Kulesza) have gotten into a position where they can audition people for induction into a school where they will be taught how to perform folk music as part of an ensemble. In the beginning of the film, they go around the country recording peasants so they know which songs are to be used. Once it's time for these auditions, Wiktor becomes smitted with Zula (Joanna Kulig), a young woman with some secrets in her history. Firstly, they are looking for peasants to perform in Warsaw and around Eastern Europe. Zula is not a peasant. Zula also is on probation after attacking her abusive father and nearly killing him. Everyone says that there's something about Zula, and after all there certainly is. Wiktor soon becomes much more than smitten.

After a performance in Warsaw, Zula and Wiktor have sex in the bathroom. A short period later, Wiktor and Irena are pressured by communist party officials to include propaganda in their performances so they can be allowed to leave the country and perform elsewhere. Irena and to a lesser extent Wiktor are very opposed to this, because such changes interfere with the goal of their music and its artistic merit. The problem is they have a third man as part of the troupe, whom I've neglected to mention to this point. Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc) is seemingly attached to the communist party in some way, or at least he knows he can get ahead by appeasing those sorts, so he agrees to the additions. Irena quits very shortly after. We are then shown a scene where Zula says she has been forced to inform on Wiktor at the behest of Kaczmarek, who has a crush on Zula and would like to eliminate his competition. When the troupe travels to East Berlin, Wiktor and Zula make plans to leave to Paris. Zula does not come. Now what?

I might be in the minority or some shit here, but I feel like Cold War is almost a really great movie that doesn't quite get there. This is a film that has great music, that's for sure. Impossible to deny that. But, perhaps this is an unusual complaint for me, but this movie is too short. Cold War is a movie that makes you feel Wiktor and Zula's tempestuous love, makes you feel the director's vision towards what freedom actually is. In Poland the troupe was forced to sing songs about Stalin, when Wiktor heads to France he is forced to play at shitty jazz clubs he doesn't want to be at, work with lyrics he also doesn't believe in, you know the drill here. Pawlikowski also left communist Poland, his experience of what he found outside the Eastern bloc I would imagine to be quite similar. I could probably find out, but I don't need to. The point is that true freedom is very difficult to find. There is always something to keep a person from that.

Cold War is a movie that has a lot of fans in high places, or at least it did when it became time to nominate movies for awards. I found that there are also things intended to push people in that direction. Filming in black and white is an artistic decision, and at the same time it is one filmmakers know the audience will appreciate. The lack of widescreen is another one of those decisions, as are the political connotations of Cold War. Movies with a period setting also fill both goals. While I'm saying this, I'm also recalling my own emotions as I watched the film play out. I definitely had a visceral feeling of frustration when the characters did things I did not want them to do. Cold War is engaging in that way. The cinematography and music are fantastic. Kot and Kulig have palpable chemistry. Pawlikowski attempts to make a film that feels like it was made in the 1950s, and accomplishes that completely. I loved these aspects of the movie so much. Cold War, however, is disengaging in other ways. The characters do not talk very much to each other. The movie is so short as to be incredibly maddening. There aren't as many scenes as it feels like this story deserves, it feels like the movie is missing parts of the romance that I needed more of. Because of this, there's only so much one can care about Wiktor and Zula. It is a glaring mistake in an otherwise great feature.

Also, yeah, I just put this movie below blockbuster shit. There are some people out there who would get very mad about that, but man. I really wish there was more of this.

8/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Wildlife
18. Stan & Ollie
19. Green Book
20. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
21. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
22. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
23. Annihilation
24. Private Life
25. Cold War
26. Climax
27. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
28. Mid90s
29. Lean on Pete
30. On My Skin
31. Eighth Grade
32. Sorry to Bother You
33. Suspiria
34. At Eternity's Gate
35. The Death of Stalin
36. A Quiet Place
37. Vice
38. The Old Man & the Gun
39. The Night Comes for Us
40. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
41. Vox Lux
42. Bad Times at the El Royale
43. The Other Side of the Wind
44. Searching
45. Calibre
46. A Simple Favor
47. The Hate U Give
48. Unsane
49. Disobedience
50. Destroyer
51. Boy Erased
52. Bumblebee
53. Mary Poppins Returns
54. Creed II
55. Hold the Dark
56. The Land of Steady Habits
57. Halloween
58. The 12th Man
59. Upgrade
60. The Wife
61. Chappaquiddick
62. What They Had
63. Ant-Man and the Wasp
64. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
65. Blockers
66. Beirut
67. Black '47
68. Roxanne Roxanne
69. Solo: A Star Wars Story
70. Tully
71. Mary Queen of Scots
72. Aquaman
73. Ideal Home
74. Outlaw King
75. Overlord
76. Ready Player One
77. Ben Is Back
78. Monsters and Men
79. Colette
80. The Mule
81. On the Basis of Sex
82. Bohemian Rhapsody
83. White Boy Rick
84. Papillon
85. Gemini
86. Game Night
87. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
88. Ocean's Eight
89. Alpha
90. Come Sunday
91. Borg vs. McEnroe
92. Instant Family
93. The Front Runner
94. The Predator
95. Apostle
96. The Oath
97. Uncle Drew
98. The Cured
99. The Commuter
100. The Angel
101. Tag
102. Beautiful Boy
103. The Nun
104. Operation Finale
105. The Equalizer 2
106. The Spy Who Dumped Me
107. Cargo
108. Yardie
109. Boundaries
110. Bird Box
111. 12 Strong
112. Venom
113. Skyscraper
114. The Meg
115. Assassination Nation
116. Never Goin' Back
117. Adrift
118. Crazy Rich Asians
119. Backstabbing for Beginners
120. The Girl in the Spider's Web
121. Gringo
122. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
123. 22 July
124. Tomb Raider
125. Rampage
126. Hotel Artemis
127. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
128. The Little Stranger
129. 7 Days in Entebbe
130. Night School
131. The 15:17 To Paris
132. Den of Thieves
133. The Catcher Was a Spy
134. Peppermint
135. Mile 22
136. The First Purge
137. Hunter Killer
138. The Hurricane Heist
139. The Cloverfield Paradox
140. Breaking In
141. Slice
142. Extinction
143. Hot Summer Nights
144. Welcome to Marwen
145. Second Act
146. How It Ends
147. Mute
148. Kin
149. Hell Fest
150. Action Point
151. Proud Mary
152. Robin Hood
153. Traffik
154. Tau
155. Winchester
156. Woman Walks Ahead
157. The Happytime Murders
158. The Outsider
159. Slender Man
160. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

Life Itself (2018), directed by Dan Fogelman

Reason for Watching: I found it extremely fitting to go from what I watched previously to watching this. One good romance movie to one that is supposed to be absolute shit. That just sounded right to me.

For starters, I can't believe Life Itself even exists as a movie. I don't really know where to start, I'll do my best. This is a movie with five chapters, four of which actually matter, but this format means that you know exactly where this movie is going after the first chapter. Seems to be a problem. The first part of that chapter is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, who introduces the hero of this story. He is talking to his therapist, Cait (Annette Bening). Nothing he has to say is of any value, not even worth mentioning that guy. While Cait is walking down the street, she wanders into traffic and is killed by a bus. It subsequently turns out this is part of a script being written by Will (Oscar Isaac), who has been in therapy. He has been going to therapy with the previously mentioned Dr. Cait ever since his wife Abby (Olivia Wilde) left him.

The second chapter picks up where the first one leaves off. Dylan (Olivia Cooke) is Will and Abby's daughter. Her grandfather Irwin (Mandy Patinkin) is very prominent in her life, the film goes through a montage and we meet Dylan when she turns 21. Dylan, it turns out, is the lead of a band called PB&J. Can I describe her music? No, I cannot.

After the second chapter, we head to the third. A man in Spain named Vincent Saccione (Antonio Banderas) owns some land and has many people under his employ. One day, he calls Javier (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) into his office. For whatever reason, Saccione decides that he wants to tell Javier his life story. To make a long story short, Saccione inherited money from his bastard of a father. After inheriting it, he decided to buy this land. Javier, however, does not respect the fact that Saccione actually took the man's money when he died. Regardless, Saccione wants Javier to be the foreman of the men working on said land, because he's the only one who picks olives correctly. Eventually, Javier comes to live in the house Saccione has provided. Javier is in love with Isabel (Laia Costa), and they have a son, Rodrigo. A lot of other stuff happens.

The fourth chapter, you might suspect, is about Rodrigo (Alex Monner). I have left out a lot of seemingly important things because you need to watch this movie if you want to know all of them. Or you can go to Wikipedia. That's up to you. Rodrigo comes to be a grown man, just like a whole lot of other people. He comes to NYU, and eventually has his first girlfriend, Shari (Isabel Durant). His mother is now terminally ill, she sent him off to university despite that. How does a young man become...a man?

The fifth chapter doesn't matter.

First things first. I need to talk about the start of the movie. The way this movie begun is too weird to believe. I told you about how the therapist was run over by a bus, but there are a few other funny things that weren't supposed to be funny at all. I have to admit that I laughed hard at the first killing via bus. Did I say first? I believe I did. The movie clearly is seeking to be serious in some kind or another, but the start just isn't. This was like a wacky television show of some kind. From the start I got the feeling this was going to be worse than expected, but in fairness I can't say that it was any worse than I'd thought. This movie is supposed to be serious and the start of it is so far out of tone compared to what you'd think it will be. I don't know what to say. After that, this turns into tragedy porn. There's just one insanely horrific thing after the other, the kind you'd think of as a joke if you were imagining creating an emotionally manipulative work. Some of the characters, like Shari for example, are nauseating. I couldn't handle even hearing them talk. You know, this is unlike most of the bad movies I review because everything done here is in good faith. It's just bad. The ending montage is absolutely surreal as well.

What I've been trying to say is that I don't understand what kind of movie this is supposed to be. Is Life Itself supposed to be like This Is Us? I've read some descriptions of the latter show and they sound terrible, but the show has great reviews and obviously a lot of people watch it too. I'm definitely never going to watch that show, even when I start this enormous television watching project. Of course, that show is why someone would be allowed to make this movie, and why they'd be able to attract a cast featuring such great actors. To say there are great actors in this movie is an understatment. A few of them even give really good performances. However, the editing and overall tone of the film seriously betrays their efforts. The third chapter is the best of them and feels the most like a real film, but this too has issues. the main problem with this movie is that it seems the writer/director does not actually understand human behavior. That's why events are funny when they aren't supposed to be, and why the characters do some of the things they do. He just doesn't understand. The ending of Life Itself is one of the most contrived pieces of bullshit I've seen in a while, too. After it, you have that montage I already mentioned. I also feel like this director has no respect for what people think about their own parents, or this guy wouldn't show countless amounts of people dying in crude fashion. Maybe he hates his own and has been imagining these things for some time.

2.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. The Rider
3. A Star Is Born
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Widows
8. First Man
9. BlacKkKlansman
10. Blindspotting
11. Leave No Trace
12. Black Panther
13. If Beale Street Could Talk
14. The Sisters Brothers
15. A Private War
16. Avengers: Infinity War
17. Wildlife
18. Stan & Ollie
19. Green Book
20. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
21. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
22. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
23. Annihilation
24. Private Life
25. Cold War
26. Climax
27. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
28. Mid90s
29. Lean on Pete
30. On My Skin
31. Eighth Grade
32. Sorry to Bother You
33. Suspiria
34. At Eternity's Gate
35. The Death of Stalin
36. A Quiet Place
37. Vice
38. The Old Man & the Gun
39. The Night Comes for Us
40. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
41. Vox Lux
42. Bad Times at the El Royale
43. The Other Side of the Wind
44. Searching
45. Calibre
46. A Simple Favor
47. The Hate U Give
48. Unsane
49. Disobedience
50. Destroyer
51. Boy Erased
52. Bumblebee
53. Mary Poppins Returns
54. Creed II
55. Hold the Dark
56. The Land of Steady Habits
57. Halloween
58. The 12th Man
59. Upgrade
60. The Wife
61. Chappaquiddick
62. What They Had
63. Ant-Man and the Wasp
64. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
65. Blockers
66. Beirut
67. Black '47
68. Roxanne Roxanne
69. Solo: A Star Wars Story
70. Tully
71. Mary Queen of Scots
72. Aquaman
73. Ideal Home
74. Outlaw King
75. Overlord
76. Ready Player One
77. Ben Is Back
78. Monsters and Men
79. Colette
80. The Mule
81. On the Basis of Sex
82. Bohemian Rhapsody
83. White Boy Rick
84. Papillon
85. Gemini
86. Game Night
87. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
88. Ocean's Eight
89. Alpha
90. Come Sunday
91. Borg vs. McEnroe
92. Instant Family
93. The Front Runner
94. The Predator
95. Apostle
96. The Oath
97. Uncle Drew
98. The Cured
99. The Commuter
100. The Angel
101. Tag
102. Beautiful Boy
103. The Nun
104. Operation Finale
105. The Equalizer 2
106. The Spy Who Dumped Me
107. Cargo
108. Yardie
109. Boundaries
110. Bird Box
111. 12 Strong
112. Venom
113. Skyscraper
114. The Meg
115. Assassination Nation
116. Never Goin' Back
117. Adrift
118. Crazy Rich Asians
119. Backstabbing for Beginners
120. The Girl in the Spider's Web
121. Gringo
122. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
123. 22 July
124. Tomb Raider
125. Rampage
126. Hotel Artemis
127. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
128. The Little Stranger
129. 7 Days in Entebbe
130. Night School
131. The 15:17 To Paris
132. Den of Thieves
133. The Catcher Was a Spy
134. Peppermint
135. Mile 22
136. The First Purge
137. Hunter Killer
138. The Hurricane Heist
139. The Cloverfield Paradox
140. Breaking In
141. Slice
142. Extinction
143. Hot Summer Nights
144. Welcome to Marwen
145. Second Act
146. How It Ends
147. Mute
148. Kin
149. Hell Fest
150. Action Point
151. Proud Mary
152. Robin Hood
153. Traffik
154. Tau
155. Winchester
156. Woman Walks Ahead
157. The Happytime Murders
158. The Outsider
159. Life Itself
160. Slender Man
161. Holmes & Watson

 

[909]

The Wedding Guest (2019), directed by Michael Winterbottom

Reason for Watching: The reason for this one is simple. Saw the preview when watching another movie last year. Thought it was interesting. Movie never came to my theater. The thing I found odd was that this was previewed during a showing of Hotel Mumbai. The thing with this, as with Hotel Mumbai, these two movies seem to largely feature, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh brown guys doing things that people are often stereotyped for doing in movies. Hopefully in this case I'm wrong.

When it comes to The Wedding Guest, let's say that I was sort of wrong. Only sort of. Jay (Dev Patel) is a South Asian man of unmentioned origin who lives in Britain, it seems that he has been raised there if not born there. Jay is headed to Pakistan for a wedding, but his route there is a very questionable one, I can tell you that. Once he flies from London to Lahore, he goes to rent a car. Jay does not speak the local language, but fortunately the attendant does. He says that he'll return the car in two weeks. When he packed his luggage, he brought multiple passports and hid them underneath his clothes. With this car, he drives to the areas of Pakistan you may know as those popluated by tribal peoples. Many of those tribes were part of the Afghan War, as you know. Jay arrives at a gun store, where he purchases two. As you might follow, this point is when things started to get really weird. After this, he heads to Faisalabad, where he drops off the first car. He then goes to rent another. You see how weird this is?

I have to admit that I don't really remember what the preview for this movie entailed until I watched it just a bit ago, I just remember thinking it was interesting. After Jay rented that second car, he pulls up to a small village where it appears someone is to be married. At the wedding party, he says that he's a friend of the bride's brother, and he spends a lot of time looking around the area. He's also pulled his car off to a secluded area and placed some baggage in the back seat. This is when I started to get clued in a little bit. Later at night, Jay goes up to a guard and bums a light off him, then waits a little while until the guard is asleep. Then, it's time to do some kidnapping. He heads into the house and remains quiet, eventually coming across the bride, Samira (Radhika Apte). You see why I said this was why I was wrong to some extent? A guard sees Samira being kidnapped and tries to intervene, but that's not going to help. As I've already said, Jay only speaks English. His attempts to get through to the guard don't work, and he has to shoot the guard twice. After this, he makes his escape easily, even though people know the guard's been murdered. The thing is, Samira knows why she's been kidnapped. She's been wanting to be kidnapped. Her Indian boyfriend Deepesh (Jim Sarbh) appears to have paid for this to happen, and they are to meet him in India. Thing is, this guy Deepesh, he's really unreliable and can't be gotten a hold of.

Unfortunately, despite the start that showed so much promise in being a unique take on kidnappings, this isn't the strong feature that I was hoping for. This certainly is a unique take, though. Someone is being kidnapped willingly because they don't want to be part of an arranged marriage. Don't see movies like that one every day. Of course, Jay has to dress like a terrorist in order to do it, and you see why I said this is sort of the kind of stereotypical movie I have problems with. Didn't really turn out that way though. There are actually very few movies set in India and Pakistan where the people in those countries are treated as being normal human beings. To that degree there isn't any of the 'foreign country filter' effect going on here. The Wedding Guest is also the rare case of a film shot both in India and Pakistan. It's a good thing that I didn't remember the preview as well. It gives away almost the whole fucking film, which is inexcusable. It's 2020. The audience doesn't want that and studios have certainly received enough complaints at this point. Stop it.

I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I actually did, but the ending of The Wedding Guest is extremely frustrating. It's abrupt, comes out of nowhere, and doesn't give me the kind of closure a film should give. In addition, the film largely revolved around two people who I feel like I knew absolutely nothing about at the end of the movie. Their backstories aren't filled in, even though there's good reason for them not to be filled in. For me, this is a problem. The scenes with the shady characters they were referred to were pretty interesting, and I wanted to know what would happen with Samira and Deepesh, but that bit gets solved way earlier than I'd thought. Ultimately, because the characters were closed off to each other, they were closed off on the screen as well, so it is hard to relate to them. A movie about two people can't have those kinds of problems unless there are really bombastic events throughout the movie. Considering this wasn't a large budget film, and considering there was only the one event after the kidnapping, you can probably guess what I think about that issue.

5.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Parasite
3. 1917
4. Midsommar
5. Ad Astra
6. The Lighthouse
7. Waves
8. The Farewell
9. Knives Out
10. Uncut Gems
11. Atlantics
12. Booksmart
13. Avengers: Endgame
14. Queen & Slim
15. Toy Story 4
16. Joker
17. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
18. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
19. The Two Popes
20. Clemency (had some stuff happen, couldn't review)
21. Us
22. Ford v. Ferrari
23. Gloria Bell
24. The Beach Bum
25. Just Mercy
26. The Art of Self-Defense
27. Dark Waters
28. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
29. Arctic
30. Spider-Man: Far From Home
31. Rocketman
32. High Flying Bird
33. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
34. Paddleton
35. Richard Jewell
36. The Peanut Butter Falcon
37. Honey Boy
38. Doctor Sleep
39. Hustlers
40. Blinded by the Light
41. Captain Marvel
42. Jojo Rabbit
43. Long Shot
44. Shazam
45. Ready or Not
46. See You Yesterday
47. A Vigilante
48. Late Night
49. Crawl
50. It: Chapter Two
51. Hotel Mumbai
52. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
53. Zombieland: Double Tap
54. Harriet
55. American Woman
56. Hobbs & Shaw
57. Official Secrets
58. Always Be My Maybe
59. Cold Pursuit
60. The Laundromat
61. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
62. Shaft
63. Happy Death Day 2U
64. Ma
65. Terminator: Dark Fate
66. Greta
67. Annabelle Comes Home
68. Jumanji: The Next Level
69. Aladdin
70. Triple Frontier
71. Fighting with My Family
72. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
73. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
74. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
75. Brexit
76. The Dirt
77. Velvet Buzzsaw
78. Stuber
79. Little
80. Alita: Battle Angel
81. The Good Liar
82. The Current War: Director's Cut
83. The Kid
84. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
85. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
86. Good Boys
87. The Upside
88. The Lion King
89. Dumbo
90. The Hummingbird Project
91. Escape Room
92. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
93. The Wedding Guest
94. Brian Banks
95. Tolkien
96. The Dead Don't Die
97. Captive State
98. The Highwaymen
99. Bombshell
100. Pet Sematary
101. The Intruder
102. Child's Play
103. 21 Bridges
104. Gemini Man
105. Brightburn
106. Never Grow Old
107. Rambo: Last Blood
108. Trial by Fire
109. Midway
110. Angel Has Fallen
111. Black and Blue
112. Yesterday
113. Anna
114. What Men Want
115. Them That Follow
116. Unicorn Store
117. The Curse of La Llorona
118. Miss Bala
119. Men in Black: International
120. The Red Sea Diving Resort
121. The Perfection
122. Hellboy
123. Glass
124. Dark Phoenix
125. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
126. The Kitchen
127. The Hustle
128. The Best of Enemies
129. The Prodigy
130. Polar
131. Serenity

 

[909]

Lucky (2017), directed by John Carroll Lynch

Reason for Watching: I am almost done with 2017, except for some franchise shit. I mean, really almost. This movie was highly touted but did not see a wide release at the time, and I only just got Hulu a few months ago. I find this movie interesting in that it's the rare case of a film focusing on a 90 year old.

If you really liked Lucky, be warned. I don't think I did. Lucky is the story of Lucky (Harry Dean Stanton), a 90 year old man in seemingly great health even though he smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. The film begins when Lucky wakes up, smokes one of those cigarettes, and follows that by doing yoga for a while. Lucky lives alone in the desert, never having married or had children, and possibly never having loved someone either. We're given a glimpse into a life of a very old man here, and I found this to be the most poignant section of the movie. In his fridge, he has gallons of milk and nothing else, because he doesn't need it. Lucky only has a few sets of clothes as well. Who needs them? I can't really imagine living like this, but at some point I know it's coming for me too. It happens to everyone.

After this morning routine, Lucky heads to a diner, which he seemingly does every day. While there, he works on his crossword puzzle from the newspaper, he has some coffee, and bullshits with the owner, Joe (Barry Shabaka Henley). After that, he goes to a corner store where he buys another carton of milk and some cigarettes. Also, consistently throughout this routine, people are telling Lucky that he should quit smoking. The owner of the corner store is throwing a party for her son and wants Lucky to come, which is an interesting addition to his daily. He thinks he'll go. That night, after watching some shows in his underwear, he goes to a bar and has some Bloody Marys. To each his own, but those things are fucking disgusting. While he's sitting there, his friend Howard (David Lynch) complains about his tortoise having escaped. Complain is probably not the right word, though. He's depressed. That's all he had. The next morning, Lucky has a fall, and afterwards his outlook on life becomes quite bleak. Maybe it always was. Maybe it wasn't.

Did I already say that Bloody Marys are fucking vile shit? I think I did. Some of the shit that people put in them is beyond the pale. I don't care if anyone here likes them either, I'm sure you guys think I like nasty shit myself, and that's fine. As it relates to the film, I'm definitely in the extreme minority here. It's not that I think Lucky is a bad movie as much as I think it's one I don't relate to at all. It's made by someone who clearly loved their lead actor, and the film caters to fans of said actor. Thing is, I haven't seen that many of Harry Dean Stanton's movies, but even if I did, this movie meanders too much for my tastes. There is poignancy in some of the events, but at my age, this movie ruminates on a lot of things I'm not particularly concerned about. I am concerned with living and making the most of things. I don't know what's at the end of life, and I don't think I really care that much either. Maybe it's a big nothing. That's why there's more and more reason to do things with your time that make you feel alive. Maybe that's what the movie is telling me.

Another thing is that at Harry Dean Stanton's age, I don't find death to be such a sad thing. It's a milestone to have made it that long without something bad happening to you, so I identify much more with the doctor character in this movie. Now, all that being said. While dying at 90 years old isn't such a bad thing, perhaps dying in this manner with nothing to show for it is the real problem. Am I going to do that? I sure fucking hope not. Also, let me just say this. A movie where I'm so fixated on one aspect of it, and not particularly in a bad way, it can't be all that bad.

6.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. The Florida Project
8. Mudbound
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
10. Logan
11. Baby Driver
12. The Post
13. Wonder Woman
14. The Big Sick
15. Lady Bird
16. Wind River
17. Thor: Ragnarok
18. mother!
19. Logan Lucky
20. I, Tonya
21. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
22. The Insult
23. The Beguiled
24. Ingrid Goes West
25. Foxtrot
26. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
27. Brawl in Cell Block 99
28. Loveless
29. John Wick: Chapter 2
30. The Disaster Artist
31. The Lost City of Z
32. First They Killed My Father
33. In the Fade
34. A Ghost Story
35. Detroit
36. Gook
37. Last Flag Flying
38. Hostiles
39. Colossal
40. All the Money in the World
41. Molly's Game
42. Darkest Hour
43. Spider-Man: Homecoming
44. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
45. Sweet Virginia
46. It
47. Battle of the Sexes
48. Stronger
49. Brad's Status
50. Okja
51. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
52. Kong: Skull Island
53. It Comes at Night
54. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
55. Crown Heights
56. Split
57. 1922
58. Personal Shopper
59. Landline
60. Thank You for Your Service
61. Beatriz at Dinner
62. Chuck
63. Atomic Blonde
64. Shot Caller
65. Wheelman
66. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
67. Wonder
68. Brigsby Bear
69. The Lego Batman Movie
70. Megan Leavey
71. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
72. Wonderstruck
73. Only the Brave
74. Marshall
75. Menashe
76. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
77. Lucky
78. Walking Out
79. American Made
80. Annabelle: Creation
81. Beauty and the Beast
82. Imperial Dreams
83. Gifted
84. Murder on the Orient Express
85. My Friend Dahmer
86. The Zookeeper's Wife
87. The Glass Castle
88. The Foreigner
89. Free Fire
90. Win It All
91. The Wall
92. The Hero
93. Jungle
94. Life
95. My Cousin Rachel
96. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
97. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
98. The Fate of the Furious
99. Happy Death Day
100. Breathe
101. The Man Who Invented Christmas
102. Maudie
103. Patti Cake$
104. Sleight
105. Alone in Berlin
106. A United Kingdom
107. Trespass Against Us
108. The Mountain Between Us
109. War Machine
110. Lowriders
111. Justice League
112. To the Bone
113. Ghost in the Shell
114. Wakefield
115. Downsizing
116. Bright
117. Bushwick
118. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
119. What Happened to Monday
120. The Hitman's Bodyguard
121. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
122. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
123. The Mummy
124. The Greatest Showman
125. Rough Night
126. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
127. Sand Castle
128. The Circle
129. American Assassin
130. CHiPs
131. Death Note
132. 47 Meters Down
133. The Belko Experiment
134. The Great Wall
135. The Bad Batch
136. Fist Fight
137. Baywatch
138. Snatched
139. Suburbicon
140. Wilson
141. The Dark Tower
142. Queen of the Desert
143. The House
144. Flatliners
145. Sleepless
146. Geostorm
147. All Eyez on Me
148. The Snowman
149. The Book of Henry
150. The Space Between Us
151. Daddy's Home 2