In my last post, I announced that I’d be doing some new kinds of pieces on the site, and this will be the first. Working retail during the holidays is a hectic experience, and though I still see quite a few movies, the rest of my free time involves more laundry and sleeping than it does writing. For the foreseeable future, I'll make the occasional “Round-Up“ post covering the latest films I’ve seen. I will still write full reviews for individual works when I can, but in the meantime I’ll use this format to maximize my output.
Author’s Note: This piece turned out much longer than I intended. The first two reviews here were meant to be indicative of the sort of format I’m aiming for, but most of these films demanded more than a paragraph. Read on, but feel free to skip around.
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Director Marielle Heller’s adaptation of author Lee Israel’s autobiographical account of her time forging literary collectibles immediately became one of my favorite films of the year. The script, by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, has an acidic wit that adds spark to what should be an otherwise depressing tale of desperation while Heller and cinematographer Brandon Trost create a tangible atmosphere of warmth and cold in the various locales of this fall-time, early 90’s-set New York story. Melissa McCarthy gives a subdued, career-best performance that demonstrates a range comparable to that of John Candy or Steve Martin in their more dramatic turns. Supporting McCarthy is an equally wonderful cast, from Richard E. Grant’s rakish, scene-stealing partner in crime to Dolly Wells’ sweet shopkeeper and Jane Curtin’s blunt literary agent. Nothing about Can You Ever Forgive Me? feels inauthentic, yet it’s alive as a cinematic experience rather than a paint-by-numbers true story turned film, and that’s exactly what makes its low-key charm irresistible.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
One of the few blessings in the modern world of media conglomerates and corporate synergy is that when one arm of a media behemoth, like Warner Media, produces something—say, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald—you can be sure where you’ll find it in nine or 12 months. You won’t miss much while you wait for the latest in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter-expanding prequel film series to land on HBO. The first Fantastic Beasts, which built to the reveal of Johnny Depp as storied evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald, is a harmlessly charming film that explored a new corner of the wizarding world in a new era, but only with the Grindelwald story line (and the promise of a young Dumbledore in the sequel) did this new franchise feel like it was earning its planned five films. And yet, The Crimes of Grindelwald is all dressed up with nowhere to go. The returning characters—like Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander, Katherine Waterston’s Tina Goldstein and Dan Fogler’s Jacob Kowalski—are welcome familiar faces, but their stories don’t really advance, and neither do those of the newcomers, including Depp’s titular Grindelwald (think a wizarding-equivalent to Hitler) and Jude Law’s young Albus Dumbledore. Rowling’s screenplay is one scene of exposition after another, with few instances of magic that actually feels magical, and David Yates’ direction is perfunctory in this, his sixth outing in the Potter-verse. Worst of all, very little has happened by the time the credits roll, and we can only hope that Rowling is holding back some truly juicy stories for the next three films that await.
Green Book
Green Book, directed by comedy veteran Peter Farrelly and written by Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga and Brian Hayes Currie, tells the true story of Nick’s father “Tony Lip” (Viggo Mortensen) taking a two month job as the driver for acclaimed pianist Dr. Donald Shirley (Mahershala Ali) on a tour through the Deep South in the 1960’s. The film plays as somewhat of a racially themed Planes, Trains and Automobiles, as the odd couple of a blue collar, racist Italian bouncer for the Copa gets to know the cultured and isolated black man he’s tasked with protecting. I’ve heard Green Book described as a feel-good film about racism, which is true in the film’s clunkiest moments (such as a traffic stop in the snow in the film’s last act), though I was surprised by the depth presented in the dynamic between the two men.
At first, Tony is shocked that Dr. Shirley doesn’t really know the music of “his people,“ like Aretha Franklin or Sam Cooke, or that he hasn’t had fried chicken. These are obviously judgments based on Dr. Shirley’s race, and Ali walks a fine line with a performance that reveals layers as time goes on. He’s portraying a man who doesn’t feel disgust for what is considered black American culture, but rather finds himself in the unique position of living in a no man’s land where he isn’t treated as white because of his skin color, and he’s not treated as black either simply because he’s lived a non-stereotypical life.
The filmmakers never really crack the code on this part of its story, in part because Tony is the main character of the film, and because the authors of this story are all white—something that can unconsciously warp the story’s perspective (though Nick Vallelonga did interview Dr. Shirley in his research). As a result, Green Book feels like a film out of time, something we might have seen 20 years ago, yet its finger is almost on the pulse of a more modern, nuanced story. Ali is terrific, as is Mortensen in a cartoon-ish performance he manages to ground despite a New York Italian accent and mannerisms that would have you think he was mainlining marinara during production. Their chemistry and emotional honesty make the film work as well as it does, and they make its flaws fade into the background enough to have a good time. Your mileage may vary as to whether or not this is exactly Green Book’s biggest problem.
Ralph Breaks the Internet
I missed the 2012 Walt Disney Animation Studios film Wreck-It Ralph, but upon recently catching up with the well-reviewed hit, I found it to be a charming and inventive tale set inside the world of arcade video games. Now, as once-lonely and frustrated game villain Ralph (John C. Reilly) has found peace with best friend and racing game star Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), his reality is upset when she suddenly wants more. Ralph’s own attempt to add more variety to Sugar Rush, Vanellope’s racing game, ultimately puts it in danger of being unplugged and sold for parts, so in a last ditch effort to save her game, Ralph and Vanellope venture into the internet through their arcade’s newly installed WiFi router.
Directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnson, the former a veteran of The Simpsons and Futurama, have crafted a sequel with more emotional punch and a sharper satiric wit than its predecessor. The screenplay—which is credited to Moore, Johnson, Pamela Ribon, Jim Reardon, and Josie Trinidad—wastes little time in establishing the new conflict for our protagonists, and once they arrive in the internet, the emotional stakes become clearer. Though Ralph and Vanellope seek to save Sugar Rush, she’s drawn to a Grand Theft Auto-styled game called Slaughter Race. Its trackless, high-speed, and dangerous races are suited to her mature driving skills. Ralph recognizes that as much as it would make Vanellope happy to join Slaughter Race, it would also mean an uncertain future for their friendship. As was the case in the first film, Ralph’s emotional insecurity leads to a lot of trouble for he and Vanellope, and the internet as a whole, as he makes all the wrong decisions for seemingly all the right reasons. Reilly once again imbues Ralph with a sweet kindness that shines through his brutish exterior and lack of foresight. It’s that well-meaning spirit that keeps his poor choices from feeling contrived. Silverman is equally charming and sympathetic as the thrill-seeking candy princess Vanellope, and her emotional journey in the film proves to be the most poignant as she longs for something more.
Such a yearning is traditional for Disney princesses, and that’s a concept mined for terrific gags in the film’s midsection, when Vanellope stumbles into a Disney fan site populated by everything from Marvel, Muppets, and Star Wars to every princess from Snow White to Moana. Ralph Breaks the Internet is as slyly self-deprecating as Disney has been since Enchanted in 2007, and the commentary here feels even more pointed. The Disney blog sequence is a microcosm of the film’s larger take on the internet—which is portrayed as a sprawling metropolis populated by avatars of real world people—providing a gently cutting look at online life that’s clever enough to feel like it will age well. As Disney Animation Studios has done with its most recent films, Ralph Breaks the Internet provides a family film that’s mature enough to work for all ages, and which doesn’t cut corners intellectually or emotionally. You won’t see Ralph stumble into a porn site or some neo-Nazi chat room, but winks at the web’s more adult corners are there, and for a Disney film that’s impressive. That Moore, Johnson and co. realize the whole of the internet in as honest a fashion as they do their characters’ personal journeys is ultimately pretty stunning, and I don’t think there’s anything better I can say about Ralph Breaks the Internet than that.
Shoplifters
When I left the theater after my screening of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2018 Palm d’Or winner Shoplifters, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the film. It tells the story of an unlikely family in Tokyo that has three generations under one roof, all of whom obviously care for one another, yet live morally questionable lives. The father regularly recruits his son to shoplift from grocery stores and newsstands, and one night he and his wife take home a young girl locked on her family’s patio. She’s quiet, hungry, and ignored. This act, a kind of compassionate kidnapping, sets the whole family off on a series of events that ultimately reveals their true dynamic.
Everything in Shoplifters works, from the filmmaking to the performances, and I don’t think I realized until now the amount of credit due to all involved—espcially Kore-eda—for crafting a film about such an unusual band of people that doesn’t make you question their actions much until deep into their story. And even then, as new information comes to light, you find yourself questioning who you should trust. David Sims, film critic for The Atlantic and co-host of my favorite podcast, Blank Check with Griffin and David, makes the most apt comparison I can think of by contextualizing Shoplifters as a modern Dickensian tale. In his piece he dives into the plot in-depth, but I’ll steal his point here that the father of the Shoplifters family is very much the Fagin, and thinking about this film in terms of a story like Oliver Twist adds depth to an already impressive film. This isn’t to say everyone will need help seeing what’s good about Shoplifters, but I don’t watch a lot of subtitled films, and I can take a bit longer to warm to them than others. Either way, if thoughtful familial drama amid economic strife is your cup of tea, Shoplifters will no doubt stay with you long after you view it.
Suspiria
Like Shoplifters, Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria is a film I didn’t have a clear read on after its screening, but for entirely different reasons. A re-imagining of Dario Argento’s classic horror film of the same name (which I haven’t seen), Suspiria focuses on a young American dancer (Dakota Johnson) in 1977 Berlin who joins a close-knit dance academy/troupe led by choreographer Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). Early in the film we see former dancer Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz) claim to Dr. Josef Klemperer (Swinton, in a dual role and convincing makeup) that the dance academy is actually a coven of witches, and from this moment on Klemperer investigates to find out where these delusions could have originated. But of course, this being a horror film, he finds a different truth.
Guadagnino, who directed last year’s Call Me By Your Name, moves the story along at a leisurely, though not boring, pace, letting the atmosphere pull you in as much as a desire for answers about the dancers’ true selves. Part of what left me dumbstruck after the film, which proves its genre bona fides in many gruesome and horrific sequences—beginning with a jaw-dropping mangling of a human body that will let you know what you’re in for later—is that its final chapter (the film is broken into multiple sections and an epilogue) goes so far into the realm of the abstract, mystical and bloody that I honestly didn’t follow the film’s themes from beginning to end. But I don’t blame the movie. As I understand it, the original Suspiria is a leaner film (98 minutes versus this film’s 152) and a more traditional horror picture. The ending of Guadagnino’s version upended my expectations and left me wondering where the hell it was taking me, and I mean that in as neutral a way as possible. It’s a film filled with excellent performances, terrific cinematography, an atmospheric score by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, and a rich amount of subtext that will require repeat viewings to fully grasp and appreciate. My only hang-up is that Suspiria is exactly the kind of film that I may never see again, because it is a twisted experience, at least compared to this horror agnostic’s usual intake.
And yet, thinking about it again, more than a month later, I’m drawn back to its mystery and layers that I didn’t fully untangle. I’m probably not Suspiria’s target audience, but it does bewitch in a way few films do.
Widows
Now this is how it’s done. Writer/director Steve McQueen and writer Gillian Anderson, of 12 Years a Slave and Gone Girl, respectively, deliver the smartest popcorn film of the year with Widows. The crime drama revolves around the wives of thieves whose last heist left them six feet under and $2 million in debt to the guys they were robbing. Viola Davis’ Veronica, widow to master thief Liam Neeson, takes his notebook, which contains detailed plans for another heist, and convinces two of the other widows to join her in pulling off the job to pay off the debt and free themselves from their own precarious situations.
Adapted from a British miniseries McQueen first saw in his adolescence, Widows is packed with phenomenal performances, dizzyingly canny direction, and a rich sense of time and place. Relocated to current day Chicago, the story finds Veronica caught up in a political rivalry between Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell) and Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), the former the next in line to a decades long Chicago political legacy, and the latter a crime boss who believes he can have and do more as the alderman of his ward. Of course, this being Chicago politics, the Mulligans aren’t squeaky clean, even if they’re legitimized, and Jack’s father (Robert Duvall) looms large as a Joseph Kennedy-esque figure who still has his own strong feelings despite his dwindling time in the spotlight. Further fleshing out the world of Widows is that the precinct the Mulligans preside over and from which Manning emerges is on the South Side. Neither party can claim to be on the straight and narrow, but Manning is truly from this neighborhood, as opposed to living in a large, gated home on its border. This contrast is demonstrated beautifully in one of the best single takes of the year, as Jack gets into his town car in a rougher part of the ward and proceeds to talk about Manning and his own insecurities as his black driver takes him to his mansion. The camera remains on the hood of the car the entire time, and we’re transported with Jack from one world to another in a matter of blocks. It’s the texture of the film’s political and societal backdrop captured in one unbroken take.
But the race is more a backdrop than it is the focus, and the women at the center of this story are oh so deserving of the attention. Viola Davis is excellent as usual, and Michelle Rodriguez gets a surprisingly touching role after years of two dimensional roles in the Fast and Furious franchise. The breakout of the cast is Elizabeth Debicki as perhaps the most mistreated of the widows. She, more than anyone else in the film, grows to take ownership of her life, though this is true to varying degrees for all three of the female leads, and Davis gets to play a surprising amount of vulnerability, too, despite her role here as steely leader. There really are no missed steps in this film, from Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya’s terrifyingly quiet and still enforcer to Veep actor Matt Walsh’s brief appearance as a security CEO, every piece of Widows feels like it serves the story to thrill, chill, or even make you laugh. It would be enough for this film to be a pulpy yarn, but McQueen and Flynn have crafted something that will keep you thinking as much as it'll keep you guessing.
The Front Runner
There’s a rich irony to one of this film’s earliest scenes in which Gary Hart, having just seen Walter Mondale officially become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 1984, tells a young staffer that they’ll be back in four years, and they’ll have an advantage. “You think the American people will vote for George Bush?“ Hart asks cockily. Yep. Two of them, in fact. The real irony wasn’t so much in that line, but in the fact that I saw Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner on the day of President George H. W. Bush’s funeral, and how not only did that man become president while Hart did not, but that the man currently in the White House is accused of so much more personal impropriety than just cheating on his wives.
A prying press, a philandering man, a woman caught in the crossfire, a marriage both public and private, and a debate over what really matters. Of course, comparing Gary Hart to Donald Trump is apples to oranges in ways that go beyond the latter’s complexion, but Hart’s story nonetheless is the perfect microcosm of our current political moment, and all that have preceded it, right back to ‘88. It’s so chock-full of worthwhile stories that The Front Runner feels like an abbreviated take on what demands a longer, deeper dive. At just under two hours, Reitman’s film neither breezes by nor drags, but it fails to settle into any one character’s story long enough to feel a true sense of perspective.
A two hour film could be made about any number of this story’s figures. The journalists who chased the “Monkey Business“ story; Lee Hart, the wife hurt yet not surprised by her husband’s actions; the political operatives who still believe in their candidate; the young woman taken with a smart senator who only wants to be seen as something more than a nice figure; and, of course, the candidate himself, who both displays personal failings and a deft understanding of the world’s issues, not to mention a position on privacy in public life that was already teetering on the edge of a cliff. Reitman shoots many scenes of the film in wandering long takes (I’ve heard the film called “Altman-esque“) that do a fine job of capturing these many moving pieces in any given scene or shot, but by the time the credits roll you’re left with a taste of everything and satisfaction from nothing.
Like Chappaquiddick earlier this year, The Front Runner is about a Democratic star in a moment of crisis. But where the Ted Kennedy picture was able to burrow deeply into a single moment and one man’s state of mind, Reitman’s film has too many interesting threads to only follow one. That The Front Runner lacks a singular argument to be made is irrelevant; it could make six contradictory arguments and the film would still feel more of a piece than it does now because this account of a three week campaign astonishingly touches on every element of what makes politics the three ring circus that it is today. It may sound crazy, but I wish we had the three hour, Godfather-style version of this story that allowed its huge cast of characters to breathe in their own corners of the narrative. It’s a shame that The Front Runner is as entertaining as it is without ever really building to something meaningful. The only lesson it teaches is that history repeats itself.
Gary Hart: perpetually on the cusp of something greater.
David Ehrlich’s The Best 25 Films of 2018
David Ehrlich—a film critic for IndieWire and a co-host of one of my favorite pop culture podcasts, Fighting in the War Room—is known in the online film community for his annual year in review videos that feature moments from not just his own picks for the best films of the year, but also from other notable releases, no matter how terrible they can sometimes be (as he would say himself). Ehrlich’s editing skills are accomplished, and his music choices are always on point. More and more this kind of video work is being recognized as its own art form; even as it uses others’ art to make something new, it still requires a deft touch to elicit an honest emotional reaction, and that’s what David Ehrlich excels at year after year with his video countdowns.
Spoiler warning: for those who haven’t seen Alex Garland’s Natalie Portman-starring sci-fi film Annihilation from earlier in the year, this video opens with some major moments from its climax (though you could probably still enjoy the mystery of the film despite this glimpse ahead).