This update has been a long time coming. I actually saw The Favourite, the first film reviewed below, the night that my last review round-up posted, so there’s quite a lot of ground to cover here. As with my last post, feel free to jump around to the reviews that most interest you. I imagine most folks reading this won’t see Mortal Engines or Welcome to Marwen, but my thoughts are here on why you should or should not all the same. For a few of the films about which I had more to say, I posted full reviews elsewhere, and have instead provided links after a brief blurb. This includes Glass, my first new film of 2019.
Before getting to the reviews (which are presented in the order I saw the films), I thought you’d enjoy seeing my list of favorite films of the year, as well as a breakdown of what I watched in 2018. Click here to get a nice visual presentation of it all. For the unfamiliar, I use Letterboxd, which is a sort of film social media platform, to log every film I watch, and I have nearly everything accounted for going back to August 2015. I don’t write reviews on the platform (which is why my stats will say 0 reviews in 2018), but I do log, rate and rank things all the time. Enjoy the deep dive into my year in film!
P.S. I still haven’t seen Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, so don’t take its absence here or in my best of list as a snub.
The Favourite
A black comedy set in 18th century Britain, The Favourite dramatizes the rivalry between Queen Anne’s close friend and advisor, Sarah Churchill, and Churchill’s cousin Abigail Hill. They jockey for attention, affection, and ultimately influence. Olivia Colman plays the queen as an aloof figure who wouldn’t be unwelcome on Veep, though behind her seeming inattentiveness is a tragic disillusionment with her role and the world. Rachel Weisz is devilishly good as Sarah, who functions as a kind of chief of staff for Anne, pulling the strings of power while comforting and insulting her queen in equal measure. Though real affection exists in their intimate relationship, the arrival of Emma Stone’s Abigail—whose family ruin has brought her ladder-climbing ambition to Sarah’s doorstep—puts Sarah on her heels, contending with someone eager to undermine her position, even if Abigail doesn’t fully understand what being the queen’s confidant entails. Rounding out the ensemble are Joe Alwyn as a suitor for Abigail, and Nicholas Hoult as an Earl eager to use Abigail to usurp Sarah’s influence on the Queen with his own. Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara’s script is filled with foul-mouthed anachronisms, especially from Hoult’s awful (and awfully entertaining) statesman, and an overall modern comedic sensibility that would feel out of place if not for the verbose wit they provide that does feel at home in the period genre. Filter all of that through director Yorgos Lanthimos’ singular style of continuous panning shots and fish eye lenses, and you’ve got a film that is a wholly original, wildly entertaining take on a staid and overplayed type of story.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
What seemed like an apparent cash-grab on the part of Sony Pictures—making an animated Spider-Man film to provide their own web of Spider-Films (and Spider-Revenue) outside of their deal for live-action Peter Parker in Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe—has actually resulted in the best animated film of 2018, the best Spider-man film since 2004’s Spider-Man 2, and the best, most original superhero film in many years. Read the Full Review
Bumblebee
A few years ago, Paramount Pictures took steps to start broadening the Transformers film series beyond the Michael Bay-directed installments (he has five under his belt since 2007). The notion of a spin-off focused on Bumblebee, the quasi-mute yellow Autobot, seemed less than thrilling; at least that was until Travis Knight—head of the stop-motion animation shop Laika—was hired to direct and Hailee Steinfeld was cast as the human lead. With those key players, and a heartfelt script by Christina Hodson, Bumblebee is easily the best Transformers movie, and one that hearkens back to sci-fi adventures like E.T. with its human dimensions given to the titular alien robot.
Set in 1987, Bumblebee requires no previous Transformers knowledge, and it acts as a soft reboot for the previous films. A brief prologue set on the Autobots’ home world of Cybertron sets up the conflict between our heroes and the evil Decepticons. The latter are bent on the former’s destruction, so Bumblebee is sent to Earth to establish a rebel outpost. He’s followed, and after a confrontation that leaves the military spooked and Bumblebee without a voice, or any memory of his origins, he ends up in a junkyard in the form of an old Volkswagen Beetle. That’s where he’s found by Charlie Watson (Steinfeld), an 18 year old girl still heartbroken over the death of her father years earlier.
From there you probably have an idea of where things go. There’s a bit of keeping secrets, trying to teach Bumblebee how life on Earth works, and, ultimately, Charlie and Bee healing each other’s wounds. Steinfeld is excellent, bringing incredible heart to a role that could so easily have felt rote, and she’s given a terrific scene partner in the animated Bumblebee. Knight’s background in animation shows as his effects team clearly knew how to wring every bit of emotion possible from a voiceless robot, not to mention making a metal face as expressive as the human characters’.
Whether you’ve given up on the Transformers films at this point, or just never cared to begin with, you would miss something special by skipping Bumblebee.
At Eternity’s Gate
Willem Dafoe is such an underutilized actor that it’s a treat to see him lead a film, doubly so when it’s about a figure like Vincent van Gogh. At Eternity’s Gate follows the painter’s final years as he struggled to find success and peace. Director Julian Schanbel gives much of the film a dreamlike atmosphere, though some of it is undercut by his handheld camerawork that, at times, is incredibly distracting when we’re just trying to observe the master at work. Nonetheless, Dafoe anchors the film with a terrific performance that bares van Gogh’s soul. I don’t know much about the real man, but Dafoe fully inhabits the life of a troubled, often misunderstood artist, and he’s always a thrill to watch. I can’t say Schnabel’s film is wholly engrossing, but I may not be its target audience, and there’s no doubt that the performance at its center is worth the price of admission alone.
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes
The world remembers Roger Ailes as the lecherous man who changed the news media and the Republican party, and, as one would expect from such an important legacy, his life story is fascinating. Director Alexis Bloom’s documentary pulls back the curtain on Ailes who, perhaps like no other figure in modern American politics, truly was the Man Behind the Curtain, in the Oz-ian sense. Interviews with colleagues, as well as archival sit downs with the man himself, paint a picture of a person paranoid about the state of his country, and eager to go to any means necessary to right the ship. If you’ve paid attention to politics the last several decades, it will come as no surprise that Roger Ailes played such an important role, but what might shock you is just how petty he could be; it’s a trait he shares with the last president he had a hand in crowning. Divide and Conquer is essential viewing for understanding one of the most significant figures in modern American history.
Anna and the Apocalypse
Anna and the Apocalypse is a British Christmas-time zombie apocalypse musical that feels fairly familiar, yet just singular enough to enjoy for those on its wave-length. Imagine if Edgar Wright’s zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead were adapted into an episode of Glee, and you’d be pretty spot on with this finished product. Anna pales in comparison to Wright’s film, but it’s scrappy charm is mostly undeniable, aided by passionate turns from Ella Hunt (as Anna) and Paul Kaye (as her tyrannical almost-headmaster). The story isn’t particularly special—Anna longs to get out of her little town and travel the world after school; her father disapproves and her best friend longs for something more with her; it’s all thrown into question when people start turning un-dead—but the execution is done with heart. This is the kind of production that works because everyone involved obviously cares so much about the project, and that creative spirit and enthusiasm go a long way.
Welcome to Marwen
Robert Zemeckis is a director who likes to take some big swings when studios let him, and boy is Welcome to Marwen just that. Adapted from a documentary, Marwen tells the story of Mark Hogancamp, a one-time World War II graphic artist who is left unable to draw and with no memory of his old life after a brutal attack. As a way to cope and continue his art, Mark stages and photographs scenes in the fictional WWII-era town of Marwen, a model built in his yard populated by dolls that represent him and the women in his life. A fair amount of the film is presented within the context of these vignettes, all representing some real-life difficulty Mark encounters, with the dolls acting out their scenes like characters in some Nazi-infested version of Toy Story.
Things begin to change when a friendly and curious neighbor, Nicol (Leslie Mann), moves in across the street. She forges a bond with Mark, and he quickly adds a doppelganger doll of her to Marwen, joining the other women. Throughout the film, Mark and Hogie (his “doll-pelganger”), are haunted by a special doll: the Belgian witch Deja Thoris. She is an extremely clunky representation of his depression—in Marwen she’s the force always keeping Hogie from love and happiness—and is just one problematic piece of this puzzle that never fits together. Mark’s idolization of the women in his life never feels right, though Carell manages to keep the character from feeling outright creepy (his performance really threads a needle here), and the resolution to the Deja Thoris Marwen plot is so ludicrous it must be seen to be believed. If you had asked me which film would ape Zemeckis’ own Back to the Future more—this one, or Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, in which the hero drives Doc Brown’s DeLorean—I would not have picked Marwen.
I can’t say I wasn’t entertained. Carell is terrific despite all that weighs the film down, and the effects are top notch. Zemeckis succeeds on a technical level with Welcome to Marwen, but this is one big swing that misses in almost every other way.
They Shall Not Grow Old
If you’ve ever wondered what a filmmaker like Ken Burns might do with the resources normally reserved for Hollywood blockbusters, you’ll get an answer with Peter Jackson’s terrific They Shall Not Grow Old. Jackson, the writer/producer/director best known for shepherding audiences there and back again to Middle-earth six times, was asked by the Imperial War Museums to put something together for the centennial of the armistice of World War I. Their edict was to use only their century-old footage of the war, and to do something original with it. Jackson landed on the idea of restoring the footage, which entailed not just cleaning up the images, but also adjusting the framerate (24 frames per second being the modern standard, the old footage was shot at varying lower speeds that would make the images appear to move faster than real life). The next step to really bring these images to life was to add sound, providing foley work like they would for any Hollywood production, and then finally adding color.
Combined with audio selections from BBC interviews with real WWI veterans, They Shall Not Grow Old provides an incredibly immersive, intimate look at the day-to-day lives of British soldiers fighting the war. Though none of the colorization looks as real as it would with modern filming equipment, there’s no denying that the sheer attention to detail to the color (right down to the different shades of brown, gray or green in the terrain) adds a level of specificity to everything presented onscreen. Jackson allows the real veterans themselves to tell their stories, but as they’re only present as voice-over, we never once leave the archival footage. From open to close, They Shall Not Grow Old puts you right in these men’s boots, and with a century of time having passed since they served, it’s incredible how vivid the film makes the experience without great dramatic flourishes.
They Shall Not Grow Old is a passion project for Jackson—he is a WWI buff and has relatives who served—and it will be a welcome sight for those who may have loved his Lord of the Rings, but felt tired by the end of his Hobbit. It’s also worthwhile to see this film in 3D. To colorize the film, the same process that would be applied to any other 2D source was used on this footage, and additional depth provided by the stellar 3D conversion is a stunning, immersive effect. Some special screenings of the film, like those organized by Fathom Events, are accompanied by a short documentary after the film in which Jackson walks the audience through the entire production process for the movie, and I think it’s nearly worth the price of admission itself.
Mary Poppins Returns
Don’t think of Mary Poppins Returns as a narrative evolution, think of it is a stylistic one. Like another British literary icon turned film hero, the one with a licence to kill, the charm in revisiting Mary Poppins isn’t in seeing what happens next as much as it is in how it all happens this time. Read the Full Review
Aquaman
At nearly two and a half hours, director James Wan’s epic undersea comic book adaption packs in just about everything you’d expect from an Aquaman movie, plus a whole lot more. It’s part Lord of the Rings, part Star Wars, part Superman, and even part Indiana Jones. Wan also specifically wanted the film to be the story of a mixed race child, which it is (Arthur Curry, the Aquaman, is Atlantian on his mother’s side, human on his father’s). The emotional throughline doesn’t get lost amidst the many, many scenes of exposition and action, though it isn’t quite strong enough to make the film a must see. Wan succeeds in taking Zack Snyder’s surfer bro version of Aquaman (then, as now, played by Jason Momoa) and melding him with the seemingly more ridiculous traditional character who talks to fish. On the whole, the film’s strength is that it’s big, silly world is rendered in a way that feels unhindered by studio meddling (something that can’t be said for most other DC comics films). It’s a zany, Saturday afternoon kind of adventure about a king going to war and being challenged by his reluctant, long lost brother. Everyone takes the silliness seriously, and Wan and company deliver a picture with enough panache to make up for its character shortcomings. Spending time with Aquaman turns out to be pretty fun, but it’s perhaps too shallow to linger.
Vice
I’m a big fan of Adam McKay’s The Big Short, the dramedy that captured the run up to the 2008 financial collapse. With that film, McKay and co-writer Charles Randolph were able to convey complex ideas with comedic asides and ultimately tell a cautionary tale about letting the powerful get away with figurative murder simply because nobody stopped to pay attention. With Vice, which McKay wrote and directed, he’s tackling a longer, and perhaps more important, stretch of history many folks may not have followed too closely: the career of former Vice President Dick Cheney. Covering his time hanging power lines in Wyoming to pushing for the second invasion of Iraq, Vice aims to paint an entirely unflattering portrait of Cheney based on as much of the truth as is available to the public. McKay succeeds in that goal, though I think he misses the mark on truly teaching his audience lessons they can carry forward.
Christian Bale is excellent as Cheney, and does lend him some welcome sympathetic depth at times, much of it born from the dynamic with his family, chiefly his wife Lynne (Amy Adams). Adams does a wonderful job portraying the steely woman behind the unfocused man who may be the sole reason Dick became the man he did. Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell are both well cast and entertaining as Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush, respectively, though some of their costars are given very little to work with, such as Tyler Perry as Colin Powell. McKay was wise to stack his cast with so many veteran comic actors, because like The Big Short, Vice is filled with fourth-wall breaking gags and vignettes meant to better convey to the audience some of the complex legal and military situations Cheney was playing with throughout his time in the halls of power. These asides don’t always land, such as a mid-credits scene that takes as much a jab at film goers as it does at voters. As with Vice’s other issues, the problem isn’t whether or not McKay is right, but how inelegantly he delivers the message. The film worked far more often than it didn’t for me, but it left me wanting more; if not a more sympathetic deconstruction of Cheney, at least an even deeper dive into how he did the things he did. McKay succeeds in getting your attention, he just doesn’t impart as much knowledge has he could have.
Mortal Engines
This film won’t be for most people. It’s yet another post-apocalyptic story adapted from a young adult series of novels, this time about how, after our advanced weapons decimated the Earth, we made our cities and towns mobile, so as to live above the land on enormous tank-dwellings. It’s an interesting enough premise, and the film actually gets a lot of humor out of the “artifacts“ of the old world. For example, a real archaeological find amidst the junk that gets dredged up from the ground is an almost fully intact toaster. It’s a kick to see this kind of science fiction fantasy world truly have a connection to the world we live in now, and overall the world of Mortal Engines looks and feels unique enough to stand on its own against the previous genre films of its kind.
Directed by Christian Rivers, a longtime storyboard artist for Peter Jackson, who here produces and co-wrote the script along with his Lord of the Rings collaborators Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens, this world is created with the filmmaking polish and attention to detail you would expect from the team behind Middle-earth’s cinematic adaptions, but unfortunately, Mortal Engines completely fails by comparison on a character level. The cast, led by Hera Hilmar and Hugo Weaving, does a fine job, but there is little after the first twenty minutes to provide enough spark and depth to the characters they play. After the first act, the film cruises on its good looks and intriguing (though not wholly engrossing) plot, and we’re left thankful that this steampunk epic is only two hours, and not closer to the Lord of the Rings’ three. I couldn’t tell when the credits rolled if there’s an extended, fully fleshed out version of this film that exists on a shelf somewhere—I can understand why Universal Pictures would prefer a shorter film if it already features no stars in a brand new property—or if at any length this project was always some kind of misfire. It’s disappointing, because what makes the film work as well as it can is the obvious affection for the source material from the filmmakers. Every interesting and oddball detail in the background of a scene was lovingly rendered by people who truly cared about this project, and the notion that it didn’t all come together, or that they won’t be able to keep playing in this world, is a bigger letdown than just being disappointed with the film itself.
On the Basis of Sex
After one very good encapsulation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s career last April, we have another in the form of a drama retelling her first case arguing against sex-based discrimination. On the Basis of Sex, written by Ginsburg’s nephew, Daniel Stiepleman, and directed by veteran of film and TV Mimi Leder, is an imperfect, and too often prosaic, attempt to look at this crucial turning point in Ginsburg’s life and career. Read the Full Review
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The Coen brothers have returned to the western after having done so well with 2010’s True Grit. Their latest, the Netflix film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an anthology based on a collection of short stories the brothers wrote over several years. The stories are filled with the kind of dark humor, bleak worldview, and occasionally over-the-top violence the Coens are known for, and though the stories are tonally inconsistent, they are each made with care and an attention to their respective atmospheres. It’s a wonderful collection of stories that’s not at all for the faint of heart. Read the Full Review
Glass
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest is a sequel to his 2000 film Unbreakable and his 2016 film Split. Glass has taken a beating from critics, with many calling it boring. Compared to an Avengers-sized extravaganza, there’s no doubt that this film is simple in its execution. It’s really a character study, and it’s a pleasure to see Shyamalan return to this story when it’s more relevant than ever. Read the Full Review