My Top 10 Movies of 2018

Helllo everyone and welcome to the ranking of my top 10 movies of 2018. With this said I want to point that this ranking was made according to my own list, independently of the reviews I made. So a 5 star movies does not automatically qualify for a high ranking. I made this list which includes the movies I remember most.

But first some honorable mentions. In 2018 there were 416 movies, I watched 353 and these are the ones which are not included in my very own top 10.

Widows was a brilliantly realized crime drama and feminist thriller with a spectacular lead performance by Viola Davis, but its ending didn’t resonate as it should have. Damien Chazelle’s First Man went the opposite way, building rather slowly from a prosaic beginning to a final half-hour - the recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing - that was majestic, breathtaking and profound in a way we haven’t seen since Kubrick’s 2001.

On the other hand, Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer took a rather straightforward noir script and elevated it through a devastating performance by an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman. To counter that film’s almost too bleak scenario, I would suggest Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a charming and moving documentary about how Fred Rogers worked tirelessly to teach our children well. Also deserving respect and praise: Private Life (Kathryn Hahn has never been better), BlacKkKlansman, Foxtrot, Black Panther, If Beale Street Could Talk, Paddington 2, We the Animals, and The Wife.

10. A Star Is Born

After three previous versions, who would think that a fourth telling could offer anything fresh from this story? And yet, Bradley Cooper found a way to inject thrumming new life into the tale of a musician on the decline (Cooper) finding love with the new star he mentors (Lady Gaga), all while failing to escape his own self-destructive impulses.
Directing for the first time, Cooper captures the life of a touring rock musician almost perfectly and delivers another in a string of excellent performances. Meanwhile, in her first lead in a major motion picture, Gaga brings humanity, warmth and a kind of curdling innocence to the part of the reluctant yet forceful Ally (a nod must also go to the truly great Sam Elliott as Cooper’s loyal but no-bullshit brother). Cooper and Gaga’s chemistry is fabulous, and if the script seems to skate rather quickly over Ally’s rise to fame, it makes up for it with sheer energy and emotion.

 9. Annihilation


As with the horror genre, science fiction cinema has taken a sharp step up in terms of quality, intelligence and meaning - getting away from simple battles in space with monsters and tackling bigger themes through both original work and surprising adaptations. Director and screenwriter Alex Garland has now done both: His Ex Machina was one of the best films of 2015, and now he’s back on the list with his version of Jeff VanderMeer’s genuinely eerie and thought-provoking novel.

Natalie Portman leads a team of five women who venture into a mysterious, expanding zone of mutating wildlife and bizarrely evolving landscapes, only to find that change will occur whether we want it or not. While freely diverging from the text, the movie is faithful to the book’s surreal tone and ambiguous nature, making Annihilation a challenging, bracing, and ultimately mind-bending experience - which is what we should want from all our sci-fi movies.

8. Can You Ever Forgive Me?

One thing that many of the films on this list have in common is that they are centered around one or two singularly great performances, a trend that continues in this sardonic, bittersweet and yet affecting adaptation of Lee Israel’s 2008 memoir of the same name. As played by Melissa McCarthy in a revelatory performance, Israel is a misanthropic writer of celebrity biographies whose livelihood is drying up - until she begins forging and selling letters from deceased writers and actors. She is joined in her scheme by a dissolute raconteur (Richard E. Grant), but their friendship is rickety from the start.

McCarthy’s talent has always been evident even in her most ill-fated comedies, but she takes things to a whole other level here with a complex performance that somehow makes you empathize with a pretty unpleasant person. Grant is fantastic as well, sad and hilarious at the same time. Director Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl) also turns the film itself into a love letter to a now nearly vanished literary New York a place where Lee never quite fit in, as much as she wanted to.

7. Leave No Trace

It’s been eight long years since writer-director Debra Granik last wowed us with the riveting Winter’s Bone (which put Jennifer Lawrence on the map), and it’s with great delight that we can say her latest feature, Leave No Trace, exits 2018 as one of the year’s finest films. A sensitive portrayal of the profound but ultimately untenable bond between a deeply troubled veteran (Ben Foster) and his loving daughter (Thomasin McKenzie), Granik’s low-key approach makes what could have become an overwrought melodrama into one of the year’s more moving studies of PTSD and familial love.

Foster and McKenzie are downright brilliant as Will and his daughter Tom, who live in near total isolation in a remote area of an Oregon park until they are discovered and sent into social services. Despite many well-intentioned attempts to help them find a “normal” life, one of them must eventually make an agonizing decision. A compassionate, humanistic and powerful film.

6. A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place is a 2018 American post-apocalyptic horror film directed by John Krasinski, who wrote the screenplay with Bryan Woods and Scott Beck. The film stars Krasinski, alongside Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe. The plot revolves around a family facing struggles in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by blind monsters with an acute sense of hearing.  

The movie is dramatic, fantastic, and the love between the parents and the kids can be felt in every second of the movie. A horror movie, which has way more elements that I still remember most of the scences. Fantastic.

5. Free Solo

A film that’s mere existence becomes a fascination unto itself, Free Solo is a remarkable achievement for subject and storyteller alike, which in this case refers to Alex Honnold, the young man who holds the record for climbing the tallest vertical surface ever without a rope, and the moviemakers who dared to hang just out of his reach with cameras. A deceptively complex narrative about human endurance and the drive to actualize one’s dream, directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi are forced to place themselves into their own film as they discuss the ethical limitations of recording a dream with life-or-death stakes… and whether they should finish it if death actually enters into the equation (especially if their presence factors in).
A tense exercise in the morality of moviemaking, as well as a compelling story of a man who is only most alive when he could actually die at any moment, Free Solo captivates from beginning to end. And it’s dizzying height is reached in no small part due to the rock solid foothold discovered in the quiet love story between Alex and Sanni Mccandless, an infinitely patient woman who must come to terms with the knowledge that time and again, Alex will pick the mountain over her, just as he must come to accept ascending to the top only matters if there is someone to call afterward. There is, and for anyone lucky enough to see it on a big screen, they’ll never forget what he has to say. I love this movie because of the passion and most of all because of the landscape NG is puting in there.

4. Love Simon

Everyone deserves a great love story. But for 17-year-old Simon Spier it's a little more complicated: he's yet to tell his family or friends he's gay and he doesn't know the identity of the anonymous classmate he's fallen for online.

Such a beautiful story of love and acceptance! After watching this I love Simon, his family and friends. Love conquers all. Everyone should see it!

Well-acted, this adaptation of the YA novel chooses mostly correct paths through its simple telling of Simon's story. Shedding no new light on the coming out narrative, it does, however, offer a freshness in the way it presents acceptance, particularly within the family unit. Aiming for the centre, it judges its ripple effect well so as to embrace the majority of viewers without ostracisation and in doing so manages to not alienate or patronise the audience for whom the story connects the most.

  

3. Roma

It truly is a brave new world when Netflix releases the most exquisitely shot and breathlessly cinematic project of its calendar year. As the 2018 picture destined to be dissected and scrutinized in the halls of film school, Alfonso Caurón’s Roma is a wistful ode to his childhood that has the masterstroke of avoiding the urge to make his younger avatar the protagonist. Rather that duty, like so many others, falls to Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) the unsung and often unseen housecleaner and caretaker of an upper-middle class home in 1970s Mexico City.

An obvious tribute to the women who’s pain and suffering are usually a footnote in the fuzzier memories of those they thanklessly shaped, Roma is Caurón’s most personal film, which is marked by the fact that he, and not Emmanuel Lubezki, was cinematographer. And that photography is quite stunning, indeed. With the intimacy of a François Truffaut reverie and the sweep of a David Lean epic, the film takes over two hours to bring audiences to tears, but for those who surrender to its hypnotic thrall, it most definitely will. Finally the unseen has been made visible in this celluloid monument that is as irresistible as the rolling of the surf.

2. Hereditary

In this modern renaissance of thinking people’s horror movies, no indie studio is making us think more than A24. In that vein, writer-director Ari Aster knocks it out of the park with his feature debut in this vaguely perverse nightmare. A film derived from dread and the often overlooked storytelling tools that made Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist endure in our haunted subconscious beyond their mere red eyes and green plea soup, Hereditary is both a throwback and something original. Showcasing the slow descent into madness and despair of a family with an already tragic history, the film cheerfully muddies the water between supernatural and psychological terror, suggesting they’re one in the same.

Hereditary would be on this list no matter what, yet the reason you’ll be thinking about it for years to come is the tour de force performance by Toni Collette. Personifying the messy overlap of trauma, guilt, self-loathing, and maybe even the insidious notion of complicity acting as a connective tissue, it is a devilishly layered turn that leaves no one, onscreen or off, feeling clean. Plus, for our money, this movie has the most unforgettable shot composition of 2018, albeit once witnessed, you’re just as likely to wish your eyes had never been so scarred.

1. Sorry To Bother You

Film criticism too often relies on the claim “you haven’t seen anything like this before,” but that would be putting it mildly in the case of Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. Rushing onto the cinematic scene with more creativity and ambition in his debut than many directors can tease in a lifetime, Riley announces himself to film culture with a defiant and deafening mic drop. Sorry to Bother You is not only an original vision, but something even rarer in its industry: an actual subversive manifesto.

Merging magical realism with a joy for balancing multiple allegorical conceits, Sorry to Bother You is a pro-union, anti-capitalist, and fanged deconstruction of the corporate-labor-media triptych that grinds most Americans in their everyday life into dust. It is also funny, insightful, and features a fantastic leading man turn by Lakeith Stanfield. Armie Hammer similarly dominates in perhaps his finest work to date as the devil made white CEO-bro flesh. It follows Stanfield’s success as a telemarketer after adopting a white voice (an honest to God alabaster cadence, compliments of David Cross’ vocals), even as his Cassius Green becomes a scab during a union strike in the process. With a humor sharper than most comedies, and a Grand Guignol edge that can be more shocking than any horror, there simply isn’t anything else like Sorry to Bother You out there.

This is it. My Top 10 movies of 2018 and do not forget, that it is only my oppinion, it does not have to match you taste.
Thanks for a great year in 2018 and see you in 2019. WIsh you all a very happy new year.

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Aquaman (2018) - Film Review

Aquaman (2018)

Cast

• Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry / Aquaman
• Amber Heard as Mera
• Willem Dafoe as Nuidis Vulko
• Patrick Wilson as Orm Marius / Ocean Master
• Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus
• Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as David Kane / Black Manta
• Nicole Kidman as Queen Atlanna
• Temuera Morrison as Thomas Curry
• Ludi Lin as Murk
• Graham McTavish as King Atlan
• Djimon Hounsou as The Fisherman King
• Natalia Safran as Fisherman Queen
• Michael Beach as Jesse Kane
• Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin

Writer

• Will Beall
• David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
• Will Beall

Writer (Aquaman created by)

• Mort Weisinger
• Paul Norris

Writer (story by)

• Geoff Johns
• James Wan
• Will Beall

Cinematographer

• Don Burgess

Editor

• Kirk M. Morri

Composer

• Rupert Gregson-Williams

Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction

Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.

 

144 minutes

 

 

Whenever anybody asks me what “Aquaman” is like, I mention an early scene where opposing Atlantean forces square off and debate the kingdom’s future. One side rides armored seahorses that whinny. The other rides armored sharks that roar. "Aquaman" is as concerned with scientific accuracy as “SpongeBob Squarepants.” And that’s one of many reasons why I like it. 

It takes skill to be as ridiculous as this movie about a half-human, half-Atlantean prince who’s known on land as Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) without seeming to condescend to the material. Directed by James Wan (“Saw,” “The Conjuring”), it’s part of a thriving subcategory of superhero movies, also represented by “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Venom” and both “Ant-Man” pictures—sweet, goofy, at times psychedelically weird films that mostly reject the sour gloom that gets mistaken for maturity. But that’s not to say that those movies aren’t serious in their own way. “Aquaman,” in particular, feels simultaneously like a spoof and an operatic melodrama. Any film that can combine those modes is a force to be reckoned with. 

Aquaman made his DC Expanded Universe debut in “Batman vs. Superman” and was part of the ensemble in “Justice League,” but this is the first movie that’s put him front-and-center. The results are enjoyable enough that you may wish Warner Bros. had done it sooner. While it’s not billed as such, this is an origin story, positioning Arthur as a reluctant hero. As concieved by screenwriters David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, adapting Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris’ source, Arthur is a mixed-species character who feels alienated from both of the civilizations he embodies. He's the offspring of union between a lighthouse keeper named Tom Curry (Temura Morrison) and a stranded Atlantean named Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) whom Tom nursed back to health. Atlanna then returned to the sea and was put to death for the sin of birthing a half-human child. 

Arthur has long hair and tattoos, a knack for wisecracks and a fondness for beer, and just wants to be left alone. He rejects allegiance to land or sea, but eventually succumbs to prodding by the idealistic Atlantean Mera (Amber Heard) and becomes a uniter at a time when radical forces, led by Arthur’s treacherous half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), want to destroy the land-dwellers as revenge for polluting and militarizing the ocean. Arthur is one of those Joseph Campbell-certified, Fated-for-Great-Things heroes, thus the mythically resonant first name. He even has the equivalent of the moment where the future King Arthur pulls the sword from the stone.

The movie is overlong and a bit repetitious (as big-budget superhero films tend to be), and its second half is more distinctive than its first because it lets its freak flag fly. But Wan and company mostly do a brilliant job of shaking the algae from cliches. Rather than get bogged down in plot particulars, they concentrate on characterization and performances, production design, costumes, and visual details. 

Every frame has marvelous details that you might not catch on first viewing. The Atlanteans use their mouths to speak, but there are no visible bubbles, only vocal distortion that suggests "bubbly-ness." When the characters aren’t swimming at dolphin speeds, they square off against each other as if they’re standing on a sidewalk on land, bobbing ever-so-slightly. The water dwellers have lighting that's supplied by luminous deep-sea creatures and high technology that’s inspired by aquatic animals and plants. Some of the battle armor features oversized crab and lobster claws. In one scene, Mera wears a dress with a collar made of glowing jellyfish and a multicolored seagrass skirt. In an arena sequence, we hear taiko drumming on the soundtrack, and the camera moves to reveal a lone percussionist: a giant octopus. 

The fight sequences use high-speed, 360-degree camerawork to create surprise and delight, rather than to add superfluous hype. We’re constantly surprised by where movements start and end, and there are multiple slapstick jokes woven into each encounter. "Aquaman" embraces the childlike absurdity of armored Atlantean troopers coming up onto the land and martial arts-fighting their enemies in broad daylight, presenting the mayhem as plainly as a kung fu showdown in a schlock fantasy like “Infra-man” or TV’s “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.” Rather than cross-cut between multiple lines of action, the camera sometimes swims or flies from one location to another and back again—most spectacularly in a chase-and-fight sequence set in a Sicilian seaside town, where combatants smash through the walls of cliffside homes and scramble across tiled rooftops. 

Momoa anchors the film, imbuing the big guy with surly charm, like one of those early Marlon Brando characters who was a jerk most of the time, but so magnetic and wounded that you couldn’t help but care about him. The rest of the cast is just as committed, notably Kidman as Atlanna, who carries on as if she’s playing the lead in an ancient Greek tragedy; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as David Kane, aka Black Manta, a pirate who swears revenge on the hero; and Willem Dafoe as Atlantis’ counselor Vulko, who advises caution and reason to no avail, and who’s like a second (aquatic) father to Arthur. 

The most remarkable aspect, though, is the way "Aquaman" pushes against the idea that every problem can be solved by violence. There are plenty of bruising fights on land and sea, plus laser shootouts and aquatic infantry clashes, but some of the most important showdowns are resolved peacefully, through conversation, negotiation, and forgiveness. Men as well as women cry in this movie, and the sight is treated not as a shameful loss of dignity, but as the normal byproduct of pain or joy. For all its wild spectacle and cartoon cleverness, this is a quietly subversive movie, and an evolutionary step forward for the genre. 

 

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Mary Poppins Returns (2018) - Film Review

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Cast

• Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins
• Lin-Manuel Miranda as Jack
• Ben Whishaw as Michael Banks
• Emily Mortimer as Jane Banks
• Pixie Davies as Anabel Banks
• Nathanael Saleh as John Banks
• Joel Dawson as Georgie Banks
• Julie Walters as Ellen
• Meryl Streep as Topsy
• Colin Firth as William Weatherall Wilkins
• Dick Van Dyke as Mr. Dawes Jr.
• Angela Lansbury as Balloon Lady

Director

• Rob Marshall

Writer (based upon the "Mary Poppins" stories by)

• P.L. Travers

Writer (screen story by)

• David Magee
• Rob Marshall
• John DeLuca

Cinematographer

• Dion Beebe

Editor

• Wyatt Smith

Composer

• Marc Shaiman

Family, Fantasy, Music

Rated PG for some mild thematic elements and brief action.

131 minutes

 

 

I don’t envy the filmmaker remaking or creating a sequel to a beloved classic children’s story. Yet numerous directors and stars are lining up for this latest craze, and especially the people over at Disney. Starting with “Alice in Wonderland,” the studio has been raiding its vaults to tap into its audience’s entrenched nostalgia, offering familiar characters and storylines in a spate of live-action remakes (“Cinderella” and “Beauty and the Beast”), sequels (“Christopher Robin”) and spinoffs (“Maleficent”) that have been met with mixed reactions.

The latest movie to join the revisited ranks is Rob Marshall’s sequel to one of the most recognized musicals in the Disney canon, “Mary Poppins.” The bar for this project is pretty high, since Marshall has to both entice newcomers and win over ardent fans with a loyalty to the Sherman Brothers’ catchy songs, memorable performances from Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke and a heartwarming story of how one stern-faced nanny reunites a family. 

Unfortunately, “Mary Poppins Returns” falls quite short of being practically perfect in every way. The cast puts on a good show, but very little can be done to salvage the forgettable numbers by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and dance routines that already look dated. A handful of colorfully charming scenes liven up the movie’s dull events, but its copycat story arc isn’t strong enough to stand apart from the original. 

Back in the magical world of Mary Poppins’ England, things are bleak. A post-war fog has settled in 1930’s London, threatening the Banks’ family home unless they can find the MacGuffin—sorry, I meant proof that the dearly departed old man Banks left behind enough shares in company stock to cover the cost of the mortgage and save their house from foreclosure. The now grown Banks children Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane (Emily Mortimer) look through the attic, desks and shelves, digging up old childhood relics like their broken kite with their mother’s “Votes for Women” sash, but no form to save their home. Michael’s oily boss (Colin Firth) at his dad’s old bank extends the family’s deadline to come up with the receipt or they will finally lose the home. His three children—Anabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael Saleh) and Georgie (Joel Dawson)—try to help or cheer up Michael since the family is still reeling from the death of their mother that year. Unfortunately, there’s only so much children can do in these grown-up matters.

Just as the Banks family is once again in chaos, who should arrive but the sharp and resourceful Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt)? She invites herself in, much like she does in the original, and brightens the children's day while also hiding their adventures from their beleaguered dad. Her Bert-like friend, Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda), is part of an army of lamplighters called leeries who have seemingly taken the place of chimney sweepers in this economy. This time, the charismatic city worker doesn’t have a fondness for Mary (not in that way, it seems) but for the spirited activist in the family, Jane. Jack sometimes joins Mary and the three Banks children on a few tangential adventures before the family’s deadline for their home arrives and bad news is imminent.

The movie is a bit of a mixed bag from the get-go, with a wide-eyed Miranda singing a tune that’s not quite in his range and with an accent that doesn’t fully stick. However, he has enough energy to power through numbers that better suit his strengths. Blunt riffs on Mary Poppins by giving her some extra pep, a fresher wardrobe and an all-knowing sly smile that Michael and Jane always seem to miss. She’s delightful to watch, and her version of Poppins seems to take pleasure in throwing the children into magical situations.

Blunt and Miranda share the highlight of “Mary Poppins Returns,” a set of animated musical numbers with talking animals reminiscent of the “Jolly Holliday” sequence in the original, “The Royal Doulton Music Hall” and “A Cover is Not a Book.” Along with the three Banks children, the group travels into an animated world set on the side of a ceramic vase the kids accidentally chipped. Everyone’s costumes look more like drawings, and the movie takes on bright, bold colors missing from live-action London. The sequence feels at once singular yet clearly an homage to the original, and it’s enchanting to see it work—until it doesn’t. 

Sticking too close to the footsteps of the original has its own pitfalls, as evidenced by the “Trip a Little Light Fantastic” number. On their way home from a disappointing trip to the bank, Mary and the three children find themselves lost and in need of help from Jack and his streetlighting friends. They assemble for what’s supposed to be a rousing number in the spirit of “Step in Time” but ultimately falls flat. Marshall, who also co-choreographed routines with Joey Pizzi, John DeLuca, Tara Nicole Hughes and Marlon Pelayo, layers in too much for spectacle and ends up with a Baz Luhrmann-size hodgepodge of contemporary dance, parkour and BMX bike tricks that feels like it was choreographed in the last decade. The scene's steps reference everything from “An American in Paris” to “Silk Stockings” to the “Step Up” movies, but it is so messily shot that our characters get lost in the shuffle.

For someone who learned every word to "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" thanks to old Disney sing-a-long tapes, perhaps any return of Mary Poppins would never measure up to the original. If anything, watching “Mary Poppins Returns” works best if the 1964 movie is a distant memory or something you just never got around to. There’s almost a parallel equivalent in the new movie for everything in the original, which makes me wonder, why not just stick with the original? For instance, the original had a character called Uncle Albert (Ed Wynn) for a one-off number, “I Love to Laugh.” The new movie features a character named Cousin Topsy (Meryl Streep) for a lukewarm number among many props called “Turning Turtle.” Not quite the catchiest title, but then again, none of the songs take off on their own. Although “Mary Poppins Returns” plays with a fan’s nostalgia with a few Easter eggs and cameos from Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury, there’s a feeling that something is missing beyond an appearance from Andrews. “Returns” is neither really new or familiar, but an odd knockoff that will work for some audiences and leave others craving a rewatch of an old favorite.

 

 

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Mortal Engines (2018) - Film Review

Mortal Engines (2018)

Cast

Hera Hilmar as Hester Shaw
Robert Sheehan as Tom Natsworthy
Hugo Weaving as Thaddeus Valentine
Jihae as Anna Fang
Ronan Raftery as Bevis Pod
Leila George as Katherine Valentine
Patrick Malahide as Magnus Crome
Stephen Lang as Shrike

Director

Christian Rivers

Writer (based on the book by)

Philip Reeve

Writer

Fran Walsh

Writer

Philippa Boyens
Peter Jackson

Cinematographer

Simon Raby

Editor

Amy Hubbard
Liz Mullane

Composer

Junkie XL

Science Fiction

Rated PG-13 for sequences of futuristic violence and action.
128 minutes

How did this truly crummy movie get made? I have a theory. Co-producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who once upon a time could put together a motion picture that was engaging, coherent, entertaining, and even genuinely dazzling, looked at a bag of money that Universal and sundry other sources of capital left on their table and asked themselves, “Can we whiff as badly as the Wachowskis did with ‘Jupiter Ascending,’ only leaving out the fun pansexual campy parts?” And the answer is, absolutely!

Co-written by Jackson and Walsh (you may remember their “Heavenly Creatures” and a couple of Tolkien adaptations) with frequent collaborator Philippa Boyens, from a sorta-I-guess-must-have-been YA novel (it was published by Scholastic in the States, I see) by Phillip Reeve, “Mortal Engines” begins with the usual voiceover informing us how “that Ancients” destroyed Earth’s civilization in “only 60 minutes,” using bad and terrible weapons technology, and how now the world itself is unmoored, as predator cities scavenge the globe for what’s left of its resources. 

How this translates into visual terms is that whole, or at least partial, world cities now are mobile, going around on giant tank treads. How this engineering feat was achieved is not addressed. Anyway, London, which we still largely think of as genteel, is hauling ass and hunkering down on a much smaller “Romanian mining town,” hoping to steal its salt. On that town is Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar), a teenage girl looking to take revenge on London’s power engineer (or something) Thaddeus Valentine for killing her mom. London’s own Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan), a young historian building up a collection of “the Ancients’” weaponry (the Ancients, in case you’re missing it, were us) the better to dispose of it so as to study war no more, is initially a Thaddeus fan. But once Tom gets too close to Hester’s secret, down London’s garbage chute he goes, the better to find love and adventure with the feisty, reticent Hester. This move, among other things, allows Thaddeus access to the weapons storehouse, which will abet him in constructing a Brand New Superweapon. 

As for Hester, does she have much to be reticent about. In her orphaned girlhood she was adopted by a member of something called “The Lazarus Brigade,” undead robots with high-level superpowers who always get what they want. Her adoptee, Shrike, played by Stephen Lang with a substantial overlay of CGI, was touched by her promise that she would allow him to turn her into a similar robot (because it sounds like such a great deal, right?). But Hester reneged to seek revenge on Thaddeus, and Shrike went apeshit, or whatever the equivalent of apeshit is for super-powered undead robots. The better to keep Hester at bay, Thaddeus frees the very insistent and very destructive Shrike from a floating prison and off he goes to collect on her promise. He destroys so much in his path it’s a wonder that Hester’s many newfound friends even keep her around, but lucky they do, because, surprise, she holds the key to dismantling Thaddeus’ super weapon. The storyline is just packed with surprising plot developments like that. 

Said story’s various components are introduced so haphazardly they can’t help but elicit titters, but even if brought into the picture differently, Shrike, intended as a poignant reminder of What It Is To Be Human, is a terrible idea terribly executed. I know Lang has probably been cooling his heels Down Under waiting for the “Avatar” sequels to start shooting long enough that he’s gotten antsy, but I wish he’d found a better way to waste his time. Even by the lower standards of kids’ stuff, this movie is laughably portentous and kitschy, and gets progressively worse, what with the heavy-handed introduction of the ethnically diverse rebel flyer team and the Dalai Lama lookalike leader of the Asian territory Thaddeus intends to bulldoze. 

But it looks great, right? Not really. Directed by Christian Rivers, a longtime art director for Jackson, the overall look asks the question, “are you sick of Steampunk yet,” and for me, yeah. Never mind that the whole concept of the movie is like someone decided to take Terry Gilliam’s “The Crimson Permanent Assurance” way more seriously than it was ever intended. I did like the near-cavernous tread tracks that Hester and Tom had to run around in on their Way to Love.  

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Once Upon a Deadpool (2018) - Film Review

Once Upon a Deadpool (2018)

Cast

• Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson / Deadpool / Juggernaut (voice) / Himself
• Fred Savage as Fred Savage
• Josh Brolin as Nathan Summers / Cable
• Zazie Beetz as Neena Thurman / Domino
• Julian Dennison as Russell Collins / Firefist
• Morena Baccarin as Vanessa
• Stefan Kapičić as Colossus (voice)
• Brianna Hildebrand as Ellie Phimister / Negasonic Teenage Warhead
• Rob Delaney as Peter

Director

• David Leitch

Writer

• Rhett Reese
• Paul Wernick
• Ryan Reynolds

Action, Comedy

Rated PG-13

117 minutes

 

 

 

Once upon a time, the producers of a little film called “Saturday Night Fever” realized that even though it was making tons of money, its "R" rating meant that those poor unfortunate souls who lacked a fake ID, older sibling, permissive parent or a multiplex with lax security were unable to fork over their hard-earned money to see John Travolta strut his stuff. Unwilling to live in such a world, they gallantly recut a new version of the film that removed enough of the fouler language and dicier thematic elements. Although that version of the film is all but impossible to see today, it served its purpose for both younger viewers and studio accountants.


Now, more than four decades later, the makers of “Deadpool 2” have elected to do the same by taking their decidedly R-rated enterprise and recutting it enough to land a PG-13 rating for a brief theatrical reissue just in time for the holidays, now billed as “Once Upon a Deadpool.” This time around, the reasons behind such a seemingly baffling decision—isn’t the whole appeal of the “Deadpool” movies based on the fact that they are unapologetically violent and potty-mouthed?—are a little more complex. Ostensibly, it is being pushed as a charity thing with Fox donating $1 of every ticket sale to the F--- Cancer organization, which, in keeping with the gimmick, has been temporarily renamed Fudge Cancer. That said, there are crasser business concerns at hand as well. With the last-minute bumping of the sci-fi epic “Alita: Battle Angel” from its holiday berth to next February, Fox had a hole in its schedule that such an endeavor could quickly and cheaply fill. Additionally, with the impending purchase of Fox by Disney, such a project could be seen as a test-run for the potential viability of a more family-friendly version of Deadpool without risking too much on such a gamble. 


To give all involved a little credit, the result is not just a heavily redacted version of the film that will be playing around the clock on basic cable in a couple of years. A new framework has been added to the mix in the form of an extended homage to the wraparound for “The Princess Bride” in which Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) sits at the bedside of Fred Savage (Fred Savage) in order to read the story to him. (Okay, technically, Deadpool seems to have kidnapped Savage, but never mind.) After explaining the premise and then immediately trying to see just how far they can push the limits of the new rating (as they demonstrate, sometimes judicious bleeping can make a scene sound much filthier than it actually is), it then plunges into the film proper, albeit without the blood or the swearing, in some cases by using what appears to be alternate versions of scenes and in other cases by dropping scenes entirely. 


The results, perhaps not surprisingly, are somewhat mixed. On the one hand, the cutaways to Deadpool and Savage are pretty funny as the two riff on everything from the impending Disney-Fox merger, the way that the films sometimes using the snark factor to cover up lazy writing, and the fact that Savage no longer minds the kissing parts of stories that much anymore. On the other hand, the film itself—I assume no detailed description of it is required here—is still kind of dumb, though its freewheeling weirdness plays a little better than it did in the original. At the same time, if you are a parent who has not allowed your kids to see “Deadpool 2” yet in order to avoid exposing them to such crude and violent material, be advised that even this iteration is insanely inappropriate for the little ones (though I suspect that between DVD, cable and the Internet, kids with any interest in seeing it have probably already done so by now).


Is it worth the bother? I dunno. Those not on the Deadpool bandwagon already will probably not be converted by this version and those who are fans may find it to be a vaguely interesting curio they'll watch once. Yes, there is the charity aspect to consider, but instead of buying a ticket and having a dollar of it donated to Fudge Cancer, you could just as easily donate the full ticket price to the organization and skip the movie altogether. But if you do end up seeing “Once Upon a Deadpool,” be sure to stay through all of the end credits.

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D (2017) - Film Review

Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D (2017)

Cast

Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator
Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor
Edward Furlong as John Connor
Robert Patrick as T-1000
Earl Boen as Dr. Silberman
Joe Morton as Miles Dyson
S. Epatha Merkerson as Tarissa Dyson
Castulo Guerra as Enrique Salceda

Director

James Cameron

Writer

James Cameron
William Wisher

Cinematographer

Adam Greenberg

Editor

Conrad Buff
Dody Dorn
Mark Goldblatt
Richard A. Harris

Action, Science Fiction

Rated R for strong sci-fi action and violence, and for language.
137 minutes

While "The Terminator" was a great horror film, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is a great action film. While "The Terminator" was about the horror of an unstoppable harbinger of a technologically-advanced but soul-dead present, "Terminator 2" is, like so many action films before it, a paradoxically violent screed against violence. The film's reactionary politics are essentially dated, though there are several modern fanatics who embody the paranoiac impulses that compel self-styled freedom fighter Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) to fight against mental institutions, the police, and common sense to stop artificially-intelligent computer system Skynet from obliterating humanity in a nuclear war. 

But it's important to note that Sarah is not the heroine of "Terminator 2" as she was in "The Terminator," but rather a supporting character who helps raise both estranged son John (Edward Furlong) and cyborg bodyguard/surrogate dad T-101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger). The T-101 is the main character in "Terminator 2" since he, as he boasts, is a "learning machine," capable of progressive adaptation. This was the path to war in the era of George H.W. Bush bipartisanship: using one lethal system to combat a more threatening system. Robots don't kill people—people kill people. 

The T-101's burgeoning ersatz humanity makes Schwarzenegger a perfectly re-purposed tool. Director James Cameron had to convince the Austrian Oak to turn his humanoid baddie into a good guy, a jarring transition that was partly difficult for Schwarzenegger to stomach due to the prior failure of "Conan the Destroyer," another sequel that was relatively lighter than its predecessor. But the T-101's role change works as well as it does because viewers—both then and now—don't necessarily expect Schwarzenegger's deadpan killing machine to be capable of serving as anybody's Jiminy Cricket-like moral compass. Still, that's exactly what the T-101 does when he re-unites John with Sarah, and learns from both characters first-hand the value of preserving human life.

The T-101's change from a villain to a hero also reflects the ambivalent optimism at the heart of "Terminator 2." Some cogs in the system can be retrained, but not all systems are benign. The psychiatric institution, represented by vainglorious Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen), is tellingly dismissed since it keeps singular iconoclasts like Sarah down, and convinces them that they must genuinely want to re-assimilate rather than just mimic a desire to change (in "Terminator 2," bad machines are good mimics, but good people are bad mimics). The cops, represented by the confounded detectives who interrogate Sarah about her connection to the T-101 and the gas-mask-making SWAT team that tries to prevent the destruction of Skynet, are ineffectual, and hampered by a lack of emotional inspiration. 

But nuclear families, like the ones that surround well-meaning scientist Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) and good-natured survivalist Enrique Salceda (Castulo Guerra), are all positive since they represent a bright future that must be protected (hope must be preserved and defended instead of cultivated and maintained). So it makes sense that Sarah stops being a machine-like human, and starts acting like a human machine when she encounters Miles and Enrique, but is either suppressed, or threatened during her every encounter with security guards, orderlies, and cops.

These central tenets of "Terminator 2"'s fear-mongering worldview are also present in "The Terminator," but they are perhaps more compelling in the sequel since they are a product of Cameron's singularly fanatic creativity. I imagine he identified as the clean-burning machine, his vision hindered only by unyielding crew members, pressing budget restrictions, and the small-mindedness of anyone who doesn't agree that bigger is necessarily better. 

For proof, compare the way Cameron shoots violence in "The Terminator" with "Terminator 2." There's more gore and impact-intensive massacres in the former film while the latter is characterized by the relatively sleek killing style of the T-1000, or even the scalpel-like precision of the T-101, who self-disassembles his left fore-arm in "Terminator 2" much faster than he gouges his right fore-arm and his left eyeball "The Terminator." And while there aren't more collisions and car crashes in "Terminator 2" than there are in "The Terminator," there are bigger explosions. "Terminator 2" oozes barely-sublimated tension that hails from Cameron's highly personal vision, as we see during formative car chases, pyrotechnics, and body-morphing computer effects.

In fact, one major reason to revisit the "Terminator 2" is that the post-converted 3-D makes the film's textures that much richer, especially any surface covered in fire, sweat, or light. Special effects designer Stan Winston's cyborg puppets and computer effects are worth the extra couple of bucks for 3-D, especially his body-deforming designs for the T-1000, like the bifurcated "Pretzel Man," or the porous "Donut Head." 

Schwarzenegger and his mostly excellent cast-mates may not need a glossy technological reboot, but it is nice to be reminded on a big screen, through engrossing close-ups, tracking shots, and complex lighting set-ups, that Cameron knows how to use his human cogs to maximally service his hulking anti-authoritarian blockbuster. His maximalist style pays off big time, making "Terminator 2" that rare genre classic that is every bit as good as its reputation.

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Titanic [3D] (2012) - Film Review comparing the version of 1997 and 2012

Titanic [3D] (2012)

Cast

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson
Kate Winslet as Rose Dewitt Buckater
Billy Zane as Cal Hockley
Kathy Bates as Molly Brown
Bill Paxton as Brock Lovett
Bernard Hill as Captain Edward John Smith
David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy

Written and directed by

James Cameron

Rated PG-13 For shipwreck scenes, mild language and sexuality 

The new 3D version of "Titanic," like the original 1997 version, is a magnificent motion picture. The hour or more after the ship hits the iceberg remains spellbinding. The material leading up to that point is a combination of documentary footage from the ocean floor, romantic melodrama, and narration by a centenarian named Rose. The production brings to life the opulence of the great iron ship. Its passengers are a cross section of way of life that would be ended forever by the First World War. In a way, the iceberg represented the 20th century.

James Cameron's film is not perfect. It has some flaws, but I hate the way film critics employ that word "flaw," as if they are jewelers with loupes screwed into their eye sockets, performing a valuation. We can say there are elements that could have been handled differently. We can begin with some elements that are superb just as they stand.

To begin with, Cameron avoids the pitfalls of telling a story about which "everybody knows the ending." Yes, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and sinks. That isn't the story he tells. He uses that as a backdrop for stories about hubris, greed, class conflict, romance and a misplaced faith in technology. The Titanic was doomed the moment it was described as "unsinkable." There is a chilling conversation on the bridge between Bruce Ismay, the ship's owner, and Thomas Andrews, its architect.

Ismay: "But this ship can't sink!"

Andrews: "She's made of iron, sir. I assure you, she can. And she will. It is a mathematical certainty."

Its unsinkability perhaps explains why Capt. Edward John Smith (Bernard Hill), despite being warned of icebergs, cranked the ship up to its top velocity and left it speeding blindly through the night. Would the captain of any other vessel have felt confident in doing that? In another sense, many of those on board thought of themselves as unsinkable, including the millionaires Benjamin Guggenheim (Michael Ensign) and the fictional villain Caledon Hockley (Billy Zane). Guggenheim called for a brandy and went down with the ship. Hockley would have thrown women and children overboard to preserve himself. Also on board was the Denver millionaire Molly Brown (Kathy Bates), who survived and is known to history as the Unsinkable Molly Brown. She's shown as one of the few arguing that her lifeboat turn back to rescue passengers freezing to death in the icy water.

Here already I have fallen prey to Cameron's storytelling, and have become distracted from the ship's fate by the fates of those on board. Of greatest interest to us are Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), who is engaged to the snaky Caledon Hockley, and Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a steerage passenger who falls in love with her onboard and saves her life. She is the same Rose, known now as "Rose Dawson," who is the old lady, the sole living survivor, brought on board a salvage vessel near the beginning of the film (she's played by Gloria Stuart, who was 86 when the film was made, and topped 100 before she died in 2010). This elderly woman, with such spirit and old, wise eyes, provides "Titanic" with what seems impossible: A happy ending. It is happy for her, at least, because she finds closure with the recovery of a drawing made by Jack and a final scene involving a famous diamond.

The Roses, young and old, provide a through-line from the day the ship set sail until the present day. She creates the psychological illusion that she's the heroine throughout, rescuing the film from a chronological timeline and providing an eyewitness for the crew on the salvage and exploration vessel. Cameron uses her as his excuse for an invaluable narrative device. He has the underwater explorers show her a little animated film that will "explain" to her how the ship sank, but actually explains it to us. This device is used all the time as a chalk talk or imaginary sequence in which the mastermind of a bank heist or prison escape explains the plan to those who will use it; he's really explaining it to us, so we'll understand it when we see it. As if there's not suspense enough when the ship is sinking, we're all the time wondering when it will break in half. Cameron is also not slow to bring the architect Andrews up to the bridge, so he can unroll his blueprints and explain to Captain Smith (and us) how the rushing flood waters will flow over one bulwark after the next.

The class differences onboard become a matter of life and death. The lifeboats are reserved for first class passengers, and those in steerage are locked below behind sliding gates. Crew members enforce these distinctions, sometimes at gunpoint; so loyal are they to their employers that, even though they're going to die, they feel no sympathy for their lower-class comrades. In an early scene, it is by sneaking up to the first class deck that Jack saves Rose from jumping off the ship. She has decided she prefers death to a life among affluent snobs like her fiancée; this shows she has more principle than imagination. Jack becomes the hero only because he flouts all class distinctions, a decision that has its roots deep in 19th century melodrama.

All of these matters take place in a ship created by art design, set construction, modeling, animation and miniatures which are state of the art. James Cameron's films have always been distinguished by ground-breaking technical excellence.

Now to those "flaws." Both of them involve the behavior of characters. There are several scenes involving Jack trying to help Rose escape the sinking ship, and then Rose helping free Jack after he's handcuffed to a pipe in a cabin, and then Jack again helping them to escape. Consider Rose. Of her own volition, she leaves the safety of a lifeboat and dashes back into the bowels of the ship to find Jack. She wades through water up to her waist, slugs an unhelpful crew member on the jaw, finds Jack, and then finds a fire ax to break the chain of his handcuffs.

Plucky, yes? But in all their other escape scenes, Jack pulls her behind him while desperately shouting Rose! Up here! Rose! Down there! Rose! Follow me! et cetera. This grows monotonous and tiresome. It reminds me of one of the early definitions in Ebert's Little Movie Glossary, the "Me Push-Pull You." That's an adaptation of a friend of Doctor Dolittle's, the "Pushmi-pullyu." I define it as a male who treats a woman as a wee helpless creature who cannot save herself but must be pushed and pulled. Given Rose's behavior in finding her way through the flooding ship while saving Jack, she seems capable enough to be allowed the occasional Jack! Up here! (There is also the inconvenience that Rose and anyone else wading through the ice-cold water should quickly be dead of hypothermia.)

Another character I have questions about is Spicer Lovejoy, Caledon Hockley's pistol-packing bodyguard and dirty tricks man. Played by the superb actor David Warner, Lovejoy is a poker-faced tough guy entirely at the disposal of his boss. In the ship's desperate final moments, he is always at Hockley's side with helpful information, such as that a lifeboat on the other side of the ship is allowing men on board. Lovejoy is invaluable to the screenplay, because he gives Hockley someone to speak and plot with. Otherwise the dastard would be reduced to dashing about madly on his own. Nevertheless, whatever Spicer is being paid is not enough.

Now for the final flaw. It is, of course, the 3D process. Cameron has justly been praised for being one of the few directors to use 3D usefully, in "Avatar." But "Titanic" was not shot for 3D, and just as you cannot gild a pig, you cannot make 2D into 3D. What you can do, and he tries to do it well, is find certain scenes that you can present as having planes of focus in foreground, middle and distance. So what? Did you miss any dimensions the first time you saw "Titanic?" No matter how long Cameron took to do it, no matter how much he spent, this is retrofitted 2D. Case closed.

But not quite. There's more to it than that. 3D causes a noticeable loss in the brightness coming from the screen. Some say as much as 20 percent. If you saw an ordinary film dimmed that much, you might complain to the management. Here you're supposed to be grateful you had the opportunity to pay a surcharge for this defacement. If you're alert to it, you'll notice that many shots and sequences in this version are not in 3D at all, but remain in 2D. If you take off your glasses, they'll pop off the screen with dramatically improved brightness. I know why the film is in 3D. It's to justify the extra charge. That's a shabby way to treat a masterpiece.

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SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993) - FILM REVIEW 2018

Schindler's List (1993)

Cast

Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler
Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern

Directed by

Steven Spielberg

Based On The Novel by

Thomas Keneally

Drama, History

Rated R

184 minutes

 

"Schindler's List" is described as a film about the Holocaust, but the Holocaust supplies the field for the story, rather than the subject. The film is really two parallel character studies--one of a con man, the other of a psychopath. Oskar Schindler, who swindles the Third Reich, and Amon Goeth, who represents its pure evil, are men created by the opportunities of war.

Schindler had no success in business before or after the war, but used its cover to run factories that saved the lives of more than 1,000 Jews. (Technically, the factories were failures, too, but that was his plan: "If this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired, I'll be very unhappy.") Goeth was executed after the war, which he used as a cover for his homicidal pathology.

In telling their stories, Steven Spielberg found a way to approach the Holocaust, which is a subject too vast and tragic to be encompassed in any reasonable way by fiction. In the ruins of the saddest story of the century, he found, not a happy ending, but at least one affirming that resistance to evil is possible and can succeed. In the face of the Nazi charnel houses, it is a statement that has to be made, or we sink into despair.

The film has been an easy target for those who find Spielberg's approach too upbeat or "commercial," or condemn him for converting Holocaust sources into a well-told story. But every artist must work in his medium, and the medium of film does not exist unless there is an audience between the projector and the screen. Claude Lanzmann made a more profound film about the Holocaust in "Shoah," but few were willing to sit through its nine hours. Spielberg's unique ability in his serious films has been to join artistry with popularity--to say what he wants to say in a way that millions of people want to hear.

In ''Schindler's List,'' his brilliant achievement is the character of Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson as a man who never, until almost the end, admits to anyone what he is really doing. Schindler leaves it to ''his'' Jews, and particularly to his accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), to understand the unsayable: that Schindler is using his factory as a con game to cheat the Nazis of the lives of his workers. Schindler leaves it to Stern, and Spielberg leaves it to us; the movie is a rare case of a man doing the opposite of what he seems to be doing, and a director letting the audience figure it out itself.

The measure of Schindler's audacity is stupendous. His first factory makes pots and pans. His second makes shell casings. Both factories are so inefficient they make hardly any contribution to the Nazi war effort. A more cautious man might have insisted that the factories produced fine pots and usable casings, to make them invaluable to the Nazis. The full measure of Schindler's obsession is that he wanted to save Jewish lives and produce unusable goods--all the while wearing a Nazi party badge on the lapel of his expensive black-market suit.

The key to his character is found in his first big scene, in a nightclub frequented by Nazi officers. We gather that his resources consist of the money in his pocket and the clothes he stands up in. He walks into the club, sends the best champagne to a table of high-ranking Nazis, and soon has the Nazis and their girlfriends sitting at his table, which swells with late arrivals. Who is this man? Why, Oskar Schindler, of course. And who is that? The Reich never figures out the answer to that question.

Schindler's strategy as a con man is to always seem in charge, to seem well-connected, to lavish powerful Nazis with gifts and bribes, and to stride, tall and imperious, through situations that would break a lesser man. He also has the con man's knack of disguising the real object of the con. The Nazis accept his bribes and assume his purpose is to enrich himself through the war. They do not object, because he enriches them, too. It never occurs to them that he is actually saving Jews. There is that ancient story about how the guards search the thief's wheelbarrow every day, unable to figure out what he is stealing. He is stealing wheelbarrows. The Jews are Schindler's wheelbarrows.

Some of the most dramatic scenes in the movie show Schindler literally snatching his workers from the maw of death. He rescues Stern from a death train. Then he redirects a trainload of his male workers from Auschwitz to his hometown in Czechoslovakia. When the women's train is misrouted to Auschwitz in error, Schindler boldly strides into the death camp and bribes the commandant to ship them back out again. His insight here is that no one would walk into Auschwitz on such a mission if he were not the real thing. His very boldness is his shield.

Stern, of course, quickly figures out that Schindler's real game is not to get rich but to save lives. Yet this is not said aloud until Schindler has Stern make a list of some 1,100 workers who will be transported to Czechoslovakia. "The list is an absolute good," Stern tells him. "The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf."

Consider now Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), the Nazi who has power over the Krakow ghetto and later over the camp where the Jews are moved. He stands on the balcony of his ski chalet and shoots Jews as target practice, destroying any shred of hope they may have that the Nazi policies will follow some sane pattern. If they can die arbitrarily at his whim, then both protest and adherence are meaningless, and useless.

Goeth is clearly mad. War masks his underlying nature as a serial killer. His cruelty twists back on his victims: He spares a life only long enough to give his victim hope, and then shoots him. Seeing "Schindler's List" again recently, I wondered if it was a weakness to make Goeth insane. Would it have been better for Spielberg to focus instead on a Nazi functionary--an "ordinary" man who is simply following orders? The terror of the Holocaust comes not because a monster like Goeth could murder people, but because thousands of people snatched from their everyday lives became, in the chilling phrase, Hitler's willing executioners.

I don't know. The film as Spielberg made it is haunting and powerful; perhaps it was necessary to have a one-dimensional villain in a film whose hero has so many hidden dimensions. The ordinary man who was just "following orders" might have disturbed the focus of the film--although he would have been in contrast with Schindler, an ordinary man who did not follow orders.

"Schindler's List" gives us information about how parts of the Holocaust operated, but does not explain it, because it is inexplicable that men could practice genocide. Or so we want to believe. In fact, genocide is a commonplace in human history, and is happening right now in Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The United States was colonized through a policy of genocide against native peoples. Religion and race are markers that we use to hate one another, and unless we can get beyond them, we must concede we are potential executioners. The power of Spielberg's film is not that it explains evil, but that it insists that men can be good in the face of it, and that good can prevail.

The film's ending brings me to tears. At the end of the war, Schindler's Jews are in a strange land--stranded, but alive. A member of the liberating Russian forces asks them, "Isn't a town over there?" and they walk off toward the horizon. The next shot fades from black and white into color. At first we think it may be a continuation of the previous action, until we see that the men and women on the crest of the hill are dressed differently now. And then it strikes us, with the force of a blow: Those are Schindler's Jews. We are looking at the actual survivors and their children as they visit Oskar Schindler's grave. The movie began with a list of Jews being confined to the ghetto. It ends with a list of some who were saved. The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.

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Widows (2018) - Film Review

Widows (2018)

Cast

Viola Davisas Veronica Rawlins
Michelle Rodriguezas Linda Perelli
Elizabeth Debickias Alice Gunner
Cynthia Erivoas Belle
Colin Farrellas Jack Mulligan
Brian Tyree Henryas Jamal Manning
Daniel Kaluuyaas Jatemme Manning
Jacki Weaveras Agnieska
Carrie Coonas Amanda
Robert Duvallas Tom Mulligan
Liam Neesonas Harry Rawlings
Manuel Garcia-Rulfoas Carlos Perelli
Jon Bernthalas Florek Gunner
Garret Dillahuntas Bash O'Reilly
Lukas Haasas David
Matt Walshas Ken

Director

Steve McQueen

Writer (based on "Widows" by)

Lynda La Plante

Writer

Gillian Flynn
Steve McQueen

Cinematographer

Sean Bobbitt

Editor

Joe Walker

Composer

Hans Zimmer

Crime, Drama, Thriller

Rated R for violence, language throughout, and some sexual content/nudity.
128 minutes

 

 

Most heist movies are built on a sheen of cool genius, masterminded by a gang of antiheroes who are typically seeking a kind of justified vengeance. “Widows” is not like most heist movies. The emotional currents that power Steve McQueen’s brilliant genre exercise are different—it’s societal inequity, exhaustion at corruption, and outright anger at a bullshit system that steals from the poor to give to the rich. McQueen’s masterful film is the kind that works on multiple levels simultaneously—as pure pulp entertainment but also as a commentary on how often it feels like we have to take what we are owed or risk never getting it at all.

McQueen opens his film with an immediate boost of adrenaline, dropping us into the latest “job” by criminal Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) and his crew (Jon Bernthal, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Coburn Goss) as it goes very, very wrong. McQueen and his incredible editor (Joe Walker, who deserves the Oscar for his work here) bounce us back and forth between the fateful job and quick scenes of introductions to the Rawlings’ crew and their spouses. So we meet Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), a fragile, abused woman whose mother (Jacki Weaver) barely treats her better than her awful husband; Linda (Michelle Rodriguez), a mother of two who is just opening her own store; and Amanda (Carrie Coon), who has a 4-month-old child. Before the opening sequence is over, all three will be widows, as will be Harry’s wife Veronica (Viola Davis).

Not long after Harry’s death, Veronica is visited by a local criminal named Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), who informs her that Harry’s final job was to steal $2 million from him and his campaign for 18th ward alderman. With the help of his sociopathic brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya), the Mannings tell Veronica that she has to repay the money just as Harry’s widow happens to find her dead husband’s notebook with all the details on past and future jobs. There’s a lot of information on the next job he had planned, one that looks to net $5 million. Veronica gets the other widows together and they agree to do Harry’s next job. They can repay Manning and have some left over to start new lives.

If only anything were that easy in Chicago. I haven’t even mentioned Manning’s competition for 18th ward alderman, Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), part of a long line of Windy City politicians, including his racist father Tom (Robert Duvall). Jack is one of those silver spoon politicians who almost feels like he’s owed the office just by virtue of his last name, never mind the fact that he’s facing a corruption scandal that involves grifting from a project that expanded the Chicago Green Line. Jack is the kind of politician who starts a program to put minority women to work by giving them businesses…from which he then takes a cut. Everything comes at a cost in “Widows.” Everything, to a certain extent, is a transaction. The job that opens “Widows” and then Veronica’s decision to use the notebook instead of just selling it pull back the curtain on a corrupt, broken system, one that feels distinctly Chicagoan while also commenting on inequity around the world. McQueen and his team use the city brilliantly, especially in a stunning single take in which we see Mulligan go from a campaign event in his ward to his home, the camera staying outside the car to show us the rapidly changing neighborhood along the commute.

Gillian Flynn’s script for “Widows” brings together many disparate personalities under one umbrella but the differences never feel forced. Only when you sit back and think about it, do you consider that it is likely not by accident that Alice, Linda, and Veronica are Polish, Latinx, and Black, respectively, never mind their incredibly different economic differences—Veronica lives on the Gold Coast while Alice has to become an escort to make ends meet. In part, “Widows” seems to be saying that corruption is a great equalizer, especially among women betrayed by powerful men. When Tom Mulligan says, “The only thing that matters is that we survive,” it’s a line meant to capture how tightly he’s trying to hold on to a white political legacy, but it’s something any number of characters in “Widows” could say. There are a number of great lines like that but McQueen and Flynn are careful to never allow their film to sink into a political diatribe. The dialogue crackles without ever calling attention to itself or sounding overly precious or preaching.

Part of the reason “Widows” stays above the line where it would feel like mere sermon is that it contains the best ensemble of 2018. Viola Davis can do more with a longing, grieving look out a window than most actresses can do with a monologue. Watch the beat where she’s looking out at Lake Michigan and we see her in reflection, an image of her dead husband coming up behind her. It’s almost as if her grief manifested him. And when Veronica’s drive turns from sadness to anger, Davis makes every beat count. There’s not a single wasted decision on her part. It might be her best performance.

She’s matched by a ridiculously talented supporting cast, all on her level. Debicki was great earlier this year in “The Tale,” but this is her breakthrough role, one that nearly allows her to steal the film. Watch Alice’s body language as she goes from a frightened victim to an empowered woman. She never overplays the transformation, but it's impossible to miss. It’s really the rare kind of film for which there are hard to pick standouts. Henry has a couple of brilliant scenes, although many seem to think Kaluuya steals a few from him (I'm not sure I agree. They're both great.). Rodriguez makes one wish she did drama more often. Cynthia Erivo should be a star any minute now. Even small roles like those occupied by Garret Dillahunt and Coon feel “right.” There’s not a wasted or poorly-considered role or performance.

Finally there are the technical elements of “Widows.” It’s not the kind of flashy exercise of something like “Baby Driver,” but the editing here by two-time Oscar nominee Joe Walker (nominated for “12 Years a Slave” and “Arrival”) is just as good. A film with this many characters and themes and plot points requires a master editor to keep it moving, and Walker finds the perfect rhythm. Hans Zimmer’s score is his most subtle in a long time, especially the way that McQueen uses it, holding back on score almost entirely for the first 30-45 minutes, allowing it to bubble up as the heist gets closer, enhancing the tension of the overall experience.

The tapestry that is “Widows” is so deep that it’s easy to miss some of its smaller patterns. There’s a scene in which Jatemme is following Veronica, listening to a report on the radio about Albert Woodfox, a man who spent 43 years in solitary confinement at Angola. There’s a line from Woodfox in the report that McQueen makes sure we hear: “Nothing you do is gonna change your situation.” “Widows” is about both the truth of that and a few people who decide to fight it.   

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