Dir. Tom Ford. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams, Aaron Taylor-Johnson Nocturnal Animals checks off boxes for me, in the sense that it does things which typically annoy me in a movie. It can’t decide which part of its plot it’s most interested in and sacrifices both pieces for it. At a little less than two… Read More Nocturnal Animals (2016)
Dir. Ava DuVernay. Starring David Oyelowo, Stephan James, Tom Wilkinson It’s not enough to simply make a movie relevant by timing it so that it will align with certain current events. Selma landed like a haybale on a see-saw when it came out on Christmas 2014; not only did it land heavily, but it sprayed the… Read More Selma (2014)
Dir. David Yates. Starring Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler I like the Niffler. The animation is a little mediocre by industry standard, I think – Fantastic Beasts is going to look outdated by the time the next movie in the series comes out – but he’s cute and mischievous all the same. He reminds me of… Read More Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
Dir. Jordan Peele. Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Lil Rel Howery What I love about the shot above, when Chris (Kaluuya) is meeting his girlfriend’s family for the first time, is the distance. Peele comes back to distance again and again in this movie (more on that later), but this is an early instance of… Read More Get Out (2017)
Dir. Ron Clements and John Musker. Starring Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House. After watching Zootopia eight or nine months ago, I thought that Disney movies were starting to stick to their claim outside musicals. After watching Moana, the latest entry to the Disney canon, I’m more sure than ever that the best elements of… Read More Moana (2016)
Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Lea Seydoux Upon reflection, it’s stunning how many of our expectations about marriage are ridiculed, satirized, or otherwise contended with in The Lobster, and how often it’s done well. Forty-five days to meet a mate corresponds with our own arbitrary yet nearly ironclad ideas about how old… Read More The Lobster (2015)
Dir. Barry Jenkins. Starring Alex Hibbert, Naomie Harris, Ashton Sanders This movie thrums. Moonlight has an after-school special feel to it for long stretches, but in each of its three acts finds a way to manage the least interesting of those excesses. Little (Hibbert) is accidentally rescued by Juan (Mahershala Ali) and Teresa (Janelle Monae)… Read More Moonlight (2016)
Dir. George Miller. Starring Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Nicholas Hoult When the Fury Road fever was at its highest – I remember laying in bed, sweating through my pajamas with a temperature of 104, intermittently shrieking, “I live, I die, I live again!” – there was a fair bit of talk about how the movie… Read More Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Dir. Gore Verbinski. Starring Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom Certainly they won’t love it like the people who grew up with it do, but I’m not sure future generations will even remember Curse of the Black Pearl. I think the best case scenario for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is Planet of the Apes, a… Read More Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr. Zodiac is a film which seems like it ought to be easily classifiable in several ways. It’s a period piece, but aside from some appropriate costume and facial hair, it’s does not flaunt its period credentials. (I forget where I originally read the following… Read More Zodiac (2007)
Seeing Things Secondhand 