23 flavors and then some

Split

Crit

No, it's no good whining about the deceptively strong Rotten Tomatoes numbers: anyone going to an M. Night Shyamalan movie in 2017 has only himself to blame. The only thing worth saying about this bit of creep-porn is that its finale surprise is as meh as any surprise in the history of cinematic finale surprises, if not in the history of surprises at large.

But two peripherals: Anya Taylor-Joy has firmly established (cf. The Witch) her excellence in portraying young women menaced by they-don't-know-what-the-hell-what, and I'm guessing she was pretty good portraying the what-the-hell menace in Morgan, so now I await her breakout role as somebody with boyfriend or office or rock band issues.

And come on: I was 25% of my audience; the other 75% was a woman accompanied by children probably 10 and 6. Do you see a problem with this scenario? Yes, they stayed to the end, and while the younger one did ask the occasional question, they were remarkably restrained; I'm guessing the problems are going to kick in shortly after bedtime.

Trailers

• John Wick: Chapter 2--Yeah, OK.

I drink your milkshake

The Founder

Crit

Did I ever tell you about when I was friends with Ray Kroc's son-in-law's brother, who, because the son-in-law was general manager of Kroc's San Diego Padres, had a pass into any National League ballpark, but never used it because he didn't like baseball? Now that's tragedy.

The ironic title refers to Kroc's usurpation of everything McDonald's from the original McDonald brothers who founded the not-yet-franchise in San Bernardino before signing a contract with a milkshake machine salesman.

The film is a good piece of storytelling, but it wouldn't fly without a spittingly committed performance by Michael Keaton. Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch are also terrific as the principled-thus-befuddled brothers. 

Trailers

• Bitter Harvest--Ukraine, 1932, and Stalin coming. And we think we have it bad.
• Wilson--No, not the volleyball, the Daniel Clowes graphic novel.

Nice weather down there

20 Century Women

Crit

Careful what you wish for, Mom--or at least what you ask for.

Dorothea (Annette Bening, as good as she has ever been, which is tall, tall cotton), as bruised as she is smart and cool (for 55), feels ill-equipped to bring her son to manhood. Jamie (brilliant newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann) is in fact about as normal as a 15-year-old boy can be in 1979, especially given the circumstances, but Dorothea asks for help from a roomer, Abbie (Greta Gerwig), who's 25 and into punk and feminism, and Julie (Elle Fanning), who is 17 and Jamie's best friend and not-at-all-secret crush, but she likes him too much to have sex with him (raise your hand if you've heard that one, boys and girls), though she has plenty of sex with older boys, as long as they're stupid enough that she can't take them seriously. Did I mention (or need to) that her mother is a therapist?

And then there's William (Billy Crudup), the only central character whose age is not specified, perhaps to leave as indeterminate as possible the relative inappropriatenesses of his involvements with Abbie and Dorothea.

Anyway, Dorothea comes to regret her request, but the fact is Abbie and Julie both do good things for his growth--I would certainly have turned out a better man had my mother had the bravery and good sense to give a portion of my care to two such women when I was 15. And I wouldn't have had any less sex than I did.

This is a nearly great film, which has a regrettable late stretch of excessive patness (including the obligatory scene of everyone dancing and everything being better for it) but more than overcomes that unfortunate turn. Might revise my top ten list for 2016, but I'll wait until Paterson comes to town first.

Trailers

• Lady Macbeth--Connection to Shakespeare seems tenuous; impossible to guess whether it'll be worth seeing.
• T2: Trainspotting--Gosh, yes, it does sound like a bad idea, doesn't it? But Danny Boyle is in charge again, and he's gotten all the principals and lots of the rest of the cast back, so I am as open as a just-spiked vein. Choose life!

What you would do, do quickly

Silence

Crit

I wouldn't spend 161 minutes of my life with Jesuits in 17th c. Japan for just anyone, but I generally trust Martin Scorsese not to waste my time, and although his exploration of faith is not my own, the questions he raises about what's important in cultivating faith and what's a relatively trivial cosmetic formal element may come in handy during the Putin era. There may be a lot of us having to practice our faith quietly.

Trailers

• Ghost in the Shell--Lucy + Lost in Translation.
• Transformers: The Last Knight--Promises, promises.
• The Lost City of V--Based on an early-20th-century Amazonian exploration.

Our fuckin' city

Patriots Day

Crit

A perfectly honorable tale of American patriotism; I'm guessing our president-elect would love it. What I found odd about it, though, was that easily the most interesting people--the only ones whose motivations were not perfectly straightforward and unsurprising--were the Tsarnaev family.

Long, long epilogue comprising photos of and interviews with the actual cops and civilians we've just seen portrayed by movie stars--plus Big Papi shaking hands with the actors in the tunnel, then going out onto the Fenway sod in front of the real people to deliver his famously obscene speech of defiance and solidarity and love.

Trailers

• Alien: Covenant--Apparently the covenant is that Ridley Scott promised to remake the original with sex when special effects improved enough.

Running

Hidden Figures

Crit

Last week, when Arnold Gorlick and I agreed that Moonlight was the best film of 2016 (see previous post), our host Tom Breen, while agreeing that it's a great film, opted instead for three documentaries(two on my top 10, 13th and Weiner, plus O.J.: Made in America) less likely to make you come out of the theater feeling good. By that token, Theodore Melfi's story--of African-American women in 1961 Virginia charged with doing the math and engineering and programming of the new room-filling IBM that will help put John Glenn into orbit and get him safely back to Earth--is a failure, because damn, it makes you feel good.

Critically, though, it also provides painful and often subtle reminders of the hell it would be--was; in some cases still is--to be deprived of dignities as simple as being able to use a bathroom near your workspace, being able to take a course needed for professional advancement, being addressed by an honorific and your surname instead of your given name in a professional context.

A lovely film, and an excellent one--almost but not quite enough to make me rework my top 10 list again.

Trailers

• The Boss Baby--Maybe, probably not.

More then

Lost in spaceyness

I have been alerted to two unforgivable omissions from my New Year's Eve discussion of my favorite films of 2016. My Mets, music, and movies buddy Jon, aka JK, aka DJ Spike Ning, took me to task for not giving La La Land even a nod, never mind omitting it from my top ten. Mind you, he did take me to task for the latter: Jon is the closest I've ever had to a kid brother, so when he said "surely you've taught me such that [a film that provided such pure pleasure] would also appear in your top 10," he had me. Jeez, if I've taught my pseudo-kid brother something, I should stand by it, right? So for now, let's slide LLL into the 7 slot I'd left vacant in anticipation of Paterson, Hidden Figures, or 20th Century Women demanding a place at the table. Of course, that would probably be only a temporary solution even if . . .

My Yale U Press and movies buddy Tom Breen hadn't, en route to his radio show on which Arnold Gorlick and I were to join him to talk about the year's notable films (see below), mentioned Kelly Reichardt's beautiful, funny, sad triptych of injustice, privilege, and unrequited love Certain Women, with Oscar-worthy performances by Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristin Stewart, and Lily Gladstone (buzz suggests that Stewart will get a nomination). I believe I literally lurched to a halt on the sidewalk: it was the real-life equivalent of that nightmare where you sit down to take a final exam and suddenly realize that you've done nothing to prepare.

Yes, of course that was one of my favorite films of the year, but I'd overlooked it while making my list because I never got around to blogging it. I blame my daughter, whose 40th birthday was a psychological disruption, as well you might imagine (oh, and I also flew to Illinois for the party, which put me behind in several of my quotidian obsessions), and the Cubs, who, even though not my team, demanded more postseason attention from me than I've given any team not based in Flushing in decades. It's certainly not my fault.

Anyway, that needs to slot in at about 5; sorry, Sausage Party, you're going to heaven. At least take heart that Weiner remains on my list. At least until I've seen the 3 films mentioned at the end of the first paragraph above (one of which I saw today, in fact).

Garble speaks

Despite my embarrassingly inarticulate performance last year, Tom Breen asked me again to join him and Madison Arts Cinema boss Arnold Gorlick on his WNHH radio show Deep Focus to talk about last year's best films. Last year I posted the link with some hesitation, and much embarrassment. This year, I'm much less embarrassed. If you want to listen to me and 2 more perceptive critics talk for an hour, click the link above; you may want to return to Tom weekly.