Some other way to prove

The Shape of Water

Crit

It's official: as I suspected I would, I regret that this didn't come to town a week later so that it could have been my Christmas Day movie, for which it would have been practically perfect. (If you're asking "Why didn't you just wait a week to go?" I wonder how you even happened onto this blog, since you obviously don't know me.)

Anyway, I want to get that "practically perfect" out of the way first, because the issue that irked me is a pretty big deal, but I don't want it to be the thing I leave you with. Zelda (Octavia Spencer) jokes with Elisa (the transcendent Sally Hawkins at her very most transcendent) throughout the film about her shiftless husband, which is a tired trope regardless of race, though not necessarily toxic, given the distancing of a potentially unreliable reporter, but when we finally meet Lou (Deney Forrest), in a brief but critical sequence, he proves to be not only stereotypically shiftless but also cowardly, both physically and morally--about the worst advertisement for African-American masculinity you could make of the only African-American male with more than a single line in the film. And I can't really see why it's necessary.

An ugly scar on the neck of a film that otherwise works on every level: as a retro monster pic, as a Cold War adventure, as a plea (notwithstanding the treatment of Lou) for tolerance and commonality (but with a sly shot at Stuckey's-style commercially manufactured homogeneity), and especially as a romance. Hawkins has a history of playing characters who fall for the wrong man; maybe the problem all along was that she was falling for the wrong species. Loving the blessedly unnamed "amphibian man" from the South American rain forest (Doug Jones, whom Guillermo del Toro has been hiding in prosthetics for his whole career, but who finally gets to dance this time!) brings a joy into her face unlike any I've seen, and it's joy that's a joy to see.

And finally: Richard Jenkins. Do I need to say any more?

Trailers

• The Post--Do you need to ask? Only if you're that guy who wandered into the blog without knowing me.
• A Quiet Place--This, though, looks like a pretty rote horror film, though the cast is great, including Millicent Simmonds, the most wondrous wonder of Wonderstruck.

Porg: the other white meat

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Crit

Yeah, OK, that was a pretty good Star Wars flick, worth a big chunk out of my day. Key intertwined takeaways are (relax, no spoilers, unless you start overthinking it right now and continue into the theater) the parentage of Rey (Daisy Ridley, still kicking ass but now being studious too) and a revelation (or articulation: I mean, we've always pretty much known this, right?) about the Force.

Trailers

• Ready Player One--Spielberg directed, so it must be smarter than the dystopic video game gimmick seems, right?
• Pacific Rim: Uprising--Let's see, I pretty much hated the first one, even though one of my favorite directors was in charge. I'm'a say probably not.

Do not forsake me

My Friend Dahmer

Crit

This portrait of the cannibalistic serial killer as a young boy is based on the memoir of a high school classmate, but it seems more like a literal-minded guess by an outsider of what must have made Dahmer Dahmer: the worst parents and the worst teachers ever, plus repression of his sexuality, plus a cadre of friends-in-the-sense-that-only-self-involved-adolescents-can-conceive-of-friendship, who, by exploiting the entertainment value of Jeff's inherent weirdness, may or may not have exacerbated it.

Not a bad film, but a surprisingly bland one.

1945

Crit

Small town, wedding day, and angst aroused by the arrival of a train--anybody else put in the mind of High Noon? It doesn't stop there, either, as the townspeople, some morally bankrupt, some just morally weak, try to repel or finesse the potential loss of the source of the town's economic comfort.

I don't want to go into too much detail because this is actually a bit of a mystery, but I will say that it's the first Holocaust (technically post-Holocaust) film I've seen in ages that has discomfited me in a completely new way. This is a film I'll be considering when I assemble my top ten list in 22 days (actually 19 days; this is a postdated post).

Given name

Lady Bird

Crit

Where to begin? Here, I guess: I hope writer-director Greta Gerwig decides that all the kudos she's getting for this means she should quit acting. As for the kudos itself, well, I don't think this will probably be #1 on my top ten list at the end of the year--in other words, pace A. O. Scott, it's not a perfect film; I found that it runs out of gas before the finish line. If it ended with her on the phone with her father, after reading what she has read on crumpled pages from a yellow legal pad--well, that would have been a nearly perfect film. Moreover, what follows could be the beginning of a sequel that everyone who saw this would buy tickets for right now.

But I quibble. It made me laugh, it made me cry. That's all I ask.

Trailers

• Father Figures--Twins (Owen Wilson and Ed Helms; yeah, I know) discover that their father might be Terry Bradshaw, among various other candidates--probably awful, but could be a hoot if not.
• I, Tonya--Yes, Winter Olympics, 1994, that Tonya. Trailer suggests an appealing narrative playfulness but gives little hint to what we really want to know: can Margot Robbie act? 

Major medical

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Crit

OK, Suburbicon director George Clooney take note: this is how to make a study of people so despicable that to watch them makes us literally queasy. I am a huge admirer of writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos, and I'll go so far as to say I admire this film about banal crime and creepy, supernatural punishment, but I won't go so far as to say I'd ever be tempted to subject myself to it again.

Trailers

• Phantom Thread--Daniel Day-Lewis in what may or may not be his screen farewell, in Paul Thomas Anderson's worst-titled film without a doubt.

Passage to power

LBJ

Crit

What an odd movie. From a production standpoint, it's basically a big Halloween party: lots of people with clothes and makeup and prosthetics and accents trying to impersonate famous politicians and members of their families and circles. Thus it's cheesier than all the cows and ewes in Texas could account for, if Texas went in for sissy shit like cheesemaking.

But if Robert Caro's biography (astonishingly not given even a thank-you in the credits that I noticed) is to be believed, this is historically accurate far beyond the Hollywood biopic standard and could serve as an excellent primer to anyone hoping to understand how a son of the Confederacy could be the best civil-rights president we've had since Lincoln, and how he managed to bend his fellow southerners in the Senate to his will.

It also helps that Woody Harrelson, though the Dumbo ears and all the crap they put on his face make him look ridiculous (and sometimes disconcertingly less like Johnson than like his successor in office), brings his usual level of conviction to the role, and that goes a long way. And Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Lady Bird, is the one element of the film that never seems false in any way.

Trailers

• 12 Strong--Bruckheimer patriotism.
• Just Getting Started--Looks like a waste of Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones.
• The Leisure Seeker--This, on the other hand, looks as if it could be a good fit for Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren.

Night at the museum

Wonderstruck

Crit

What a wonderful cinematic era, when one can, as I have, on consecutive postwork Fridays see My Future Wife Julianne Moore fill four roles in two films.

This is much the better film, though Julie has relatively little to do with its excellence. Millicent Simmonds, playing one of two runaway-to-New York deaf children a half-century apart (and deaf herself), owns this wondrous film, her wonder so evident in her eyes that you see familiar sights through her eyes and feel that wonder too.

Mind you, Oakes Fegley is fine as Ben, the 1977 Odysseus, but when the quick cuts between their stories cede the story to the later time, it's a letdown, and only a spectacular and completely illogical climax (but oh, what a thrilling climax, almost enough so to make you ignore its silliness) can level the playing field. We want to see lots more of Simmonds. And we might want to read screenwriter Brain Selznick's YA novel whence the film comes.

Trailers

• Isle of the Dogs--Full disclosure: I impatiently watched the trailer a few weeks ago online. Wes Anderson, animated, yes, please.
• I Can Only Imagine--Personally, I cannot. Imagine, i.e., that this "inspirational" true story can be remotely palatable.