TOP 10 OF 2018

As opposed to last year, 2018 has made it difficult for me to narrow things down to a finite ten films that I thought worthy of making my list. These kinds of lists, no matter how superfluous, would always fare better were they put together in a couple years time rather than in a rush in the last few days of the year as one is attempting to cram in all the end-of-year awards contenders being released simultaneously as well as catching up on everything that might have been missed throughout the year, but that is supposed to be really good and you don't know why you didn't watch some of these sooner. Alas, some will slip through the cracks and while I made as valiant an effort as I possibly could (I even saw Holmes & Watson yesterday-more out of an undying loyalty to Ferrell than the potential of it making my list, of course) I still managed to miss more than I would have liked to. Furthermore, there have been films with exceptional moments that might feel like glaring omissions from my favorites list given you've likely heard a lot about them over the course of the last few months that will make many others; examples include films such as Green Book, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and The Favourite. I couldn't agree more that each of those films possess inspired moments that transcend the art form, but as a whole were they films that made an impression on me that will last, if not forever, but at least a few weeks after seeing them? Not at this point, no, though I'm suspect this might change with at least two of these.

On the other hand, there are a handful of narrative features competing for spots on my list that, on any given day, might have been in one of those top ten spots; HBO's The Tale, the Joaquin Phoenix-starrer You Were Never Really Here, Steve McQueen's Widows, what could possibly be Robert Redford's swan song in The Old Man and the Gun, as well we Bo Burnham's feature debut in Eighth Grade would round out my top fifteen at this point, but if I included documentaries on this list it would be a completely different story. The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, Three Identical Strangers, Whitney, Free Solo, not to mention Won't You Be My Neighbor? were all fantastic documentaries released this year where at least three of those would have made my top ten, but given the differences in the approach to filmmaking it only seems fair to highlight them outside of a traditional top ten list. Of course, going back over the year there are many regrets around films like Blindspotting, The Hate U Give, Searching, Bad Times at the El Royale, Halloween, Instant Family, Vice, Shoplifters, Love, Simon, and Hearts Beat Loud that I wish there were space for as I enjoyed each and every one of them to the extent I would genuinely label them as "great". All things considered though, please know I go into every film truly hoping to see one of the best movies of the year and the ones that follow are the ones that surprised me with their quality or surpassed every expectation I held for them. Enjoy!

A QUIET PLACE Review

There is a lot to say about A Quiet Place, the third directorial effort from John Krasinski (The Office) starring real-life wife Emily Blunt in their first on-screen collaboration (and as a married couple no less), but more than anything this is a movie that encapsulates the equal amount of unexpected fear as compared to the expected amount of joy that comes along with becoming and being a parent. It is something society doesn't often prepare you for and that you don't hear much about when embarking on this particular chapter in your life. People tell you how it will change your life, certainly, and how it will do so for the better as well as how tough things will be at different times for different reasons, but no one ever seems to warn expectant parents just how much fear will encompass their lives and in what are otherwise seemingly normal of situations. This isn't what A Quiet Place is about outright, but as the father to a three year-old daughter that is what A Quiet Place is most explicitly about to me. It is a summation and tense execution of what it feels like to solely be responsible for the lives of those that are dependent upon you whether they see it that way or not; they simply expect you to be there for them because that has always been your role without a second thought to the worry and fear that role might encompass and carry. A child's perspective is difficult to re-adjust to the point they understand the full spectrum of various emotions we as human beings are capable of experiencing, but there is something inherent when becoming a parent where your brain automatically switches to all-of-a-sudden be weary of any potential dangers to your child while at the same time coming to the realization your strengths and abilities might not be enough to protect them from whatever the world throws at them. Granted, A Quiet Place is this times fifty-seven and represents the worst-case scenario of what are most of the time internalized fears, but that is what makes the film so effective and ultimately, so moving. At the center of the story is a family unit that has been fractured by grief in the midst of having to adjust to this new way of life thanks to an extra-terrestrial threat whose origins remain a mystery sans some quick glances at a few newspaper clippings, but the context doesn't matter as much as the concepts that bound forth from its simple, but intriguing premise. Through all of this, Krasinski hones in on what makes the premise work so well, that being the grief, necessary coping, and inherent fear that inevitably comes with making ourselves vulnerable enough to care so much about others. Realizing these emotions and this feeling of need to protect and shelter those you are responsible for even when you have no idea how you might accomplish as much into a tight, ninety-minute actualization that will have you holding your breath and remaining as still as the reflections we see on screen.

DETROIT Review

If you thought the sound design in Dunkirk was crazy effective wait until you get a load of Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit. That isn't to say one is more effective than the other, but both utilize their environments and the sounds that resonate most within those environments to help push the visceral experience of both films to the next level. A level that indeed truly transcends the space and time of where one might be viewing the film and places you among the riots of the summer of 1967 where fear, uncertainty, and chaos ran rampant. I open with such a statement not to emphasize the technical aspects over everything else in a film as important and timely as Detroit so as to draw attention away from the tough and difficult subject matter at hand, but more to begin a dialogue about why the movie itself becomes equally effective and affecting. It is through this portal of sound, of genuine gun shot smatterings that ring out at any given point in the movie and make you feel not only as if you’re in the room with these characters, but are then also inherently placed in the headspace of someone such as Larry Reed (portrayed by newcomer Algee Smith), a singer and aspiring musician who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is interesting, seeing how writer Mark Boal’s (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) screenplay brings several strands of characters, historical situations, and themes together into a single, encapsulating experience, but while we don’t meet Larry Reed until just prior to the events that the film dedicates its biggest chunk of time to it is his arc that we become most enamored with in many ways due largely to the fact he faces a wider variety of obstacles in terms of difficult choices as well as attempting to comprehend a life that seemingly has everything he ever hoped for stripped away in the matter of a handful of hours. That also said, Detroit is not about a single character, but more it is about how far away we still are from things being easy even if it would seem we’ve overcome so much in the fifty years since these infamous riots. As a piece of entertainment, Bigelow’s film isn’t something to be recommended for the experience which it entails, but rather because it is a heavy experience that needs to be known about and acknowledged. Detroit is about acknowledgment and about asking not why this happened in the past-we know why it happened-but rather if we’re doing today what we need to be doing in order to prevent as much from happening again. Detroit is a reminder we’re not doing as well as we should be in case you couldn’t tell already.

First Trailer for Kathryn Bigelow's DETROIT

The first trailer for Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow’s (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) highly anticipated new film, Detroit, has premiered via Annapurna Pictures. The film, which was written by Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker), chronicles the Detroit riots of 1967. The riots are historically known to have been initiated by a police raid of an unlicensed bar in the city’s Near West Side when confrontations turned violent, ultimately resulting in the deaths of thirty-nine people and leaving hundreds wounded as the riots went on for five days. Bigelow and Boal have seemingly approached this event with the idea of telling several different accounts that occurred over the course of the five days in order to paint a full picture of what happened, why it happened, and how those on either side of the law were forced to handle themselves. In typical Bigelow fashion the film seemingly holds a number of tense moments while the ensemble cast as led by The Force Awakens' John Boyega are seemingly giving top notch performances to only accentuate that suspense further. Though not overly familiar with the details of the events that happened in Detroit that summer the tagline for the film, as shown at the end of the clip, hints that the film will paint a picture from a perspective most history books aren't accustomed to telling. I'm anxious not only to see what a talented filmmaker like Bigelow does with such material, but also the kinds of conversations it creates given the material couldn't be more relevant or a more timely reminder for the American conscience. The remainder of the ensemble cast includes Chris Chalk, Nathan Davis Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, Austin Hébert, Joseph David-Jones, Malcolm David Kelley, John Krasinski, Jacob Latimore, Anthony Mackie, Jason Mitchell, Hannah Murray, Ben O’Toole, Will Poulter, Jack Reynor, Algee Smith, Peyton Alex Smith, Jeremy Strong, Ephraim Sykes, and Leon Thomas III. Detroit opens in theaters on August 4th.

THE HOLLARS Review

John is Jim and Jim is John and in his new movie, The Hollars, John is simply John. We're talking about John Krasinksi of course who parlayed his likable everyman gig on The Office for nine seasons into a brand all its own with which he will now try to both break (13 Hours) and embrace (The Hollars). In Krasinski's second directorial effort what we have is your standard tale of a white man who's been given little if nothing to overcome in this society other than his own emotions and how he deals with such emotional conflicts when his mother falls ill in the small town he ran away from long ago. It is in returning to this not only small town, but the man's hometown that we know our protagonist will learn lessons that might help him deal with his mental constipation. Naturally, there is a cast of quirky family members who are designed to be specific in certain ways, but just broad enough in others so that we may all find someone to relate them to in our own families. In venturing back to his homestead John with the titular last name rather than Krasinski comes to learn things about his parents and his other family members that he'd never been privy to before; intimate and mostly ugly details he doesn't necessarily want to know or see, but as something of the family savior he finds it his responsibility to try and put them back together. It is in this idea, this story arc that The Hollars attempts to differentiate itself from this genre of defeated middle aged men returning to their roots to remember who they really are by reminding themselves of where they came from. It is in this idea that the one who fled to search for more is the one who fled not wholly out of ambition, but also from the pressures imbued upon them by their clan. In The Hollars, John is the only character whose life is fairly average-he really has little to complain about aside from the fact he may not be where he imagined himself professionally at this point, but otherwise he lives in New York City and has a rich/hip girlfriend in Rebecca (Anna Kendrick) who is expecting their first child. The guy more or less has his stuff together sans a few emotional shortcomings, but it is in these emotional shortcomings that the crisis drives him to some interesting and introspective places that are hinted at through his re-connections with his hometown, but that Krasinski brushes over too broadly for them to really resonate instead resorting to genre cliché's to round out his movie.

13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI Review

Director Michael Bay is not someone you would call subtle. As the director of films like Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys I & II, and the Transformer series it is clear to see the guy doesn't mind indulging just a smidge. Typically the guy gets a pretty bad rap for crafting films of spectacle with very little substance, of putting forth his uber-machismo attitude that displays the women in his films as little more than figures of sexuality, and for generally allowing his movies to get away from him as the action (and more specifically the explosions) take over. That said, 13 Hours: The Revenge of the Dark of the Moon is very much a Michael Bay film. Of course, it is a film that Bay has been wanting to make for some time now and that desire, that passion clearly shines through. One could add to the list of Bay's tendencies his penchant for idolizing the American flag and the country it represents. When it comes to America or at least the American military, Bay seems to believe in absolutes and by absolutes I mean the guys on the ground, the soldiers, the people doing the dirty work are the kind of people we should all aspire to be. And maybe that's true, maybe the way Bay has depicted the six men who didn't have to do what they did on September 11, 2012, but chose to risk their lives to save other American lives is completely accurate. I have no qualms with how these heroes are represented as 13 Hours doesn't look to get political, but simply aspires to tell the story of the type of man it takes under such circumstances to make shit happen. My qualms with the film come when these men have little to no substance to them, when they are more or less interchangeable, and when the attempts at adding some weight or personal insight to the situation are so blatantly obvious it takes you out of the movie. Still, those who go into 13 Hours knowing what they want and what they're getting will undoubtedly describe this as nothing short of awesome and the type of pro-American film liberal Hollywood doesn't make enough of. Instead of being pro anything though, I like to imagine most filmmakers simply try to lend each story they tell a sense of well-rounded perspective, but with Bay there is no inhibition about the actions of these men and to even question as much is a fallacy. And so, 13 Hours is the culmination of everything Bay has ever wanted to put to screen and while it's certainly an entertaining action flick it still doesn't connect in the affecting way his over-powered soundtrack suggests he wants it to.

First Trailers for Michael Bay's 13 HOURS

As a big fan of Michael Bay's previous film between Transformers movies, I've been looking forward to seeing what he does next away from the Autobots. When we learned Bay's next project was going to be something of a Benghazi war story based on actual events it was surprising, but in a strange way made complete sense. Bay has always been an action director first and foremost and no matter how bad of a rap the guy gets, he is one of the best action directors working today. He is an auteur in his own right and even if you don't care for many if any of his films one must at least admit they are gorgeous to look at and can be insanely fascinating if not for the story they present, but the thoughts going through the directors mind in order to create something as bombastic as Bay typically does. With the blandly titled 13 Hours that features an even cheaper feeling subtitle in The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Bay enters territory that melds his take on true stories with that of what he has been perfecting his entire career. John Krasinski leads the film that tells of the six members of the military security team that fought to defend the Americans stationed at the embassy in Benghazi when it came under attack. It is also of note that Chuck Hogan (The Town) wrote the script while the Bay imagery is still fully intact if not looking like something akin to American Sniper or Zero Dark Thirty in it's tone if not it's aesthetic. James Badge Dale (Iron Man 3), Max Martini (Pacific Rim), Pablo Schreiber (Orange Is the New Black), and David Denman (The Office) fill out the rest of the main players with the film set to hit theaters on January 15, 2016.

ALOHA Review

Aloha is a strange bird. From the opening credits laid out over vintage footage from Hawaiian celebrations to the music of Hanohano Hanalei there is a sense of slapdash to it. Given this is a Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) film there is a sense of expectation to it, but more than anything he's done over the past ten years Aloha immediately feels more free-wheeling. From the outset we get the sense not of Crowe's writing style, but more the dedication of the actors to the defining characteristics and personalities of their characters. The films lead is entrusted to one of our few bankable movie stars in Bradley Cooper whose Brian Gilcrest was nearly killed in a bombing while serving in Afghanistan and now has trouble with both legs. Gilcrest's jaded and cynical outlook will no doubt serve as the catalyst to be shifted over the course of the film. We are quickly introduced to a roster of familiar faces that are equally defined lending to the thought that this could really be something special. There is Emma Stone's Allison Ng who exudes a hyper-strictness to military conduct while at the same time being blunt, to the point and somewhat over-eager regarding her latest assignment that includes Gilcrest. There is the old flame Gilcrest has tried to forget about since losing her to himself as personified by Rachel McAdams. McAdams ends up coming away with the most emotionally resonant performance of the bunch as it is clear she is anxious to not necessarily reconnect with her former lover, but more get some things off her chest that have been weighing on and need to removed for her to move on. This weight has certainly interfered in her marriage to Woody (John Krasinski) who fully embodies the "strong and silent type". Woody is resistant to change and he knows it, but the time has come to face it when Gilcrest returns to what is Woody's cozy little Mayberry military base in Hawaii. Then you have Bill Murray playing some billionaire technology developer who's looking to buy all he can. Murray is the not-so-wise old man that pretends to have the perspective, but really just has the deep pockets. With all of this going on and all these likable people breathing life into Crowe's quirky dialogue one has to wonder how the film can't at least be appealing or even charming. The fact of the matter is that it actually kind of is despite ever being able to lift the cloud of peculiar that hovers above it.

First Trailer for Cameron Crowe's ALOHA

I feel like I'm supposed to inherently be a fan of Cameron Crowe and while much of what is now likely considered his prime came at a time when I wasn't allowed to see his movies it has been interesting going back, watching those films and seeing what was so captivating at the time. Obviously, this hook is more clear in something like Almost Famous whereas it is tougher to detect in Jerry Maguire. I mean, I get it, but it seems strange now when watching the film back and knowing this was something that caught on in a major way. Since that film though, Crowe has seemed to have a few issues recapturing that kind of sentiment, branching out with Vanilla Sky and returning to comfortable grounds with both Elizabethtown and We Bought A Zoo. While those last two features may generally be considered lesser Crowe I didn't mind them and found much to appreciate in both. With his latest, Aloha, the writer and director looks to be working in the same vein, but will hopefully transcend the issues many had with his later, more sap-fueled features. As I feel something of an inherent liking to the artist this trailer only looks to be a hint of what is a solid, creatively-written film that takes an introspective look at not only a specific type of person, but a lifestyle that those outside it don't typically concern themselves with. The reasoning for the love triangle isn't necessarily fresh, but the circumstances at least offer justifiable reasoning and with Bradley Cooper on nothing short of a hot streak I'm anxious to see if he saw something enticing in the script or if it was simply the prospect of working with Crowe. Aloha also stars Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Alec Baldwin, Bill Murray, John Krasinski, Danny McBride and opens on May 29th.

PROMISED LAND Review

Gus Van Sant is a director whose work I have unfortunately never been highly exposed to. I hear the guy is rather good, but besides his 2008 Oscar contender Milk and his rather underrated 2000 film Finding Forrester I haven't seen any of his films. Yes, this does mean I've never sat down and watched the film written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck that made them stars and won them Oscars. I've heard mixed things about it and seeing as it came out when I was only ten years old I have a valid excuse I think for never getting around to it. Still, this matters little as Mr. Van Sant's latest film which again stars Matt Damon is a beautifully looking tale of moral conflict that deals with an issue known as fracking. We'll get more into that interesting term later, but to draw you into why you should be interested in this film would be to say that it not only stars good, credible actors such as Damon, Frances McDormand, John Krasinski, Hal Holbrook, Rosemarie DeWitt and several other, lesser known character actors who have small parts as the towns folk opposed to the big bad corporate company coming into town and taking away their pride. Besides that, this was also written and produced by both Damon and Krasinski and was originally intended as Damon's directorial debut. Who knows what or how different this film might have been had it been made under Damon's directorial eye, we won't know until we get a chance to see that, but with what has been delivered here I can feel nothing if not appeased by the effort. There is a straightforward, matter of fact feel to the film that paints a black and white picture but doesn't stop there. It takes things a step further and adds a more complex layer of conflict we as an audience naturally place ourselves in the middle of.