My Top 10 Favorite Films of 2018

Another year, another slew of movies added to my library. In celebration of tonight's Oscars ceremony, I present to you my ten favorite films from the past year.

(Disclosure: I was unable to see Destroyer before compiling this list.)

10. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
It's everything I've ever wanted from this franchise. Breakneck action, nonstop ingenuity, absurd humor, and pure terror. It's also easily the most beautiful film in the series. Most importantly, it's a total game-changer; it often does not feel like a Jurassic Park movie and indeed sets up a potential future for the franchise that completely ignores the Park. But come on, we've had the "Park" movie four times now. If this one hadn't set up a whole new vision, I fear my beloved dino flicks would go, well, the way of the dinosaurs. Mission: Impossible -- Fallout might boast the "best" action movie of the year, but my heart belongs to the final scenes of this movie, when the dinosaurs are unleashed on California wildlife. Perfection.

9. Widows
Steve McQueen does it again. It's got an ensemble cast all at their best, led by a fearless Viola Davis. A riveting, timely, and complex screenplay -- co-written with Gillian Flynn -- that balances heist with drama perfectly. A gorgeous score by Hans Zimmer and haunting cinematography from Sean Bobbitt. And, of course, a fresh story expertly told and so relevant to 2018 America that it's hard to know where to start praising it. Other worthy movies this year have featured women rising above their situations to wage war on men -- The Wife with Glenn Close and Bad Times at the El Royale with Cynthia Erivo and Dakota Johnson -- but Widows leads them all. It's dark and disturbing, never less than entertaining, and fabulously original.

8. Black Panther
Here it is. My favorite Marvel movie yet, and easily the most important one in the franchise. Black Panther is everything we dreamed it might be and then some. Suave and sophisticated, action-packed and thrilling, dazzling and gorgeous, it also doesn't skimp on relevance, timeliness, originality, and fun. It features some of the most sophisticated, dynamic characters I've ever seen in a superhero movie -- especially its antagonist -- and pairs them nicely with rich, thoughtful production design. Complex messages and rousing splendor make Black Panther the experience of the year, maybe the decade. Go watch it, and then go watch again. Buy it. Buy two and give one as a gift. It's important, beautiful, fun, and brilliant.

7. Annihilation
Science fiction at its very best, Annihilation takes what is already a fascinating premise and relies on smart storytelling to creep under your skin and mess with your mind. A Quiet Place was a close tie here, but Annihilation is a work of visionary genius, thrilling and horrifying but beautiful and wondrous. Its cosmic horror isn't just in the human body or biology at large -- though it's an entrancing vision into the disturbing nature of cancer -- but in the very mode of storytelling itself. Flashbacks and flashforwards interrupt the narrative while the mythic strength of a quest into a heart of darkness / into hell / for a beloved potently invites a wide range of speculation and interpretation. Which, really, is what science fiction is all about.

6. BlacKkKlansman
It was a pretty amazing year for Black cinema, and one for -- don't take this the wrong way -- masculine cinema. First Reformed, Beautiful Boy, and Ben is Back all sought to mine the hearts and minds of men struggling with identity and existence in a cruel, violent world. Hard to watch, they were mostly a once-and-done set of dramas. Though Spike Lee's movies can feel a bit preachy, by the end of BlacKkKlansman I wanted even more. While this film is an absolute assault on contemporary issues, it is also unusually indirect. He has created Art where he could have simply vomited rhetoric and style and morality on an age where Nazis are again openly marching in the streets. He has mined history and polished it, presenting it as truth and as allegory, framed it with art history in the form of film, and at the same time made an endlessly entertaining feature.

5. Hereditary
Family secrets are dangerous things, and sometimes the things we inherit from our ancestors are even thicker than blood. Hereditary is the horror movie of the year (with one exception), combining immaculate production detail and expert craft from first-time director Ari Aster with some of the best performances in horror cinema history. Aster's masterclass in directing is keenly focused on Toni Collette's impossibly brilliant delivery as a mother at the end of her rope, while Alex Wolff makes a strong case as the rising star of his generation. Much like The Little Stranger, a close contender for this spot in my list, this film doesn't just navigate between honoring specific classic films; it navigates effortlessly between subgenres of horror. We're being played by Aster and his team, much like the amazing miniatures featured as the mother's artwork. I don't want to give anything away, just know that you really don't know what's coming. And, really, when it comes to family, who does?

4. Disobedience
Disobedience is a fabulously melancholy chamber piece, reaching operatic heights in its depiction of the intersection of religion, history, and sexuality. In fact, this is the queer movie we should be raving about this year (step aside, Love, Simon). Boy Erased comes close, but never quite reaches the transcendence of this piece; If Beale Street Could Talk was my other romantic option here, but, dammit, I'm partial to the queers. Rarely have we ever seen a film that explores this fully the essence of the religious queer person; equally rarely do we see this sympathetic a portrait of modern Orthodox Jewish life. It's a lovely premise and and even lovelier slice of culture. These characters at once belong and do not, love and cannot, believe and should not. The film's insistence on delving into these complexities and shunning clear-cut answers, characterizations, or solutions -- along with extolling defiance and doubt as virtues -- makes this film a gripping exercise in humanity.

3. The Favourite
We got some great historical dramas this year, from the heartwarming Stan & Ollie to the queer feminist powerhouse Colette and of course the scathing dark dramedies of Vice and Can You Ever Forgive Me?, but Yorgos Lanthimos blew them all away with his newest spectacle. The Favourite charms before it chills, telling a story of female empowerment and warning of the pleasures and pains of excess. Irreverent, brutally funny and sad, this movie casts a stylish spell that will keep you giggling and thinking long after the credits roll. It centers on a trio of women all at the top of their game, playing characters that come along once in a lifetime. Their power play is endlessly entertaining, and I found myself laughing and gasping aloud in an otherwise pretty silent theater. Some people just don't understand quality comedy.

2. A Star is Born
Mary Poppins Returns was a lot of fun and Vox Lux was dazzling, both were really close contenders here, but unfortunately not my favorite musicals in 2018. You might say A Star is Born is a spin-off of Romeo & Juliet, where the lovers aren't star-crossed so much as, simply, stars. It's the ultimate cinematic depiction of the glories and horrors of fame, framed in a gorgeous love story; it's been done before, but this movie validates itself time and again. An awesome outing from first-time director Bradley Cooper -- along with one of his very best performances -- and the kind of vehicle a goddess like Lady Gaga has long deserved. Beautiful and sad, the movie gives as much as it takes. It's an experience unlike anything of its ilk, a wholly unique spectacle of love and passion. Plus it's got an incredible soundtrack I've had on repeat for months.

1. Suspiria
Women behaving badly is always fun to watch, as we see in films like Thoroughbreds and A Simple Favor, both also in the running for this list. But nothing -- nothing -- prepared me for Luca Guadagnino's reimagining of this horror classic, his magnum opus for a new age of gods and monsters. Guadagnino has carefully calculated every breath of this film to be slow and deliberate, drawing you in and forcing you to exist in the sensory world it creates rather than simply watching. Along with entrancing music, the sound mixing and editing is designed to pop, creeping into your ears and under your skin to not only quicken your heart but also to pain it. The film knowingly invites you to share in its uncanny chill, its deliciously subversive approach to anticlimactic horror, and its ultimately tragic sense of how very wrong humans can go. It is a consummate work of art: a work about art that uses never-before-seen techniques to remaster the form of film itself, to make insightful commentary about the power of art in our broken lives and about broken art in our lives, and to make itself a new way of viewing not only a genre but our world. Allow its meditation on guilt, generational pain, female fellowship, and the limits of the body and of memory to invade your heart, and witness the awesome power of modern horror cinema.

Although Disney doesn't always succeed, 2018 made Disney more relevant than it's been in a long time. Not only is Black Panther a nominee for Best Picture at the Oscars (among six other categories), but it shattered box office records and inspired notable cultural shifts. Apart from the films that made my list, I wanted to include two honorable mentions from Disney that rounded out the year beautifully. A Wrinkle in Time wasn't everyone's favorite, but I found it a surprisingly beautiful, clever, and moving flick; it's also terribly important, normalizing female empowerment and racial diversity without much ado. Christopher Robin works not only as a nostalgic heartstring-tugger but as a rollicking comedy-adventure worthy of a classic Winnie the Pooh tale.

What were YOUR favorite movies this year? Let me know and we'll chat about some stellar cinema!

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Wait...that was Melissa McCarthy?

Disappearing into a role nobody could have expected or prepared for, McCarthy earns her place among the stars in her turn as Lee Israel. A writer who can't quite make her ends meet, a woman who can't connect with anyone in a meaningful way, and a person who seems to hate herself as much as she loves herself, the character exists more than lives in an indifferent New York of the early '90s. Her story, we learn, is one that is marked not by authorial success but rather by a criminal enterprise: namely, forging and selling personal correspondence from deceased celebrities.

It's a ridiculous, impossible story -- true, of course, but hardly credible on screen -- and the character could have quickly become a caricature of an eccentric, overweight lesbian who lies to live. With McCarthy's transformation, though, comes some of the most nuanced performing we've seen on screen this year. Her every movement is measured, each look calculated. We see a woman constantly at war with herself, denying herself what she most wants and indulging the very things she (and we) knows she should abandon. Her sparkling wit occasionally outshines her pessimism and scathing banter with the limited people she interacts with. It's a quietly intense delivery that is easy to get lost in, or to miss entirely.

Sharing the screen with her is Richard E. Grant, whose flamboyant and seedy character of Jack Hock is apparently the only person Lee Israel might call a friend. Wry and wicked, Jack joins in her criminal spree -- not forsaking his other sins -- and the two embark on a tenuous relationship that mixes work with friendship and wealth. It'll prove a doomed combination, but it is NYC nearing the end of a millennium, and doom is already in the city's lifeblood. Grant's character is a magnificent creation, no less complex than McCarthy's if given less attention by the film, and together the two make a strong case for this to be the queer movie of the year.

Much like McCarthy's quiet intensity, the film operates like a surgical knife, shiny and clean at the outset before diving deep into the carnage of our inner lives. Director Marielle Heller masterfully controls the flow of information, keeping everything intimate and allowing her creation to play a game of cutthroat poker. Everyone's hands are close to their chests, and while we're left with performances for the ages, nothing is as understated as the messages of the movie. The movie will end but its ideas creep under your skin and into your heart. Guard yourself, and then reconsider the cost of forgiving such deeply moving cinema.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

You can almost feel the Coen brothers in their writing room. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is far from their most polished work, but it's a masterclass in screenwriting and a damn fun way to spend two hours.

"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is just the opening salvo here, an optimistic and gleefully violent short starring Tim Blake Nelson, Willie Watson, and Clancy Brown. This film, you see, is an anthology. Collected here in a lovely book that includes "Other Tales of the Wild West" are five additional stories that explore various elements of misadventure on the frontier. Scruggs is probably my favorite, as Nelson's quirky comedy is just so damn infectious, but each segment has its particular charms of beauty, humor, and violence. The other tales include (in order of my preference):

"The Mortal Remains" -- five strangers (including Tyne Daly and Brendan Gleeson) share a nighttime stagecoach ride to an uncertain destination, uncomfortably discussing differing philosophies. Features bounty hunters and magnificent dialogue.
"Meal Ticket" -- a manager (Liam Neeson) struggles to find a paying audience for his traveling show: an orator (Harry Melling) with no arms or legs who recites famous speeches from memory. Features a chicken that can count.
"Near Algodones" -- a cowboy (James Franco) robs a bank and faces perpetual death, having underestimated the elderly banker (Stephen Root) and vigilante posse (Ralph Ineson). Features a Comanche raiding party and scalping.
"All Gold Canyon" -- an old prospector (Tom Waits) hunts for gold in an Edenic valley, unaware that he is being watched by nature and a criminal. Features gorgeous photography.
"The Gal Who Got Rattled" -- Alice (Zoe Kazan) travels on the Oregon Trail to find a new life; after escaping a prearranged marriage, she learns to find love (Bill Heck) and take control of her own life to the very end. Features a dog and surprisingly moving romance.

While I expected a more satirical view of the Wild West, I'm far more impressed with the film as it is. Satire is useful, but it's been done in this context and not often successfully. But this film is never predictable; rather like a miniseries, we jump between episodes just when they begin to lose steam. It's some of the most creative world-building we've seen from the duo yet. Ultimately, it's a delicious excuse to view the world from the Coens' unique perspective: bizarre, macabre, violent, and with more genuine wit than you could kick your spurs at.

Roma (2018)

Score: 1 / 5

It might be gorgeously shot, but the content is nothing we know or care about. It's all in black and white in homage to someone we don't know or care about. So why has Roma become the hit movie of this awards season and the thing everyone is going to pretend to know and care about?

I couldn't tell you.

Roma is the most boring movie I've seen in years. Endlessly indulgent, sick with sentiment, and dripping with artistic pretense, the film seems happy with simply showcasing the life of an average housekeeper in an average family during average times in their lives. Sure, there's a forest fire at one point and a child almost drowns in the ocean and there's a bizarre violent student march in the streets; but even more screen time is devoted to the dog's shit covering the garage floor and the mother's inability to drive her car.

You could say it's worthwhile to get the "slice of life" from such an average family in Mexico City, especially in the middle of the Trump administration, and you could say that the family drama is interesting, if you're interested in such soapy baloney. Or you could say, like me, that the lengthy flick is more like watching Cuaron flip through old family photo albums. Pretty, sweet, and ultimately something I'd rather not do. 

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Dan Gilroy may not be the year's premier horror filmmaker, but no one can say he doesn't try daring new things with each project. Here he turns his attention away from seedy bottom-feeders in the news as well as shady lawyers in a morality play and turns his considerable insight and wit to the world of contemporary art. In doing so, he captures a dazzling, damning, and deeply disturbing look at the ways we treat art nowadays.

When she stumbles across a dead man in her apartment building, Josephina (Zawe Ashton) sneaks into his unit and discovers tons of beautiful paintings. She steals them and soon the L.A. contemporary art world clamors for the work. But the dead artist, Vetril Dease, had poured some of his inner demons into his paintings, stemming from his abused childhood that culminated in murdering his father and subsequent debilitating mental illness. Having violated his specific instructions to destroy his art, the greedy art dealers and critics become prey for the vengeful art they've profited from.

Sound brilliant? It is. Think The Picture of Dorian Gray meets It Follows, and you've about got the entire horror aspect of this movie. But what makes Velvet Buzzsaw a really amazing movie is that, in terms of its structure, it's not even a horror flick.

We begin not with the crazed artist painting his masterpiece nor do we even know about his death for the first several scenes. Instead, we start in an art exhibition in Miami Beach with an art critic named Morf Vandewalt (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose caustic wit and transcendent taste seem to have earned him a prestigious place in contemporary artistic circles. He passes through the gallery attentive more to the guests than the art, fleetingly trading gossip and insider info on the biz. His date is Josephina, who works for famed gallery owner Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo), and they quickly begin a sexual relationship when Morf reveals unhappiness with his boyfriend. But this, too, is fleeting. Morf is not the relationship guy, he's the social status guy.

With this inciting incident, the film is immediately established as a razor-sharp satire. Rapid-fire dialogue reveals characters' infinite disdain, avarice, and no small amount of personal loathing. You can never quite shake the feeling that these people know their entire sense of identity is based on being unable to create anything; they merely feed off what others make, hoping to grab whatever social and financial power they can by cheating the artists and making what should be experiential consumptive.

Leave it to Dan Gilroy to not only lampoon an entire institution but to make a complex and sophisticated piece of art in doing so. Everybody has ulterior motives, and all are impossibly selfish. Gilroy has a knack for these utterly unwholesome characters, and here he adds campy flamboyance to them. Perhaps best in this vein are Toni Collette and Rene Russo, vying for Morf's favor and the hottest pieces on the market, with their bizarre costumes, striking hair, and deliciously affected speech patterns. The film's color palette and cinematography paint a highly stylized world for our endless pleasure, the kind of cinematic candy that makes your mouth water and pucker up at the same time. What else would you expect from the production designer Jim Bissell (Suburbicon, Juamnji, 300) and cinematographer extraordinaire Robert Elswit?

With its large cast, short running time, and lots on its mind, Velvet Buzzsaw could have derailed into a sordid mess of half-baked ideas. Instead, thanks to precise writing, focused direction, and stellar work from cast and crew, it cuts deep into the state of art in a postmodern capitalist world of ownership and validity and subjectivity.

Bird Box (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

It's become a bizarre cultural joke, but the new Netflix thriller Bird Box is a surprisingly effective post-apocalyptic sci-fi/horror blend that will make you think and weep, if it is short on scares.

Based on the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel by Michigander Josh Malerman, Bird Box imagines a future in which mysterious horrors prowl the earth provoking widespread death. "Provoking" is the key here because, much like in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, these monsters do not kill directly, instead somehow inspiring their victims to kill themselves. Their methodology is vague because they are so mysterious, and it would seem that one informs the other. If they are aliens, do they drive their victims insane? If they are demons, do they possess their prey? We're sure of one thing: seeing the monsters is the problem. The film actually suggests the monsters are invisible until you see them; those we would call mentally ill or insane can apparently see the "beautiful" beings and choose to worship them, carrying out their will by trying to get other survivors to see as well.

Speaking of the survivors, that's where we get the now-famous image of Sandra Bullock with two children, all of them blindfolded in a boat. Having survived five years in this chaotic world, she finds herself the lone parent for two children and desperate for help. After receiving a radio transmission from a community of survivors, she blindfolds herself and her children and takes off on a boat, rowing for two days through wilderness and rapids. The film splits its time between two narratives: one is here on the river, the other is five years prior, just after the world falls to these mysterious invaders and as Sandy B joins up with other survivors.

I was shocked at the number and caliber of star power here. Other than Bullock, we have Sarah Paulson, BD Wong, Jacki Weaver, John Malkovich, Tom Hollander, Rosa Salazar, Danielle Macdonald, and Trevante Rhodes. What? I know, it's pretty crazy. Add to that the talent behind the scenes: director Susanne Bier (The Night Manager, Things We Lost in the Fire), writer Eric Heisserer (Arrival, Lights Out), and frequent Ron Howard collaborator cinematographer Salvatore Totino (Spider-Man: Homecoming, Everest, Concussion). It all makes for a beautiful picture I rather wish had been released in theaters.

Having held off on this picture for a while due to overwhelmingly negative responses from friends who had seen it, I'm really glad I didn't let them talk me out of viewing. Perhaps they were upset because it's not a "scary" movie, or perhaps they wanted more action or something. I found Bird Box to be a lovely, if intimate, adventure through the heart of a wounded woman. Bullock's character is hardened by the world -- she's pregnant and does not want to be -- and the events of this plot force her to make a choice between remaining isolated and breaking open. The film is far more emotional than scary or creepy, and as she learns to find hope and love in unlikely places, you might shed a tear too.

As in the best science fiction, this film invites many layers of speculation and interpretation. If the monsters are alien, how do they know intimate details of the characters' pasts? If they're demons, why does the natural world react in such strange yet predictable ways to their presence? The picture will provoke discussions of insanity, art, motherhood, survival, religion, community; it's sparse enough to be a fairy tale and thrilling enough to be entertaining. In the end, we've experienced a journey toward hope. That's something we could all use a bit more of.

Plus, Trevante Rhodes is beautiful.

The Prodigy (2019)

Score: 1.5 / 5

There's nothing prodigious here, and the inability of the film to so much as send a chill down your spine is the tip of this melting iceberg.

"What's wrong with Miles?" reads the poster tagline, and if you've ever seen any movie in which a child becomes possessed by another conscious entity, you already know the answer. The opening sequence of The Prodigy sets up a nasty twist on the genre, suggesting that the untimely death of one man in Ohio and the simultaneous birth of a baby boy in Pennsylvania are connected. We're not exactly sure how they're connected yet, but the blood spots on the infant mirror the bullet wounds on the man. We're sure, though, that the man is not a good man; he had an abducted woman imprisoned in his basement who had escaped and screamed "He took my hand!" to the first person she encountered.

Miles, though, matures quickly and his parents are proud that their son is so advanced. Unfortunately, we know he's not a prodigy so much as possessed because he's just so fucking creepy. Not scary, mind, just uncomfortable. He stands silhouetted in doorways and window frames, listening and muttering to himself in Hungarian, glaring at the people we know he's planning to attack. He may be smart, but he's no genius. He's just got a fully grown psychopath sharing his brain.

The film strings itself along from plot point to contrived plot point, cliche to groan-inducing cliche. It's what would happen if The Omen was less demonic and more The Orphan. We learn quickly that the dead man/abductor was a serial killer who murdered women and removed their hands as his trophies. After the turning point when Miles's mother -- and, actually, everyone -- knows Miles is evil, she discovers their dog's mutilated body in the basement with its paw cut off by garden shears. The dog, by the way, is the only certain death in the film. What is the deal?

There's not a moment we don't see coming, and not a moment we really care about. The thin, flaccid story is even worse than Nicholas McCarthy's purposeless direction. His film can't decide what it wants or how to achieve any meaningful affect; its aesthetic is lost in shifting focus and scenes drained of energy. The whole affair becomes an exercise in the most boring kind of nihilism, the kind that makes the movie feel not only unwelcome but almost insulting.

My favorite part occurs about halfway through, when Miles's teacher at his gifted school convinces Miles and his mother to visit her colleague, a psychologist or academic (we don't know) who studies reincarnation. It's all a lot of hooey, but Colm Feore plays the good physician with a delicious magnetism. His glistening dark eyes and haunted visage are exactly what I need in a horror movie worthy of his talents. That is, not this one.

Serenity (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

Writer-director Steven Knight is always a little hit-and-miss with me. That is, his thrillers are usually appropriately erotic and emotionally complex with just enough crazy to make me enjoy them; they're also often in bizarre settings with even stranger twists that serve more to distract than compel me. Nowhere has he done this more effectively than in Serenity.

In a neo-noir thriller that reminded me more than once of erotic thrillers from 40 years ago like Fatal Attraction and Jagged Edge. Actually, it reminded me a bit of Acrimony too, but in a less urban-Gothic way. It all takes place on a remote island (only heaven knows where), picturesque and tropical, the perfect place for margaritas and murder. The economy of the island seems dependent on fish, but one fisherman isn't interested in just any flopping flounder. Matthew McConaughey plays the fisherman -- he has a name, but he's just a melancholy Matthew McConaughey -- hell-bent on harpoonin' that blasted Moby-Dick, by t'under!

He may not be an Ahab, but there are plenty of ideas being tossed around here. The fish he's after is a huge tuna named "Justice"and if you think for one instant someone isn't going to be dragged by Justice to the depths, you'd better crack open a book and educate yourself. His first mate Djimon Hounsou, ever the faithful and pious Starbuck character, counsels him to make a living and let Justice alone, to no avail. After all, Matt McC seems to catch swordfish and sharks with no problem on a daily basis. Why should he care about Justice? Er, that is, a tuna? But our fisherman is haunted by a seeming injustice done him some time before, perhaps when he was on the field of war, or perhaps something to do with these visions of a son he hasn't seen in years.

Into this troubled paradise steps (saunters, really) Anne Hathaway as a stunning femme fatale in white. Her outfits alone make the movie worth watching, but so does her penchant for inciting murder. Anne, you see, is Matthew's former wife and mother to his son. She feeds off his hunger for his son and plies him with stories of how abusive her new husband (Jason Clarke) has been. Matt agonizes over the prospect, knowing murder to be wrong in some weirdly moralistic way (other than Djimon there is no religion here, and he's totally fine prostituting himself to Diane Lane for extra cash) but finding Anne's simple, elegant plan nearly foolproof.

It's all a fascinating setup: glamorous, psychological, chilling, erotic. There's nothing not to like, especially with the promise of mysteries to unravel, not least of which is the strange connection between Matthew and his son that even Anne comments upon. But by the halfway point, the film begins to unravel. Jason Clarke is actually a monster, and we totally want him to die. Dressed like a Scorsese mobster and as vile as the sharks we hope will eat him, Jason oozes nastiness and violence in a caricatured performance that is as far from Matthew's tortured introversion as you could possibly get.

The strange metaphysical connections increase in length and intensity until the secret comes out. I really don't want to spoil it, but it's completely absurd. The movie owns it, which I admire, and even kind of works on its own terms, which I admire even more. But it's such a bonkers concept that I almost laughed out loud in the cinema, when I should have been awed or thrilled or...something. It took me so far out of the moment and has so little real meaning that it feels more like a poorly wired gadget shorting out, causing entertaining sparks that almost immediately fizzle and die.

It's lots of fun on its own, to be sure. But I can't help wishing the film had stayed true to its setup of classic erotic thrills and a seductive murder in paradise. I guess, for that, there's always Dead Calm.

Stan & Ollie (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

It's pure movie magic. Stan & Ollie dramatizes the relationship between two founding fathers of American comedy, Laurel and Hardy, in their waning years. Battling personal demons and memories of former glory, the two embark on a tour of British music halls with some success and more than some squabbles. The simple story frames what is essentially a meditation on aging, aging in the entertainment industry, capitalism's effects on American artists, and of course friendships forged in the spotlight.

We begin in the heyday of their careers, as the duo make Way Out West and look to continue their successes. Studio execs wine and dine the pair -- sometimes together, sometimes apart -- and we see the seeds of strife sown between the men. Will they be as successful apart? That is the question everyone wants to know, but the two men can't seem to articulate their own hopes, concerns, or fears. So they remain together after what might be described as certain infidelities. Their act, after all, has made them; it seems likely that we'll see how it unmakes them, too.

And to an extent it does. Steve Coogan plays Stan Laurel to John C. Reilly's Ollie Hardy, and the two have never been better. Their comedic timing takes backseat to their acting chops, and both transform utterly into their characters. Never have their affected characters been so fully realized nor so uncannily like their real-life counterparts. Every look Reilly gives, every heaving sigh under layers of prosthetics and makeup, every twinkle in his eye oozes Hardy. Coogan's simpleminded Laurel onstage is revealed to be a veritable creative genius, and while his sense of urgency often butts against his partner's sense of style, he carries most of the heart of the film. Together, they carry the movie and immediately make you forget you're not actually watching the original duo in some forgotten biography.

And while the film has a lot to say about the state of the art, the cultures of theatre and comedy, and of the men who started it all, it's also a damn classy comedy in its own right. It weaves a mesmerizing tapestry of humor and melancholy that turn in unexpected places, making you laugh out loud -- at good clean fun, too, the timeless kind -- before choking back a gasp. It's so funny and so sad that you, shockingly enough, believe these to be real people dealing with real issues. How often does that really happen in movies these days?

Glass (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

A fascinating conclusion to the series no one expected or even really wanted, Glass takes all that's great about Shyamalan's work and combines it with the things general audiences don't really enjoy. This will make it unpopular to some and only entertaining to others, but for those of us willing to give ourselves over to his vision, it's a fabulous exercise in auteurship that deserves attention.

Not long after the events of Split, Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) is at it again, having abducted three cheerleaders along with his "Horde" of alternate personalities. Determined to rescue them -- as was teased in the final scene of Kevin's movie -- is vigilante David Dunn (Bruce Willis), much older now and assisted by his grown son (Spencer Treat Clark). Using his special powers, he locates the girls and fights Kevin before they are both arrested. The rest of the story centers on the mental institution (read: prison and torture chamber) where they are held, interrogated by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson). She specializes in patients who think they're superhuman.

The performances are all stellar, and writer/director M. Night Shyamalan has assembled familiar faces to bolster the emotional appeal, including Anya Taylor-Joy and Charlayne Woodard. Paulson holds her own as the calculating doctor, and in case it wasn't obvious, she ends up being the primary antagonist here. Some will lament the script's underuse (and, arguably, misuse) of Bruce Willis, relegated to a minor role in which he mostly broods and looks bored, but his best talents haven't been satisfyingly featured by a filmmaker in years. Instead, we get a lot more McAvoy doing his awesome work, and some healthy doses of Samuel L. Jackson, whose character Elijah Price or Mr. Glass has been held in the institution for many years.

What's really fabulous about this film -- and series -- is how it's about superheroes without being a superhero movie. Leaving the theater, I heard cries of "Shyamalan doesn't know how to film action" and "where was the climax?" People clearly wanted more, but I'm not sure why. The great drama of this film is mental, brought wonderfully to life in the closeups of the main characters' faces as they struggle through the psychological implications of their actions and their identities. And then, when their powers do unleash, Shyamalan views it with a deliberately distanced lens, forcing us to view them as they really exist in a real world. Their actions are amazing, but we're shown them in an almost pedestrian context.

That's why the ending works especially well for me. There is a climax, to be sure, but we're promised a huge showdown atop the tallest building in Philadelphia; we're given a smaller fight on the lawn of Dr. Staple's institution. But the climax isn't even the fight. The whole affair is a sort of overly aggressive anticlimax, forcing us to reconsider not only our expectations of these characters but of these films, and of the whole superhero genre. Shyamalan's endgame here isn't to recreate the grandeur of Marvel's universe, but rather to subvert it. He suggests time and again -- through Staple -- that we might not have been watching superhero movies disguised as psychological thrillers, but rather psychological thrillers masquerading as superhero stories.

We end the film with (SPOILER ALERT) the deaths of the three major characters, the apparent victory of the shadow organization -- yes, another stylish throwback to comics -- and a typical Shyamalan twist ending. The three people most attached to the heroes (their sidekicks, we might say) team up together in the film's final moments, both mourning their passed loves and taking up their mantles as they witness footage of the battle virally spreading to the world. Are they vigilantes against the institutions of the world? Speaking truth to power? In it to selfishly vindicate their fallen friends and family? Or could they be teaming up to, as Mrs. Price suggests, create their own universe? Because that's exactly what Shyamalan himself has made a career of doing.