The Odyssey (2026)

Score: 5 / 5

How do you tell a new version of one of the oldest stories in the Western world? You start by telling a story about stories. I was a little nervous at first that Christopher Nolan would pull some of his usual shtick again and mess up the timeline of his own film, but then I remembered that The Odyssey itself isn't really linear. Of course there's no reason not to start in medias res, and in this case it makes perfect sense with Nolan's oeuvre. But the truth is that if you're consuming the foundational epic for its plot, you've already missed the mark. Sure, the whole dang thing is arguably "about" its plot, but what makes it really compelling is its sense of style, its complicated characters, its sense of pacing and propulsion despite its stretched timeline. 

Actually, Nolan's film feels at once like a wildly satisfying (and the first, which is crazy) adaptation of Homer's epic poem for a modern audience and one of the most riveting pieces of filmmaking this year. In a perhaps unobvious move, he starts us focused intently on Telemachus (reliable Tom Holland) and Penelope (a glorious Anne Hathaway), fending off a cadre of suitors feasting and whoring in the king's hall in Ithaca. These scenes take place near the end of the story, chronologically, as Odysseus has been missing for ten years. That's in addition to the ten years he was away from home for the Trojan War. He barely knows his own son, and Penelope is nearing the end of her rope. Or, rather, tapestry, which she cleverly uses (and unravels) to keep the wolfish suitors (led by a sniveling Robert Pattinson) at bay. These scenes, occasionally sprinkled in between flashback episodes of Odysseus's adventure, are filmed like a bleak political thriller, ending in a climactic banquet hall battle that, truly, took my breath away with its sheer barbarism and spectacle.

The bulk of the film -- though, as I say, arguably not its focus -- concerns the titular journey of its hero, told in lengthy flashback sequences. He's on an island with Calypso (Charlize Theron, wasted in the bit part but always a commanding and welcome presence on screen), eating lotus flowers (in a curious but effective change to the source material), suddenly trying to remember why he's there and for how long he's been stuck in a somewhat limbo-esque beachside paradise. He's seeing visions of his past in Troy, wallowing with his army for years outside the city gates until he designs and creates a massive wooden horse; this bit takes several scenes, including a particularly gross montage of the men hiding inside with their piss and shit and dead comrades, getting dragged and flipped around as they're brought into the city (again, not part of the original story, nor from The Iliad). He's also seeing the goddess Athena (Zendaya), though he doesn't always seem sure if it's really her, or a dream, or just his own imagination. All this is to say that his mind is fractured, and so is our approach to his story, a highly effective means of granting us emotional access to these characters and their plight as we, too, attempt to figure out what's happening.

Even a graduate-level familiarity with the material won't save you from at least wondering once or twice, "Gosh, I don't remember that part" or "Wait, who is that again?" That's because Nolan's vision isn't a straightforward adaptation so much as it is a thesis project, combining other sources (like Virgil) along with Homer to deliver a story that's familiar but fresh at the same time. He's uniting stories rather than corrupting them. At its heart, it's very much the story we want to see; in his grip, though, Nolan's story takes on new and important themes paired with some of the most arresting and thrilling visuals we've ever seen from an epic. Not because it's bombastic and loaded with CGI, but because most of it is filmed in seemingly natural light and with practical effects. Perhaps the only scene clearly done with CGI is the encounter with Scylla and Charybdis, and while I didn't love those designs, they worked fine enough. But the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians, the sirens, Circe's animals, and all the "big ticket" creatures and visuals are apparently practical. It's gobsmacking.

Yet for all the spectacle -- even the frustrating moments -- Nolan cares more about the effect of these things on his characters than about our experience of them. He makes it a profoundly human story, grappling with weighty themes of fate and purpose; he makes us wonder about our own lives, our glorious intentions, our miserable failures, our great shames and hopes, inviting us to think about the story of our own lives through the warping lens of memory, regret, and uncertainty. With all these ideas whirling around our minds, it might be easy to say the nearly three-hour runtime is a slog, but it isn't. The simplicity of these proceedings keeps us grounded, compelling us to continue experiencing rather than drifting away. The experience, though, is exhausting, and more than once during the film I had to stretch and breathe deeply, just to attempt to revive my endurance.

Despite the hullabaloo online about this film -- perhaps hypocritically, I'm becoming increasingly convinced to leave social media, if only to avoid people complaining loudly about things they neither understand nor care to -- and as a student of the classics, I had no significant qualms with this film's depiction of history or characters (or the cast, for that matter). Everyone is playing at the top of their games, including Benny Safdie, Elliot Page, Lupita Nyong'o in brilliant double roles, Himesh Patel, and even John Leguizamo. Samantha Morton plays such a terrifying Circe that I nearly choked on my own saliva (and, again, her scene features some of the nastiest and most inventive practical effects I've ever seen on film). The costumes are exquisite, especially Agamemnon's helmet. Ludwig Goransson's score is transportive, utilizing ancient instruments to evoke a unique sonic palette. Sure, some of the dialogue can be off-putting (the repeated use of "dad" in Telemachus's mouth is grating), but any complaints about accents, etc., are little more than stupid hot air from people who have clearly never thought critically about any film.

And we haven't even discussed the analog filmmaking, the brutally physical shoot, Nolan's use of brand new technology for IMAX film cameras, or even Matt Damon's performance as the complicated protagonist. There will be college courses based around this film for the sheer amount of material to be covered. While I'd have liked a few changes, having now seen the film twice (specifically, more cleverness and agency and violence from Penelope, more comeuppance for Mia Goth's character, a better visual on the sirens, less obsession with genre lingo like "Zeus's law," and slightly more elevated dialogue a la The Lord of the Rings), I'm so thrilled that this is what we have. Seeing this on the biggest screen possible and with the best sound system will change you; there were moments of such intense passion from the subwoofers that my seat was vibrating like in a 4D movie. Most importantly, Nolan expects us to both do our homework, denying us the pleasures of modern blockbusters and forcing us to catch up with him in a story that feels almost suspiciously anti-AI and anti-summary. These are complex ideas and characters, and we're meant to approach them with appropriate nuance and thoughtfulness. Harryhausen films and their ilk are fabulous and personal favorites, but Nolan is giving us something brand new. Which is saying a lot when he specifically references such things, including a shot from the original Clash of the Titans (1981) involving Athena's statue's head broken off and tumbling down steps. It's a single shot, and I let out a half-strangled moan and laugh combined that probably unnerved people sitting around me. They should be so fortunate to understand the craft at work here. All hail!

Armageddon Time (2022)

Score: 2 / 5

The first day of sixth grade could be tough on any kid. Queens in 1980 certainly was tough for Paul Graff, a Jewish-American boy who lives with his parents in a comfortable and financially stable home. Due to his age and expectations of boys at the time, he tends to sleep a lot; when he's awake, he looks a bit lost or bewildered, as though a nap would do him more good than his various activities. Played with sensitivity and bravery by young actor Banks Repeta (The Black Phone), Paul means well but certainly can't stop himself from getting into trouble. His parents and brother seem to fight regularly to make Paul wake up and get going, usually to school. When he's there, he's not shy about causing trouble for his teacher or that he's more interested in doodling, cracking jokes and insults, and thinking about rockets. It's time for Paul to wake up.

At school, Paul meets a new friend at school, Johnny (Jaylin Webb), the only Black student in his class. Johnny is bigger than the other kids; we're told multiple times that he is in sixth grade for the second time, and the teacher chooses to be quite cruel to this student he's sure will be trouble. Johnny gets singled out and harshly reprimanded so often that he begins acting just the way the teacher has proscribed. Paul acts accordingly, relating perhaps a little too strongly to Johnny than his teacher or family would prefer. After a particularly troubling visit with the principal, Paul's mother (Anne Hathaway) calls a family meeting and they decide to send Paul to a private school. 

Armageddon Time is reportedly an autobiography of sorts for writer and director James Gray (Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z, The Immigrant). But it's also a thoughtful meditation on the "Armageddon" of our individual youths, the time when some of us had to suddenly change our mindsets and mature to survive. Paul is coming to the realization he wants to be an artist, but his parents want him to actually make a living someday. He's realizing that Black and white kids are treated differently, and that other identifiers such as being Jewish have various stigmas, challenges, and benefits beyond who you are and what you do on a personal level and a social level. He's seeing the inconsistencies between the American Dream messages preached at him and the realities of his family and family history. The Trump family is entrenched in his new private school, and Maryanne Trump (Jessica Chastain) delivers the first day address to students, lionizing the virtues of hard work and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. Meanwhile, Paul's maternal grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) tells him about their family escaping antisemitic persecution in Europe.

Hopkins is the heart of this film. When Paul is sad that his parents don't support his dreams of becoming an artist, his grandfather gifts him a professional painting set. Though his age is starting to show, much to his daughter's concern, the grandfather is smart as a whip and eager to be a supportive and encouraging voice for Paul, even to the point of challenging Paul to stand up to bullies of his friend Johnny. He's seen the horrors of racial discrimination and persecution, and he has no interest in letting his grandson experience the same thing in the land of freedom and opportunity. He exhorts Paul to be a mensch, which is lovely but particularly difficult for the 11-year-old boy who just wants to fit in somewhere.

Gray works hard to make the film relatively void of sentimentality or nostalgia even as he wants to create a time capsule of period details. By including the Trumps and Reagan as major cultural moments, he drains the film of political or social neutrality. It's all shot in somewhat cold, dim lights, and the interiors of the family home are darkest when the television is blaring news about the upcoming election. Paul's concerns about internalizing the messaging he receives from his grandfather, his parents, and the authority figures at school and on TV are quite blurry -- intentionally so -- and yet it all builds to a whole lot of nothing. He doesn't learn much by film's end except the importance of thinking for himself, which he dubiously acts upon in the film's final scene as he leaves the Thanksgiving dance at school as Fred Trump delivers an address to the students.

I wanted to love this movie, but it just didn't do much for me. If this had come out in 2016, it might have felt more relevant. As it is, it feels like the de-sentimentalized version of Roma or Boyhood or any other number of autobiographies from auteurs. Which is fine, but it's just not the kind of movie I usually enjoy watching. It walks a fine line between sensations that plague this unique genre: sometimes it feels like the director is forcing us to go through old photo albums of his past, and sometimes it feels like the director is hammering home Big Ideas that he realize shaped his developmental stages of life and wants to preach those messages from the realm of his own experience. And yes, reflection on ourselves is important, and reconciling our memories of the past with perspective from the present can be a beautiful thing, but not in heavyhanded lectures like this. It's just not entertaining.

The acting is pretty solid across the board, but the screenplay doesn't seem to know how to give its characters much to do, other than Paul. His father (Jeremy Strong) is sort of amorphous, at times abusive and disciplining, at times gentle and emotional and kind, at times goofy to a fault. Paul's brother is so briefly and shallowly considered he's almost absent. Paul's teacher is a caricature of (pardon the pun) old-school cruelty. Hathaway's mother character has some heft in the actor's hands, but it's not because of the screenplay doing her any favors. Worst, Johnny is so thinly written I fear he is actually just a really bad representative of Black kids in a film that, by definition, should be more sensitive and knowing. It seems the movie as a whole is meant to be a kind of apology to kids like him, but it never really gets to that point, and by the halfway point even seems to largely sweep Johnny away from its concerns entirely. The early parts in which he proves more consequential relegate only a few attributes to him rather than any depth of character, which he frankly deserves in a film about learning to see and appreciate the interiority of people's lives.

The Witches (2020)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

If there was any major filmmaker out there who decided a remake of The Witches should happen and who had the technical, deeply disturbing, and contagious sense of fun required for it, it would be Robert Zemeckis. His varied and always surprising filmography often marries the fantastic to the macabre, the uncanny to the fetishistic, and his control of the slim boundary between the delightful and terrifying plays out best on the largest screen in town. Unfortunately, his newest vision was released in October, just as people were ready to celebrate holidays and COVID-19 was keeping things too dangerous to venture outside, and so it premiered on the rather exclusive streaming service HBO Max. Thank goodness for free trials!

To briefly summarize the plot, for the unfamiliar: A young unnamed boy, orphaned, moves in with his grandmother and casually runs into a witch. She immediately believes him and tells him about a secret society of witches, wicked fiends who look normal apart from their gloves, wigs, and squared shoes; these accoutrements disguise their monstrous appearance. But once a witch discovers a child, the child is perpetually in danger, and so the boy and his grandmother leave home to hide out at a nearby hotel. But soon after the Grand High Witch shows up there to lead a conference, unveiling their plan to use a potion -- hidden in candy around the world -- to turn children into mice. Before he can warn anyone else, the boy is caught and mouse-ified and spends the rest of the film trying to stay alive and thwart the witches.

It's a cute enough premise, but as with all adaptations of Roald Dahl's work, it requires certain understandings going in, or else viewers may become hopelessly frustrated. The 1983 novel has been previously adapted to film, in 1990 by Nicolas Roeg, and it has yet to be fully satisfying as a story. After a clever and interesting setup, some chilling exposition, and an early centerpiece that is camp heaven, the story peters out into odd chases, bewildering chance encounters, unfulfilled intrigue, and ultimately an ending that is so deeply uncomfortable that each movie has attempted to change it, unsuccessfully each time. Add to it the hotly debated misogyny and racism claims against Dahl's work and the whole concept becomes generally unpleasant.

Which is, surely, why Zemeckis assembled a team of stars to create this new version, even if the reasons for doing so are difficult to determine. Co-written by Guillermo del Toro, whose work with dark fantasy seems remarkably fitting here (and let's all take a minute to thank Hollywood for keeping Tim Burton away from this project), this movie transplants the plot from '80s England/Norway to '60s Alabama and makes the boy and his grandmother Black. There's more than a hint that this may be partly inspired by Lovecraft Country and the general social trauma of the past four years, especially when the grandmother, Agatha (played by Octavia Spencer doing what she does best), takes her grandson, named Charlie here, to a nearby hotel. Its large white façade feel reminiscent of a plantation, and grandmother's assertion that "witches only prey on the poor" feels a little too on-the-nose in these surroundings. When the well-dressed women arrive at the hotel's private ballroom for their meeting of the International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, shifting from suffragettes to pro-life Republicans to something not unlike Nazis, and discuss turning children into mice to be "sqvashed", the allusions pile up faster than you can keep count.

But there is no denying the sheer watchability and enjoyability of this movie, and I look forward to seeing it again. Anne Hathaway goes for broke here, with a balls-out performance that often feels like it's in a different movie altogether. Much like Angelica Huston in the previous film, Hathaway is clearly having fun camping up her performance and giving so much energy that even when her face splits into a shark-toothed Glasgow smile you see her more than the layers of effects; her thickly ambiguous and theatrical accent tosses in rolling Norse "r" sounds to honor the source, but more than once I wondered if her vaguely eastern European voice was inspired by our own current first lady. "Be best," I wanted her to purr in the moments she wasn't screaming with diabolic ecstasy. She is brilliant even when others are overshadowed (Stanley Tucci), underserved by the script (at least Spencer gets to sing and dance to the oldies), or simply in a movie they just don't belong in (Kristin Chenoweth, I love you, but why are you voicing this mouse like a Southern belle?).

As with many Zemeckis films, he's less interested here in engaging in any Big Ideas. He all but ignores the potentially anti-Semitic theme of blood libel, despite making the witches even more human and therefore more evil than in Roeg's version, sidelines sexist conception of the witches themselves, and barely verbalizes any of the racial tension on screen that he himself created for this picture. Rather, he prefers letting these many issues exist visually, running rampant but small like the mice through his story that is ultimately meant to be funny, thrilling, and scary. Rather like Dahl's prose, in fact. Frankly I don't have a problem with that in itself, but I'd have liked to see Zemeckis and del Toro dramatically rework the story to make some kind of point. Not that a point is necessary, but the similarity of this flick to Roeg's thirty years ago does give me some consternation. They could have restructured the basic plot into anything, and frankly they both have more than enough imagination to do it.

Dark Waters (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Todd Haynes has done it again. Nobody would have thought he'd jump into a legal thriller, much less one about the DuPont poisoning scandal in West Virginia. But here it is, one of the best pictures of the year.

Mark Ruffalo stars as Robert Bilott, an Ohio attorney who stumbles upon a troubling problem in the foothills of Parkersburg, West Virginia: cows are becoming mad, getting sick, and dying en masse. The farmer whose cows have been plagued is convinced that DuPont is dumping chemical waste nearby, and even though Bilott's firm represents the chemical manufacturer, he cannot shake the feeling that something is horribly wrong. This protagonist is a more or less typical Haynes character study in that he is an outsider looking for belonging and purpose and ends up in way over his head. His timid, almost turtle-like demeanor belies a fiercely obsessive intellectual bent, and Bilott quickly becomes, as the headline said, "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare."

Ruffalo here proves his mettle in the kind of "everyman" role that James Stewart thrived on, an awkward but unshakably decent man determined to do the right thing. And in a case like this, the right thing will prove to dominate the rest of his life, much to the chagrin of his wife, the woefully underused but always reliably excellent Anne Hathaway (who really should have played opposite Cate Blanchett in Carol, but that's another rant). It's one thing, after all, to prove wrongdoing. It's quite another to prove intent and lasting damages for such a long period of time and, as we learn, over so much global ground.

Because, thrilling as the film often is, its earnest delivery of corporate-sponsored destruction of lives and property is ongoing, making questions of our own health and complicity requisite topics of conversation for post-screening reflection. While the film pulls at our patience -- the story spans decades, friends -- writers Mario Correa (I don't know of him) and Matthew Michael Carnahan (Lions for Lambs, State of Play) do their best to keep the important parts in, balancing crucial plot development with key character turning points, making the film remarkably intimate and vast at once. It can all get pretty thick and heavy, and Haynes wades into surprisingly dark water here (forgive me). Thankfully, the righteous anger of Dark Waters comes with a strange optimism: even this little guy could take on the big business. The film allows Bilott the platform to help laypeople like me understand how this disaster could have happened, how and why it's been covered up for so long, and of course how it's possible -- indeed, our duty -- to resist.

I was left with cold sweat and a warm feeling in my heart despite the agony of viewing, but I was also left with the burning question of why on earth Haynes decided this story would fit into his body of work. But as I reflected on his early film Safe, in which Julianne Moore develops a mysterious illness to everything around her, I recognized Haynes's sense of paranoia and invisible stressors that loom over the proceedings. And as I thought of Far From Heaven, I wondered if Haynes was drawing a parallel from that picture's depiction of racism/sexism/homophobia and in this film finally highlighting economic status and class as similarly dangerous social constructs that alienate victims and disenfranchise individuals most at risk. And, of course, Haynes controls his art with a sure hand and remarkably insightful eye, making even the slightest of focus shifts sing with purpose and injecting electrified tension into each emotional beat between actors. This movie is a masterclass in directorial artistic integrity, and it's also a damn important story to see on screen.

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.

Ocean's 8 (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), younger sister of the late Danny Ocean, is released from prison and immediately sets out to score a heist. Her target? A gorgeous necklace valued at $150 million. Due to her scheming -- and assembling a team of, you guessed it, seven remarkable women -- this necklace will be out in the open at the Met Gala on the neck of the clueless celebrity actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway).

I found Ocean's 8 to be my favorite of the Ocean family films. You can definitely feel that Steven Soderbergh isn't helming this outing, which is difficult to swallow. But you can also feel a pulsing energy and dazzling style that, for me, felt absent in the male-dominated entries. Those were fun and suave, to be sure, but here we have eye-popping flair. My immediate response to this film is that it is more accessible to a casual summer-going audience (or at least audiences with beautiful, badass women on our minds).

For all the glamour of the film -- which is considerable -- it remains a fairly basic caper. Every other move in the plot is predictable, and the major twists are almost annoyingly simple. But I found these rough edges to be more endearing than obnoxious, largely a result of the winning cast. Though the screenplay does them few favors, the ensemble works brilliantly as individuals and off each other as a team. Helena Bonham Carter steals her scenes as an eccentric fashion designer while Rihanna and Awkwafina dazzle as a hacker and thief, respectively. Cate Blanchett (as a fabulous possibly-queer partner-in-crime), Sarah Paulson (a profiteering suburban mother), and Mindy Kaling (a jewelry maker under the thumb of her overbearing mother) round out the rest of the team under Bullock, who is totally winning and convincing as an Ocean sibling.

Oh, and Anne Hathaway is unbelievably (perhaps too much so) nuanced in her character. She's silly and stupid in one scene, terrifyingly unbalanced in another, and arrestingly manipulative in yet another. Just watching her is a masterclass in farcical acting and grotesque affectation. She's magnificent.

I took my mother to see this movie, and we had a grand time. We laughed out loud, gasped appropriately, and walked out feeling thoroughly entertained. I about lost my marbles in one montage of the women walking out of the gala in fully bedazzled formal wear and my mom had to shush me. Really, what else is there?

IMDb: Ocean's 8

Colossal (2017)

Score: 4.5 / 5

What do you do when you realize that, at the same time and place each day, a monster appears on the other side of the world and does exactly what you do?

That question is only the beginning of Colossal, a complex story that defies genre and convention. Anne Hathaway masterfully plays Gloria, an alcoholic writer who is unemployed and struggling with the men in her life. Dumped and kicked out by her NYC boyfriend (Dan Stevens), she returns to her childhood home and meets up with old friends and flames while working as a bartender, which fuels her troubles. It's around this time, every day at 8:05 AM, that a monster appears in Seoul.

Gloria, though tormented by the pain and terror she unwittingly causes, has other battles to fight. Her real-life monsters include her ex, who returns to reclaim her, and her boss, self-hating and abusive suitor Oscar (Jason Sudeikis in a terrifying performance). The latter, we learn, has a similar predicament, and when Gloria and Oscar battle for agency in the relationship, it's a clash of the titans in South Korea.

Besides a fascinating screenplay (by director Nacho Vigalondo) and stellar performances, there's not much to this movie. It's a heartfelt story of a woman battling the odds and winning. It's a razor-sharp black comedy that never relents on awkward humor. And, of course, there's the bizarre manifestation of monstrous avatars wreaking havoc in a metropolis. The film weaves its way through unlikelihoods and absurdities to downright crazy shit, but the final act ties everything up into a rousing and emotional showdown that is as fitting and earned a conclusion as any I've seen on screen. When we see Godzilla-meets-Pacific Rim as a mirror for a bunch of drunken asshole losers in a fictional American town, we see a work of pure artistic wit that works to destabilize our cultural obsession with larger-than-life spectacle and ground us in the human element. Take that, Transformers.

IMDb: Colossal

Interstellar (2014)

Score: 3 / 5

It feels important. It feels sometimes dreamlike. It feels like Oscar-bait. Christopher Nolan's newest, much-anticipated cosmic drama was, frankly, a disappointment to me. But it is also quite beautiful, and in unexpected ways.

Typical of Nolan's work, Interstellar makes you think while it awes you with great visuals. Its fanciful appeal keeps the lengthy running time (almost three hours) not quite unbearable. Though not as explicitly dazzling as the special-effects-heavy Oscar winners of the last two years (2013's Gravity, 2012's Life of Pi), Interstellar features truly amazing effects and visual art. Perhaps my attention was most captured by the practical appearance of those effects. I've not read much about the making of the film, but it seems to me that more of the effects were tricks of science and photography, rather than straight computer generation. That's a really interesting choice for a space adventure, and one that keeps it fresh and absorbing.

But the emotional substance of the film falls short of its visuals. Nolan and his brother Jonathan intriguingly wrote the film with an emphasis on human (especially family) drama rather than wild space exploration and adventure. But I think they failed at balancing what might be a moving family drama and what could have been a riveting sci-fi excursion. The film is only occasionally "exciting" in the typical sense of the word, and though a lot of the characters cry most of the time it's never cathartic; this film may tug at your heartstrings, but you can also feel the heavy hand that plucks 'em. Though the dialogue has its moments -- often heightened and abstract -- there are only so many times I want to hear Michael Caine recite the same verse. In fact, I think the most emotional connection I made to the film was through the lovely score by Hans Zimmer.

The acting is really solid, fortunately. Matthew McConaughey gives a powerhouse lead performance that will surely garner some award nominations. Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway tag-team as his strongest supporting castmates, and Hathaway especially delivers in a crucial monologue about the essence of love, about halfway through the film. These dynamic ladies, though, are featured with lots of close-ups of alternating crying and anger; they are giving great strength, but Nolan's direction sometimes works against them. Other actors Wes Bentley, Michael Caine, Matt Damon, John Lithgow, and Ellen Burstyn are all fine, though their roles are all quite brief.

I really liked the first hour of the movie, and the second hour only a little less. The family drama is a little too familiar, but paired with this cast and the high-stakes science, it's no less engaging. Not all of Nolan's dramatic choices work as well as he obviously wanted them to, and frankly I was annoyed and shocked by all the sizeable plot holes in the picture. Nolan usually knits up his plots with incredible detail, so this felt quite uncharacteristic. But in the third hour (or at least the third act, as I wasn't really keeping time), I just checked out. I don't want to spoil anything, but the already out-of-this-world film gets aggressively weird, and I just couldn't take it any more. It felt wildly contrived and forced, and Nolan's already sentimental approach controlled the last half hour so much that I was giggling at the melodrama. That, I guess, is not the response we're supposed to have.

IMDb: Interstellar