The Fall Guy (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Could the 2020s see the return of simple, original, fabulous standalone blockbusters from major studios? So far, the signs are good, and after starring in both Barbie and now The Fall Guy, Ryan Gosling is making quite the splash as Hollywood's "it" leading man. It's refreshing to have these big budget, creatively inspired, wholly joyful movie experiences in an age when everything is part of larger IPs and guaranteed message boards meant to tease out obscure references in other media that is required for full comprehension. The studio effort to entertain above all else is admirable for the first time in a while, and especially with these titles that aren't weighty or even apparently eager for awards.

And just as how Barbie worked to remind us of the magic of production design in practical ways, The Fall Guy explicitly wants to lionize stunt workers in our age of fully saturated CGI action. It helps that it's being directed by David Leitch, who started his career as a stunt double and whose previously directed films (including John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Deadpool 2) have significantly altered the landscape of contemporary action as a genre. Here, Leitch is clearly in his element, and the labor of love is palpable in every single scene of this film, which carries a uniquely electrifying energy that never lags. Every time I thought the film might zig it zagged, and not necessarily in terms of plot (though the writing by Drew Pearce is fine) but in terms of style and tone. Here we have a rambunctious mix of humor, romance, mystery, crime, and of course action but never in the expected manner. Each set piece gets bigger and more elaborate, whether it's an insane ride in a dump truck through urban streets and a dog that bites crotches or an emotionally fraught slow chase between speedboats in a marina, and all are executed with obvious care and good awareness for its audience's patience.

The plot is easy enough to follow with a few arguably unnecessary complications, so we won't recount it here. Gosling himself carries the movie with the kind of '80s panache of Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, or Sylvester Stallone, and he's magnetic on screen. Emily Blunt isn't given a whole lot to do, but she performs reliably and shines in the first act, and again in the finale, well after her shoehorned karaoke scene (which isn't her fault, it's just an annoying trope of rom-coms that can be put to bed now, thank you very much). With their leading power, The Fall Guy reminds us that sometimes, and only really in movies like this, star power can be both the saving grace of a picture and completely earned by the performer. Effortlessly funny and sexy at the same time, Gosling's swagger isn't just his brand; he also acts his face off here, bringing his sizable filmography in indie dramas to bear on a film that he certainly could have just shown up to glide through.

The supporting cast are all excellent but shockingly understated. In a film where style arguably supersedes substance, it's telling that nobody is really hamming it up like they could. Everyone is grounded in a refreshing way. Key to this is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, playing the big movie star for whom Gosling is meant to double in stunts. While he consciously references other big stars like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in his mannerisms and delivery (even his voice feels stolen from Matthew McConaughey), he's not making fun of any of them or even really trying to pull focus; he's just reminding us of the reality of leading men we know and demonstrating the separation of expectation versus production process. It's carefully calibrated and really smart. Similarly, the film-within-the-film that acts as the plot's mobilizing entity always has its trusty producer Gail at hand, and Hannah Waddingham (in a shocking dark wig) comes the closest to a full camp performance without really stepping over that line. Always with a bag on her arm, a drink in her hand, and a plastered grin on her face -- always somewhat masked by hair or glasses -- she moves through the world of the film in a more diminished capacity that we're used to seeing from her, which has the added effect of making her less predictable and more interesting.

The rest of the cast is fine, though I'd like to have seen more for Winston Duke and Stephanie Hsu to do. A great soundtrack of period-appropriate music keeps things moving when the plot threatens to slack. The behind-the-scenes of the movie industry on display could have been featured more, and frankly the organized crime plot was overbaked to a point of distraction. But it allows for some truly eye-popping stunt work which is what the film is really all about anyway. A love letter to the guys on set with their thumbs up as they risk their bodies and lives, The Fall Guy feels as much a gift to modern audiences annoyed with CGI-laden three-hour features that take themselves too seriously as it does to its own industry as anxieties about AI and deepfakes reach a boiling point. It's a great way to start the summer blockbuster season.

Oppenheimer (2023)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The American Prometheus, referring of course to the mythic titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, is J. Robert Oppenheimer, the infamous physicist who developed the atomic bomb. This title isn't just about his invention or its valuable and dangerous fallout (so to speak); it also refers to his politically and existentially tortured life afterward. Christopher Nolan's newest film, for him unusual as a biopic, is a cerebral character study of one of the most interesting and consequential figures in human history. Taking place over three hours we're treated to a dual storyline, again one of Nolan's trademarks, here emphasizing two very different ways to destroy the world.

The first plotline, filmed in color, is subtitled "Fission," referring to the splitting of an atom's nucleus (and the means by which Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed). It dramatizes Oppenheimer's life on his way to his "great deed," from his times in various European universities to his PhD in the '20s and '30s, from his dabblings in communism to his marriage to Kitty (Emily Blunt) and his affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), and of course his appointment to lead the top secret Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, circa 1942. It's the lead up to this last that makes up the driving force of the film, as even the score indicates a ticking clock toward doomsday. When General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) verifies that Oppenheimer is not, in fact, communist, he's put in charge of the race to beat the Nazis in creating the first atomic bomb. The race is personal for Oppenheimer, who was Jewish, and he has fears of what Heisenberg may be developing; contracting his own scientists, he moves them and their families to a secret location with their families, building a town around them to keep everything close and tight-lipped.

Filmed in IMAX by the magnificent Hoyte van Hoytema, the location of this town is beautifully constructed against the beautiful scenery of New Mexico's deserts. It's a bit chilling, too, knowing what will happen to parts of the world in the wake of atomic disasters. The filmmakers here seem intent on impressing that contrast to the audience, often interjecting images of curling flames, flying debris, and sparkling explosions between images of Oppenheimer's intense, tortured face. His life, as brought to award-worthy performance by Cillian Murphy, seems a similarly tortured landscape, occasionally flaring with personal faults of impulsive pride and lustful greed. He's a Greek tragic hero, often dissociating from the hullabaloo of his life to think about his own fantasies of physics, sex, and impending doom. One wonders what it would be like to change the course of world history by creating the thing that could annihilate us all; Murphy delivers that.

The second plotline, in black and white, is subtitled "Fusion," a process by which two nuclei are combined and releases far more catastrophic energy than fission. This part of the film doesn't make as much sense for a while, as we follow Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) trying to get approved by the Senate as commerce secretary in the '50s. He's being held up and though he doesn't know why, he strongly suspects it's due to the influence of his old rival, Oppenheimer. The physicist, haunted by the hell of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, had urged President Truman (Gary Oldman) to restrict increased nuclear weapon development, which Truman dismissed as weak. We learn, through flashbacks (if that word is even applicable amidst all the time jumps here), that as an advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission headed by Strauss, Oppenheimer advocated against additional nuclear research that would lead to the creation of a hydrogen bomb. Strauss resented Oppenheimer for this and other perceived slights, and so proceeded to assassinate Oppenheimer's reputation and credibility during the latter's security hearing in 1954, resulting in neutralizing his influence on security as well as policy. The McCarthy-era fervor is brought to full flavor in these scenes, though thankfully Strauss gets his comeuppance eventually, primarily at the hands of testifier David Hill (Rami Malek), who publicly reveals the personal grudge match.

It's a fascinating way to frame the title character's life, and one that remarkably humanizes both the character and the director, Nolan being a prime case of director who notoriously leeches his films of sentiment or "humanity." This is his Amadeus, if you will, in which "great" men collapse under the weight of their own prides, jealousies, and pettiness. Add in, if you will, other personal faults hinted at but never really fleshed out by the film, including his adultery and Kitty's suffering and alcoholism, and Nolan is really going for gold here; that said, this film only strengthened my annoyance that Nolan is incapable of writing well-rounded female characters or of directing female actors (Pugh and Blunt are among the best, and they are wildly unsupported here in garishly archetypal roles that only use their bodies and emotions to function). It's a shame, because Kitty has a few lines that reveal her sharply tactical sense of logic, and some of Oppenheimer's worst choices would have been avoided had he listened.

On a similarly personal note, I found it dismaying that the film callously avoids direct reckoning with the bombings that effectively ended World War II. The arguments for and against the use of those bombs are voiced, briefly, but little to no consideration of the historical reality of those arguments is provided. Was Japan too determined to quit, or were they on their knees at that point in the conflict? The film espouses neither perspective, choosing instead a maddeningly cryptic approach that makes us, like Oppenheimer, get a bit paranoid. Leave it to Nolan to give us a puzzle box rather than a coherent story. It's this that, while feeling very much like the filmmaker, reminded me of several other auteurs; I've never considered Nolan as anything but himself, but this film repeatedly reminded me of Terrence Malick (especially in editorial style), Oliver Stone (especially in the hearing scenes, and with Oldman, Blunt, and Downey's almost camp performances), and of course Stanley Kubrick in its bleak sense of humor (a la Dr. Strangelove and when, notably, government officials debate over which Japanese cities to bomb). 

Like it or not, enjoy it or not, this is a masterful and galvanizing film, one that perhaps best exemplifies the best (and worst) tendencies of its profoundly complex creator. Never has Nolan so seemingly identified with his own subject, and never has his own theoretical interests meshed so flawlessly with those of the story he tells. Some of the best critical writing this year will be about this film, how its relentless editing matches some obscure physicist's understanding of human psyche, radiation fallout, or cosmic structure. Because ultimately that's the puzzling game Nolan plays, and frankly I don't much care for that level of masturbatory cleverness. What I love about this movie is its old-school approach to acting and melodrama, its deep understanding of the boundaries between personal and collective identity (and trauma), and its respect for the audience, along with its characters, to decide for ourselves the significance of these potentially world-shattering events and, worse, ideas.

Jungle Cruise (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

What an absolute delight. Jungle Cruise, Disney's latest live-action adaptation of one of its famed park attractions, will surely be compared to The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean, and it owes a healthy amount of its silly nature and good-humored style to those previous pictures. One wonders about a future date when the already revamped Pirates ride and soon-to-be revamped Cruise -- already situated next to each other in the Magic Kingdom -- become a single thrilling tropical adventure for wide-eyed children hoping to explore a swashbuckling world of action and magic. But this new film owes as much, if not more, to the blockbuster franchises of Indiana Jones and The Mummy in content and tone.

Its slap-dash opening sequence, covering conquistadors searching the Amazon for a mythical Tree of Life, is the kind of stuff we expect to see here; thankfully, we're immediately aware that Edgar Ramirez will be playing the Big Bad, cursed for eternity to wander the shores of the river. Then we sharply cut to London just after the turn of the century, where botanist Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) is desperate to convince the male-dominated scientific community that her research on this "tree of life" is valid and should jumpstart a full-scale expedition. Using her snooty brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) to speak for her, she sneaks away to steal an artifact she is sure will lead them to the tree and its healing flowers, known as the Tears of the Moon. It's hard not to hear Johnny Depp delivering some of these lines ("So, it's a key?" "Much more better -- this is a drawing of a key!", if you, like me, quote the magnificent Pirates movies daily). But Blunt's performative dexterity is again put to the test in a sort of Milo Thatch-meets-Jane Porter mashup of eccentric wit and adventurous fervor.

Her gumption, if not quite her wit, is matched by their guide. Upon arriving in South America, they hire their "Skipper," Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) to propel them upriver. It is Johnson's inclusion that pushes the movie into farcical territory, but it is eminently worth it; his introduction is the film's only major reference to the theme park ride, as his job consists of taking tourists around the exotic sights of the river. Making cheesy jokes the whole time, and often staging the exciting events he narrates, he's the epitome of a well-meaning geriatric (we've come to expect this dry gruffness from Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis) in a younger, frighteningly buff body. His energy pairs well with Blunt's, even though the two never quite kindle the latent romantic energy we might expect; they're having too much fun to weigh it down with sentiment!

While the explosive action and frenetic propulsion of the movie are not indicative at all of the ride, this is the sort of delightful, escapist romp we've all craved since March 2020. There's a lot of shoehorned lore packed in here, and it's not as thoroughly developed as in Verbinski's swashbuckler, but it's a hell of a lot of fun to see it all come to life. And the casual racism of the ride is gone, too, perhaps nowhere more clearly than when the "headhunters" the heroes encounter turn out to be part of Skipper's shtick. It's hard, alas, to not let some of the more absurd elements go. Once during the screening, as the boat encountered roaring rapids before almost plunging over a waterfall, I had to choke down my indignation that the whole premise of the plot consisted of them traveling upriver. But since when has realism stopped a Disney movie from forging ahead into the thicket of wildest fantasy? From its eye-popping visuals (and beautiful CGI renderings) to its infectious joy; I lamented more than once that the film did not allow its optical grandeur to breathe and sink in. A little patience and intelligence go a long way, as we saw with Pirates, but this movie is up to a very different project.

There are a few other delightful inclusions, including the notably underused Paul Giamatti as a caricatured Italian harbor master demanding money from Skipper at every turn. Jesse Plemons pops in for a few scenes as an equally cartoonish German villain in a torpedo-laden submarine. Both are very funny, and do the movie a lot of credit. Even with that, the design of the cursed conquistadors is the stuff that fueled my childhood nightmares (and Ramirez will be much better remembered as the real villain here). With so much going on, Johnson, Blunt, and Whitehall (playing the first unequivocally gay character in a Disney feature) are obviously having the time of their careers hamming it up with each other and lead the film with great panache. Director Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows, and several fun if rote Liam Neeson action vehicles) smartly keeps things moving, reminding us that depth doesn't matter if the ride is fun enough. And this one certainly is.

A Quiet Place Part II (2021)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Sequels are dangerous, especially in horror, and the unexpected (yet long-awaited) follow-up to the 2018 smash hit A Quiet Place hits a lot of the red flags. It's louder and faster, more expensive and expansive, and feels often derivative of other sci-fi horror. It doesn't really change the formula from the first movie, unless you count the bizarre switch from almost exclusive sign language communication to mostly whispered communication. As such, this movie has a lot more dialogue in it; it makes sense, as one of the four main characters is now dead (RIP zaddy Abbott) and we can hardly expect other characters to know how to sign. But even the three survivors of that family often whisper to each other while signing, which just seems like cheating after the first movie made us terrified to even breathe out loud.

But A Quiet Place Part II gets a lot of stuff right, and its conviction and sense of dignity for its characters take primary focus here. We begin with a flashback to "Day 1," when what looks like a giant burning asteroid -- or spaceship -- streaks through the sky above a small town kids' baseball game. As the nervous crowds disperse for the relative shelter of their homes, violent spidercrab-like monsters attack, apparently attracted to anything making significant noise. It's a nasty way to open this film, and works best because of its sudden, brutal violence. It also clarifies something notably absent from the first film: the monsters do not appear to eat people, but rather simply enjoy slaughtering their victims. In the middle of town, they slice and dice with their javelin limbs, or simply smash their prey to a bloody pulp, but there's not an indication that they are hungry or even carnivorous. Perhaps they hate sound so much that they just kill whatever makes noise, rather than "hunting" noisemakers?

We then leap forward in time over a year, to the aftermath of the first film's climactic and sudden ending. Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) leads her children Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus (Noah Jupe) out of their destroyed farmhouse, apparently having fought off the additional monsters that attacked them after their father Lee (John Krasinski) sacrificed himself. Evelyn's newborn baby, literally fresh out of her womb, has been safely stored in a soundproof trunk with a supply of oxygen, but who knows how long that will last?

We have no clear indication of where the family is headed, though they may not know either. We've seen other fires at night on the hillsides, so we suspect a few other pockets of families might exist. As their defense, Regan also carries an amplifier, which when plugged into her hearing device (that otherwise doesn't seem to work), releases feedback that seems to be the only thing to weaken and bewilder the monsters. Marching beyond the borders of their farm and its sand-covered pathways, the family steps into new thematic realms as well as geographical ones. Part one seemed to focus on the sacrifices on makes for family and the domestic horrors of having that threatened; part two keenly shifts into the potential need to sacrifice for others, even strangers. It's a haunting reminder of what we've all had to consider during the past year, which makes the film (planned to be released over a year ago, in March 2020) terrifyingly prescient.

Approaching an apparently abandoned steel foundry, Evelyn hits a trip wire attached to a mess of glass bottles, summoning monsters instantly. Fleeing through the debris field, Marcus is caught in a bear trap. His screams, paired with her panic, drive the movie into full-octane terror that almost never lets up, much like the first movie. Here, the game is less novel, less interesting, but never less than thrilling. Krasinski ratchets up the tension with every scene, demonstrating at even more intense levels his uncanny ability to jump between various characters in various locations to tell the same cohesive story. Moreover, each character deals with impossible circumstances and almost always rises to the occasion.

While the first film terrifies us with sound -- and this one does, too -- what's scariest about this new installment is its unexpected attention to physical violence. Once the family starts meeting other people, especially their bereaved neighbor Emmett (a chillingly efficient Cillian Murphy), we get the sense that the people still alive might be as dangerous as the monsters. He suggests in his introductory, very creepy scene, that the people still alive are not worth saving. And he's also proven right, somewhat; one scene near the lurch toward the climax features a group of menacing humans; the only thing scarier than a group of clearly desperate and violent men trapping you and preparing to do something is when they're all silent. The whole movie is very The Walking Dead, and by the time our heroes finally locate a safe community, we are fully aware that the zombies -- er, monsters -- will arrive shortly afterward, with deadly consequences.

And while the proceedings aren't as wildly unpredictable as in the first, there's nothing wrong with Kraskinski's impeccable writing or directorial brilliance. A Quiet Place is a rarity in the genre for several reasons, but a major plus is its remarkable lack of subversion. So many popular horror movies lately are deeply subversive, and Kraskinski seems almost to use that new standard to his advantage, by utterly ignoring it. His robust and graphic approach to horror is the kind of balls-out, "what you see is what you get" action that has fallen out of vogue in recent years; even so, he's never exploitative, he treats his characters and his audience as intelligent, and he respects the craft more than he respects cheap thrills.

Given that this movie is a nearly perfect sequel -- meaning that it broadens, intensifies, and slightly changes the game while remaining mostly true to the spirit of the original -- and that it came from a movie we all thought would be standalone, I found myself immediately wanting a part three by the end of this film. If the first movie ended suddenly -- not really a cliffhanger -- with Evelyn taking control of her family and their situation, this movie ended with an even stronger character development in the two older children stepping up and into their adulthood. It's the kind of bravura filmmaking that drove me to tears even as I inched toward the edge of my seat in fear. And it's the kind of movie that, really, has to be seen in cinemas.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Score: 5 / 5

Mary Poppins Returns, and in a big way. Even for someone who was never a big fan of the 1964 original film, this long-delayed sequel is an amazing movie experience. In fact, I liked this one so much that I'll be revisiting the original with a much lighter disposition. The Broadway musical was great, but this film exploded any and all expectations I had for the character and franchise.

The story takes place twentyish years after the original, when young Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) has lost his wife and now fathers three adorable motherless children. Helped by his sister Jane (Emily Mortimer), though she's quite busy organizing labor activism, and their housekeeper Ellen (Julie Walters), Michael works for Fidelity Fiduciary Bank and has squashed his artistic aspirations in favor of making ends meet. Yet his dreams do not survive the Great Depression, and the Bank's greedy president (Colin Firth) threatens to take the Banks home.

Remembering their father owned shares in the bank, the Bankses frantically search for proof, and in comes Mary Poppins, floating in on the kite that ended the original film. Emily Blunt is utterly magnificent as the iconic character, at once vain and proper but bubbling over with magical joy. Director Rob Marshall seems infected by this energy, and this movie becomes a sort of sensory overload in the best possible way, forcing you to forget about your troubles and simply enjoy the endless pleasures offered. It's a spoonful of sugar, and then some: vivid colors, mesmerizing effects, glorious dancing, and gorgeous costumes are matched by a score that could have been written by the original musicians. I was tapping along to songs I've never heard before, and humming them as I jaunted out of the theater. That is some damn good movie magic.

Yes, the cast is brilliant and yes the film is a masterclass in what Disney can get so, so right. But what struck me and stuck with me was the absolute genius of this film. Structurally, it is Mary Poppins. The original. Instead of sweeps, we have lamplighters who dance, yes, but underground instead of on the roofs. We have Mary's first number not with cleaning the nursery but with cleaning the children themselves. We have cousin Topsy (Meryl Streep) whose home spins around her, rather than Uncle Albert who floats around his home. We have a chipped china bowl to adventure within, not a chalk painting before the rain. We have balloons instead of kites, given by none other than Angela Lansbury. And Dick Van Dyke shows up for one of the most purely entertaining moments I've ever seen on screen.

If it all sounds like a cheap ripoff -- and it does -- fret not! Nothing here is cheap or forced. In fact, it's all done with such an eye for authentic nostalgia that it even won me over. Unlike The Force Awakens that relied on forced nostalgia and plastered fan service, this movie is a pure work of fans for fans and for everyone else. It's a celebration of childhood, of beauty and creativity, and there's not a moment I wanted the movie to end.

I have absolutely no complaints about this movie except that it did, unfortunately, end. It's pure and sweet and fun and creative and intelligent and everything you could possibly want. We can only hope Mary Poppins will be back.

IMDb: Mary Poppins Returns

A Quiet Place (2018)

Score: 5 / 5

In a not-so-distant future (2019, to be less than exact), the world has been overrun by monsters. Their origin remains unknown, though they seem to be the alien version of a crab/spider hybrid, but it is common knowledge that they have extremely sensitive hearing. They hunt anything that makes much noise but are apparently blind. They move terrifyingly fast and tend to just smash anything that makes noise.

Enter the family of our story (do they even have names, apart from the credits?), played by real-life couple Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. Their three children -- including Noah Jupe from Wonder and new Deaf actress Millicent Simmonds of Wonderstruck -- learn to live in silence, fearing for their lives. Living on a farm in isolated foothills, the family has fortified against attack by creating a soundproof basement, making paths of sand to soften footfalls, and stringing lights to indicate safety and danger (the use of red is a stroke of cinematic genius). They are incredibly prepared for everything and might be labeled a survivalist family, as the father has stockpiled all kinds of supplies and is aggressively researching both the monsters and his daughter's deafness, trying to find a connection between sound and survival.

Of course, the best-laid plans will go awry. It is a horror movie, after all. Apart from a few expository and scary scenes, especially an emotional opening on day 80-something of the apocalypse, most of the film takes place over the course of a single day and night when pretty much everything that could go wrong does go wrong. The family gets hopelessly split up, the mother goes into labor, the deaf daughter is out on her own, a bent nail causes pain (!), a monster comes lurking, and a series of disasters makes the entire second half of the film a nonstop climax. You can scarcely find time to breathe, which is good because breathing too loudly will attract the monsters.

A Quiet Place isn't necessarily the most innovative film you've ever seen, but it's close, and it's one of the best-executed genre films of the decade. Smart without being pretentious, the film moves along quickly and carries you each step of the way. You're never lost or confused; every moment is important to our experience as viewers. The movie makes you care instantly about everyone, ratcheting up our dread about their fates, and earning your tears at the end. Fret not! While grief and death inevitably stake their claim, the final five minutes of the film will make you want to stand and cheer, as at least three people did in the viewing I saw last night.

What else can we say? It's impeccably detailed, bone-chilling and endlessly terrifying, heartfelt and sweet, and ultimately rousing. The sound mixing and editing is really amazing, and it boasts a gorgeous musical score. And, really, you just can't get much better than Emily Blunt being badass.

IMDb: A Quiet Place

The Girl on the Train (2016)

Score: 4.5 / 5

If you're going to see this hoping for the October thriller event this year, you might be disappointed. It's not melo. It's not huge. And it's definitely not as accessible as the couple sitting behind me in the theater would have preferred (Which is surprising to me, since the filmmakers pointedly changed the setting from London to New York City for no apparent reason).

If, however, you're going to see this to relish in the darkness promised by the book, you are in for a real treat. Less a thriller and more a tightly wound psychosexual mystery, The Girl on the Train plays out almost as an indie film, complete with shaky camera, abstract editing, claustrophobia-inducing closeups, and an entrancing sense of place. Director Tate Taylor (famous for directing big-budget feel-goods The Help and Get On Up) disappears into his craft here in what is easily his best film yet, losing himself to the character of Rachel almost as much as Emily Blunt does. He views the film with a sometimes blurred camera, disjointed plotlines, and images that we can't trust. Amazing how well he took the unreliable narrator of Paula Hawkins's book and translated it to the screen: Not unlike in Oculus, here we see events happen that are memories and skewed perceptions, and some that even exist solely in the imagination of the characters. Yet there's not a single moment when you doubt the director's control over the film.

Blunt, too, gives one of her career's best performances. Though some might take issue with her not being fat, she more than makes up for the character's self-loathing and indulgent vices. Bleary-eyed and convincingly inebriated, Blunt stumbles her way through the picture with intoxicating energy, at once cold and fiery, fearful and fearsome. She and her director must have had a gold-mine of detailed conversations on how to do this movie, because they magically take the book's suggestions and turn them into arresting realities. Together, they turn the whole movie into a voyeuristic nightmare, a malicious cocktail of cruelty and passions and secrets and lies that teeters on the precipice, begging to be rescued but threatening to take you down with it. And down we go, as the film counters its more erotic and violent sequences with pseudo-confessional moments of Rachel's narration; seeing her tear-stained cheeks as she questions her own soul is incredibly sobering for us, if not for her. Watching Blunt in her drunken fury is one of the most awesome things you'll see at the movies this year. Don't miss it.

Hitchcockian in the best way, the film marries genres like it's a game. Suburban sexual thriller meets feminist psychological drama, and we are completely absorbed in the lives of these beautiful, broken people. More than once, actually, I let myself forget the ending and convince myself that literally any of the main characters were the villain. Scene by scene, I suspected someone else, and I wondered if the filmmakers were going to surprise us with a twist ending unlike the book's.

Speaking of the ending, that was the only time in the film that I felt a bit distanced from the film. Danny Elfman's fabulous score is suddenly hushed, and the horror I remember feeling as I read the final 30 or so pages of the book is exchanged for a strange lack of horror. We see terrible things happening, but for some reason it's not as brutal as I wanted the final confrontation to be. It feels oddly emotionless and cold. I don't think it's bad in any way, and it certainly fits with the voyeuristic style of the rest of the film. I just wanted a bit more of a bang. Of course, watching the villain get screwed in the end was thoroughly satisfying, so maybe my complaint doesn't matter.

IMDb: The Girl on the Train

The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016)

Score: 4 / 5

A lazy mash-up of plot ideas from its predecessor, The Huntsman: Winter's War brings little new to the table. What it does bring is largely incoherent and shallow. The plot is thinly stitched together in such a way that it is both a prequel and a sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman, but by bringing in new characters, places, and themes, it has little relation to its earlier incarnation. I won't bore you with details of the story -- a bizarre retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" that comes not long enough after Disney's Frozen, with more than a little homage to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe --but I would like to use this otherwise "bad" movie as an example of what I might consider to be one of the greatest queer fantasy films yet.

Let's start with considering the basic plotlines. Whereas in the first film we saw a heteronormative couple (in the huntsman and Snow White) who never consummated their flirtatious romance (making the film remarkable in its own way), in this film we see a fiercely sexual journey between our hetero protagonists. Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain charm with their sexy Scottish-ness and expert fighting. But they are only half the story. The main plot follows Freya the Ice Queen (Emily Blunt), whose magic powers are unleashed after her child is murdered. She subsequently builds her kingdom by murdering her enemies and amassing an army of abducted children she trains to have hearts as cold as her own.

In most fairytales, our heteroheroes would sex and find their happy ever after in procreation, or the promise of the same. Here, however, we have a first film that ends in (more or less) denied affections, and a second film that relishes in the corruption of youth and innocence, that works specifically because of the loss of one's offspring. Childhood rearing becomes the training of soldiers. While the end of the film -- almost as an afterthought -- puts a stake into a denouement of hetero-affirmation, there is still no chance of procreation due to Chastain's character's sterility, another machination of the Ice Queen's design. These examples throw the film under the shadow of a queer nihilism, where the future holds little to no hope of continuation of our heroes' blood. Their hope is in a carnal and temporal romance with each other.

Still not convinced? Let's look at the real reason we all came to the movie. Charlize Theron reprises her role of Ravenna, this time with less madness and more method. Her delivery is terrifying as she intones her satanic malice, stealing our attention and our hearts (which, we know, she likes to eat) with every glint in her eye. Ravenna's obsession with appearance over substance is no less intense here, where we see that she was the real villain behind her sister's bereavement due to the child being more beautiful than she. Appearance over integrity; style over substance. Ravenna is vanity incarnate, a physical manifestation of camp. It seems here that her death and mysterious resurrection through the golden mirror has somewhat cured her mania (which made her psychologically rounded in the first movie), as she is now purely wicked with no fear or insecurities to balance the scales. Instead, she performs as a two-dimensional snapshot of vice, hungry for our love and praise, demanding to be centerstage in the same throne room where her sister reigns. And through her entire charade, we don't even really care -- perhaps the most telling element that is camp -- because it's all artifice; in fact, we don't even always know that Ravenna is really present in corporal form, much like the mirror's prophetic voice.

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention Colleen Atwood's glorious costumes, the linchpin of my entire argument. Her beautiful, detailed clothes festoon our players with layer upon layer of sparkling excess. Each sequin and gold-tipped feather, each leather bracer glinting with polish, each mote of dusty eye shadow, not to mention the divine hairpieces, speak to the wonder and extravagance of the world displayed before us. If you don't love it, you're wrong. It's the only substantial thing in the movie. (Think about that. The only element of substance and consequence in the entire film is clothing. It's a fantasy action romance, and the only thing that brings frivolous life to the screen is clothing. It's genius.)

I won't spoil the ending. Actually, yes I will. Romantic love conquers, and the sisters are vanquished (the exact opposite of what happens in the far more feminist Frozen). But as the camera pans away from the kingdom, a golden bird flies overhead and lunges at the camera, suggesting that Ravenna's spirit lives on. Like the evil queen antihero of the series, these films may continue to return in various incarnations, each more gorgeous and more hollow than the last. And, frankly, if you're a fan of these films, you're not hoping for anything more than perfect costumes, awesome visual effects, a great score, and deliciously camped performances. Style over substance, my pretties. This is how it works.

IMDb: The Huntsman: Winter's War

Sicario (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

I get really excited every time some of my favorite artists team up to do a film, and Sicario is no exception! Visionary director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy), legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (Prisoners, Doubt, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption), and recent composer Johann Johannsson (Prisoners, The Theory of Everything, Foxcatcher) rock this daring and haunting crime thriller in ways I only dreamed they might. It was a total moviegasm experience for me, and my hands are still shaking from it.

Imagine what would happen if Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Traffic (2000) had a baby, and you can grasp the direction this film takes. It's a brutal peek into the drug trade and cartel culture, and it relentlessly forces us to face the horrors we so easily permit. It's about the little compromises we make every day that push us farther and farther away from civilized life and into the deserts of chaos and cruelty. It's a web of policy and procedure, a critique of corrupt or misguided law enforcement, and a tragedy of one soldier's fall from innocence.

That soldier, played with great vulnerability and compassion by Emily Blunt (The Young Victoria, Into the Woods), is an FBI agent determined to win the war on drugs by the book. But, as she soon learns, her idealism is far from practical and far from successful. After a traumatic incident in one raid, which starts the film, she joins with Department of Defense agents to hunt down the head of a cartel and bring him to justice. She sees her team lie, torture, and murder their way to the top of the cartel, and becomes privy to secrets that destroy her faith.

Of course, director Villeneuve is keenly aware of his female protagonist as the heart and soul of the film, and so he keeps us trained on her. For every horror she faces, we see it only as it relates to her. In fact, most of the violence and dead bodies we see only briefly, before turning to see her reactions to them. It's a gamble, and one that pays off brilliantly. And that's not to say we don't see plenty of the other actors as well. Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men, W.) is his typical gruff self, though here I found him more compelling and inscrutable than usual. And Benecio Del Toro (Traffic, Che) blew me away yet again as the dangerous loose cannon of the team, guarded behind his facade but vicious and terrifying when necessary.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins -- I can't even say how much I love his work -- fashions the drama with an eye for gravity and weight, shown most obviously in his repeated longshots of the desert landscape and views down from aircraft. He takes his time with every scene, painting a portrait with varied lights and colors that build to a climax that parallels the plot. By the time we actually reach the climactic raid -- underground and at night -- he throws convention to the wolves and douses us in thermal vision and night vision lenses. The interplay is provocative to say the least, aand by the time it was done I felt as though I had tried some of the drugs the characters were hunting.

The whole movie is a trip and a half, a spiritual descent into hell, and one that left me bewildered but satisfied. And the score by Johann Johannsson isn't intrusive at all; the only memorable part is an increasingly hypnotic drone that thrums on through the film, a mysterious and unsettling sound that feels tied to an idea of impending doom. If this all sounds a bit heady, it's because it is. And designed to be so. Handled by others, this film might have become mired in complex dialogue absorbed with the details of the crimes and organizations involved, in muddled editing and ambiguous plotlines juxtaposed with vague or unnecessary characters, or in sentiment and politics. Instead, we get a clear, if artistic, picture of a very specific world in which very real people grapple with huge abstract concepts. And it's all done beautifully, which is obviously the most important part.

IMDb: Sicario

Into the Woods (2014)

Score: 5 / 5

If you recall, I often limit my consideration of a film in terms of its source material (be it history, literature, or both) because adaptations and changes in medium render such comparisons useless. But because I am more sympathetic to theatrical purists than to pretentious readers who expect other people to share their vision of a work, I will concern a large part of the following with the effects of the changes made to this film adaptation from its staged roots. Why? Partly because theatre is far more collaborative than literature, and partly because so much of this film's material is directly translated from the stage. Are we all okay with that? Very well -- let's journey on. "Into the woods and out of the woods and home before dark!"

Starting from the top, Rob Marshall directs this fantastic excursion with surprising novelty, perhaps one of the film's greatest strengths. He finds subtle moments (in a slightly altered screenplay by James Lapine) and fleshes them out into juxtaposed moments of dark humor, tragedy, slapstick, and romance, all framed with so much fantasy atmosphere that the film itself feels like a dream. This film is surprisingly dark, and not just in tone, so don't be expecting a fabulous turn in the theater this holiday season. The fluid and versatile cinematography (by longtime Marshall co-visionary Dion Beebe) almost always works for me, and the lighting is simply perfect, often featuring a lone light peering through the branches and thickets of the shadowy woods. Though using similar narrative devices from his previous movie-musicals, Marshall does not go for glitz and glamour in this picture; here, he dazzles us with atmosphere and emotionally charged visuals, effects, and close-ups on his actors. Celebrated costumer Colleen Atwood dresses everyone beautifully, and though it's an obvious favorite, she really outdoes herself on the Witch's blue and sheer dress in the second act. Stephen Sondheim's phenomenal music is brought into stunning character in the film, where we can hear nuanced sound and more delicate instrumentals than in many a live theatre. Instrumental versions of cut songs keep the emotional pace of the film in step with the stage show, appeasing fans (or at least me) with beats that few (if any) average moviegoers will appreciate.

Okay, let's just dive right in, and we'll talk about scenes, actors, and the like as they come up. The Intro is a fourteen-ish-minute thrill ride, and the editor nails the fast scene changes and follows quirky lyric with adept skill and understanding of the material. Marshall and his team had their work cut out for them -- establishing character, plot, setting, and musical coherence -- and they excel, allowing the humor of moments (Cinderella and her birds), the atmosphere of an imposing forest (Red Riding Hood skipping into a dark tunnel), and emotional foundation (Jack and his mother) to combine and explore themselves before the movie really begins. "Hello Little Girl" is rather nice, featuring Johnny Depp (and his awkward vocals) in a slightly furry zoot suit, with enhanced wolfish growls and glowing eyes. Red Riding Hood, nailed by little Lilla Crawford and her great voice, charms with "I Know Things Now", in which we see a trippy but effective sequence of her looking like Alice as she falls down a purple rabbit hole and finding her grandmother in the Wolf's belly. Sadly, we do not get "Maybe They're Really Magic", but that doesn't stop James Corden and Emily Blunt from owning their roles as the Baker and his Wife. Their interaction and dynamic emotional journey hits a high point in "It Takes Two", which is staged more appropriately and intelligently than I've ever seen on stage.

"Agony", featuring the hunky and slightly campy Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen, is incredible. Climbing atop a waterfall, splashing themselves with water, and tearing open their shirts, the two men are endlessly charming (ha?). Sadly, we don't get to see them reprise the song in the second act, which greatly shortens their screen time. Daniel Huttlestone's voice doesn't quite appeal to me -- though he does earn the character as poor dumb Jack -- but his tree-climbing physicality in "Giants in the Sky" worked really well, especially since on stage the number is usually fairly spotlighted and movement-less. Anna Kendrick shines as sweet Cinderella, and her slightly altered "On the Steps of the Palace", wisely changed to present-tense, is lovely. Moving into the second act before we talk about the more complicated bits, "Witch's Lament" is sadly only one-third of its proper length. I don't know why they cut it down, and it makes me sad to not hear the whole thing. But the change in Rapunzel's fate struck me as decidedly more tragic than on stage, and though I won't spoil it here, I think it fits in a lot better with Marshall's central theme for the picture (which we'll discuss later). Meryl Streep is the star here, and her every moment on screen steals the movie anew. I don't know how she does it, but she puts an astounding amount of energy and heart into her role as the Witch. The staging for "Last Midnight" makes the scene the best in the film; besides Meryl's award-worthy performance in that single song, the whirling camera, lighting, and special effects combine in the most dazzling musical theatre number I've ever seen on film except perhaps "All That Jazz" in Chicago.

We lack the sung transition pieces that mark each midnight as they pass, but moments like that (and, later, the characters sharing their learned lessons) just wouldn't work as well in a film. I believe that is also why the Mysterious Man/Narrator has been cut, mostly because the magic of that character revolves around his physical presence on screen and the duality of his role. That tension finally peaks in the second-act song "No More", which is also omitted in this film for the same reason. It's a beautiful moment on stage, but Marshall and Lapine very dangerously and, I think, wisely sacrificed it to bring greater strength to other moments. Let's face it, even on stage, there is no much happening in the script that the show can be overwhelming and start to languish in its own dense rhetoric. Omitting the Narrator and including more references to the Witch's mother and Cinderella's parents make one of the show's more interesting themes rise to exciting new levels (and influence the finale, as we will discuss later). Elements like the Narrator can work well when we can see them live, but would become confusing in a film that is not divided into acts and that does not allow characters to walk on and directly address the audience. Similarly, I'm okay with omitting "Ever After", a lovely transition number that would only really work well if we had the other numbers that revealed character lessons, and that satirizes fairytale rhetoric in preparation of the second act (so it wouldn't make sense without an intermission).

The ending works perfectly for me as a film. I understand that people will be upset: non-previous-fans because it's not a typical "happy ever after", and stage-show fans because it doesn't have the theatrical wink and giddy, bouncy ending that makes audiences feel less disturbed as they exit the auditorium. But the slow pan across the forest and onto the cloudy, almost-sunlight sky as Streep sings the ever familiar "Children Will Listen" is one of the most emotionally honest and transcendent moments on film we've seen this year. The ending features a dreamy confluence of narrator voices that draw from a pool of characters, including the Baker, his father, his wife, and even the Witch; I believe this is done partly to round out their variously tragic stories and bring them back to some sort of "life", and also to again emphasize the unspoken central theme in this movie of the emotional dynamics between absent parents and their children. That's a theme that isn't really central to the stage show, and frankly Marshall's meditation on it here is one of the most moving elements to this film due to its relative novelty. Marshall also repeatedly pushes the lesser themes of moral confusion ("Moments in the Woods", "No One is Alone"), the importance (and dangers) of decision-making ("Your Fault/Last Midnight"), and a certain inevitability about entering the woods ("Into the Woods").

With these ideas, the final shot perhaps works better than a smash-bang chorus finale, because we are left with our survivors joining together in the sunlight, hoping (more than wishing) for a bright future, though they are still deep in the forest. Melancholy as it may be, it doesn't leave us untouched. Rather than telling us how to feel, or leading us on a rote moral path, Into the Woods claims its place as one of the most engaging, provocative, beautiful, and intelligent films I've ever seen. Go watch it, and don't be afraid to get a little lost.

IMDb: Into the Woods