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

Free State of Jones (2016)

Score: 2.5 / 5

It just tried too hard. This summer's wannabe blockbuster-slash-pre-Oscar-season-"Big Important Film" fell a bit flat, and for several reasons. It wants to be a vehicle for Matthew McConaughey's dramatic leading man spree, but his solid performance is hindered by splintered writing and an unfocused script. It wants to be a triumph of social justice rhetoric and historical reclamation, but wallows in its period and atmosphere. It wants to teach a history lesson about one of the most intriguing and least known stories of our Civil War, but can't decide between history and relevance, drama and action, or even if it wants to be a biopic about Newton Knight.

It's a fine picture. Really. Nice costumes, some really fabulous atmosphere (set design, cinematography), and a few strong action scenes. McConaughey is obviously working hard for the part, and the supporting cast is all in. The problems here are script and direction. Neither is as focused or specific as it should have been for clarity's sake, much less for dramatic competency. The script is confused and poorly paced, spanning a vast amount of time and space to cover the full story without ever diving into the ideological meat of the matter. Sure, visuals of slaves and freed men, runaway Confederates, lynchings, and the KKK all convey powerful shorthand, but that's all shorthand we've seen dozens of times before. In historical dramas, we have to see novelty, or we compartmentalize it into the nameless mass of wartime films we saw in high school history class.

I'm talking about the almost perfect sequence in which the women of the hidden camp march into town to supposedly bury their dead, under watchful guard by Confederate soldiers. As they level with the enemy, they reveal weapons under their mourning gowns and ope fire at point-blank range. That's something special, and it was the most memorable scene in the film for me.

It could have been epic. It could have been romantic. It could have been swashbuckling and intense. It could have been pedagogical and enlightening. It could have been relevant and brutal. And when it could have been everything but ended up as little more than a historical anecdote, it not only didn't do justice to its inspiration, but it didn't do justice to itself or its audience.

IMDb: Free State of Jones