Frankenstein (2025)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Literary purists were going to hate this anyway. Frankenstein, for being one of the most-adapted works of English literature, has never had a film version lauded as faithful to Mary Shelley's Gothic nightmare of a vision. The material itself, sublime and terrible, has always seemed eager to have a life of its own, thus spawning so many takes and versions and interpretations and deconstructions and homages that "Frankenstein" has come to mean, for any generation of readers or viewers, whatever its artists want it to mean. Like the infamous monster it dramatizes, the story's meaning has become an amalgamation of sordid parts, wet connective tissue, and a spark of creative enthusiasm. Take anything from Young Frankenstein to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, with a lot in between (and since), and you'll see what I mean. Hell, pay the cost to watch Danny Boyle's theatrical production with the National Theatre Live company; in two parts, in which the two main actors switch roles as Victor and Creature, the production is gobsmackingly brilliant and deeply moving.

In fact, there's only one adaptation I've ever seen that feels truly faithful to the novel. And no, I don't mean Kenneth Branagh's pseudo-camp, very wet 1994 version, though that will probably now have to retain its deeply misleading and frustrating accolade of being the most faithful feature adaptation. Rather, I refer to the 2004 Hallmark made-for-tv film in two parts, which has its obvious budgetary restrictions but manages nevertheless to faithfully adapt the entire Shelley narrative (!!) with some notably impressive moments (their encounter in the ruined medieval castle is a brilliant scene, cinematographically) and a couple knockout performances, especially from a career-best Luke Goss as the monster. William Hurt's weird accent and flat performance notwithstanding, the production even features a score for days and a few scary images that will knock your socks off.

We all knew Guillermo del Toro would add his signature style to the material, and the trailers reinforced that idea. We all knew this would feature some obnoxious sci-fi imagery, with lots of beakers breaking and animated lighting zapping all over the place; it's annoying, from a purist's perspective, because almost none of the "science" in Shelley's work is like this, yet almost every adaptation uses these trappings to convey something about a very specific idea of (mad) science. And it never makes sense, especially the bizarre stitching patterns used on the creature. If Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs can make a prettier skin suit from girls in a dry well than can an actual surgeon (never mind the century), something is very wrong. Sadly, del Toro's monster follows the same path, offering more stylization than is good for it. The monster so rarely resembles a real dead body that it never feels as scary or gross as it should; its whole point is that it is incarnate abjection, a large living corpse. Do yourself a favor and reread Shelley's description of the monster, and think about what it would really look like. Just don't do it before bedtime!

I say all this because it's important to go into this film with basically no expectations regarding the material. Even a passing knowledge of the novel and its themes will lead you to disappointment. Del Toro has crafted, in his latest film, a travesty of aesthetics. What was so obviously a dream project reveals itself to us as an obsessive, forced mess that butchers its source material on the altar of autership, sacrificing any attempt at philosophical soundness, thematic imagination, and movingly dynamic characters to the false gods of beautiful but hollow imagery, and uninspired and derivative storytelling.

Do we have time for everything? This will be a long one, so gird your loins.

Broken into chapters as it is, I rather expected a more thematic approach. Either a new way of viewing the plot (a la The Last Duel, or Boyle's stage production), or perhaps something linking this more strongly with the Prometheus myth. But no, del Toro merely uses these arbitrary chapter divisions to clarify that the first half of the story is Victor's and the second half is the creature's, as if that wasn't already manifestly apparent in the narrative itself. Worse, despite some ham-fisted dialogue relating Victor to Prometheus -- almost all spoken by Christoph Waltz -- the film ambiguously provides the creature as much if not more imagery associated with the myth (his regeneration, his relationship with fire), so the blending of names and titles becomes functionally meaningless instead of meaningful.

Oscar Isaac plays Victor with his typically excellent craft, though more than once here his voice felt parodic of his own as the title character in X-Men: Apocalypse. Though Isaac has already played the Victor-character before, in the modernized Ex Machina, here del Toro has him set in 1857, several decades after Shelley's original setting, for no apparent reason except to lean farther into the sci-fi trappings of his laboratory. Changing the setting simply to have more reason to insert unnecessary effects sounds pretty artistically bankrupt to me, and it distracts from Isaac's otherwise committed performance. I'd have much preferred to see him going mad while lurking around churchyards and sweating in a lonely, Gothic attic lab. For no clear reason, del Toro has Victor prowling snowy battlefields of what I gather to be the Crimean War; in what world are these corpses of better use to a man looking for ideal, healthy body parts to cobble together a giant man? 

I just don't understand why, in adapting such a clearly and simply constructed story, you'd change so many details that cause you more problems in conveying ideas. Moving things from Regency England to Victorian England only seems justified if the point is to let Victor play with electricity, which isn't even the point of any of this. Worse, it's not even used medically appropriately. By the waking of the creature (and Jacob Elordi gives a fine performance, though his design is too weird and distracting), we quickly learn that he can heal from any wound almost instantly. Heck, in the opening sequence, he's given an animalistic roar and superhuman strength that allows him to singlehandedly move the entire icebound ship loaded with its crew. Imbuing the creature with such superhuman abilities makes him both more monstrous and potentially more heroic, pushing what could and should be a horrifying chamber piece into the realm of Disney-fied superhero flicks.

Del Toro retains the framing device of Victor's final chase through the Arctic and his encounter with sailors trapped there, but the minor theme of the captain's own obsessions is practically absent. In its place, he forces a few action scenes to showcase the supreme might of the creature and its The Terror-like ghostly presence in the frozen wastes. While beautiful, these scenes only confused me more, as they immediately reveal the creature to be immortal and immune to grievous injury. Yet the creature still loiters around, allowing Victor (who looks too healthy to be on death's door) to tell his full account to the captain (Lars Mikkelsen, with nothing to do) before intruding to share his own story. The timing just doesn't add up, even if the views of golden firelight flickering in the icy darkness are lovely on screen.

Victor's story -- told through rather obnoxious voiceover by Isaac -- launches into his childhood home life, quickly bypassed in favor of his days at university, Edinburgh rather than Ingolstadt for unexplained reasons, where he is the subject of an ethics tribunal. He's animating gory, half-corpses and getting them to politely catch and return objects. It's an insane change to the material, not least because it undercuts his entire tragic personality: the whole point is that Victor cannot and does not tell any other soul about his experiments or his eventual creation. His secrecy is wrapped up in his monomania and ego, but del Toro seems thrilled to showcase Victor's efforts to every single character in the film. Impressed by his grotesquerie, Christoph Waltz's original character of Henrich (an arms dealer, for no reason) generously offers to bankroll all of Victor's science, even relocating him to what appears to be an abandoned water treatment tower alongside a reservoir. It's beautiful, sure, but it's also an illogical and gratuitous move in order to force cheap Gothic imagery into the film. 

This reveals a central problem to del Toro's film: in attempting to force Gothicism, he ends up butchering it. How much scarier and more cinematic -- yes, even on a home screen via Netflix -- would Victor's lab have been had it remained true to Shelley's vision? A darkened, locked attic, shrouded in secrecy and night, with much of the body horror seen only by candlelight. Instead, the camera swoops around what might as well be a giant stone lighthouse with a gaping tiled hole running down through its center. Architecturally, it makes no sense at all, and adds a sort of Chekhovian bit of foreshadowing: someone will fall through this inviting hole without guardrails. And indeed, before long, the bizarre and totally extraneous character of Henrich does just that. I hoped we'd retain some of the academic and ethical debate so central to the novel through his character, even if he wasn't one of the iconic professors Victor studied under at university. Alas, he's just there to pay for an expensive and impractical setting.

After the creature is born, Victor is not repulsed or ashamed, but rather takes the creature by hand and walks him around, trying to communicate while teaching him to walk. He even has the creature, who seems shy or pained by sunlight, reach out as if to embrace the yellow rays. There's an impetus of kindness and fatherliness here that actually interested me, because it's so foreign to the material and character. Yet instead of building on this dynamic, del Toro has Victor promptly take the creature to a dungeon -- again, what exactly is this architecture?! -- and chains him up before walking away for the night. For some time after, Victor attempts to teach the creature various things by day before chaining him up again, though the creature only seems able to repeat the name "Victor." 

Until, that is, Victor's family arrives. I don't even know where to start with this. First, his younger brother William (the favorite of their father, played by Charles Dance, in a delicious casting choice for the bit part) is significantly older than he is in the book (so is Victor, to be fair), which changes their dynamic drastically. Worse, Elizabeth is in this version Henrich's niece and William's betrothed. Victor repeatedly makes advances on her, which she rejects; yet upon visiting the tower, Elizabeth immediately wanders into the dungeon and meets the creature, making physical contact without much ado, after which the creature is smitten with her. It's obvious, too, that she's smitten with the creature.

What the fuck, del Toro? I'm all for fresh interpretations of classic stories that aren't bound to purity. Look at Lisa Frankenstein. Look at James Whale's original film. Heck, look at Poor Things. These take a nugget or two and run with it into new and exciting directions. But to pass off your adaptation with integrity while bastardizing the material to suit your own oeuvre feels like the work of an amateur, not an auteur. I'm fine with a dark romance teased out of an ambiguous story: Robert Eggers just did that with his Nosferatu. Del Toro himself has done this! The Shape of Water takes our beloved Gillman from Creature from the Black Lagoon and moves him into a different setting with different themes attached, yet his story is still one of being a missing link and deciding to love a human woman who connects with him. If that's the story del Toro wanted to tell, why didn't he just write that? Why does he try to pass it off as a reasonable adaptation of Frankenstein? He could have taken the character and written a story around it finding romance, acceptance, and forgiveness, and he could have titled it The Shape of Flesh. 

A few moments do offer cool beats we don't always get in these adaptations. Most center around Elordi's creature, though I still think his design looks less like an animated corpse and more like an alien; in fact, he appears to have been visually inspired by Ridley Scott's Prometheus, which is an intriguing connection in genre intertextuality. Woodland creatures seem quite at ease with the monster, and we see him feeding elk and rats a few times. Elordi's physical performance and emotional conveyance is laudable, though I wish he was given more to do by the screenplay. His few scenes of real action are so drenched in CGI -- and yes, while I was at first excited for the wolf pack attack sequence, it quickly derailed into frantic, nonsensical animation -- that they made me lose respect for his performance. You just can't tell what's real or not, which hinders our ability to relate.

Speaking of which, del Toro takes such pains to equalize "monstrous" traits to both Victor and the creature that neither ends up being very dynamic. Victor has urges to be a kindly father or benevolent god, yet his lecherous attitude toward Elizabeth and cruel, almost blasé treatment of his child make him eminently unlikable. The creature is gentle and natural, yet does not hesitate to crush and eviscerate any potential physical threat. By changing the roster of characters in the story, and their ages, we lose several deaths enacted by the creature that increase our complex understanding of his monstrosity, and Victor's by extension. We don't get children being killed or maids being framed (justice for Justine!), and we lose the sorrow of Victor's best friend. There is almost no reason for us to care about Victor because he cares about no one; there is almost no reason for us to care about Elizabeth (and, frankly, Mia Goth's performance is flatter than a pancake in garish, unsightly costumes) because she has no trait of interest beyond liking bugs (so, she's a lay scientist?) and being unfaithful to her betrothed before being passed from brother to brother to child. 

After a messy final act, the film ends on a note that I took particular umbrage with. Having told their respective stories, Victor suddenly and inexplicably feels close to death, and begs the creature's forgiveness, apologizing for his cruelty and negligence. The creature immediately and tearfully accepts and forgives him, and Victor begs the creature not to perish but to "live." The creature disembarks the ship, pushes it out of the ice, and then tries to embrace the sunlight as Victor taught him. It's disgustingly sentimental and anti-Gothic, and profoundly stupid : what life does Victor think this creature could possibly have? He's greeted by horror in civilization. And without Victor, the creature will now forever be alone. Why would the creature want to live? It's a question Shelley asked and had an answer for: he doesn't! But in del Toro's vision, the creature seems fine with living a hermit's life in the Arctic circle, so he tries to affirm that bizarre choice with sunlight and flourish.

And what makes it all worse is that, however we want to define "monster," del Toro could have gone dark with this film. His Nightmare Alley is still on my list of almost-too-disturbing films due to its nihilism and garish theatricality. Can you imagine, here, an ending of the creature drifting away into the inky ether on an ice floe, perhaps holding a torch, slowly disappearing into the blizzard? A haunting chill of possibility, the kind of bleak frisson of the opening scene of Midsommar or that carriage scene in Nosferatu? For that matter, can you imagine an approach to Frankenstein in the style of The Lighthouse, vis-a-vis Robert Eggers?

I really wanted to love this movie, but it might be the first del Toro film I've actively disliked. Very few choices within it are elements I found engaging, thoughtful, or worthwhile. It's loud and bright and kinetic and pretty much everything I don't want from Frankenstein. Worse, his changes to the source material are unfounded, confusing, and detrimental to the story he himself is telling, causing what is a remarkably coherent literary work into a literary travesty without internal logic. Alexandre Desplat's score was lovely, and provided some nice atmosphere. The cinematography was beautiful, if often distracted; editing is more messy, with lots of redundancy, but it's not awful. David Bradley has a nice couple scenes as a rural blind man who becomes the creature's friend, and those might have been the best part of the film (until the giant wolves descend). But pairing my disappointment in the film with my disappointment in del Toro is a nasty shock that I wasn't prepared to handle as we hurtle into awards season.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Only recently, I finally joined the throngs of fans of Into the Spider-Verse, easily one of my favorite animated films to date. So seeing its follow-up, Across the Spider-Verse, in cinemas was an experience I bitterly regret missing in 2018. Stunningly beautiful artistry, revamped characters voiced by stellar actors, and endlessly inventive storytelling with mature, complex ideas make this franchise one of the best out there. It's a great sequel, one that builds on what came before while still telling its own story -- stories, really. Unfortunately, and truly the only thing that left a bitter taste in my mouth, is its deeply cruel non-ending that leaves us on a cliffhanger for no good reason. It could have easily and satisfyingly wrapped itself up with a few hints at what's to come and still been a wonderful self-contained film; instead, it threatens us, big studio style, with needing to return for a future installment that we already want or we won't have closure. It's a cheap ploy that we've become desensitized to (thanks to the MCU), and one I certainly didn't expect and don't respect from this franchise, which has done so well bucking the status quo of genre films, animation films, and extended IPs in mass media.

We begin about a year after the first movie with Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) trying to keep her Spidery identity secret from her police captain father (Shea Whigham) in their beautifully watercolored universe. When a version of Vulture materializes and causes chaos, a few other Spideys drop in from other dimensions to clean up the mess, telling her that Spideys across the multiverse have teamed up secretly to rectify these aberrations. Their leader, an intense Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac), doesn't say it, but we are meant to recall that Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), protagonist of this series, is such a "mistake." He was never meant to be a hero, and so begins the central thematic concerns of this film, once we shift to Miles's universe again: What makes a hero who should never have become a hero?

Miles is living a pretty good, albeit secret, life in Brooklyn when a new villain pops up. The Spot, Dr. Jonathan Ohnn, was previously an Alchemax scientist whose body became host to wormhole-like portals during the events of the previous film. He's retroactively input into the previous film as the man Miles hit in the head with a bagel, and don't think for a minute that isn't relevant or hilarious in the year following the major Oscar wins of Everything Everywhere All at Once. Voiced by Jason Schwartzman, the Spot starts a bit awkwardly as a C-level villain of the week until he starts controlling and mastering his powers, becoming increasingly dangerous and unhinged. His antics draw the attention of the Spider-Society, who descend on Miles's reality in a lovely reunion before the action really takes off. Unfortunately, the Spot soon enough disappears from this film and doesn't get much payoff dramatically, but he'll clearly be a big bad for our heroes to deal with in the upcoming sequel, promised for us in March 2024.

Questions of purpose and fate are the bread and butter of superhero tales, but never has it been so dramatized or so relevant in our age of super-saturation in terms of sci-fi fantasy content and superhero mania. When Miles literally has to compare himself with a cadre -- nay, legions -- of other similarly-abled Spideys, he has to ask himself repeatedly what makes him special, if he even is special. The screenplay's sharp critiques of determinism and lionizing of perseverance are fresh and relevant, perhaps all the more in our post-pandemic world. We're reminded strongly through Miles and Gwen and their actions here that imagining our other potentials doesn't and can't matter as much as honoring and cherishing the reality we're already grasping. That mastering our own fate and knowing ourselves inside and out make us our own heroes, and that empowering ourselves and others in the moment matter infinitely more than seeking out destiny for destiny's sake.

Its ideas, though rich, are difficult to fully appreciate despite the film's almost two-and-a-half hour runtime because it's just so damn full of ideas. And action, of course, with eye-popping artistry that feels more than a bit overwhelming. More than once, I had to look away from the screen to remember where I was and flex my limbs because it's such a transportive, trippy experience to behold. An aesthetically confident, assured film like this has no business being so kinetic and frenetic, yet it pulls no punches with its breakneck pacing and endlessly creative flow. Even its "quiet" or more somber moments are jam-packed with beautiful artwork, inspired music, and raw, earned emotional weight. Not a moment feels extravagant or unnecessary, even though the whole thing is unmitigated spectacle and paraded as such. Its heavy action is perfectly easy to follow, which most live action sequences cannot say for themselves, and even when things get too heady or chaotic, its directors masterfully know when to ground us with a line of dialogue or delayed edit -- or to pump in the tunes.

I hate the ending, but I cannot wait for the next movie. These are the real deal, and if you haven't seen them, you are absolutely missing out.

Dune (2021)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Denis Villeneuve is my favorite director right now for a lot of reasons, and his films are all on my regular favorite lists. As he's moved into science fiction and major franchises, I've been slightly skeptical; not because he didn't knock Blade Runner 2049 out of the park, but because I've worried that studio oversight would limit his vision or shoehorn accessibility into his work. We've seen it happen before. And Villeneuve's latest, Dune, is only exacerbating my anxieties to that end because, while my exact concerns did not come to pass, it is easily my least favorite film from the genius.

As with any big franchise -- especially in this genre -- most discussion will revolve around the adaptation process. Frank Herbert's '60s groundbreaking novel and his five (?) sequels spawned an entire shared universe of interplanetary politics, economics, and war, and it was notoriously labeled as unfilmable after David Lynch's 1984 cinematic attempt. I've never read or seen anything about Dune, so this review will not engage with those concerns, but I'm aware enough of its sprawling world-building scope to understand that there is enough within the franchise to excite anyone interested in heady ideas of environmentally radical geopolitics, anti-capitalist exploitation, and unusually complex gender and racial dynamics that hinge on religious identity. In these respects, I'm planning to read Herbert's series in the coming months, if only to check it off my list. But this film did almost nothing to excite the prospect of more, and given the widespread praise of it, I'd like to reflect on why.

The plot is, I think, shockingly simple. In the distant future, a galactic emperor decrees that the powerful Atreides family will relocate and become the rulers of Arrakis, a desert planet. What seems a curse is complicated due to the presence of "spice," a unique natural resource only on Arrakis, which is crucial for space travel (and hallucinogenic trips) and therefore the most valuable element in their civilization. Making this move, the Atreides patriarch (the ever-handsome Oscar Isaac) realizes they are in the midst of a power play between the paranoid emperor and other dynastic families vying for wealth and influence, none more so than the villainous Harkonnens (and their patriarch, a deliciously wicked Stellan Skarsgard), who previously ruled Arrakis. As the family learns more about their new place in galactic geopolitics, they must fend off traitors; their son Paul (Timothee Chalamet) becomes a man and a messiah, seeing visions and exhibiting powers cultivated by his deeply religious, slightly witchy mother (Rebecca Ferguson), and connecting with the native population to mysterious ends.

As the title card for this film indicates, this is only "part one" of the story, which will reportedly conclude with a "part two," and so it is by no means a complete narrative. Its extensive work in world-building is nothing short of spectacular, and deserves to be seen (and heard, in a droning Hans Zimmer score that threatens to blow out speakers) on the biggest screen available. But its characters, largely archetypal, are much harder to parse because they simply do not go through standard dynamic developments. The closest we get is the callow (dare I say shallow? Sorry, I'm not a big Chalamet fan) Paul becoming a man, but as much as he learns about himself, his mystical gifts, and his place in the violent intrigue of this interstellar Game of Thrones, he ends the movie finally finding "the girl" he's been seeing in visions (Zendaya), which is about as trite a resolution as we could have gotten.

It's a thoroughly entertaining experience, and in Villeneuve's hands often feels like the sort of epic that will add it to fans' shelves alongside major movies from George Lucas, Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan, Stanley Kubrick, and Ridley Scott. I especially liked that it is so (apparently intentionally) allegorical, and was probably one of (if not the) first in its genre to tap into Islam as a good thing, as well as a certain sensitive portrayal of ecoterrorism. The native people of Arrakis (the Fremen) appear to be modeled after Arab Muslims, and "spice" read to me as oil, which the alien invaders sweep in to take over and fund wars much like Westerners (and in Westerns, at that). I confess myself most confused not with the material itself, nor with its visionary spectacle, but with its technical delivery. The editing is all over the place, in my mind, and almost every time I was prepared to settle in and absorb a new frame -- each gorgeously, gloriously composed -- it would cut to another shot. This worked well during the action sequences, including any time sandworms attacked and flying through a sandstorm, but not so well in intimate scenes or any shots meant to inspire sensations of grandeur or even fear, such as the weird religious test of pain Paul goes through very early in the film.

Perhaps part of my ambivalence for this movie stems from a similar annoyance with other soft science fiction devices, specifically an over-reliance on original vocabulary. You may have already gathered as much, but this movie made very little sense to me because of its thick screenplay, which is comprehensible only if you can effectively remember and contextualize its many characters, organizations, and technologies after only hearing them briefly. I say "hearing," but that's the other major problem: I could barely understand most of the dialogue in this film. Much like last summer's Tenet, I expect I'll like (and comprehend) this movie a lot more when I can watch it with subtitles. The sound mixing is fine, but the editing should have been mindful of their audience, many of whom have no idea what's really going on here, and so need to be able to listen accurately and without driving us to distraction. I appreciated that the screenplay didn't make its exposition feel like exposition, but the flip side is that it took me a while to feel reasonably confident about anything going on.

The Card Counter (2021)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Paul Schrader will never be accused of being uninteresting, and his latest feature is no disappointment in that regard. In many ways, it's a standard exercise for the veteran writer/director, concerning the soul of an isolated man on the brink and the moral responsibility with which he struggles. But this movie is no visionary work like First Reformed, his last project, and feels more like some of his '90s films in tone and its almost unbearably slow pacing. Moreover, here Schrader plays a dangerous game with his audience, making the movie appear to be very much one thing before pulling the rug out and revealing his true intentions (a la American Gigolo). Despite its title, marketing, and demeanor, this is not a crime noir about poker. It's a cruel take on revenge thrillers.

Oscar Isaac plays William Tell, a man of staunch discipline who plays poker obsessively. While his name is almost certainly not actually William Tell, he knowingly also goes by "Will Tell," the weaknesses he surely exploits in other poker players in order to win. And yet he doesn't seem to win big. He notes more than once that he wins enough to make good money -- he has no job, no family -- but not enough to be on anyone's radar as a shark or celebrity. In fact, he dryly says, "I hate celebrity gambling" even as we're repeatedly shown his apparent adversary, a jingoistic Americanized player whose groupies chant "U.S.A.!" as they follow him to tournaments. Impeccably dressed and coolly removed from social life, we wonder immediately what's wrong with him.

Because Will Tell doesn't say much, we're forced to read him like he reads the cards. He introduces himself to us in voiceover, describing part of his method in a detached, calculated way. Similarly, later, he offers key bits of gambling wisdom to other characters, indicating his wealth of knowledge as much as his determination to hide elements of himself. That's not all he hides. In the privacy of his motel rooms, the only places he lives, he ritually shrouds all the furniture in white sheets, tied with twine; he wants no decoration, no distraction. It feels uncannily like something from American Psycho, but all he does after shrouding the room is sip whiskey and write in his diary in beautiful script. His tortured mind reveals itself when, after a disturbing recognition of a man presenting at a conference, he retires to bed and undergoes a jarring dream sequence. We see some of his history replayed through fisheye lens: he was a US Army torturer in Abu Ghraib.

Through interspersed flashbacks, we learn a little bit more, including his subsequent stint in prison after the horrors of Abu Ghraib ended. Once, he picks a fight with another violent inmate, apparently hoping to be killed. But his death wish isn't ever realized, which makes his obsession with learning to count cards and play poker a little non-sequitur; then again, the movie presents two compelling reasons for Will to persevere: two new friends he meets while doing what he does. The first, La Linda (a skillfully underplayed Tiffany Haddish), runs a "stable" in which investors back gamblers for a percentage and wants to work with Will; the two flirt and fall in love very casually. The second, Cirk (Tye Sheridan) who pronounces it as "Kirk" but spells it with a "C" as he repeats to everyone, approaches Will in the fateful conference as Will leaves. Cirk can tell Will knows the man speaking (Willem Dafoe) and gives him his number; when they meet up later, Cirk reveals that he's the son of a military man who killed himself out of guilt over what happened in Abu Ghraib. Now Cirk wants revenge on the commanding officer (Dafoe's character, evidently).

Will Will foster the angry and awkward young man, training him in a new skill and hope that this sets Cirk on a better path? Will he face his own guilt and adopt the plan for revenge himself? Schrader's method is to put the pieces together and just let them stew in a brooding, slightly surreal journey through the heart of a man we don't really know. The Card Counter won't be remembered as his best, but it adds to Schrader's fascinating list of hard-hitters. Then again, it's more than worth a watch just to see a beautiful Oscar Isaac do his usual amazing work.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

The Rise of Skywalker, the end of a beloved multi-generation saga of folks who love the Skywalkers in a galaxy far, far away, is a muddied mess of fan service and forced nostalgia that sacrifices the joy and ingenuity that makes Star Wars great. It is often blatantly reactionary, repeatedly attempting to comment on and even undo the magnificent strides of its game-changing predecessor, The Last Jedi. Instead of allowing artistic integrity or even quality storytelling to rule the day, Episode IX retreats to a sense of cringeworthy sentimentality and often downright sloppy craft to produce a film that means well but ultimately reveals dangerous ideological impulses.

The plot is pretty bewildering, and all amounts to just about nothing. We begin with the opening scrawl, telling us that a broadcast message has announced the return of Emperor Palpatine. To determine the truth, Kylo Ren mows down soldiers on Mustafar and retrieves a Sith artifact called a Wayfinder. Guess what it does? He finds his way, then, to a mysterious planet called Exegol, where he encounters the decrepit old man. Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid doing wonderful things again) reveals that he is the architect of everything that has happened, including creating Snoke and initiating the First Order. Fittingly, he unleashes the Final Order, a legion of new Star Destroyers each with the power to destroy planets (Death Star tech again, because we clearly haven't had enough of all that).

Then we get tossed into a chase as we follow our heroes Poe and Finn on their mission to deliver new intel to the Resistance: the same damn info we've already got twice by this point. Rey, honing her Jedi skills under Leia's guidance, joins them and they embark to yet another new desert planet to find Lando, who supposedly can help them. After a mini-adventure, they discover a Sith dagger that tells the location of -- guess what? -- another Wayfinder to help them find their way. But then they go to a snowy planet to get a mechanical device from apparently the only person in the galaxy with one, then they use that device to crack the Sith dagger code and travel to another moon of Endor where the wreckage from the second Death Star fell. In the ruins, Rey finds her way. Excuse me, I meant she finds another Wayfinder to help her find her way.

The whole affair is laughably bizarre and confusing at this point, and they still planet-hop at least three more times before the movie ends. Though some may have criticized The Last Jedi for having such a straightforward "chase in space" and an odd but thematically crucial side-plot to Canto Bight, I would take that any day over this nonsense. The Wayfinders are MacGuffins by definition, and would be interesting as such if we had other things going on like character development, world-building, or even fun action. Consider for comparison Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which plotwise is very similar to this: we didn't mind the weirdness of needing a drawing of a key to get the key to open a chest we had to find in order to stab the thump-thump and save the oceans because there was so much quality character development, humor, drama, mythmaking, and generally awesome storytelling.

Instead of those things, we often get the opposite. Much like in Lucas's original trilogy, we get very little -- if any -- understanding of secondary characters or locations. Keri Russell appears (sort of, we only hear her voice and see her eyes) for a hot second, as does Naomi Ackie. Dominic Monaghan shows up in a couple scenes for some reason. Richard E. Grant plays a new First Order (Final Order? Who knows) commander, which is thankfully about all we need to know. All these folks and more are suddenly introduced and just as suddenly ignored. As if the cast wasn't big enough.

Rose Tico, the most exciting new character since Poe, is basically unwritten in this movie. Two new female characters are put in for the sole purpose -- I defy you to give me one shred of evidence to the contrary -- of proving there is absolutely "no homo" between Finn and Poe. Finn doesn't even get a fitting arc, after all his amazing development in the previous two episodes, and he is here relegated to being a stock action hero. There's a truly baffling twist from General Hux. And while seeing Billy Dee Williams again as Lando is fun, he does so unbelievably little in this movie I'd have preferred him to not even show up. Maz Kanata shows up for like three scenes, and yet we still have absolutely no idea who or what she is, what she does, why she's important, or really anything interesting at all.

Most cruelly, Rey is here revealed to be as flat and boring a character as ever I suspected. Just when things were getting really cool in The Last Jedi, when we learn she is completely self-made, even in the Force, and that she came from unremarkable parents, The Rise of Skywalker has to screw it all up. Lo and behold, the granddaughter of Palpatine. Don't get me wrong, I think that's freakin' awesome. But when the main character has been set up as a pretty great feminist icon (remember the way she took control of every situation in The Force Awakens?), it should be artistically criminal to suddenly pull back the curtain and reveal that she is only what men make her to be. In this movie especially, she is stripped of any agency. Her story, her actions, even her identity are forced on her time and again by men. Even in her rare moments of strength, she is seeking answers, advice, and labels for herself from men.

And then there's Leia, whose presence in this film is just unfortunate from top to bottom. Granted, the filmmakers had an impossibly hard job on their hands after Carrie Fisher's untimely death, especially since it seems clear that Leia was supposed to be the last O.G. hero standing. But I can't help but wonder if they should have just killed her off in the opening crawl of this new movie, because her scenes are so deeply uncomfortable. Her presence makes me think of the uncanny valley, and her image is often drenched in so many aggressively drawn visual effects that she doesn't always look real. The scenes in which she's featured -- sometimes made up of deleted scenes from the other films, sometimes simply shot behind her and using a body double -- are disjointed at best, often with dialogue so vague it makes no sense.

Apart from the plot and characters, I can't help but shake what I read as the film's core ideological problem. The film essentially suggests that, if we put this into context, Hitler survived and resurfaced 30+ years later to join forces with the Soviets and turn the Cold War into an apocalypse. That's fine, I guess, except that this film attempts to cultivate nostalgia from the original generation of fans, which is annoying even if it makes sense from a business perspective. The problem is that it's a generation that has twice allowed a Palpatine-like war criminal and egomaniac to take control (George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively) and, each time, failed to rise up and challenge him. How about instead of stroking those egos and making that generation feel so safe, we try confronting them with the realities of their sociopolitical choices and its fallout for subsequent generations?

I don't want to belabor the point any longer, but I was just so utterly disappointed in The Rise of Skywalker. It spends too much time retconning the previous movie, which might be the only work of consummate art in the entire franchise. This tendency dissolves any cohesion in the sequel trilogy, making the episodes incoherent at best and conflicting at worst. These anti-developments in this final chapter result in denying the sequel trilogy its own artistic reasons for existence, unless you count the considerable interest in visual effects, which feels rather masturbatory for Disney at this point.

At Eternity's Gate (2018)

Score: 3.5 / 5

A highly unconventional biopic, At Eternity's Gate seeks to dramatize and hypothesize the final days of Vincent van Gogh.

Not terribly concerned with realism, time, or facts, we flow through his life with impressionistic images and vignettes more than scenes. He travels around France, painting constantly, seemingly forever in a state of exhaustion and bewilderment. His brother (Rupert Friend) lovingly cares for him when he's able, and he meets kind folks (Mads Mikkelsen) along the way. But he's mostly alone, painting feverishly and drawing the disdain of other artists who do not understand his style (Oscar Isaac). Van Gogh cannot support himself, and his destitution is only enhanced by his mental state.

The film doesn't quite suggest the nature of van Gogh's other-ness, though it could be a form of mental illness. It seems more likely that it's a disorder of some kind -- what we might call a disability -- that allows him to see the world differently than the rest of us. What way this might be is similarly unclear. Cinematographer Benoit Delhomme attempts to take us inside van Gogh's head, often using between intimate handheld cameras and changing lenses and focus to shift our awareness of the environment. He even includes some almost-first-person shots that feature heavy blurs in the lower third or half of the screen; it's a very specific choice, and one that served to baffle me more than anything. It's not likely to be an accurate estimation of van Gogh's vision, thus an odd way to identify his POV.

Willem Dafoe gives a solid performance as the suffering artist, and while his performance carries the film, it's not the most interesting or beautiful part of the picture. For me, it was all about the cinematography and the screenplay. The two work together to craft a fairly radical approach to filmmaking, especially in the biography genre, and while it's not always effective in telling a story or even providing enlightenment, the film manages to impress its aesthetic and strangeness on you. You feel it, you just don't always know what it is you feel.

Operation Finale (2018)

Score: 3.5 / 5

We all know the story -- even peripherally -- of Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi brains behind the "Final Solution," the Holocaust. We know that he escaped Europe and lived for a decade in Argentina under a false identity. We know that Israeli intelligence agents tracked him down, captured him, and returned him to face trial before sentencing him to death. We know, too, that his name is synonymous with the "banality of evil" and that "little Eichmanns" are the sort of sycophantic, mindless paper pushers and bureaucratic desk workers who never get their own hands dirty but whose activities cause great harm to others.

It would follow, as we know the basic story and characters, that a cinematic depiction of these events and characters might be one of those great war thrillers or revenge dramas that sweep awards and educate while they provoke and honor. Operation Finale, while serviceable and highly entertaining, falls short of such expectations for many reasons. Though a pretty amazing team of artists hide behind the curtain -- to say nothing of the ones on screen -- there's just something that didn't quite work on the grand, epic scale of (for example) Munich or Zero Dark Thirty.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't think Operation Finale even wants to be considered a "great film." It's almost a chamber piece, revolving around its two main characters as they intellectually spar during Eichmann's captivity. The great pleasure of the film lies with these characters and the actors who portray them. Ben Kingsley is chilling as Eichmann, at once silly and conceited yet calculating and manipulative. He seems to have no remorse for his crimes, and endlessly seeks justification for his own existence, about which he has apparently no delusions. He knows he's just an animal, and though brief insights into his emotional state occasionally flash through his stony visage, his existence seems based on instinctual tasks like eating, shitting, and finding comfort.

Oscar Isaac carries the film as his primary captor, Peter Malkin, who struggles to keep his mission professional but nevertheless succeeds where his peers fail. He crosses boundaries in his efforts to get Eichmann to comply, alienating his team, but as the story's end attests, Malkin apparently knew exactly what he was doing the whole time. His beauty in no way detracts from the proceedings, though it does distract on occasion; his greatest contribution to the character, however, is in his dedication to the little moments of silence as he contemplates the horrifically complex ethics of the mission.

With a team including Javier Aguirresarobe and Alexandre Desplat, Operation Finale had great resources and guidance. While director Chris Weitz may have been ill-prepared for a postwar espionage thriller with timely and important themes, there's not a clear reason why this flick isn't a new staple in the WWII canon. Perhaps we can blame the story itself: not really a war movie, it flips constantly between feeling like a thriller or drama or history. How do we read it? How did the director read it? It's not an easy question to answer, made all the more difficult in the film's repeated tonal shifting; I love breaking the mold of genre and experimenting with new art forms, but it's important too to have a sense of purpose and intent and, it's true, direction. Its attention to detail and fabulous nuance in ethical dilemma make Finale engaging if not quite thrilling, and even got me to forget (briefly) how the story would end.

P.S.: Keep your eyes peeled for Simon Russell Beale in a surprising single-scene role as David Ben-Gurion, blessing Malkin's team before they depart Israel.

IMDb: Operation Finale

Annihilation (2018)

Score: 5 / 5

This is science fiction at its very best. Like Arrival and Ex Machina, Annihilation takes what is already a fascinating premise and relies on smart storytelling to creep under your skin and mess with your mind. It's a work of visionary genius, an immersive experience beyond what I imagined, thrilling and horrifying but beautiful and wondrous. It's the kind of movie that comes out when least expected, hits you where it counts, and haunts you afterward.

Natalie Portman plays biologist Lena, whose missing husband shows up at home but seems different somehow. He falls ill, and en route to the hospital they are abducted by a government organization called Southern Reach. Taken to a remote location, called "Area X" in what must be Florida or Louisiana, the Southern Reach has been studying a mysterious region cut off from the world by "The Shimmer". Before you get totally turned off by the silly sci-fi proper nouns, just know that's about where it ends.

The Shimmer, an oily boundary stretching from ground to sky, is expanding slowly, and no research teams who entered have returned (save the husband, played by Oscar Isaac). Dr. Ventress (a chilly Jennifer Jason Leigh), a psychologist in charge of the facility, assembles a team of women to go in and learn what the men could not, and Lena joins them. Weird shit happens immediately, as the women wake up apparently four days later with no memory of their actions during that time. Not long after, monsters beset the team and claim victims. As they get closer to the lighthouse, the epicenter of this dreamlike landscape, reality is warped and matter is in a constant state of cellular mutation. Alien biology? Multiple dimensions? Spiritual manifestations? Who knows what the hell is happening here. That's why it's great science fiction.

There are almost no answers in this movie. Its beauty is in its ambiguity and mystery. It forces you to think and pulls no punches, even during its scenes of visceral body horror (I will forever see those swirling tentacles in my belly). Each shot is an artistic masterpiece, from kaleidoscopic lichens and mold to trees made of sand-turned-glass. The rainbow gleams in every other shot remind us of where we are and of the oily slick that makes the Shimmer beautiful but distinctly toxic. Writer and director Alex Garland is a master of visual beauty as well as tonal complexity: His movie changes temperature and volume seemingly without effort, and he assaults you with so many arresting visuals you don't always have time to check yourself and remind your brain that you're okay.

Garland and his characters mix deadpan with melodrama, spectacle with mind fuckery so much that the film quickly becomes a cerebral jungle. Its cosmic horror isn't just in the human body or biology at large, but in the very mode of storytelling. Flashbacks and flashforwards interrupt the narrative while the mythic strength of a quest into a heart of darkness / into hell / for a beloved potently invites a wide range of speculation and interpretation. Which, really, is what science fiction is all about.

IMDb; Annihilation

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I will spoil the movie for you. You've been warned.

The first thing you need to know about The Last Jedi is that it is infinitely superior to The Force Awakens. That film was a rehashed "Best Of Star Wars" scrapbook of fan fodder, expertly executed but lacking in any substance. Well, beyond its cast of fabulously diverse newbies. It was also a mess of plot holes and unfinished storylines, and by the end of the film we still didn't know much about any of the new characters or the new mythos of a galaxy far, far away.

Rian Johnson, however, has crafted one of the better Star Wars movies with Episode VIII. It's a deeply emotional movie with real stakes, troubling moral ambiguity, and complex relationships. For a two-and-a-half hour movie, it's also incredibly tense, even when the pacing tends to lag. People get hurt. People die. A lot of people die. Hope is ever-fading. It's a strangely apocalyptic vision of science fiction not unlike Revenge of the Sith; whereas that film ended with a comparatively safe sense of nostalgia and hope, The Last Jedi is far more bleak. That's partly due to our utter ignorance as to where this franchise is going. Disney holds all the cards now. Let's just hope the Force is with them.

Speaking of the Force, let's dig right in. We pick up the saga not long after the end of The Force Awakens. The Resistance fleet is on the run, pursued through space by the First Order, which was apparently not seriously set back by the destruction of Starkiller Base. General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) have developed the ability to track their prey through hyperspace, and most of this film concerns what is essentially a car chase with spaceships. The Resistance fleet (...of three ships?) is low on fuel and doomed unless Finn (John Boyega), BB-8, and newcomer Rose (an excellent Kelly Marie Tran) can hire a computer pirate (Benicio del Toro) to save them. It's a bizarre little side adventure through a casino populated by war profiteers, slavers, weapons manufacturers, and people who brutally race alien horses. All is for naught, however, when the pirate sells out to the highest bidder, and the Resistance is forced to hide at an old outpost. Almost all of them die, including (probably) their second-in-command Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern, who really deserved more screen time), but General Leia Organa survives. Unfortunately, and ironically, that is one of the most heartbreaking things about this movie.

Thankfully, this movie provides her with much more screen time than the previous episode. I'm a bit concerned about what will happen to Leia now. She could have died at least three times in this movie alone, and I find it troubling that the filmmakers didn't account for Carrie Fisher's death. We'll have to wait and see how they fashion the next installment. Han is gone, and as of the end of this movie, so is Luke. Mark Hamill gives a riveting performance as a haunted rogue Jedi, and we get a fair amount of backstory on him and his failed Jedi revitalization project. He trains Rey (Daisy Ridley), sort of kind of, and is forced to face his own shortcomings. There's a great scene when the ghost of Yoda appears to him, still instructing him, saying that failure is the greatest teacher. But in his final moments, after expending his life force to save what's left of the Resistance, Luke disappears and his empty cloak floats off into the wind.

Which brings us to another point. I'm not sure about this sequel series playing fast and loose with the mythology. Kylo can stop a blaster's laser in midair? Leia gets blasted out into space and can survive by pulling herself back into an air lock? Yoda's ghost can cause a lightning strike? Luke can astral project?! I had some misgivings about the directions this franchise would take when Disney took over, but things are getting a bit wild. Similarly, while this film answers plenty of questions from the first and fills in some extra plot holes -- the most fabulous being that Rey's parents are nobodies; she is a strong independent woman and she don't need no fancy bloodline -- it keeps us in the dark about just as much. Who is Supreme Leader Snoke? He has a glamorous golden bathrobe, but we still don't know who or what or why he is, and now we may not. Kylo kills him in an otherwise really cool scene (he and Rey fight together against the guards and a burning backdrop). Who was Max von Sydow's character in The Force Awakens? Still don't know, probably doesn't matter. What's Phasma's story? No idea, and she (also probably) dies too. There is a new canon book about her, so hopefully that helps.

Despite my meandering thoughts, I cannot deny the sheer beauty and power of this film. It's a visionary masterpiece, pushing the Star Wars limits in ways I never expected to see. It's a tapestry of color and light, gorgeous special effects and dazzling storytelling. Its menagerie of alien species gets a little weird at times, but it all works together to create a nearly perfect escapist experience. Even moments that could be a dangerously close throwback to The Empire Strikes Back are quickly altered to be novel: The climactic battle on salt-crusted Crait isn't just snow and AT-ATs like it was on Hoth; arresting red dust billows from the ground and none of the enemy's weapons are destroyed. The infiltrating team of Finn, Rose, and DJ the pirate don't shut down the tracking device like Old Ben did on the Death Star; they get caught and almost killed.

In this way, the movie is a (successful) meditation on failure, its price and its cost as well as the lessons it teaches. It's a thematic work of genius, and I can't wait to watch it again. Sure, there are some awkward comedic moments, some earned and some not, but nothing caught me off guard so much as little moments of insight and affection between characters in intimate proximity. I wept openly through lengthy sequences, and choked up so much I could barely breathe. After saving Finn at the potential cost of her life, Rose tells him that's how we win: "Not by fighting what we hate, but by saving what we love." Take my tears and my life, why dontcha? Other than Rogue One, it is the most dense Star Wars yet, and if that's any indication of the franchise's future, I am HERE FOR IT.

PS: For those of you who are as in love with Oscar Isaac and Poe Dameron as I am -- just kidding, no one rivals my affection -- you will be pleased to know that he has some great moments in this film. He connects with all the major players in heartfelt ways, he leads a mutiny, his hair is on point. And he gets a new leather jacket.

IMDb: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Suburbicon (2017)

Score: 4 / 5

Don't pay attention to the critics on this one. It's an absolute delight of a flick for pre-Oscar season nuts like us.

Suburbicon takes two stories and meshes them into one, though the synthesis isn't quite inspired. Think Stepford Wives meets mob-affiliated home-invasion thriller. The bare bones story is that of the Myers (?) family, consisting of a black man and woman and their young son; their presence serves little narrative purpose other than to demonstrate the horrors of Suburbicon, the all-white paradise of Trump's America. Oops, I'm sorry, I meant 1959 America, when America was "great" to begin with. There's a difference, right? Only the day after the Myers move to town, the mailman starts spreading the word, and neighbors begin picketing their property. The neighborhood decrees privacy fences will be installed around their yard. Groups of chanting malcontents gather on the street, shouting insults and appropriating spirituals to taunt the family. Ultimately, the rioters, despite halfhearted attempts by police to restrain them, attack the house, burn the car, and terrorize the family.

But their son makes tentative friends with another young boy, the white boy whose backyard mirrors their own. That boy, young Nicky, has family problems of his own, and though his skin grants him salvation from community bigotry, he goes through another kind of hell, and it is this that the film centers on.

Matt Damon, the patriarch of this family, plays a weak and desperate sort of suburban white-collar worker. He spends his days in an office pumping away on stress-relief squeezers, and it seems he has gotten terribly involved with "the mob" from another city. He lives with his infirm wife (Julianne Moore) and her sister (also Julianne Moore, praise be to Jesus), and their relationship is only barely introduced before their home is victimized one night. Two thieves appear and molest the family, tying them to kitchen chairs and chloroforming them before supposedly robbing them; they end up murdering the wife/mother Julianne Moore in front of little distressed Nicky.

I don't want to spoil anything, because half the joy of the film is its ability to story-tell. Nicky is the only sympathetic character -- apart from the Myers family -- and his ability to observe the corrupt dealings of adults informs our understanding of the evil at work in white suburbia. The white people are all variously destroyed by an effort to perfect their lives: through order and sense, through money, through status. Well, not "all", because of course the general population lives on to spin their own story. The final shot is of media interviewing "bystanders" who are declaring the Myers family responsible for the violence in their midst. Survivors and victors get to determine history.

Director George Clooney isn't making a treatise here on racial dynamics or white morality. He isn't making a statement on feminist culture or domestic patriarchy. These elements are present, of course, and arguably make up the meat of the movie. But he stays somewhat aloof, allowing the elements to blend and conflict at their own volition, and forcing the viewer to think. If nothing else, that's a damn valuable thing these days. And as a white lower-middle-class American, this movie made me even angrier at white middle-class America. The Coen brothers with Clooney have crafted a script that doesn't pursue the directions it could have taken -- intensely subversive domestic horror, hilariously scathing satire of white hegemony -- but certainly suggests all of the above and more. I laughed out loud more than once, and covered my eyes at least twice. (Seriously, why the hell wasn't that fire truck sounding its siren?!)

It's not a great mystery. It's a mediocre thriller, and a not-very dramatic drama. But as a quirky sort of crime flick, it works really well. Its well-rounded cast (including Glenn Fleshler and a scene-stealing Oscar Isaac who will make you feel all sorts of spectacular things in his brief onscreen appearance) provide a fabulous hour-and-three-quarters of entertainment. Workable if uninspired vision from the usually exceptional cinematographer Robert Elswit and typically mesmerizing music from Alexandre Desplat provide enchanting visuals and aurals to soak in, even when the plot isn't as daring as we might want. And, if murder and sexism and money and racism and child endangerment and classism weren't enough, there's always a crazy Julianne Moore, a sweet and terrifying Matt Damon, and a sexy and suave Oscar Isaac to soothe your soul.

Check into Suburbicon. You won't be sorry.

IMDb: Suburbicon

The Promise (2017)

Score: 3 / 5

Mikael, an Armenian apothecary in idyllic foothills of the Ottoman Empire, knows he could be doing more. Betrothing himself to the daughter of a local wealthy man, he uses the sizable dowry to travel to Constantinople and attend medical school. There, enchanted by city life and the multicultural pleasures at every turn, he meets Ana, a dancer and mentor to his young cousins, with whom Mikael is living. Charming and vivacious, Ana is also Armenian but had been raised in Paris, and she is romantically involved with an American reporter named Chris. Set in the beautiful, bustling city during and after World War I, this film follows these three lovers through their toils of the heart. It's such a shame that their romantic triangle was broken up by the Armenian Genocide.

Perhaps that's too harsh. The Promise is, in retrospect, one of the very few films about the tragic holocaust, and as such it deserves more praise. The events it depicts are still denied by some, and the Turkish government still refuses to call it a genocide, even though the word was coined in 1943 to describe the horrors inflicted on the Armenian people, among others. The film effectively dramatizes the hows and wheres and whos of the mass killings, and succeeds in involving us emotionally with the fear and chaos felt by the Armenians.

Where the film falters, however, is in the whys. It seems to intentionally avoid delving into the cultural factors and social atmosphere, content to rather hint and suggest, making the events feel like a natural byproduct of living in close quarters with other cultures and ethnic groups. While that may be historically debatable, I would have been far more interested in seeing a modern dramatization of motivations, conflicts, and real-life consequences than in episodic slices of fictional life.

Actually, I think my problem with the film is a similar problem I have with historical fiction that attempts to take on iconic moments in history. In essence: The Promise does not take inspiration from the ilk of Schindler's List or Zero Dark Thirty, but rather from Titanic or Colonia (to use a recent example). Rather than focusing on the epic journey of a person or a people through hell to their fate, or using history as the main narrative frame on which the drama may be hung, The Promise relies on the predictably soapy drama to push the story while the riveting history becomes little more than set dressing. While the latter can be done well (just look at Titanic), those examples are few and far between, and are only accomplished when the drama is expertly written, paced carefully, and envisioned with honesty and novelty. This one doesn't have those benefits.

I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the picture. Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (The Others, The Twilight Saga, The Road, Blue Jasmine) knows exactly what he's doing and allows the pulsing color and light of his images to capture our attention. The cast does its best with the material, and our leads turn out solid work; Christian Bale seems distinctly out of place, but he's only occasionally on screen here. Of course, I'd watch Oscar Isaac do literally anything, and personal favorite Shohreh Aghdashloo makes any movie for me.  Director Terry George (Hotel Rwanda, Reservation Road) obviously means well, though he utterly fails to balance the film and its narrative swings from clumsy to simple like a leaden pendulum. A film eponymously promising great things deserved far better.

IMDb: The Promise

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Score: 4 / 5

The first X-Men film that actually feels like it's one of the comics. It's excellent.

Jam-packed in its lengthy running time are dynamic action shots, extravagant destruction, vibrant colors, wit and charm, high stakes and higher concepts, and almost nostalgic melodrama. All the makings of blockbuster summer entertainment. Sure, it's not as intelligently written as Days of Future Past, and it doesn't have the heart that film bared, but a game-changing movie like that can only come once in a series. This is a big, blustery, loud and proud follow-up, as it should be, and it owns its own preposterousness. The villain is cliched, the apocalyptic images are all too familiar these days, the plights of our heroes are typical.

And yet, as you can even see from the poster below, it may be the most visually arresting film in its franchise. At every moment, the bland and empty shots of catastrophe and destruction are parried with bright and stylized shots of the outlandish characters in colorful costumes straight out of the comics striking poses and leaping frame to frame as if it were drawn on page. Are you getting my message here? I liked the damn movie.

There's not much more to say. I need to watch it again to get everything -- I confess, at two and a half hours of explosive energy and dizzying effects, my mind began to wander. This film knocks its Quicksilver scene out of the park (again), effectively balances itself between all the players in its vast cast, and beautifully reintroduces several beloveds (notably Storm and Jean).

It's not the most original superhero movie. But it does its thing, and it does it well. Bryan Singer's still got it.

IMDb: X-Men: Apocalypse

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Score: 3 / 5

**Fair warning: I don't care about spoilers for myself, so I won't worry about censoring my thoughts here. If you haven't seen the film, and get violent when someone else reveals plot points, stop reading now. You should also probably just avoid the Internet until you've seen the movie.**

The most obnoxiously advertised movie event of the year, the new Star Wars regime opened with great fanfare and packed auditoriums. If you had the pleasure (?) of seeing it opening weekend, you no doubt shared with the enthusiasm of the multitudes as I did, and cheered aloud at appropriate points. It's undoubtedly a fierce spectacle, dazzling in its precision and flair, encouraged by the sentiment and nostalgia brought to it by both filmmakers and audiences.

There isn't much I can say specifically in praise of the movie, because technically it's pretty darn fabulous. The effects are killer, the score is lovely, the production design is interesting, and the camerawork is fine. There are some sizable holes in plot and characterizations, but as a part of a planned trilogy, I can't really fault the film for that; we can certainly expect to know more with the next installment. That said, I always prefer films (as sequels, prequels, and trilogies too!) to be able to stand on their own. I'm not so sure this one does. There's almost no exposition and new ideas pop up without preparation or, sometimes, merit. For example, early in the film, villain Kylo Ren uses the Force to stop a blaster's fire in midair. When has that ever been a thing? And apparently a renewed Empire (the obtusely named "First Order") has taken charge, led yet again by a mysterious Sith, though we don't know anything about what happened after the fall of the Empire in Return of the Jedi. I guess time will tell. But in most of these respects, The Force Awakens is very reminiscent of A New Hope.

Of course, it's also reminiscent of A New Hope in ways that aren't so admirable. In fact, a few times I wondered if I wasn't just watching a remake of that iconic first film. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I felt thoroughly disappointed at least half a dozen times in this movie. I mean, where's the creativity? If I wanted to see a poor orphan on a desert planet looking for adventure, a masked magic man with a sinister artificial voice, a superweapon the size of a planet, or a mysterious alien whose short stature belies supernatural knowledge, I could have watched the originals.

And before you start saying, "Well, it's better than the prequels," think again. I've never had a serious problem with the prequels, and I've not heard many sound arguments against them, other than personal preference. Sure, Jar Jar Binks is the worst, but so were the Ewoks. Sure, Darth Maul dies in the first movie, but so did Alec Guinness. No, I think the real reason people like the prequels less is because the script and its themes are far more complex and aloof; in having to rapidly expand the galaxy and its denizens, the prequels have precious little of the raw humor and "realistic" sense that defined the originals. Which is fine in my books, but not so with everybody. But that humor and grounded awareness is what J. J. Abrams's new film has in abundance, thereby winning over so many original fans. For example, when one tough pilot is dropped before the intimidating figure of Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), he glances up and asks who speaks first. It's the little moments like this that present us with a believable sense of humor, one that sparkles with wit amidst operatic galactic warfare.

In any case, it's not this film's (lack of) creativity that's winning anybody over. For all their editing faults and effects-heavy spectacle, the prequels matched the originals in sheer imagination and creative output. The Force Awakens just looks like Abrams's scrapbook of images and sensations from the original movies, recycled in order to win over doubters. I might add that, as a fan of the original expanded universe, there were extensive plotlines established before, after, and during the films' plotlines, written in both novels and graphic novels. I love reading the books, so it's a little hard for me to swallow that virtually all of them are suddenly irrelevant. That's a barrier I'll have to overcome on my own, but it certainly made me bitter while watching this new movie. Of all the brilliant stories and characters in the expanded universe, to have the filmmakers here just pirate plot points and images from an old movie is pretty irritating. But I suppose that's just a matter of personal preference, not unlike the disdain some feel toward the prequels.

Maybe I'm harping on something that doesn't matter much. Maybe the new Empire (Disney?) is planning on making the second and third films (plus more, apparently? God, I hope it's not overkill) wildly novel and imaginative, so they had to make this one familiar. I guess we'll have to wait for episode eight. For now, it's a nice excursion, and one that promises even more boons in the coming years. And speaking of boons, let's praise the amazing cast ( and casting director) here for a moment. Yay, the movie isn't only full of white people! Yay, we have a badass female protagonist! Yay, Oscar Isaac is my favorite! But seriously, the cast is great and their work is great, especially the newbies. I'll happily follow any mainstream sci-fi adventure with a cast that can impress me this much this quickly. Focal point: My favorite scene in the film is when Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega) are attempting to fix the Falcon, and BB-8 is withholding the location of the Rebel base. It's a fast and charming verbal dance between the three, and one that had me giggling for minutes afterward. It's scenes like that that won me over. Let's hope Abrams has more of those up his sleeve.

Here's a list of other objections some have had with this new film. Some are far more problematic than others, but generally I felt most of these ideas while watching the picture. Check it out: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/274463/episode-vii-sucks/.

IMDb: The Force Awakens

In Secret (2013)

Score: 4 / 5

Take an abbreviated Jane Eyre, turn it on its head, toss in some steamy sex, and you get In Secret, a quietly captivating erotic thriller that passed us all by two years ago. This dark adaptation of Emile Zola's Thérèse Raquin does little for those of us who want to be surprised by plot structure, but it works wonders for the rest of us. Not for a moment do we believe that the adulterous affair suggested by the title will end happily, but we also don't really care; anyone who disagrees has never seen Romeo and Juliet or any other romantic drama ever.

I suppose a brief outline will suffice, then: Therese (Elizabeth Olsen) is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly, spoiled cousin Camille (Tom Felton), watched over by her domineering aunt/mother-in-law Madame Raquin (Jessica Lange). When Camille's seductive friend Laurent (Oscar Isaac) comes calling, he and Therese embark on an intense affair that leads to murder, madness, and other exciting stuff. And if you don't expect all these things from the dark first scene, you can leave the fun stuff for us and go watch one of several mindless comedies in theaters right now.

Thus, our focus here is on style over substance. I said the first scene is dark, by which I do actually mean chromatically. Yeah, sure, the whole film is "dark" thematically, but director Charlie Stratton rightly decided to pair the heavy drama of a period piece with the striking visuals of Gothic thrillers, making every moment fraught with tension and rimmed with shadow. Stratton's screenplay -- which moves along at a surprisingly fast pace, though it is disguised by Florian Hoffmeister's (Mortdecai) meditative cinematography -- features very little dialogue, allowing for the actors, sets, and lighting to paint a nightmarish vision of hell itself, as Therese herself once describes her situation. Gabriel Yared (Cold Mountain, Shall We Dance?, 1408) crafted a symphonic score to accompany, and the great sweeping runs of stringed instruments would make the film feel overscored if the visuals weren't already so dramatic. In fact, the whole film teeters dangerously on the edge of operatic excess. The only thing that grounded it, for me, was the cast.

Jessica Lange is the undisputed soul of the film. And really, even for younger audiences or romantic viewers who might prefer the star-crossed lovers to be their protagonists, the film wouldn't work without a conniving, vulnerable, and passionate Madam Raquin to run things. Though some might say we've seen enough of Lange's crazy time in American Horror Story, here she does what she always does: She finds yet another nuanced, fully-realized character in the throes of madness unlike any we've seen yet. Miraculously, Olsen, Isaac, and Felton all match her, though perhaps less gracefully, scene for scene, with their own idiosyncratic psychoses. Olsen carries the weight of the film really well, allowing her teary, fearful gaze to sweep, wide-eyed, across almost every scene. Felton's pale simpering oozes a charm of its own, countered marvelously by Isaac's smoky stares and aggressive sensuality.

For as much as I'm throwing around descriptions of these people as "crazy", I don't want you to think this is a film populated with fearfully unstable individuals. No, this film isn't "about" (vile phrase) insanity. This film is about the ways in which normal people act and react under heavy cultural weights. These people are single parents who dote on their children, surrogate children searching for love, spouses stuck together without love or respect, a woman seeking freedom from cultural oppression, a man risking everything to be with his lover, and, ultimately, two people who learn that the sins of the past can never really leave us. Whether or not we agree with these characters' actions -- and Stratton has very cleverly allowed a lot of room for discussions on class, gender, family structure, morality/ethics, social norms, and marriage -- we can easily participate in their navigating the murky waters of forbidden romance, and hopefully emerge a bit better off than they do.

IMDb: In Secret

Ex Machina (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

Easily the most surprising thriller in recent memory, Ex Machina stylishly welcomes us into what is sure to be a summer movie season for the record books. Though its cool facade never seeks to approach blockbuster status, its pristine gloss and wildly intelligent craft far surpass most of the crap going through our cinemas in the last two months. What we have here is a concept-driven meditation on humanity, technology, and their increasingly ambiguous relationship. In fact, I would consider this picture to be the dark sister of Spike Jonze's 2013 Her; in each, we see a human man develop his understanding of an artificial intelligence (not insignificantly coded as female) before his attachment becomes romantic.

But it is, to be sure, the Gothic version of that tale. We have a futuristic haunted house, an ambiguous host with bizarre idiosyncrasies, bodies stuffed in closets, guests-turned-prisoners under observation and study, and even a particularly disturbing murder. So who's who? Okay, the lonelyheart oddball is played with striking vulnerability by Domhnall Gleeson, who is certainly one to keep on your radar (he is a busy rising star, with roles in Calvary, Anna Karenina, and the upcoming The Revenant and Star Wars: Episode VII). He is matched by the pitch-perfect Oscar Isaac (a personal favorite, bringing to mind his other recent triumph in A Most Violent Year) whose buff machismo is almost as subversive as his character's plans. And Alicia Vikander steals the show with her incredible movement work as the Artificial Intelligence robot called Ava. Most importantly, first-time director Alex Garland controls his film with a measured, contemplative eye and a calculated grasp on a lot of abstractions. Here he presents a gripping thriller made all the more important with its theological underpinnings, to say nothing of its technological, sociological, or even sexual dimensions (the romantic/erotic drive of this film lies most potently in what we don't clearly see: Ava "undressing" her previous incarnations, Caleb's voyeurism, Nathan's sadistic control over his servant and even Caleb (thinly disguised as flirtation)).

Ex Machina is slow but never ponderous, and its examination of human existence is almost unbearably precise, if suspiciously broad. Garland's camera (rather, cinematographer Rob Hardy's camera) lingers over exquisite but sparse sets, forcing us to consider factors of wealth and materialism in Nathan's world. Gorgeous shots of clouds passing over mountains are juxtaposed with sessions between Caleb and Ava, serving as a breath of fresh air out of the confining artificial light of Nathan's underground lair and reinforcing an unspoken conflict of interests between nature and artifice, God and man. It is not by mistake that it is outside that Caleb receives almost divine inspiration to question Nathan's motivations and behaviors, and where he ultimately decides to betray Nathan. In one outdoor instance, Caleb asks if Nathan ever feels like God, and in an indoor scene not long after, Nathan declares himself to be like God.

If you're thinking that this movie sounds all over the place, I promise it's not. But it does suggest a wide range of hot discussion points for you to immediately hop on as you're walking out of the auditorium. It's intimate but abstract, and its power lies in its almost fantastic quality: Like a parable, it presents us with archetypes and Big Picture themes, lets them do damage to each other, and forces us to make our own interpretive conclusions about what happens. All while we sit on the edge of our seats.

And you thought you were just going to relax at the movies this summer.

P.S. - If you were wondering, I think this film brings a harsh focus on the more common concept of deus ex machina ("god from the machine") specifically in the absence of deus in the title. I found the film's theological themes particularly stimulating as a result of the conspicuous lack of a "god-force" in the film. But that might be a discussion for another time.

IMDb: Ex Machina

A Most Violent Year (2014)

Score: 5 / 5

Easily the most undeservedly understated film this year, I am convinced that A Most Violent Year is also one of the best. Perhaps its late release resulted in its being almost entirely ignored by the awards circuit, but then we all know how much that actually means. Just think of all the truly amazing -- and awards-snubbed -- films just last year: Enemy, Under the Skin, Locke, Love is Strange, Snowpiercer, Only Lovers Left Alive, and many others. Besides the otherwise familiar romantic drama Love is Strange, these films aggressively bend genre conventions and even filmmaking techniques, resulting in abstract, experimental film less approachable by Academy voters. So why do I push A Most Violent Year into their company?

A Most Violent Year follows the odd but welcome strain of crime dramas and neo-noir/art films of this past year, including A Most Wanted Man, A Walk Among the Tombstones, and The Drop. It also continues this year's seemingly universal cinematic meditation on moral compromise and, well, fifty shades of gray-area ethics. (Stay tuned for more on that, in my pre-Oscar post. Forthcoming.)

This film concerns a young business man (Oscar Isaac) -- aptly named Abel Morales, in full artistic/allegorical significance -- who seeks expansion and security. His product, fuel oil, is a hot commodity in 1981 New York, and his truck drivers are subjected to attacks from hijacking competitors, and a district attorney (David Oyelowo) targets his business for intense scrutiny. Meanwhile, the Morales household is tested repeatedly by both gangsters and cops, resulting in Abel's wife, Anna (Jessica Chastain), taking matters into her own hands. So now let's talk about why I'm crazy about this picture.

EW's Esther Zuckerman said it best: "History will remember it [because...] the film will stand as evidence of major talents whose careers are still on the upswing". Leading is Oscar Isaac, a personal favorite, whose successes haven't been much recognized (remember Inside Llewyn Davis?) perhaps because his greatest talent lies in his ability to restrain and nuance a performance. Isaac flawlessly gives his character a powerhouse journey through being a husband, father, and successful business leader. He carries his paternal strength into the workplace and makes an otherwise dirty and dangerous job profoundly intimate and validating. The film is worth watching just for his performance (but also everything else). Because he's so wonderful, please take some time to get to know him before he becomes a mainstream sensation in this year's Star Wars: Episode VII and X-Men: Apocalypse. Good starting places might be The Nativity Story (2006), Won't Back Down (2012), or The Two Faces of January (2014).

Following his lead and matching him at every turn is Jessica Chastain, easily one of the most versatile  and prolific actresses of the last five years: Coriolanus (2011), The Help (2011), Lawless (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Mama (2013), Salome (2013...okay, I haven't seen it yet, but I am actively hunting for it!), Interstellar (2014), and the forthcoming (or, should I say, selectively released) The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. Sorry about the lists, but I'm crazy about these people. Chastain transforms her chameleonic self yet again into a bizarre character who desperately seeks strength in a world that will not permit it. She seeks social power by throwing a party, only to have it ripped from her by a police raid; she seeks personal security by keeping a gun handy, only to use it to put a deer out of its misery. She plays into an older, almost campy, type of leading woman, allowing her costume (and veritable fingernail-talons) to become an extension of her while she perfectly owns the tricky accent and dutiful housewife/co-conspirator role. She is a marvel.

Director and writer J.C. Chandor -- Margin Call (2011), All is Lost (2013) -- is, for me, perhaps the most promising director of the last three years because he has only directed three feature films, and each has been an utter success. Each has also, and more importantly, been radically different from the others. Chandor hasn't established a distinct style of filmmaking, which for me makes him a more intriguing director and one with undeniable artistic integrity. He films A Most Violent Year with attention to delicate emotional beats and a rhythmic visual pulse that mirrors his beautiful dialogue. His style is augmented with the stunning costumes: fitted, clean suits and coats, coats, COATS. Cinematographer Bradford Young (also unrecognized for his killer work in this year's Selma) keeps things hopping in an otherwise slow, taut drama, and works to shade the screen into subtle dusk. Chandor and Young work together to make the film dark, seductive, and meditative, with through-lines of razor-sharp wit and cruel tension. It is, truly, a most brutal viewing experience.

IMDb: A Most Violent Year