Just Mercy (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

The latest Black movie that caters (mostly) to a white audience, Just Mercy nonetheless manages to get several things very, very right. Dramatizing the true story of a wrongfully convicted black man, the film follows a young defense attorney and civil rights activist in his efforts to see justice carried out. While the film nominally fights police corruption, institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system, and the death penalty, it reigns in its righteous anger to keep the whole affair consistently and specifically about this case. The result, for better or worse, is a relatively straightforward courtroom drama with a lot on its mind and even more on its heart, though it leaves those matters largely implicit.

We begin with Walter "Johnny D" McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a black man in Alabama making his way home from work when he is suddenly stopped by an entire squad of police officers who arrest him on the spot. Then we're introduced to a parallel story of the man soon to partner with him: Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), a recent Harvard law graduate with pep still in his step as he travels to Alabama to change the world. Bryan treats his own culture shock from landing, suddenly, in Alabama and with inmates on death row by diving headfirst into his job at the Equal Justice Initiative. Having recently founded this organization with Eva Ansley (Brie Larson), he meets the inmates he will be defending from the death penalty: those poor souls, he repeats, who are most in need of quality help.

One of these men is indeed Johnny D and we learn his story along with Bryan, from court documents to eyewitness accounts. Johnny D, it is immediately apparent, is totally innocent of the murder he was convicted of perpetrating. He was framed by desperation -- corrupt police and ravenous media -- and coerced into delivering false testimony in exchange for a lighter sentence in his own pending trial, namely getting off death row. But, absurd as the whole ordeal may be, Johnny D's life hangs in the balance, and Bryan's work is more than cut out for him. People are too afraid to help him or too indifferent to care. And while indifference is a difficult villain to film, it nevertheless makes for a fascinating example here.

Director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, The Glass Castle, and the upcoming MCU feature Shang-Chi) is very careful here -- again, for better or worse -- at keeping the film very civil. Some will see this as watered-down and immaterial, if not downright insulting, much like the Green Book that won Best Picture at the Oscars last year. This movie staunchly refuses to allow its Black rage to boil, as it righteously should, instead apparently hoping to make it all accessible to moderate whites and even shallow racists. But there's nothing worthy or worthwhile in seeing cartoonish racist villains (specifically the sheriff and prosecuting attorney) only out to save their own hides. The film would have been better served to show these individuals as the agents of corrupt and violent institutions that are still entrenched today.

I wanted more dynamism from the plot, but the characters here are also woefully flat. The only interesting characters come from a PTSD-afflicted inmate (a tragic Rob Morgan) who is executed halfway through the movie, and the convict who lied under pressure to save his own skin (the always reliable Tim Blake Nelson). These characters demonstrate that even poor or sick people are victimized by law enforcement; injustice is, it could be argued, rather colorblind. Brie Larson and Jamie Foxx milk their slim and shallow roles for every second of screen time, along with Michael B. Jordan who only succeeds slightly more due to his physicality and burning intensity. If there is Black rage in this movie, it's in his eyes and gritted teeth in horrific if understated moments of unabashed racism.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Score: 5 / 5

Hell yes.

Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom is everything I've ever wanted from this franchise. Breakneck action, nonstop ingenuity, absurd humor, and pure terror. It's also (easily) the most beautiful film in the series. Most importantly, it's a total game-changer for the series; this means it often does not feel like a Jurassic Park movie and indeed sets up a potential future for the franchise that completely ignores the Park. But come on, we've had the "Park" movie four times now. If this one hadn't set up a whole new vision, I fear my beloved dino flicks would go, well, the way of the dinosaurs.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Fallen Kingdom picks up three years after the "kingdom" of Jurassic World fell to the Indominus Rex, a monstrous creation that, like all the dinosaurs in Hammond's parks, proved smarter and tougher than expected. As always, life has found a way, and many dinosaurs are still thriving on the ruined, abandoned Isla Nublar. In an opening sequence reminiscent of the very first scene of Jurassic Park, mercenaries sneak into the island's lagoon to harvest DNA from the bones of the long-dead Indominus. Their mission goes horribly wrong.

Meanwhile, the world debates whether the dinosaurs on the island should be saved from the impending volcanic destruction of the island -- good thing the park is already closed! -- or whether they should be left there to die as nature intended. When intervention is formally denied, a private entity (James Cromwell, playing an old partner of John Hammond) develops a plan to rescue the dinos and find a safe haven for them. Who does he select for his mission? Claire and Owen, our favorite lovebirds played by Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt, of course!

This movie is a hybrid of many things, including the bones of previous Jurassic Park films as well as surprising genres. While the previous installments have been primarily action-adventure outings with healthy doses of sci-fi, Fallen Kingdom is, at its heart, a disaster movie with the soul of a horror film. Director J.A. Bayona does what he does best and he delivers the goods for every single minute of the wild ride through volcanic explosions, mad science, gas chambers, clones, and what becomes a haunted house of monsters. Every shot is beautiful and calculated; I'd compare the cinematic artistry of this film to The Last Jedi. These new, glorious visuals pair nicely with the new, complex themes in the series.

(SPOILER ALERT!) Never have the stakes felt this high, because never have the stakes been this high. By the end, we've gone to obscenely dark thematic places. We have cloned people. We have gut-churning choices of life and death and genocidal implications. The final sequence of this film is one of the most absurdly mesmerizing sequences I've ever seen in a franchise movie. It absolutely changes the name of the game in totally unpredictable ways. To summarize: our heroes kill the evil monster and then let all the dinosaurs loose in the mainland. Dr. Ian Malcolm (a glorious Jeff Goldblum, who really always needs more screen time) intones that now we'll have to live with our consequences and coexist with a new dinosaur age: "Welcome to Jurassic World."

And I lost my composure.

It's everything I've ever wanted from the series. Sure, it's a fun ride when there's a mystical island of dinosaurs out in the blue. But how many times can we visit it and expect a different outcome? Exactly once more than before. That narrative is done. The park is gone, as the tagline reads. Ever since I saw an episode of Dinotopia, I've wanted a movie where realistic dinosaurs lived alongside modern humans. And now it's finally happening. I wept openly as the dinosaurs went out into the woods of North America. I shrieked as the Mosasaur picks prey off the sunny California surf. I tried to choke back my joy as a flock of ptero-somethings perched on the Eiffel Tower replica in Las Vegas (that's the post-credits scene, y'all. Dig it!). And of course, we've been hearing about these militarized dino soldiers since the first Jurassic World. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the chaos coming next.

IMDb: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

The Ritual (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

It's basically a freaky, updated version of The Blair Witch Project with a gimmicky premise, an unnecessarily changed setting, and someone's Swedish fantasies. And it's fabulous.

The Ritual concerns a group of four young men who, to honor their recently murdered friend, go hiking in rural Sweden. The gorgeous protected land harbors a dark secret, though, as the friends soon learn. Something is moving in the shadows of trees. Someone is leaving wooden figures in the forest. Something gutted an elk hanging twenty feet off the ground.

As nightmares begin to plague the group they seek a way out of the forest. But now tensions are running high and it becomes clear their health -- and, you know, lives -- are in danger.

It's a thrilling story -- old as time, still so haunting -- in a fresh setting. Not much else is fresh here. Not the monster, which is fabulously realized as a creature from nature, a "jotunn" or troll of Scandinavian myth. Not the pagan cult that worships it. And certainly not the way the young men are ritually sacrificed to the beast.

But originality doesn't always make a film worth watching. The Ritual is brilliantly acted, especially by Robert James-Collier, and beautifully shot. The images of the forest and mountains are breathtaking. The special effects and design of the monster are surprisingly good. And, of course, if you, like me, are a total sucker for pagan cults and mythic monsters and deep dark woods, you'll love this movie too.

IMDb: The Ritual

The Big Short (2015)

Score: 4 / 5

It's a strange thing to enjoy a film but have no idea what's happening. The Big Short is all about the housing market, Wall Street, and the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. Basically, a lot of things I don't expect to ever really understand. But the film works precisely because it caters to those of us who share that bewilderment. Of course, it also caters to people who do understand the crisis and vilify the villains behind it.

Hell, I even got angry with them. I didn't always know exactly why I felt that way, but director Adam McKay (in what might be the first film of his I've ever seen) shares his outrage so bountifully that even his kinetic directorial style here serves to heighten the anxieties and tensions at work. We flit from brokers and bankers to salesmen and victims with such fervor that we feel vexed not only by the duplicitous and voracious money-mongers, but by the filmmakers and their fierce understanding -- and criticism -- of the crisis.

If that makes sense to you, you're already a step ahead of me. But the primary way McKay caters to us know-nothings is by breaking the fourth wall in periodic, stylized exposition monologues. We have Ryan Gosling delivering voiceovers, trying to help us understand the forces at work. When even he needs help, he presents us with celebrities in various comical situations who then explain in hilarious and somewhat less-than-totally-enlightening terms a particular concept or construct. The logic, I suppose, is that Margot Robbie in a bubble bath can explain something as dull as subprime mortgages (??) in an entertaining and pleasant way, while maintaining a sort of aloof, satirical manner. Similarly, Selena Gomez stacking chips in Vegas can explain synthetic CDOs (??) about as well as Anthony Bourdain can make fish chowder out of three-day-old fish while explaining something else. It's a sly move.

It's also one that laughs at us as much as we laugh at it. I mean, isn't part of the problem with these complex business concepts that the majority of Americans really have no idea what's happening? I think it's one of the characters early in the film who decries Wall Street for coming up with big words and complex procedures simply so that its grip on international finance remains firm. So whereas McKay and his team seem to know what's going on, and while he seems willing and able to share it, he does so by condescending to a populace that only really cares about "reality" television, breaking down the fourth wall on celebrity life, and sipping champagne in a bubble bath.

It's a damning judgment of a couple institutions, to be sure. And all this has been to say nothing of the biting dialogue, razor-sharp and with more wit than it can sometimes handle. We see young men calculating their way into the field from their garage, and we see those same men later lounging in their commercial offices while the financial world collapses. Their performances -- particularly those of Christian Bale and Steve Carrell -- are stunning, even (and perhaps especially) when they prove to be less than heroic. Of course, this is movie almost exclusively concerns white men, but then I suppose that's a bit of a statement in itself, even with the likes of Melissa Leo in supporting roles. And by the end, they all work together, through perfect timing and flawless dark comedy, to infuriate the audience.

This movie isn't a drama thriller that carries a warning, like Margin Call. This is a white-hot, scathing indictment against all kinds of things I just don't understand. And it's one of the funniest movies I've seen this year. And that's exactly the point.

IMDb: The Big Short