A House of Dynamite (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Every once in a while, a movie slides in without much pomp or circumstance and subtly shifts your entire opinion on the year of film. Kathryn Bigelow's previous three films have done that for me, and it holds true now, eight long years after Detroit blew me away. Along with Bigelow's other historically-minded action dramas Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker, both among my favorite of all films, these titles have collectively made Bigelow one of my favorite directors, despite her rare output (Tom Ford is another, obviously). A House of Dynamite, however, is more speculative in nature, suggestively showing us a cynical and realistic possibility of our current world in horrific, thrilling real time. 

Taking place over about nineteen minutes of time, the film is told in cyclical and nonlinear fashion. Essentially, the story is this: an unknown foreign entity has launched a ballistic missile at the continental United States. That's it. In twenty minutes, it will likely hit Chicago and, as it presumably carries nuclear weaponry, the result will be devastating. Worse, in our moment of vulnerability, it's possible that other foreign enemies could continue the assault on the US. But twenty minutes isn't enough time to do much: a lone military post attempts to shoot down the missile, but as the film says, it's an attempt to hit a bullet with a bullet. Twenty minutes won't save Chicagoans, or any of its surrounding area (not to mention the environmental disaster to the Great Lakes region). Twenty minutes isn't enough time for the Pentagon to learn who sent this missile from the north Pacific; the obvious guess is North Korea, but should the US retaliate before it knows for sure? Would that spark global holocaust?

I had a full-on panic attack while watching this film. It reminded me in no small way of reading Bob Woodward's Fear, in which he details precisely how close we came to nuclear war during Trump's first presidency. We knew bad things could happen, but their fingers were practically on the firing mechanisms multiple times. Even the tagline for Bigelow's film reads "Not if. When." This thrill ride she's created here -- with writer Noah Oppenheim -- may be fictional, but it's horrifyingly close to reality. And the key to it is not identifying the source of the missile, which is almost certainly how things would go down in real life, like if it happened today. 

The most surprising and enduringly interesting aspect of this film, for me, is its structure. Broken into three main parts, the film repeats the events of those twenty minutes, effectively rewinding twice to showcase various aspects of how US intelligence and defense agents handle the impending disaster. Yet even these three sections are about forty minutes in length because they split those twenty minutes between two characters and/or offices. So, really, we're getting six twenty-minute short films intercut with each other to make sense and build a world of meaning. It's not unlike holiday-centered romcoms (Love Actually, etc.) or even Crash (2004). 

Most of the characters -- the vehicles of drama here -- are experts in their fields and working on behalf of the US government. We get access to the White House situation room, a Defense Secretary's office, a military missile specialist in a remote base, and even the president with the final word on the national response. And they're all -- each character -- riddled with profound humanity. The president is making a public appearance for school kids while calling his wife on an international trip; other agents are having fights with their girlfriends, caring for sick children, trying to get in touch with spouses and estranged daughters, attempting to navigate rush hour traffic. The point is that this could be any day, when we're all busy with Other Things, and that those things will affect our performance when it's crunch time. The point is also, seemingly, to remind us (the audience) that the people in charge of such existential defense are also just like us, and that maybe we can't resort to easy judgment when it comes to reacting to such inconceivable horrors.

The ensemble cast is uniformly solid, effectively conveying a grounded approach to the situation while providing moments of emotional insight. Not relief, mind, but a few breakthroughs; this isn't a film meant to make full narrative sense or reach for dramatic catharsis. We're meant to sit with discomfort, just like these people would. There's a moment when, in the situation room, two supervisors help each other get their cell phones and try to warn their loved ones before simply succumbing to the impending tragedy: with tears in their eyes, they simply reach out and silently hold each other's hand while watching the missile on each of the dozen screens before them. What else can they do at that point? Part of the joy of the film is watching familiar A-list actors doing what they do best but in a starkly understated way; they get to the truth of their characters without showcasing their craft. Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris -- they're just given the most material, but the full cast works in perfect harmony to create the muted vibes of this vicious experience.

Clearly impeccably researched and written, the material bravely resists easy answers by refusing to give us any. Bigelow has carved out quite a niche for herself that almost no other filmmakers are doing, at least with her budget or skills: she takes some hypotheticals, dunks them into a thickly realistic setting, and makes the case for horror in what could so easily be jingoistic action. People interested in such military and government insider jargon will surely appreciate the film's educational value in chain of command, agencies and their acronyms, and the real-time pressures involved in this narrative. Storytellers will find its structure and theming fascinating, as it functions more as a series of intercut chamber dramas; I'd be interested in seeing a live theatrical version of this screenplay as a sort of staged radio play or series of one-acts. And anyone eager for a timely thriller that will give you full-body chills and dread -- when you're not panicking -- should check out A House of Dynamite. It's one of the year's best.

Deep Water (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

A Hulu exclusive? Ugh, I'm getting tired of this streaming frenzy. I get that Disney owns everyone now, but if they're going to financially back movies for adults, why do they have to dump the releases unceremoniously on Hulu?

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I really liked Deep Water, the poorly titled new erotic thriller from Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Jacob's Ladder, Indecent Proposal). I thought Lyne had retired or something, but thankfully the master (of sorts) is back in form after, what, a decade or more? I confess to loving a solid erotic thriller, and the subgenre has been considered dead for a long time now. Of the most recent ones that come to mind, Fatale was a bit disappointing, Acrimony was pitifully misled, and I actually really enjoyed Careful What You Wish For. But that's about it in the last decade or more! I love movies like this, where the sexual tension is palpable and laced with murderous intent; the actors are usually gussied up to look like glamorous off-duty models and the drama is forced, uncomfortable, and delicious.

This story, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel (Highsmith's work always gets high scores in my roster), concerns Vic and Melinda Van Allen, a married couple with a young daughter Trixie and absolutely no love between them. We're not sure why they're together, except maybe for Trixie's dubious benefit, as in the opening sequence we see Melinda actively cheating on her husband as he watches. He later corners her new lover at the same party to quietly warn him that he killed Melinda's previous extramarital partner. Ben Affleck plays Vic in a powerful performance so understated we're never really sure what he's capable of doing. And that's okay, because the point is made loud and clear. He could be killing off her partners, and that's what matters for their relationship.

Ana de Armas plays Melinda with a cool, sexy suavity engendered by disillusionment. She's unexpectedly amazing in this role, and she seems to be having a lot of fun with it. De Armas and Affleck together have an unlikely chemistry, and Lyne films them in stunning clarity, emphasizing their physical connection in counterpoint to their mental games. She seems to know what he's capable of, to the point that when yet another of her lovers ends up dead -- at a party they are still present for -- she is utterly convinced Vic did it. A nosy acquaintance at the party (played by Tracy Letts), who writes for a living, takes a keen interest in their dynamic and the murderous potentiality of Vic's behavior, starts poking around after Melinda's accusations find purchase in his mind. It's then that the plot really gets going.

This isn't a mystery. It's also not a standard drama. You have to know the subgenre to appreciate a movie like this, and if you do, there is a lot here to admire. The performances are all great, and the writing gives them some juicy stuff to gnaw through, though it stops short of the kind of spectacle you might expect. Utterly earnest as it is, it brilliantly plays everything deadly serious, keeping the psychosexual tension humming like in Gone Girl or others (I thought of the Fincher film because Affleck is playing a similar character, with a few notable changes). I wanted a bit more dialogue to flesh out some more heady concerns of the screenplay, such as the ways in which most characters attempt to commodify and use each other for selfish purposes. Especially near the end things get really dark really quickly, and I wanted more of that. But thankfully this is a feature film, not a miniseries, and we need to maintain the value of not drawing things out needlessly.

French Exit (2021)

Score: 3 / 5

Michelle Pfeiffer is one of the best character actors of her generation, usually combining her age-defying beauty with cold, distant cruelty. Naturally, this often eases her into villainous roles, ones that ooze gilded sensuality from balustrades of wealth as she climbs (or descends) steps of social strata. And so is the case in French Exit, a rare comedy that capitalizes on Pfeiffer's unique sense of luxurious detachment. If produced onstage, it would almost certainly be labeled as a farce: its absurd contrivances remind me more of Frank Capra or Noel Coward than of anything in Pfeiffer's list of credits. Even the first episode of Schitt's Creek was more confident in embracing farce than this movie. Apart from Pfeiffer's character, everyone else feels like a caricature meant to swirl around her and inform little of the story or themes apart from the weirdness of her life.

Frances Price is newly broke. A Manhattan heiress and socialite, some years widowed, she has been raising her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) much as she herself behaves. Indifferent to the restrictions of the lives of others, she -- in an early introductory scene -- plucks her son out of boarding school with a rebellious smirk, defying the headmaster and tempting Malcolm to indulge his whims. But she's playful and engaging, probably more with her son than she was in her marriage. Time leaps forward quickly to Malcolm as a young man, swaddled in his privilege (Hedges is deliciously disassociated from his character), secretly engaged to his girlfriend (Imogen Poots). Suddenly -- and this is the inciting incident -- Frances is slapped with the reality that she and Malcolm have blown through their entire fortune.

Of course, that's what happens after probably two decades of living it up without any new income. Frances can't even pay her housekeeper the $600 of her wages. Instead, she starts to crack, drinking her last reserves of good wine as she sharpens knives in a dark kitchen; Malcolm's latent fear in seeing her thus is a wealth of humor for us, but it reminds us that dramatic renditions of this scenario would probably result in some kind of violence. Not so here, where the characters seem to be keenly aware that they are clichés -- Frances drily says as much to her friend Joan (Susan Coyne) -- as sad, rich white people who are no longer rich.

Thankfully, Joan offers her empty Paris apartment to her newly homeless friends, and so Frances and Malcolm embark on the titular French "exit." They take few possessions with them, but they intentionally bring Small Frank, their formerly stray black cat, whose green stare and deliberate movements suggest alarming sentience (spoiler alert: the cat is evidently Frances's husband reincarnated). Paris doesn't seem to fix the relational problems Frances and Malcolm have, but they are soon jolted out of their self-pitying stupor by Madame Reynard (the hilarious Valerie Mahaffey), an eccentric expat who seems to think her own first name is "Madame." Her bubbly energy almost entirely disguises the fact that she is actively reinventing herself, and her eagerness to forge kinship with Frances is endearing when it's not a little cringey. Frances is initially cruel to her, determined to ward off any real emotions, and so when Madame Reynard simply replies, in a voice that only slightly breaks, "I'm ... lonely," she immediately breaks any ice left between the women.

Other, poorer attempts at human connection become the driving motifs of the film, often helped by the production design. Though it seems to take place in the present day, characters often use pay phones or send postcards to communicate, and their stilted language reminds me more of George Bernard Shaw or David Lindsay-Abaire than of real-life speaking patterns. Other characters fly in and often stay in the apartment, including Danielle Macdonald as a sad fortune teller on the transatlantic ship who psychically knew Small Frank wasn't just a cat, a private investigator (Isaach de Bankole) Frances uses to locate Small Frank when he disappears, and even Malcolm's recent ex-fiancée shows up again with her new boyfriend. By the time Joan checks in on her friend and discovers her apartment has become a bizarre hostel, the movie careens wildly toward its simple, silly, and sweet ending. It's not a rollicking comedy the whole time -- although when a seance results in Tracy Letts doing voiceover as Frances's deceased husband, I almost lost it -- but it's got some cool ideas on its mind.

The Woman in the Window (2021)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

The story of the making of this movie is long and disheartening, but it has been told elsewhere. Now that it has finally arrived (on Netflix, unfortunately), it actually feels disturbingly timely after the last year of our lives. It's the story, based on the delightful novel by A.J. Finn (pseudonym of the disgraced and fascinating Dan Mallory), of an agoraphobic woman stuck in her large house alone for months on end. After new neighbors move in across the street, she takes up spying on them from afar, though we imagine she's done this before, and to other neighbors. But when she suddenly witnesses a murder through their front windows, her options for helping are limited; it doesn't help that she's about as unreliable a witness as they come. It's a Hitchcockian whodunit thriller for the age of quarantine, and it's about as magnificent as you could ask for.

To be fair, this won't be everyone's cuppa. It's not exactly the most fresh when it comes to its ideas, especially after so many other recent and similar stories from Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins. Even despite its incredible cast, including Brian Tyree Henry, Wyatt Russell, and Tracy Letts (who also penned the screenplay) in bit parts, some will find this movie trite, overwrought, and unrealistic. Some won't like the exaggerated performances of Amy Adams and Gary Oldman. Many won't like the whirling camera, frenetic editing, and garish color palette. But these things, and more, made this movie one of the most unexpectedly rewarding I've seen recently. I expect it'll be in my Top 10 movies of 2021.

"Tell me to go outside," Anna Fox (Adams) pleads on the phone with her ex-husband (Anthony Mackie). We gather early on that her agoraphobia manifests specifically as an inability to go outside; perhaps the opening shot, swirling through the blackness and dotted with white flecks -- stars? snow? dust? -- is a representation of her fears of, who knows, falling upward through an endless sky? Anna seems fine interacting with other people, even if their conversations border on the absurd. Her psychiatrist (Letts) comes to visit her, not the other way around, and her tenant in the basement (Russell) tends to show up unexpectedly but warmly. Letts's dialogue leans into the idiosyncracy of her character, effectively putting us squarely within her frame of reference even as it quickly establishes wit, pain, fear, and a certain sophistication of percussive rhythm. Even as we learn she is severely depressed and mentally disordered, she has not lost her sense of humor, sarcasm, or functionality. Well, at least when she's not binge-drinking her wine.

Production designer Kevin Thompson (The Girl on the Train, Birdman, Funny Games) seems to have gone a bit gonzo with Anna's house, resulting in a highly theatrical space of wide open, wood-paneled doorways leading deeper into the maze of her house. Clearly meant to represent Anna's mind, the house is one of those old urban townhouses, rising up three or four floors via a steep central staircase that circles upwards through wide landings; the kind that Chekhov would say exists for the sole purpose of letting someone, eventually, fall all the way down by movie's end. Impossibly tall windows, almost always curtained and shuttered, exaggerate the closed-in feeling of isolation and intentionally walled-off nature of Anna's situation. Each table and countertop is littered with half-empty bottles and sometimes randomly full glasses of wine, revealing to us her lies about curtailing alcohol consumption while on heavy medications.

Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Inside Llewyn Davis, Big Eyes) injects psychedelic colors and light through the huge house windows into Anna's home, and it was through this that the film began to make sense to me. His whirling, constantly moving camera forces us into the house, from its cavernous living quarters to its claustrophobic underbelly and corners. The house is lit differently in every scene, from electric blue to garish pinks and sickly green, as if the windows were sheets of stained glass. Some scenes are overlaid entirely, as one memorable one of Anna in bed bathed in a thick blood-red hue, much as we expect from 1970s giallo films. With that in mind, and because the film spends so much time forcing us into this aesthetic, I started to appreciate the incredibly hard -- and thankless, to a mass audience -- work director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Hanna, Anna Karenina, Darkest Hour) and his team were doing.

The movie is about watching people, as of course was the case with so many Hitchcock films. Almost entirely taking place within the house, its contained setting of place (and, relatively, of time) make this a fairly straightforward Greek drama, complete with a chorus of sorts in terms of Anna's internal monologue and the voiceover presence of her ex-husband (Anthony Mackie) on the phone. By the time characters start entering through the foreboding front door, including each member of the Russell family separately (patriarch Gary Oldman, wife Julianne Moore, and son Fred Hechinger), we suspect all is not well with this otherwise nuclear family. Often these outside characters are shot with comparatively "normal" lighting, sharply contrasting the heady pseudo-reality of Anna's consciousness. When characters appear together, or when Anna is watching one of her many classic noir DVDs (Dark Passage, Laura, Spellbound), the movie utilizes the famed De Palma technique of split-diopter shots to showcase Anna in extreme closeup, framed or even upstaged by the fictions swirling in her mind.

Are we any different, deriving pleasure from watching Anna's insular suffering? Wright seems intent on, yes, luring us into her world, but with such outlandish, uninhibited artistic expression I can't help but feel he's also forcing us to recognize our own tendency toward voyeurism. Especially given the last year of our lives, we've all come to feel in some ways that our homes are our fortresses, and our level of obsession with personal comfort has reached a cultural tipping point. Anna is perhaps a little too much like us, collectively, than we'd care to admit. As with any play, we're made to feel as if we are present there with the protagonist, and once her secrets are revealed to us, we feel betrayed, unable to trust our narrator/proxy any more, and it is by this point, near the climax of the film, that things go completely off the rails. In a good way. Sort of.

Some will decry the finale of this movie as rote, a typical and semi-expected ending that, while still disturbing and surprisingly violent, relies heavily on the tried and true. A home invader, a chase up the stairs, a bloody showdown on rain-swept roof. It's the sort of cathartic release a movie like this usually needs, and I found it delightfully wicked even as its excesses outweighed its substance. That said, I think we can finally fit this movie into its generic niche: camp. Wright and his team pumping cinematic reference after homage after stolen imagery doesn't cheapen the film; this technique enhances the film, turning it into a meditation on the power not only of historic film to shape our understanding of new works (and real life), but of the ways our memory of things we see can reshape our perception of the world around us. More to the point, it's the kind of camp whose excess is its pride and in its prideful corruption of "good taste." It's meant, in many ways, to be seen as "bad" even as it critiques our understanding of voyeuristic art as standard, acceptable, and tasteful.

In pirating familiar movies, stories, and images, Wright twists them and violates them, drawing keen attention to them and making their meaning glaringly clear, profane as it becomes. One of the first shots of the movie is an extreme close-up of an extreme slow-motion shot from Hitchcock's Rear Window, from which this movie (and its source material) repeatedly draws direct inspiration; James Stewart's horrified face -- in a context absolutely un-horrific -- foreshadows, of course, but more importantly sets up a disconnect, an artistic artifice of disassociation and collage. This theme is heightened, later, even by the story itself: after Anna thinks she sees the murder of her neighbor Jane Russell (Moore) by her husband Alistair Russell (Oldman), she is forcibly reintroduced to an uncanny double of the woman, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Jane Russell, of course, as the film later reminds us, is the name of the star of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and then there's Hitchcock and De Palma's famed use of doubling in mystery thrillers. These references are less about Wright stroking his own movie knowledge and more about deconstructing tropes and history, cutting-and-pasting an amalgamation dripping with ironic takes on genre, more like queer artists like Todd Haynes than anything resembling earnest arthouse fare.

From Wright, Delbonnel, Thompson, and Letts to even the ballsy, overwrought performances of the cast, everyone associated with this movie are making a strong, unspoken point of actively interrogating the tight bonds between pop culture and history, between art and life, and how none can exist without the others. It's a high-brow game they're playing, one that will certainly fly over the heads of most viewers watching from home. In fact, based on the scathing reviews of professionals and nobodies alike, I doubt many people at all found much to appreciate here. That seems less surprising than disappointing, as most people -- myself included -- assumed this would be cut from the same serious, bleak cloth as Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. But those reviewers are missing the simple fact that Wright's The Woman in the Window is a movie about those kinds of movies. It's a movie about our impressions of those kinds of movies, actually, and that even as cinephiles who think about these things, our impressions are as unreliable as the protagonists we love to watch.

Little Women (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The pleasant surprise of the year for me is Greta Gerwig's second directorial outing, a new adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I liked Lady Bird, her debut film, well enough to recognize a rising auteur with wit, talent, and gumption. But her newest film demonstrates exceptional brilliance in both adapting the story and telling it -- yet again, as if we really needed it -- with stunning relevance and ingenuity. Even knowing the story and characters well won't stop you from enjoying this iteration as if it were all brand new.

Gerwig's depth of knowledge about the source material allows her to do some truly amazing work here, cutting up the narrative and dividing it into parallel acts that run concurrently. As we flip back and forth in time, brilliant new insights and ironies burst into bloom before us that were always there in the novel but never as clear. Gerwig's control informs the tone as well: her lived-in familiarity with the material allows her to play with strong senses of memory and nostalgia and hope and anxiety that are simply not as potent in the traditional linear narrative. Specifically, early sequences that juxtapose Laurie (Timothee Chalamet) and the sisters growing up with scenes of Laurie in his post-Jo European adventures showcase the dynamic ways these characters change over only seven (?) years. Later, in the film's climax, we get the two bouts of Beth's illness, bringing questions of fate into thematic discussion.

These kinds of moves make this Little Women feel rejuvenated while also keenly aware of its lasting, timeless impact as a core cultural work of art. It becomes at once accessible to newcomers while reviving interest and fascination in old fans. It helps, too, that the performers are all eminently likable and give stunning performances, perhaps nowhere more than in Florence Pugh's stunning delivery of Amy, whose dramatic shifts can sometimes appear shrewish but here feel grounded and powerful as a force of willful, profoundly human womanhood -- a force of nature, in fact. Saoirse Ronan brings her typical brilliance and fury to Jo but underscores it with potent unspoken desire. Laura Dern plays Marmee perhaps the best I've seen, though the film favors her character less than the four daughters. And then there's the costumes, which are uniformly breathtaking, works of pristine and visionary art.

The finale, though, is Gerwig's crowning glory in making this adaptation relevant and important. The ending here lies solely with Ronan's Jo, flustered and winded but absolutely triumphant as she watches her novel being printed. Once the finished copy is in her hands, I totally lost my composure. Having refused to compromise her worth -- though she does subtly compromise her artistic vision -- Jo is usually seen as a stand-in for Alcott herself, who was forced to change the ending of her novel into one that has its female protagonist married by the end. Throughout Gerwig's vision, we're never quite sure how in love Jo is with her intellectual equal and romantic gentleman caller, but by the end Jo is quite on her own. Sure, Friedrich is with her in the final scene, but they are not identified as partners in any way except as facilitators of Jo's new school, opened in Aunt March's house. It's an inspiring ending that smacks of artistic and historic integrity in ways we simply haven't seen yet from this story.

Ford v Ferrari (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

If you think racing cars is a sport, then this movie is definitely for you. I don't, and I still enjoyed it; the only other movie about racing I like is Ron Howard's Rush. James Mangold brings an absorbing, warm aesthetic to the (more or less) historical story that makes it accessible in the few times its eminently likable leads aren't stealing the screen. And yet, for all its high-octane tension and occasional sense of fun, I found myself constantly checking the time. At two-and-a-half hours, it's an exhausting exercise in trying to find something interesting.

In the 1960s, the Ford executives attempt to merge with Ferrari. Negotiations fail, and CEO Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) declares war on the Italian car company to be determined in races, specifically the Le Mans 24-hour race. Ford hires engineer and former racer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to design the car and find drivers. He selects Ken Miles (Christian Bale), a struggling mechanic and professional race car driver with strong personality and a fiery temper. Miles doesn't adhere to the image Ford presents, and so the executives attempt to deter his involvement. But eventually he succeeds in his race and Ford wins at Le Mans four years in a row as the only American company to win at the European race.

As far as sports dramas go, this is strictly standard stuff. The infighting and conflict between the tough-headed macho grunt-men and the equally stubborn, greedy money-men hits every predictable dramatic shift. Miles, a WWII veteran with a need for speed and thrills, has trouble with his wife (Caitriona Balfe) when he promises to stop racing after a near-death experience and then dives back in again. She, meanwhile, is the only woman of any substance in the film, and she calmly plays the dutiful housewife who exists only to support her husband (though she does occasionally yell at him before caving to his decisions).

But the more I think about Ford v Ferrari, the less I like it. It seems determined to hearken to an age of car-obsessed macho-man nostalgia -- read "very white and very straight" -- and even the humor of the film is profoundly sexist. At one point they joke about putting Doris Day behind the wheel, a throwaway line that hangs uncomfortably in the air as it reveals some strong unspoken assumptions the movie constantly makes. My favorite scene in the film works because of its inherent misogyny, when Shelby takes Ford himself in a racing car for a spin; Letts's performance steals the scene as he begins weeping from the thrill and emotional significance, but he stands in stark contrast to the mechanics, who comment on the un-manliness of anyone who doesn't race and estimate how long it takes for weaker men to lose control of their bowels.

And, while the film does end with Miles being killed in a car accident two months after Le Mans, it does not even come close to trying to understand the mystery of why Miles needed to race. He was almost killed multiple times doing it, knowing full well his wife and son did not want him to continue. We can guess his needs, especially in light of his prior service, but the film conveniently ignores the psychological reality of Miles's life and motivations. Similarly, the film conveniently ignores the seriously problematic parts of Shelby's life: while it paints Shelby as a hero, and he is in some ways inspiring, even a cursory Google search reveals the man's history of poaching, womanizing, suing, and even raping. So, taken for what it is, the film is aesthetically pleasing even as its substance lacks in every conceivable way.

Imperium (2016)

Score: 4 / 5

Finally got around to seeing this beast of a flick and, let me tell you, it floored me.

Daniel Radcliffe (who, if you're not following his career, is doing truly great work) plays Nate Foster, an FBI agent hunting terrorists. He's recruited by Agent Zamparo (Toni Collette in a thankless but vital performance), who suspects a white supremacist cell of plotting an act of domestic terrorism. Nate is chosen to infiltrate the neo-Nazis and uncover the plot.

That's about it for plot, without giving anything away. Most pleasure from viewing the film comes from the character-driven drama as the eminently likable Radcliffe becomes a muscly skinhead and ascends the ranks of a cabal of evil organizations. Its likeable cast (including Nestor Carbonell, Tracy Letts, and Sam Trammell) help make the film as rich as it is painful to watch.  Of course, morbid pleasure also comes from the research the filmmakers have done into these groups of white supremacists. The costumes are disturbingly on-point. The array of white men feel disturbingly accurate, from punks and thugs who just want to break things and cut people to hardcore anarchist survivalists, from comfortable middle-class culture snobs to full-blown terrorists willing to give up their lives to cause chaos.

I found the screenplay to be especially fascinating. Though the plotting occasionally lacks cohesion, often skipping what I would consider crucial scenes, the dialogue is dense and loaded with layers of meaning. The Nazis speak in aphorisms, euphemisms, and coded language that is at once terrifyingly specific and laughably self-aggrandizing. They think they are far more important and intelligent than they are, which is deeply funny and therefore unnerving. They talk in broad, sweeping terms as if they, often individually, have greater insight into the functions of the world around them (rather, as they see it, against them). More fascinating still is the extent to which the different factions of the movement see each other as irritating, ineffectual, and even threatening.

The film suffers, it's true, when it tries to become a straight-up thriller, focusing its third act on the terrorist plot perpetrated by the Nazis. But the first two acts are endlessly engaging. Though not as passionate or horrifying as American History X or The Believer, this movie nevertheless works best when Radcliffe is on screen, desperately working to convince the Nazis he's one of them. Can he try to prevent a black man from attack without being found out? Can his heart break for brainwashed children without showing it? And, finally, will he give up his life for the terrorist plot if it means cracking open the inner workings of the cell?

I will say, knowing this movie came out two years ago sent chills down my spine more than once. In one scene, Radcliffe joins in a Nazi march that is attacked by anti-fascists. Having seen these kinds of things happen lately in the news may have desensitized me, as I didn't react overmuch to this scene. But surely this movie was sickeningly prescient.

Oh, and one last thought. Just a reminder: Guys. Nazis are BAD. There is NOTHING good about Nazis.

I'd be so down for big studios to make more movies like this that remind us that there aren't "good people on both sides" of our ongoing war against Nazis.

IMDb: Imperium

The Post (2017)

Score: 5 / 5

Spielberg doesn't always have his shit together, but when he does, it's a thing of wonder.

The Post, one of the best films this year and one of the timeliest movies I've ever seen, recreates the true story of journalists from the Washington Post attempting to publish the Pentagon Papers under President Nixon's vengeful administration. It's also many more things: a fabulously detailed period drama, a feminist snapshot of a woman succeeding where men fail in an atmosphere dominated by and solely populated by men, and a nail-biting political and legal thriller. Even when I had no idea what was going on (they toss around names and jargon like frisbees), I knew exactly what was going on dramatically and thematically, thanks to Spielberg and his longtime cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.

This is the sort of film, like All the President's Men and Spotlight among so many more, that reminds us of the intricacies and power of a free press, and how crucial it is to a free society. In an age when it seems the press and the government are constantly at odds and accusations (and probable realities) of corruption riddle each side, films like this become not only entertaining and fascinating, but crucial. The mass-market impact of film should make the studios crank out movies like this as if it's their job, so when it happens, I'm more than happy to praise the makers.

The Post is urgent and taut, determined to change your mind about something. Even when it hits a little too hard on the nose -- the last scene is a bit too Hallmark-y for me, but the film earned it, dammit, as Streep pithily expresses that the press may not always get it right, but they will keep trying because it's their responsibility and their calling. Writer Josh Singer (Spotlight, The Fifth Estate, The West Wing) hits hard when it counts, which makes him a fitting member of the Spielberg/Kaminski team. Streep and Hanks -- how they haven't worked together before now astounds me -- of course slay, and while neither role really screams Awards-worthy, their delivery is the stuff of stars. There's really nothing constructive for me to say here except to keep praising the movie. Just go see it. It's important and beautiful and important, in that order.

IMDb: The Post 

Lady Bird (2017)

Score: 5 / 5

By now, you've probably heard that Lady Bird is one of the best movies of the year. And while I wouldn't say it's one of my favorites, I can't deny that I was totally enthralled from the first shot. It's an unspeakably quiet film, devoted to its pure and honest look into the life of its quirky and fun protagonist.

It's a fairly average coming-of-age story, though the remarkable thing here is that it focuses on a young woman. Taking place in 2002 California -- evoking a dirty sort of Bush-era nostalgia, the kind that we don't want to go back to now that we see where it has led us -- the film follows young "Lady Bird" Christine (Saoirse Ronan) as she navigates adolescence, school, family drama, work, and sex. I won't recount the plot because it is mostly immaterial and familiar.

What is not familiar, however, is the arresting approach of the filmmakers. Greta Gerwig's directorial debut is like a breath of fresh air in an age of sexual misconduct and gender and identity issues, violent politics and jaded cynicism. Her story and her film grow naturally, gracefully sidestepping gimmicks or conventions. There isn't a minute we don't believe these eccentric, broken, loving people or their ambitions and fears. An amazing cast -- including Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet, Tracy Letts, and Lois Smith -- fit seamlessly into a film that is really only about its lead woman. Well, and her mother, played to masterful perfection by Laurie Metcalf, and if she doesn't make you cry you're doing it wrong.

Lady Bird is easily the funniest movie I've seen all year, standing apart from run-of-the-mill comedies by virtue of its heart of gold. Its quiet feminism is enchanting, its novelty inspired, and its power indisputable. She'll change you, if you let her.

IMDb: Lady Bird