Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Yorgos Lanthimos does tend to zig when we expect him to zag. The recently acclaimed auteur behind the generally accessible postmodern visions of The Favourite and Poor Things has certainly done weirder and more surreal projects, and his latest reminds us of that in gloriously weird fashion. Kinds of Kindness is more in line with his earlier surreal feature films, perhaps partly due to the return of his sometime co-writer Efthimis Filippou. As is the case with Lanthimos, there is far too much going on in this film to coherently discuss in one sitting, and I'm still not entirely sure I "get" his latest project, but it's a fabulously entertaining and challenging example of how the best artists can and should play with form to imagine new ways of being.

Kinds of Kindness, described by the studio's marketing as a "triptych fable," consists of three short films, each just shy of an hour in length. The anthology format sometimes works for me, often doesn't, but here seems just connected enough that I never felt completely ripped from the viewing experience. Each of the major actors of the film appear in each story, though they play different characters in each, some radically and dynamically different, some oddly similar for purposeful intent. There are so many ideas swirling around that, while watching, I was unable to tease out a particular thematic strand and follow it. And I'm not sure you should, because the primary joys of this film lie in its utter unpredictability and brazen swings meant to subdue you with shock and awe.

Generally, I'd hazard that the main points made by the whole work have to be about the nature of control and our agency within that. Why do we let ourselves be controlled by others? What happens to us as humans when we exert control over others? How easy is it to delude ourselves into thinking our interactions aren't ultimately selfish? Where can you go, once freed, but back to some system of control? When do we sacrifice joy and satisfaction in favor of control? Each of the stories involves some kind of unlikely and dangerous power dynamic that forces its central character to do the unthinkable in an attempt at a better life. And the results... well, they vary.

In the first part, Jesse Plemons plays a corporate lackey whose boss Willem Dafoe wholly owns him (note that I'll be using the actors' names; I have enough trouble with character names when actors aren't playing at least three in a single film!). Dafoe controls Plemons's hourly schedule to the finest detail, including his nutritional diet, his exercise routine, and even his sexual activities with his wife. In fact, to this point, Dafoe has ensured that Plemons drugs his wife Hong Chau to miscarry so they will not have children, which Plemons lies about. The inciting incident here, however, is Dafoe's directive that Plemons kills another man. Plemons balks and refuses, and Dafoe casts him out of his life. Plemons is so desperate to reclaim his charmed life under Dafoe that he clings to the unraveling strands as he emotionally spirals out. Then the fire is ignited: he will do whatever it takes to satisfy his boss (and lover, apparently, which adds so much meat to chew in this already rich stew).

The second part opens on Plemons as a police officer wallowing in grief after the disappearance of his wife in a helicopter accident at sea. His cop partner and closest friend Mamoudou Athie tries to keep him calm, but Plemons is messing up at work in a big way and is clearly drowning socially. When his wife Emma Stone suddenly returns, Plemons notices too many inconsistencies and changes, becoming quickly convinced that she's an imposter. He attempts to test her honesty and commitment to him, but the threat becomes too much to bear, leading to his mental break and her becoming inexplicably pregnant. This was by far my favorite section of the film and I don't want to spoil it, but be prepared for some wild shifts and a completely ambiguous ending that only further complicates what we think we know about this film. It's a puzzle box that, I think, cannot be solved.

Finally, the third section provides yet another manifestation of control: a cult that seems primarily about sex but also is deeply concerned with reversing death. Its specifics and goals are never made clear, but Dafoe and Chau lead it while Stone and Plemons work to find a miraculous woman (Margaret Qualley) prophesied to resurrect the dead. Stone finds one she believes could be legit, only to have her life fall apart when she tries to reconnect with the family she left behind to join the cult. Then, with nothing left, she becomes determined to prove her theory no matter the cost. It's a thrilling conclusion, one that perhaps makes the capitalist and heterocentric issues of control from the first two parts coalesce a bit due to the fact that cults are by nature about control.

Lanthimos works best in his unique blend of tone, and each "short" is a masterclass in blending hilarious comedy with macabre terror. He also toys with his audience, making each section title about someone (or something) called R.M.F., but that identifier is never wholly clear; indeed, multiple characters could be referenced by those initials, making us wonder to whom each subtitle is actually referring. Apart from the main characters, some of whom could fit the bill, there is also a courier man, a helicopter pilot, and a corpse, who could be the same man but could also not be.

R.M.F. isn't the only mystery left for our musings by the end of the film. Each part contains hours of provocative material, not least of which is how and where to apply the title to each depraved and disturbing story. There are moments of joy and peace and even kindness in each, but they are muddled and spread, tainted with the darker elements of human nature. Technically, the film is impeccable, and it's nice to see Lanthimos scaling things down considerably from his latest features. Here, his focus is on the ideas, to be sure, but also on his actors, and the ensemble collectively provides some of the best performances of the entire year. But, despite his recent more mainstream fame, I expect Kinds of Kindness to be relatively inaccessible and poorly received by mass audiences, added in a footnote to Lanthimos's filmography and largely forgotten. That would be a shame, because it's a testament to the vivacity and ingenuity of his storytelling oeuvre and a welcome challenge to any cinephile eager for the auteur's most inscrutable puzzle yet.

Nosferatu (2024)

Score: 5 / 5

Eggers is back, baby, and his latest feature only cements his place as a leading voice in horror as well as period filmmaking. Working best in making the familiar uncanny, he turns here to new territory: adapting pre-existing material with a long history of other adaptations. But, even in telling an old story everyone knows, he makes each moment feel pulsing, throbbing, and thick with menace. Eggers eschews easy access, as is his wont, turning the simplistic story of an existentially dangerous outsider threatening civilization and life itself into a Gothic puzzle box of creeping dread, erotic taboo, and wintry frisson. A masterclass in designing and maintaining atmosphere, the latest iteration of Nosferatu is also one of the most important and satisfying films of the year.

Given his track record of uncompromisingly accurate period pieces -- be they in colonial America or ancient Iceland -- Eggers here takes us to Wisborg, Germany, just before Christmas 1838. There are no real analogies baked into the film itself, though its powerful story certainly begs for contemporary application of its themes; Eggers prefers to establish his world as urgently and consequentially real on its own terms. It would seem that the more effectively he does so, the more alarmingly relevant his themes become in our own world. Consider the state of male homosocial bonds and mental health in The Lighthouse or the rising power of women and harmful dogma in The Witch. With Nosferatu, as we might expect, themes of foreign plague and the difficulty of free will coalesce into a heady cocktail with erotic overtones.

This is not necessarily Eggers's own doing. F.W. Murnau's iconic 1922 original film has always held a curious place in pop culture: a bastardized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, the film was destroyed en masse after the Stoker estate successfully sued it for unauthorized piracy, even with character names and setting altered from London to Germany. Some recordings survived, and it has since become known as not only the first vampire film but, in many ways, the first real horror film. That it was made by and subsequently immortalized one of the first openly gay directors in film is a fun tidbit. The film is still so popular, in fact, that its influence extends far beyond cinephiles' ecstasy.

Though Dracula of course combined the many eastern European legends of vampiric creatures of the night to make a single, iconic horror monster with too many thematic elements to list, Nosferatu added a few of its own. Whereas Dracula can pass through nineteenth-century society reasonably well, Orlok (the corresponding vampiric count of Murnau's imagining) looks like a long-dead corpse or even what 1960s American film might loosely see as gray aliens from space, with his bulbous, balding head, exaggerated features, and particularly inspired long fingers and nails. His appearance has long cultivated some speculation that he is designed to demonize Jewish physiological stereotypes, which adds an interesting if unfounded dynamic to his Otherness at the time. Too, whereas Dracula is weakened by sunlight but can still function during the day, Orlok is finally defeated by the sun's rays, which instantly destroy his body. That entered the vampire zeitgeist in a single puff of editing from Murnau's film and has never left.

By 1979 (the same year of the television short film "The Halloween that Almost Wasn't," for those of you wonderful freaks who know the gems of our genre), another version of Nosferatu was necessary to make vampires interesting again -- after so many Dracula-related movies from Universal in the '30s and '40s and Hammer in the '50s, '60s, and '70s that vampires were ubiquitous and familiar, essentially children's play, in American media -- so Werner Herzog crafted Nosferatu the Vampyre as an amalgamation of Murnau's film with character names from Stoker's novel to try and combine the disparate elements of our cultural foundation for vampire fiction into one moment that got back to its own roots. As the titular character, Klaus Kinski's performance and character design brought the iconic look immortalized by Max Schreck in 1922 into the sensibilities of a whole new generation. Herzog updated the end to show the lasting effects of vampiric horror on men of the world and how that threat never really dies, and he specifically imbued his tragic heroine (this time played by a radiant Isabelle Adjani) with erotic and spiritual agency. Then, in 2000, a relatively unknown director and writer pairing created Shadow of the Vampire, an independent horror-comedy (though, really, it confounds such simple categorization) about the making of the original Nosferatu with an ingenious and horrifying twist, starring John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck among a shockingly star-studded cast.

With all this grandiose tradition behind it, and the accompanying expectations, Eggers could easily have bitten off more than he could chew. Nosferatu was reportedly one of his earliest passion projects as a filmmaker, but he deliberately held off on it until his credentials established himself as worthy of tackling it. The time clearly has come, as his loving care and detailed attention is rapturously realized here, infectious through each image. In our screening, I gasped in awe at the pure nightmarish vision even in the earliest scenes, often when no action whatsoever is occurring onscreen. Just the first shot alone demonstrates this, opening in darkness until Ellen, the female protagonist, lurches forward, speaking to us and to a disembodied voice, inviting "us" to come to her before she walks through the void to a large open window, the fluttering curtains of which show a similarly disembodied shadow. Eggers hides other such long takes quietly in his film, not drawing attention to them but effectively dropping them when they have the greatest unnerving impact.

Unlike most films of this story (and I do include the Dracula story in this assessment), this one feels generally as if it is being told by the vampire directly, or at least with his aesthetic literally plaguing every frame. It's unusual, especially in a film that hinges on the vampire's eroticism, for the monster to be a desiccated, decaying corpse with open sores and voice from the grave. Played here by an unrecognizable Bill Skarsgard, Orlok's booming demoniac voice rumbles up like tectonic gravel underfoot, suggesting age and potency despite his carapace which can only be described as syphilitic and rotting. His large bristling mustache brings a spiderlike fascination to his oral cavity, and matches well with his garb, which seems to be inspired from a Cassock's furred cape (side note: someone called him an "evil nutcracker" online and that seems deliciously apt). His castle -- apparently filmed on location -- is the stuff of Gothic nightmares, and Eggers leans into it, sapping it of color and visible style, viewing it mostly with natural light and through opaque silhouettes of various door and window frames. This visual entrapment is maintained throughout the film, continuing as the action moves to the German city where Orlok will strike.

The vampire has always brought with its bloodthirst certain elements to threaten various facets of human existence, including religious heresy, foreign political and economic advancement, unnatural influence over nature (weather and animals), sexual aggression toward men (the females are usually taken for granted or as tools to get to the males, with Nosferatu being a notable exception), rendering science irrelevant or even useless, and of course social collapse due to plague. Whereas this was more invisible in Stoker's story (despite some "dirty animal" interactions, the infectious elements are bloodborne), Murnau's intervention was to literalize the plague, made visible by the arrival and permeation of rats in Wisborg. Eggers capitalizes on this, and the final act of the film features a few increasingly apocalyptic shots of city streets collapsing with corpses and overrun by rodents. 

Feeling inspired by the German expressionism iconized by the original film, Eggers crafts wholly original shots and pairs them with equally fresh sound design, acting choices, and dialogue that enhance our understanding of the familiar story. He leaches color from many scenes, making this film often appear black and white through minimal natural light; he also relies on blue color grading, only dispelled by pale fire light, and I'd be fascinated to hear from him some of his color theory. Whereas the original was of course silent, here Eggers's own screenplay talks a lot, and some may find it a bit overbearing. But (and despite the lack of German accents, for some weird reason; The Northman had plenty of effective Nordic accent work) I think this is for multiple reasons: first, to clear the air about the various elements that have come before and start fresh with as much detail packed in as possible for a new generation of moviegoers; second, to thematically establish the necessity of communication between characters faced with unknown threats; third, to add much-needed character depth and dynamics to what have long since become stock types. This is the first time in a Dracula story since Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula that I've cared deeply for any human characters, and that comes from Eggers letting us get to know them beyond their fated role in the plot.

Much will be made of the various performances, particularly of Skarsgard's presence, which many will decry as wasteful, though I'd urge another viewing for his voice work alone. He feels ancient, like a living curse dug out of a grave and filmed sacrilegiously, cursing us by extension. Lily Rose-Depp provides impressive physicality to Ellen, in turns gliding and writhing like a possessed child in exorcism horror; I personally strongly disliked her emotional and verbal performance, which felt forced and overacted along with being almost indecipherable aurally, but a single capable performance won't derail an entire film due to individual preference. Nicholas Hoult, returning to vampiredom after Renfield, plays a wonderfully earnest Thomas Hutter, Ellen's husband, who is Orlok's first conquest in this schema. Enthralled and mesmerized by the count, who eventually discards him due to an unexplained obsession with Ellen (frustratingly so, in this one, which feels more inspired by Coppola's romantic notions than by any other version of either Dracula or Nosferatu), Thomas eventually saves himself from his Transylvanian prison and, with the help of Romani peasants, returns to Wisborg to save them from Orlok's advance. To do so, a group of men convene including the Van Helsing character, Albin Eberhart Von Franz, played by a somewhat poker-faced Willem Dafoe, similarly returning to vampiredom in a welcome and shockingly, beautifully understated performance as a character almost always overcooked. I particularly liked the surprising inclusion of Emma Corrin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Ellen's best friend and her husband, as they add more emotional stakes and varying ideological viewpoints to the barebones story. Finally, Simon McBurney pops in for a few memorable scenes as Herr Knock and... well, if you know, you know.

Perhaps Eggers's greatest triumph -- in a singular movie littered with them -- is making vampires terrifying again. We haven't seen this kind of monster headlining its own story in many long years (no, I am not forgetting The Last Voyage of the Demeter), and this time he's not just drinking blood. Eggers helps him get under our skin, where the rot can fester. I haven't felt so cold in a movie since The Revenant, and even thinking about certain visuals has me shivering now. One scene in particular had me moaning in my seat, early in the film, as Hutter walks down a wooded road to the castle during a wintry night: the dark trees morph into a black tunnel around a bright, almost white, circle of snowfall above a path with Hutter's silhouette. Despite the silence, a pulsing pound slowly rises, perhaps a heartbeat, until a shadow of horses pulling a carriage emerges from the void, almost out of tune with the sound until it crashes into visibility. Robert Frost ain't got shit on this snowy evening in the woods.

Saturday Night (2024)

Score: 4 / 5

And the Oscar for "Best Ensemble" goes to... well, if there was one, it would certainly go to Saturday Night this year. In perfect homage to the industry standard of irreverent pop culture humor for almost fifty years now, this film does more than simply recount the 90 minutes before "Saturday Night Live" aired for the first time: it honors the quirky, hopeful, nervous artists and technicians and producers who made it happen. It's a delightful time, sure to make you nostalgic and wistful, but it's also fraught with anxiety that might leave you twitching on the edge of your seat.

NBC would never be the same. That's the sensation we get from the major players in Rockefeller Center on October 11, 1975, as what will come to be known as SNL prepares to broadcast in less than two hours. Audience seats hadn't sold yet, so Finn Wolfhard hustles customers on the street. Costumes are still being worked on, a row of lights falls on set, at least one star still hasn't signed his contract, and the brick centerpiece of the stage hasn't yet been laid. But Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) has a vision, a calling, a purpose, and he'll be damned if this show doesn't air. As writers offer new material, actors take substances and complain about costumes, producers breathe down his neck for information, and his own ego threaten to derail his dream, Michaels remains somewhat enigmatically determined to revolutionize American television.

Did it all happen like this? Almost certainly not, but this isn't a historical treatise; it's art. As such, the film harnesses its own anxieties and pulls us into the mess, not unlike Birdman in its frenetic pacing and multiple deep cuts into the showbiz lingo and themes. Too many cooks in the kitchen, for example, means big heads bump into each other at crunch time. Some of the artists are here for vanity projects while others excitably play with each other, oblivious to the administrative panic setting in just down the hall. Director and co-writer Jason Reitman clearly loves the history and people in this yarn he's spinning, but he also clearly intimately understands the flavor and kinetic motion of these kinds of sets, so he doesn't make it pretty or neat. While his focus is sharply on the characters, he carefully ensures that the immaculate production design isn't lost on us, grounding us in the reality of the moment even as we're swept from room to room in the crowded, bustling studio. Dizzying cinematography and editing keep the action in something very, very close to real time, and for the most part we follow Michaels on his odyssey through the chaos on delicious 16mm that makes the warm amber of dressing room lights, wood paneling, and thickly textured fabrics as tactile as they are visually pleasing. 

To praise the cast is to list the whole bunch, so I'll leave you to peruse IMDb for that or, better yet, the credits of the film after you watch it. Personal favorites were Cory Michael Smith doing a dead ringer for Chevy Chase and Ella Hunt's frothy, sweet Gilda Radner. But, really, there's not a weak link in the whole thing, even when heavy hitters like Willem Dafoe and JK Simmons grace the screen, knowing their place and their task among this enormous ensemble. In fact, mentioning the latter reminds me of one of the thematic concerns raised by the film: the conflict between mainstream, "safe" comedy represented by old, established Big Names and the kind of disruption represented by Michaels and his hippie friends. The film struggles a bit with its big themes when it tries to literalize them rather than letting the screenplay speak for itself; when Michaels, for a memorably blunt example, decides on the iconic brick floor an hour before go time, it smacks of historical inauthenticity as much as thematic desperation for establishing (literally) its own character.

Your mileage in this film may depend on your affection (or lack of) for its characters. While I think all actors perform admirably here, some are clearly swinging big while others are determined to recreate their subjects as truthfully as possible. For example, Jim Belushi (Matt Wood) is painted very much as a laughable monster, while Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) is relegated to the role of racial spokesperson. And if you're a stickler for facts in your art, you won't like this. Though, if you are, maybe you should re-evaluate your understanding of what art actually is. As a richly detailed, knowingly clever, furiously thrilling depiction of the night American television changed forever, Saturday Night is one of the more affirming and emotionally honest historical films in years. And it's hilarious, which is maybe more important.

Poor Things (2023)

Score: 5 / 5

Some of the best cinematic scholarship of the year will center on the latest trip-and-a-half from Yorgos Lanthimos, whose auteur streak has just reached profound new heights. If you love him, you love him; if you don't, definitely avoid this film. The most profound, bizarre, and deeply literary film of the year is also one of the most purely entertaining and unforgettable viewing experiences in years. Poor Things is at once a natural extension of Lanthimos's oeuvre and a brazen evolution of timeliness and complexity, sure to launch him into a new strata of filmmaking in ways that The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and even The Favourite weren't prepared to do.

The Greek auteur here seems interested in his usual theming -- the awkwardness and easy fallibility of human relationships -- and finally embraces the Gothic pastiche with which he's always flirted. Without rehashing the full plot here, suffice it to say that Poor Things is a postmodern feminist reimagining of Frankenstein in a manner analogous to Guillermo del Toro's Cold War-era answer to The Creature from the Black Lagoon in the form of The Shape of Water. Which is to say that it takes the bones of that "source material," if you will, rearranges and redecorates it with contemporary style and ideas, and repurposes it for unique and culturally disrupting ends. It might also be fair to say that this is perhaps Lanthimos's most funny and positive -- or, at least, comedic in the most classically Greek sense -- film yet, which could arguably make it more accessible to those less familiar with his previous, darker films.

The entire production -- all nearly two and a half hours of it -- is impeccably, impossibly detailed with outrageously inventive artistry. Stilted and occasionally horrific dialogue elicits as many embarrassed chortles as it does explosive belly laughs. Sets reminiscent of something in a Tim Burton film or Dr. Seuss story are palpably realized, and I thought more than once of Barbie in terms of production design, practical effects, and theme. Otherworldy costumes fill the usually fisheye lens with popping colors and tactile intrigue. Victorian London becomes steampunk Paris with a few stops at Lisbon and Alexandria along the way, making the protagonist's journey indeed something of a road flick, allowing the filmmakers ample time and space to realize the splendor of their awesome, wholly original world.

Other writers will cover the endlessly fascinating characters with better insight and theory than I could summarize here, but this is one of the most radically feminist stories I can recall seeing in ages. It's helped, yes, by a magnificent cast, all here performing at their very best. Emma Stone pulls out yet another performance for the ages as Bella Baxter, the protagonist, whose journey of self-discovery and external discovery forms parallel plotlines; her intellectual enlightenment is woven with threads of her sexual and emotional maturity, and as she learns about the fantastic world around her, she learns to trust -- and to what extent -- the odd characters she meets, most of whom angle to use her in some way. She'll have none of it. Stone's performance is a tightwire act of impetuousity we rarely see from any leading actress; completely unpredictable in every scene, one wonders the extent to which she was allowed to improvise versus calculated specificity. The cast is uniformly great, but I'd note especially Mark Ruffalo as the greasy villainous cad (whose sexual proclivities reach a certain Streetcar Named Desire climax that had me weeping from laughter) and Kathryn Hunter as the powerhouse madame of a French brothel (whose comparatively brief screen time offers devastating and challenging nuance in what could easily be a one-note character).

The continuous references to Dr. Godwin (Willem Dafoe) as "God" deserves unpacking, as does most of the film in general, and I confess to know nothing about Alasdair Gray's novel of the same name which this screenplay by Tony McNamara adapts. It would be nice to know, but I'm hesitant to borrow the book from a library because I don't want to tarnish the raw experience of seeing this film's beauty and strangeness as filtered through Lanthimos's vision. But it is precisely the language of dialogue that I'm most curious about, having seen the film, because of the way it evolves along with Bella, both in terms of subject/substance, yes, but also in terms of rhetorical style and increasingly complex turns of phrase that bear multiple meanings. Witty in the best, most devious sense, McNamara pulls no punches with his biting sensibility. The smorgasbord of artists assembled here are all performing at the top of their craft, aligned to perfect effect by a director coming into his own with each new project. Poor Things is one of the best -- read: most important -- films of the decade.

The Northman (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

It's unlike anything you've ever seen before. Well, mostly. Taken from the medieval myth that inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Northman is a rare film that feels completely timeless even while pushing modern boundaries of what is cinematically possible. Beautiful and challenging, it reminds us why we culturally carry these far-removed stories with us and revitalize them time and again. In director Robert Eggers's masterful hands, both the film and its audience are in for a soul-shaping artistic experience. Prepare yourself for this one; everything may not be "perfect," but as so few films are this well-crafted, I'm just going to love a lot on it right now. Plus, there are precious few real epics for adults anymore, and this one checks all the damn boxes and then some!

Eggers is not interested in American folklore this time, but in Scandinavian legend, and he approaches this differently; less time seems to have been spent on perfecting any kind of authentic dialogue, as he painstakingly endured in his feminist frontier fright fest or his neurotic nautical nightmare, and more time carefully constructing the right look and feel for a culture none of us really knows much about. Aesthetically and thematically, the closest things I can compare this to would be The Revenant and The Green Knight, in terms of mythic worldbuilding and of course the plot itself. And, as we might imagine from his previous work, he is adept at including psychological torment, atmospheric dread, and sequences of dreamlike weirdness that are always ambiguous and memorable. The difference here is that the scale is huge, as opposed to his two earlier chamber pieces.

Mythology is weird, even when the drama is profoundly human. Enter Amleth (a sinfully muscular Alexander Skarsgård doing great work), an angry warrior prince determined to reclaim his kingdom, throne, mother, and honor. Years earlier, his uncle Fjölnir  (Claes Bang) murdered Amleth's father King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) before taking the queen (Nicole Kidman) as his own wife. Amleth escaped the massacre as a young boy and swore vengeance. The skipped years of his adolescence and young adulthood have turned him into a one-man army, a Viking berserker on the verge of becoming a wolf or bear in the vast, unforgiving landscapes of their homeland (his tribe of roving warriors are all too content to howl at the moon while dancing naked by a bonfire). While raiding a village, he meets a witch who reminds him of his former home, stoking the fires of revenge and sending him on his way before disappearing into thin air.

Here, the overarching concerns are for deconstructing patriarchal structures and questioning traditional masculinities, but there is ample room for the age-old questions about family loyalty and the dubious folly of revenge. In this kill-or-be-killed world on the earliest edges of civilization, the characters aren't really much more than animals in their desires and actions, and consequences are vague at best, unless it ends in plentiful bloodshed. But, as with any myth, there are lots of considerations along the way, including the role of this witch (and her inciting incident) as well as a "he-witch" or shaman (played by Björk) later; there are considerations of the king's fool or jester Heimir (Willem Dafoe), who the uncle also kills but who returns, in a sense, later to aid Amleth. Other considerations: Queen Gudrun has had a new child with Fjölnir and we never really know where her loyalties lie or why; Amleth's paramour Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a slave and witch of sorts herself, and she seems eager for Fjölnir's blood independently of Amleth, so is she a Lady Macbeth suddenly hungry for blood or is she a dutiful wife, or something in between? These are only basic concerns -- ones, you might notice, that easily cross over into the territory of Shakespearean criticism, proof that new adaptations don't have to (and shouldn't) answer the big literary mysteries -- but showcase the broad range of interpretive and artistic paths into appreciating this film.

Eggers and his team -- especially his regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke -- lean heavily into their most daring instincts, pushing for long tracking shots often, usually during an attack or raid. Moments like these reminded me keenly of Alejandro G. Inarritu's The Revenant, in which there is an almost immeasurable amount of care and precision and craft in so many people, in such a tightly constructed set, perfectly executing their jobs to create a wholly believable and absorbing world in the middle of absolute chaos. It's the very best form of theatre. The fires they set on village huts are the campfires to which we draw close and attempt to shut out the cold and dark; unfortunately, these fires are violent and bloody and perhaps more horrifying than what lies in the cold darkness. But even as the film draws attention to itself as film -- even the landscapes are utterly gobsmacking -- it enhances itself with subtle effects, such as the bluish family tree that Amleth imagines rising from his heart and showing his various relatives (and offspring). Scenes like this, underscored by brooding, synthetic music, reminded me of David Lowery's The Green Knight (bolstered by the power of myth), though this movie is quite emotionally removed from that masterpiece, seemingly eager to thrive in pain and violence rather than hope or peace. Indeed, after the film ended, I felt little other than exhaustion. Satisfaction, to be sure, and lots of joy for various elements, but it's a brutal two-and-a-half hours of greed and lust and revenge.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Score: 4.5 / 5

One of the most exciting entries in the MCU -- amidst an unpredictable slew of new titles, too -- No Way Home is a triumphant third Spider-Man movie. That's a phrase we've never heard before. Jon Watts and his team have crafted what amounts to a DCEU Arrowverse major crossover event, a playful and endlessly entertaining mashup of heroes and villains who react to their circumstances in unpredictable ways. What could have been a logistical nightmare, with so many big names, big titles, and big expectations, is instead energetic, creative, and utterly joyous. That's all thanks to a brilliant screenplay and confident directing, although frankly, I found the editing in this movie bewildering more than once (and that's the only reason it's not scored 5). Until, that is, the final act, which is shockingly emotional.

Beginning immediately after the end of Far From Home, the story launches Peter Parker (Tom Holland) into the public sphere. People on the street know who he is now, and so does the government. Peter, his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), are brought in for questioning before their charges are dropped, thanks to some quick work by their lawyer. And this, within the first ten minutes of the film, is when I started crying, because lo and behold: Charlie Cox reprises his role as Matt Murdock. Thanks to this applause-generating cameo -- and the presence of Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk in the Hawkeye miniseries -- it seems the MCU has reclaimed the rights to their characters from the Netflix shows.

Then there's some basic dramatic hoopla about the kids applying for university and getting denied from all (even MIT!) due to their notoriety. The story in earnest begins after Peter asks Dr. Strange to cast a spell and make the world forget that he is our friendly neighborhood webslinger. Interrupting the wizard's work, Peter fractures the spell by requesting exceptions for MJ, Ned, and Aunt May. It's more than a little annoying to me that Ned is such a central character in these movies, because I find him almost unbearable, but MJ and Aunt May each finally get some really golden scenes in this movie. Not long after the spell, we learn that his meddling somehow caused a rift in the multiverse, allowing other individuals who know Peter's secret identity to access this universe. Thus enters characters from previous iterations of Spider-Man in some of the best-handled retconning I've ever seen.

In what we all feared would simply be a casting gimmick, a huge cast of fan favorites appears spontaneously, wreaking havoc in their search for Spider-Man. The Lizard (Rhys Ifans) and Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) are quickly contained by Dr. Strange, and Peter confronts Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) and Electro (Jamie Foxx). Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), still wrestling with his split personality of the Green Goblin, makes friends with Aunt May, and works with Peter to rehabilitate the villains. They aim to help these characters rather than simply send them back to the moments of their deaths. It makes for several surprisingly funny sequences of the characters bantering and discussing how to be "fixed." It's not an overcrowding mess, but in fact buttresses this "Home" trilogy's central themes of belonging and integrity and comfort. It's also an effective way of finally allowing Holland's version of Spidey to mature and really grapple with his mantra, "with great power comes great responsibility."

And with the weight of these heroic decisions comes dire consequences. The filmmakers here know this, as they strive valiantly to honor the legacies of previous Spider-Men franchises while more or less correcting our cultural narrative around the intellectual property. Enter, as they do near the halfway point, two other Spider-Men in the form of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. What I thought would be cameo appearances are actually crucial plot and character points that carry through the end of the film. Their scenes are laugh-out-loud funny, often tear-jerking, and irresistibly welcome, and the writers clearly wanted to honor rather than rewrite their characters, especially in Garfield's case, who was unable to make a third outing as Spidey. One wonders, now, if Sony will attempt to capitalize on his re-entry for their growing efforts to continue pumping out darker Marvel titles. It helps that Venom will apparently now become a shared property, as told by the credits scenes in Venom: Let There Be Carnage and in this film.

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Score: 5 / 5

I'm embarrassed to admit I knew nothing of the William Lindsay Gresham novel on which this movie is based, nor on the 1947 film adaptation. But that perhaps made watching this Nightmare Alley the most darkly pleasurable cinematic experience this year. Despite gauging early on that this was no typical fare from writer/director Guillermo del Toro, whose work always seems to include elements of the supernatural to buttress his real aims of skewering wealth, the pious, nuclear families, and genre conventions, it became clear quickly that this is one of his best. There are no fairies or ghosts in this film, at least not literal ones; Nightmare Alley is his astonishing foray into film noir, a crime thriller dripping with style, hinging on plot, and toying with no small amount of irony.

While the ending initially surprised me, it shouldn't have. Without spoiling things, del Toro here crafts a parable about the cyclical nature of self-destructive behavior. Primarily interested in his antihero protagonist, Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper at his best), del Toro frames the film as a character study. Generally nonverbal, Stan leers his way through each scene with Macbeth's ambition glinting from his hungry eyes. Before he says any words at all, we've already seen him drag a corpse into view before setting a house on fire; fleeing the scene, he materializes in a circus circa 1930. Think AHS: Freak Show with a distinctly Gothic palette. Upon seeing the carnival "geek," a feral man who has been abused and dehumanized by the owner (Willem Dafoe) to sell more tickets, Stan gets the itch to make money with this traveling group.

Del Toro, by this point, has shown us a world rich only in desperation, selfishness, and violence. We're keenly aware that Stan's decisions -- mysterious as his criminal past is -- are entrapping him, and we suspect that he is a little masochistic. It's telling that, in walking through the circus before encountering the geek, the only attraction he enters is a giant devilish facade for a "fun house" themed after the circles of hell. It seems Stan knows he is destined for damnation. What he doesn't know, and what del Toro brilliantly highlights through production design, lighting and colors, and cinematography (the excellent Dan Laustsen), is that he is seeing his own future unfold before his eyes. The circus, much like the as-yet-unknown interiors of Stan's mind, is a downward spiral, one that will repeat and deteriorate until he is hopelessly enmeshed in a web of his own making.

Speaking of spidery predators, let's move on to a few other delightful characters. After learning the arts (and tricks) of mentalism from the circus fortune-tellers, Zeena (Toni Collette) and her partner Pete (David Straithairn) who use a clever code to read and cheat people, Stan desires power over the simple-minded masses. Courting another carny named Molly (Rooney Mara) as his lover and assistant, Stan leaves to make a name for himself as a traveling psychic. When things get a little boring or he's not raking in enough money, he starts offering "spook shows," meaning preying on the bereaved and suggesting ghosts of their loved ones mean to communicate. He was forbidden to do this by Zeena, who knew the emotional pain this can cause, and Molly is deeply uncomfortable with the practice too. But Stan, in Cooper's hands, uses his charm and panache just enough to make us doubt that he's a heartless, avaricious wolf in handsome skin. Could his daddy issues -- flashbacks reveal his boyish need for approval and his earnest hope to succeed at any cost -- be sincere, or did they create a black hole of sociopathy?

Enter Dr. Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a psychologist with no small amount of hatred for those who prey on the weak-minded, just as Stan reaches the height of "making it big" in Buffalo, New York. His high society aspirations -- and his disgusting new moustache -- are challenged publicly by the deep alto and satin-sleek woman of his dreams. From her introductory shot, we are keenly aware that she is a standard femme fatale. As written, she's a panther stalking the man she will destroy; in Blanchett's uncommonly intelligent and elegant style, she's a demon in curls and heels, knowingly disarming in her every movement and turn of phrase. As she lures Stan into her sanctum, she vampirically sucks him dry, romantically, sexually, cognitively; his masochistic tendencies make him feel drunk with power in these moments, but we know it's only a matter of time before the good doctor's fangs are bared. It's a masterful performance and one of the most exciting characters on screen this year.

Laustsen's lighting has the uncanny glow of timelessness, a youthful aura that is deeply unsettling as it de-ages its subjects. I'd kill to see this movie in black and white, if only to better appreciate the noir aspects: deep, opaque shadows, sets that feel more like prisons than offices or houses, shades that frame characters like bars on a cell or cages in a zoo. Then again, the gorgeous colors -- strong especially in gold and green hues, the colors of money -- add immensely to the toxic atmosphere and beguiling nightmarish aesthetic. The circular imagery is inherent too repeatedly, from the giant Ferris wheel over the circus to the funhouse tunnel Stan traverses to reach the geek, from the dark and narrow streets of Buffalo to Dr. Ritter's recording cylinders and even the deep hallways of her office building. Even some transitional editing uses old-fashioned iris out before a scene ends. And then, by its final tragic shot, the film suggests to us that we are not so removed from this waking nightmare as we might have hoped. Del Toro's craftsmanship here is one that will keep you thinking long after the credits have rolled; a nightmare indeed.

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.

Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Less hard-boiled than tender-hearted, Motherless Brooklyn is a fascinating, sweeping film that showcases what is best and worst in the genre. Edward Norton's latest feels much like a passion project -- his name is all over the credits -- and fits most squarely in film noir, something I don't think anyone really expected from him. His clear determination to get it right often makes the film feel sentimental, which is not quite a proper noir attribute, but his emotional intelligence keeps things grounded and intensely relevant.

That is, if you can follow the convoluted story. This is where I get lost in most noir: I get taken in and carried along by the setting, lighting, atmosphere, costumes, and acting, and I completely lose track of the plot. So much of it is relegated to anti-dramatic exposition -- that is, a femme fatale describing the crime, a mob boss describing his innocence, a detective piecing together disparate stories -- in voiceover or dimly lit P.I. offices. They toss around names and places and connections like we can catch it all, and frankly I have trouble remembering my own age. And if you, like Norton, stretch your mystery across two-and-a-half hours, you can kiss my memory of details farewell.

From what I do remember, Norton plays a detective in 1950s New York, working with his foster brothers under their boss and surrogate father Bruce Willis (forgive me, but I'll never remember all these characters' names). Norton's character, the titular "Motherless Brooklyn", has Tourette's Syndrome, which often causes some friction with others and his ability to blend in while investigating -- he's often also called "Freak Show" -- but he has an invaluable photographic memory. When Willis is killed by criminals, Norton embarks on a dizzying descent into the criminal underbelly of his hometown.

It sounds simple enough, but the criminals are in fact those lording over the city, and the film quickly changes tactics. Before the halfway point, we're already enmeshed in conspiracies over urban planning and gentrification, and if you think this isn't the stuff neo-noir stories should be concerned with, think again. It's a thrilling and confusing web of thieving businessmen and genocidal politicians all angling for power and money in an atmosphere of secrecy and impunity for those with titles and cash. Enter Alec Baldwin, whose city planning developer is more interested in roads and parks and displacing nonwhite folks than in actually building a community, and Cherry Jones, a grassroots activist fighting the forced removal of immigrant and minority workers. Norton becomes a sort of Dante, guided by Gugu Mbatha-raw's Virgil, climbing from the depths of dark alleyways to the well-lit offices of public officials where he finally confronts the capitalist devil himself.

Civic corruption and racism go hand-in-hand here, but for all the film's damning indictment of U.S. gentrification (in the 50s, sure, but also today; it's hard not to think of Baldwin's impression of Trump on SNL while watching him here, though here he's far more sinister and believable) it remains eminently watchable. This is because it flirts with noir tropes while subverting many others, making it a unique project working toward, I suspect, a re-evaluation of the genre. Norton is sweet and caring, not chauvinistic or entitled. Mbatha-raw is not forced into a role of dutiful sidekick, sex icon, or victim/villain, but is given ample space to craft a strong, standalone character who chooses a mutually beneficial romance with Norton. Norton's perceived disability gives him a fresh and useful perspective he uses to the advantage of others; he's no chainsmoking Bogart in a fedora and trenchcoat looking for the next broad to bang.

It's fascinating to me that, by displacing the film to the 50s and layering it behind steam rising from street vents and jazz music wafting on salty breezes, Norton's messages ring clear and true in 2019. Motherless Brooklyn is a rewarding viewing experience, if you're into mystery and confusion and that feeling of melancholy that follows most of the best noir pictures. But be warned, it's the kind of movie that you have to watch and listen to the whole time if you don't want to get lost. Look away for a moment and you could miss valuable information. That's a lot to ask for with a runtime this taxing.

The Lighthouse (2019)

Score: 5 / 5

Robert Eggers completes the triumvirate of modern horror auteurs, which includes Jordan Peele and Ari Aster, with his second major feature film after The Witch. Whereas his first consisted of a family isolated in 17th-century woods haunted by the occult, his second consists of two loners on a 19th-century island tormented by nature (external or internal, but we'll get to that). Where his first thematically moved to transcendence, his second leads to doom. The former relies on womanhood, the latter on masculinity. In many ways, I'd argue these are companion films. But let's try to consider The Lighthouse on its own treacherous ground.

Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson), a young ex-lumberjack looking for better pay, is dumped on a storm-swept, rocky island somewhere off New England. The more remote the lighthouse, the better the pay, and Winslow is ready to earn his keep as the new "wickie," or lighthouse keeper. Until, that is, he meets the crusty old sea-dog senior keeper Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe), who barks his orders with a thick dialect and jealousy keeps the ethereal light to himself. So begins a battle of wits, a test of sanity, and a duel to the death at the utter brink of the world.

Shot in a boxy, tight aspect ratio (don't ask me what numbers) and on black-and-white 35mm film, Eggers clearly had a lot of unusual intentionality for this film. And while the delivery of his vision could be as inaccessible and even off-putting as Wake's archaic language, that is probably part of the point. More accurately a film in grayscale than B&W, the whole thing looks pallid and cold. It thrums along with a grandiose, deliberate visual pace not unlike a German Expressionist film, underscored brilliantly with Mark Korven's (The Witch, In the Tall Grass, The Terror: Infamy) doomsday dirge and a haunting foghorn bellow. The tight screen shape makes for a claustrophobic viewing experience, even as it distances us from the reality of the proceedings.

Paradoxically, even while the film holds us at a cold arm's length, it invites us into the minds of its two leading men. Each deliver stunning performances, and each suggests enough madness to keep us alert for cinematic tomfoolery. Though the film begins with a promise of Winslow's four-week trial period, we quickly lose all sense of time and begin to suspect the island does not exist in temporal reality. As their dark secrets are revealed -- the men, we learn, share a first name and wicked past sins -- the men appear to act as foils and doubles for each other. Their alcoholism doesn't help their potential madness, and the film's editing teeters toward incomprehensibility: are the impossible things we see "real", or products of the deranged minds unraveling before us?

The madness of their experience, it should be noted, is also very possibly real. It's not impossible that their madness is provoked by the island's apparently supernatural activity. A half-blind seagull (think of The Raven and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) torments them and could represent anything from Poe's Black Cat to Norse mythology's Odin. A siren and/or mermaid appears at least twice to tempt and terrify. Mysterious tentacles appear at key points and could indicate liaisons with a giant squid, Poseidon's (or Ursula's) devilish presence, or even a Lovecraftian Elder Thing. Further, it's up for debate whether these, as Macbeth would say, supernatural solicitings are only visible to Winslow or to both men. If Wake (whose name suggests a disturbance) can see these things, is he also going mad; if not, could he be an extension of the horrors, or even the cause?

Then again, Wake has a tendency to spin his own tales between bouts of farting. The air incessantly leaving his body seems to make his rather gaseous existence something out of myth. And this brings me to my final thoughts: that the enigmatic light in the lighthouse reveals the film to be essentially about nothing. Sure, we can tie everything to this story from Melville to Jewett, Milton to Woolf, Shakespeare to Dr. Caligari. But the men, vying for proximity to the light -- the light! A beacon for wayward souls that saves no one, serving instead as a tool for obsession and madness and a lure for monsters of the sea -- ultimately meet doom and death after getting too close. This movie is a tall tale, an urban legend, and perhaps anyone looking for anything more concrete will only crash on the rocks.

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.

Aquaman (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

What a fabulous flick.

It's become cool to hate DC films, and I simply do not understand why. People suck their teeth and shake their heads and say words like "bad" without giving any evidence, let alone articulating why they simply didn't like the movies, which is their real complaint. Maybe because I don't like hopping on hateful bandwagons, or maybe because I'm not a big DC fan anyway so creative liberties in new adaptations don't bother me, but I've never felt less than thoroughly entertained in a DC superhero film. And Aquaman is no exception.

If you, like me, knew precious little about the hero, I'll give you a quick rundown. Son of a lighthouse keeper and the princess of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman), Arthur Curry embarks on a mission to save the world. A year after the events of Justice League, the reigning king of Atlantis, Arthur's half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) sows strife among humans and sea-dwellers to justify his preparations to launch an attack on the surface world. Warned of this plot, Arthur begins a quest to find the lost trident of Atlantis, a magic weapon that will establish Arthur as the rightful king and master of the oceans.

It's not an original story, and this Arthur seems to be a curious mixture of Hamlet and King Arthur searching for his Excalibur. Combine it with the visual wonder, though, of a James Cameron film and the rollicking energy of the very best fantasy/action pictures, and suddenly this Indiana Jones-meets-Avatar adventure launches itself into a memorable new stratum. Director James Wan gives us an underwater world like we've never seen, bright and vivid, teeming with life and creativity, completely absorbing in its every detail. There's everything from soldiers riding sharks and seahorses to an octopus playing the drums. What's not to like?

Aquaman provides the DC franchise with a fresh aesthetic and energy. Though elements of its plot are needless or needlessly complex and contrived, it's an engaging story that knows it's running on tried and tested ground. Its novelty doesn't even lie with its hunky hero, Jason Momoa, whose swagger and haunting eyes lead the picture with incredible star power, nor with its other stars, of whom Nicole Kidman is easily the brightest. Rather, this movie works best because it simply has fun with every single moment. An infectious sense of joy bursts out of the screen at you, flooding you with wonder and good humor.

I was enjoying myself, I'd like to note, until one scene right before the final third of the film. In this moment, when Arthur finally enters the Trench, where monstrous hordes were thought to have murdered (eaten) his mother. Escaping the snapping teeth, he enters a portal to the center of the earth. There had been a Jules Verne reference early in the movie, and here it comes gloriously alive as dinosaurs -- yes, dinosaurs! -- swoop over a secret beach, and Nicole Kidman is revealed as the lone warrior who helped Arthur escape the Trench. It was at this moment I stopped enjoying the movie and grew to love it. It's emotional and beautiful and exciting and basically everything I wanted. Oh, and not long after, Arthur gets his magic trident which is guarded by a Kraken-like monster voiced by Julie Andrews. I mean, honestly, does it get any better?!

I'd also be lying if I didn't add that this movie gives me hope for a quality live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.

IMDb: Aquaman

The Florida Project (2017)

Score: 2.5 / 5

It's a slice of life so often omitted from our cultural vista. Six-year-old Moonee spends her summer mostly unsupervised in the somewhat tightly-knit community of a motel. Named the Magic Castle and painted in a vibrant purplish pink, the motel sits precariously on the border of tourist-laden Walt Disney World territory and the lands of impoverished Floridians basking and wallowing in the Everglade sun.

The story itself is wholly uninteresting; its depiction of life, however, is magnificent, particularly as it is seen through very young eyes. Moonee's world is colorful and vibrant, and she understands more about her surroundings than some of the adults might want her to. She knows exactly what her mother (Bria Vinaite) is doing -- namely, struggling to survive by any means she can -- and she knows what's expected of her by the motel manager (Willem Dafoe, in a seriously overrated role). But she also knows that she can get away with a lot more, and so she does. With her friends, other long-term "guests" of the motel, Moonee gets into all sorts of trouble.

What she learns before the end of the film, however, is that trouble is not always fun and games. After covering up the children's act of arson, Moonee's mother tries desperately to make money by stealing perfume and tickets and re-selling them and even by prostituting herself and hiding her daughter in the bathroom. It doesn't take long for us to see that the mother and daughter are remarkably similar in their efforts to enjoy life and cheat their way around responsibility, which they view as artificial and counter-productive. Unfortunately, their lifestyle clashes magnificently with the folks around them, and they quickly alienate all their friends.

I did not like this movie. Is it important? Perhaps. Is it moving? Definitely. But it's also difficult to watch, and not at all rewarding. Poor people are terrible parents, according to the simplest logic of the film, and though that message may be confused and complicated by the finale, it is the purest and most visceral takeaway. Think Beasts of the Southern Wild but with white people and much more grounded, without allegorical significance or consistent aesthetic theme.

SPOILER ALERT.

Speaking of the ending -- WOW. It was the film's saving grace. When CPS-type officials show up to investigate Moonee's mother and take the child -- seemingly violating the colorful dreamlike atmosphere in their stark dark suits and strict dialogue patter -- Moonee steps away to say goodbye to her young friend. But, together, they run away in a remarkable (and wordless) sequence that leads them into the theme park. Apparently shot from a smart phone, the scene wobbles and shakes and takes on the slightly simplified visual dynamics of altered reality as the children escape all their problems and vanish into the happiest place on earth. It's an uplifting and heartrending moment that thrills even as it horrifies, and leaves you breathless and tear-stained as the credits start to roll.

IMDb: The Florida Project