Release year: 2019

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Runtime: 161 min

Stories are integral to the human experience. From fables to history to parables to mythology, storytelling is a vital, God-given component of humanity that we live to express, digest, and create. It’s who we are. Art tells stories in many ways, and much of our being drawn to it is because of the narratives we learn and the characters we meet and the places to which we travel in it, and this sensation is captured in the greatest films, that are (as Martin Scorsese once said) “memories of our life time.” As little my keenness on Tarantino’s style is, I have to admire his ability to captivate moviegoers through generations with his storytelling. His latest effort Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood has sat with me for some time, and I finally feel confident enough in my qualms with it and generous enough in my compliments of it to review this chaotic, dream-like spectacle of a film.

The premise, of just-barely-not-washed-up Rick Dalton grasping at straws to keep his acting career in late ’60s Hollywood from plateauing or (more likely) crumbling entirely… is intriguing. His friendship with his stunt double Cliff Booth? Even more so. Their subtle interactions with other big names like Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski? The prospect of one of the most interesting films of the decade has just been made in Tarantino’s ninth film, headlined by Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie (respectively, in those first three roles). Hollywood promises a lot while also still leaving copious room for history lessons and/or creative liberties. Tarantino opts for both in a mixture of fact and fiction that keeps the audience on their toes in multiple ways, and I appreciated this aspect of the film (up to a point). The extent to which the film is devoted to its style really is admirable and has an air of confidence I hope to see transformed or emulated in the near future. The movie knows itself thoroughly.

What immediately and pervasively disappoints is where this knowledge lacks. The film is so surreal and almost ethereal in its establishing shots of the sunny California setting and the ample car rides throughout it, but it never really goes further in the roots or the implications of this constantly evocative mood and tone. People call the movie a “love letter” to this era that captured Tarantino’s imagination, but without being factually grounded like a documentary or traditional historical fiction, or entirely imaginative in a purely fictitious story, Tarantino balances the beauty and the inadequacies of this era in a customizable trail mix of characters and events for two hours and forty-one minutes. He magnifies and stylizes every component of ’60s Hollywood he likes, and ignores, reinterprets, and/or flat-out rewrites the parts he doesn’t.

Hollywood is a story told through this Tarantino-tinted lens, which I found to be one of the film’s least admirable qualities. It never felt interactive enough to offer up much of anything new or sophisticated enough to simply tell the truth about this era like it is. The performances that translate this landscape from his mind to the screen are wonderful, however. Pitt exceedingly deserved his Oscar for his charming work as Booth, the sidekick with as much if not more importance to those around him (and definitely to the audience) as Dalton. Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as the midlife crisis-battling, typecast Dalton was spectacular in my opinion. I was blown away by how he mastered each of his scenes and even his character’s scenes, toggling between mellowness and aggression realistically and poignantly. Even better than these characters, however, was their chemistry: the two-man team that delved deeper into friendship than I’d expected was a joy to watch, even through the bloated runtime. For the few scenes she had, Margot Robbie shone as a particular but captivating enough facet of Sharon Tate, and the guest appearance-resembling roles from Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, and Al Pacino were enjoyable as well.

Margaret Qualley’s performance was also among the better ones of the film, but her character and many others manifested another factor of the film I disliked: the lack of subtlety. Her character and all of her cohabitants felt like caricatures of themselves, rather than real people or even fatally susceptible people (which may have been a byproduct of Tarantino’s stylize-the-good-and-dissipate-the-bad attitude in storytelling here). Detailed looks into actual people’s differing lives felt forgone in favor of using characters as tools for the plot and theme. Looking at Dalton’s character in particular, I genuinely appreciated the character-studying examination of the has-been actors that reached such a crisis in this Hollywood era, but Dalton’s felt a little bit too archetypal. Creating this ’60s Hollywood mythos feels like it reduces his character to an all-representative figure, rather than using applicable characteristics to attribute to him. He feels too flat much of the time. His conversation with the young child actress (or… actor? technically she was an actress) seemed like the ultimate way to simplify his crisis for her sake, but their conversation is executed in a blatantly corny way without an ounce of subtlety. For someone who wants to be taken seriously, Dalton seems way too soft and open with a young stranger suspiciously worthy of his attention and soul-bearing. When he is on the brink of organic change, his arc is narrated away so the audience only really sees his trial-and-error of a last-ditch effort at a career, then a satisfied “after photo” that conveniently makes Rick Dalton just the man for the plot climax Tarantino wanted. The focus on the style and air of Hollywood seems to have zero implications on the characters communicating it, beyond the ones the audience could have guessed in the first half hour.

Not since (please don’t hate me) Fury Road have I seen a film lack both subtlety and substance so noticeably, but the way Hollywood does is in how overbearing yet empty the film is. If it is not going to hide anything… at all… I was really expecting, even hoping for more of a plot or theme than the movie ended up providing. Long scenes have a tendency to wander and arrive nowhere, most particularly in Booth’s visiting George’s ranch. This scene builds up a monstrous amount of intrigue and tension all for it to collapse on itself with the smallest amount of payoff (but that line about the red hair was funny. Classic Bruce). I “got” the scene, it just did nothing for me. Most of Margot Robbie’s scenes, which are commonly criticized for both understandable and unjustified reasons, had a similar effect on a smaller scale. The scenes clung to the sense of uncertainty about what she would do, all to just kind of leave it there. Apparently this was Tarantino’s iconoclasm of the public’s view of Tate, and I appreciate this ambition to present her with more substance, but the substance is ditsy when it could have been more charming, oblivious when it could have been more care-free, and boring when it could have been more endearing and contemplative. This side project does not come to any kind of fruition until…

…the ending. Tarantino’s ability to create tension is impeccable in this film’s final act (and it 100% eclipses his ability to narrate. Seriously, did we really need to be verbally told the time of night when it’s already on the screen?!? The audience is not idiotic). The second I realized the story was about to incorporate a real life tragedy… I’m incapable of describing the amount of anticipation and foreboding anxiety that welled in me. I did not feel like it was just a movie anymore; this was the perfect way to combine fact and fiction. My relationship with the ending is one of both love and hate. I loved the aforementioned building up of tension and the disturbingly good portrayals of our new antagonists. I loved that Tate’s assailants were painted in the worst light possible. I loved Pitt and DiCaprio’s portrayals of two guys willing to take humorously brutal initiative in time of need, even under inhibiting influences. However… I hated (or at least disliked) quite a bit as well. As excellent as the overall morality of the ending sequence was, it was at the cost of revisionist history, and I was not a fan of that. All too overwhelming was the impression that Tarantino’s “love letter” to the era was to an era that only existed in his mind, idealistically and almost unrealistically. I don’t mean that the ending was supposed to be realistic, but that Tarantino’s view of Hollywood in the ’60s is unrealistic, and the ending was the epitome of his inability to share the whole truth, and it left a bad taste for me. Why should the audience have to submit to this one man’s interpretation with so little room to inspire any other? What does this do for the audience?

Granted, the audience is presumed to already know the real story, and Hollywood‘s ending is not Tarantino’s attempt to one-up history, as I’d initially thought. I must give him the benefit of the doubt that he tried to express his pathos for the era, which does not always line up with how life works out. His keeping Tate and her baby alive in the story was something of a testament to their innocence, his way of keeping their memory alive, and that I do respect.

Tarantino also does not make Hollywood appear entirely good, either. He may rewrite real life conflicts, but he isn’t denying their existence. He may overuse simple tactics to convey Dalton’s condition, but it’s more real than most people’s perspectives of actors. Regardless of the different directions the film goes, or how far the audience can take what it gives them, the ambition is undeniable. The hard work that went into exacting the vision is, too, and Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood is a resulting epic dreamscape of entertainment unlike any recent period piece I’ve seen.

Release Year: 2014

Director: Ryan Gosling

Runtime: 95 minutes

Someone with a day job as mastered as Ryan Gosling’s ought not to quit it, but cannot be blamed for at least trying something new, right? Most actors who take to the director’s chair do so without much ambition, usually taking minimal risks and having one of the wealthiest fallbacks should those risks even fail, but what shocks me about Lost River (besides, you know, everything else about it) is that Gosling takes anything but the safe route with his directorial debut. Where he would be expected and almost forgiven to direct a straightforward, cookie-cut statement, Gosling presents viewers with a fantastical enigma, a film that is truly a metaphor and idiom itself.

The imagery of Lost River is by far its most masterful quality. The detail and intricacy and tasteful color palette that goes into each shot makes the film breathtaking on this basis alone. Cinephiles (or even people who have just seen Drive) will note the similarities to the work of Nicolas Winding Refn, and while it is almost impossible not to draw this comparison, it is downright disrespectful to leave it at that. This film still develops a distinct style, more like the spiritual relative of Refn’s work rather than the blatant offspring. I always felt like I was in fact watching Lost River and I never got its style derivatively confused with any other. If the film had no other good qualities I would still have been blown away.

But lack other virtues it does not: the film is wonderfully acted from start to finish, with wistful and almost dreamlike (but still somewhat emotionally grounded) performances fleshing out every gorgeous shot. Iain De Caestecker stood out to me as having a really impressive character interpretation, and Matt Smith came to play as well. The tension between these characters felt very real and eventually three-dimensional (after several characterizing interactions). Eva Mendes is shown as a terrifying agent of the entertainment underworld depicted in this film, with a very convincing personality. Christina Hendricks’ portrayal of a desperate single mother was also believable, and I felt like I’d practically met Saoirse Ronan’s character Rat.

What these characters say through these performances is where the film gets admittedly spotty. The dialogue is not always Gosling’s main mode of communicating feelings and moods (and I duly respect the long stares in their place) but when it is present it does not always keep the film running in the most attention-worthy direction. Dialogue feels like a checked-off list item rather than a necessary component of a scene, and while this does eliminate potential suspicion of a perfect debut, it still makes some scenes unintentionally uncomfortable. An exchange of dialogue I liked, however, was between Rat and Bones. Rat asks what’s keeping Bones in their lost cause of a town, since he has every reason to leave, and he answers in almost a non-sequitur that his mother and brother live there. He doesn’t explicitly say he doesn’t want to leave them, but the audience and Rat are not dense: it is easily surmised he is staying for them, not himself, and Rat brings this to even more light for him. There was only one way for the is conversation to go and this scene took it there very realistically.

The film is very disturbing when it is not endearing, and the fact these scenes really stick out and contribute to the tone more than traditional narrative is probably most people’s most prominent gripe. Lost River tries to be more evocative than sensical, which at first sounds harsh but makes sense from an atmospheric standpoint. Watching interviews with Gosling revealed that this fairy tale type of narrative was not an excuse for surrealistic events but an actual artistic choice. This becomes more obvious in retrospect, as the head-scratching points in the narrative are not plot contrivances that failingly attempt to have the plot make more sense, but bursts of pathos and imagery that take one out of the traditional storytelling style. Gosling attempts to have realism and surrealism act as a sort of yin and yang to coexist in the film, not to have surrealism as a deus ex machine when the realism becomes too hard for him.

This ambition is thrilling and memorable, and the fact a film is difficult to watch does not necessarily make it bad, especially when the difficulty derives from defiance of preference and convention, not quality or originality. Gosling’s inspiration is on his sleeve throughout the gem that is Lost River, but it is used as a vehicle of artistic osmosis from Refn and Lynch’s work into his, rather than some crutch from which he never strays. I enjoyed this film from its acting to its production design to its prophetic foretaste of what we love about Stranger Things. It’s imperative to take the flawed but wonderful Lost River seriously.

Release Year: 2019

Director: Martin Scorsese*

Runtime: 229 minutes

Actor-director duos are one of my favorite aspects of film. The chemistry within duos like Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson or Spielberg and Tom Hanks, in addition to reunions like Refn/Chazelle and Ryan Gosling, Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt… it just makes the film more exciting in my opinion and for whatever reason gets me more absorbed despite this meta-cinematic connection. One of my favorites, however, has to be the duo of Scorsese and Robert DeNiro. From Taxi Driver to Raging Bull to Goodfellas and many more, there is just something about this team-up that adds believability and an inexplicable unity to the films they’ve done together. The themes (that have become motifs) of gangsters and ambitious protagonists also seem to be members of this team-up, and the masterpiece that is The Irishman more than expands on them.

The film proves even in its opening that it is nothing short of epic: the audience is in for a gripping story that will earn their attention viscerally. From Frank Sheeran’s venerable recall, we learn about his story with perspective that becomes almost metaphysical, and definitely extremely dramatic. The worst thing a fact-based drama can do is look unbelievable, but Scorsese quickly owns every bit of realism in this non-fiction narrative so the viewer is aware they are watching history unfold, even if it’s as entertaining as a plausible story. Frank’s worldview and status as a mobster who is clearly on a downward spiral are engrained in the viewer by the oldest advice in cinema,** and that is show, don’t tell. By the time Joe Pesci’s character appears onscreen in his youngest form, the atmosphere of the film is so tensely captivating that the storytelling devices are hardly devices anymore, and are rather components, attributes, or effects.

DeNiro’s performance is unsurprisingly spectacular. It’s the mark of a great actor when a role like this is his forte even at his age, but he certainly nails Sheeran’s storytelling dialogue in a manner markedly different from his past work. Pesci gives a performance by which I was genuinely blown away, however, and not by his energy this time! The fact he could play it so subtle this time around, out of retirement no less, was excellent and I felt as impressed with his decision to finally take the role as I was with watching him in it. Pacino shone with a vibrance I hadn’t seen from him since Heat, and it continually felt like candid history was the driving force of his role as Jimmy Hoffa. Not one character felt out of place, and while my harshest gripe with the film does lie with the de-aging, this aspect was done unexpectedly well and it begins to feel like a flashback cinematography choice in later scenes. It really is incredible 95% of the time, and is the appropriate use of CGI I have been hoping to see done right for a while now.

As I mentioned, the story unfolds very realistically while still being entertaining. Most people might disagree with me, but I did not find the film to be overlong at all: I think it was much more hard-hitting after spending so much excruciatingly raw time with these figures, and the time flew welcomely by for the whole three-and-a-half hours. It was brilliantly paced and easy enough to follow without sugarcoating the facts. The best part of this film’s epic scale, however, was the impressively vast emotional range. I do not tend to watch Scorsese films to be “moved.” There may be some necessarily dissected pathos in Taxi Driver or The Departed, but it isn’t as inherently “emotional,” as, say, Silence. With this film, I was shocked at how my absorption in these gangsters’ actions actually morphed into genuine empathy, and eventually melancholy sympathy. In ways I will not disclose in order to preserve this film’s plot, I was deeply saddened at multiple points in this film as Scorsese did what he’s done best for half a century: turned these larger-than-life figures and archetypes into real people. You don’t forget Sheeran’s identity or his actions, nor do you excuse them, but his humanity is established so beautifully through the whole runtime, and with it a sense of complex understanding the viewer can hopefully apply to life.

The balance of grit and insight is mastered as well as the cinematography, which can immerse the viewer if nothing else does, and with ease. Netflix seems to be capable of distributing the highest quality of films now. I first thought The Irishman was a gimmick: Netflix’s attempt to strike a “cool” chord with a generation that once was really excited about a director who is pretty much done. What I realized after its acclaim, but more importantly my viewing of the film, is that it is anything but a gimmick and the inaccessibility was the risk, not the attempted payoff. The revitalization of a Scorsese gangster epic starring actors arguably past their prime was what many studios likely thought unmarketable, a dead end. Realizing Netflix was the one willing to see the excellence in such a feature not only makes sense but also makes this film more magnetic in its sense of rarity (to this generation). We may never get another film like The Irishman again, but instead of wondering “what if…” we got a vital and vibrant spectacle that defines but also redefines the meaning of going out with a bang. This is my favorite film of 2019.

*One of my favorite directors

**maybe

Release Year: 2007

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen*

Runtime: 123 minutes

Without realizing it, what most people want is control. For good or bad reasons, everyone has, to some extent, the desire to control some aspect of self, life, or environment. Maybe all three. Fear and dissatisfaction do not have to exist when we have control: but life tends to give us anything but. It is not in our design to have as much authority and security as we want in this world, and no film follows a character who learns this lesson the hard way quite like No Country for Old Men. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is a respectable, small town lawman who expands well beyond a character who has simply “seen some things.” He is thrust unwillingly into a fiasco with no turning back and no making it out unscathed, and the experience is remarkably affecting.

The Coen brothers both defy and utilize conventions for Westerns and films in general here. The utilization, however, is always with some unique purpose that makes the viewer feel like it is being used for the first time (ultimately turning into another defiance, by nature). The most obvious example of this is the voiceover that opens the film. Falling meticulously over beautiful frontier establishing shots, that adhere satisfyingly to the rule of thirds, is the sheriff’s sincere account of his longevity in the position and what dread disturbs him most about it. The dread, unsurprisingly, is encountering something he does not understand, something he cannot control. The way he sees it, there is good like him and bad like the criminals he arrests: anything in between, he can deal with case-by-case. The audience meets a different character as the voiceover concludes, however, and his name is Anton Chigurh. His introduction right as Ed admits his fear provides the audience with the suspicion that he might be the fulfillment of this fear, and that it is more than possible that Sheriff Ed is the old man who does not belong in this country anymore.

This dual character introduction has the same effect as Shakespeare’s blatant titling of his plays as tragedies. The audience is sought to be intrigued not by whether or not the ending is tragic, but by the way the events unfold. Voiceovers tend to be lazy and/or overbearing devices in modern film, but Ed’s introduction frees the narrative up to focus on other events and present a more dramatic reaction from him, now that we know the philosophy on which he’s built. The film’s goal is quickly diverted from telling you what its message will be. . . to how and with what visceral storytelling it will show you. Convention gets upturned to introduce nuance.

Another trope more easily recognized, that of the cat-and-mouse chase, is soon made clear as well. We are introduced to something of a protagonist, an everyman named Llewelyn Moss, who plans on stealing money from the aftermath of a criminal transaction. One can sympathize with him, but only by default: he is not a “good” person, but he wants to take control of a situation in which he’d otherwise have no part by obtaining money with which he can take control of his life. Anton Chigurh does not exactly want him to go quietly, as we will learn. The stakes are terribly high with a villain foreshadowed to be fatally fearful, a “good guy” who clearly fears him, and this villain’s target who honestly does not seem to stand a chance.

He’ll certainly try to deny that, and try to make the viewer deny it too: Llewelyn ends up being crafty either by personality or as a defense mechanism, and the twist on the cat-and-mouse game is that it is so terribly difficult to root for Llewelyn, the obviously doomed mouse, and that it is so surprisingly burdensome to call Ed the cat as he chases Anton one step too slowly. There are three runners in this race, but the middle man is something neither of his opponents can understand, their every move poking the soulless, unstoppable bear.

Anton is definitely more of a bear than the cat Llewelyn believes him to be and the mouse that Ed believes him to be: nothing, not even feelings, successfully stands in his way as Javier Bardem delivers one of the most chillingly convincing performances I’ve seen from any actor in my life. The whole nightmare tour the film takes feels so real and unnerving and frightening, but the quality of how the tone is accomplished makes for an outstandingly impressive experience. The Coen brothers communicate an idea of such relevant truth that it seems to never get old, as well. That idea is that plans do not have a guarantee of success. From Blood Simple to Fargo or even True Grit, their films have featured characters so plausibly fixed on things going their way, without a single hitch or obstacle whatsoever. The novelty of the concept persists in the realistic and emotionally driven ways that the characters meet the real world. Almost all of them are fixed on money and greed, and the destruction of such wicked pursuit strikes a chord every time, especially in the humorless, dry, unrelenting narrative of No Country. The Coens have a significant story tell with this small town debaucle.

Similar to Western ancestor The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, characters in this film are humanely (or inhumanely) representative, in true Coen fashion. While probably not going to the same lengths that Llewelyn does, nearly every audience member can relate to the concoction and stubborn pursuit of a plan that cannot work out: we have all tried to control what we simply cannot. It seems so obvious to the audience just how severe Llewelyn’s futility is, but this is only through the perspective of the movie: real life can make us into Llewelyn’s on a smaller, subtler scale. Ed’s pursuit of Anton does not seem nearly as futile, but just as bleak. He has the humility to submit to moral values, but perhaps not the humility that admits that there is more to life than he can understand, similar to how Batman learns in The Dark Knight that some people “just want to watch the world burn,” and reason will not work on them as much as taking a strong, maybe simultaneously introspective stand. Anton is the “thing Ed doesn’t understand,” who exists not on Ed’s black and white moral scale but seemingly outside of it. He determines his actions from a coin toss. He wants to chase Llewelyn for the thrill and satisfaction of his own inhumanity: Llewelyn’s theft of the money is just an excuse. Anton is the inhumanity both of the other central characters are unwilling to face or comprehend, with Ed and Llewelyn as two versions of denial. They exist without a greater perspective of the world, that is cognizant we cannot understand everything, and a has a virtuous sense of humanity that is satisfied with all that is good no matter the circumstances.

No Country for Old Men, in a sense, helps to provide that perspective. If we seek morality purely as a way to control or understand the world, we will be disappointed by a world that is not so luxurious. If we stare the world’s bankruptcies in the face, however, humbling ourselves to the truth that we cannot understand everything, seeing the consequences of self-centeredness and arrogance, truly fearing the corruption of circumstance-based purpose, then we are closer to a life of clarity. A life of morality despite hardship, fulfilling in the ways we possibly can God’s design for His fragile creatures.

*some of my favorite directors

Release Year: 2017

Director: Greta Gerwig

Runtime: 94 minutes

350 pages. That’s the alleged length of Greta Gerwig’s original script for Lady Bird. I will get to the importance of this fact after I first discuss what I liked most about this Sacramento-set coming-of-age dramedy, which at times feels like more than that, and sometimes feels like less.

The protagonist Christine, self-christened “Lady Bird,” is not an instantly likable one. The film’s opening scene gives the audience the good, bad, and ugly of her complex personality and the frankly unpleasant moods that come from it. She is in many ways a victim of her environment: not necessarily her physical one, but that of her psychology. She is a teenager in a school full of people nicer than her and nastier than her, she lives without a role model worth following by her standard, and she seems to be torn by dilemmas she can never understand, for they reside in the emotional realm.

Typical adolescence. . . and it works. Lady Bird stands out among its contemporary peers in that it tells a familiar Bildungsroman tale in a time period thoroughly neglected by most narratives: the early 2000s. The grit of growing up certainly does get through to the viewer thanks in large part to Saoirse Ronan’s excellent performance as the titular character: every little expression on her face or in her actions warrant some kind of response, be it contempt or sympathy. The most convincing teenager, however, was in the portrayal by Beanie Feldstein. Among some shaky performances, hers very much stood out in a way of which I was hoping to see more throughout the film.

Side note before I go into the negatives: I know nothing about Sacramento or any city like it, but in 94 minutes I felt like I’d lived there for a while. The cinematography’s meshing with the events of the story paid off beautifully in this regard, and I applaud the whole team for that.

As far as the other characters, all of them seemed to be written very well, adding to the astonishment that this is Gerwig’s solo debut in the writer/director’s position. Each peer from Lady Bird’s school did not feel like a flat, categorical result of a personality test, but they could each receive a distinct one, and in realistic ways. The acting that brought life to the characters was a bit of a blemish, however. Some perfectly fine pieces of dialogue came off awkwardly and purposelessly, and iffy lines were not always “pulled off” by the actors portraying them. Every line from Timothée Chalamet in particular was less believable than the last. What could have passed for honest or even satirical portrayals of teenagers instead at times felt like an ensemble of caricatures despite the good writing beneath them. The same suspension of belief (and I mean that) was not nearly as present in the adult characters, thankfully.

The real issue, or at least my real issue, with this movie is the pacing. Lady Bird clocks in at well under two hours after a significant journey alongside many, many characters. Lady Bird undergoes a grand arc, traditional in most coming-of-age stories, yet the movie objectively flies by. There are two core reasons I consider this aspect to be prominently problematic.

First, it leads to several other problems. The characters are realistic and well rounded for the most part, but not every action can be well justified in an hour-and-a-half movie. Lady Bird has a specific scene where she expresses sincere gratitude one second, level-headed authority the next, and finally an odd mix of determination and resentment, all in a succession that is not just illogical emotionally, it is illogical narratively. When the character’s actions seem unexplained or unjustified in how surprising they are, the audience gets this metaphysical “sense” that they’re watching a movie, instead of enjoying it or at least giving it time and thought. “Snaps” out of the narrative flow abound as characters jump to betrayal or turmoil in swift ways that, yes, had events leading up to them but fail in providing sensical trails of plot to and from them for the audience to care. It all moves too quickly for the story to truly flow. Growing up is a long process that feels like it takes even longer, and with all the realism elsewhere in the movie, this fact seems unfairly distorted.

My second grievance is rooted in the first as well as the fact I mentioned at the beginning of the review: the movie’s original script was 350 pages long. The situation is clearly not that Gerwig did not have any material with which to better allocate the movie’s focus, nor is it that she is not capable of telling a broader story. This is not necessarily a problem I have with the movie itself, and yet. . . it is, because it reveals so much of the potential I hoped to see. Those swift character arcs could have been fleshed out, those inexplicable motives could have been explained, those narrative turns that appear to be idle loose threads could have been woven delicately, and those contrivances could have received the necessary buildup that would have made them much more natural.

The journey that acts as the center of the movie, the maturity of Lady Bird, is indeed a fascinating enough one. Her story is quite absorbing most of the time, which is why I wanted to see more of it, and learn more about this more clearly significant life led by an obnoxiously understandable teen. The biggest genius of the movie is perhaps the fact that the audience has the opportunity to learn alongside Lady Bird. Even with the movie’s opening scene and its focus on her and her mother, all the other competitively distracting events of the movie vie for attention as well, much like real life. Without the blatant title Mothers and Daughters that the movie originally sported (I got this fact and the one regarding the 350-page script from IMDb Trivia), the audience gets to find the value of their relationship at the same time, though likely not at the same rate, as Lady Bird.

The movie obviously opts to bear the title of its protagonist instead. What will Christine make of this identity? Is Lady Bird a different person than Christine? Will she change that? Has she changed that? The movie brilliantly balances this sense of identity with many other discoveries that are made in the late teen years. Sometimes this is to a fault, as an exhausting plethora of social issues are all present and at times cramped in the originally focused plot, but who knows: maybe a longer runtime would have explained those seemingly loose ends. The ends that are not loose, however, surely do make for a bold, heartfelt, realistic movie that proves unlikable characters can still go on likable journeys.

Release Year: 2019

Director: Rian Johnson*

Runtime: 131 minutes

Fewer genres rely on conventions quite as much as a murder mystery. Similarities between sci-fi movies from Blade Runner to Arrival or between fantasy movies from Narnia to Hobbit are met with copious amounts of originality and unique spins on the genre basics… but most mystery movies have difficulty breaking out of the style their genre often sets for them. Rian Johnson has proven himself capable of bringing life and originality to the genre with the neo noir masterpiece Brick, and I can confidently say he definitely strikes again with his 2019 feature film Knives Out.

From the opening shots detailing Thrombey Manor, it is already evident that the film is going to be a beautifully shot one: shoutout to Steve Yedlin for helming such visual quality that hooked me in before the story even began. The acting was also immediately intriguing, with convincing performances all across the impressive cast. Ana de Armas and Daniel Craig were perfect for their roles and fully deserved their positions as the stars, but Chris Evans was also so shockingly suave at playing Ransom that I almost felt bad for tying him to Captain America all this time. Michael Shannon also proved he deserves way more credit for playing those vexing characters that somebody has to play. He was very impressive as well. Finally, it felt great to see LaKieth Stanfield in another role he quickly mastered.

Once the plot began, I was taken aback by how well paced it was. Things moved along at a believable but understandable speed, and it feels like actually watching it all unfold, rather than knowing ultimately more than the detectives and having to sit through their guesswork. Then came the twist: it is revealed that Marta, the innocent one (and her innocence is reinforced by at least half a dozen foils, whose egos and coarse manner of talking with one another made me instantly and credibly hate them) is allegedly the perpetrator. A mystery movie where the criminal is revealed in the first half hour? In a frankly plausible way? This was a risk masterfully taken, and reminded me of masterpieces like Fargo or even Shakespeare plays where the audience knows who the killer is, and poignant direction derives the enjoyment from other genuine aspects of the story.

Then Johnson flexed his writing skills even further once again** when it’s revealed Marta is actually innocent: the “grand reveal” scene that was practically guaranteed by the premise, then (reasonably) subverted by the plot, is reinstated in a plot twist that was unexpected, was well covered, was well explained, and actually makes sense. The only lull I ever felt in the movie came right before this striking scene. The ways Benoit figured it out were reasonable, the red herrings were hardly red in that they weren’t cheap, and it all came together so neatly without losing any of the grit the actual events possessed. I had a single grievance, that even if Marta was innocent she still royally messed up in mixing up the bottles, but even this was cleared up. She administered to Harlan based on the medicines themselves, not the labels, and as Benoit tells her, she simply is “a good nurse.”

On top of all of that, the movie is exceedingly funny. With genuine, complex, and well-timed jokes placed evenly throughout the film, tension was less broken and more teased in innovative wit. The modern elements scattered across the lingo and priorities of the characters were also a nice touch. Knives Out is a very self-aware movie that teaches a humane lesson in treating others equally without having a preachy agenda. Harpooning multiple viewpoints, the film is culturally involved without being so maniacal or overdone about it.

The final shot solidified this movie as a really special one, with Marta’s figurative moral position “above” the Thrombeys expressed obviously but effectively in her physical looking down on them. Her holding the symbolic coffee mug that started the whole film’s cinematography was the pure definition of a nice touch. With a compelling story that is appealingly told (and somehow used conventions to break storytelling ground), entertainingly realistic characters, and witty relevance all cinematically well packaged in good portion, Knives Out is definitely an essential mystery movie achievement.

*One of my favorite directors

**I do not mean to be redundant when I say “further once again,” since I’ve seen him contribute great writing to a film, then top himself later in the film (hence “further”) on multiple occasions, such as in Brick or Looper (hence “once again”).

Release Year: 2015

Director: George Miller

Runtime: 120 minutes

Opening with the mad world introduced 36 years prior, Mad Max: Fury Road immediately provides an updated look for the landscape of director George Miller’s directorial brainchild: new threats and details inhabit, even plague the old destruction and barren nightmare surrounding the haunting Fury Road. These words (“fury” and “road”) do an impeccable job of summarizing much of the movie in fact, even though the opening is filled to the radioactive brim with promising establishing shots, chaotic world building, and voice-over pondering from iconic protagonist Max Brockatansky. What starts out as a potential continuation of exploring this character… turns into exhaustingly grand fury on an exhaustingly long road.

While not greatly familiar with or appreciative of the Mad Max movies, I still understand the artistic direction in which Miller goes in making this movie more about other characters rather than Max. I understand the title is a return to a world, not the promise of a character study, so this was not my issue with the movie. Rather, the shortcomings begin with the frankly uninspired and uninspiring words of the voiceover. The concept of madness in this fictional world is so oversaturated, there’s not really any necessary force behind Max’s pondering over it. His two options in his apparently big question (whether the whole world is mad or he is) are both beyond the truth, not mutually exclusive, and not interesting enough to kickstart a movie that is more focused on his indisputably good team-up with Charlize Theron’s Furiosa against indisputably bad warlords. Not every movie has to have questions of moral ambiguity, especially a full-fledged action movie, but the easily aligned, depthless sides the movie creates genuinely nullifies the opening philosophy, and already makes the whole flick rather scattered in this respect.

With other respects, it is unexpectedly orderly despite the madness of the scenery. Characters act the same way at the end of the movie as they do at the beginning, with one… not necessarily predictable, but still uninspiring… exception. A plot point establishes exactly one task, with no further implications, and not even an entire reroute of the characters’ journey really changes how the audience feels about what they are doing. The problem with creating such an already chaotic world is that the audience can too easily become numb to the danger, and with the stakes so terribly high, they can neither rise nor impact individual characters in unique ways.

What a world that is created, though. Gruelingly realistic set design matches with expertly conceived costumes to bring this world to dangerous life*. Fury Road is absolutely deserving of its Oscars for production, hair/makeup, and costume design, and this is where its flaws go from being a grievance to being a wistful disappointment. The nightmarescape is imagined with such talent, and this is by far the best takeaway from seeing the movie. This includes all the stunt work that made everything seem so real (regardless of how needed it was) and actually kept me engaged and willing to view the rest of the movie.

This will was debatable, however, as an unsatisfying story was infused in all the action sequences (the extremely long, repetitive action sequences). Elements like redemption, sacrifice, and self-improvement, which I love seeing in cinema, felt forced into this objectively simple narrative. None of the scenes or lines of dialogue established much of any humanity that would put strength into these themes, and they instead feel like abstract concepts with nowhere to significantly land. If the movie was trying to express solely the characters’ loss of humanity (which it does among other busy things), it would have fared better to let the viewers watch fleshed out characters and view their trek to redemption, deducing just how inhumane their mad world is for themselves. Instead, this concept is bluntly handed to the viewer, like nearly everything else. This movie has not an ounce of subtlety.** Besides these characters’ motivations’ being flatly stated instead of meaningfully expressed, another example would include when the main villain’s goon ~minor spoiler alert~ is blinded, and chases the heroes while plainly bellowing, “I am the scale of justice” or something to that effect, to refer to Lady Justice. What could be interesting motifs for the audience to digest turn into flat elements that further the plot and not any of the viewers’ thinking. The movie would have been an excellent turn-your-brain-off action flick, since it certainly has the adrenaline of one, but it is filled with too many inflated moments like this to be so. It balances between a deep journey and a mindless thrill ride and this ambivalence is, in my opinion, the movie’s downfall. Trying to have the best of both worlds does not guarantee either.

Similarly, groundbreaking editing is generally celebrated when it takes new risks, but not every new risk guarantees itself to be groundbreaking. This is my most subjective gripe with the movie, so it can be dismissed, but I was not a fan of the varied frame rate at all. I thought it made crucial scenes look jarring and childish, and it took me out of the aforementioned absorbing realism of the world building. This is just my personal preference which I am sure is unpopular, so this is not my basis for disliking the movie, but it did not help.

I applaud George Miller for returning to his classic franchise with an ambitious new entry, but I do not think this ambition alone makes the movie of any quality. The style is fantastically presented and I definitely appreciate all of these aspects of the film, but with shallow characters, plentiful clichés, mediocre performances, and an unimpressive plot that gets lost in well-choreographed but oversaturated action, Mad Max: Fury Road is an unfortunately inadequate use of two hours.

*I especially enjoyed the scenes that took place at night: the use of blue was astonishing.

**Of course the maximalism (no pun intended) is the point of the world the movie creates: that is not what I mean by subtlety. I mean subtlety from a creative standpoint: the sense of artistry that is lost when a warlord thug makes a blatant reference to Roman art, or when an initially clever moment of a character’s unfamiliarity with what a tree is gets dragged out for a couple lines.

Release Year: 2011

Director: Terrence Malick

Runtime: 139 minutes

Answers can lead to questions just as often as, if not more often than, questions lead to answers. Many inquiries about the things that really matter require an answer that is beyond these very things, and yet fragile humans try to entice constructs and ideologies and refinements which attempt to simplify the world and life itself, vainly attempting to answer mysteries within the same scope as the clues. A true admission that we do not know everything, that there is Someone beyond us, that life has a purpose we cannot find by looking exclusively at life itself… such an admission takes honesty. To convey that honesty in a creative way takes vision, which Terrence Malick astoundingly proves in his masterful film The Tree of Life. If Neil Gaiman is right, which I believe he is, in declaring that fiction is “the lie that tells the truth,” then The Tree of Life is undoubtedly one of the most truthful works of fiction I’ve ever encountered.

There is purpose in every color that is included in this film’s artistic palette, which is true for the film emotionally, philosophically, and definitely visually, which I will revisit soon. Without cheap manipulation or overly sentimental storytelling, the characters that are emotionally introduced quickly feel like real people, where the focus is placed more emphatically on their expressions than a pedantic list of characterization. When dialogue does emerge, it does what I love to see in movies: the lines form neither an overly characterizing exposition, nor a vehicle for the writers’ agenda, and instead further the plot with organic realism. When a main character’s mother consoles her early in the film, her words are not meant to solve any problems, inform the viewer drastically of who she is (or who her daughter is), or tell the audience what to think. These tasks are subverted in favor of candidly depicting what kind of conversation would in fact occur, had the events of the plot taken place in real life. The fact is, the undisclosed events do happen everyday, as a part of life, and the grounded genius that brings soul to such scenes permeates the whole film.

Early in the film, as well as throughout it, beautiful spectacles of cinematography grace the scenes, taking the viewer on a unique, quite literally stellar journey. It eventually did not feel like a movie anymore: not to sound corny, but the film eventually resembled the first-person perspective of some kind of angel, seeing things in an objectively beautiful way, reminding the audience of the beauty in God’s creation that is all around us, should we look. Even buildings, which viewers are more than likely to see immediately in their surroundings, glimmer in the incomparably bright sun as products of the mankind fashioned by the same Hands that crafted the wondrous solar system. The work of God is on full display, and it is inescapably showcased in the film’s cinematography.

Such mind-blowing scenes give infinitely, but not unrealistically, more meaning to the small scale of the Texas household depicted through most of the plot. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain were unexpectedly one of the most convincing couples I’ve seen on film: their love evident in their conflict just as much as despite it. Jessica portrays a gentle mother whose character seems to clash with her husband’s (and this is an understatement) tough love, yet the uniqueness of their parenting of their three boys begins to complement one another. The sad aspect, among many others, is that the mother’s gentleness does not always seem able to keep up with the severity in her husband’s fatherly discipline. How can gentleness be severe? Malick directly frames the conflict, and indirectly frames the necessity, of either side, and the tension feels real all the way through.

Characterization abounds not just in these people’s relationships with each other, but with their relationship with God. In narration-like candor, their questions are painstakingly addressed to the Divine, and the viewer gets to see for his/herself how everyone asks questions. One may relate to the mother’s emotional turmoil or even to her son Jack’s childishly naïve, but ultimately empathetic inquiries. The Tree of Life gets the audience to think, with the thought being a means, not an end: it leaves an actually meaningful impression that does not begin and end with itself.

The ability to relate to the characters is, as mentioned, not cheap at any point. With entirely realistic events and entirely understandable reactions, the plausibility turns into full-fledged art imitating life. The vast scope of the narrative, technically spanning all of time and space, but with a focus on a regular household, puts emphasis on perspective of the ordinary or even mundane, rather than providing a story of something with which one is unfamiliar. It would sound pretentious if it were not so sincere, and I think the sincerity is this film’s greatest virtue.

I really like the C.S. Lewis quote where he notes, “If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would look like one single growing thing-rather like a very complicated tree. Every individual would appear connected with every other.” This is the poetic nail Terrence Malick hits on the head with this stunning film. With a rare and worthwhile balance of visionary boldness and humble honesty, one sees the beauty of life and heart-wrenching inquiry that penetrates every human being, no matter the time or privilege that may simplify and/or conceal it. Nature and grace battle and coexist in this raw film, and then one is challenged to see the ways they do the same in the real world. The power of love in grace is emphasized in The Tree of Life, and its presence in the simplest, most plain-looking lives in fact reveals its complexity, its intensity… its necessity.

Release Year: 2014

Director: Dan Gilroy

Runtime: 117 minutes

From interest… to fixation… to obsession. Nightcrawler chronicles this dark journey, traveled by protagonist Lou Bloom, and every step feels hauntingly realistic. Even as a well-paced downward spiral, Lou’s actions are constantly unpredictable (pardon the paradox). One of the best movies of 2014 and surely of the decade as well, every part, big or small, of this darkly masterful film cooperates excellently.

In the first few minutes, Jake Gyllenhaal gives a startlingly convincing performance, and the film’s natural characterization is already kicked off. The audience is dealing with a “subtly” self-righteous man whose respect is embarrassingly scarce. He develops an interest in “nightcrawling,” or covering nighttime debacles for news coverage. No matter how gruesome a tragedy Lou finds, his focus (his only focus) is recording it for the news. His indifference to the horrors he finds and ends up chasing is one of the most disturbing aspects of the film. Nightcrawler does not want to make the viewer comfortable, that is for sure.

The cinematography is ironically well laid out though. Some of the most interesting shots I’ve seen in film come from this movie, which uses contrast, framing, and focus to produce a very well-filmed work. This is what I mean when I say the film’s parts cooperate: they all work with the purpose of making it more coherent, from enhancing the setting to reinforcing characters’ motivations. LA is the dark landscape where the cringe-inducing brutality of the story unfolds, and Dan Gilroy proves that an unpleasant subject does not have to make for an unpleasant film.

I have appreciated Riz Ahmed’s work for a while now, and I was extremely happy when he showed up as the desperate but competent enough Rick, a potential partner for Lou. Seeing how poorly Lou treats people really creates an interesting dynamic and conflict for this partnership: the sick nightcrawler who is anything but a people person now has to spend time with someone and let him in on his obsession. Rick really needs a job, which is lucky for Lou, and the newsworthy accidents of LA attract the pair for Lou’s apathetic greed and Rick’s loyal desperation. The story unfolds with unpredictability and one meaningful scene after the next: none of them are out of place, and all of them are intriguing… even for shocking reasons. The film quickly gains that can’t-look-away x-factor possessed by all the subjects of Lou’s nightcrawling.

These subjects are extremely graphic and realistic, and so the movie is not for the faint of heart, but I think this is the point. Gilroy wants to reveal to the viewer the actual reality that occurs behind soulless headlines and addictively perpetual newsfeed. It is an unexpectedly good thing to be unsettled or even disgusted by the plausible events the film depicts, as this is the proper response to such horrific occurrences, and is the opposite of the more common insensitive or tantalized reactions that today’s news induces. I greatly appreciate that this film is willing to sensitize its audience, rather than using gruesome details as a plot device or entertainment subject. This topic is tackled the whole time, as the audience is shown the process that Lou and the superiors of his freelance work undergo to present and even modify their news in a way that will get the channel high ratings. There is strong, significant truth in this dramatization, convicting the audience and news networks in general for this inhumane attitude.

What I like most about Nightcrawler is that it tells hard truth. It challenges the viewer to think about its many subjects which include but are not limited to the following: the line between fixation and obsession, one’s limits regarding desperation for money, how insensitive is too insensitive, and of course the difference between the real and the fake. I have not been so disturbed, yet convicted, yet somewhat inspired by a film quite like I have by Nightcrawler: disturbed by the ease of simplifying reality, convicted of my perception of the truth, and inspired to cling to the truth more tightly.

Release Year: 2019

Director: JJ Abrams

Runtime: 142 minutes

Sequels gain most of their hate on the grounds that they are unnecessary: a perfectly functional standalone film can be so satisfactory that adding to it even with a companion film would take that satisfaction away. Sagas require multiple entries, however, and each entry’s job is as interdependent with the others as it is individually entertaining. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is the staggering ninth installment in a franchise that is in many ways unmatched in its iconic and influential status, but just because sagas require entries does not mean that audiences require the saga. Just as with the overly busy prequels, this sequel leg of the Star Wars story is just too heavy to be carried on, and Rise of Skywalker, while entertaining, fails its impossible task of pumping Disney life into the franchise.

Moderate spoilers follow.

The movie has plenty of redeeming qualities. Seriously. There are some genuinely funny moments throughout the decent runtime, some worthwhile acting performances shine through, and tributes to the original trilogy were well placed. The movie is a great time. It is the more abstract elements, the thoughts that come after, and the subtler details that make it a sadder revelation than it needs to be. On the surface, it seems like a job well done: Rey’s journey from an identity-less scavenger to some kind of Jedi warrior queen was a thrill to watch, Finn’s journey from an unbelieving coward to a sympathetic rebel was inspiring, and Poe’s arc from overzealous soldier to… a better soldier was entertaining with Oscar Isaac’s performance at its core. The movie is filled with resolutions as much as it is with revolutions. The satisfaction it sought is certainly achieved in these and more character arcs.

Where satisfaction is absent is in elements like plot and setting. I attribute most of these problems with the movie and the sequels as a whole trilogy to the alternating directors. Things like Palpatine’s return, Rey’s lineage, and revisiting Tatooine were not only never foreshadowed in the previous movies, they were even discarded as possibilities. I may be in the minority on this, but I thoroughly enjoyed Episode VIII. I thought the concept of campaigning a Star Wars iconoclasm that did away with the old and brought in the new was not only solid, challenging filmmaking, but the entire POINT of making sequels. The Force Awakens was a brilliant movie, but filled with nostalgic fan service. If I wanted to see more fan service, I’d just rewatch it, not see a new movie with even more. The Last Jedi removed itself from this possibility under Rian Johnson’s brilliant direction, which would have worked if the saga had stayed on this course.

When Johnson told us Rey was a nobody, and her strength was from her character rather than lineage, it felt extremely cheap to learn she was Palpatine’s granddaughter (even if it was revealed in a striking way). When Snoke was offed in Episode VIII, it felt extremely cheap for Palpatine to return and take that position back for himself. When the characters split up on their own journeys just an episode ago, it became all too easy to see through Abrams’ teamwork moments that permeated this movie long before the properly positioned climax. The whole movie gave me plot-whiplash,* which would be Johnson’s fault if his vision weren’t way more creative and less formulaic than that of JJ Abrams. Many people hated that Johnson threw the formula away and instead of proving this could work, Disney forced the viewer to return to it. Rise of Skywalker offers nothing new to the franchise, seemingly released just to cancel out the most adventurous installment since Return of the Jedi.

The old, un-fixed elements it offers are nice elements indeed, however. The wit and adventure present since the beginning are in full form, regardless of how familiar that form is. Rey’s character is probably the most original, and the most interesting, component of the narrative. Her struggle begins commonly and ends in a surprisingly intriguing look at identity, one that values integrity more than any potentially self-centered route. In following Rey, the sequels do a solid job, but in accomplishing any other worthwhile purposes, they do not do as much, and this especially goes for Episode IX. The sequels felt like a journey with a course that was mapped as it was travelled, making for an entertaining trilogy that is not much beyond that. As this journey’s conclusion, The Rise of Skywalker is probably the most quality it could have been: not a 10/10, but certainly not a 4/10, just simply an unfortunate but somewhat worthwhile space in between.

*My heavy-handed invention of a term, meaning the plot goes one way and snaps to another in an unforeseen, unnatural, and/or unrealistic fashion.