Good Time

I usually make the decision to see or not see a movie based on the trailer and the one for Good Time really intrigued me so I knew I had to see it.  Constantine "Connie" Nikas (Robert Pattinson) has anything but a good time when an ill-conceived robbery that he pulls with his developmentally challenged brother Nicholas (Benny Safdie) goes awry.  As the two of them attempt to flee, Nicholas is apprehended and sent to Rikers Island.  Connie then spends a frenzied night trying to get the bail money to get him out.  The hand held camera follows Connie's every move as he progresses from one dangerous situation to the next so you feel his ever increasing desperation as if you were right there with him.  It is intense, to say the least.  Connie does some pretty despicable things and I wasn't entirely sure if he was motivated by concern for his brother or guilt for getting his brother in the situation to begin with but I was captivated by his image on the screen.  That is due to the fact that Robert Pattinson gives one of the best performances of his career.  You cannot look away as he digs himself deeper and deeper into trouble.  He portrays so much nervous energy that I was on edge almost from his first scene and I carried that feeling of unease with me for quite a while after I left the theater.  The supporting cast is also excellent and I especially enjoyed Jennifer Jason Leigh as Connie's unstable girlfriend and Buddy Duress as a criminal that Connie inadvertently teams up with.   Good Time is visually stunning with lighting that alternates between dark shadows and psychedelic neon (I loved the scenes at an amusement park).  The pulse-pounding electronic score by Oneohtrix Point Never is absolutely incredible, rivaling anything done by Tangerine Dream in the 1980s (this is high praise from me because I love Tangerine Dream; they have a thematic album called Phaedra), and it adds greatly to the overall feeling of tension.  This film is filled with violence, language, sex, and drug use so not everyone is going to enjoy it but I think it is brilliant!

Brigsby Bear

Quite a few of my friends really loved Brigsby Bear when it screened at Sundance this year so I thought I'd check it out now that it is in wide release.  James (Kyle Mooney) was abducted as a baby and has been raised his whole life in an underground bunker by Ted (Mark Hamill) and April (Jane Adams).  His only contact with the outside world is a TV show called Brigsby Bear Adventures which has hundreds of episodes about a life-size bear who triumphs over the evil Sun Catcher and teaches valuable life lessons.  James is obsessed with the show, accumulating memorabilia and participating in an online forum dedicated to it.  One day the police come to the bunker and James is reunited with his real parents Greg (Matt Walsh) and Louise (Michaela Watkins).  He has difficulty adjusting to the outside world (in some incredibly amusing scenes), especially when he discovers that his beloved TV show does not really exist and that it was created by Ted just for him.  It is his only frame of reference so, as a way of coping with his new circumstances, James decides to make a movie continuing the adventures of Brigsby.  I loved so many things about this charming and original film.  Mooney is incredibly endearing in this quirky role.  He makes James into an entirely believable character and you find yourself rooting for him.  I also really enjoyed Greg Kinnear's performance as the detective on the case and a scene where he performs in the Brigsby movie made me laugh out loud.  I loved the message that being a fan of something, even something that is ridiculed and not understood by others, can be meaningful.  I definitely recommend this delightful film.

Note:  Brigsby Bear was filmed in SLC and I had a lot of fun recognizing various venues.

Logan Lucky

I am happy to report that the first day of school went extremely well yesterday so as a reward I decided to see a movie.  Most of my friends really liked Logan Lucky so, despite the fact that I was a little bit lukewarm on the trailer, I decided to give it a chance.  It is absolutely hilarious!  Down-and-out brothers Jimmy (Channing Tatum) and Clyde (Adam Driver) Logan create an elaborate plan to rob the vault at the Charlotte Motor Speedway because Jimmy learns how the pneumatic system for moving money works after working there.  They recruit their younger sister Mellie (Riley Keough), an expert safecracker named Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) who is currently in-car-cer-at-ed, and Joe's brothers Sam (Brian Gleeson) and Fish (Jack Quaid).  Due to circumstances beyond their control, they must move the date of the robbery to the biggest race of the year: the Coca-Cola 600.  While this is definitely a typical heist film it is just so much fun to watch the oddball characters execute the complicated plan and I really enjoyed the twist at the end.  The ensemble cast is excellent with an absolutely hilarious performance by Craig.  In addition to the principal cast there is Seth MacFarlane as an almost unrecognizable businessman, Sebastian Stan as a NASCAR driver, Katie Holmes as Jimmy's ex-wife, Katherine Waterston as a former classmate of Jimmy's, Hilary Swank as an FBI agent, and Dwight Yoakam as an incompetent prison warden.  In fact, these actors do such a good job that I would have liked to have seen even more character development.  The script is very clever and I laughed out loud during the prison riot scene when the inmates demand that George R. R. Martin release Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring!  So funny!  The action is as slick and stylized as in the Ocean's movies but just with a West Virginia accent and a soundtrack featuring John Denver.  This film is so entertaining and I highly recommend it!

Note:  Even though most of my friends really liked this film and recommended it, I have to admit that the main draw for me was Adam Driver.  I find him to be strangely appealing!

Wind River

Last night I went to a Thursday preview of Wind River, a psychological thriller with an ending that I am still thinking about.  Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner, in one of his best performances to date) is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Officer who is called out to the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming to track a mountain lion who is killing cattle.  He finds, instead, the body of a young woman.  The cause of death is exposure but, because it is clear that she has been assaulted and raped, the FBI sends rookie agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen, also excellent) to investigate.  She is laughably unprepared for the elements and doesn't understand the complex dynamic of the people on the reservation so she asks Lambert to help her.  The story is, on the surface, a typical murder mystery but dig a little deeper and it becomes a powerful commentary about life on a reservation in an environment where people live with silence and snow and little else and either survive or succumb.  It is also a story about grief with an incredibly poignant scene between two fathers who have lost daughters.  The scenery is starkly beautiful but always menacing, the dialogue is sparse, and the tension is almost unbearable.  The mystery unravels in a scene of shocking violence, which caught me by surprise, and the resolution is an interesting exploration of justice that I found to be strangely satisfying (the people at my screening cheered out loud) much like my reaction to another film by Taylor Sheridan.  All of the performances are compelling (I always enjoy Graham Greene) and the score, by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is suitably atmospheric.  If you enjoy tense thrillers with something to say about people who live on the margins of society, go see this film!

The Glass Castle

Last night I went to see The Glass Castle, the film adaptation of the best-selling memoir of the same name by Jeannette Walls.  It is the story of Jeannette's childhood of extreme poverty with a brilliant but alcoholic father and a self-absorbed mother who cares more about her art than her children as they move from place to place, often just one step ahead of the bill collectors or law enforcement.  We meet Jeannette (Brie Larson) in 1989 sitting in a taxi as she sees her father Rex (Woody Harrelson) and mother Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) digging through a garbage dumpster which embarrasses her.  Then we go back and forth between flashbacks to Jeannette's (played at various ages by Chandler Head and Ella Anderson) childhood experiences and her attempts in 1989 to leave her childhood behind with her job as a gossip columnist and her relationship with a wealthy banker (Max Greenfield), both of which clearly do not bring her any happiness.  Jeannette must ultimately come to terms with her past and make peace with her parents before she can move forward with her life.  Most of what happens to the children is very difficult to watch but I found the story to be very compelling and authentic, particularly the scenes with Anderson who is brilliant as the young Jeannette.  The performances of Larson, Watts, and, especially, Harrelson are also outstanding.  I was impressed with how Harrelson is able to portray Rex as both dangerous and captivating, someone who is both feared and fiercely loved.  Many alcoholics have incredibly charismatic personalities and know how to manipulate the people around them which makes it difficult to completely abandon them even though they do despicable things and Harrelson nails it.  Some people might have a problem with the content but I didn't because I really loved the themes of resilience and forgiveness.  Just because Jeannette ultimately forgives her father for the horrific things he does to her and her siblings doesn't mean that he is absolved and I don't think the film glorifies his behavior.  Forgiveness is less about the person being forgiven and more about the one doing the forgiving.  Jeannette must reconcile with her father for her own sake rather than his and she can only live an authentic life if she acknowledges her past and the impact that her parents have had, for good or ill, on the person she has become.  However, I had several problems with this adaptation.  It is overly sentimental, in stark contrast to the memoir, with a very manipulative score that tells the audience what it should be feeling and it sometimes feels like a Lifetime original movie as a consequence.  I also didn't like the conclusion because it is too easy and abrupt, almost as if Cretton (who co-wrote the screenplay and directed the film) wanted to give us all a happy ending that is not earned.   I think the memoir is better at telling the story objectively but this film is ultimately worth seeing for the dynamic performances.

Detroit

Last night I went to see Detroit, one of the most powerful films about brutality and injustice that I have ever seen.  It is set against the backdrop of the riots that happened in Detroit in 1967.  As the city burns out of control the local police, along with the state police and National Guard, are asked to do the impossible and keep the peace.  We meet a trigger-happy young white officer named Philip Krauss (Will Poulter) who has been reprimanded for shooting a looter in the back, an aspiring black singer named Larry Reed (Algee Smith), and a black security guard named Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega).  They all converge at the Algiers Motel, where Reed has taken refuge for the night when he can't get home, after a resident foolishly fires a starter pistol at the National Guard who mistake it for a sniper attack and fire back.  What follows is a long and protracted sequence where Krauss and two other white officers brutalize Reed and the other black residents in order to get them to confess, ultimately killing three of the young men, despite Dismukes' attempts to intervene.  These scenes affected me on a visceral level but I was even more upset when the young men seek justice.  In my opinion, they faced more discrimination in the courtroom than they did while being beaten in the motel.  I was very moved by Boyega's performance, especially in the scenes where he is interrogated unjustly as a suspect just because of his race.  Poulter also gives an incredible performance because I hated him and, frankly, I am going to have a hard time watching him in any other movie from now on because he is so menacing in this role.  This film was incredibly difficult for me to watch because in my mind I pictured my nephew in that motel and I cried through most of it (and for hours after it was over).  However, this is a film that I think everyone should watch because, as much as we would like to think that we as a society have moved on from 1967, I don't think we have.

The Dark Tower

I have read all eight books in Stephen King's Dark Tower series and I absolutely love them so, as you can imagine, I have been anticipating the movie adaptation with both excitement and apprehension.  I was so excited when I heard that Idris Elba had been cast as Roland Deschain because, in my opinion, he is the Gunslinger.  But I was also apprehensive because I really wanted this movie to be good.  It is always bad to walk into a screening with such high expectations because they are rarely met and they certainly weren't met in this case.  The Dark Tower is such a disappointment.  I knew going in that it had received appalling reviews and the theater was nearly empty, which is very unusual for a Thursday night preview, so I should have known better.  I still hoped it would be good and I was disappointed.  This film has both too much and too little exposition.  Way too much time is squandered on Earth introducing Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) and describing his visions of the Gunslinger (Elba) and his quest to stop the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) from destroying the Dark Tower, which holds the universe together.  Then, when we get to Mid-World, the story becomes incomprehensible.  I had only the vaguest notion of what was going on (and I've read the books so I understand the mythology).  I also was quite bewildered by the cuts back and forth between Mid-World and Earth and the tone in the Earth scenes is inappropriate.  The fish-out-of-water trope is very tedious here.  The books are full of action but the action sequences here are not only few and far between but they are not very good (The only scene that really held my attention was when Roland shoots his way into a portal to Mid-World).  The special effects are pretty shoddy for a summer blockbuster.  The only character that is really explored in depth is Jake and he is played rather blandly by Taylor.  McConaughey is an absolute disaster as the Man in Black, playing him as a caricature of a villain rather than someone to be feared, and we never learn enough about him or the Gunslinger because we don't get enough time with them.  They are supporting players to Jake which is a huge mistake.  The only bright spot in this movie is Elba.  Imagine what he could have done with a decent script and a proper budget for effects.  Ugh.  Definitely give this a miss!

Lady Macbeth

Sunday night I went to the Broadway, as I often do on a Sunday night, to see Lady Macbeth.  My friend saw this film at Sundance and gave it a very unfavorable review (even going so far as to call it "indie rubbish" which has become a bit of an inside joke with us) while another friend loved it, hailing it as a masterpiece.  After viewing this film myself, my reaction falls somewhere in between.  Katherine (a mesmerizing Florence Pugh) is forced into an arranged marriage with a much older man, Alexander (Paul Hilton), who shows very little interest in her.  Alexander's father, Boris (Christopher Fairbank), continually reminds her of her marital duty which is, namely, to provide them with a legitimate heir, and he also mistreats her.  She is kept to a very rigid schedule and is never allowed outside of the house.  When both Alexander and Boris are called away, she takes advantage of the opportunity and roams the countryside.  She also begins a passionate affair with Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), a groomsman on the estate.  When Boris returns, he hears about the affair, which has been conducted very openly, and has Sebastian beaten and locked up.  Katherine poisons Boris so she can be with Sebastian, showing very little remorse.  As is often the case, they are forced to commit several more murders (including a particularly egregious one) in order to keep up pretenses and Sebastian begins to feel more and more guilty.  There are a few things I really liked about this film but there are definitely some aspects that I didn't enjoy.  I was quite impressed by Florence Pugh's performance as a woman who will go to any lengths to keep her newfound freedom and her journey is very compelling, at least in the beginning.  I was on the edge of my seat most of the time and the eerie silence on screen added greatly to my unease.  I also think that William Oldroyd made some very interesting choices; for example, highly composed shots of Katherine sitting on a couch wearing a buttoned up dress and corset with her hair tightly coiled juxtaposed with beautiful shots of her roaming the moor unbound with her hair blowing in the wind are highly effective at establishing her motivation.  However, some of his choices are less effective.  I found the scenes involving a cat to be completely bewildering.  I am sure that these scenes are meant to be artistic but the symbolism was lost on me because the cat disappears after a few early scenes never to be seen again.  Why?  Another problem I had was that, while I sympathized with Katherine in the first half of the film because of her ill-treatment, I found many of her actions in the latter half to be completely reprehensible.  She ends up being more ruthless than her oppressors, particularly to her maid, Anna (Naomi Ackie).  I had to look away during a scene involving a horse and the final murder (which went on for so long) of an innocent child was especially brutal.  The ambiguous ending did not hold her to account for her actions in a way that brought me satisfaction.  Finally, I don't know if it is just me but I thought there was a racist undertone to this film.  There is absolutely no discussion of race but all of the characters portrayed by black actors end up as victims and it left a bad taste in my mouth.  Hmmm.  Have you seen this film?  What did you think?

Note:  This film is not based on William Shakespeare's Scottish play (as I originally thought) but, rather, on the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov.

Atomic Blonde

Atomic Blonde is a sleek and stylish thriller with Cold War intrigue and a kick-ass female spy.  What could be better on a Saturday night?  Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is an MI6 agent sent to Berlin just before the fall of the wall to retrieve a list, stolen by the KGB, of every British agent under cover in the Soviet Union and to discover and assassinate a double agent named Satchel.  She is aided by the Berlin Chief of Station (James McAvoy) who may or may not be her ally.  I found it to be an interesting, if sometimes convoluted, story with one twist after another but what makes this movie so much fun to watch is the action.  The set pieces are pretty violent (Lorraine does get pretty battered and bloody) but, as I mentioned, they are extremely stylish with incredibly complex choreography and camera work with multiple angles.  There is a fantastic sequence involving a stiletto heel in a moving car, another one involving a garden hose over a balcony, and yet another in a stairway (which goes on for at least ten minutes without any discernible cuts).  Charlize Theron does most of her own stunts and it is impossible to take your eyes off of her as she punches, shoots, and kicks her way out of trouble in one fabulous outfit after another.   James McAvoy looks like he is having so much fun with a "disastrous Sinead O'Connor haircut" and a knowing smirk.  As a child of the 80s, I really loved the soundtrack which features at least a dozen pop songs from that decade.  I think I giggled out loud when I heard the opening notes to "Der Kommissar."  My only complaint with this movie is that we see Lorraine naked multiple times (she takes an ice bath, not once but, twice and she has quite the sex scene with another female agent) for no reason beyond titillation.  Can we please have a strong female character without resorting to objectifying her?  However, this is a fun movie and I recommend it to fans of the spy genre.

A Ghost Story

A Ghost Story is a film that just about blew my mind at Sundance this year.  It stayed with me for quite a while and I eagerly anticipated its wide release so I could see it again.  I have to say that I found it to be even more profound upon a second viewing on Friday night and I was not alone in my reaction.  The entire audience stayed seated in absolute silence long after the credits had rolled and the lights had come back on.  The narrative revolves around a man (Casey Affleck) who dies in a car accident and returns, shrouded in a sheet, to the home he shared with his wife (Rooney Mara).  He stays and watches her as she grieves and then eventually moves away.  He continues to haunt the house for decades as it is occupied by various people, is demolished, and is replaced by a high-rise building until he is finally able to let go of his attachment.  There is another ghost haunting the house next door until he is able to leave behind a person he is waiting for.  The ghost is one of the most sympathetic characters I've ever seen on film, even completely shrouded as he is, and the long, sustained shots with very little action are strangely compelling.  The score is very evocative and greatly enhances the otherworldly mood.  As previously mentioned, I found many of the themes to be so moving.  I've always believed that the spiritual aspect of humanity is more important than the physical which is, indeed, impermanent.  We must ultimately leave behind our attachment to people, places, and things to progress on our journey.  It is enchanting to believe that we leave behind a piece of ourselves and that we will be remembered but our time here is temporary and time inevitably and inexorably moves on.  We don't really belong here in this physical plane.  I know I will be thinking about these ideas for a long time to come and I suspect that this beautiful film will provide even more philosophical musings each time I watch it.  I must admit that A Ghost Story might not appeal to everyone.  It is a high-concept film and you must commit to this concept fully in order to appreciate it but, if you can, you will be forever changed by its powerful message.

Maudie

Thursday I spent the afternoon in a darkened theater full of senior citizens (seriously, I was the youngest person there by decades) watching Maudie, the real-life love story between Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis (Sally Hawkins) and her husband Everett (Ethan Hawke).  Maud suffers from a debilitating form of arthritis (although we don't learn the nature of her ailment until almost the end of the film) and her brother and aunt consider her to be a tremendous burden.  One day she answers an advertisement to be a maid for a curmudgeonly and reclusive fishmonger, mostly to get away from her aunt.  Everett lives in a dilapidated one room shack in rural Nova Scotia and he treats Maud very cruelly, even telling her that his dogs are more important than she is.  She begins painting simple flowers, trees, and birds on the walls to brighten her grim existence.  She eventually worms her way into Everett's heart and they marry, although he is still very gruff with her.  She paints cards to deliver to all of Everett's customers and attracts the attention of a wealthy New Yorker on vacation who commissions a painting which brings her national exposure.  She spends the rest of her life selling her paintings outside of her tiny shack and when she dies Everett realizes how much he loved her.  While the film tells the story of Maud's life and career as an artist, the narrative focuses on the relationship between the two lonely outsiders and it is such a poignant story.  My favorite line is when Maud says that they are like two mismatched socks!  Sally Hawkins gives an incredible performance that is sure to be remembered during awards season and this is an Ethan Hawke like you've never seen before.  I feel that I have unjustly pigeon-holed him as the goofy deadbeat dad that he has portrayed lately (see here, here, and here) but he surprised me because he is marvelous in this multi-layered role.  After a while I didn't even notice that I was watching Ethan Hawke.  In addition, there are some stunning shots of the surrounding landscape (Canada is a beautiful country) and I really enjoyed the score by Michael Timmins (of the Cowboy Junkies, a favorite band from my youth).  I highly recommend this lovely film.

Note:  I am not very familiar with Sally Hawkins but she seems to be everywhere at the moment.  This performance captivated me and I am really looking forward her next film, The Shape of Water.

Dunkirk

Last night I went to see Dunkirk and it was probably the most immersive movie I have ever seen.  The evacuation of hundreds of Allied soldiers from the seaside town of Dunkirk after the German invasion of France is told from three different perspectives: land, sea, and air.  On land we follow a British soldier (Fionn Whitehead) as he attempts to evacuate from the beach on one ship after another over the course of a week.  On sea we follow a civilian (Mark Rylance) who takes his boat across the Channel to rescue as many soldiers as he can in one day.  In the air we follow an RAF pilot (Tom Hardy) as he provides air support for one intense hour.  The events are portrayed in a non-linear manner and we see some of the same events happen multiple times but the three timelines eventually converge for a dramatic conclusion.  The audience is dropped in the middle of the action with very little exposition or character development and I've heard many people criticize the movie for not having a plot but in my opinion the story is survival.  I loved all of the small acts of heroism that are portrayed and Christopher Nolan lets these events unfold without a lot of dialogue or manipulative music cues (more about that later).  The cinematography is brilliant (I wish I could have seen it in 70mm) and I felt like I was in the middle of the fighting, especially the aerial dogfights.  I frequently found myself holding my breath and, at one point when the cockpit of a downed plane was filling with water, I realized that I was lifting my head up to avoid drowning myself!  The action is unrelenting from the opening scene until the final credits and much of it involved practical stunts rather than CGI.  Hans Zimmer's remarkable score, which includes a synthesized ticking clock, is incredibly ominous with a sense of urgency that adds greatly to the tension.  The large cast does a great job but there are a few standouts for me:  Kenneth Branagh has a very poignant scene as a naval commander coordinating the evacuation, Harry Styles is much better than anticipated as a soldier on the beach (his character is a bit of a jerk but he plays him well), and Cillian Murphy is quite convincing as a shell-shocked soldier rescued from the water.  This film just blew me away!  In my opinion, it is a masterpiece and it definitely needs to be seen on the big screen!

Kiki's Delivery Service

Last night I saw Kiki's Delivery Service, the next film in the Studio Ghibli Fest.  I enjoyed My Neighbor Totoro so much that I decided to see the rest of the films in the series.  This film is about a 13-year-old witch in training named Kiki who must leave her home and travel to a new place to discover her destiny.  Believing that her talent is for flying, she begins delivering items using her broomstick and we follow her on her adventures.  Eventually self-doubt causes Kiki to lose her ability to fly and her friends must help her to regain her confidence.  I loved this movie so much!  I think I loved it even more than My Neighbor Totoro because I related to much to the character of Kiki.  She is incredibly resourceful in finding her way in a hostile world, including finding a place to live and a way of earning money all on her own.  She encounters many obstacles in her delivery service but she uses her ingenuity to solve every problem and I found her to be such an empowering character.  However, the characteristic that I enjoyed the most in Kiki is her kindness.  She is kind to everyone around her and it is that kindness that eventually brings her rewards in the end.  I loved that message!  I also liked the fact that Kiki is a real 13-year-old girl with typical teenage problems, especially in her relationships with other teenagers.  She is so authentic!  Jiji, Kiki's black cat, is also a really fun character and the source of much laughter at my screening.  The setting is a beautiful, almost European, seaside city and the animation is so colorful and vibrant.  This movie is just delightful and I highly recommend it!  Go here for more information about the Studio Ghibli Festival.

Valerian

Last night I went to see Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and, despite what many critics have said, I really enjoyed it.  The spectacle opens with a montage of the history of space travel and the establishment of Alpha, the titular city where representatives of a thousand planets live and cooperate with each other, with David Bowie's "Space Oddity" underneath it.  My attention was completely drawn in and it never wavered as one dazzling sequence after another filled the screen (it is one of the rare films I recommend seeing in IMAX 3D).  The narrative focuses on the destruction of a planet which federal agents Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delivigne) must investigate with the help of a few strange and magical creatures, including Bubble (Rihanna) a shape-shifting performer, and a few wild adventures, in multiple dimensions, before they solve the mystery.  If you have seen the trailers you know that the visual effects are absolutely incredible.  I was most impressed with the world-building and the character design, especially a sequence at a market that takes place in multiple dimensions at the same time (mind blown).  Unlike many, I thought the campy performances of DeHaan and Delivigne really worked and I laughed out loud at Ethan Hawke's turn as a pimp.  I even liked Rihanna who has an unexpectedly poignant scene.  In my opinion this film is funny, quirky, and wildly entertaining.  It never takes itself too seriously so I think it is destined to become a cult classic.  I highly recommend it for a really good time.

Planet of the Apes Triple Feature

Yesterday I had the opportunity to see a triple feature of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes.  It was a long afternoon and evening but I definitely enjoyed myself (and bonded with the people around me).  It is one of the best trilogies I've ever seen, one, rather unusually, in which the films get better and better.  All three of them feature compelling and thought-provoking stories, powerful performances, and dazzling special effects.  In Rise, my sympathies are entirely with the apes.  Just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should, especially regarding the ethics of animal testing.  In Dawn, the stakes are considerably higher and the heroes and villains aren't quite as black and white for me.  There are good humans and bad humans just as there are good apes and bad apes.  I was very intrigued by the difficulties involved in diplomacy, how easy it is for an extremist to undermine the work of many.  In War, after fighting for two years, Caesar (Andy Serkis) offers the humans peace if the apes can be left alone in the woods.  However, a mysterious Colonel (Woody Harrelson) arrives and kills Caesar's wife and son prompting him to vow revenge.   As the rest of the apes try to escape, Caesar goes on a journey with a few apes to locate the Colonel at his compound in the North and then learns that his apes have been taken prisoner.  The way that the prisoners are treated is extremely difficult to watch (much like the Jews in concentration camps) but the prison-break scenes provide a bit of levity.  While there is an epic show-down between the apes and humans, the titular war, in my opinion, is within Caesar himself as he battles his hatred.  Of the three, I think this film is the most complex in its storytelling because of the themes of vengeance and redemption.  Andy Serkis is, once again, brilliant in a motion-capture performance that is incredibly powerful.  I have always enjoyed Maurice (Karin Konoval) as a character but I loved his role as Caesar's conscience in this film.  Woody Harrelson is menacing as a military leader gone rogue and I enjoyed the addition of Bad Ape (Steve Zahn) for a bit of comic relief to offset the bleakness.  Finally, I was so impressed by the CGI which I thought was incredibly realistic, almost to the point that you forget that you are not watching apes but actors in motion-capture suits.  This is a very fitting end to the trilogy and I loved it.  Actually, I loved watching all three of these films together, so much so, that I spent about forty-five minutes discussing them in the parking lot with my fellow audience members!

The Exception

As a student of history I hadn't really thought much about what happened to Kaiser Wilhelm II when he exited the stage after World War I.  After seeing a preview of The Exception, I was intrigued about his post-war life and very eager to see a film about his involvement, albeit fictionalized, in events at the beginning of World War II.  I am a sucker for films about World War I and World War II!  I saw The Exception last night and I wish that it had focused more on Wilhelm (Christopher Plummer) rather than on the romance between a German officer (Jai Courtney) and a Jewish housemaid who may or may not be a British operative (Lily James).  Captain Stefan Brandt (Courtney) is sent to the Netherlands, presumably as punishment for an incident in Poland (there are lots of flashbacks), to be the head of security for the exiled Wilhelm.  In reality, he is sent there to spy on Wilhelm.  He immediately, if abruptly, begins a passionate affair with the new maid Mieke (James), who reveals to him that she is Jewish.  When Heinrich Himmler (Eddie Marsan) visits Wilhelm, who hopes for news that the Nazis want to restore the monarchy, Brandt suspects that Mieke might be a spy.  Will he choose love or duty?  I loved Christopher Plummer in this role as a mercurial king-in-exile who longs for the past (he loves showing guests his collection of military uniforms) yet rails against his generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff for losing the war.  He insists on receiving military briefings from his aide de camp (Ben Daniels) in one moment and in the next he chops wood and feeds the ducks.  I also enjoyed Janet McTier's performance as Wilhelm's wife, Hermine, who works behind the scenes to restore the monarchy so she can order new clothes and refuse her sisters entrance at court.  Their story is incredibly compelling;  Brandt and Mieke's is less so.  Lily James does a good job in the scenes where espionage is the focus but I didn't buy the romance at all.  Why on earth does she get involved with a German soldier when she wants revenge against them for killing her father and brother?  Why does she tell him that she is Jewish when she doesn't know him well enough to trust him?  There is no motivation for their affair at all (beyond lust) and I didn't really care for Courtney's stilted performance as Brandt.  There is no tension at the climax because we already know that Brandt is troubled by the brutality of the Nazis so his decision isn't that surprising.  I found Wilhelm's decision to be much more interesting.  Bottom line:  I liked this movie but it would have been better with more Plummer and less Courtney.

The Hero

Last night I went to see The Hero, a film I saw at Sundance and really enjoyed.  To be sure, it is a cliched character study about a man with regrets who must come to term with his own mortality but it has an incredible central performance by Sam Elliott which makes it worth watching, even twice.  Lee Hayden (Elliott) is a former Western film star well past his prime who who spends his days drinking, smoking marijuana, and recording ads for a barbecue sauce when he is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  At the same time he meets a much younger woman (Laura Prepon) and begins a relationship with her and, after a drug-fueled speech at an awards ceremony goes viral, gets a big movie offer.  In the midst of all of this, he tries to reconcile with his estranged daughter (Krysten Ritter) and decide what to do about his diagnosis.  He has recurring dreams about being on the set of his most popular movie, in his current state, where he metaphorically fights his cancer.  Even though Elliott is essentially playing a version of himself, he is absolutely shines in this role (I have heard mention of a possible Academy Award nomination).  He is in almost every shot and I found him to be captivating.  He is able to convey more emotion with just a lift of a bushy eyebrow than most actors working today do with pages of dialogue.  While all of the supporting characters are pretty thinly drawn I found a scene with Nick Offerman, who plays a former cast member who is now Lee's drug dealer, to be hilarious and I enjoyed seeing Katharine Ross, Elliott's real-life wife, as Lee's ex-wife.   This film is a little gem that I recommend, especially if you are a fan of Sam Elliott.

The Big Sick

I'm just going to put something out there.  I am not a big fan of romantic comedies (and I despise it when people refer to them as rom-coms).  I rarely see them and I am almost always underwhelmed by the ones I do see.  Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and boy gets girl back.  Blah, blah, blah.  However, I decided to see The Big Sick on Friday night because it generated a lot of buzz at Sundance this year (it receieved one of the biggest distribution deals from the festival) and I saw a preview last week which made me laugh out loud.  It is a true story which adds a bit of a twist to the standard formula: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl is put into a coma, and boy gets girl back.  Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani playing a fictionalized version of himself) is a Pakistani comic who gets heckled one night by a graduate student named Emily (Zoe Kazan).  They immediately hit it off but eventually break up because Kumail's traditional parents want an arranged marriage for him.  Emily ends up in the emergency room one night and a friend asks Kumail to check up on her.  Her condition worsens so it is decided that she should be put in a medically induced coma and Kumail must inform her parents, Beth and Terry (Holly Hunter and Ray Romano).  As the days go by, he bonds with her parents and realizes how much he loves Emily.  It is so funny!  I laughed out loud through the whole thing!  I almost couldn't breathe in the scene where Terry and Kumail talk about 9/11 because I was laughing so hard.  All of the scenes with Kumail's potential brides, who just happen to drop by, are also hilarious ("The truth is out there!")  There are also some very heartwarming scenes, especially when Kumail tells his parents that they can't kick him out of the family.  Kumail is so endearing and both he and Kazan have great chemistry.  Both Hunter and Romano are also great together and Kumail's fellow comics (Bo Burnham, Aidy Bryant, and Kurt Braunohler) are a lot of fun.  I should mention that there is quite a bit of profanity but I absolutely loved this hilarious movie and I highly recommend it.

Note:  I saw this at the Broadway Theater and there was not an empty seat in sight.  That has only happened for two other movies that I've seen there:  The Grand Budapest Hotel and La La Land.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

On Thursday night I saw an early screening of Spider-Man: Homecoming and I absolutely loved it!  What made it so much fun is that Peter Parker is finally portrayed by an age-appropriate actor as a wisecracking and nerdy high school student dealing with both his superpowers and the everyday problems of a 15-year-old, like who to take to the Homecoming dance.  Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) owns a salvage company tasked with cleaning up after the Battle of New York until Stark Industries and the federal government create the Department of Damage Control and take over.  Bitter about losing so much revenue, Toomes keeps pieces of the Chitauri technology to create weapons to sell on the black market.  Eight years later, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is still on a high after his experiences with Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) and is finding it hard to settle down to real life in high school.  He wants to be an Avenger but Stark wants him to start slow as a friendly neighborhood superhero (in some really amusing scenes).  Meanwhile, Toomes has become the Vulture with a crew who rob the D.O.D.C. for more alien technology to keep up their supply and Spider-Man attempts to stop him, often needing to be rescued by Iron Man (with some fun action sequences involving Peter's Decathlon team in Washington, D.C. and a fight with the Vulture on the Staten Island ferry).  Tony Stark takes away his Stark Industries-enhanced suit so Spider-Man must go it alone in an epic confrontation with the Vulture.  I thought Michael Keaton's Vulture was a very ordinary villain but I absolutely loved Holland's performance because of his impetuosity and awkwardness.  His interactions with his friends Ned (Jacob Batalon), Flash (Tony Revolori), Michelle (Zendaya), and Liz (Laura Harrier) are incredibly amusing.  I laughed out loud when Peter and Ned talked about building the Death Star out of legos!  I also think the mentor relationships with Tony and Happy (Jon Favreau), who is his minder, are great.  The action sequences are fine (although I wish the final confrontation hadn't been at night because it was so dark that I sometimes had a hard time seeing what was going on) but I had a lot more fun with the character development and dialogue.  It is such a fun and lighthearted movie and I highly recommend it.

Note:  The Captain America (Chris Evans) PSAs used at the school are hilarious.  I also loved it when Peter's Decathlon teacher (Martin Starr) is interviewed after the events in Washington, D.C. and says, "I would hate to lose a student on a school trip.  Not again."  I think I was the only person in the theater who laughed at that.  I once left a student at Kingsbury Hall...

The Beguiled

My friend and I went to a screening of The Beguiled on Friday night and, while she only liked it, I absolutely loved it!  The Beguiled is set on a large and isolated plantation in Virginia which is used as a Ladies Seminary run by Miss Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman) at the end of the Civil War.  When one of the girls comes upon a severely wounded Union soldier named John McBurney (Colin Farrell), they decide to shelter him while he recuperates.  He disrupts their quiet and well-ordered life and all of them, even the young girls, begin vying for his affection by wearing their best dresses and jewelry and sneaking into the music room to speak with him.  I particularly loved a scene where all of them try to take credit for an apple pie that John praises.  John takes advantage of the situation by flirting with the no-nonsense headmistress Martha, a repressed teacher named Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), and a bored and sullen student named Alicia (Elle Fanning) with the hopes of being allowed to stay on the plantation but this eventually sets them against each other with catastrophic results for him.  There were many times when I wondered who was beguiling whom!  The tension builds very, very slowly and I almost couldn't bear waiting for the resolution (my friend had seen the 1971 original but I hadn't so I think that contributed to my reaction) which just about blew my mind with its subtlety.  All of the actresses give marvelous performances as genteel Southern belles who come undone.  Of course Nicole Kidman is brilliant but I was especially impressed by Kirsten Dunst's portrayal of Edwina's sadness and insecurity and I thought Addison Riecke was adorable as one of the younger girls (especially when she suggests looking for mushrooms).  Finally, this film is beautifully shot with lots of atmospheric scenes of moss-covered trees outside and flickering candles inside.  I highly recommend The Beguiled for it's tension, incredible acting, and gorgeous cinematography.