My thoughts on... "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"

The film rights to Spider-Man are in a weird place right now. Although last year's Spider-Man: Homecoming emerged as the result of an agreement between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios, this year has seen Sony release several products meant to preserve its hold on the license: a well-received video game, a disastrous Venom movie, and most recently Into the Spider-Verse, an animated film which shifts focus from Peter Parker to Miles Morales, who came to adopt the Spider-Man moniker in Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series.

If Homecoming saw Marvel Studios tentatively experimenting with more complex themes, Into the Spider-Verse is more novel for its psychedelic visual style, which combines bright comic-book colours with a wide array of other influences and a healthy dollop of self-referential surrealism. At a time when the Spider-Man brand is reaching peak saturation, it has justified its own existence not only by being arguably the best Spider-Man movie, but also by being the most Spider-Man movie. And yet, as prominent as the film's fanservice is, it's always grounded in genuine pathos and humour, and the film wisely streamlines its story so that the history behind certain plot elements, while enhancing them, isn't necessary for enjoyment. Indeed, beneath all the flashy visuals and goofy references, this is a movie which contains all of the elements necessary for a good superhero film and then some.

Have you seen... Tangerine (2015)?

Given how many motion pictures are released each year, it’s inevitable that the vast majority fade into relative obscurity. There’s only so much room in the mainstream, and that space is almost always occupied by the most accessible and widely-advertised of movies. In this column, I seek to discuss those movies which have been overlooked or underestimated and attempt to explain why they’re worth your attention. Ultimately, I hope to introduce lesser-known films to people who might never have heard about them, and if I’m really lucky, maybe I’ll help broaden my readers’ horizon. This time, the subject is Sean Baker’s 2015 comedy, Tangerine. Feel free to correct me on the language I use regarding race and gender. Did I like it? Yes. When was it released? It premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and opened across North America later that year. What’s it about? Sin-Dee and her best friend Alexandra are black trans sex workers in Los Angeles. Sin-Dee, after getting out of prison, has just learned that her pimp boyfriend was cheating on her with a cisgender woman, and sets out to give both him and the other girl a piece of her mind. Alexandra copes with the usual annoyances of her own career, and meanwhile, an Armenian taxi driver named Razmik does the same with his job. Also, it takes place on Christmas Eve. Who made it? Tangerine was directed by Sean Baker, who also wrote the film with his friend Chris Bergoch. The two had previously collaborated on Starlet (2012), but Tangerine proved to be their breakthrough. Sin-Dee is played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Alexandra is played by Mya Taylor, both of whom are not professional actors and whom Baker met at a Los Angeles LGBT Center. What’s pertinent is that, whereas many films would have Sin-Dee and Alexandra played by cis actors, Rodriguez and Taylor are both trans women themselves. Meanwhile, Razmik is played by Karren Karagulian, who previously worked with Baker on Starlet. What content warnings or trigger warnings apply? Tangerine contains depictions of sex, vomit, violence, drugs, swearing, transphobia, verbal abuse, and racism. What language is it in? English. What’s its style? Tangerine is a straightforward comedy, with a heavy reliance on verbal wit and a lot of raunchy dialogue, albeit one with moments of sentimentality and intensity. Alexandra and especially Sin-Dee have abrasive, talkative personalities, which provides much of the film’s charm, but the film doesn’t just leave them to babble, and smartly modulates its pace and tone to make the characters feel more real and sympathetic. Notably, the film was shot on an iPhone 5S, resulting in a distinctly low-fi appearance, but the fuzzy image quality, overblown light sources, and dull greenish tint all enhance the harsh tone. Baker also likes to employ aggressive zooms and pulsing trap music. Why is it interesting? A lot of it is the raucous vibe: Rodriguez and Taylor are both genuinely terrific, inhabiting the protagonists’ larger-than-life personalities so well I wonder how much of their dialogue is completely improvised. Both speak loudly and frequently, and yet there’s such an exuberance to their delivery that each line positively sparkles. As much as the film’s humour is dependent on its leads’ energy and the profanity-laden dialogue, though, it’s also got a strong visual wit, regularly providing quirky details in the backgrounds of scenes or even as brief pit stops along the narrative. On top of that, the film is appealingly digressive: significant scenes are punctuated with quirky interruptions from the other two stories, and when the film slows down, it’s still happy to puncture the mood with spontaneous bursts of humour. Baker’s style of humour is boisterous and noisy, but on several occasions the movie changes pace and takes its protagonists’ anxieties more seriously. In Alexandra’s scenes, that often revolves around the uncertainties of her work, including unsympathetic police officers and entitled customers. Sin-Dee, meanwhile, is mostly concerned with her relationship with her boyfriend, and beneath all of her aggression it’s clear just how anxious she is about his apparent betrayal. In certain key moments, their vulnerability does shine through, and they both become genuinely sympathetic as the movie progresses. Neither of them is a perfect person, but they have no shortage of redemptive moments, and their witty rapport is genuinely endearing. Consequently, the emotional stakes of each disconnected moment are genuinely compelling. But although the two’s woes are always on the surface, it’s in the movie’s most sentimental scenes that they appear most vulnerable: clearly, these two women care about each other, and there’s a surprising amount of heart underlying the film’s in-your-face style. The casting and subject matter serve to give Tangerine an air of progressivism, and the film does take on more serious issues of race and gender. The film doesn’t really dwell on it, but the fact of Sin-Dee and Alexandra’s trans identities does hang in the air, and while the two of them are content to joke about it, others are much less accepting. There’s more than one scene of one of the protagonists being misgendered or an unwarranted reference to genitalia, and some viewers should be advised that this isn’t a fantasy so much as a portrait of life on the fringe of society. Nonetheless, Baker’s camera is unjudgmental: to the extent that trans identity is used for humour, it’s almost entirely by way of the lead women making mundane, tossed-off comments, and if anything, cisgender people receive the brunt of the film’s mockery. The word “fish” comes up, for instance, in reference to cis women, and all the male characters think with their dick first. Race is less of a factor, but there is some cringe comedy based on white people using African-American slang. What are its themes?

For all its progressive subject matter, Tangerine mostly revolves around the simple pathos of its characters’ journeys, and the clearest themes which emerge are familiar ones about female solidarity and friendship. In that sense, it’s not entirely different from any number of more conventional comedies, but it doesn’t so much present that as the end of its character arcs as suggest it through various quiet moments littered amongst the more frenzied scenes. In large part, the film is also about the general difficulties of being a black trans sex worker, and one of its most admirable qualities is how it deglamorizes Los Angeles. It’s just a day in the life of these women, and ultimately what comes across is a sort of authenticity. In summary: 
Tangerine has a uniquely abrasive style of humour, but there’s also an undercurrent of sweetness and drama which makes its leads sympathetic even through their imperfections. It also offers a daring visual style due to being shot on an iPhone 5S, and has nonprofessional trans actors giving strong, energized performances. Those performances alone elevate the film, but it’s also filled with strong dialogue, and the characters are great on their own merit. It’s very funny, but it’s also unexpectedly moving where it counts. Support me on Patreon and get new posts a week early!

Have you seen... "Holy Motors" (2012)?

Given how many motion pictures are released each year, it’s inevitable that the vast majority fade into relative obscurity. There’s only so much room in the mainstream, and that space is almost always occupied by the most accessible and widely-advertised of movies. In this column, I seek to discuss those movies which have been overlooked or underestimated and attempt to explain why they’re worth your attention. Ultimately, I hope to introduce lesser-known films to people who might never have heard about them, and if I’m really lucky, maybe I’ll help broaden my readers’ horizon. 

This time, the subject is Leos Carax’s 2012 masterpiece, Holy Motors. 

New column + Patreon updates

Hello! With my erratic release schedule, you might not be wondering why I didn't post a movie review this week, but what you might not know is that I actually did write an article for this blog. It's the premiere of a new series which I've begun called Have you seen..., in which I recommend and analyze movies which are obscure, overlooked, or underestimated yet interesting enough to deserve more attention than they get. The series will follow a set formula, including a brief comment on my own opinion, a paragraph of plot synopsis, a brief description of who worked on the film, and then the lengthier explanation of why the film is worth watching, including specific sub-headers for themes and style.

The first entry, on Holy Motors, will be publicly uploaded in two weeks, but you can read it right now by pledging $2 or more to my Patreon, which can be found at this link. On Friday 16, 2018, that article will be posted to this blog. If you pledge $20 or more, you can request a movie for me to cover in that column!

For the short term, this will mostly be replacing my regular film reviews, but significant enough movies (and TV shows!) might still receive less formal reviews under the header My thoughts on..., and may or may not receive a number score according to my recently-published scoring guide.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading my blog for all these years, and thank you also to those of you who have just started reading it recently! I'm very excited to be exploring new forms of content, and I hope to keep writing content which is interesting to all of you.

Edit 10/11/2018: 

Two weeks was probably too long, so Patreon-locked content can now be found one week early for patrons. I'm also interested in incorporating a section on trigger warnings in each Have you seen... entry, which you can see in a fairly primitive form on the Tangerine article currently available to $2 patrons. I intend to refine and expand upon that section in future articles. 

Movie review: "First Man"

dir. by Damien Chazelle
written by Josh Singer
Oscar-bait biopics are one of those genres where technical execution is everything. Films like this are, by their very nature, contrived to exhibit performances, and more often than not tend to place their emphasis on time-tested emotional beats rather than any sort of more experimental approach. The mainstream biopic is inherently pulled between ambition and pandering: it needs to appeal to a wide audience, but it also needs to live up to its subject's legacy. Biopics often contain significant artistic accomplishments, but almost always within the confines of the genre's cliches and formulae.

First Man, which combines that with the longstanding tradition of expensive Hollywood space movies, is a perfect example of that. It's in many ways a familiar story, hitting on cliched emotional beats regarding family and grief, but it's well-paced and well-acted, especially from The Crown's Claire Foy, who gives depth to Janet Armstrong despite having little support from the script. Also present is the superstar powerhouse that is Ryan Gosling, here providing a somewhat more grounded performance than his usual persona, and the established directorial talents of Damien Chazelle, who turns each shuttle launch into a sort of horror movie without abandoning the requisite sense of wonder. As familiar as it can be, First Man is an example of how satisfying this genre can be when it works.

Scoring guide

Number scores are probably the least important part of my reviews, but I feel they serve an important purpose. Whereas the text explains my most relevant thoughts towards a film or show's qualities, the number score summarizes my personal reaction, and therefore puts all of the text in context. It serves, therefore, as something of a more direct recommendation. However, they've often been misinterpreted, so here I'll briefly explain how I use number scores on this blog.

Movie review: "Mandy"

THROND'S CHOICE
directed by Panos Cosmatos
written by Panos Cosmatos, Aaron Stewart-Ahn

For several years now, Nicolas Cage has been largely banished from mainstream cinema. Since 2013's Joe and excepting the occasional Paul Schrader joint, the Oscar-winning, internet-beloved actor has been largely relegated to direct-to-video dreck, and low-budget trifles. Recently, however, that's begun to change, with Mom and Dad receiving a cult following out of TIFF 2017, and Teen Titans Go! To the Movies casting him as none other than Superman himself.

But neither of those movies has accumulated as much momentum as Mandy, Panos Cosmatos's mesmerizing, intensely stylized, frequently absurd evocation of both B-movie pulp and prog-rock grandiosity. Cosmatos blends self-serious, droning aesthetic experimentation with pandering machismo, creating a hallucinatory, genuinely transporting landscape all in the service of watching Nic Cage kill biker lizardmen and druggie cultists. This film's perverse blend of highbrow stylings and lowbrow content marks it as perfect cult film material.

Movie review: "Searching"

dir. by Aneesh Chaganty
written by Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian

In 2015, a small film called Unfriended caught the public's eye through its unconventional approach to horror. This was a film set entirely on a laptop screen, and while reactions were mixed, the film was successful enough to warrant a sequel this past July. It remains a novel gimmick, and one which resonates with modern anxieties about technology. Aneesh Chaganty's Searching takes the same approach to a straightforward mystery thriller, and it's such an obvious fit that one wonders why it hasn't already been milked to death.

Searching is certainly a novel and clever approach to mystery storytelling, but it's also one which finds the thematic hooks such an approach begs for and exploits them for all they're worth. By the end, the film has become a character study, not of its missing subject but of the protagonist who is doing the searching. Its approach is imperfect, but the film smartly reminds us of how the internet allows us to develop dual identities, and it also reminds us of how discovery can reveal as much about ourselves as what we're discovering.

Movie review: "Mile 22"

directed by Peter Berg
written by Lea Carpenter

For years now, director Peter Berg has collaborated with Mark Wahlberg on dramas about American tragedies. Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, and Patriots Day all took real-world events as their subject matter, with varied but generally positive critical reactions and widespread popularity. Clearly, Berg and Wahlberg have a comfortable relationship, so although the former previously failed to craft a successful summer blockbuster with 2012's Battleship, a new action film from the duo still had potential, especially given Wahlberg's continued box office success.

However, Mile 22 suggests that Berg should have stuck with what was working, as he struggles to find a story compelling enough to compensate for the lack of real-world inspiration. More importantly, the film features some shockingly bad editing, and lacks even a single visually coherent action scene, instead waiting not even a second between cuts. The basic responsibility of any action movie is to ensure the audience can follow the action, and in that sense, Mile 22 is perversely inept. Considering that fundamental failure, it hardly even matters that the film also has an unlikeable protagonist and terrible dialogue. All anyone wants from an action movie is clear, comprehensible action, and this film can't even deliver that.

Movie review: "Crazy Rich Asians"

dir. by Jon M. Chu
written by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim
A lot of the conversation around Crazy Rich Asians surrounds its cast, which is comprised almost exclusively of Asian actors. And indeed, this kind of representation is rare enough that it's worth commemorating, as Asians are so often underrepresented on the silver screen. I'm not qualified to fully discuss the significance of this film's casting, but I can say that it's a very funny, well-executed rom-com which, while covering a lot of familiar territory, finds some strong emotional grounding for its luxurious aesthetic, finding pathos through the specificity of the upper-class Asian experience.

Crazy Rich Asians never really transcends itself or steps out of the predictable, but its all-out charm offensive is irresistible, even in spite of some clunkier moments.  Films like this show Hollywood discovering that shifting the cultural context can give a fresh twist to its usual formulas, and this particular context provides two additional benefits: aside from the aforementioned Asian representation, it also gives the film an excuse to wallow in luxury porn and travelogue-style montages. All of that could have overwhelmed the film, but the story at its core is strong enough to overcome and even complement all those expensive trappings.

Movie review: "BlacKkKlansman"

THROND'S CHOICE
dir. by Spike Lee
written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmot, and Spike Lee

For a good while now, Spike Lee has balanced his for-hire work with much more idiosyncratic projects, every Oldboy remake or NBA 2K story mode balanced with oddities like a Chicago-set adaptation of an ancient Greek play, or a story about a man cursed with a thirst for blood. Given that recent history, BlacKkKlansman is one of his more straightforward premises, a biopic based on a particularly strange piece of history, with a lot of work already done by the premise. On the other hand, the film comes as not only Lee's first Palme d'Or competitor since 1991's Jungle Fever, but also as the winner of the second-place Grand Prix at that same festival.

Indeed, it's the relative accessibility of the film which is its greatest strength. Here, Lee has crafted a funny, tense crowd-pleaser while intertwining pointed social commentary into the humour and narrative, and the result is a film which is equally thoughtful and entertaining. The film is professional and straightforward without being mindless, and at the same time it's intelligent and righteous without being self-indulgent... well, mostly. Come for the crazy premise, stay for the sharp critique of American institutional racism.

Movie review: "Incredibles 2"

THROND'S CHOICE
dir. and written by Brad Bird
Going into the long-awaited sequel to The Incredibles, I had some idea what to expect: fun action scenes, a funny script, and quirky family dynamics with a superhero flavour. The first Incredibles, released over 10 years ago now, is one of Pixar's best films, an exciting, funny, and inventive take on the superhero genre which remains delightful and refreshing even as its graphics have aged. Incredibles 2 is many of those things, and retains the humorous family dynamics and the exciting, creative setpieces, albeit with a somewhat darker tone in places. This is still a film which takes advantage of it superheroes' abilities far better than most films in the genre, and it's still refreshing to see superheroes placed in this context.

The difference is that Incredibles 2 is weirdly overstuffed and idea-driven, juggling at least three main thematic threads which it adheres very closely to, even stating in blunt dialogue on more than one occasion. These three main threads are disparate enough that they directly compete with one another whenever they come into contact, and none is quite as fleshed out as they could have been, but what's particularly commendable about this movie is that it weaves these ideas into the story in intriguing and often hilarious ways, very rarely feeling like it stops dead to sermonize. If recent Pixar sequels like Finding Dory have felt too similar to their predecessors, Incredibles 2 stands out by doing something different.

Movie review: "Solo: A Star Wars Story"

dir. by Ron Howard
writ. by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan
One of the key themes of December's Star Wars: The Last Jedi was that obsessing over the past is futile, and yet, Disney has seen fit to fill the gaps in its yearly release schedule not with intriguing new stories from disparate corners of the galaxy, but with yet more prequels which tell stories we already know about. Solo: A Star Wars Story, despite having its fair share of new characters, is a worse offender than Rogue One, as it insistently strings together explanations for nearly every aspect of Han Solo's persona in the original trilogy, while including at least a minor reference to every single piece of backstory which had been mentioned in those original movies.

That doesn't leave Solo with much room to take significant risks within its own story, so thankfully it instead takes on an upbeat tone and a breezy pace, diverging from grim foreboding of Rogue One in favour of a lightweight caper, albeit at the expense of the novelty and unique style of the earlier film. But if Solo contains few of Rogue One's strengths, it also fixes its primary weakness with a far more memorable cast of characters, and the action at the very least remains imaginative and exciting even if it's far less stylish than other recent Star Wars entries. Solo is the most disposable of the recent Star Wars films, but as a fluffy summer blockbuster, it is more than satisfactory.

Movie review: "Hereditary"

THROND'S CHOICE
written and directed by Ari Aster
I'm not very well versed in the horror genre, but when I do watch horror films, I tend to prefer them to be on the artsy side. Great films like The Babadook and The Witch have been major highlights of their respective years, and the latter established distribution company A24 as a major purveyor of weird, artsy horror films, with a similarly harrowing release in last year's It Comes at Night cementing this reputation. Even more than the aforementioned films, however, Ari Aster's Sundance hit Hereditary seems tailor-made to alienate mainstream audiences, an exquisite slow burn which only explodes very late into its running time.

It's peculiar, then, that what holds Hereditary back from greatness is that it's not weird enough. While certain themes are carried through into the horror elements, others actively compete with them, resulting in the curious effect that the film becomes less moving as it gets scarier. Approximately half of Hereditary is a powerful meditation on grief and guilt, while the other half is a sharp, imaginative modern horror feature. But despite the latter half gaining much of its effectiveness from the former, the actual imagery offered here has very little to do with the psychological depth which the film is so successful in establishing. But even with that disconnect, it's hard to resist a movie which is this accomplished on a scene-to-scene basis.

Movie review: "Deadpool 2"

directed by David Leitch
written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds
When the first Deadpool movie released in 2016, it felt like a trial run. With obvious budgetary constraints and a leaden origin story to contend with, the film was simply nowhere near as subversive as it occasionally presented itself to be. Nonetheless, that movie was a massive hit, proving the ability of R-rated superhero movies to succeed commercially, paving the way for the likes of 2017's excellent Logan as well as a much higher budget for its own inevitable sequel.

That higher budget was the first sign of hope for Deadpool 2, promising an improvement over the first film's tepid, sluggish action scenes. Adding to this was the recruitment of Atomic Blonde director David Leitch, a director already noted for his skill with charismatic performances and stylish fight scenes. Both of those make this sequel a more entertaining film than its predecessor, but the increased energy of the action and spectacle have come with a stronger, denser script from the writing team, whose continued reliance on pop culture references is offset by a much greater level of both wit and absurdity, as well as a significantly less intrusive plot which makes for a still somewhat uneven but altogether highly enjoyable action-comedy.

Movie review: "Avengers: Infinity War"

dir. by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo
written by Chrisopher Markus and Stephen McFeely
I will confess to having a soft spot for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I enjoy the vast majority of the films in the series, and in particular I've highly praised every entry from the past two years, excepting Thor: Ragnarok, which I didn't review. But my praise tends to be focused on how these films find their own distinctive identities, with clear thematic concerns, strong character arcs, and to an extent even different styles. The upcoming Avengers film worried me, because I still remembered the last one, an enjoyable but rough, overstuffed, and somewhat predictable behemoth which was too massive for its own good.

Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of 10 years of movies, and it certainly feels like a product designed to pay off such an expansive array of content. With its absurd bloat and deeply fragmented narrative, this at times doesn't even feel like a proper film, with its character arcs given zero space to breathe where they exist at all. And yet, Infinity War is at least satisfying on its own terms, as a series of comedic, dramatic, and action beats carefully designed to appeal to the series' immense fanbase. It's a brisk 2.5 hours, and there's an undeniable appeal in the margins, but with this one you will need to bring your investment in with you.

What I saw at the 2018 Calgary Underground Film Festival: Part 2

And now, what I saw on the weekend. Find part 1 here.

What I saw at the 2018 Calgary Underground Film Festival: Part 1

April's Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) is much more genre-oriented than the larger September festival, and in turn also has fewer showings on fewer screens. As a result, there were not nearly as many significant festival hits, although there were a handful of major headliners. This year, I went as far as to buy the Festival Pass, which allowed me to see a wide range of movies, including some minor local pictures. Here, I will quickly discuss the films I saw, starting with the six I viewed on weekdays.

Capsule reviews: March 2018

Republished Letterboxd capsules I wrote in March 2018. 

Movie review: "Thoroughbreds"

THROND'S CHOICE
dir./writ. by Corey Finley
Feature film debuts are a hard business. Acclimatizing to hour-plus filmmaking can be a hard process for many filmmakers, and while some directors like Jordan Peele hit the ground running, others take a bit longer to find their footing. Corey Finley, not unlike Peele, has prior experience in another medium, in this case theatre, and this goes some distance to explaining the unpredictability and novelty of Thoroughbreds, his first work as a filmmaker. The film is a showy exercise, heavy on concept and light on thematic heft, but Finley's writing talent shines through in the film's tightly-wound thrills and razor-sharp dark humour.

What makes Finley's debut so astonishing, though, is that, despite never making a film before, he has matched his exciting narrative with a strong formal style. So many first-time filmmakers can only dream of making something this confident and distinct, and yet Finley seems as comfortable with the form as if he had been making movies for years, merging his great script with an off-kilter, unnerving aesthetic which colours even the most mundane of events. So sharp is his formal control that it elaborates and elevates the already exhilarating content of his script, and if this film is any indication, Finley should find cinema a good fit for his talents.

Movie review: "Mute"

dir. by Duncan Jones
written by Michael Robert Johnson and Duncan Jones
Duncan Jones has, allegedly, been trying to get Mute made for some decade and a half. Presented as a sequel of sorts to his excellent 2009 sci-fi film Moon, this new film represents Jones's return to science fiction after the critical failure of his video game adaptation Warcraft. Given the pedigree of Jones's previous work, it's not hard to expect that this would show him regaining his footing after that brief stumble, but it's also a relatively safe career move. That it was Netflix who ultimately distributed it could indicate that it was too challenging for the traditional studios, but it could also simply indicate that the project wasn't coming together.

Netflix's willingness to let filmmakers do whatever they like allows for ambitious projects to gain a mainstream pedigree, but it also means they have a low standard of quality. In Jones's case, there's a reason the major studios wouldn't touch this: if Mute is a passion project, it's hard to see where the passion is directed, as this is a droning, persistently generic neo-noir project, and while it's admirably committed to its scattershot ideas, those ideas are overwhelmingly derivative, gracelessly grafting a Blade Runner ripoff aesthetic to a tediously creaky mystery. The downfall of Netflix's approach, it would appear, is that there's nobody to tell a filmmaker when their efforts just aren't working.

Capsule reviews: February 2018

Not everything I write winds up on this blog. Here are a few quick opinions which I published on Letterboxd in February 2018.

Movie review: "Annihilation"

writ. and dir. by Alex Garland

Horror and science fiction are both presently enjoying modest renaissance periods. For horror films, the likes of It Follows and The Witch provide clever twists on common horror motifs, whereas recent sci-fi marvels like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 use their imaginative worlds to tell very human stories and explore fascinating philosophical concepts. Writer-director Alex Garland was at the forefront of the latter wave with his 2015 feature Ex Machina, a nebulous yet fascinating bit of speculative fiction which placed as much weight on the personalities of its leads as on the technology of its core. That film ultimately devolved into a deranged slasher film, high-energy but bland and comically overheated, but its questions lingered in the mind.

With his new film, an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, Garland has mixed the thoughtful science fiction of his prior film with foreboding tension and intelligent scares, finding synthesis between these two reemerging genres. However, this new film proves even more nebulous, and despite now having popular source material to work with, his intellectual and pulp impulses continue to be at odds with each other, and while the latter is as sharp as it's ever been, the former drowns in a cliched, expository script, where an actual human core to the story has been sacrificed in favour of imaginative digital effects. Like fellow writer-turned-director Taylor Sheridan's Wind River, Annhilation is an extremely taut demonstration of Garland's astonishing formal skill, and yet it's the thing he made his name on which falters. 

As a slow, tense genre movie with strong world building, however? It's not half bad!

Movie review: "Black Panther"

THROND'S CHOICE
dir by Ryan Coolger
writ. by Ryan Coolger and Joe Robert Cole
It's widely acknowledged by now that the post-Iron Man superhero genre has been overwhelmingly dominated by stories about good super-powered white men defeating sinister villains and scary monsters. The current crop of Marvel movies so frequently rely on such traditional narratives that they've come under wide criticism for it, and while movies like Doctor Strange and Thor: Ragnarok added tweaks to the films' visual styles, they're nonetheless cut from the same template. It works, but it's been working for a full decade at this point, and understandably some people are starting to get tired of it. Black Panther could have been an unholy disaster, and it still would have stood out not only for swapping out the skin colour and cultural background of its cast, but also for making tweaks to these movies' expected plot structure.

However, what Marvel hasn't gotten quite enough credit for lately is how they've attempted to infuse many of their recent films with a greater degree of introspection. What they dub "Phase 3" started with the genuinely thoughtful Captain America: Civil War, a film in which the primary conflict didn't even have a proper villain, and which seemed surprisingly ambivalent about the fundamental tropes of its own genre. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 tied all of its characters back into a nuanced theme about finding one's family, and Spider-Man: Homecoming featured subtext about wealth and privilege in both the genre and in modern America. Black Panther, then, didn't come out of nowhere, but while it's more talky and heavy than much of Marvel's usually buoyant catalogue, it's also the studio's most dramatically compelling and thematically committed film to date, and generally its best since Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Best Picture 2017: Oscar Nominees Ranked

The Best Picture category has a pretty solid crop this year, with even the most polarizing of the lot enjoying no shortage of popularity. Of course, there's some prime targets for backlash, but there's nothing like American Sniper this year, let alone something along the lines of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Last year, I missed several of the nominees, but this time around I've managed to see everything, at least in the running for the top award. Here is how I would personally rank them:

Capsule reviews: January 2018

Not all of my writing makes it to the blog. If you've found my Letterboxd account, you'll also know that I often write quick, relatively informal paragraphs on other films which I have seen. January was a particularly busy month, given the impending deadline of my Top 10 List, so in that month I saw a sizeable number of well-liked movies of 2017. Starting this year, I am going to publish these shorter reviews on here in monthly bursts. Here is everything I didn't give a full review in January of 2018:

Movie review: "Paddington 2"

THROND'S CHOICE
dir. by Paul King
writ. by Paul King & Simon Farnaby
2015's Paddington was an unexpected delight, a sweet and funny kids' movie which did justice to its source material with a warm and inviting tone which gave it broad family appeal despite being clearly geared at a younger demographic. Especially when so much family fare can be shrill and overly self-aware. the simple charms and Wes Anderson-inspired visuals of Paddington were refreshing, even with all of its broad slapstick.

Like its predecessor, Paddington 2 has arrived in North American cinemas riding a tidal wave of good news from its original United Kingdom release, and also like its predecessor, that praise is warranted. But whereas the original film was merely sweet and endearing, this sequel is a nonstop delight, tightening up the prior film's slapstick while doubling down on its heartwarming sweetness, making for a truly joyous example of pure cinematic pleasure. Paddington 2 is absolutely brilliant, and that makes its American dump release in January all the more criminal.

My Top 10 Favourite Films of 2017

In many ways, 2017 was a year of regeneration for popular cinema. Despite the continuing blight of forced franchise-building and the existence of The Emoji Movie, there was also a shocking outpour of artistry in studio tentpoles: Get Out, Logan, Wonder Woman, Baby Driver, War for the Planet of the Apes, Dunkirk, Blade Runner 2049, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, among others, all provided the year with a ceaseless procession of ambitious and intelligent blockbusters, and Netflix provided a flawed but ambitious and well-crafted alternative in Okja, which has all the excitement and visual prowess of a studio tentpole while also packing much more of a personal vision. In an era where so many alternatives to the inconvenient and expensive world of cinema entertainment exist, studios saw losses on many pictures, but where the product delivered, audiences showed up. In that sense as well as many others (most notably the #TimesUp movement), this was also a year of upheaval. For the industry, there's work to be done, and lessons to be learned, but for moviegoers, there was a wealth of riches to experience. Here, from A to Z, are my ten favourites of this lot.

Movie review: "The Post"

dir. by Steven Spielberg
written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer
Uniting Steven Speilberg with two of Hollywood's finest actors and a timely script, The Post seems like a surefire recipe for awards success. It's a recipe which on the surface seems foolproof: a major event from American history, milked for all of its contemporary relevance, perfectly poised for great actors to do their thing, all wrapped up with direction from one of the greatest filmmakers currently working. While such a perfect formula may bring the accusation of Oscar bait, that doesn't necessarily mean the film isn't worthwhile: that a premise is suspiciously timely doesn't make it less powerful, and that the performances are so heavily emphasized doesn't diminish their excellence.

But there's only so much that great actors and a great director can do, and with The Post, they're given the tough job of elevating a script which consists largely of a constant stream of exposition, with plot detail after plot detail explained to the audience and personal stakes which strain against that plot for even the faintest hint of emotional resonance. The film's politics are certainly admirable, and Spielberg's mastery of tone and tension elevates the whole affair, but it's only in the all-too-rare moments where the film shuts up for a moment that it finally gains the tension which this story so desperately needs.

Movie review: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

THROND'S CHOICE
dir. and written by Rian Johnson
Star Wars has been successful for 40 years. It's a testament to the strength of this franchise that it's never fallen from the popular consciousness, but it's also a testament to the sheer force of marketing which has always surrounded these films. Any franchise as successful as this risks falling victim to complacency, delivering exactly what its fans expect for fear of alienating them, and while The Force Awakens gloriously tip-toed the line between paying tribute to all that came before it while still providing a new, exciting future for this universe, its deviations from series formula were related to theme and character, whereas its plot structure remained similar to the the original film from 1977, albeit purposefully so.

The Last Jedi matches its predecessor for thematic impact, fascinating characters, and astonishing action scenes, but it adds an almost total refusal to give in to fan expectations, and this is what makes it a more challenging and ultimately superior movie. There's nothing predictable about this latest Star Wars, which renders it ultimately more mysterious than this franchise has been in ages, and it benefits further from the considerable skill of director Rian Johnson, who is among the greatest visual stylists to ever operate on this universe. It's a long, often grim, at times even surprisingly talky, and yet it's also relentlessly gripping, punctured by strong comedic beats and some of the greatest action scenes the series has ever seen. Despite all of its idiosyncrasy, this is unmistakably Star Wars at its very finest.