The Favourite (2018) Review

Title: The Favourite
Year: 2018
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Country: US
Language: English

The 2019 Academy Awards are coming up and Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite is up for a great amount of Oscars. I predict it will win "Best Picture", "Best Directing", "Best Production Design", "Best Cinematography", "Best Original Screenplay", "Best Costume Design" and Olivia Colman will win "Best Actress"  for her role as Queen Anne. The film really is as good as I will make it out to be. 

In early 18th century England, a frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne and her close friend, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) , governs the country in her stead. When a new servant, Abigail (Emma Stone), arrives, her charm endears her to Anne.

The onscreen mental catfight between two important women, one already in aged in her role and another up and coming,  reminds me of Joseph Mankiewic's All About Eve (1950). Indeed that picture was up for many of the same awards. The Favourite puts three powerful women at the center of its costume drama, unfolding as a political-erotic triangle in which two parties compete for the affections of a third. This darkly comic situation gives way to a tragic and complex portrait of a time period that been left in the past and is usually misrepresented in modern pictures. 

Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan shoot in natural light, so England’s overcast skies illuminate massive drawing rooms with gray highlights coming in from the windows, while dark evening scenes burn orange by the fire of candlelight. This use of lighting, combined with the camera's cold distance, create a great atmosphere of dread and detatchement. Ryan's cinematic touch allows the external to reflect the internal

Great cinematography is enriched with great writing and even better acting. Though Supporting Actress may go to a well deserved performance in Roma, Coleman does a tremendous job at portraying the grotesque caricature an ailing queen. Surely, this is one of the best films of 2018. 

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) Review

Title: Age of Ultron
Year: 2015
Director: Joss Whedon
Country: US
Language: English

By the time Avengers: Age of Ultron hit theatres the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in  Phase 3 and had already produced at least three critical hits; Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. With Age of Ultron Joss Whedon was tasked with re-creating the success of the first Avengers and, well, I shall review if he succeeded. 

When Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) try to jump-start a dormant peacekeeping program called Ultron, things go horribly wrong and it's up to Earth's mightiest heroes to stop the villainous Ultron (James Spader) from enacting his terrible plan.

Darker in theme and content than its predecessor, Age of Ultron, though not as highly regarded by fan-boys, is the better picture when compared to the first Avengers venture. Not completely full of fight scenes, Whedon uses the film's physical downtime to establich enriching character arcs that will improve each character's overall cinematic story. From here on there isn't a bad Marvel film and that's due to the foundation Ultron lays.

The destructive finale comes with great purpose and passionate backing, The scope of physical devastation is accompanied by an equal force of emotional devastation. With Age of Ultron Joss Whedon introduces us to characters that prove to equal Captain America & Ironman in importance to the story. While Avengers felt like an Ironman movie w/ guests, this film feels like an ensemble of important characters. 

Age of Ultron is all about fleshing out characters and bringing great importance to their wants & needs, Finally Thor (Chris Hemsworth) feels like an actual person rather than a dumb meathead. Now Ultron isn't perfect, the villain's comedy is a bit off-putting and he doesn't feel as scary as Thanos (Josh Brolin) in Infinity War. His goal is also a bit murky, whereas Thanos proudly announced it. Ultron doesn't feel like a real threat to the Avengers. Despite this, I did enjoy Age of Ultron due to its world building. 

Chained Girls (1965) Review

Title: Chained Girls 
Year: 1965
Director:  Jospeh P. Mawra
Country: US
Language: English

Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive) is a strange man with an offbeat taste for eccentric pictures that have long been forgotten. With his website (https://www.bynwr.com) he presents "an unadulterated expressway of the arts", cinematic revivals of lost pictures that, thanks to him and his restoration partners, can be seen with astonishing quality. I've enjoyed House on Bare Mountain, Wild Guitar and now Chained Girls. 

This exploitation classic purports to expose the secrets of the 1960s lesbian underworld.

"Only through understanding the facts, can we keep Lesbianism from becoming a serious social problem." Mocking public service movies like Reefer Madness (1936), Chained Girls can be seen as a mockumentary that keeps us laughing with ridiculous "facts" like 33% of single female college graduates are lesbians!  and Marriages are not uncommon among lesbians. How were they "not uncommon" decades before lesbian marriage was even legal?

One of the ways pre-hippy 60's  authors and filmmakers  avoided obscenity charges when dealing with homosexual subject matter was to smear their exploration of sexual deviance in "scientific" terms. Chained Girls writer-director Joseph Mawra uses this tactic, and thus gets away with making a picture that serves as part pornography. The film-maker was able to get away with gratuitous shots of topless women rolling around on top of each other, because the censors were truely fooled into thinking this really was "educational". 

Chained Girls is a trashy film that tells us a lot about society at the time. Some Americans were really this paranoid about gay culture and thought, regardless of nudity, the "truth" had to be told. Some of America were perverts desperate to see half-naked women onscreen & some Americans wanted a laugh at the theatre. This film appeals to everyone! 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) Review

Title: The Winter Soldier
Year: 2014
Director(s): Russo Brothers
Country: US
Language: English

Aside from Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was terrible. Phase Two started off slow with bad sequels to Thor and Ironman, but picked up speed with great velocity due to The Winter Soldier. This is the turning point of the Marvel movies; where they stopped being bland and started being bold. 

As Steve Rogers struggles to embrace his role in the modern world, he teams up with a fellow Avenger and S.H.I.E.L.D agent, Black Widow, to battle a new threat from history: an assassin known as the Winter Soldier.

THANK GOD The Winter Soldier didn't go the Thor route of the idiotic "fish out of water" lead character. "What is this? and this!? What!?" Steve Rogers adapts to waking up 60 years in the future, but it's more of a sombre feeling, due to having lost so many friends due to time, rather than "A smartphone!? You mean I can take a picture AND make a call?" It avoids ALL the "character wakes up in a different time" cliches and I love the screenwriters, directors, everyone involved for it. Any comedic moment is small and overshadowed by the more gradiose dramatic moments.

This time The Winter Soldier is not a nostalgic war yarn, but an action spy thriller. Rogers is a “freedom” preaching patriot in a cynical world where—in the age of information, digital footprints, and satellite tracking—freedoms are sacrificed in the name of security. The idealistic "right thing to do" hero is conflicted in a world so full of grey areas. It's nice to see that the central conflict - albeit there are a lot of baddies and action scenes- is an inner conflic regarding ideaology and ethics. 

Though it isn't as entertaining as The First Avenger (2011) and I'll admit I don't like it as much, The Winter Soldier is a step forward in the action spy thriller genre. The audience is far more invensted on an emotional level in this sequel and maybe more than any other Marvel movie before or since. I highly recommend it! 

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) Review

Title: Captain America
Year: 2011
Director: Joe Johnston
Country: US
Language: English

To be blunt, I hated Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Incredible Hulk (2008) was a bore, Ironman I & II were forgetful, Thor's "fish out of water" theme was cringeworthy and The Avengers was a let-down even with my incredibly low expectations. I pushed off the Captain America movies until, well, until I watched everything else. I was prepared for the worst, but was pleasantly surprised. 

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a rejected military soldier transforms into Captain America after taking a dose of a "Super-Soldier serum". But being Captain America comes at a price as he attempts to take down a war monger and a terrorist organization.

Director Joe Johnston and production designer Rick Heinrichs give us a wonderful throwback to WWII yarns with nazi occultists. It's Raiders of the Lost Ark for a new generation. Johnston’s eye for the era’s romantic wartime iconography steal the show in early scenes and the filmmakers have great fun rewriting history with futuristic gadgets and highly stylized vehicles, all with past-meets-future touches, 

Almost entirely a period piece, Captain America is a superior superhero movie because it leans on its strong character and mesmerizing setting, rather than purely being entrenched in action for the sake of action. This is the first phase one MCU film that feels like its own entity rather than a build-up for the eventual (dissapointing) Avengers flick. 

I was never a huge fan of Captain America, but I was enchanted by this picture as I imagine most who saw this were. Its got a nostalgic charm that is rarely seen in action movies like this. I couldn't wait to see the sequel The Winter Soldier. 

10 Favourite Films of 2018

1. Death of Stalin

Stalin Dies. Russia goes into manic frenzy. 

2. They Shall Not Grow Old 

Peter Jackson's restoration of WWI footage

3. Eighth Grade

A generation Z's eighth grade experience

4. Zama

A spanish officer in the 17th Century awaits his transfer to Buenos Airies

5. Roma

The life of a maid in Mexico in the 70's

6. The Other Side of the Wind

Orson Welles' last film...finally complete!

7. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Coen Brothers' shocking Western shorts

8. Blackkklansman

Based on a true story, a black man joins the KKK

9. Let the Sunshine In

An artist looks for love. Juliet Binoche is my favourite actress. 

10. Avengers: Infinity Wars 

All your favourite heroes fight Thanos for the fate of the Universe

Eighth Grade (2018) Review

Title: Eighth Grade 
Year: 2018
Director: Bo Burnham
Country: US
Language: English

Previously cinema was filled with coming-of-age flicks that were centred around teenage boys (Submarine, Boyhood). More recently we've had hit after hit about the experiences of girls (Ladybird, Edge of Seventeen) These semi-autobiographical pictures, often directed and written by women, feel quite honest and vulnerable. Even though I'm of different gender and of different time (I was an adolescent 10+ years ago) than the character, I feel like I've had very similar experiences. 

An introverted teenage girl named Kayla (Elsie Fisher) tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth grade year before leaving to start high school.

Bo Burnham, a millenial writing about generation Z, delivers a sweet, understanding portrait of a particularly brutal and rejection-inflected period. He resists making his character too self-aware, ensuring a naturalistic performance from his lead actress Elsie Fisher. Her character’s crutch of vocalized pauses and resistance to eye contact, captures what it feels like to exist in an unwelcoming world and feel alone.

The film's balancing act of coming-of-age comedy and dramatic depiction of teenage insecurity is remarkable. The style of humour is close to cringe-comedy, but it doesn't detract from the emotional character study unfolding in front of our eyes. Older viewers might have trouble relating to  Kayla's world, as it is dominated by gadgets, but I still found it quite relatable. 

Eighth Grade is full of Universal lessons that will appeal to all ages, no matter how far from eighth grade you are. An absurd and yet heartbreaking picture, it\s one of the best from 2018 and will likely be remembered for decades to come. 

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) Review

Title: They Shall Not Grow Old
Year: 2018
Director: Peter Jackson
Country: UK
Language: English

Originally comprised of murky archive film and scratchy audio testimony, Peter Jackson uses his same Lord of the Rings technical talent to transform and restore priceless footage so audiences of 2018, one hundred years after the end of the war, can view the same events in awe and wonder. The clean-up job must have been difficult and taken countless hours, but after having seen this film I can thankfully say that the time and effort was worth it. 

This is a documentary about World War I with never-before-seen footage to commemorate the centennial of the end of the war.

Plundering the vast collection of Britain’s Imperial War Museum, Jackson has given us an artistic educational video that surpases all others. This accumulation of century-old film, previously unviewable, emerges like a phoenix via colorization and 3D conversion (among other cleanups). As a result, the footage looks like it was filmed this year. An foreign feeling war is brought incredibly close to home. I feel like I could have known- or been- one of these soldiers. 

We start the picture in a boxy black and white frame and, although very unimpressive, prepares us for our jaws to drop when we see the restoration job- which is complete with sound. No doubt inserted via sound editing long after the fact, it helps complete the picture of the war. The sounds of fight and fury create an atmosphere of dread and disease. but also courage and honor.

They Shall Not Grow Old captures what is left out of classroom textbooks; namely the daily mood and morale of the common soldier over the course of four long years. It does a wonderful job, as I've said previously, of making the war feel more personal and closer to home. A very important picture that ought to be seen by people of all ages. 

The Wild Bunch (1969) Review

Title: The Wild Bunch
Year: 1969
Director: Sam Pekinpah
Country: US
Language: English

American Director Sam Pekinpah Peckinpah once said, “The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws—everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he’s only an animal, a meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace, and love, and beauty. But don’t say to me we’re not violent. Because we are. It’s one of the greatest brainwashes of all times to say we’re not." With that philosophy in mind, he set to dispel the myths of the American West. 

In this, an aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them.

The Wild Bunch confronts its audience, knowing they've been fed lies about the frontier, and gives us an honest representation of a brutal time. Pekinpah's characters are defined by their sadness and regret, lacking any sense of decency or real code of honour. Its a far cry from the John Wayne films of the 1940's. Brutally violent, any sense of romanticism of the past is dropped and instead stark unforgiving reality fills the screen. 

A controversial film for the time, another notable theme in The Wild Bunch is the spiritual bankruptcy that shrouds each and every character. Their pointless, fruitless existence only leads to a finale that leads any surviving character completely empty. To see beyond the violence is the great challenge of The Wild Bunch, but once you do you'll find great introspection is to be had. Pekinpah not only asks you to be critical of the American West, but to be critical of what you are taught about humanity in general. 

Boy Erased (2018) Review

Title: Boy Erased
Year: 2018
Director: Joel Edgarton
Country: US
Language: English

I have often dismissed evangelical films like Heaven is for Real and The War Room as meandering melodrama that can only appeal to very weak minded people. Similar can be said for Hollywood's anti-evangelical films. Boy Erased (2018) ia a film about an issue we all know about (gay conversion therapy) and is important to know, but tells us in a weak way that doesn't quite hit its audience in the gut wrenching way it should. 

Jared, the son (Lucas Hedges) of a Baptist preacher (Russel Crowe) is forced to participate in a church-supported gay conversion program after being forcibly outed to his parents.

Joel Edgerton's direction treats the material seriously, but with an astonishing lack of subtlety regarding its symbolism. In one scene the main character walks past an advertisement on a bus stop, as he turns back the hot female model turns into a hot male model. It's like the Universe is mocking his sexuality! In another he is walking in slow motion to his school, against the flow of traffic. It's like he's "different" from everybody else. Woah. 

The dramatic points of the film never quite hit a high note. The most harrowing scene ends with Jared's mother picking him up after he calls her. The expose against the church doesn't tell us anything new and doesn't go far enough in showing the abhorrent nature of gay conversion therapy. Honestly if one were to watch Boy Erased they might think "well gay conversion is not as bad as we hear". It is as bad and its so much worse than what we see in this film. 

Boy Erased is not a good film despite having incredible performances by Lucas Hedges and Russel Crowe. Russel's body morph alone (the Gladiator guy got that fat for this role!?) deserves to earn him an oscar nomination. Ultimately this film was very dissapointing.