Murphy’s Law. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Sidney Lumet’s (Guilty As Sin, Dog Day Afternoon) Before the Devil Knows Your Dead is a good-old-fashioned robbery gone wrong that involves older brother Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman – Capote, The Savages) and younger brother Hank (Sinister, Before Sunrise) fleecing the strip-mall jewelry store of their parents Charles (Albert Finney – Erin Brokovich, Tom Jones) and Nanette (Rosemary Harris – Spider-Man, Tom and Viv) on a day where neither parent was expected to be there.
Will everybody be okay in the end? In fairytales, yes. In real life, maybe not so much. Perhaps, instead, if we work hard enough, we can maintain a life that is, at its worse, tolerable and, at its best, offers enough of a glimmer of hope to move on. First-time director Elizabeth Chomko provides the most authentic movie of 2018 with the touching and sentimental What The Had, a look at Alzheimer’s Disease/dementia (I don’t think it is ever specified) that hits you like a ton of bricks. Predecessors like the slightly overrated Still Alice, the underrated Away From Her, the brutally honest The Savages, and the Nicholas Sparks/Ryan Gosling/Rachel McAdams ‘Welcome to Hollywood’ tearjerker The Notebook. None of these four, pretty terrific, movies were able to do what What They Had was able to do…and that was to make it real for me. By the end of this movie, I was lost in all of the major characters and was on the verge of tears at the movie theatre for the first time since 2016 (keep in mind that I see over 50 movies a year in the movie theater). A movie that likely will get snubbed by all Oscar nominations, What They Had is real, brutally honest, and feels like it could be a true story about the family down the street from you, if not your family all together. Continue reading What They Had (2018)→
Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Crimson Peak) adult fairytale The Shape of Water is a movie we’ve seen so many different times in so many different forms that it’s a wonder that we’d even be willing to see it again. Starcrossed lovers find themselves in a forbidden love situation while fighting off some catastrophe, or at least societal pressures. Think Titanic, a nearly perfect movie that showcased this is in a way that will never be forgotten by any who watches it. So how does del Toro pull off this story in a completely original yet equally compelling way? Well, he does it in a way that only del Toro can do. And in doing so, he creates both the most unparalleled and also (with no disrespect to Call Me By Your Name) the most romantic movie of 2017. This movie certainly is not for everyone. If Thor: Ragnarok or Justice League is more your thing, then I’m not even sure I’d consider The Shape of Water. This is the ultimate independent movie, and if you go into this movie with the mindset that you’ll be able to enjoy the ride and not have to think, you’ll be in for a long two hours. In a year where the movies have been the worse they’ve been since I began my blog in 2010, the uniqueness of the movies (rather than the quality of them) has really defined this year. Continue reading The Shape of Water (2017)→
Jeff Nichols’s (Take Shelter, Mud) Loving is an early contender for my most disappointing movie of the year. While there are plenty of other candidates, Loving is the only one likely to be considered for Oscar contention. It likely will get a nomination for Joel Edgerton (Warrior, The Gift), who I think is one of the best actors we currently have but whose performance was not one of the five best of the year (and probably wasn’t even one of the ten best). It likely will also get a nomination for Ruth Negga (Of Mind and Music, Warcraft), whose performance was equally uncompelling. And it could earn Oscars for Nichols (who I also love, but who should get nominated as well as Best Picture). Continue reading Loving (2016)→
Almost perfect. While it may not even end up in my top five movies of the year, Tom Ford’s (A Single Man) Nocturnal Animals was almost perfect. I liked it so much in this movie, and Ford almost created a masterpiece, but the movie just felt short. An A- for sure. Maybe even an A. But it won’t be the 49th movie that I’ve seen that I would classify as an A+. Jake Gyllenhaal (Love and Other Drugs, Everest) is better than ever, and he could end up with an Oscar nomination for this film. In a perfect world, he would, especially since he very well may have been the odd man out both in 2015 (Nightcrawler) and 2016 (Southpaw) for a Best Actor Academy Award. But with four of the five slots pretty much locked up (Tom Hanks – Sully, Denzel Washington – Fences, Casey Affleck – Manchester by the Sea, Joel Edgerton (Loving), that leaves only one more nomination between Gyllenhaal, Ryan Gosling (La La Land), Warren Beatty (Rules Don’t Apply), and Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge). And, to be honest, while his performance was great, it wasn’t nearly the performance he gave in either Nightcrawleror Southpaw. Ford’s chances for a Best Directing nod look even dimmer, and an impressive performance by Amy Adams (The Fighter, American Hustle) may be completely overlooked because she will likely receive a nomination (and may even be the frontrunner) for Arrival, a movie that was released just a week before Nocturnal Animals. Continue reading Nocturnal Animals (2016)→
Murphy’s Law. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.