“The rush of battle is a potent and almost lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” – Chris Hedges, author of War Is A Force that Gives Us Meaning.
2009’s The Hurt Locker is one of the finest movies ever. It was utterly gripping in its year of release and is a movie that will remain relevant until the end of time. It was monumental that director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Zero Dark Thirty) became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director and the first woman to direct a Best Picture of the Year. It only took 80 years. Just as impressive, and a significant credit goes to Bigelow, was the breakout performance for two future Hollywood A-listers in Jeremy Renner (The Town, Wind River) and Anthony Mackie (The Adjustment Bureau, Triple 9). Ironically, both have landed themselves as Avengers characters, something I will touch on later in this review. There have been many excellent movies about the war in Iraq (Stop-Loss, The Green Zone, The Messenger, Grace Is Gone, Lions for Lambs, In the Valley of Elah, Jarhead), The Hurt Locker is second, falling just behind Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. And it’s close. Each is a film that should receive multiple views. Each had a lead that hit his performance entirely out of the park, had incredible direction, and had a chilling score that could be listened to on a quiet night on the couch at home. It is, without a doubt, a movie that should be viewed by anyone who enjoys/appreciates war movies.
As my friend Tom would say, directing a Mission Impossible movie is like a doorknob. Everyone gets a turn. This is so true, but not really in a good way. While this franchise undoubtedly improves with each new installment, this wasn’t always the case. My biggest problem with the first four movies of the franchise was how different they were from one another. I have never watched a sequel that was so inherently different in directing, storytelling, cinematography, sound, and everything else from the original than Mission Impossible 2 was from Mission Impossible. John Woo’s Hong Kong-style martial arts action flick was so far completely different from the Brian DePalma intelligent, well-crafted, big-budget adaptation of the brilliant spy television series that ran for seven years in the late 1960s that it felt like the two movies weren’t even related. I don’t necessarily oppose changing a director (though I don’t love it), but I oppose changing styles. Plenty of franchises have had different directors that have made that work (most notably the James Bond franchise, which is similar to Mission Impossible), but many more haven’t.
Blindspotting, one of the mid-summer hidden gems of a promising 2018, is a highly ambitious movie from two unknown actors who will likely be household names. It’s undoubtedly a breakout for the film’s stars, Daveed Diggs (who won a Tony for his role in Hamilton) and newcomer Rafael Casal, who also wrote the film. Adding to the virginity of this experience was first-time director Carlos Lopez Estrada. This movie has been a hit with critics and audiences alike (93% and 86% on Rotten Tomatoes). It is a good movie that teeters on the verge of being great. However, it feels like a few different films weaved into one. Worse, it goes back and forth between these different styles and intents and ultimately leaves us needing clarification as its two lead characters, but in entirely different ways. I could empathize with their situation and their confusion. What was hard to comprehend was the character’s rapidly changing thoughts, feelings, and actions. People can act differently in particular situations, but these two characters went through the complete gamut in four days. Ultimately, it left me with many questions to ponder. I also felt like I was watching a series of one-act plays rather than one cohesive movie.
What a year for Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line, Her) will have. With four movies set for release in 2018, Phoenix is an early favorite for a Best Actor Academy Award for the critically acclaimed and still under-appreciated You Were Never Really Here. Say what you want about that movie if you’ve seen it, but you can’t knock on his amazingly even performance. The highly anticipated The Sisters Brothers (fall release) has also received some early Oscar buzz. As good as he was in You Were Never Really Here and as good as he probably will be in The Sisters Brothers, his performance of the year will be as John Callahan, the quadriplegic cartoon artist in the biopic Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, a movie that many moviegoers will forget because of its title, but not because of its story or the performances of its lead. I was skeptical of the title and the trailer because you never know if a Phoenix movie will be great or terrible. But I trust director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester). I felt invested in the story and the characters. It reminded me a lot of The End of the Tour, a movie which, admittedly, I enjoyed slightly more than Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. But it had that same sort of vibe with me.
When you are the director who helped the likes of Jennifer Lawrence into stardom, you’ll garner lots of attention. But that doesn’t mean you must capitalize on this and chug out movie after movie. Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone, Down to the Bone) did not do this. Winter’s Bone, which launched Lawrence into the public eye with her first of, as of 2017, four Academy Award nominations, was released in 2010, but this is Granik’s first non-documentary film since then. And, for critics, it was worth the wait. At the time of this review, her new film Leave No Tracehas a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. And, just as a recap, Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregate of critics’ reviews. So, a 100% rating doesn’t mean a critic thinks it’s a four-star movie. It just means she gives it a favorable review. And I’ll be the first to say that if I was a Rotten Tomatoes critic, I’m uncertain if that aggregate rating would still be 100%. Ultimately, I do fall on the side of giving this film a favorable review, but it is far from a great movie. Based on the trailer, I thought I would love Leave No Trace. However, I found it to be more than just slow. It was boring. And I wanted to understand one of the two lead characters much more. There was a desire during the middle of the movie for me to learn more. Unfortunately, it never quite quenched that thirst.
“The rush of battle is a potent and almost lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” – Chris Hedges, author of War Is A Force that Gives Us Meaning.
As my friend Tom would say, directing a Mission Impossible movie is like a doorknob. Everyone gets a turn. This is so true, but not really in a good way. While this franchise undoubtedly improves with each new installment, this wasn’t always the case. My biggest problem with the first four movies of the franchise was how different they were from one another. I have never watched a sequel that was so inherently different in directing, storytelling, cinematography, sound, and everything else from the original than Mission Impossible 2 was from Mission Impossible. John Woo’s Hong Kong-style martial arts action flick was so far completely different from the Brian DePalma intelligent, well-crafted, big-budget adaptation of the brilliant spy television series that ran for seven years in the late 1960s that it felt like the two movies weren’t even related. I don’t necessarily oppose changing a director (though I don’t love it), but I oppose changing styles. Plenty of franchises have had different directors that have made that work (most notably the James Bond franchise, which is similar to Mission Impossible), but many more haven’t.
What a year for Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line, 
When you are the director who helped the likes of Jennifer Lawrence into stardom, you’ll garner lots of attention. But that doesn’t mean you must capitalize on this and chug out movie after movie. Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone, Down to the Bone) did not do this. Winter’s Bone, which launched Lawrence into the public eye with her first of, as of 2017, four Academy Award nominations, was released in 2010, but this is Granik’s first non-documentary film since then. And, for critics, it was worth the wait. At the time of this review, her new film Leave No Trace