Coma (1978)

Michael Crichton directed and adapted the screenplay from the novel by Robin Cook, so both writers involved in the project have medical degrees which works well given the subject matter. There is a conspiracy at a prestigious Boston hospital to put healthy patients into permanent medically induced comas and make it look like a bad reaction to the coma drugs, this is so that healthy organs can be harvested in an on demand black market. A&E did a mini-series adaptation of this story back in 2012 staring Lauren Ambrose and James Woods. This film stars Geneviève Bujold and Michael Douglas and I think it works better because its much tighter. This movie has a number of before-they-were-stars bit parts, including Dixie Carter, Tom Selleck and Ed Harris. Even though I already knew the basic story this was a gripping well done thriller, and the mostly realistic look into the operations of a large hospital of 40 years ago is an interesting bonus. Also staring Richard Widmark. ***1/2

Disclourse (1994)

I can't say this movie aged well, in addition to the CD-roms and the VR, Disclosure has a decidedly non #MeToo  approach to work place sexual harassment, in that Michael Douglas is the one claiming "Me Too". I suppose one can lump this together with author Michael Crichton's climate change skepticism, the man was a bit reactionary. I'm not ruling out sexual harassment of men in the work place all together, I'm sure it happens but can it possibly be as bad as what women experience? I'm more then a little skeptical, especially for back in 1994 when this movie came out. Also the person doing the sexual harassing is a 31 year old Demi Moore, this is more a fantasy then a nightmare for most men. The movies kind of plodding and late into the proceedings it is reveled that Demi's harassing is just a faint to throw Michael off the scent of the real scam, and then the movie turns into a different kind of movie all together, and I was so grateful for this that it became the most enjoyable part of the picture for me. Not one of Barry Levinson's better films. *1/2

A Perfect Murder (1998)

Were we supposed to sympathize with adulterous couple Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen, because from the start of this movie I was rooting for Michael Douglas to pull off A Perfect Murder as promised. He doesn't of course, and the twists and turns of loyalties abound in this lose update on Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, a superior film. The biggest problem I had with this movie was the lack of chemistry amongst the leads, and the lack of strong rooting interest in anybody, at least after Douglas's first variant on his scheme ends in failure. David Suchet, Hercule Poirot himself is in this, and as a police detective no less, however he is given very little to do and is almost an afterthought. This movie isn't badly put together, still I lost interest pretty quick. **

Falling Down (1993)

Certainly an interesting movie to finally see during the Trump era. Filmed in 1992 (with shooting temporarily interrupted by the L.A. Riots) but released in 1993 Falling Down is the story of a recently laid of defense worker (Michael Douglas) who snaps, abandons his car in traffic one hot summer day and walks a violent odyssey across Los Angeles to his ex-wife's house in Venice Beach and his little girls birthday party. Robert Duvall serves counterpoint as a police officer on the trail of Douglas, on of course the day of his retirement from the force.

Douglas in character made the cover of Newsweek Magazine in March of 1993 (the movie came out in February) for an article about the "angry white male". The message of the film is a little ambiguous, how much are we supposed to sympathize with lead character William Foster?  In some ways he has gotten a raw deal, but through course of the story we learn he was always a man with violent potential, who insisted on things "his way", we learn that he is at least a casual racist, but also that he is not a Nazi because he kills one in the course of the movie. Despite this moral muddle and the film at times being kind of ridicules, it was consistently entertaining, almost perfectly paced it never lost my interest. I also suspect that like Patton this is something of a Rorschach movie, the protagonists shade of hero v villain depends on what you bring to the proceedings. *** 

Roman J. Israel Esq. (2017)

I rather enjoyed Roman J. Isreal Esq. but I think I figured out what its main problem was, this should never have been a movie it should have been an eight part HBO limited series. Roman J. Israel, as portrayed by Denzel Washington is a really interesting character, and supporting characters like Carmen Ejogo's Maya Alston and Colin Farrell's George Pierce turned out to be intriguing as well, the problem was that we didn't get enough time with them. The movies pacing and structure felt off, you are half way through the film before Roman comes to his faithful decision, he then spends 40 minutes trying to justify it and 20 trying to atone for it. This is not enough time for this arc, especially when there was so much more here that could have been explored. Break it up, flesh it out, expand it over a full season, Washington defiantly could have carried it (it would be interesting to see him return to TV 30 or so years after the end of St. Elsewhere), I think it would have been more enjoyable and would have worked better.

Roman is a throw back lawyer, still stuck in his student activist days of the 1970's,and while its never directly stated, he appears to have aspergers syndrome. After the liberal lion whose law office Roman has been quietly working in back of nearly 40 years unexpectedly dies, Roman is thrown out into a different moral landscape and has to grapple with choices he hadn't been pressed with before. It is really fascinating, and deep, and literary and it should have been explored more. Like Roman in a little back office there is a lot of potential here squandered, and I'd have loved to a take a look at that alternate universe rendering of the story. Baring that however Roman J. Isreal Esq is still worth a look. ***1/2

Roma (2018)

Sad and beautiful Roma may well be the best movie of 2018. While produced for Netflix director Alfonso Cuarón was able to negotiate a limited theatrical release, which enabled the film to qualify for its 10 Oscar nominations. I was fortunate to be able to see the movie on the big screen and if you are able to that is the way I would recommend you see it. Cuarón's shots are rich and detailed and can best be appreciated in a larger format. Filmed in a crisp black and white this is a near documentary recreation of Mexico in the early 1970's. There are scenes in the film that if you had taken a frame from them, shown it to me and told me it was an award winning photograph from the era I would have believed you. There are so many moments in this film that are so beautiful and so real that you just feel transported, it's like you are actually seeing the time and place portrayed. No doubt that is in part because many of these moments are taken from the memories of director Cuarón, the film being based loosely on his childhood in the Roma section of Mexico City. The stakes here are not those we associate with the directors earlier work, it is not about junior wizards, or astronauts, or the fate of the human race, rather it is about the trials and tribulations of regular people, of family both biologically and emotionally. It is not in a hurry, it may take some patience to start with, but if you give it a chance it can be a truly moving and profound emotional journey. ****

90 Minutes in Heaven (2015)

90 Minutes in Heaven is 121 minutes long and I don't think I could call any of that time heaven. This is the story of a man named Don Piper who claimed to have spent an hour and a half in heaven after being declared dead in a car accident in January of 1989. It's a fantastic story and whether you believe it or not a movie about a man going to heaven and back should not be boring, unfortunately this one is. It's a very clinical, surprisingly unemotional movie. Don had to spend months in the hospital after his accident and a lot of this movie is about that time, I would say too much of it. I know something of the strains and stresses of a prolonged hospital stay, and while a lot of that stuff in the film felt true to me, it cinematic potential is limited. Not a lot of time is spent with the actual Heaven experience, and it is rendered very gauzily, it intrigues but never really delivers on the promise of awe.

It can be interesting to see who ends up in these Christian films, Kate Bosworth is in this as Eve Piper, Don's wife, Ms. Bosworth is married to the movies director Michael Polish of the 'The Polish Brothers' (lower rent Coen's) , the only film of there's I had seen was Northfork from 2003, which actually shares with this film religious themes and a muted tone, though it is a better movie. Hayden Christensen plays Don Piper, he's a better actor then he gets credit for, I could believe him in this, he plays a guy I suspect is nothing like Hayden Christensen, but I could buy him as a late 80's Baptist preacher and family man. There is a scattering of moments that work here but on the whole its a bore, at times oppressively so. *1/2

A Farewell to Arms (1932)

1932's A Farewell to Arms is the first film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's semi-autobiographical novel of the same title. Since pre marital sex is a major plot point this movie is very much pre-code. The film was directed by Frank Borzage, who at this point in his career had already won his two Academy Awards for best direction, in fact he won the very first Academy Award for best direction, that was for 7th Heaven in 1927. Borzage specialized in romantic and later religious themes in his movies, and his visual style was very much influenced by German directors such as F. W. Murnau, so this movie is often very visually impressive, and in fact won the cinematography Oscar that year.

Gary Cooper plays the lead Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American in the Italian ambulance corps during the first world war, he is good of course but it's his leading ladies movie. I had only ever seen Helen Hayes in film as an old woman before, she would have been 31 when they made this and quite beautiful, already a strong actress. This is a doomed romance picture, and while dated, I think the heart of it comes across. Paramount let its copyright on the thing slip through in 1960 so it is now widely available for free online, including in some very good quality prints, so worth checking out. ***1/2

Glass (2019)

The trilogy is not unbreakable, I felt split about Glass. The final chapter in the Unbreakable or Eastrail #177 trilogy, Glass has the unenviable task of being sequel to and resolution for two barely related previous movies, Unbreakable from 2000, and Split from 2016. By far the weakest of the three Glass is very much a mixed bag, there were times watching it when it was working for me and I was rather enjoying what I was seeing, and then there were times when it wasn't and I wasn't. The film too often felt forced, and while there were one or two successful misdirects, I think Shyamalan was overreaching for profundity. There are too many false endings here and while some are mildly intriguing, none are truly satisfying. I am not sure if there were too many or too few drafts.  **

Unstoppable (2010)

Denzel Washington and Chris Pine must stop a run away train, but that's not going to be easy because this films title is Unstoppable. Based loosely on a real life near railroad catastrophe from 2001, the CSX 8888 incident, Unstoppable does what it does well, it's an enjoyable but inconsequential movie that is too straight forward to require unpacking here. Tony Scott's last film. ***

Gaslight (1940)

The psychological term gasligthing which describes a form of psychological abuse in which the victim is gradually manipulated into doubting his or her own reality, originated from the 1938 play Gaslight by the author Patrick Hamilton, who is also known for his 1929 play Rope which Alfred Hitchcock made into a movie in 1948. Gaslight was turned into a celebrated film by MGM in 1944 staring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotton, and an 18 year old Angela Lansbury. That film I have found to be extremely difficult to find, and while I still intend to see it I decided to view an earlier British production from 1940 in its steed. This earlier film production of Gaslight was directed by Thorold Dickinson and stars Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard and Frank Pettingell, and its production values are decidedly less then what MGM could offer at the same period.

The story begins in London in 1865 when an elderly woman is murdered and her townhouse ransacked. The ensuing scandal results in the house remaining vacant for 20 years, until it is subdivided and a couple from Devonshire, the Mallen's move in. Paul Mallen is played by Anton Walbrook, an actor I am used to seeing play very admirable people in Powell/Pressberger films. Here Anton is a near-do-well, Paul Mallen is a foreigner who married his wife for money and is steadily manipulating her to think she is going insane, his exact reasons for doing this are reveled in the course of the film. Bella Mallen is very much a timid and emotionally receding woman of her time and class, actress Diana Wynyard certainly captures this, however she is not that interesting and lacks the charisma or star power that this part needed, something that Ingrid Bergman no doubt brought to her better known take on the role.

The central mystery is fine if not that interesting, but it is the way Paul causes Bella to doubt her own sanity which is why the story is remembered. Paul hides things from Bella and leads her to believe that she has moved the objects and forgotten that she did so. There is also of course a trick with a gaslight that aids in Bella doubting her own sanity, but how that works is a tad involved and plot centric so I won't go into detail. Frank Pettingell plays B.G. Rough, a former detective who had worked on the original murder case in the Mallen residence, and who is immediately suspicious of Paul when he first sees him. Cathleen Cordell plays the Angela Lansbury role, Nancy the maid. The beginning and end of this movie were good, I felt the middle dragged too much and I had a hard time holding interest, I look forward to see the superior version some day. **1/2

American Gangster (2007)

There are so many gangster movies that for one to be even worth seeing it has to do the genera particularly well and have something new to add. A little bit to my surprise American Gangster does both. There is this whole south east Asia angle, using military plans to smuggle heroin during the Vietnam War. There is the black angle, an African American gangster (Denzel Washington) getting the one up on the established Italian families, and they parallel his rise with that of a particularly honest (though also troubled) cop (Russell Crowe). You knows these guys and their organizations are on a collision course, and it comes in about as good a set piece action confrontation as you will find, but its what comes after that really made this movie for me, and I won't spoil it. Based on a true story. ****

Déjà Vu (2006)

Déjà Vu stars Denzel Washington as a New Orleans based ATF agent who after a terrorist attack on a ferry boat kills hundreds, is recruited by a secret government team to apprehend the perpetrator. Said team has top secret technology that allows them use wormholes to look exactly 4 days, 6 hours, 3 minutes, 45 seconds, 14.5 nanoseconds into the past. I have quite a few problems with this film, and there will be spoilers. First off I don't think the scale of the media response to the attack is depicted as big enough, though I guess one only has so much money to pay bit players to pretend to be reporters. Also that bridge near the attack scene would have quickly been shut down to traffic, if for no other reason then to prevent people from stopping on it to gawk and potentially interfere with the investigation, though again I get how shutting a major bridge down for filming would have been difficult.

So lets get into the time travel and paradox stuff, first this technology is far too sensitive to just let an unveted and unbriefed ATF agent in on it. If the government had this technology, they would train special investigators to use it, and keep it very locked up hush, hush, Washington's character gets into all this far to easily. Solving Paula Patton's death is supposed to be the key to unraveling the larger crime, but Washington falls in love with her while investigating her murder, like Dana Andrews does Gene Tierney in the classic movie Laura. As a result Washington violates protocol and endangers potentially all of existence, by using the wormhole to travel back in time. In doing so Washington is responsible for many of the clues he would later find in investigating the crime the first time, so it shouldn't be possible for him to save Paula because clearly he went back in time already and failed, otherwise he would never have found the body that prompted him to go back in time. This movies paradox is an inconsistent mess, had Washington failed in his mission at the end I actually would have liked it because then all the pieces would have fit together logically, and it would have upset conventional expectations that there must be a happy ended. However this did not happen, and I kind of hated this movie. There were clichés, there were slow stretches, and while the last third was fairly good in terms of screen action, those were the same sequences that invalidate the logic of the original set up. I'm a stickler for this kind of thing. *1/2

The Favourite (2018)

The Favorite, the latest from the idiosyncratic Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) tells the story of the jockeying for power by two cousins (Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz) in the court England's Queen Anne in the early 1700's. The film is based partly on fact, and partly on scuttlebutt, some of it dating back to Queen Anne's reign. Anne is played by Olivia Coleman and it is a great performance, she has already won the Golden Globe for this role and I think it likely she will also take home the Oscar. Anne was really a fascinating woman, after seeing the movie I did a little bit of research on her, she seems to have been mostly regarded as a monarch of good intentions, if limited ability. She had 17 pregnancies, 12 of which resulted in still birth or miscarriage, and of those who survived the oldest lived only to the age of 11, the movie has an interesting (though not historically accurate) way of conveying her grief to the audience, though doubtless this experience put a tremendous emotional strain on her. In addition Anne was not a healthily woman, dead at 49 she had periods of paralysis, and at least as portrayed in the movie may have been a manic depressive. She also may have been lesbian or bisexual, at least that is rumored, she was famously and some say suspiciously close to her childhood friend Sarah Churchill, an ancestor of Sir. Winston's.

Sarah Churchill is played by Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone plays Sarah's cousin Abigail Masham, who was form the less fiscally fortunate side of the family. At first Sarah takes Abigail into the royal residence as an act of pity, but Abigail quickly works her way into the Queens good graces and sets herself up as chief rival for the queens affections. What follows is 18th century English dynasty by way of the 1980's television series Dynasty. It can be fun to watch, but it is also weird, and by the end deeply sad. For a period film of its setting The Favourite feels remarkably contemporary, not just in subject matter, but in tone and pacing, this ain't BBC formal, it's rawer, though never feels so stylized that it takes you out of the 18th Century. Strong performances by all three leads, a darkly comic drama of great finesse, a highlight of the movie year. ****

The Bedford Incident (1965)

I recently determined that my most underrepresented year, in terms of American films seen is 1965. That is going back to at least 1945 but probably through the entirety of sound films. I had only seen eight 1965 theatrically released American films of that year, so I have set about to remedy this and get it at lest into the double digits. While casting about for what 1965 release I would watch first I was looking through an article in the New York Times about the television series The Amazing Mr. Maisel, and how actual period New York settings inspired the look of the show. One of the pictures accompanying the article was of a city street and dated 1965, on a theater marquee I could read the title The Bedford Incident and determined that would be the next movie of that vintage I would consume.

I knew very little about the movie going in, not even that it had been based on a 1963 novel of the same name. The movie starts with a helicopter delivering two passengers to a navy destroy in the North Atlantic. The passengers are the new ships doctor (Martin Balsam) and a magazine writer dropped off to do a piece on the ship (Sidney Poitier). Nowhere in the films dialogue is the fact that Poitier's Ben Munceford's being black mentioned, I don't think the part was written specifically with a black man in mind which makes the casting rather progressive, though if you think about it Poitier was probably the only Hollywood actor you could do that with, to wide acceptance, at this time.

Munceford quickly notices the odd cult of personality built around the ships Captain Eric Finlander (Richard Widmark, very good). In fact he know of the cult of personality before he came, it was part of what interested Munceford in doing the story. Finlander had been turned down for promotion to Admiral because of his publicly expressing the view that the United States should have taken a harder line in responding to the Cuban missile crises. Exiled somewhat Finlander becomes obsessive when his ship spots evidence of Soviet submarine activity in the area. He pursues the sub, Captain Ahab like, follows it doggedly, preventing it from surfacing for air, ramping up tensions in direct violation of orders. Munceford attempts to talk him down, as does Commodore Wolfgang Schrepke, a West German officer, a World War Two veteran who is onboard as a NATO observer. Their success or failure in this endeavor will determine the ultimate nature of The Bedford Incident, which I won't spoil because its worth going in not knowing how things will turn out. I was really surprised  by how good and tense this movie is, there are a lot of really good dialogue scenes in addition to the navel action. Turns out this movie was a real find, I'd happily watch it again. ***1/2

Fences (2016)

August Wilson adapted his own Pulitzer Prize winning play Fences for this film adaption. He must have completed his adaptation a long time ago because he died more then 10 years before this movie was released. The treatment opens the material up a little bit, there are a few scenes outside of the Maxon family home, and the opening shots of Troy (Denzel Washington) and Jim Bono (Stephen Henderson), garbage men working their route is incredibly open and detailed, with long visits and it feels like you are their in 1956 Pittsburg. The majority of the film is still "a bottle movie" though, it has that stage play sense of confinement, but it also has that stage play richness.

While I know the play by reputation only, man am I impressed by the content of this thing. The characters feels so real, so fleshed out and complicated, Wilson must of spent a heck of along time thinking about this piece and it really paid off. I can't remember the last time I have been so impressed by a source material I have never even seen, but you can feel it in there. At first I thought I knew the basic contours of where this story was going, but a couple of times it really upended me in unexpected ways. The cast is uniformly excellent, it made me remember just what an amazing actress Viola Davis is, and even the lesser known players like Jovan Adepo and Russell Hornsby brought a lot to their roles, even if they didn't always have much screen time.

Denzel Washington is still the star here, both in front of and behind the camera (this was his 3rd directorial effort and he is quite capable in that role). Troy Maxon is the center of this story, he is fascinating and complicated, a man very much of his time, born of the early 20th century African American experience. He is a creature of resentment, pride, appetites, deeply held feelings, he is conflicted and stubborn, a hard man, and sincere one. He would be both easy to like and difficult to love, and inspires devotion and loyalty he does not fully deserve, but that is inseparable form who he is. Washington continues to demonstrate that while he may do a lot of disposable work (I recently saw Deja Vu) he is still one of the finest actors of his generation, their is still a lot in there yet to get out. ****

Malcom X (1992)

I really had nothing but a brief, thumb nail sketch comprehension of the life of Malcom X before I saw this movie. I knew he converted to Islam while in prison, became a fiery advocate for American blacks, stepped on a lot of powerful toes with the things he said, was raciest against white, then had a change of hart and was killed. There is a lot to Malcom X's story, including two major changes to life philosophy. At over three hours running time Spike Lee's 1992 film was something of a cultural touchstone about a cultural touchstone, with Denzel Washington giving quite the performance in the lead, and a good supporting cast as well. This was probably the first major Hollywood bio-pic about a black man, at least the earliest one I can think of. Nicely budgeted and demonstrating its directors signature style, preoccupations, and directorial flourishes. A strong film on many fronts. ****

Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956)

While I have seen the 1990's and 2010's American remakes of the venerable monster franchise, my direct knowledge of the Japanese originals has mostly been limited to snippets I've seen on TV and a couple episodes of Mystery Science Theater. Amongst my movie goals for this year is to watch at least two of the Japanese Godzilla films, I thought I'd like to start at the beginning, and since the original 1954 Godzilla was not available on Netflix I opted for the English language release from two years later. Godzilla, King of the Monsters! takes the original movie, edits and dubs it, and chops in scenes of Raymond Burr as a reporter, and surrogate for American audiences. There was a time, concentrated around my middle school years when I was really into 50's sci-fi, that I think I probably would have rather liked this film, and I can see there's a good movie in there, but it really felt butchered to my current tastes. Burr is so staid and unnecessary, shoehorned in and the least interesting thing about the picture, I'd say he drags it down, but his presence, or some white presence, was doubtless seen as essential to American distrusters in the 1950's. I do want to see that original version some time, but I don't think I can recommend this version on it's merits, beyond simply checking "a classic" off your movie list. *1/2

The Mule (2018)

While driving to visit family for Thanksgiving I passed a billboard for the Clint Eastwood movie The Mule, and it occurred to me that people were driving past billboards for Clint Eastwood movies 50 years ago. This may be your last chance to see Mr. Eastwood on screen in something new, the man is 88 years old and rarely acts anymore, concentrating on directing, and he is one of the best living at it. Eastwood stars in and directs The Mule, and if it turns out to be his final screen performance it would be an appropriate note to go out on. Like The Old Man & the Gun the Robert Redford vehicle from earlier last year he has billed as his last screen appearance, The Mule is also inspired by the true story of an elderly criminal.

Based loosely on the real life Leo Sharp, Clint Eastwood plays Earl Stone, a career horticulturalist whose once thriving daylily business is destroyed by the internet. Earl's always loved to drive and when a chance to make easy money delivering a package from Texas to his native Illinois pops up he jumps at it. Not one to ask questions about a lucky break, Earl never the less quickly puts together that he is engaged in drug running, however he finds ways to compartmentalize this and continues to do it. While Earl's personal money needs are quickly meet he finds other things he can use the dough on, like helping to pay for his granddaughters wedding, or fix up his local VFW after its is damaged by fire (Earl is a proud Korean War veteran). Earl becomes an enigma to the drug cartel he works for, who can't figure out the old man who will stop to help a family on the side of the road with a flat tire, and then spend the night in his hotel room with two prostitutes. Earl was always a man who put his self first, to the determent and frustration of his family and those who loved him, so oddly the very selfish act of drug running opens unexpected opportunities to reconnect with estranged loved ones.

It's a prefect vehicle for Eastwood, he gets to be crusty on the surface but subtly revel his characters emotions below, he is a master at this. At times The Mule feels a little like two movies, contrasting Earl's adventures on the road with the work of a team of DEA agents (lead by Bradly Cooper) who you know are going to intersect with Earl eventually. However The Mule delivers everything you'd want from it, I thought it was consistently engaging, and a little to my surprise had an underlying tension throughout which made it almost a thriller. It's a master demonstrating his mastery and while on some level you may feel that you've seen this before it's still probably worth your time. ****

Man on Fire (2004)

Man on Fire does this kind of weird thing at the end where it kinda sorta wants to make you believe its based on a true story, they do an epilogue thing with captions about what happened to characters afterword's. Well it ain't true, not even as a heavily fictionalized adaption of something that is. No in fact Man on Fire is a remake, of a 1987 film of the same name staring Scott Glenn, which in turn was based on a 1980 novel by D. J. Quinnell, set in Italy and the first in a series of books about the character "Creasy" formerly of the French Foreign Legion now turned bodyguard. Apparently Tony Scott wanted to direct that original movie but he was too new to directing for the studio to entrust the project to him, so 17 years later he made his own. Perhaps the fact that this is a remake helps explain its low Rotten Tomato's score, because I thought the movie really worked as the kind of revenge action movie it is.

The stories setting has been updated from Italy to Mexico City to keep it more current, and Denzel Washington's "Creasy" is former Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance, burnt out and self hating, his soul is renewed via friendship with new bodyguarding charge, a little Dakota Fanning, but when the bad guys get her, he goes loco nuts and out for revenge with all the weaponry Christopher Walken can supply him. I suppose its nothing special, but its a well done and satisfying example of the kind of thing it is. Washington gives a better performance then the film probably deserves and has a real chemistry with Fanning, you can feel his pain when she is abducted, and that makes the subsequent busting of heads somewhat meaningful. Also this vaguely counts as exposé, because criminal justice in Mexico is really corrupt, more so even then here in the states. ***

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

When I first started to see advertising for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse I assumed it was like one of those animated made for DVD superhero movies only they pored a little more money into it and decided to throw in theaters as a cash grab. This Spider-Man movie is something more, in fact it won the Utah Film Critics Association Awards for Best Picture, Best Animated Picture, and Best Screenplay. Spider-Verse is a liberated film, fond of what came before but not beholden to it, both freer and more self aware then an MCU offering, truer to the spirit and aesthetics of comic books, smartly written for adults, visually inventive for children, a good fit for Utah. The plot concerns multiple universe iterations of Spider-Man converging on one universe as a result of inter-dimensional experiments conducted by Kingpin and Doc Ock,

Young Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), an Afro-Latino teenager recently bitten by a radioactive spider is our principle Spider-Man, while alternates include Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld), a middle aged Spider-Man (Jake Johnson), a black and white film noir Spider-Man (Nicolas Cage), and a couple of others including a cartoon pig. It's a bizarre premise, but its fun and it works. Good voice cast also includes Mahershala Ali, Zoë Kravitz, Chris Pine and Lily Tomlin as Aunt May. This Spider-Man movie at first seems like it shouldn't be much of anything but really succeeds on all fronts, and brings a freshness to one of the most overused properties of  contemporary Hollywood, this is the 9th theatrical film to feature Spider-Man this century. Stay for the post credit sequence its as weird and unexpected as what came before. ****

The Best Films of 2018 Version 1.0. Still a lot of 2018 releases to see, but I'm keeping this list to those movies I first viewed in the last calendar year, so Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse and The Mule do not appear in this ranking (otherwise they probably would).

10. Jane and Emma
9. The Death of Stalin
8. Black Panther...
7. Vox Lux
6. Won't You Be My Neighbor
5. BlacKkKlnsman
4. A Simple Favor
3. Crazy Rich Asians
2. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
1. First Reformed

The Best of 2017 Version 3.0

10. The Other Side of Hope
9. The Big Sick/ Columbus
8. Baby Driver
7. Dunkirk/ Darkest Hour
6. Call Me By Your Name
5.Get Out
4.I Tonya
3.The Florida Project
2.Wind River
1.Phantom Thread

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Mary Poppins Returns is the appropriately titled and long belated sequel to the 1964 Disney classic Mary Poppins. With almost 55 years between movies one wonders why wait so long? Well a Mary Poppins sequel has actually been in "development hell" (industry term) since the year after the first film was released. The finicky author of the Mary Poppins book series P.L. Travers retained rights to the property and throw up road blocks to production, if you've seen the movie Saving Mr. Banks you can readily imagine this. Travers died in 1996 but it took the recent box office streak of Disney remakes and reboots to get the project back off the ground. Besides if your going to wait this long you want to make sure that you do the project right. To ensure this happens, to ensure that the beloved property was honored, and practically treated as scripture, they played it really safe. However this works.

Mary Poppins Returns is not a great a movie, for one thing it spends far too much time reminding you of one that is. This I think was unavoidable, but is extra pronounced as the powers that be took the original film as template in much the same way that Star Wars: The Force Awakens shamelessly cribbed from Star Wars: A New Hope. This movie is near beat for beat an evocation of the original. The classic Sherman Brothers songs seemingly each have an analogue, parallel scenes are legion. There is a scene where the live action characters interact with animation, there is a scene and a song on a ceiling, instead of dancing chimney sweeps you have dancing lamp lighters.

The biggest contrast with the first film is that the tone is darker, though hardly unbearably so. Mary Poppins, this time played "practically perfectly" by Emily Blunt returns to 17 Cherry Tree Lane in 1935 to help a recently widowed Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw, Q in the Daniel Craig James Bond films) reconnect with his children, avert economic catastrophe, and if not so much fly a kite, at least hold a balloon. The three young kids are all fine, Emily Mortimer is cute a Jane Banks, and Lin-Manuel Miranda sings, but did not write the music, which seems like a lost opportunity, though I think the new songs are actually better then a lot of people are giving them credit for.

The movie contains some appropriate cameos from nonagenarians Angela Lansbury and Dick Van Dyke, the latter still spry. Meryl Streep is also in the movie for one musical number, she's not bad here but her casting seems odd and a little random. Perhaps the best thing about the this movie is that it looks and feels like a Disney movie from 50 years ago, a lot of attention is paid to production design, and the animation sequences look like 1960's animation sequences, not like lame reproductions, they look remarkably authentic. One thing I haven't seen commented on is that when the credits role at the end the background isn't just black, but a subtle blue and while I can't say for sure I tend to remember that being common in Disney films of that era. My biggest regret in watching this film was not watching the original film again shortly before, to get my bearings on stuff like this.

Mary Poppins Returns is a good movie, I'd say an acceptable successor but in no way an equal to the original film. If you have kids, it's probably worth taking them to see this in the theater as a memory, and even if you don't its an enjoyably retro experience. ***

Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

Dalton Trumbo is chiefly remembered as a very talented, awarded winning screenwriter who was blacklisted during Joseph McCarthy's crusade, continued to write (and win Oscars) under pseudonyms, and eventually broke the blacklist in the early 60's allowing his name to once again appear on his work. They even made a really good movie about him called Trumbo which earned star Bryan Cranston an Oscar nomination. Before all that however Dalton wrote for magazines and was a novelist in the 1930's. His 1938 novel Johnny Got His Gun won the National Book Award in 1939, it was an anti war novel, very much in sentiment with the post Great War feelings. The novel was so structurally unique, and tonally grim that adapting it to a feature film would have been basically impossible during the studio system era. More then 30 years after the novels release Trumbo would adapt and direct (his own directing credit) his own novel as a movie.

The film stars Timothy Bottoms, in his screen debut, as Joe Bonham, an 18 year old American solder in the first World War who loses all of his limbs and has his face blown off on the battlefield. Somehow Joe's body is recovered, and thinking him brain dead the military elects to keep pvt Bonham (he is so badly mangled the army is unable to identify him) alive as an experiment, to test the durability of various life support methods to aid in medical research and hopefully save more lives in the future. However the doctors are mistaken, Joe is not brain dead, in fact he is perfectly aware mentally, when not sufficiently drugged, however he has no means by which to communicate with the outside world. The scenes in the outside world are rendered in black and white, while Joe's interior life of dreams, memories and fantasies are played out in color.

This is one of the darkest most depressing films I have ever seen, it was a rough watch. Joe's life is a living hell, as anti war statement this is immensely effective stuff. That Trumbo was able to pull this all together and make a harrowing, and ironically visually interesting motion picture is another testament to his great talents. Absolutely not for everybody Johnny Got His Gun is still a dense, rich achievement, I know there was a lot here I didn't catch and I intend to return the film, but I think I'm going to wait at least a year to do so. ****

Vice (2018)

Join me if you will on a trip to a time when Donald Trump was not the most universally hated Republican. I remember watching the vice presidential debate back in 2004 and John Edwards (who hasn't aged well either) said something to Dick Cheney about his not understanding the plight of poorer Americans. Cheney responded by saying that he did know what it was like to be poor and had been a lineman when he was younger. I remember being struck by that, it was the first I had heard of it, this corporate CEO and powerful politician had actually started out running cabals in Wyoming. I thought "now I'd like to hear more about that", this Cheney may be more interesting then he at first appears. Indeed Dick Cheney is kind of fascinating, and a bit of a cipher, what's going on his mind, what is he about, what is the meaning of Dick Cheney?

The new movie Vice explorers these question but I'm not sure it comes up with any definitive answers. It charts Cheney's rise from rural near-do-well, and on up the ladders of power in Washington and the corporate world, eventually reaching his summit as the all but universally acknowledged most powerful American vice president ever. Cheney changed his early rowdy ways out of love for his childhood sweetheart and later wife Lynne (Amy Adams) who wouldn't have him if he didn't try to make something of himself. Cheney went to college earning both a BA and an MA in political science, and then entered an internship in program in Washington.

Now in the film Cheney goes right to work for Illinois congressman Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), when in fact he first worked for Wisconsin congressman William Steiger, and didn't go to work for Rumsfeld until he was working as the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity at the Nixon White House. This error is representative of the types of errors I was able to find in the film, not really substantive, but more about the constraints of keeping a film story slimed down, efficient, and eliminating supporting characters superfluous to the central narrative. Another example of error in this film is George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell) being portrayed as drunk at a White House Christmas party which by implication would have been in 1986, George W. Bush got saved and sober earlier that year so the point of his appearing intoxicated in this scene was to establish that the future president had been a screw up.

The film proceeds pretty quickly through Cheney's earlier career wanting to spend as much time as it can in his vice presidency, so we hit the 2000 election at around 40 minutes in. The Cheney who was vice president is a different fella then he had been as recently as his service as Secretary of Defense for president George H.W. Bush, this 'change' in personality has been commented upon by people who knew him then, such as the elder Bush, Brent Scowcroft, and Colin Powell, who by the way is played here by Tyler Perry. Cheney was secretive in his last governmental role, power hungry, and contradictory of positions he had held earlier, such as invading Iraq being a bad idea. Cheney is very single minded here, driven, and obsessed with the theory of the "unitary executive". This all seems true but it's also hard to see what exactly drove Dick from point A to D on this thing, I don't doubt the change happened but I don't understand exactly how or why, other then that is was gradual.

An element of Cheney's story that is nuanced, and fascinating as counterpoint to his ruthlessness in the political realm is his home life. We have sequences of Cheney playing hard ball in office counterpointed with a seemingly very happy and functional family life. When Cheney's youngest daughter Mary (Alison Pill) came out as a homosexual in the 1980's her conservative republican family, her father was a congressman at the time, did not disown her, they embraced her and continued to do so, despite its political liability (though with one big exception towards the end of the film). This is impressive, and would be unexpected if you didn't already know about it. It makes Cheney harder to pin down.

The film is directed by Adam McKay, who mostly does Will Ferrell comedies (Ferrell is an executive producer on this movie) but three years ago did The Big Short, a movie about the housing bubble collapse in 2007-2008. That film and this film are interestingly structured blends of comedy, drama and documentary, which employ unusual narrative devices and digressions to explain, in simplified form, important and complicated concepts (collateralized debt obligation, unitary executive theory) relevant to understanding the stories they are telling. The Big Short does this chiefly through celebrity cameos such as Selena Gomez and (the late) Anthony Bourdain, while Vice does it through a narrator named Kurt (Jesse Plemons) who claims to be related to Dick Cheney but we don't find out how until late in the movie. I think the whole conceit of this film mostly works, though I understand how people can be critical of it, and had I been making/ editing this film I would probably have deleted Cheney's last monologue near the end, I'm not sure it was really needed, it seemed to be spelling out stuff that we should have been able to pick up on by reading between the lines.

Lastly I need to say a word or two about Christian Bale's performance as Dick Cheney. First off they really make Bale look like Cheney, and not in an SNL kind of way, he really looks like Dick Cheney, its impressive make up that doesn't stand out as being make up, I don't know how they did it so well. Bale gets Cheney's monotone grumble down, and while the vice president is both protagonist and antagonist here, I think he comes across as a man who thinks he's right, not just a sneering villain, though of course he is also part sneering villain. When I came out of this movie I felt unsettled, I didn't know quite what to think of Dick Cheney, though I was certainly thinking about him.  I think that is the point of a movie like this, a morally ambiguous character should make us grapple with his ambiguity. Cheney loyalists (I assume there are some) will think this a hit piece, and it is a hit piece, though not a groundless one, and not one lacking in any subtlety. I'm still not sure quite what to make of this movie either, but it is well done and leaves you thinking, so I'm giving it ***1/2