Sicario Day of the Soldado (2018)

The film Sicario is a beautifully shot nihilist nightmare. Writer Taylor Sheridan and director Denis Villeneuve are some of the best working in the business right now. Their bleak look North American security politics is tormenting. Emily Blunt acts as a surrogate for us, the audience, as she descends into helpless disgust at a system which forces the worst moral choices possible.

Stefano Sollima takes over the direction in this follow up but mimics the matter of fact, rather steady hand direction Villeneuve took with the first as he adapts Sheridan's sequel script, which feels in someways an attempt to humanize the characters a bit. Gone is Blunt's idealist and instead we focus on the rather monstrous characters of Brolin and Del Toro who the first film positioned as the "heroes" cleverly forcing us to align ourselves with something despicable.

So Day of the Soldado is a bit of a moral relief as the film attempts to position our anti-heroes as more human than they appeared in the first film. Unfortunately for me that took away some of the punch. It was exactly their lack of humanity, and the way the film explored how the forces which crafted such monsters, which gave Sicario it's real power. It is a deeply disturbing film in the way it doesn't give us an out, a moral high ground to rest on. Soldado is a bit of a lesser film for this.

Having said that, Soldado remains smartly written, intricately constructed, and fascinating from start to finish. Like the first film there isn't filler. The film follows one plot point to the next. And it is still skating the edge of just how horrible humanity can become. But perhaps Taylor felt he needed to show a certain amount of humanness left in his title character. I felt Brolin's character's actions at the end didn't completely mesh with the character but I was willing to buy Del Toro's motivations, even if the climax ends requiring us to stretch plausibility quite a bit.

There is talk of making this a trilogy and the way Soldado ends makes me want to see the next chapter badly. And that makes the film successful even with the faults I found.

Sicario Day of the Soldado
Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner, Jeffery Donovan, Manuel, Garcia Rulfo, Catherine Keener, Matthew Modine
Director: Stefano Sollima
Writer: Taylor Sheridan

Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

Won't You Be My Neighbor? is one of those documentaries that attempts to be a crowdpleaser while it sneaks in its message. Director Morgan Neville mixes the charm and gawky charisma of Mr. Rogers with a dose of sentimental ennui about goodness in a dark time. The audience can't help but be enamored, and while this is going on Neville shows us all the ways Fred Rogers influenced a generation for the better.

Neville focuses on Rogers' desire to make things better. The way he respected his young audience. The way he addressed important issues. In his eyes Mr. Rogers combated racists, federal budget slashers, assassins, those who would marginalize the most vulnerable, all by being a decent person in an indecent world. His Mr. Rogers is a loving and unassuming hero.

His case weakens slightly when he glosses over some more troubling aspects of Roger's history like when he made a gay cast member to stay closeted. Instead of embracing some of these less than flattering features and showing us that no man is perfect, Neville quickly excuses it and moves on, focusing on his hero's journey.

But his film is enjoyable and a loving tribute to a man who did influence a generation for the better. I reflected on the ways that television shows of my childhood, like Sesame Street and this one, truly did teach me the sorts of values which I have taken into my adulthood and it is artists like Fred Rogers, who many not have been perfect, but who did what they could to contribute to having a better society.

Won't You Be My Neighbour?
Starring: Fred Rogers
Director: Morgan Neville

La nuit a dévoré le monde/The Night Eats the World (2018)

I've said it before, the zombie genre never dies no matter how tired of it we all should be by now. But with recent films like Cargo, Train to Busan, The Girl With all the Gifts, and The Battery, these movies continue to remain engaging, insightful, and as long as they keep making great movies, it truly is the trope that doesn't die. Now The Night Eats the World (one of my favourite titles to a movie in a while - and sounds even better in French) comes along and continues this trend.

The best zombie movies are always about something other than zombies. This one is all about isolation. Our story follows, Sam, wakes up after the zombie apocalypse all alone in an apartment building in Paris. The story follows him as he makes a life living completely alone. He is seeking isolation at the beginning of the film and ends up getting far more of it than he ever dreamed possible.

At the centre of the film, and what likely makes it work as well as it does, is Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie. His performance is engaging and layered throughout, making it possible to watch what is essentially a one man show. His Sam (which he filmed in both French and English I understand so you can choose which language you want to watch it in) is potentially the last living person in the world and we, as his audience, have no one else to relate to. It is strikingly powerful to see his journey through this.

Writer/director Rocher does a great job on his first feature by capturing the ennui of this existence and making it watchable. He keeps the story tight while expressing the long loneliness of being disconnected. He also manages to instill some frightening chills, the zombies aren't just background, they are terrifying as well. Rocher pulls it all together beautifully in the most beautiful city in the world.

The Night Eats the World is not just a beautiful title, nor is it just another entry in a genre which should have overstayed its welcome a long time ago. It is a lovely, painful, and inspiring glimpse into our social nature as human beings.

La nuit a dévoré le monde/The Night Eats the World
Starring: Anders Danielsen Lie
Director: Dominique Rocher,
Writers: Dominique Rocher, Guillaume Lemans, Jeremie Guiz

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Jurassic Park, at its best, is one big B-movie. It's a monster movie at its heart with all that's great about such movies. The sequels err more on the side of what's bad about B-level monster movies. Preposterous plot developments, bad writing, thin characterization, and lots of characters making stupid decisions to further the adventure. Personally I felt Jurassic World got a bad rap. While not the adventure masterpiece Jurassic Park was, I felt it exhibited more of the good aspects of the genre and elevated the franchise again. But very much like The Lost World, Fallen Kingdom spends most of the good will left over from the previous film and feels like a serious drop in quality

But I'll give it this, when Fallen Kingdom is pushing for pure dino-thrills it hits the jackpot.

I won't get into spoilers but I will say that what the trailers and commercials have shown you is just the first act. The main story of the movie is nothing like what you have seen in the promotion. I give them credit for that cause that leaves you often sitting on the edge of your seat. I did find the film rushed its plot and most of it was eye-rollingly silly, but if you treat it as fluff and let yourself get into it, Fallen Kingdom goes from 0 to 60 very quickly and becomes pretty no-holds-barred.

The Jurassic movies have remained very family friendly so much of the thrills have always been fairly PG. A big part of Spielberg's genius in the first film was making it as exciting as it was while remaining safe for the kids. Fallen Kingdom is more brutal movie than we've seen in the franchise before. While the blood is still not there, the violence level is ratcheted up. Fallen Kingdom is of the "more is more" school of sequel making. More dinosaurs. More action. More intensity.

Unfortunately the story that strings it together is often too silly to take seriously and there are far too many times when characters do the most ridiculous things. It's a turn your brain off sort of adventure story. I prefer my adventures stories to make me think more. This is not that. But despite myself I still had fun.

Once the dino-action lets loose, and the film wastes no time getting there and then rarely lets up, if you do turn your brain off, you can have lots of fun. It will likely remain a guilty pleasure for me. I will enjoy watching the dinosaurs fight but I'll always cringe at the dialogue, the story, and the lack of real characters.

But the ending shows a lot of promise. The way the film ends is a big hint towards where I have always hoped this franchise will go. Perhaps the next Jurassic movie will be the one I've been waiting for.

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, B. D. Wong, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Lavine, Jeff Goldblum
Director: J.A. Bayona
Writers: Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly

Incredibles 2 (2018)

The Incredibles was my favourite movie of 2004. It is one of my favourite superhero movies and one of my favourite animated movies. 14 years later and I still watch it with amazement and wonder. It captures so much that I find interesting about the questions posed by the possibility of a world with super powered individuals. There are few movies which come close to being perfect and it is one.

So going in to a sequel I just have to be prepared for it not to live up to the first film, right? While I have always felt The Incredibles was ripe for further adventures, a part of me knew any follow up would be a "let down" in that it could not be the masterpiece the first film was. But I also knew I could enjoy it for what it was, the further adventures of characters I feel a strong passion for, and the further exploration of ideas I am interested in.

And that's pretty much exactly what I got. Seeing these characters again was a true pleasure and picking up right after the events of the last film worked well. We get to see the implications of what happened in the first film, both for them and for the larger world. The story crafted is another fascinating one about the complexities and moral questions of living in a world where some people have super powers. The movie is exciting, funny, poignant, and mostly fun.

But throughout there was a linger sense for me that what I was seeing wasn't as magical as what I had experienced before. The story wasn't as cohesively compelling as the first, the characters didn't evolve as completely as they did in the previous installment, the whole package just wasn't as... incredible. Instead it was very good and very good is very good indeed. But it isn't incredible.

Don't get me wrong. I completely enjoyed myself and I'm on board for more Incredible advantures if Pixar feels compelled to make them (and based on the box office I assume they will be), but Incredibles 2 won't occupy the same space in my film loving heart as the first film. And it doesn't need to be a great movie. But a sequel can't help but live in the shadow of its predecessors.

Incredibles 2
Starring: Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Vowell, Huck Milner, Samuel L. Jackson, Brad Bird, Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keener, Sophia Bush
Writer/Director: Brad Bird

Hotel Artemis (2018)

I really enjoy a fun stylized B-movie and that's just what Hotel Artemis is. Simple, beautiful, featuring a great cast, Hotel Artemis is a fun, sugary treat.

Artemis doesn't reach the levels of cult classics but it holds it own providing a fun, adrenaline rush. Sterling K. Brown and Jodie Foster (for the first time in years) headline this tale of a bunch of messed up people converging until all hell explodes. Writer/director Drew Pierce shows some potential here with his eye for making the world of the Artemis so rich visually.

Narratively that world is a bit thin but not to the point of detriment. He creates some truly enticing characters, even if they do remain a bit surface level. I do think Artemis could have been a bigger and better, imbued with more sense of gravity. But as surface level fun it hits the mark and entertains.

It certainly made me curious to see what Pierce can do next.

Hotel Artemis
Starring: Jodie Foster, Sterling K Brown, Jeff Goldblum, David Bautista, Zachary Quinto, Sofia Boutella, Jenny Slate, Charlie Day, Brian Turee Henry
Writer/Director: Drew Pierce

Hereditary (2018)

Until I saw Heredity I didn’t understand why many were calling it a new generation’s The Exorcist. The cryptic trailers and fairly universal praise coming from critics created an elusive air of mystery around this debut feature from an acclaimed short film maker. My curiosity was peaked.

And as the film played out the comparisons to The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby started to become clear. The film embraces its supernatural subject without trying to cloak it in an “is it madness or is it ghosts” esthetic. It is a slow burn sort of horror where the film becomes more and more uncomfortable as it goes along. People are ugly and mean to each other. There aren’t clear good people and bad. It is an exercise in exploring darkness within families and Aster’s calm hand through it all is unsettling to the audience.

But as the film wound up to its conclusion I started to notice how much Hereditary owed to many horror films of the past beyond just its style and craftsmanship. The thing that left me the most cold at the end wasn’t the way the characters fall apart and the way the evil crushes them. It was how predictable, how familiar, how unsurprising the plot was. I am not going to spoil the story as I feel that for many reasons Hereditary is worth seeing and experiencing. However I found the story and its conclusion to be rather bland and disappointing.

For me a film’s power lies mostly in its story. Films that prioritize style over substance, form or content, tend to leave me wanting more. The story of a horror film needs to get under my skin in some way for me to love it. I am not sure Hereditary was able to do that. I left thinking about film craft choices and the incredibly strong performance of Toni Collette at the centre of the film. But I didn’t leave ruminating on the story of feeling chills. I left feeling intellectually about the film not viscerally.

And for me that just isn’t enough to call the film great. It is certainly interesting academically but as an emotional experience Hereditary left me feeling blah.

Hereditary
Starring: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Gabriel Byrne
Writer/Director: Ari Aster

Ocean's 8 (2018)

Turns our Sandra Bullock and cast have made the most appropriate sequel to the Ocean’s franchise. Like the Clooney movies, Ocean’s 8 is a rather safe, unremarkable movie that entertains just enough to get you through it but doesn’t inspire much enthusiasm.

First let me say I enjoyed Ocean’s 8. The movie is filmed in the exact style of the previous movies and features a heist story which is fun to play out. Sure, very much like those movies, the story relies on endless coincidences and unbelievable turns of events. But like those previous movies the cast is charming enough to make us not care. We can just enjoy the mayhem and be satisfied as the plan comes together.

But to be honest I think I was expecting more. This is a pretty damn impressive cast and despite having so many funny people on the screen the film doesn’t inspire many laughs. Normally people like Kaling, Awkwafina, and Bonham-Carter have me in stitches but here I rarely giggled. Sure they are all good in their roles. It is hard to pick any standouts cause they all nail their nutty characters. Perhaps I enjoyed Blanchett’s butch smarty a little too much. But despite that the film never lets us truly revel in any of the characters. It just moves from one plot beat to the next, quite formulaicly.

Now to be fair I would say Soderbergh’s films did the same thing. I found them enjoyable but overrated. So perhaps this film just fits very nicely into all of that. And in torts of general enjoyment I had a good time. I just really thought I was going to get a lot more out of this than it offered.

Ocean's 8
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Kindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter, Richard Armitage, James Corden, Dakota Fanning, Damien Young
Director: Gary Ross
Writers: Olivia Milch, Gary Ross

Mary Shelley (2018)

Elle Fanning has yet to find that role which is up to showing off her immense talent. The idea her of her giving a tour de force performance as one of history's most celebrated English female writers and minds is a great one, but the film Mary Shelley doesn't feel like it accomplishes this.

Mary Shelley feels like a very standard sort of period drama. Perhaps some of the expectations arise as it is made by Saudi film maker Haifaa al-Mansour, whose debut feature, Wadjda, showed such promise. But Mary Shelley seems determined to make the title character into a rather traditional romantic hero and not the radical many understand her to be. In fact the film spends a lot of time making the radical around her a negative influence on her life. And once it does that, a questionable choice at best, it then turns on a dime at the end to give her the happy ending a film like this needs, even if it is anachronistic.

The film also continuously makes references to Shelley's most famous work, Frankenstein. This makes a certain  amount of sense. Illusions to the story abound. But what was interesting is how much the film seems to be saying how her life is all building towards her writing of that novel. An interesting theory but one which perhaps reduces her even further. For a film which seems to be about showing us who she is beyond A Modern Prometheus, it ties almost all aspects of her life to that story.

Mary Shelley is watchable despite the stylistic choices I was not a fan of but just always feels far more standard than I had hoped. And Fanning is still waiting for that role which can give her the opportunity to bite off all that she can chew.

Mary Shelley
Starring: Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, Bel Powley, Tom Sturridge, Stephen Dillane, Maisie Williams
Director: Haifaa al-Mansour
Writer: Emma Jensen