So I've discovered a fun pattern. When, in my first year of grad school, I sat down to write up my best of the year posts, I was confronted with the ugly reality that my movie enthusiasm had fallen by the wayside--call it a lack of time (which it certainly was), call it mental exhaustion in the free time that I did have (which it also certainly was), or maybe just call me lazy. At any rate, after that first year, I resolved to fix my free time movie problems: to recommit myself to movies. And (shockingly) it worked! The next year saw my end-of-year list returning to a healthy pre-grad school count. Which, of course, means that I assumed I'd solved the problem forever and never thought of it again--and when the next year rolled around, I found myself back to square one.
For the past half a decade (
how have I been in grad school for half a decade and am now only
maybe halfway done?), I've been careening through a cycle of 'oh no! Where did movies go?' to 'ALL the movies will be in my eyes THIS INSTANT' to 'Hooray! The world is fixed forever!' and back again--and this year just happens to be an 'I assumed I had no problem but now I'm here and I haven't seen much' year. So what do I do? Do I do the re-commitment dance anew and patch things up for another year? What can I do that'll make it
stick? I wrote at some length last year about grad school tends to colonize every facet of your life, pushing the things you love out onto the street where you belong. And that hasn't changed in the interspersing 12 months, nor
will it change in the next 4-5 years that I'm in school (or, spoiler alert, for the next 2-until I'm dead years after I graduate).
So here's my new little reconsecration speech--you can throw it back at me next year when I'm treading these same paths (or, if the pattern is to be believed, the year after). But for now: I am not recommitting to movies. I'm not promising to watch a movie every night, even if it kills me. I'm not going to scamper off to the theater after every class, just to make sure my numbers keep bumping up.
I am going to commit to learning how to use my damn time. There are only so many hours in the day, and no number of cannily deployed aphorisms or dizzy daydreams will add more, and this will be true for the rest of my life. So, I can be upset that I've got no time or energy for movies, or I can address the root of the problem and tackle the grumpy little puzzle box that is work/school/life management in academia. And we'll see how that goes! Watch this space.
And why, they ask,
is he leading with this weepy monologue? Maybe he only saw Bohemian Rhapsody
and that new Transformers
movie (you know, the one with the bee)
and it wasn't enough? Here's the part where I reveal that my sarcophagus reveries stem from the fact that I saw a dirty 66 movies from this calendar year. (
66! they all scream,
that's a neutron star of movies! That's the number of movies that killed all the Jedi!, making little Michael Bay-shaped crucifixes with their fingers as they flee.) Well, it is, as they say, my party, which means that I get to complain about whatever I want. Just as a comparison, though: 2013, my last pre-grad school year, had me clocking 92 movies at this same time.
And what about the movies themselves? While I won't pretend that this year is quite up to last year's standards, which saw me adding two movies to my top 30-40 all time (still love both of you 4ever,
Lady Bird and
Call Me By Your Name), as well as a veritable flotilla of high quality content to fill out the top 20. And while there are certainly riches to be had here--the top two are
miles above everything else, both from this year and most others, and the top 10 itself is a writhing panoply of earthly delights. That said, this may be the first year since I began writing these (in 2007, because I am ancient and so are my fingers and opinions) that I can't scrape together a top 20 about which I am uncomplicatedly ebullient. Don't get me wrong--I'm still inflicting a top 20 (and honorable mentions!) on you, but it's not until movie #15-ish that I can really start getting 2 fast 2 enthusiastic without reservation.
If you're new here (which seems tenuous to me, but hey, maybe my loyal Eastern European fanbase are sharing me around?), here's how the format works. I'll rattle off my top 20, as mentioned above, trying to keep a weather eye cast toward brevity (more in interest of killing it horribly dead than in trying to abide by its rules). As always, I've got a self-imposed two sentence limit for each movie, but, uh,
we'll see. After that, if you're still looking for ways to flagellate your sinful eyes and thoughts, I'll throw up a list of the best scenes of the year, as well as the worst movies. And then here's a departure: normally (i.e. every year other than last year) I'd put together a list of silly nominations and categories for your enjoyment, but I can tell
im voraus that I'm not going to have that in me by the end of this creeping, oozing monstrosity I'm suturing together. So here's the deal: let's tentatively plan on me doing an extra categories/silly awards post after the other two I've planned. Won't that be nice?
In interest of transparency, here's a list of all the movies I've seen. Like I mentioned, I am woefully lacking in screen experiences this year, so if something you loved isn't mentioned, chances are I just took a nap or cried into my pillow instead of going to the movies that day. As always, I'm also woefully lacking in international films and documentaries. It doesn't help that the local artsy theater tends to dump many of the most acclaimed foreign-language films of the year into 2-3 day engagements during finals week.
Every year it happens, and every year I brush a tear away as I wave to
Border and
Shoplifters and
Burning as they drift by like highbrow manatees. I also haven't seen things like
Capernaum, Leave No Trace, Zama, Disobedience, You Were Never Really Here, Madeline's Madeline, and other works that
are available now online (or otherwise), but I just haven't made the time to catch them.
Alex Strangelove, Annihilation, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Aquaman, Avengers: Infinity War, Bad Times at the El Royale, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Beautiful Boy, Ben is Back, BlacKkKlansman, Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, Boy Erased, Burning, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Cold War, Crazy Rich Asians, Deadpool 2, Eighth Grade, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, The Favorite, First Man, First Reformed, Free Solo, Game Night, Green Book, Halloween, Hereditary, I Am Not a Witch, If Beale Street Could Talk, Incredibles 2, Isle of Dogs, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Love, Simon, Mary Poppins Returns, Mary Queen of Scots, Minding the Gap, Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol, Mortal Engines, Of Fathers and Sons, Overlord, Pacific Rim: Uprising, Paddington 2, A Quiet Place, Ready Player One, Red Sparrow, The Rider, The Ritual, Roma, Set It Up, A Simple Favor, Solo, Sorry to Bother You, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, A Star is Born, Support the Girls, Suspiria, Three Identical Strangers, Tully, Venom, Vice, We the Animals, Widows, The Wife, Wildlife, Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Alright, without further ado (as there's been much too much ado already), let's jump in!
Honorable mentions: though they didn't make the top 20, I'm grateful for the painterly and deliberate rythyms of
If Beale Street Could Talk, the heart-in-throat reportage of
Of Fathers and Sons, and the stellar performances trapped in a shaky script with
Ben is Back.
20. A Star is Born (dir. Bradley Cooper)
Sure, the first half is stronger than the back half, and I'm admittedly not sold on two of the three key performances in the way that most are, but who am I to resist Lady Gaga's world-ending apocryphal Shallow yowls? Beautifully crafted, fiercely sung slice of all-caps STARDOM--the ups, the downs, and the lack of anything in between.
19. A Simple Favor (dir. Paul Feig)
The movie this year most likely to make unsuspecting audiences question their own concept of reality this year,
A Simple Favor skips lightly from mystery thriller to buddy comedy to winky satire to, uh, incest chronicle--and it does it all in the space of one perfectly outfitted breath. Not all of
Favor's moving parts move with the same precision, and the film doesn't fly as high as it could because of this, but I'm also not going to look a gift horse wearing a tearaway business suit in the mouth.
18. Paddington 2 (dir. Paul King)
Chicken Soup for the 2018 soul--a movie that vehemently asserts the values of warmth and kindness in a world increasingly unconvinced by secret sunshines. Gorgeous design, a perfectly hammy Hugh Grant flouncing around in a nun's habit, and the happiest prison this side of The Producers--what's not to like?
17. The Rider (dir. Chloe Zhao)
I'll admit that this one was a little further up the list, but, while trying to firm up my rankings, I watched this movie's last scene and it made me tear up right then and there, so I had to push
The Rider up the list. While neither the beats it hits or the way it hits them are necessarily unexpected, this quiet narrative of a rodeo cowboy fighting his own post-injury body hits hard--and is all the more fascinating for being performed entirely by the Lakota cowboys and their families upon whom the movie is based.
16. Sorry to Bother You (dir. Boots Riley)
There's plenty of debate about this movie's third-act bonkers plot twist's virtues (or lack thereof), but
Sorry to Bother You has enough creativity and see-sawing zaniness and ugliness to redeem itself (though I'll admit I don't hate the ending). And sidebar--I was shocked and tickled when Boots Riley (the lead vocalist of
Street Sweeper Social Club, the rock/rap group of my early college years) turned up and started making movies as playful and furious as his music.
15. Widows (dir. Steve McQueen)
The best ensemble of the year (fight me) working in a trapped and brittle heist thriller in which the real thrillers were inside us all along (wherein 'real thrills' means 'the way Elizabeth Debicki side-eyes Cynthia Erivo). The villain(s)' angle is perhaps too pat (and too convoluted), but I could watch these women alternate between crying into their mirrors and running kick-ass crime schemes for the rest of my life and never get bored.
14. BlacKkKlansman (dir. Spike Lee)
It's tough to braid comedy and real world atrocity together in any kind of compelling way, but
Klansman manages to both laugh at its subjects without obscuring how profoundly ugly their souls are--an incredibly difficult balancing act of mocking your racist cake without making it seem harmless. Extra points for knowing when to understate (Adam Drivers' arc, for instance) and when to overstate (that piercing Harry Belafonte monologue/
Birth of a Nation montage, that beautiful final tracking shot, leading us, dead-eyed, into the screaming present).
13. Support the Girls (dir. Andrew Bujalski)
Takes a potentially toxic and ridiculous premise (day in the life at a Hooters-style restaurant) and elevates it with real humor and compassion.
Support the Girls bleeds empathy--it secretly suspects everyone of being better than they think they are, even when (or especially when) they aren't acting like it.
12. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (dir. Bob Perschetti, Peter Ramsey)
Maybe the most surprising movie of the year--a no-holds-barred whirlwind firestorm, saturated with wit and humanity, and casually peacocking enough visual invention for ten lesser movies.
Spider-Man realizes (perhaps for the first time in the filmic history of this character?) the wild and keening joys and pains of being a kid with a secret--how someone who doesn't fit in draws both their power and their trauma from the thing that wedges itself between them and the ones they love.
11. Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler)
I'm late enough to the party on discussing this one that it seems almost silly to add to the discourse, but for what it's worth:
Black Panther is one of the only Marvel movies to have a notion of its own artistic sensibility, deploying some mind-bogglingly fantastic crafts in the service of creating an alternate reality that still
feels like the only Marvel movie to take place in our world. It's beautifully made, compelling, shockingly aggressive in its politics (for a Disney movie contractually obligated to make billions of dollars), and it's just a blast--a consummate Marvel package by which all of the next Marvel movies will need to measure themselves.
10. Burning (dir. Lee Chang-dong)
An exercise in slowly boiling the audience alive: we know we're hurting, but we don't know why until its too late to do anything but step quietly out of our skin. Anchored by a trio of spectacular performances (one of which is a debut, no less!),
Burning assembles a calculated mosaic of yawns, glances, morning jogs, and some weepy topless dancing thrown in for good measure, creating a tempered beast crawling toward some inevitable world.
9. Cold War (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski)
An east/west narrative that deftly unsettles of the notion of objective historical narratives--both west as freedom and east as imprisonment, and west as decadency, east as revolution, all seen and rebuked. Beautiful performances, cinematography, and music, all in service of showing both real and imagined easts and wests as nothing but a series of ugly compromises.
(note: I shamelessly stole this from my letterboxd review. Go follow me on letterboxd and be subjected to my movie ramblings all the time!)
8. Hereditary (dir. Ari Aster)
What's to be said about this devil's haberdashery of wackiness and evil, in which tongues click, heads fly, people scamper across the ceiling, and Toni Colette gives the best horror performance in decades? Gleefully hideous study of family gone awry--all the pain and secrets and ugliness we try to hide at the dinner table, everything that looks and smells like broken candles and bastard sage and the things you yell to whatever pagan god you assume can lift you out of yourself.
7. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (dir. Marielle Heller)
What a sneaking, perfect little time bomb this is--a tetchy and note-perfect construction whose vast emotional weight only becomes evident once its far too late to put your guard up. Such a beautiful story of broken self-worth in a world of rain--
Can You Ever is hilarious and painful and (a rarity!) a story driven by queer friendship that's unafraid to show the bile on its tentacles.
6. Roma (dir. Alfonso Cuaron)
I freely admit that I need to watch this again (about 40 minutes into the film, I got hit with the worst food poisoning I've had in years, and spent the rest of the film nauseously peeking through my fingers), and as such struggled to find the right position for it here--how do I reconcile its towering reputation, its technical acumen, and my own (mostly) positive thoughts with the vaguely negative (and admittedly vomit-drenched) haze that surround my own memories? No idea (other than to watch it again, but who has time?), so for now I'll say that Cuaron's technique is staggering, the moments he catches and choreographs are both precise and expansive, achingly specific but somehow universal, and his commitment to telling this unexpected and unsung story--to position a woman overlooked in her life as the halcyon reference point in the grandiose maelstrom around her--is deeply felt. You wouldn't be wrong to claim that the beauty and scope keeps the audience an arm's length away from the characters (note the insistence on few closeups--or none at all for anyone other than the main character), but I suppose that's the nature of memory itself--drifting further and further away, except for the few key moments that can still cut like glass.
(That broke my two sentence rule, but I had to explain the circumstances. Besides, I've never gotten this far before! Quick, congratulate me before I ruin it!)
5. Eighth Grade (dir. Bo Burnham)
Scarily relateable, unforgivingly detailed look at adolescence, and at cultivating a sense of being under the microscope of constant public scrutiny on social media--takes on being young and unsure what to do about it that are this warm and concise are few and far between. And it's worth noting that this is a
movie: how many school movies are this aggressively shot and styled? Burnham directs like his young heroine is going to war--and she is.
4. Minding the Gap (dir. Bing Liu)
Absolutely the surprise of the year--I expected nothing much from a movie that advertised itself as a documentary about skateboarding kids, but what I got was a writhing and palimpsestic examination of violence communal ugliness that re-writes itself on the fly, morphing from a 'kids in their free time' doc to a wounded attempt to expose all the little hurts that perpetuate the myth of the American dream. A profoundly moving documentary, a consistently surprising experimentation with the narrative arcs we've come to expect, and a legitimately uplifting look at the ways in which people can lift each other up. If you haven't seen this, go watch it right now (it's streaming on Hulu).
3. First Reformed (dir. Paul Schrader)
I can't help but feel like ugliness unifies more than a few of the movies on the list: all the ways to cinematically approach the fact that the world we have isn't necessarily the one any of us would have wished for or imagined. The gap between what Ethan Hawke's falling pastor can imagine and what the world can create becomes wider and wider, with no consolation other than a pepto-whiskey cocktail and some good old-fashioned levitation and self-flagellating. If it sounds miserable, it's only because it is--this is an Apocalypse, and it is unstoppable. "Somebody's got to do something!" he yells as worlds both large (the seemingly unstoppable course toward destruction we've charted with climate change) and microscopic (his own body) fall apart. But...why?
First Reformed is quick to show us its despair, but is uninterested in providing any answers: partly because there might not be any, and partly because we don't deserve them.
2. The Favourite (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Every single element of this wild-eyed period piece is essential work. Part (very) black comedy, part shockingly moving study of love, illness, and devotion in all its forms, and part documentary made by alien baby with no interest in realistic human behavior (duck races! Naked fruit throwing! The things Nicholas Hoult does to his cane!), and every part as vital and organic as the next. I'll save my accolades for the performances until that post (as well as its filmmaking craft), but there are entire
years that don't have performances as good as any given four in this movie. Any movie that be this funny, strange, and beautiful all at once deserves every prize and accolade it gets.
1. Suspiria (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
This may be a controversial choice--and I acknowledge that a two and a half hour long, profoundly brutal, deliberately paced movie about experimental dance, the Holocaust, and witches isn't everyone's cup of tea--but I'm confident that all the people who hate this movie are wrong, and that critical opinion about this movie will turn in the right direction as time passes and people forget what they wanted
Suspiria to be and watch what it is. And what
is it, exactly? It's not the horror film people wanted. First,
Suspiria is an examination of history--it immerses itself in the German Autumn of '77 more than any movie I've seen since Fassbinder, taking the unrest, the fury that spilled into the streets, and the certainty that evil things lurk beneath every surface, and creating a film whose own specificity qualifies it to speak to other periods (some far too close for comfort) in which all the systems we put in place to stop horrors from being perpetuated are the ones that will eventually sink hooks into our bodies. But that's just the scaffolding for a story about guilt and shame, both culturally and historically (aka Germany's relationship with its own past), one that seems to allege that only when all memory has passed will we even begin to feel absolved of our own sins--and even then, the things that can't be undone will still be written on the walls. Oh, and if that wasn't enough,
Suspiria is also a
dance film--maybe one of the only movies I've ever seen to really get underneath a dancer's skin, to try and viscerally evoke the spiritual and physical punishments people inflict to write with their bodies--all while asking about how to ethically create art in a world shorn of beauty. It's also a quiet take on feminine power and different kinds of motherhood. And, yes, it's a horror movie, full of some of the most brutal and upsetting imagery I've
ever seen. Long story short,
Suspiria is a nesting doll of discourses, theses, and arguments, and it's also an exquisitely crafted, moving film that I felt crawl across my skin. And all in service of one question: why is everyone so ready to think the worst is over?
Look at me go! I didn't really horrifically destroy brevity until the end. I expect at least some kind of trophy from everyone who reads this (as if everyone abasing themselves to plod this far isn't a trophy enough).
If you've still got more in you (and if you do, you poor thing, know that it's ok to stop, why do you do this to yourself?), then let's jump into the best scenes of the year! I'll link to them on youtube when I can, but no promises.
10. You Get To Exhale-Love, Simon
Sure, maybe it's the Kidzbop version of Mr. Perlman's
Call Me By Your Name speech from last year, but I just can't turn down a watery-eyed Jennifer Garner speaking some truths my teenage self would have killed to hear.
(As an aside, I probably need to love on this movie more than I have. It's faaaaaar from perfect, but hooo boy it would have been a fundamentally life-changing experience for a teenage me, and I'm still dazzled and in love with the fact that something like a mainstream big studio gay teen romcom gets to exist)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mDsxTt6SDE
9. The Popping Book-Paddington 2
Ugh, this scene is just so sweet and lovely and warm. It's like getting hugged by the concept of happiness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd82DD4aO9w
8. Hooray for Pool Parties!-Eighth Grade
The pre-teen Hieronymus Bosch bacchanalia of all of our nightmares! Scenes like this show why
Eighth Grade would be totally at home on the shelf next to the horror movies. Extra points for the perfectly bonkers and punishing score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nSxQdQ7U-U
7. Twilight Dance-Burning
Such a strange and lovely moment--and from a woman in her first on-screen performance!!!-as Jong-Seo Jun recreates the 'Big Hunger' dance (aka the dance of existential questioning) as the sun sets.
(Note: this clip contains a topless woman, so I'll label it NSFW)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuY9oVXCH4E
6. Mahjong Game-Crazy Rich Asians
What a beautifully written scene acted between two luminous women at the heights of their powers. If Constance Wu doesn't become a superstar after this movie, I'm going to throw my computer out the window.
(Note: this scene contains significant spoilers for this movie)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh_oOd5JGpU
5. Family Dinner-Hereditary
Is this the most unpleasant dinner in the history of cinema? Maybe, as all of the pain and resentment in one household comes crashing down over some limp broccoli. Remind me why Toni Colette hasn't won an Oscar yet?
(Some spoilers for
Hereditary in this clip)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uWQVdNKUrk
4. Olga's Dance-Suspiria
Look, I just... This is probably top three most brutal and horrific movie deaths I've ever seen. Part of why I haven't re-watched
Suspiria (for a third time) is that I'm just not sure I want to watch this again (not yet). Simply put--a woman loses control of her body and is contorted beyond all recognition. I was begging for her to die halfway through--and then it kept going. Which, I suppose, is part of the point: brutality never has enough. It goes and it goes and it perpetuates itself until there's nothing left to devour.
3. Wacky Party Times-The Favourite
Lots of parties and dancing on this list, but this one takes the cake. So weird (the anachronistic choreography is everything, and then some), and with such an undercurrent of sadness (poor Queen Anne's new stockings that never get the debut they want). Everything good about
The Favourite can be found in this little dance-y microcosm. I've no idea why everyone with dialogue in this scene isn't guaranteed an Oscar come Sunday.
(Note: the quality of this clip is atrocious, which is a shame, as you can't see the details in the performances, which are quite important, but for what it's worth...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euyDSzCCkOM
2. Ending Montage-BlacKkKlansman
Normally it's against my rule to include ending scenes here, but if you're alive in 2019, you probably don't need a spoiler warning before learning that racism wasn't solved forever in the 70s. Spike Lee pairs the ending of his narrative with the Charlottesville violence in a horrific and upsetting way, and the message is clear--continuity is continuity. There is no stepping away from or ignoring the violent and oppressive narratives of the past, because they never went away.
(tw: this clip contains footage of the Charlottesville conflicts, which include violence and a man ramming his car into a crowd and murdering a woman)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_QccgBBEHc&t=100s
1. Tell Me Something, Boy...-A Star is Born
Like I'm strong enough to not put this here? I'm not
A Star is Born's biggest fan, but this song and this scene feels like it was carved into my bones the moment I was born. There is no pre-Shallow or post-Shallow. There is only During Shallow as Lady Gaga's Aaaa--eee--aaaa--aaa-aaaaahhh echoes into eternity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNxCz-Iyu0g
And finally...the worst movies of the year! I suppose i ought to relabel this, as one of the perks of watching movies for fun rather than as a job is that I don't have to see anything I don't want to, which means that I get to avoid all the *really* terrible movies. That said, I still willingly put myself in the line of fire for some grade-A disappointments. In fact, maybe we ought to call these the biggest let-downs, as every movie on this list was a highly anticipated/prestige pic. How many Oscar nominations do the following five movies have? More than my top five movies of the year! Because, as Nietzsche said, God is dead, we killed him. (...I find myself quoting Nietzsche too much this Oscar season. This is truly the darkest timeline.)
5. Beautiful Boy
Sure, addiction is a horrible and arduous process, but does watching a movie about it have to be this...repetitive? Unpleasant? Weirdly unbalanced in its power relations? Full of screaming Steve Carell (boy do I wish he would try his hand at comedy again)? Full of flashbacks within flashbacks? Points for Timothée Chalamet, who would be compelling to watch just reading the newspaper, and Maura Tierney as his step-mom--why can't we get a movie about these two? Why do we have to have this story mediated through the tired old white guy who feels personally victimized by his son's choices?
4. Bohemian Rhapsody
I know, I know, how is this not the very worst? Well, despite its absolutely regressive and upsetting politics that make me furious (and even more furious that most of the straight people who see this movie just don't care too much that the queer community is demonized and Freddie Mercury, one of
the queer icons, is represented as a sad, self-hating queen who just wants a wife), and despite its hacksaw editing and its terrible performances, and just....everything about this movie that's awful, which is everything (wait, am I talking myself into putting this at #1?). Despite all that, Queen's music is kinetic and transportative enough that there's some vague fun to be had in hearing that music in surround sound.
3. Vice
It's like they say--I don't need my movies to try and humanize our war criminals until
after they've been tried at The Hague. And yet here we have this ham-handed, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Dick Cheney biopic that both wants us to laugh at this man while being afraid of him, to appreciate his humanity while casually suggesting that he's responsible for literally all of the world's political evils (which itself is a pretty presumptuous claim that demonstrates that even 'woke' liberals still inherently accept American exceptionalism as being objectively true). And the last shot--in which Cheney turns to the camera and tells us all that he did it because safety requires compromises--totally rewrites the entire film, asking us to question how necessary the Bush administration's policies were to protect our children. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck this movie.
2. Avengers: Infinity War
Oh hey, do you enjoy superhero movies? Do you like Marvel movies? Well MARVEL HOPES YOU AND YOUR WHOLE FAMILY DIE. This movie is so needlessly ugly, so full of torture and close-ups of weeping faces--it wants you to suffer for having the audacity to pay money to be entertained. What's more--where's the character development? The narrative arcs? Anything? What a small, small movie this is, one that assumes that the explosions will keep you from realizing there is
nothing here. I want to like Marvel, and goodness knows I'm the first in line for every movie they release, but...Not like this.
1. The Wife
Maybe a controversial choice, given the utter trash that came before it, but no movie this year made me more embarrassed on behalf of the concept of filmmaking than
The Wife--a sloppily made production of a breathtakingly pretentious and idiotic script (and I know a lot about pretension and idiocy). Some of the choices made here are among some of the most inexplicable and terrible I've ever seen in a movie. What's more, these choices totally undermine the movie's thesis. For a movie about a woman artist who has been consistently passed over in favor of her less talented husband,
The Wife is sure eager to step away from Glenn Close at every opportunity to gawk at the utterly laughable performances given by the other men onscreen (seriously, Jonathan Pryce's shrieky scenery chewing had me laughing out loud). Don't get me wrong--Glenn Close is absolutely fantastic in this movie. Is that enough to salvage a movie with at least three of the worst performances of the year, one of the worst scripts, and a directorial sensibility that constantly undermines itself and Close's performance? Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope.
So there we have it! Every year I convince myself to be more brief next year, and every year I LIE TO MYSELF. Hooray! Thanks for sticking around to the end (if there are any of you left)!
I can't promise the next list (acting/directing/screenplays) tomorrow, as Wednesdays are my super long days, but I'll post on Thursday.
In the meantime, sound off! What did I do right? Wrong? Come fight with me!
