To be honest, it sucked in theaters this year. Sure there were some terrific movies, but they were dwarfed by Marvel super heroes or Jurassic sequels or more Impossible Missions. Not that I don’t need a fix of that once in a while, and seeing Black Panther in a packed, enthusiastic, theater was liberating. Luckily, streaming and cable has picked up the slack. Terrific films like the sublime Coen Brothers western The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs and Roma showed up on Netflix shortly after their release in theaters to reach a broader audience. And some of the most exciting drama has been in series like Sharp Objects, Killing Eve, Pose & Bodyguard. Other adventurous networks like Acorn.com and MHz Networks contain some of the most thrilling content from around the world. But there is still nothing like being in a theater and seeing something that moves, thrills and scrambles your brain. Here are my 10 favorites:
Roma (Alfonso Cuaron) An extraordinary, deeply personal, film about the tumultuous year in the life of a Mexican household, mostly told from the perspective of the servant Cleo (the luminous Yalitza Aparicio). There’s so much heartbreak and beauty in the film thanks to the glorious black & white photography and the simplicity yet power of the storytelling. Yes, it is as good as people have told you.
The Death Of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Set in 1953, a Council of ministers quickly meet in the dead of night when Soviet President Joseph Stalin suddenly dies. The shameless grab for power is absolutely hilarious (not surprising since it’s from the same team that gave us In The Loop and Veep). The improvisational brilliance of the cast (from a screamingly funny Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev, Jeffrey Tambor, Paddy Considine, Simon Russell Beale, etc.) is breathtakingly and riotous to watch in this pitch-dark comedy.
Permanent Green Light (Dennis Cooper & Zac Farley) A tormented young man, surrounded by others who lust for him, dreams of strapping himself with bombs and blowing himself up- like a terrorist, but only hurting himself. Cooper & Farley’s film is lyrical yet rigorously Bessonian, and aches with unrequited passion, confused teenage angst, and stinging black humor. A brilliant, disturbing, but darkly rewarding experience.
The Strange Ones (Christopher Radcliff & Lauren Wolkstein) The film begins like a road movie of sorts with scruffy, handsome Alex Pettyfer playing a man driving a car down back country roads with a very young teenager (James Freedson-Jackson). You aren’t sure of their relationship but when they introduce themselves they claim to be brothers and give fake names. The youngster calls himself Jeremiah. There’s also this strange sexual energy in the air that seems to mysteriously infuse each scene. A haunting, fiercely original first film.
Nico, 1988 (Susanna Nicchiarelli) A stunning bio-pic of the thorny later days of former Velvet Underground chanteuse Nico (played with blazing fury by Danish actress Trine Dyrholm). Focusing on the rocky tour with a new band (one even more dope sick than Nico), the harried British manager (John Gordon Sinclair) tries to keep things together and keep supplying Nico with the heroin she needs to keep going. What the movie does so expertly is show Nico’s demons but also her humor and humanity.
Gemini (Aaron Katz) An intriguing (sort-of) mystery about a harried personal assistant (sensational Lola Kirke) to a Hollywood starlet and tabloid darling (Zoe Kravitz) who becomes embroiled in a baffling murder, and falls under suspicion by a wiley detective (John Cho). Here’s a movie that told the story in such a unique and disorienting way, but always felt refreshingly exciting to watch.
The House That Jack Built (Lars Von Trier) This is the movie that caused an uproar at Cannes, but in actuality it’s simply a sardonically funny, sometimes uncomfortably creepy, film about a serial killer in the 1970s starring Matt Dillon. Told in five chapters, what surprised me most was the subversive humor. True, there are things that make you cringe, but hell, it’s about a murderous psycho (with OCD, no less). The whole finale with Bruno Ganz is so bonkers it solidified my love for the movie (but wait for the unrated director’s cut).
A Quiet Place (John Krasinski) A family navigates in complete silence in a remote farmhouse while alien creatures lurk in the woods sensitively alerted to sound. Krasinski, who directed and starred with his real wife Emily Blunt, created a gem of a thriller, and with real heart too. I have never seen an audience so spellbound (and quiet) in my entire life.
Piercing (Nicolas Pesce) The sensational actor Christopher Abbott plays a disturbed father who gets subliminal orders from his newborn baby to travel to another city (pretending to be on business), check into a hotel and kill a random escort girl. But things go wildy awry when a quirky, strange woman (Mia Wasikowska) shows up at his door. Truly bizarre, and a nice twisted mesh of the director of The Eyes Of My Mother and the author of Audition– Ryu Murakami. Not to mention a glorious soundtrack borrowing tracks from Dario Argento films and the theme from The Red Queen Kills 7 Times.
Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle) An amazing documentary about three young men in the 1980s who discover they were adopted at birth, and separated, without knowledge that they were triplets. When newspapers run their story they enjoy a flurry of instant fame, and the likeable trio open up a restaurant in New York. But a a dark and disturbing backstory slowly emerges. Best to approach this movie cold and have the rug pulled out from under you.
As Thomas Hardy once said: “To every bad, there is a worse.” Here are my 10 worst:
A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper). This critically lauded, and probably award-winning, reboot of the oft-told story is actually a God-awful mess. One can see why Cooper wanted to do it- who wouldn’t want to play a drunken, self-destructive rock legend? But his performance- head down and mumbling, is laughably ludicrous. The movie is also about the same length as Roma but feels 5 times longer.
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos). I haven’t hated a movie this much in a while. Nicolas Cage goes full gonzo going after his lady love Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), who is kidnapped by a cult of hippie, Manson-like, LSD-fried cult members led by their long-haired leader Jeremiah (Linus Roache), who has taken a satanic shine to her. The director obviously was inspired by the primary colors Dario Argento used in Suspiria, so he hyper-stylized the look of his movie in similar ways, but slows down the action to 33 1/3 so that it plays like a stoner slog. I can see how some inexperienced film geeks might find this weird and cool, but it’s just a trippy turd.
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot (Gus Van Sant) Joaquin Phoenix plays real life cartoonist (and colossal asshole) John Callahan, whose wild drunken exploits eventually leaves him a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic, who slowly discovers his art and sobriety. This is better suited at an AA seminar, but as a movie you’d have to be dead drunk to sit through it.
Winchester (Michael & Peter Spierig) Helen Mirren plays real-life firearms heiress who built a wildly eccentric house outside San Francisco which supposedly was a repository of ghosts of those killed by her family’s weapons. There’s a kernel of a good idea in all this which makes it all the more frustrating when the movie goes tediously nowhere.
Fifty Shades Freed (James Foley) The key word is “freed.” This schoolgirl-lite S & M love story ends with a wedding and some very mild conflict before closing the doors on the “red room” for good, thank God.
Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg). A futuristic world where kids play a virtual reality game searching for a hidden easter egg left by it’s mythic creator. Chock-a-block with visual pop culture references, unfortunately it’s like looking over someone’s shoulder while they’re playing a video game. There’s a (sort-of) amusing The Shining sequence, but I grew weary of this early on.
The Strangers: Prey At Night (Johannes Roberts). The original “The Strangers” was a creepy little gem of a movie. This is the lunar opposite. Just a tired rehash, and aggravatingly dull.
Terminal (Vaughn Stein). Margot Robbie makes a bet she can eliminate two hitman to a faceless crime boss in this neo-noir by director Vaughn Stein that tried my patience with its arty, conceptualized universe of abandoned train stations, diners and dingy hotel rooms. Mike Myers as a mysterious janitor didn’t help, either.
Here And Now (Fabien Constant). Sarah Jessica Parker plays an accomplished jazz singer who gets a dire health prognosis from her doctor and mopes around New York taking stock of her life. This movie is so agonizingly pretentious and boring, I became glad she was dying- just not soon enough.
The Meg (Jon Turteltaub). How can you screw-up a giant shark movie? This should be taught at schools on how not to make a movie. Especially when you have Jason Statham on board and waste his time. There were so many missed opportunities you wanted to scream. A scene at the end with hundreds of people swimming and the shark gliding beneath them- not snacking, was typical of how toothless the movie was.
I’ll never forget Mandy. And for all the wrong reasons. You’re dead right there.