The Favourite (5/5 Stars)

“The Favourite” was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Now here is a director whom I have a love/hate relationship with. I have seen three movies of his, rated the first (“The Lobster”) five stars, the second (“The Killing of a Sacred Deer”) with one star, and now the third, “The Favourite” five stars again. The style of Lanthimos does not change all that much, film by film. The main difference between “The Lobster” and “The Favourite” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” is that Sacred Deer takes place in the present day with supposedly normal people. “The Lobster” by contrast took place in a futuristic society with humans that consistently did not act like humans. The setting of “The Favourite” though obstensibly historical is more in line with a setting like “The Lobster” in fact that is part of what makes it so funny. “The Favourite” presents an absurd historical scenario. It concerns the short reign of Queen Anne of England (played by Olivia Coleman) who reigned in the first decade of the 18^th century. Queen Anne has no business being on the throne. She has been involuntarily been delegated the task of ruling a nation through the childless efforts of the past three Tudor kings. She herself lost seventeen children within fifteen years to miscarraige, still-birth, and infant mortality. Such a history would make any person a little unhinged if not completely crazy. Queen Anne is no exception. She will be the last of the Tudor dynasty and it shows.

This consistently ill (her maladies include fevers and gout), generally burnt out and severely insecure lady nevertheless has enormous influence over the fate of the nation. She never leaves the house (to be fair it is a big palace) so the most important decision makers in the nation camp out in her court waiting for her to be well enough to attempt to address the issues of the day. “The Favourite” refers to the woman who at the moment has the most weight with the Queen. This is not a merit based position. It takes fierce ambition, the capacity for much mean girl backstabbing, and a mental limberness that allows one to completely subjugate one’s thoughts and feelings to the whims of a sick crazy woman in order to ultimately manipulate all the other people around her. Does Yorgos Lanthimos show Queen Anne or her sycophants any sympathy. Absolutely none. At times this seems unnecessarily cruel, but given that all the people involved are running an incompetent and irresponsible government it is very much what they all deserve. It’s okay to laugh at these people. They are all doing terrible things. “The Favourite” would make a great double-feature with “The Death of Stalin”. If you ever feel bad about democracy, go and watch these two movies back to back.

The original favourite is Lady Sarah (played by Rachel Weisz). Her ambitions are mainly political. She wants the Queen to finance a war with France. The subject is brought up constantly in this vague abstract way that can’t possibly lead to competent decisions about it no matter what side they ultimately fall upon. Lady Sarah’s political opponent is the leader of the opposition, Lord Harley (played by Nicholas Hoult). Court dramas are generally stiff affairs what with the costumes and the elevated language. Not so with “The Favourite”. Lord Harley is dressed like an insane clown. He has this big white wig, way too much white face makeup, and stupidly high heels. Nicholas Hoult is already a tall actor. Put heels on him and he absolutely towers over the women of the story. It is rather funny how this towering man with a large powerful constituency has to ingratiate himself to a fickle weak women by his dumb dress and absurd courtly manners. Nicholas Hoult has become an eminently watchable actor. This is the same guy who played Nux in “Mad Max: Fury Road” and amazingly, the boy in “About a Boy”. There is a certain confidence he can bring to odd characters that put at least his work in “The Favourite” on the level of a Robert Downey Jr., Sam Rockwell, or Christopher Walken. The man just walks around and kills it in every scene.

Because Lady Sarah’s ambitions are mainly political, she fails to notice at first the upstart Abigail (played by Emma Stone) who has designs on the Queen herself. Abigail does not particularly care whether the war is financed. She wants the Queen’s attention to elevate her position from a servant girl into something more. Her first successes in winning the Queen’s favors draws the attention of Lord Harley. Lord Harley is willing to arrange a wedding with a Lord for Abigail that will automatically elevate her to the nobility herself, in a polite exchange of course for Abigail’s services in backstabbing mean-girl style Lady Sarah’s relationship with the Queen. The movie resembles more “Heathers” than any Merchant and Ivory costume drama and I mean that in the best way.

“The Favourite” presents the learned viewer with a view to a historical anomaly in the stature of women. Three hundred years ago, the women of England had no greater political rights than any other women in the world and no other women in the world at that time had any political rights for the last several thousand years. However, England like other countries had a hereditary monarchy, and in a hereditary monarchy, a woman (not women) could have considerable power given their access to the royal persons. (In the case of England’s Queen Elizabeth, it was possible that a hereditary monarchy could even luck into a great monarch in the form of a woman.) An influential woman in the court of a hereditary monarchy could have the type of power akin to the President’s Chief of Staff in our system. They could direct the monarch’s attention to certain matters and enable or restrict access to the monarch from various constituencies. Lady Sarah does exactly that in “The Favourite”. It is an interesting historical fact that although women were universally oppressed for all of human history, they were most able to attain power in the most oppressive of governments. It was not unnoticed by the Ancient Greeks when they compared their government, a direct democracy (which limited rights only to men), to that of Persia, whose royal courts were continually dominated by the mothers and wives of the emperors. The United States of America is a good modern example. It has been almost 250 years and we have yet to elect a woman as president. Meanwhile anti-liberal states like Pakistan and Myanmar have both had woman heads-of-state in the past 50 years. These women are not coincidentally family members of important political dynasties. Political power spread wide but unevenly as in Ancient Greece and the United States (at least until the 1970s) keeps women from power. Political power tightly held routinely ends up in the hands of a woman.

But what type of woman gains this power? The movies in today’s time have a conundrum that will be a hard needle to thread. How do we, in this newly woke society, treat women in history. We want to tell stories that show empowered women. However, as much as women in power hundreds of years ago may have been ambitious, may have been brilliant, and may have been heroic in their intentions, they were all confined by the misogynistic structure of society. Thus, to gain any power, they would all need to be cunning, scheming, and duplicitous. “The Favourite” shows this dynamic in spades and contains fully-developed interesting female characters. An example of how to not to thread this needle is the last several seasons of “Game of Thrones” TV series which has bowed to consistent pressure as to how it portrays women in its medieval fantasy land. The most annoying example is the nine-year-old Lady Mormont who speaks with vivacity and eloquence to large groups of male warriors and sometimes even persuades them to change political tacks. It is totally unbelievable that these men would let her into the room and even more unbelievable that they would be persuaded by her words, which are even more unbelievable in that they come from a nine-year-old child (you can contrast her behavior with that of Bran who was also a child lord). I suppose in this season of #MeToo, women characters must all be born with an unreal amount of pluck and wisdom lest the creators be branded sexist. A certain amount of complexity in character development is sacrificed when a movie inserts unreality into a historical situations for modern political purposes. The women in “The Favourite” given the society they live in, must adapt in sometimes deceitful and amoral ways. This makes them more interesting and, in my opinion, a better movie. Political correctness be damned.

Bohemian Rhapsody (3/5 Stars)

A movie with a Queen soundtrack is automatically good.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” belongs to that relatively new subgenre of movies, the musical biopic. These movies trace the life of a famous musician with the help of a greatest hits soundtrack. This subgenre has its pluses and minuses. The pluses are the guarantee of a soundtrack that is composed of great songs, a must have in any good movie musical, and an existing fan base that can guide the creators to the important much loved milestones/controversies of the musician’s life. The drawbacks is the inborn sense of responsibility to the musician’s brand, which can gloss over certain unsympathetic events (say the omission of multiple children by multiple women in the movie Ray while the musician was married) or act as an excuse to put the plot of the movie on autopilot. There are great movies in this genre that use the pluses and avoid the drawbacks. Ultimately they can do this by not making the musician the hero of his story, but as a means to explore deeper themes. Amadeus has a Mozart soundtrack but is ostensibly about a less famous rival of his, Salieri, and his envy. Very good movies like Get on Up and The Doors do not treat their musicians sympathetically at all and act more like cautionary tales about fame and/or drugs. It is rare that a musical biopic can have it both ways: an exception would be What’s Love Got to Do With It, which believably portrayed Tina Turner as the hero of her life without provoking the usual cynicism.

Bohemian Rhapsody belongs to the middle-of-the pack biopics that herald a great soundtrack, make sure the fans get all the milestones/controversies they came to see, but ultimately fails to connect the music with a unique story. This movie follows an autopilot plot of early and unlikely success, large success marred by egotism, a break-up, soul-searching and an ultimate reunion for one last concert. You’ve seen this before. The music is probably better this time, but that is because Queen is a special band, not because the movie is a special movie.

Having said that, I enjoyed the entirety of the movie. How could I not? They were playing Queen the entire time and some of the cliché scenes were rendered enjoyable simply by the truth of it all. Did a producer really drop Queen after hearing their magnum opus album “A Night at the Opera” because he did not like/understand “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Yes, apparently this happened. The recluse Mike Myers drops in for a cameo scene as the clueless producer in order to milk this scene for all its worth. When the band exits the producer’s office they warn that the producer will be always be remembered as the man who lost Queen. This is the type of movie that has no qualms about unfairly utilizing 20/20 hindsight. Still its enjoyable because its true. What a dolt.

Bohemian Rhapsody may be notable in that its autopilot plot noticeably avoids a take on Freddie Mercury that would plausibly argue that he was a great figure in a continuing cultural battle. Freddie Mercury was gay at a time when he could not be open about it. However this biopic is not all that concerned with any prejudice Freddie Mercury may have encountered (his rift with his parents is much broader than sexuality given that they are conservative Zoarastrians from Zimbabwe) and portray him as a figure fighting for gay rights. In fact, his first wife is glowingly portrayed while the character the movie decides to make its villain is Freddie Mercury’s first gay lover and his gateway into the homosexual lifestyle of the late 70s and early 80s. It is there through debauched partying that Freddie contracts AIDS, a truth that the movie does not describe in detail and does not ask the audience to sympathize with in any particular way. The story ends with the LiveAid concert for Africa wherein a healthy and robust Freddie strutted and performed before an audience of one billion people. His death a mere five years later is not shown. I wonder whether had this movie been made ten or twenty years ago perhaps this part of Freddie’s story would have had a more central importance to the movie. Now that the cultural argument seems to have been all but won in favor of homosexuality, perhaps we will see the argument sidestepped more often and even more villains garbed in studded leather jackets.

Freddie Mercury is played by Rami Malek, a decent casting choice. Rami Malek and Freddie Mercury both look vaguely foreign in the same unique way that it almost seems like Bohemian Rhapsody was a movie waiting for Rami Malek to become famous before it could get made. Rami Malek does a fine job in performing Freddie moves on stage. However, there is a slight problem here. Rami has to be about five or six inches too short and it apparent in several scenes where he is sharing a stage with other actors who should be the same height or shorter than he is. It is possible to heighten an actor in a movie. Steven Spielberg somehow plausibly grew Daniel Day-Lewis by seven or eight inches to play Abraham Lincoln. Bohemian Rhapsody fails to perform the same magic with Rami Malek and this hurts his ability to project Freddie Mercury’s stage presence. You can look at a YouTube video of the LiveAid concert alongside the movie’s shot by shot performance of the same concert and see what I mean. At the end of the day, Rami Malek falls short of Freddie Mercury.

The director of this movie was Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) who has done some very good movies in the past. Apparently he was fired half-way through for allegations that have not been fully revealed but seem connected to the #MeToo movement in a Kevin Spacey-like way. Dexter Fletcher took over and made a safe mediocre movie. I’m not sure what Bryan Singer was doing, but I bet it wasn’t too much different than the world that Freddie Mercury was apart of for awhile. A more ambitious movie may have explored that a little further, but perhaps we are not ready for that yet. It certainly wouldn’t fit the operatic bouyant eminently entertaining music of Queen all that well.

A Star is Born (4/5 Stars)

Most popular movies spawn sequels. This is the case when we are more in love with the characters and/or the movie stars. “A Star is Born” is the type of movie that finds its staying power in its archetypal plot. This particular plot can be categorized as an evolutionary offshoot of Pygmalion, that ancient myth about a male sculptor who labors over the sculpture of his perfect woman. The goddess Aphrodite is so impressed by his creation that he deigns to grant one wish of the sculptor. The sculptor wishes that his perfect woman was real. Aphrodite grants that wish and the perfect woman becomes flesh, climbs down from her pedestal and embraces the artist. This myth has as its progeny in every “make-over” play and movie that followed, the best “My Fair Lady”. The “A Star is Born” plot is disarmingly simple but powerful. A famous man spies a talented but unknown woman. He helps her with her career. She becomes a star. Meanwhile, his personal demons and substance abuse set his career path on a downward trajectory. The movie is especially powerful in its treatment of its themes. Fame has both good and bad facets. Personal relationships are both a help and a hindrance. Art is created by both good fortune and personal destruction. Meanwhile we are treated to mandatory great performances, that which must attest as to why the Stars in the story should be considered Stars. For this reason, “A Star is Born” is continually remade. You know the story, but then you’ve always known it. What is interesting is how it is being done this time. And of course, the success of the movie ultimately depends on the “A Star is Born” test: The plot states that the characters are Stars? Do the actors and creators of this movie live up to this description?

A Star is Born (2018) was directed by the actor Bradley Cooper who also has a writing credit. along with two other screenwriters and a host of other story credits for the past three iterations of this movie. Bradley Cooper also acts in this movie in the lead role of Jackson, a country music rock star. I don’t know if he can actually play the guitar or whether that is actually him singing, but it sure looks like it. Bradley Cooper also speaks fluent French. Just thought I’d throw that out there. The look and feel of A Star is Born is a simple and straightforward style. You get the feeling that it does not really matter that Bradley Cooper is the director. However, one must recognize that the director’s invisibility is also a choice of the director. Bradley Cooper has decided to draw attention to his characters not his director’s self. This is probably a good idea.

Bradley Cooper is eminently believable as a country-music star named Jackson. One night, Jackson, needing a drink after a concert, randomly walks into a bar populated by drag-queens. They are tolerant of him and he of they. The drag-queens are having a revue. It’s almost all drag-queens, but they have made an exception. An old employee of the bar named Ally, played by Stephanie Germanotta aka Lady Gaga, performs a perfect rendition “La Vie En Rose”. Jackson falls in love with Ally’s talent, if not yet her person, at first sight. It is important to stress here the importance of this scene and how it is acted. We as an audience have to come to realization along with Jackson that we are watching a first-rate albeit unknown talent. To do this, Lady Gaga has to sing and perform a great version of “La Vie En Rose” without production value, backup, or flash. She does. The pipes on that girl. Holy shit.

Here is where the movie really works and what makes it arguably the best “Star is Born” to date. The soundtrack of this movie is first rate and performed by fantastic artists. Bradley Cooper can’t be said to be a great musician or vocalist, but he doesn’t noticeably suck either. I liked his songs. Lady Gaga just absolutely kills it every time she opens her mouth and/or is on some sort of stage. What is also interesting is the variety of music in the movie. Jackson has some good fast and slow country songs. Lady Gaga starts out in this vein and then, true to her character, she becomes her own star with her own voice, which in the 2018 version includes pop songs. There are also the customary romantic ballads. Like the best musicals, there isn’t a song which makes you want to fast forward the movie to the better songs. Can Lady Gaga act? Yes, and with brown hair. I bet she can speak fluent French too. These freaking talented people.

A Star is Born is further populated with interesting choices for supporting characters. Ally’s father is wannabe crooner turned blue collar limo driver. He is played by Andrew Dice Clay, a former comedian, who seems to have gotten out of bed playing the role. There is a certain warmth that one would not expect, but when he beams with pride about his daughter’s success you totally believe it and feel enthused with him. Another character that flits into the movie is an old colleague of Jackson, that had lived fast for a while and then moved on. He is played by the comedian Dave Chappelle. Something about the way Chappelle speaks, his laid back delivery of precise words, sounds preternaturally wise. I enjoyed his presence. The movie is populated with non-actors (I think the pop producer character might be an actual producer). They all do fine work.

Is this the best “A Star is Born”. Well, I wouldn’t know. I’ve only seen the Judy Garland version. I can say this one is better than that one. I never bought a forty-year old Judy Garland as a twenty-year old neophyte (whereas Lady Gaga here seems to be playing her own age). I’m pretty sure this is better than the Barbara Streisand version simply because I’m pretty sure Babs wouldn’t allow her ego to act like she wasn’t a Star the entire way through the movie. The first movie I heard does not have any music. A bet this “A Star is Born” is the best one. I look forward to the next one, like thirty years from now.

Bad Times at the El Royale (4/5 Stars)

1968 in all its terrifying glory

Welcome to the El Royale. A classic party hotel near Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada. I mean right on the border. The border runs right through the hotel and neatly divides the rooms available into California and Nevada rooms. There are a lot of available rooms. The hotel recently lost its liquor license and with it all of its regular customers.

“Bad Times at the El Royale” is a nice compact story that uses some old tricks of the trade to confine its characters in time and place. These tricks of the trade (I won’t get into too many details) will feel like familiar tropes of horror and mystery stories. For instance, many horror movies requires that all the characters stay in the same place so as to limit the chance of escape. Mystery movies limit the amount of characters so as to help flush out a culprit. “Bad Times at the El Royale” is not a horror or a mystery movie. What it does is use the above tropes to gather and force a suspicious and varied group of characters to interact with each (sometimes violently) within the course of one day/night. Like most great writing, the writer/director Drew Goddard imposes these constraints through the reasonable choices of his characters. The movie acts at many points like a very good play with areas of extended conversations that never get tired punctuated with reveals and reversals.

The movie is divided into chapters based on the rooms that each of the characters originally let. There is Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), a sociable southern traveling salesman, intent on taking the Honeymoon Suite he can finally afford since no-one uses the hotel anymore. There is Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges) in town to visit an old acquaintance. There is Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) a “Wall of Sound” backup singer in town for a gig in Reno. There is a surly woman (Dakota Johnson) who won’t give her name. And finally there is the Royale’s one and only employee Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman) a meek lad who doesn’t seem to be particularly good at anything. No-one is as they seem and some reveals as to who they actually are always good, and sometimes great (particularly the first and last reveals). By the end, it seems the Drew Goddard has decided to lump all the outrages of 1968 into one day/night at this one hotel. We have government conspiracies, Manson-like cultists, Vietnam trauma, and mafia schemes. Darlene Sweet is the most exact reference, obviously referring to the real life Darlene Love of Six Feet to Stardom replete with an obvious Phil Spector-like creepy manager. Her story is the most straight-forward in that she is actually who she says she is. Her character more than pulls her weight though by providing the music’s soundtrack, great acapella versions of “Wall of Sound” doo-wop music. If you love that sound like I do there will be long stretches of this movie you will find particularly enjoyable.

Chris Hemsworth shows up without a shirt half-way through though I won’t be able to tell you why. Jeff Bridges’ performance is great too though the scene he is particularly memorable in I can’t give away either. Several people die. A couple of other people get rich. Everyone in the audience has fun.

Drew Goddard has only one other writer/director credit to his name Cabin in the Woods (He is a prolific producer and writer though of TV shows like Lost). I have not seen that one but I heard, and now believe, that it is was made by a man who knows his stock characters inside and out. More than anything, that is what “Bad Times at the El Royale” is. It is a genre piece from a certain period of time with recognizable characters. Drew Goddard mixes it all up and makes it interesting again. Weirdly it is an original script, though the material really could not be more adapted.

First Man (3/5 Stars)

Can there be just one astronaut’s wife that doesn’t continually lose her shit.

First Man tells the story of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. The moon landing occurred in 1969, an event we are told was watched by 400 million people worldwide. Amazingly, this is the first biopic about Neil Armstrong that has ever been made. It comes twenty years after Apollo 13, the movie about the most disastrous Apollo mission, and even a couple of years after Hidden Figures the “untold story” about three obscure NASA mathematicians who happened to be black women. In a way, First Man’s long delay is a great illustration of the artistic community’s disconnect with science and engineering. First Man probably took so long to get made because Hollywood has no idea what makes the story interesting. Watching First Man it is clear that Hollywood still has no idea. Bless them, they understand the drama of a black woman being unable to use a “white’s only” bathroom, but a successful trip to the moon, that is uncharted territory.

It is possible to make an interesting movie that takes place in space and does justice to the people involved in the missions. Apollo 13 was a particularly good movie. The Martian also did a great job. What these movies understand is that science puzzles and engineering problems when presented with clarity and acuity can be suspenseful and interesting. First Man being based on real events that presented engineering problems, sometimes with fatal consequences, had a lot of potential to take this road. What the movie chose to focus on instead was family drama, most of it probably trumped up, and none of it deserving to be shown alongside the extraordinary historic moment the movie is supposedly celebrating.

Neil Armstrong is played by Ryan Gosling, who channels his Drive persona and does a great job in playing someone who historically was described as calm, quietly brave, and no-nonsense. I expect the real Neil would approve of the portrayal. Janet Armstrong, played by Claire Foy, can hardly keep her shit together. It would be hard for me to imagine the real Janet not being somewhat offended by her portrayal. The movie, in its misguided search for drama, decides that Janet’s fears for the safety of her husband is on the same level of importance as a mission to walk on the moon for the first time. She even goes so far as to berate her husband right before the mission about his cold emotional stability about the whole thing. I just wanted to shake her and explain, “Neil is about to WALK ON THE MOON. Your life, children, and nerves are insignificant bullshit compared to that!” There is even a segment of the movie that does a tour of the country zoning in on all the naysayers who thought the moon missions were a waste of time and money. Why is this here? I saw this movie because I was interested in Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11. I don’t care what a bunch of short-sighted idiots think.

First Man was directed by Damien Chazelle. This is his third feature behind Whiplash and La La Land. His first two movies were great movies about music and musicians. I really have no idea why he chose First Man as his next project. The direction is competent but lacks interest in the subject matter. Chazelle seems more interested in Armstrong’s dead daughter than he does about spaceflight. Surely dead daughters and fretful wives can be the subject of great films, just not great films about a man walking on the moon for the first time.

Sorry to Bother You (5/5 Stars)

Sorry to Bother You has lots to say and uses its time wisely. This is one of those movies that you can spend much time afterwards discussing what it had to say. On an originality scale from 1 to Being John Malkovich, it is around 8 or 9 Charlie Kaufmans. It starts off in a new place and then half-way through goes completely crazy.

Sorry to Bother You was written and directed by Boots Riley. Never heard of him, but the way this movie plays, it feels like he’s had half a decade worth of material backed up in his system wrestling for position at the floodgates of creative fulfillment. Sorry to Bother You is about many things: wealth and poverty, capital and labor, ambition and community, individuality and conformity, weird art, wrong-headed genetic experiments, and slavery.

Our hero Cassius Green (played by Lakeith Stanfield) starts with an existential crisis. He lives in his uncle’s garage and hasn’t a job. He is simply surviving. What will his life amount to future generations? (Even when the movie is small, it is big.) Cassius Green lands a soul-crushing seemingly impossible job at a telemarketing firm. They will hire anyone who walks in the door. He is not doing well. Then, a fellow colleague played by a wonderful Danny Glover (still alive!) gives him great advice. Use your white voice he counsels. “White Voice?” asks Cassius. Glover explains what he means. Its not just sounding nasal. It means sounding like you don’t have student loans, that you pay all your bills on time, that you don’t have a care in the world. You are who the other person on the phone wants to be like. Oh, that white voice. Cassius Green gives it a shot. (He sounds remarkably like the actor David Cross, best known as Tobias Funke the therapist turned actor in “Arrested Development”.) This apparently is what black people think white people sound like. Like the movie in general, it’s too funny to be truly offensive.

Pretty soon, Cassius’s telemarketing career takes off and two subplots run right along side his growing success. The first is that the telemarketing center tries to unionize. This is led by a guy named Squeeze, played by Steven Yuen, who stages a work stoppage during prime calling hours. As one character remarks, it is some very Norma Rae shit. Having seen that movie, I agree. The second is that after Cassius gains a promotion he starts selling a product called “Worry Free” labor. “Worry Free” is a company that contracts with regular people to provide guaranteed food and shelter in exchange for otherwise unpaid labor. Its not necessarily slavery but Sorry to Bother You wants to liken it to such. Obviously, Cassius, being black, has some qualms about selling slavery to anyone, even if the slaves are of all races. But he also doesn’t want to be poor loser anymore and what exactly is his responsibility to everyone else?

Then there are weird art show, at least one riot, and the horse people. But I’m not going to get too far into that. It would be impossible to explain here. Two more points. First, this is the second movie this year that puts Oakland, California on the map. The first was Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther”. It is beginning to feel like that place is the next hot place to make great movies. If one more great movie from one great new filmmaker springs from there in the near future, it would be fair to say its a trend.

Second, is a philosophical qualm. Unlike Boots Riley, I don’t believe slavery is a particularly profitable or productive way to run a business. Here, “Worry Free” is making cash hand over fist by this type of business practice. History disagrees. As the Adam Smith would say, the problem with slavery (besides all the evil) is that, because there is no hope of bettering their situation, the workers are not incentivised to worker smarter and/or harder. Rationally, a slave will work just as hard as they can to avoid punishment. I’ve heard this weird argument flitting about that the wealth of America was produced through slavery. That is a bit like saying the economy of South Korea was built by North Koreans. If slavery produced wealth, the world would have been a whole lot richer a whole lot longer ago. This the truth of the matter. Having said that, Boots Riley made a great film and Lakeith Stanfield, well, his character reminded me of some great white characters like Peter Gibbons from Office Space and C.C. Baxter from The Apartment.

Ant-Man and the Wasp (4/5 Stars)

Like an antidote to universe-sized seriousness, Ant-Man and the Wasp sneaks into theaters just a few months after Avengers: Infinity Wars. Importantly, it takes place before that movie. A good thing since the Ant-Man franchise is notable in its complete lack of bigness in both themes and superhero size. It stars the nice and cute Paul Rudd as a petty thief named Scott Lang who teams up with the reclusive scientist Hank Pym (played by Michael Douglas) who engineers for him a suit that shrinks his size but outsizes his strength, you know, like an ant. Hank’s daughter, Hope Pym (Lost’s Evangeline Lily), gets her own suit this time around and becomes The Wasp. Really, she was better at this thing than Paul Rudd was even in the first movie. She was the one who trained him after all.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is all fun and action. I mean really, it is a Paul Rudd movie (everybody is nice or at least means well) but with car chases and quantum mechanics. However, to explain anything that happens in this movie takes a stupid amount of exposition. In fact, this movie could serve as a screenwriting class on exposition. There are some really good examples and others not so good.

Exposition is something that all movies need to do. Since Ant-Man and the Wasp is like the twentieth movie in an intertwined Marvel Universe, much exposition is needed to explain what this particular movie is about. The best exposition in this movie happens in the first ten minutes as a soliloquy performed by the scene-stealing Randall Park. (I’ve been doing this for so long that I can say about Randall Park what I said about Paul Rudd after “Knocked Up”, I think this guy is a leading man who needs his own movies). Randall Park plays a FBI agent who is checking in on Scott Lang during his house arrest. Scott Lang’s seven-year-old daughter asks why the FBI doesn’t like her daddy. Randall gets down on his knee to better connect with the little girl. “It must be hard to understand for you,” he relates and then speaks at length in a direct and literal tone about the various legal codes in effect since Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War. Classic. This does three things: One it explains the most important events of past Marvel movies concerning Ant-Man’s situation. Two and Three: It is a character-defining joke, the FBI agent seemed like he knew how to relate to a girl by getting down on her level but comically revealed that he was too straitlaced to do so.

The worse exposition concerns all the explanations concerning Hank Pym’s wife being lost in the quantum realm, how the quantum realm works, and the nature of the movie’s bad but not so bad guy Ghost. These do not come along with jokes or character development. They are necessary scenes but pales in comparison with good exposition as above. In fact, it pales in comparison with a scene of unneeded exposition provided by Luis (played by the scene-stealing Michael Pena) who answers the simple question “Where is Scott Lang?” in a very funny not simple at all way.

But besides the exposition, what is this movie like? Well, it’s got a bunch of good people trying to figure out problems. There are a few bad guys but they are either kind of goofy (Sonny Burch played by Walter Goggins) or mean well (Ghost played by Hannah John-Kamen). They have car chases over and about the hills of San Francisco. You may have seen that before, but have you seen it with cars that shrink and unshrink and sometimes a huge Ant-Man? It is good times.

This movie has notable diversity. It is a casting laundry list of the better actors of various ethnicities in its supporting roles. Obviously Paul Rudd is the straight white male. But two main superheroes beside him are both female (The Wasp and Ghost). Paul Rudd’s friends who run a security agency are hispanic (Luis), some sort of Eastern European and black. The FBI agent is Korean. The lesser bad guy is a southern gentleman (Walter Goggins) who employs at least one Indian. Given the movie’s location, San Francisco, the cast seems possible and besides me, I don't think anybody has made a point of it.

The Ant-Man franchise adds another complexity to the nature of the Marvel Universe. Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy added the vastness of the universe. Dr. Strange added new dimensions. Ant-Man adds the minute quantum realm. The science behind these complexities is real if thinly realized. What is more interesting perhaps is how these various thin interpretations of real science will interact with one another. This is bound to happen in the next Avengers movie given how Ant-Man ends.

First Reformed (4/5 Stars)

It is hard to explain the appeal of devotional Christianity. That is, the type of Christianity in which one lives alone in prayer without any earthly comfort. Many saints lived in that way, some of which would endure what would be defined as torture, if it had not been self-inflicted. The early Christians had a reputation for suicide. Historians like Edward Gibbon argued that the downfall of the Roman Empire was in part caused by the many Christians who did not believe their civilization was worth living in: they opted out of Roman life, thus depriving the state of the citizens and soldiers it desperately needed to stave off internal revolution and outside invasion. In that way, the fall of the Roman Empire was caused in part by a Christian rejection of its unjust and unequal society. The Romans could not be beaten in a fight, so the Christians gave up all earthly ambitions in lieu of participating in a society they deemed sinful. In the end, Christianity defeated Rome by hollowing it out from within.

Can this devotional Christianity still hold appeal in our society today? In many ways our civilization is far better than the Romans in terms of equality, rule of law, health and happiness. But this movie makes a strong argument that there is still room for it, without sounding too much like Ezekiel or Jeremiah. If this polemic concerned the sexual revolution, crime, or immigration it could be dismissed by the scientific evidence that show either the problem is overblown or closer to being solved than it ever has been. However, what causes the despair in Pastor Toller (played by Ethan Hawke) is actually backed by the science. Pastor Toller becomes concerned about climate change due to encounters he has with a parishioner, a deeply troubled environmentalist.

Pastor Toller is the prime candidate for this form of Christianity before the film begins. He is recently divorced. His wife left him because he had encouraged his son to join the military (like he had done and his father had done before him) and his son was killed in Iraq in a war with no moral justification. He lives simply, alone, and in deteriorating health. He works at First Reformed, a museum church with a very small following that is being funded by a richer, fuller, and more entertaining church called Abundant Life. Abundant Life is headed by Pastor Joel Jeffers who is played by Cedric Kyles (better known as Cedric the Entertainer) in a rare dramatic role. The juxtaposition between what Christianity started out as and what is now being called the Prosperity Gospel may by itself cause despair. In one scene Pastor Toller when volunteering in a youth ministry, one of the kids explains that her father goes to church and prays all the time, so why she asks, is he still unemployed? Pastor Toller tries to explain that Jesus is not calling people to be successful (at least in the commercial sense). He is angrily attacked for this view by another one of the kids. At another point he finds out that Abundant Life has accepted charitable funds from the area’s main polluter, Balq Energy. What is Pastor Toller going to about all this? What would Jesus do?

Like most movies that deal with heavy philosophical questions, this movie could descend into unbearable melodrama. It was written and directed however by Paul Schrader, who has had much experience in bringing these types of moods and themes to our screens. (He is best known for his Scorsese collaborations Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ). This can be noticed almost immediately when he chooses to devote what has to be at least ten minutes of conversation in one room between two people, Pastor Toller and Michael, the despairing environmentalist. In most other movies, the scene would have ended five minutes earlier. But Schrader stays and flushes out all the arguments about life, forgiveness, hope, and despair. The result is fascinating, half because it is almost never done (perhaps the last time I saw something similar was the fifteen minute conversation between the priest and Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s Hunger) and half because all the arguments both for and against make sense.

Schrader has had a famously uneven career as a movie director. His last one starred Lindsay Lohan and James Deen and I’ve heard was particularly bad. It is nice to see him return to form here and make one of his best movies. Ethan Hawke is also very good and Cedric Kyles once again proves that comedians can be the perfect choice for certain dramatic roles. First Reformed does not end tidily and given the existential problems it explores, it probably could not do so. But its journey will take you places most other movies would not know how to find. I recommend watching it alone at home in a dark room with no distractions and a bottle of scotch.

The Incredibles 2 (5/5 Stars)

 A benefit of animation is the ability to stop time. Bart Simpson has been the same age since 1989. Here, the time between original movie and sequel was a full fourteen years. However, thanks to the wonders of technology, The Incredibles 2 starts immediately after the first film ended. Now, you will know exactly what happened when the villain Underminer (looks like a mole) burrowed beneath the city with a big drill to rob several banks. The human actors certainly look older but all they lend here are their voices and those are the same. Actually, there was a casualty. The young boy who voiced Dash in the earlier movie had to be be replaced by a different young boy. Still everyone else is back. Craig T. Nelson voices Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible, Holly Hunter voices Helen Parr/Elastigirl, Samuel L. Jackson voices Lucius Best/Frozone, Sarah Vowell voices Violet Parr (the author Sarah Vowell did not turn the ingenious bit of casting that landed her this part, and her first role in a movie, fourteen years ago into a voice career, The Incredibles 2 is her second role), and the Director Brad Bird again voices Edna Mode that tribute to old Hollywood costume design.

The Incredibles 2 is above all an action film. The superheroes fight villains and do so at regular intervals. At the beginning of the movie, they fight the Underminer together. The collateral damage from this fight has superheroes banned again (the bank after all was insured, so if the Incredibles had done nothing, things would have turned out better). As the government program is terminated, a billionaire philanthropist steps into the void. This man is voiced by the incorrigible excitement of Bob Odenkirk, perfect. The billionaire believes that superheroes have an image problem. He proposes that they wear cameras on their clothes and present their best sides first. By that he means, only Elastigirl and not Mr. Incredible because she wrecks less things while saving them. Mr. Incredible comically fights to hold onto his dignity and Elastigirl goes on to save runaway trains and fight villains every twenty minutes or so in spectacular display.

Meanwhile, Mr. Incredible is relegated to taking care of his family. Never has such a task been presented in such a heroic light. Those who are old enough will remember when American education “changed math” much to the chagrin of old men trying to help their sons with their homework. And can you really help a teenage girl deal with anything? The most pressing problem however is the toddler Jack Jack who is budding with new random and frightening superpowers. The movie’s best moment has to be when Jack Jack fights a raccoon, who starts the fight with way too much confidence and is continually surprised by the toddler’s more and more dangerous capabilities. Jack Jack is taken at one point to Edna Mode who goes crazy with the creative possibilities of a super-suit for such a superbaby.

The Incredibles franchise is notable in its slightly conservative tone. The first movie took swipes at bureaucracy and personal injury attorneys. The Incredibles 2 continues on this thread. This can be seen first in the billionaire’s modern liberal idea to present superheroes in a more favorable light by not highlighting the white man (I say that this discrimination is from a conservative point of view because it presupposes that the movie’s world would find a woman to be more acceptable than the white man. We all tend to see ourselves as the victim). That poor white man, it really hurts to not be wanted. At another point, the villain of the story, the Screenslaver, presents a very compelling reason for why it wants superheroes to remain illegal. Screenslaver posits that when there are superheroes around, normal people become complacent about their place and situation. Why should they try to better themselves or fight back when they can just call on superheroes to save the day? Superheroes, this villain reasons, make people weak. This is essentially an argument against patriarchal, i.e. big, government. The movie is not completely about this point. It is very funny and action-packed, but it is notable that a kid’s movie would so articulately make this point (even if, you know, the villain is ultimately vanquished). Pixar is a company that contains a multitude of voices.

Pixar has unfortunately gotten so successful they feel compelled to make sequels for their best films, i.e. most of them. If they were a less successful company, this movie may have been made ten years ago. (Instead it had to first wait for sequels of Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Toy Story, and Cars (twice) to be made). The Incredibles 2 is notable in that it is better than the first one. It is as funny and action-packed (perhaps more so) but also has a better villain and a better point to it. After fourteen years, and a stupid amount of other super-hero movies produced in the meantime by other studios, this sequel had much more to say about the genre than it had before. Give Pixar another Oscar. I most likely won’t see a better animated movie this year.

p.s. Samuel L. Jackson currently has the record for most box office receipts for movies he has acted in, $5.589 billion dollars to be exact as of now. He just reswiped this record from Harrison Ford, $4.963 billion dollars. How did he do it? Well, apart from being a reliable work-a-holic, he is also a big team player. He added substantially to his record this year with supporting roles, first in Avengers: Infinity War and now as Frozone in Incredibles 2.

Deadpool 2 (4/5 Stars)

Deadpool 2 makes such a big deal about its sub-class of superheroes. In one scene, as Deadpool wanders about the X-Men superfortress, he wonders where everyone else is. Didn’t this movie get the rights to anybody other than Colossus and what’s her name!? (A room full of the important X-Men quickly close there doors upon a glimpse). That is unfair. Deadpool does not lack for great superheroes. Well, perhaps not great but at least very fun superheroes. Take Deadpool, just by himself. Here is a man who that cannot die and does not care whether or not he lives or even gets hurt. Demonstrating how indestructible he is, he attempts to kill himself by incineration at the beginning of the movie. He literally lies on a bunch of gas barrels, drops in a lighter, and blows himself up into many pieces. No doing. He can’t die and just how he survives these sorts of things is fodder for many jokes, most made by Deadpool himself, an accomplished wisecracker.

The next most fun is Domino (the more diverse and genderfied version of Longshot, my favorite superhero who I guess will never make it into a superhero movie now). Domino’s superpower is luck. She just gets lucky all the time. “Luck is not a superpower” retorts Deadpool. Well, what if you gave a dumb excuse to a movie production team and several screenwriters to make sure you escape in the most profound and unexpected ways from many many dangers. Yes, that just might be a superpower. Then there are the big guys like Colussus and Juggernaut. At one point they use their big metal fists to pound on each other. It’s fun.

You have already seen the plot of Deadpool 2. This engagingly humorous derivative product of superhero movies basically copies the twists and turns of two great prior movies Terminator and Looper. Terminator concerned a bad guy from the future who was on a mission to kill a hero before he became great. Looper a derivative of Terminator with a twist concerned a good guy heading back to kill a future bad guy, who at that point was still an innocent child. Deadpool 2 has the same exact plot, and it speaks to the power of these particular story-lines that they continue to have such power. It certainly works here. Why? Because time-travel is about regret, and that is universal. Deadpool is an ugly outcast second rate superhero (regret). Deadpool failed his loved ones (regret). Deadpool wants to help a child be a better person than he turned out to be (regret). Deadpool is one of us, just immortal and with a far more developed sense of humor.

I confess I did not like at all the first twenty minutes of Deadpool 2. A deep tragedy occurs in that time and, no, the sarcastic opening titles could not make me feel any shallower about it. Not until did I realize that time travel was going to be involved did I start to feel like I was allowed to have a good time. When Cable (played by Josh Brolin a fine straight man counterpoint to Ryan Reynolds wild and crazy Deadpool), a Terminator knockoff, finally shows up trying to change the past, I was finally okay, nothing matters, they’ll figure out how to change the past at some point here. Of course they do, and many other things that did not need to be changed at all.

I want to give a shout out to the soundtrack of Deadpool 2, the songs of which the movie would have you believe it is playing ironically. Yeah right, these guys obviously love Celine Dion and Barbara Streisand. And why wouldn’t they, they’re the best. Deadpool 2 also contains an extraordinary acoustic version of A-ha’s “Take on Me”. I had to mention it to the people I saw this movie with around 3-4 times before I got them to admit that they too believed it was great. There is no shame when your heart is in the right place, that’s what Deadpool 2 teaches us about life.

Disobedience (3/5 Stars)

I confess that I wanted this movie to be worse. Part of the reason I saw it at all had to do with the promised outrageous scandal of the Hasidic Jewish lesbian love affair between actresses Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. A bad movie might have been hilarious and/or sexy. Unfortunately and fortunately this turned out to be a good movie about the forbidden romance of two Hasidic Jewish lesbians. Sexy at times yes, but not hilarious, and at some points rather touching. In fact, for the first time in an untold amount of movies, the conclusion to this particular type of story had a conservative bent. For once, sexual liberation does not get the upper hand in its age old war against traditional community values.

We find Ronit Krushka (played by Rachel Weisz) in New York. She works as a photographer. She ice skates. She drinks. She has casual sex with strange men. Then she receives a phone call. Her father, a venerated rabbi in a tightly bound Hasidic Jewish community in London has died. She has been outcast for some time.

She returns home. Everyone is surprised to see her but greet her with politeness. She first comes to the house of Dovid Kuperman (played by Alessandro Nivola). The funeral ceremonies are being held there because he was an important pupil of the rabbi. Its awkward though because Ronit and Dovid were in a relationship when she left for good. A further twist develops when the reason she the leave enters the room as Dovid’s now wife, one Esti Kuperman (played by Rachel McAdams). Esti it is established is lesbian. Ronit seems like she is bisexual. In any case, their relationship was frowned upon and Ronit simply left the community. Esti married Dovid.

For the most part, this movie follows the forbidden love genre track. It is a Romeo and Juliet storyline: the two lovers against the unjust world. Until, quite amazingly, it doesn’t follow through. There is something strange about this community. For all its stifling conformity, it is apparent that Ronit misses being apart of it. Witness her trying on a wig and keeping it on for a day. Look at the way she enviously eyes those she has left behind in the coffee shop. Then there is Esti. She finds Ronit more attractive than her husband, but she doesn’t want to elope to New York. She likes these people. There is even a scene where the husband is teaching Torah to some pimply faced teenage boys. They are studying a passage in which sex is the main feature. The boys interpret the passage as simply expressing physical pleasure. But, points out Dovid, isn’t there a type of love that is more than that?

What saves this movie from being a simple polemic against homosexuality is the main theme of it. It does not present the question as just dogma: if you don’t do as we say you will go to hell. It presents an actual choice. You can choose self-fulfillment in this particular way that this community does not recognize, or you can choose this community. The movie suggests that the latter can be a real choice made by a real person who is not brainwashed and not being abused by this community. That is, being part of this community might actually be worth the sacrifice being made. The point though is that the morality of the question necessarily depends on the choice of the individual. It is a question so fundamental to one’s identity that it needs to be independently made. What I love about this movie is that it asserts a free-thinking individual can assert an unselfish identity. There is rightly much cynicism about this topic, but yes, ultimately I believe it too.

The Avengers: Infinity War (5/5 Stars)

The last time a movie franchise achieved something akin to what Avengers: Infinity War accomplishes had to be The Lord of the Rings. That epic multi-Oscar winning movie was itself the third installment of a cohesive and perfectly realized trilogy of movies based on revered source material. Avengers: Infinity War leap-frogs that accomplishment. This movie is the culmination not of a trilogy but a universe of interconnected movies that spans nineteen films. Perhaps the HBO series Game of Thrones is the closest thing, but that TV series is still not of the same scale nor found in so many variations as the Marvel franchises that have climaxed into Infinity War. No, there really is nothing quite like Avengers: Infinity War in the history of movies.

Avengers: Infinity War has seventeen credited writers. It has two directors, Anthony and Joe Russo. It tells a story that attempts to involve all of Marvel’s outstanding franchises. These include:

Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man); Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Pots); Don Cheadle (James Rhodes/War Machine), Samuel L. Jackson (himself)

Thor: Chris Hemsworth (Thor); Tom Hiddleston (Loki); Idris Elba (Heimdall); Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk); Peter Dinkalge (Eitri)

Captain America: Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America); Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow); Paul Bettany (Vision); Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch); Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson/Falcon); Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier)

Guardians of the Galaxy: Chris Pratt (Peter Quill/Star-Lord); Zoe Saldana (Gamora); Karen Gillan (Nebula); Pom Klementieff (Mantis); Dave Bautista (Drax); Vin Diesel (Groot); Bradley Cooper (Rocket); Josh Brolin (Thanos)

Dr. Strange: Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange); Benedict Wong (Wong)

Spider-Man: Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man)

Black Panther: Chadwick Boseman (T’Challa/Black Panther); Danai Gurira (Okoye); Letitia Wright (Shuri)

Any of these franchises can and have carried a great movie on their own. (In particular, since 2013 Marvel has made a stretch of great movies including Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor:Ragnarok, and Black Panther). So one of the great obstacles Infinity War had to overcome is how to fit all the above in the same movie giving each and every character their own moment to shine. Amazingly, this is done. All of the above share this movie in equal heft and have their own moments to shine. I’m not sure how seventeen writers and two directors go about doing something like that, but its time to start handing out Oscars.

What may to be the hardest thing to accomplish is how consistently funny the movie is. I say this because there are two big things fighting against it. The first is that the main villain, Thanos (played by Josh Brolin) is trying and succeeding throughout the movie to kill off half of the universe. It is heavy stuff and is taken quite seriously, not least by Thanos. Two important characters from the Thor franchise, Loki and Heimdall, die in the first fifteen minutes. Another important character from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise dies at the half-way point. At the end, well, it seems like half the characters die. I won’t tell you which half, that would be a spoiler. The second is that this is an action-heavy blockbuster and huge spectacles and jokes generally do not generally complement each other. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs working is the first Ghostbusters movie. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs not working is the Ghostbusters remake. But in Infinity Wars, every joke lands. Dr. Strange is funny, Thor is funny, Star-Lord and Drax are funny, Spider-man is funny. Some characters are generally funnier than others. For instance Captain America and Black Panther were never particularly humorous, but almost everyone has their moments. There is also the added pleasure of seeing various characters interacting for the first time. At one point Thor meets up with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Bruce Banner has a scientific conversation with Shuri in Wakaanda. Dr. Strange and Tony Stark have this dialogue upon meeting.

Tony Stark: Nice cape. What's your job, again?

Dr. Strange: Protecting your reality, douchebag.

Infinity War is supposedly only the first of a two part movie, the other coming out next year. In that case, it is hard to judge the overall story at this point. But really, given how well this movie did what it set out to do, how could it be bad? Marvel is at its peak and the movies it has been making deserve to start getting serious recognition and not just for special effects. I expect Black Panther will run away with a serious amount of Oscars next year. Perhaps the year after Infinity War 2 will take the ultimate prize. As far as I’m concerned, Marvel has already earned it. At this moment, They are the best in the business.