Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)

Wreck-It-Ralph was a great movie that didn't really need a sequel but I'm quite satisfied with this. The underlying plot is deeper than a little kid could comprehend. The movie ruminates on finding meaning in life. Ralph is content doing the same thing everyday. But Vanellope is looking for something more. More familiar to children will be the internet. Kids who have grown up with the internet have an inherent understanding of what it is that the rest of us had to learn on our own. Disney visualizes cyberspace with much humor and cleverness that people of all ages can appreciate. It's hard to overlook the nonstop product placements that we are bombarded with. I'll make a small distinction between the Internet product placements and the Disney "synergies" that are written into the plot, like the Disney princesses. But it's so obvious and shameless. Despite this, the movie is fun. And the voice cast is fabulous, especially Sarah Silverman.

Secret Sunshine (Miryang) (2007)

Secret Sunshine is about grief. It's about faith. It's a bold, powerful movie anchored by a visceral performance from Jeon Do-yeon. What she conveys in just looks is as strong as the words and cries. She is such a complex character feeling a wide range of lows. There is a particularly stirring scene in a prison in which we face a murderer who has been saved. It is not her most emotional scene. But it is a turning point for her. And her blank stare we can read so much suffering. The movie goes really deep into her suffering.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

The movie has two things going for it. The visuals are cool. And the cast is fun. Johnny Depp plays the villain like only Johnny Depp could. That's about it cause the plot is all over the place full of holes and exposition with no payoff. We are introduced to a slew of new characters with familiar names for no apparent nor believable reason.  Remember the name Lestrange? Like Bellatrix? Well the central conflict centers around whether there are more of them. The opening scene is a prison transport gone wrong. But who would be so stupid as to hand over a wizard's wand for prison transport? And you expect me to believe that wizard transportation is so primitive as to be using carriages? Dumbledore has a seen at the mirror of erised, showing his utmost heart's desire...spoiler alert it's Grindelwald. Is this the homosexuality that Rowling has alluded to in interviews? Also what's the deal with Nicolas Flamel? There's a few too many needless references to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Widows (2018)

Steve McQueen knows how to make an intense movie. Heist movies, by their very nature, are intense, but McQueen takes it to another level. Hans Zimmer's score as well as the moments of tense silence contribute to the mood. There are some gorgeous tracking shots. And Gillian Flynn of Gone Girl fame writes an engaging screenplay full of twists, grit and excitement.The plot is complex, intertwining race, power, money and gender roles. And the cast is all phenomenal.  Viola Davis is a badass.

Putty Hill (2010)

I don't think I was really paying enough attention to appreciate this movie. The pseudo documentary style is jarring, and a little off-putting (off-putty hill?). The off-screen interviewer is like an anthropologist conducting research in the field of Baltimore. And Baltimoreans are a special breed but not quite interesting enough to engage me.

Nobody's Fool (2018)

I think Tyler Perry is underrated. His movies should have appeal with a much broader audience than just the African American community they're marketed to. He proves to be entertaining and accessible. Tiffany Haddish, especially, has universal appeal. Her personality is so electric and she appears to be having so much fun on screen you cannot look away. And I, for one, think Tika Sumpter is fantastic. Now there is a pretty major plot hole towards the end with the surprise twist that not only invalidates the previous hour of film we've just seen but also doesn't make sense. But if they could have patched up this hole somehow, I dare say, the plot is near Shakespearean. Catfishing is our modern equivalent of mistaken identity, the hallmark of a Shakespearean comedy. And by the end, I think it would have been more interesting if "they" didn't end up together but it then wouldn't be a Shakespearean romantic comedy.

Boy Erased (2018)

Joel Edgerton must have some issues. The writer and director cast himself as the villain. This is no sympathetic villain either. I don't think he means to condone his character's behavior. Does he identify with the hack Christian therapist Victor Sykes? Overall, the movie is good. It exposes the truth about these "gay conversion retreats" for the child abuse they are; the Evangelical audience watches it for this purpose. But for audiences on the liberal coasts, it is more revelatory than expository. This is a whole Evangelical world so far from my own that I couldn't have fathomed.  There are some very troubling scenes in this movie, absolutely appalling stuff. Maybe none more than the victim blaming and the disturbing rape that goes ignored. And it makes me dislike the movie to a degree, again even though Edgerton is not explicitly condoning it. That it goes unpunished and uncommented on, almost amounts to effectively condoning it.

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018) & The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead is the accompanying documentary to the long awaited "The Other Side of the Wind". Not only is this a making-of documentary, but it also assists in deciphering the very experimental movie. This is important because the saga of the making of the movie is the majority of the allure. And in its own meta way, the ordeal of the creation of "The Other Side of the Wind" is self-referential. You see, the "The Other Side of the Wind" is about the final day of director Jake Hannaford, who is extraordinarily Orson Welles-like, who is struggling to finish a movie called "The Other Side of the Wind". Welles may have said that the movie was not autobiographical, but the documentary insinuates so much as fact. And the documentary is quite interesting because Welles was a character.

The ironic film-within-a-film structure is trippy. Welles was supposedly parodying Michelangelo Antonioni, whose style he abhorred. He does so with such disdain, it is actually spot on, very pretty looking but wondrously empty and wordless. The broader film is shot in documentary style. It seems as though Welles pioneered the modern documentary style. Though in reality, he was so far ahead of his time that we still have not caught up. Documentarians follow Hannaford's every move, on different cameras, in different colors and aspect ratios. And they're all cut together very quickly. The edits are lightning fast accompanied by a jazz score. It's so fast it is impossible to follow. And it makes the task of cutting together someone else's hours and hours of footage a gargantuan task. I don't think it's Netflix's fault that the movie is so incoherent, Orson Welles just left us with a really difficult movie. Too artsy for me.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

It's not a great biopic but it's good fun. The movie shines in the musical sections, especially the Live Aid performance (which would've been really cool as a single shot if they had the ambition and money for it). But the story is lacking. The biopic is an inherently flawed genre and it shows in this movie. Freddie Mercury had an interesting and troubled life and I don't think the movie does it justice. Take his relationship with Mary for instance. She was his one true friend. She was the subject of Love of My Life. But we don't really see how their relationship evolves. After the first third of the movie, we hardly see them interact at all. And what right does she have to define him as gay? The central conflict in the movie is driven Mercury's relationship with Paul Prenter, who is blamed for driving the band apart. But I think it really should have focused on a man vs self conflict because Freddie was a complex guy. Rami Malek is phenomenal. Freddie Mercury was quite the character and Malek's interpretation of him is engrossing. And the costumes are great.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

A lovingly-made tribute to one of the greatest Americans of the twentieth century, a television pioneer, and a decent man at a time such people are hard to find. You cannot overstate the number of lives Fred Rogers touched, teaching young children how to navigate the world by treating them like people, acknowledging their feelings and helping them understand the complex world around them. I hadn't realized how much thought he put into this show to really get a message across to the kids. Children's programming today is totally devoid of content and this would appall Mr. Rogers. Maybe I would emote better had I watched Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Maybe I would have watched it if it was a little less creepy. Something as simple and mundane as puppets, but they're some creepy looking puppets. At the beginning of television, Mr. Rogers was there. All in all he filmed over 1500 episodes. Some iconic highlights that are featured in Morgan Neville's documentary: RFK's assassination, Francois Clemmons and Fred Rogers soaking their feet in the pool, Koko the Gorilla, quadriplegic Jeff Erlanger, the Challenger disaster, and 9/11.

The Rider (2017)

What compels Chinese Chloe Zhao to make two consecutive films in South Dakota? She manages to make a compelling movie about something I would not generally care about, rodeo. She takes a very specific activity inspired by real life, and crafts a universal story about passion. It is a little slow to start but it is actually really well done, never being preachy exercising restraint. There are some gorgeous shots with a nice use of natural light. The last thirty minutes of the movie is beautiful, truly moving. She uses non-professional actors who literally play themselves to great effect.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)

Disney's latest attempt at a live-action re-imagining of a beloved tale is almost incoherent. It's ostensibly the Nutcracker, but it tries to emanate the Chronicles of Narnia, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and Wizard of Oz, making it wholly unoriginal. Some of the characters have the same names as the ones from the ballet but the story is totally different and that's a bad thing. Nothing is really quite explained enough to satisfaction. And there are a handful of plot points that frustratingly don't go anywhere. I love Keira Knightley and I've never heard her voice sound so unnatural. Also beware the mice; there are A LOT of mice in this movie.

But let's try to focus on the good. The cinematography and art direction are beautiful. Linus Sandgren's visuals are stunning as usual. The music of the Nutcracker is iconic. The score by James Newton Howard does not merely copy Tchaikovsky's composition. It does includes short snippets here and there. But Howard's excellent soundtrack has noticeable variations on the themes from the Nutcracker. There is one scene of the movie that rises above the rest: it's obviously the ballet scene featuring none other than Misty Copeland. In a movie full of CGI, the most magical scene is the one featuring practical sets on a ballet stage. I actually wouldn't have minded if more of the story was told through dance. That wouldn't have been inappropriate for the Nutcracker. They couldn't done a Chicago-esque kind of thing. The ballet is preceded by maestro Gustavo Dudamel taking his place in front of the orchestra in silhouette a la Fantasia. That's Disney invoking itself; I don't know if anyone else would be so bold but Disney.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Melissa McCarhthy is obviously a comedienne.When I heard she was doing a drama, I was naturally surprised. But there is a lot more comedy in the movie than I was led to believe. And good thing there is because McCarthy is phenomenal. She gets to shine in this dramatic-comedic hybrid role as a cynical writer who can't find work who turns to literary forgery. Director Marielle Heller does an incredible job at making something that is extremely niche accessible to a broad audience. Cause really who knows or cares anything about literary collectibles? Richard E. Grant plays her partner in crime and his character is somehow simultaneously sleazy and charming. Grant and McCarthy play off of each other brilliantly. I think Dolly Wells as Anna is really charming too. It's really surprisingly enjoyable overall.