Aquaman (2018)

There are some really good things about this superhero movie at a time when we're all sick of the genre. James Wan's direction is notable. I saw tinges of Furious 7 in the action sequences (and the final battle is Tolkien-esque). I love the zooms, in and out, in the Sicily scene, giving us a sense of scale and continuity between the separate chases. The underwater visuals are spectacular. The production design for Atlantis and the other underwater realms is visually stunning. And I also liked some of the music. There are some interesting choices (Pitbull singing Africa?). But every now and then, you hear music reminiscent of Vangelis's score for Blade Runner. I thought I might have caught a reference in the beginning too, when Nicole Kidman's character says the sea washes away tears in Atlantis, like teardrops in the rain (from the monologue at the end of Blade Runner). That's the best line in the movie. The rest of the dialogue is really cheesy. And it's a shame because there are some real nuggets of inspiration in the writing. The central conflict between Aquaman and his brother is quite interesting. We are engaged in the war between land and sea over pollution and warships because these are genuine problems in our world. Much less consequential is the conflict with Black Manta. It's obviously setting something up for a future movie, but he is totally insignificant and uninteresting  in this movie. Finally, I have to mention the acting because Amber Heard and Jason Momoa are just terrible. They can only do so much with bad writing...

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.

Lion (2016)

Lion is an incredible true story about a young Indian boy, played by a radiant 6 year-old Sunny Pawar, who gets lost and is eventually adopted and raised by an Australian family. The second half of the film is about the college-aged boy searching for his birth mother via Google Earth. It is a very emotional movie, as you could imagine. There is a lot of soul searching. It is really emotionally devastating--at the beginning, at the end, and in the middle. You cry in the sad parts and in the happy parts. It's unrelenting.

The first half is carried by a 6-year-old. I cannot emphasize enough how good he is. A lot of these scenes are characterized by silent acting, and he shows emotions without words. The cinematography in the Indian scenes is absolutely stunning. The poverty is overwhelming but each shot is just beautiful. There is an underlying theme of child trafficking in the first half of the movie. I don't know if it is detailed in his memoir, but I can't imagine that he would have known so much detail at such a young age. Surely, it is incredible that he fended for himself for so long and I don't doubt that his child's intuition was leaps and bounds beyond what I'm capable of, but I think there was some artistic license there to give the movie a theme and purpose.

Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel, too, give excellent performances. The movie really should've been in the running for a hair styling Oscar. I didn't really need the subplot with Rooney Mara, but it does give Patel's character a little more conflict, as if he needs more conflict in his life. This is kind of a spoiler, but after all the methodical searching, he seems to stumble upon the right spot just by magic. There is a whole process that goes straight out the window, and then just by coincidence it all clicks. It's a little too perfect and implausible of a scene. It is a very crucial scene upon which the movie hinges that fails for me.

And finally, the music is really good too. Sia contributes a song to the end credits. The score by Dustin O'Halloran is enchanting, definitely taking some influence from Indian music but crafting a beautiful soundtrack that is uniquely his own.