My freshman year of college brought me a lot of discoveries: how much weight I could gain from eating cafeteria food, how to nearly fail an English class, the wonder of Jim James’ voice. I went back and forth on how much I loved the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ excessive Stadium Arcadium double-album, and which of the two sides I loved more (this is still a debate I have not settled). I cackled every time I played ‘Knocked Up’, the opening song off Kings of Leon’s Because of the Times album in the family van, waiting for my very Catholic mother to flinch at the ‘I don’t know care what no one says, but she’s gonna have my baby…” (spoiler alert: she never noticed).

But one of my favorite and most lasting discoveries that freshmen year is stumbling into Before Sunset, the second film in Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy. This was a solid six or seven years before I moved to Austin, unknowingly the hometown of Linklater himself. I had heard, based on a few reviews I had glossed over, that such a film was supposed to be short, compact, and absolutely worth a look. The premise – two friends/lovers who meet again after ten years – didn’t completely grab me. It didn’t need to. The plot, however thin, just creates the space for the story to fill up and nearly flood the emotional chambers. There was so, so much going on – each longing look, each pained joke – that I immediately seemed out the original Before Sunrise that started it all.

And like I went back and forth between the Mars and Jupiter sides on Stadium Arcadium, I went back and forth on whether I loved Before Sunrise or Before Sunset more. They both had their own way of holding me. Before Sunrise reminded me of the wide-eyed crushes I had in high school and college, when a short encounter – a dinner date, a Sadie Hawkins dance – would send my mind reeling at all the possibilities. And there was no way to know it, but Before Sunset would forecast the feelings I would grapple with in my early 30s, when the longer you live means the more you emotionally accumulate.

Jesse and Celine talked the way I imagined my conversations with my soul mate would go. Growing up the sole deaf person in a family, I frequently wished I could fully understand the conversations around me. I remember one particular night when my brother and sister and I were sent upstairs in the playroom so my parents could have an argument in relative private. I could hear their yelling and the cadence of their cases. But I could not make out enough of the actual words. I asked my sister, nearly four years younger, just what they were saying. They were not very nice things, she would tell me. But I didn’t care about the plus-minus value. I wanted to know the precise words. I wanted to know how the hearing world really talked to each other when they were very upset.

Movies (and the subtitles with them) gave me access to that conversation. Finally, I could understand what people were saying! Finally, I could see the actual words used in a real ugly, drawn-out argument. Or the awkward pauses when there’s nothing good to say. Or the cutting, sarcastic line that releases the tension and sends everyone into fits of laughter. I could finally be a part of this carefully-edited world these hearing people lived in, even if they were characters in filming locations, moving to director commands and separated by a big glass screen.

When I found out Before Midnight would be coming out in the summer of 2013, the first of the trilogy that I could actually see in theaters, I was hoping and praying it wouldn’t gloss over anything. I wanted to see all the warts, as sun-dappled by the Grecian sun as they may be. I wanted to be shown, “This is what your life could look like in another ten years,” and find a place of acceptance, if not hope. I wanted to know that two people I greatly loved and admired – however fictional – could get into an absolutely brutal fight and still find the reasons to remain together.

And boy, did I get it.

That final hotel fight in Before Midnight is still one of the most brutal things I’ve ever seen onscreen. You can see them digging in, alternating between saying the most hurtful thing they can think of, before backing off and realizing, “Oh shit, are we really going this far?”. It’s a delicate, masterfully written and acted moment. And I still doubted what would happen. I, for far more moments than I was comfortable with, wondered if they wouldn’t make it. The dream would be over. Reality would finally hit me upside the chin.

But Jesse finds Celine. And he makes a joke that brings them back to the beginning when they first met. And Celine holds out as long as possible, unconvinced that they can pull this off AGAIN.

As a time-traveler, he takes her back to that summer of ’94, the man who fell in love with her for the first time. And that’s what we all are in our stories: time travelers who live in the present moment while pulling out each memory we’ve built together, sometimes to lovingly pull us tighter together and sometimes to drive us a little further apart.

 

I thought about Jesse and Celine a lot as I watched Rob and Sharon move their way through Catastrophe’s fourth and final season. There’s a lot of similarities between the two sets of writer/actors, in that both would meet up and hash out ideas and write together before production (Linklater’s more direct writing/directing invovlement with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy the main difference). Both sets of actors drew from their own lives. Both seemed to be figuring out their own lives offscreen just as their characters were their lives onscreen. You can see what drew them together, in Before Sunrise and in the first season of Catastrophe. You can see where the cracks formed that would have to be sealed up between the two. And you can see just how they found their home stretch narratively, where they had to compromise, make some concessions, and be a little bit more forgetful about the past and a little more optimistic about the future.

Similar to Before Midnight, Rob and Sharon, in the last episode of the fourth season, have an absolutely brutal fight. Rob, most likely indirectly struck by the grieving of his mother’s death and a job offer to stay in America, absolutely tears into Sharon, saying the meanest things possible. Sharon is completely flabbergasted. She knows they’ve had a rough go of things, but damn. Even my fiancé said, “What the hell, Rob?”. Catastrophe has always done a great job of allowing their characters to have their human, unlikable moments. And they sure let Rob do so, with Sharon barely fighting back.

It’s so vicious and the situation so delicate, that we don’t know how they’re going to be okay again, even as the episodes – and series – ticks down to its final minutes. Except we remember all the other vicious fights we’ve seen (and this is where I realized just HOW MUCH they packed into four short seasons) from these two and how they’ve found a way to come back to each other.

I absolutely love the way this series ends, because it works on both a figurative and literal level. They pull over to a beach, finally beginning a vacation they’re almost not sure they can enjoy. Rob apologizes as Sharon assures him he really does make her happy. They both recognize a third child that’s on the way. And then Sharon takes off, discarding clothes with every few steps, beginning a swim she’s not sure Rob will share with her. Rob just watches all this until he spots a sign warning of strong currents and the generally very unsafe swimming conditions. Instead of screaming at her to come back, he discards his clothes and runs right in himself.

As he catches up to her she says, “Thought you didn’t want to swim.” And then Rob gives the real kicker of a response that wraps up the series so beautifully:

“I just didn’t like seeing you there drifting on your own.” 

They kiss. They enjoy each other’s presence as they barely keep their heads above water. The camera pans back to their clothes upon the rock. They’re physically and emotionally naked with each other. They’re all in. The camera pulls back wider and wider and we just see them for what they are, just like I saw with Jesse and Celine before: two people committed to swimming in this giant ocean of craziness because they enjoy each other and don’t want to watch each other drifting on their own.

I’ve been far more impressed with than moved by Marvel’s 22-movie longform storytelling. Whatever emotional heft the films tighten in me tend to slack with the next board-resetting film. That dusty ending to Infinity War should have sent me crying a river deep enough to flood the theater. Instead, I shook my head in disbelief: of course they were killing off characters that had movies announced; this shit wasn’t going to stick.

But the bigger curiosity for me has been something else: where we will they go from their next movie, Avengers: Endgame? Where will they take the story after they’ve (presumably) defeated the biggest and baddest villain of them all, Thanos himself?

Villains are often poorly done in superhero movies, and it’s not hard to see why. They got to be powerful to challenge a superhero. They gotta do something dramatic. People probably have to die. Cities probably have to be destroyed. Something has to be done that – whether it makes sense for the story or not – allows the superhero to show off ALL their powers in their own chaotic, wonderful, visually appealing ways. This is fine when you make a few superhero movies each decade. But when you make more than a few each year, it leads to an endless ramping up of the stakes, where things get bigger and bigger and bigger until they lose all meaning again. After all, boiling water at 400 degrees is not going to make it any more boiled than it was at 212 degrees. It’s all excess, unnecessary energy.

But Marvel’s villains may be trending in the right direction. Black Panther sported one of the best villains of not only the MCU but the greater movieverse in Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Killmonger. He didn’t even have to destroy any cities for it! What made him so potent is the duality he shared with Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa. They both wanted the same thing: their people to be taken care of. But they had widely different definitions of what “my people” and community were. And they had wildly different approaches for how to share that wealth with others. That’s what made Killmonger’s end so tragic. He wasn’t wrong. He had good intentions. He just didn’t know how to go about it in a better way.

Captain Marvel’s team of writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half-Nelson, Sugar, Mississippi Grind) seem to have taken exactly these notes with their own villain. Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos appears at first to be another hammy villain role in which an incredible actor is buried beneath 4 hours worth of makeup (see: Idris Elba in Star Trek: Beyond, Oscar Isaac in X:Men: Apocalypse). But as the story goes on, we can see that Talos wants the same thing as Brie Larson’s Vers: freedom. They just have different definitions of it. And yet they both need the same journey to get there.

We’ve all been there. We’ve wanted the same thing as someone else – be it a job, money, or last seats into a soldout concert – and for different reasons. And often, when we want it bad enough, we resort to behavior that is atypical of us. We almost do whatever is necessary. We’re usually not proud of our actions afterward. The end justifies the means.

In Captain Marvel, Talos indeed appears to be one for those nasty, hellbent villains. He shoots people. He impersonates others (a special Skrull skill). He doesn’t seem to yield a gentle bone in his body until he comes face to face with a cat – even as he contends its actually a Flerken (spoiler alert: it’s a glorious Flerken). From that encounter on, we can tell something is different about this guy. He seems very interested in Vers. He seems even more interested in finding this light speed machine that can get him places. It’s just that the place he genuinely wants to go is actually pretty sweet: home. And he wants to help what’s left of his Skrull race achieve the same freedom.

I found it enormously satisfying that Captain Marvel’s most brutal fights take place in wide open spaces or in outer space itself. Whenever I’ve had someone describe my brain, “wide open spaces’ and ‘lost in space’ are two often-used phrases. And it’s true: the mind is a very, very elastic creature capable of expanding for any size of thought and intention. Throughout the movie, Vers’ most important battle is entirely internal. She’s simply trying to figure out her true identity. To make sense of all her flashbacks to some kind of previous life. And when she finally puts all the emotionally drenched pieces together? She’s brighter and stronger than ever. She tears through ships right down the middle. She fights off powerful bombs intent on worldly destruction. And she does it all with such glee. For the first time in the whole movie, she is truly, completely unburdened.

No cities are destroyed in this movie (London, New York, Chicago, and San Fransisco – y’all can take a breather until the next superhero movie). No love interests are forced. The heroine is disarmingly cocky and not full of stereotypical insecurities. The world-building and gap-filling to tie in with the larger Marvel story never feels forced. The cute animal survives. And the hero and “villain” both help each other to get what they want. How rare is that?

There’s a fun experiment that takes place after every year’s Oscars, where some of us, now able to easily rent these Oscar-nominated films through Redbox or seek them out on streaming platforms, think, “Well, let’s see what that was all about.”

So it made sense last weekend to not only to catch up a little bit, but to knock out two music-heavy movies together. While there are definitely differences between the two, I’m going to focus on one thing: the cinematography. And more specifically, how the cinematography gives you each movie’s mission statement, one shot at a time.

If you didn’t know Bohemian Rhapsody is about Queen, you might be fooled into thinking it’s another superhero origin story. All the shots are brightly lit and move in very, very slick ways. So slick, in fact, that you can see some serious trickery went into making the camera appear far more capable and smooth than it has any right to be. There’s a great deal of costumes meant to be retro but are rather expensive, excessively clean reproductions of the same thing. There are lots of wigs, too. Questionable ones at that.

So would it surprise you if you I told you Bohemian Rhapsody’s cinematographer, Newton Thomas Siegel, has worked with director Bryan Singer on all of his X-Men movies, including his Superman Returns? (that’s 5 big-budget superhero movies). He’s using his same slick, well-lit skillset from the superhero movies to bring the story of Queen to life.

A Star is Born, on the other hand, shows the signs of a craftsman who’s worked with Darren Aronofsky, Jon Favreau, and Spike Lee alike. Matthew Libatique has always been an excellent talent who can do just about any genre. Here, he works with director Bradley Cooper to make some quite effective decisions. All the concert and music footage is filmed at the eye level of those on the stage. In fact, Libatique said they would shoot their music scenes as dialogue scenes. This makes total sense when you see just how intimate everything feels. The close-ups that capture the glances. The emotions worn deep and under bright light.

 

What I couldn’t get over with A Star is Born is just how crisp and detailed the low-light shots were. There’s always some kind of light – be it a stage light, a sun, or something other – fighting to break its way into the darker areas of shots. And even then, we see our characters in stark clarity. It’s an apt metaphor: a movie this focused on two people struggling to pull each other up is bound to be so clear in low light.

Bohemian Rhapsody can’t seem to decide at times what kind of movie it wants to be, so it does a little bit of everything. It touches briefly on singer Freddie Mercury’s life and choices, but it’s so quick as to barely register. Even the supposed animosity between Mercury and the rest of the band is manufactured. Everything about this movie, not unlike your average superhero movie, is designed to entertain. It doesn’t want to go to deep. It just wants to rock you.

You can’t go wrong with a soundtrack packed with Queen songs (and the Oscars for Sound Mixing/Editing are arguably deserved for who well they weave in the entire Queen catalog with bits of dialogue), but A Star is Born is absolutely no slouch. Everyone loves to talk about the breakout hit, ‘Shallow’, but I found “I’ll Always Remember You This Way” to be my favorite. It’s pretty clear how hard everyone – Lady Gaga, Cooper, Diane Warren, Lukas Nelson and his band – worked together to create something memorable, and something memorable they have absolutely achieved.

But it all comes back to the light. You can see it in the shot selection and the way the camera moves. One film is a superhero movie with heavy bass instead of groan-worthy punches and high notes instead of explosions. It’s smooth, fast-paced, and always glossy.

The other is a genuine attempt at depicting a man trying to rediscover his place in the world while the woman he loves is slowly creating hers. It plays with contrast and color. It shows us clear emotions and faces in messy light. It rocks us all the same, but in a different, deeper way that persists long after the lights go down.

I was so ready for this movie from the time it was announced. The premise – widows stuck with a debt left behind by their newly-deceased criminal husbands  – is undeniable. Yes, in 2019, I want to see women take back their narrative and show they can do everything just as good, and likely better, as a man can. Yes, I want to see women be badasses and vulnerable at the same time. Yes, I want to see director Steve McQueen have a little bit of fun after being known for such serious, heavy movies. Everything about it sounded prime to explode. A true firecracker ready to be thrown under the porch of America.

Yet it came out in mid-November 2018 and more or less disappeared.

When I first started my blog back in 2014, I wrote a recurring column called Redbox Ready. For a variety of reasons, I dropped it (Redbox’s cultural foothold beginning to shrink with the influx of streaming, the format itself too laborious to leave energy to write). But I happened upon one really key discovery that I still think about today: the discrepancy between the critical and the audience reaction.

When people are talking about the general response to a movie, they’re often quick to mention the Rotten Tomatoes scores. There’s a number of issues with that, such as how the scores are developed, how the website decides what’s fresh and what isn’t, etc. But it does, in the end, give you a general flavor for how critics across the country (and aboard) are swaying.

What I find more interesting, however, is when you look at Rotten Tomatoes and compare the Tomatometer (critics) with the Audience Score. Some movies have been certified Rotten (below 60%), but the Audience Score is much higher. A recent example of this would be M. Night Shyamalan’s superhero sortasequel, Glass. The Tomatometer rates it at 37% for the critical response, but the Audience Score is over twice that, sitting at 74%. Even more, that’s 330 critics vs. 8,660 audience members.

(Now, I’m not going to say anyone is right or wrong. Everyone approaches a movie differently. Some critics will judge a movie based on what they want out of it, some will judge based on what they believe the movie’s goal to be, and some will judge based on some Unmentionable Criteria of Perfect Movies they’ve been forming over the years. The audience is just as varied with how their approach. Some want a good, complex story; some want escapism; some just want an accessible tale they can follow. You never know.)

There are also times where the Tomatometer is quite high and the Audience Score is significantly lower. WIDOWS is one of those situations. The movie sports a stellar Tomatometer of 91%, but rather head-scratchingly, a much lower audience score of 62%. Now, there is no right or wrong – that’s entirely beside the point of going to the movies, where we ideally want a conversation about what we saw – but it does suggest a disconnect. In the time that I wrote my Redbox Ready column (RIP those FOUR columns I wrote), whenever I saw a much higher Tomatometer score compared with a much lower Audience Score, often the case was simple: the movie was greatly admired and respected, but it left a good chunk of the audience cold.

It’s very easy to simply say, “Well, it just wasn’t for them”. And that is very likely true. But there is also the very real possibility that, for a significant chunk of an audience, something is missing.

I count myself a part of that group.

I want to be clear that there is so much to admire in this movie. The expert craft of it. The bold, crisp visual style. The quiet, furious power of acting led by Viola Davis, and continued with an absolutely stellar cast including Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya (holy shit, is that a character), and Michelle Rodriguez. Elizabeth Debicki gets her best role since GREAT GATSBY as a vulnerable, slightly naive woman trying to stand up for herself for once. Every actor here brings their A-game, but that’s where the coldness starts to leak in.

WIDOWS was originally conceived as a British crime drama that aired between 1983 and 1985, two series (seasons) of six episodes each. A casual reading of the plot on Wikipedia reveals that a significant twist (you’ve been warned) at the end of the first series is in the WIDOWS movie. That means writer Gillian Flynn condensed 6 episodes of television into one 2-hour movie. Unfortunately, it feels like it. There are so many characters that would likely be bit parts except for the fact they’re played by major actors like Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall. When you have a character played by Brian Tyree Henry or Carrie Coon, I sorta expect them to be central to the plot; when they drop out, even as intended, it feels like something got lost in the shuffle. As a work of adaptation, they understandably had to condense the story. But this almost feels like an Ant-Man adaptation – hoping to keep all the parts so the shrinking only increases the density, thus retaining the strength.

In that case, the density is there. But it makes it nearly emotionally impenetrable. I know I’m seeing great acting and great direction (McQueen’s long shot atop a limo driving through Chicago while a volatile conversation is only heard and not seen is an especially inspired way to show how removed these people are from the city they’re trying to take hold of), but it’s not taking hold of me. It’s missing that connective electricity that shocks it to life.

The best way I can think of this movie is that it’s like someone took an entertaining paperback novel, injected it with some timely lines and images (you’ll know them when you see them), and then framed certain pages inside an art museum. It is a stunning, immaculately crafted work of art to walk through. Individual pages and moments will surely draw your attention (just as there are individual scenes I will remember, most of which involve Kaliuuya’s and Davis’ characters).

But we all know that feeling of going into an art museum in which the art is not speaking directly to you. It’s gorgeous and to be admired, but it’s not shifting anything internally. The more you walk around, the more you feel slightly wearied by it, hoping for something to jolt you into feeling. You can see where they’re trying to go with Davis, Debicki, and Rodriguez’s characters; it just doesn’t quite land the punch it should. Maybe it’s a result of not knowing enough about them or their husbands. Maybe it’s not having enough time to breathe, narratively. Whether it’s an overabundance of plot or what, something is dragging this film, preventing it from reaching a full, cathartic sprint.

At this time of the year, when the Oscars are incoming, it’s common for writers and audiences on the internet to point out “This is a movie y’all forgot and it’s great!” WIDOWS has certainly been mentioned quite often. Maybe it will register with others far more than me. But this may also be another instance where a movie came and went for a reason: a disconnect with an audience just wanting to feel something.

You know the drill: a lot of movies came out this year and I saw a very small percentage of them. Below is my Top 10, along with several other awards – a format that I started last year and enjoyed writing very, very much.

I want to apologize in advance to the following films I missed, but believe could have very easily made their way into this article, and of which I’ll likely catch up with in 2019: Early Man, A Wrinkle in Time, Blockers, Tully, Hotel Artemis, Uncle Drew, Teen Titans Go! To The Movies, A Star Is Born, Bad Times at the El Royale, First Man, Eighth Grade, The Rider, The Hate U Give, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Suspiria, Private Life, Hold the Dark, Burning, Widows, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Anna and the Apocalypse, and Aquaman.

And off we go!

Most Expensive Magic Trick: Avengers: Infinity War

A $300 million budget. 40 characters across 18 Marvel films. A main villain that is 100% motion-capture. I can’t even imagine the amount of planning it took to get so many expensive, well-known actors into one location, given secret scripts which unravel upon being read, with the sets, locations, and coordination that goes into making this even remotely work.

And yet, it works. It really, really works. Thanos, thanks to Josh Brolin and an army of CGI artists, feels like a living, breathing, power-hungry villain. Yes, his plan is pretty dumb. But it feels beside the point. What matters is how powerful he becomes and how powerless Marvel’s characters feel by the film’s closing moments. This film lost major points with me for killing off the characters we all knew had movies coming (this is where reading about movies as much as I do is not so beneficial), and yet: I’m not sure how they could have avoided a collision with the Disney/Marvel movie machine, which will rumble on for many years to come, among roads paved with dollars, coins, and sheer gold.

Even more: it made me curious just how they’re going to wrap this whole ongoing storyline up. Maybe there will actually be stakes. Maybe main characters will actually die or remain dead. Maybe these movies will stick with us beyond the walk to our car.

These are all high hopes. But nobody can take away Infinity War and the massively expensive, exhaustingly-coordinated magic trick it turned out to be.

Best Summer Palate Cleanser: Ant Man and the Wasp

The first Ant-Man movie came out in the summer of 2015, a couple months after Avengers: Age of Ultron, which was a 2 hours-plus, $300 million-plus sequel with a CGI villain played in motion-capture by a fifty-something actor (James Spader). Everyone pretty much said, “Wow, that Ant-Man sure is a great Marvel palate cleanser after the excess of that Avengers sequel!”

Three years later, Ant-Man and the Wasp comes out a couple months after Avengers: Infinity War, which was a 2 hours-plus-plus, $300 million-plus sequel with a CGI villain played in motion-capture by a fifty-something actor (Josh Brolin). Everyone pretty much said, “Wow, that Ant-Man and the Wasp sure is a great Marvel palate cleanser after the excess of that Avengers sequel!”

Best Wedding Sequence: Crazy Rich Asians

The film itself is quite fun and an interesting foray into a world unbeknownst to most of America. And yes, Henry Golding is very, very charming and a great onscreen match for Constance Wu. But the movie operates along the lines of “fun, escapist summer movie” all the way until its showstopper of a wedding sequence.

Like a wedding in Washington, D.C. or even with the Royal Family in England, this is a wedding in which the surroundings and participants are more attention-demanding than the bride and groom themselves. Rachel (Wu) has struggled to untangle the webs of Singapore wealth threatening to keep her and Nick (Golding) from being together. Her unease is apparent as the key figures in the various conflicts approach and seat themselves amidst tall grass, with an aisle that later fills with a shallow sheen of water as the bridge glides to the alter.

It’s a gorgeous setting, and clear how such a royal wedding such as this could cost $40 million. Everyone is dealing with their own personal issues, whether with themselves, their family, or their spousal relationships. And yet, by the time Kina Grannis’ sings her immaculate, deeply emotional cover of ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ and the camera cuts between Nick and Rachel, back and forth, each time their frustrations disappearing and their smiles surfacing, we can see just how deeply in love these two are and how special it is that moment when they recognize everything is worth it. That they will give it their all to make it work.

Best Twist: Sorry to Bother You

Anything I read about Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You suggested to go into the film as cold as possible. To not spoil one bit. And so I listened. I bookmarked anything I wanted to read and read absolutely nothing ahead of time. I was ready to roll.

But that late-in-the-game twist? Holy shit.

It is so ballsy, so off-the-wall, so unexpected. And it recontextualizes everything that came before, like the best twists do.

This is a movie with great music, great acting, a true point-of-view, and the best twist of 2018.

Best/Worst 2 Hour Tease of a Movie I Might Actually Prefer to See: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World seemed to think people wanted two things from their Jurassic Park movie: great dinosaur action and human, relatable characters. They delivered (mostly) on the dino action, but they gave us some of the most annoying, maddening human characters. So then they overcompensated with Fallen Kingdom by dialing the human characters down a bit and trying to make them more likable. And then they gave their new bad guy the broadest possible personality strokes – so broad even Jafar and Scar would sit up and spit out their drink – and their new child character, meant to be somewhat relatable, the craziest, ickiest twist of science fiction.

Guess what, guys? It really doesn’t matter.

I don’t care about any of these people.

I just wanna see some jaw-dropping dino action that I haven’t seen before. That’s all I ask.

And I just might get it. I’ll just have to wait until Summer 2020 when the last of this dumb trilogy comes out. You see, the final moments of Fallen Kingdom (SPOILERS) show what we actually saw in the first trailers: shots of a T-Rex roaring at a Lion, of a Mesosaurus in rapid danger of chomping the life out of some tiny surfers cruising a gnarly wave.

In other words, we saw a world in which we didn’t have to come up with another dumb dumb dumb reason to get these barely human characters BACK to the island AGAIN and instead got to see the totally cool juxtaposition of real dinosaurs in AMERICA with ANIMALS that we are very, very familiar with. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to see these dinosaurs ruin the country even faster than the current administration has! Maybe we’ll even get some ‘good’ dinosaurs to help take out the ‘bad’ ones and it will be like every time I played with my good and bad dinosaur toys as a kid! Maybe!

I just had to suffer through 120 minutes of an excuse to see 4 minutes of what I actually wanted to see. So if you have the time and energy for that kind of bargain, might as well fire this movie up.

Best Video Game on Film: Ready Player One

I haven’t read the Ernest Cline novel which this is based upon, so I can only base my reactions on the film itself (which is how every film adaptation of a book should be judged, honestly). This is a seriously confused movie thematically, as it keeps building towards a moment of being profound that ends up being somewhat lacking in self-awareness. It wants to tell us to prize human interaction and go outside more often when the entire thing is stuck is in a video game. It wants to convince us that an entire virtual reality empire was built on not being kissed on a date, which just makes all the adults look like 14-year-olds in a state of arrested development. And then it wants to say NONE OF THIS MATTERS LETS HAVE FUN while demanding we create more meaning of what we just saw.

My issues with those story choices aside, this is a movie that’s better to view through the lens of Spielberg having loads of fun with fancy technology.

(BTW: director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump) – who went down a serious motion-capture animation rabbit hole with Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol – paved the way for Spielberg to take the marriage of actors and animation and run with it. Spielberg dabbled in the field with alarming success in his first feature attempt with 2011’s Adventures of Tintin. Zemeckis just made a movie called Welcome to Marwen – about a man going through a difficult time and who finds escape and meaning in creating an alternative reality that is fully CGI’d…much like Wade Watts in Ready Player One escaping into a fully CGI’d alternate reality. If these similar frameworks for films were dresses and we were playing ’Who Wore It Best?’ I’m gonna say Spielberg wins this round. Just sayin’.)

It should say a lot that Sony actively pursued an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Film for this crazy ride of a film. There’s just that much CGI and that little of actual humans moving on screen. Either way, Spielberg is clearly having a blast going nuts with the technology and being freed from the constraints of a physical film set. Like Avatar, your eyes will become accustomed to the new CGI reality and it will all blend seamlessly together. I never thought I’d get so much enjoyment out of seeing my beloved Iron Giant on the screen again, kicking ass and taking names, but this is the kind of film that takes your nostalgia for everything (and not just the 80’s) and weaponizes it in the name of hope and, uh…whatever else the film is fighting for. Just don’t think about it too hard.

Best Exercise in Gratitude: Hereditary

I left this movie grateful for a few things, in no particular order:

1. My head (as in, a healthy one attached to my neck and above my shoulders)

2. A lack of peanut allergy.

3. A bedroom ceiling devoid of Toni Collette’s presence.

The “It’s Not You, It’s Me” Award: Mandy

Just about every conversation I’ve had with a fan of this movie has admitted it’s style over substance. And they just really, really like the style. I remain baffled at what makes this movie so beyond great other than some impressive cinematography, original title cards, a unique way of showing how cults brainwash you (maybe the whole movie is a giant cult trying to brainwash me into loving something I do not fully understand?), and some brave, oddball decisions.

I felt like the dude on the other side of the looking glass the last few months as everyone raved about this film. But there’s nothing wrong with saying it’s just not your thing. Mandy, it’s not you. It’s me. And that’s okay.

Best and Most Expensive Dad Joke: Rampage

I will admit I am very vulnerable to the charms of not only CGI monkeys, but CGI monkeys using sign language. There’s just something about it I cannot resist.

Another thing I cannot resist: dad jokes. I love them wholeheartedly.

So when (in an otherwise very forgettable movie) Dwayne Johnson reminds this white ape of what his name is and he signs the ASL sign for “rock”, you bet your monkey-signing-loving dollar that I laughed out loud and told everyone about it.

Hats off to Dwayne Johnson, director Rawson Thurber Marshall, and New Line Cinema’s pockets for nailing the most expensive Dad Joke in cinema history.

Best Reminder There is Good in the World: Paddington 2

I love this movie franchise, and yet even I have to admit there is very little to these series than 1) very charming British actors, 2) an adorable CGI bear voiced by a charming British actor, and 3) the lesson that kindness and community will never go out of style.

This sequel recycles points #1-3, but does so with the addition of perhaps the most charming British actor of the last 30 years in Hugh Grant, who is delightfully game for some very, very amusing disguises throughout the film.

And, of course, like the first Paddington did, this movie is very likely to make you cry in its final moments.

Reminder That Getting Things Out of Your System Should Be Good, Not Unhealthy: Venom

Maybe Tom Hardy just wanted to be in a superhero movie and have his own superhero franchise. Maybe Tom Hardy thought the character looked cool. Maybe he liked the possible acting challenge of Venom vs. Eddie Brock and playing both characters. Maybe he wanted to act a scene in which he jumped in a lobster tank and bit a couple lobster heads off. Maybe he did this movie because his kids love the character and he wanted to bond a little more. Maybe he needed the money. Maybe Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, and Jenny Slate all needed the money (and if they did, God Bless them all, because they are wonderful actors that I cannot bare to say a bad thing about). Maybe everyone thought they were supposed to act like an alien in this movie.

Maybe all these things are true.

But there is still always a choice. And it looks like everyone kinda made the wrong one.

Best Netflix Movie to Compete for Your Attention: Set It Up

There’s an awful lot on Netflix that can be considered background noise; either because it’s so familiar you can hear or notice the familiar beats and slide right in, or because it’s so predictable that you can catch an original moment with a glance.

I found my pursuit of Level 89 of Toon Blast more interesting than this movie early on, but I kept glancing. And glancing. And glancing.

There’s some good lines (I guffawed at least thrice). There’s weirdly a lot of dick jokes. There’s further evidence that Pete Davidson cannot act (sorry, Pete!).

But above all, there’s undeniable proof that two very likable actors with great chemistry goes a loooooong way towards helping your movie almost single-handedly revive the presumed-dead romantic comedy genre. It subverts and calls out romantic comedy tropes just enough to keep it fresh while also hitting those familiar notes that upgrade a movie to ‘memorable’. They set it up, and they nailed it.

Best Reminder That Sequels Can Be Bigger, Better, and Sexier: Deadpool 2

I loved the first Deadpool, but after multiple delays and the original director departing, I worried where the Merc with the Mouth would be going. Turns out Ryan Reynolds and his collaborators were just fiercely taking their time to tell a worthwhile story.

I doubt I had a more thoroughly enjoyable moviegoing experience as seeing this one in theaters. The jokes come fast and furious, and they land far more often than not. The series gets some delightful new blood with Josh Brolin’s Cable, Zazie Beetz’s Domino, and Julian Dennison’s Firefist. New director David Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde) brings ample amounts of action crunch to Rhett Reeese and Paul Wernick’s hilarious script that somehow, for a Deadpool movie, packs a pretty decent emotional wallop.

Of course, the post-credits scene upped the awesomeness of this movie up an additional 37%. Highly recommended.

And now, the actual Top 10:

10. BlacKKKlansman

Spike Lee lays out the true story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Stallworth, wanting to make a difference, finds a way to infiltrate the KKK by impersonating a white man and using a partner, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to take them down.

This film reminds me so much of Lee’s Chi-Raq, in which he used well-known, great actors and an entertaining, muscular style to bring some attention to a real, pressing issue. Washington, Driver, and every other actor in this movie clearly bring their A-game to tell this story as powerfully and honestly as possible. Lee even manages to wring some real laughs out of the film while losing none of its power.

And the final shots are a strong, bold reminder from Lee of just how little we have progressed as a racist country in the 40-plus years since.

9. Roma

Alfonso Cuarón has long been one of my favorite directors. I love him for his insane skill at filmmaking – his masterful long takes and his seamless uses of cutting edge technology – and I especially love him for his empathy. All of his characters feel deeply felt and realized. They’re raging against their reality; they’re trying to find meaning in things that often feel meaningless.

Roma has an unlikely protagonist in Cleo, the housekeeper of a middle class family in early 1970’s Mexico City. She barely says anything throughout the film, her facial expressions almost impenetrable. In fact, one of my favorite scenes is early in the film when a naked man performs his martial arts in front of a smiling Cleo – a scene that with any other director could be played for laughs, but here? Cuarón holds no judgment and instead embraces the naked display of expression from his characters.

Around Cleo, Cuarón paints his black-and-white tapestry with astounding images: planes flying across the reflections in puddles, dust blowing through an outdoor martial arts class, the stark juxtaposition of people blown out of cannonballs while the rest of the world walks through mud and poverty. I kept waiting, however, for something to break through. Something to show us that Cuarón had something up his sleeve.

You’ll know it when you see it, but a devastating event for Cleo seems to go without response or expression until Cuarón masterfully films a scene in which Cleo, unable to swim, must desperately fight through waves to get to children who are drowning. On the surface, it’s a technically impressive long take. But on a storytelling level, it’s one of the most visceral, emotional scenes I’ve seen all year. We know what it feels like when those waves we’re walking or swimming against just keep hitting and hitting, a percussive reminder of just how close we are to failing.

What follows after this scene is the outburst of emotion we’ve been waiting nearly the whole movie for. And the response of the characters around Cleo is just about the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in the movies all year. Cuarón has done it again: impressed us with this deft hand at filmmaking just as he’s reminded us of how powerful empathy and community can be.

8. Shirkers

I happened upon this documentary rather late in the game, and I’m so grateful such a happy accident. Director Sandi Tan wrote, starred in, and shot a movie, Shirkers, back in 1992 with the help of an American mentor twice her age. But just as they finished filming, the footage disappeared with the mentor, never to be seen or shared until 20 years later, when a series of events placed 70 canisters of the film back in her hands.

This film gave me so much to digest and think over. It made me angry and sad for the opportunity that Tan and her collaborators lost. They could have had their place in Singapore (and even American) film history with an actual film, and not just a ghost of a film that everyone continued to whisper and talk about. When Tan points out the American movies that followed hers and the similarities that came about, it only highlights further a simple question: just how many influential, powerful movies have we lost in the narrative of film history? How many stories have been taken away, especially from women?

Tan shows incredible skill with her filmmaking in the way she’s able to seamlessly weave in actual footage from her 1992 unfinished film with the footage of her work to interview her collaborators, her critics, and her friends, and to get to the bottom of what exactly happened to his passion project that was taken away from her. It’s a beautiful way to take back control of a narrative she long had no control over. It’s empowering and heartbreaking all at once, and something I will not forget about for a very long time.

7. Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Watching the Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scroggs reminded me of the time I recommended one their films and nearly scarred a dear friend forever.

It was 2009, and I was drunk on their 2008 twofer of Burn After Reading and their deeply personal, highly underrated follow-up, A Serious Man. Giddy from describing what a lovable twit Brad Pitt makes against the fiery, blustery anger of John Malkovich (there are still few things funnier to me than an angry, petulant Malkovich), I recommended Burn After Reading to a friend, promising a deeply entertaining reel of non-stop laughs and giggles.

The next time I saw her, I asked how the movie was. I expected something close to the same giddy energy I had when I first described the movie to her. That’s not quite what I got.

“Ugh” she said, “So depressing. I felt like I needed a shower after that movie.”

This is not an easily depressed friend. This is someone I joked many, many times with, from the mundane to the slightly macabre. I thought this would be an easy win. Instead, it seemed to burrow some kind of dark energy into her that didn’t easily wash off. She seemed almost bothered by what she had seen.

I couldn’t reconcile the difference in my expectations and the reality until I convinced my own mother to watch A Serious Man. I insisted to her how deeply thoughtful and yet hilarious it was, and figured the stark Jewishness of it might somehow appease the strong Catholic she stood as (clearly I did not understand religion enough at the time). While I giggled throughout the entire movie at all the colorful characters and their note-perfect, deeply infectious dialogue, my mother watched in confused silence.

By the end, when the finals moments reveal peak Coen Brothers’ nihilism, the screen cut to black and my mother beat me with a pillow as she screamed “damn you damn you damn you”. She was slightly joking, but she also was a bit serious. She didn’t see what was so enjoyable about it – she just saw the bleak, unrelenting pessimism that’s easy to feel yet harder to intellectualize.

From there, the Brothers’ just stacked their tribute to Memento Mori even higher, as if each movie was a giant coin made life-size and unmovable.

I could only think about those experiences as I watched this new Netflix joint because what held true then holds even more true now: among their six stories, there are incredible charms to be had – and yet each piece is punctuated by deep, horrific reality and an arrow-to-the-chest reminder that life is fleeting. That you could go at any moment and any unsavory way; a shot you can’t move from once you’re hit. You can only sit and attempt to admire the view (which is quite easy in this handsome production).

All the while, I could only hear the Brothers cackling behind me. You can hear the glee in their dialogue and in just how jet-black their story decisions sometimes are. And while some will point to this as evidence that these brothers are some seriously tortured, fucked-up souls, I prefer the more likely reading: that they know their jig will be up one day, so they might as well find the small joys in all the smile-worthy characters and quirky physical comedy they can.

6. The Favourite

Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster was my #1 movie of 2016. That his new movie would be working with some of my favorite actresses in Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Colman only primed me further to love this 18th century display of madness.

There is so much charm and quirk and hilariously sinister in this movie. The story sets its pieces on its twisted chessboard before winding around tighter and tighter with the performances of Colman, Weisz, and Stone and their corresponding characters’ actions, right up until the final, unforgettable shot, an extremely deft touch by Lanthimos’ that punctuates his message like an arrow from the past to the present.

5. Black Panther

Few films this year made me think as much or as deeply. This is not JUST a Marvel movie. This is so, so much more. From the impressive cast to the colorful, smart art direction to the bruising action scenes and philosophical discussions: it’s got a little bit of everything and it does a little bit of everything very, very well.

Ryan Cogler knocked me cold with his last film, 2015’s Creed, and he further proves his worth as a heartfelt heavyweight with his Marvel debut. I’m so glad he fought for the creative control he seeked (and received) with this film, and that he did it all inservice of a story both global and painfully personal at once.

4. Mission Impossible: Fallout

I’m not gonna lie: I was about to say this film had my two favorite live-action action scenes of the year – the bathroom brawl and the batshit crazy helicopter chase – and then I realized just how many other killer action sequences there are and then I thought, “Holy Cruise, this thing is just long incredible action scene, right?”

To say that’s true would actually be doing a disservice to the filmmakers. I found it simply incredible that a film this intricate and nuanced could begin shooting with barely a 30-page script and rough outline to its name. I’ve seen successful movies made more or less on the fly before. But never as assured, confident, and textured as this. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie clearly has a special relationship with his star, Tom Cruise, and the madness those two fuel each other towards – while still managing to tell a complete, engaging story – is truly something else.

I have no fathomable idea where they will take the story from here. They truly threw all their best cards on the table and won all the chips. But I would wager if the money and motivation became enough and they still had a sliver of a script, they’d answer all questions with the great dialogue through-line the film uses: “I’m working on it”.

3. A Quiet Place

I was probably one of two people in my entire college to watch John Krasinski’s directing debut, an adaption of David Foster Wallace’s short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, way back in 2009. The cast was undeniable, but the story too complex and scattered to really register.

I knew John Krasinski had to be a smart, capable dude. I mean, he did convince Emily Blunt to marry him, after all. But I had no idea he had this in him.

What I will remember the most about this film and still hold close to my chest is the restraint. Every time the film feels like it’s about to blow the premise open, it takes a breath and sits still. It lets us learn about the family and how they communicate with their Deaf member. It shows us all the different ways they maintain their survival. It lets us live their lives with them just before we see them broken again.

There’s an ache that sits deep in this film from the first sequence, where we’re exposed to a tragedy the family never quite recovers from. They grieve in their own ways. They don’t always say the things they need to say to each other. And they live each moment knowing just how easily it can all come undone.

This film holds a handful of beautiful moments I still remember: Krasinski and Blunt’s sweet headphones dance to “Harvest Moon”, Millicent Simmonds’ struggle to relieve herself of blame, Blunt’s moment of levity with her son as she talks about how she’ll need him to take care of her when she’s old and missing teeth. It’s a beautifully etched, impressively-thought through film that ends on the absolute perfect moment.

I cringe at the idea of an unnecessary sequel, but with Krasinksi back in the saddle, he’s got my trust.

2. Annihilation

Reading, Annihilation, the first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, is still one of my favorite reading experiences ever. I curled into the couch, moving only for bathroom, water, and the occasional shifting into a new position. I devoured and savored the book all at once, a masterfully-sketched tone of paranoia and dread from start to finish.

Knowing this experience would be adapted by one of my favorite writer/directors in the business certainly had my interest. But what Alex Garland does with this adaptation is something wholly inspired. The beginning and the middle of the story will feel familiar to readers. Even parts of the end. But the rest? There are still bits of dialogue, flashes of horrifying and beautiful imagery, and whole sequences embedded in my brain.

Maybe this movie is about cancer. Maybe it’s about depression and mental illness. Maybe it’s about self-destruction and how we can’t just get out of our own way. The beauty of this film is that it can be all of the things. Time will treat this movie well. Seek it out.

1. Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

Spiderman has never been a hero I’ve been particularly drawn to beyond two things: a badass costume and just how cool it is to swing around a city. That’s about it. Peter Parker didn’t feel especially relatable to me, no matter how many times the movies or the comics tried to make it so. I never rooted for or against Mary Jane. I never understood just why Uncle Ben was so deeply important to Peter beyond, again, the movies and comics reminding me over and over it must be so. And, of course, it didn’t help that Sony couldn’t seem to get out of its own way and figure out just how to continue a successful Spiderman movie franchise.

I tuned out after the Sam Raimi-Tobey Maguire breakup and never saw the Marc Webb-Andrew Garfield films. I rooted for Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone far more in real life than I ever had an interest to in the movies. The movies seemed to struggle to differentiate themselves from each other just as the audience increasingly struggled with how to care. More recently, I found Tom Holland’s version of Spiderman to be like all the Marvel movies: likable, enjoyable, but not particularly memorable.

All I needed to see in the teaser for Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse when it sprung out over a year ago (December 2017!) is the fact Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, 22 Jump Street) had a producing hand. I didn’t care how involved they were. Simply having them nearby had to be something good. I mean, these are two of the busiest guys in the business; it has to be something worthwhile to grab their interest, especially when working with one of the most visible superheroes.

The charm of the animation style (you can read about how they achieved it here) only had me further smitten. Casting Jack Johnson to voice a Nick Miller-ish Peter Parker/Spiderman? I needed to see it and luxuriate in it. Then the rest of the cast rolled in: Nic Cage, John Mulaney, Halie Stanfield, Mahershala Ali, Shameik Moore, Liev Schreiber, Kathryn Hahn, and Brian Tyree Henry.

Now, animation voice casts are typically stacked. They have big names. But this? This felt awfully specific. The kind of specific that only occurs when people REALLY know the kind of story they’re trying to tell.

And man, do they tell it.

I am still blown away by what this team of filmmakers pulled off. It’s not only the most second-to-second entertaining movie I’ve seen this year (even more so than Mission Impossible: Fallout), but it’s quite deep, emotionally resonant (I definitely got choked up a few times), and got me to finally understand the appeal of Spiderman: that anyone can wear the mask.

Hopefully this is the kind of film that opens the creative floodgates for many eager to tell stories. The animation style is such a captivating mix of voices that I’d be shocked if it’s not only studied heavily in art and animation schools in the future, but just as often cited by future artists as a key inspiration. Last year’s Moana, Wonder Woman, and Coco showed us just how powerful representation is for the upcoming generation. It’s not enough to tell them they can be someone. They have to see themselves on the screen.

And if you can convince me that Nick Miller can be Spiderman, screw it all up, and STILL have a chance to make it right? You’ve got a believer in me.

I cannot wait to see this movie again.

That’s all, folks. Looking forward to 2019!