Write Errant

As usual, I’m not going over the TV, because I’m not nearly caught up enough.

Best Motion Picture — Drama

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Lion

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight

Prediction: Moonlight. The only thing I didn’t love in this category was Hacksaw Ridge, which a) Mel Gibson, and b) is mostly a generic war movie that doesn’t deserve remarking. Manchester by the Sea could steal, but Moonlight deserves it.

Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy

20th Century Women

Deadpool

Florence Foster Jenkins

La La Land

Sing Street

Prediction: La La Land. Pretty foregone conclusion. I really loved Sing Street and 20th Century Women too (Florence Foster Jenkins wasn’t much imo, but it was still good). I’m not sure I’d pick either of them over La La Land though.

Best Director — Motion Picture

Damien Chazelle, La La Land

Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals

Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge

Barry Jenkins, Moonlight

Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea

Prediction: Damien Chazelle, La La Land. Moonlight is so god damn incredibly, meticulously crafted in every respect, but I think that La La Land has the choreography and the flare that’ll stand out more to voters. If it was up to me, I’d have a hard time deciding.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama

Amy Adams, Arrival

Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane

Isabelle Huppert, Elle

Ruth Negga, Loving

Natalie Portman, Jackie

Prediction: Natalie Portman. I’ve actually only seen one of these, so it’s a bit of a shot in the dark, but this is what I’m going with. Would love to see someone take home something for Arrival (which was my favorite of the year), but I don’t think this is Amy Adams’s year.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — Drama

Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea

Joel Edgerton, Loving

Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge

Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic

Denzel Washington, Fences

Prediction: Casey Affleck. Probably should be Denzel (although I haven’t seen Fences yet), but Manchester has a lot of momentum, and it really hinges on that performance. 

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — Comedy or Musical

Colin Farrell, The Lobster

Ryan Gosling, La La Land

Hugh Grant, Florence Foster Jenkins

Jonah Hill, War Dogs

Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool

Prediction: Ryan Gosling. La La Land is so big right now, and I think he’s earned it. I’d LOVE to see Ryan Reynolds take it (or, wonder of wonders, Colin Farrell, because honoring The Lobster here would be AMAZING), but it’s not gonna happen. 

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Comedy or Musical

Annette Bening, 20th Century Women

Lily Collins, Rules Don’t Apply

Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen

Emma Stone, La La Land

Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

Prediction: Emma Stone. See above. I would also love to see Annette Bening take this, because 20th Century Women is really some of her best work, but it’s honestly pretty close.  

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture

Mahershala Ali, Moonlight

Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water

Simon Helberg, Florence Foster Jenkins

Dev Patel, Lion

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nocturnal Animals

Prediction: Mahershala Ali. This could also conceivably go to Dev Patel, who’s excellent (although talk about category fraud, seriously), but I doubt it. 

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture

Viola Davis, Fences

Naomie Harris, Moonlight

Nicole Kidman, Lion

Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures

Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea

Prediction: Viola Davis. She won the Tony for the same role in the stage version, and she’s VIOLA DAVIS. This is a really packed category though, so it could conceivably go to someone else. Naomie Harris would be my next pick, but Michelle Williams and Nicole Kidman were also excellent, and Octavia Spencer’s always great (I haven’t seen Hidden Figures yet).

Best Motion Picture — Animated

Kubo and the Two Strings

Moana

My Life as a Zucchini

Sing

Zootopia

Prediction: Moana. I’m actually weirdly behind on this as well, having not seen Kubo, Sing, or Zucchini, but I think Moana has the most momentum, and I loved it. 

Best Screenplay — Motion Picture

Damien Chazelle, La La Land

Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals

Barry Jenkins, Moonlight

Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester By the Sea

Taylor Sheridan, Hell or High Water

Prediction: Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea. I think it’s the most dialogue-driven of the big ones (Moonlight packs a lot into very few words, for instance), and it probably deserves it. Would love to see more for Hell or High Water, but I think that’s going to be sadly overlooked for the most part.

Best Original Score — Motion Picture

Nicholas Britell, Moonlight

Justin Hurwitz, La La Land

Jóhann Jóhannsson, Arrival

Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O’Halloran, Lion

Benjamin Wallfisch, Pharrell Williams, and Hans Zimmer, Hidden Figures

Prediction: La La Land. I don’t think I really agree with this, but the score (as opposed to the full on songs) really stands out and works as connective tissue through the whole thing, so I think it’ll be the most noticeable, even if there are better compositions.

It’s no surprise that trans representation means a lot to me. The visibility of women like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, stories of questioning sexuality and identity on TV, and other pop-culture messages of self-acceptance were instrumental to understanding and embracing my own gender identity, and it’s incredible to see the progress representation and media coverage have made, even just in the last year.

So Nomi began with a special place in my heart, particularly since she’s played by a trans actress, Jamie Clayton (by no means a given, even today), and because she’s the first trans lesbian character to appear on TV. That her first couple appearances are entirely built around love and acceptance is worth more than I can say.

Even before the main characters of Sense8 start really connecting with each other, it’s moments like that that get at the heart of the show. It’s not mired in after-school special preachiness, but it does want to drive home again and again the value of understanding other, facing their experiences no matter how different they might be from your own. One of the show’s greatest virtues is that it accomplishes this not by telling the audience about its goals, but by constantly presenting this sort of connection as something worthwhile, beautiful, life-affirming.

But Nomi’s story adds something more to that technique. After collapsing during Pride, Nomi wakes up in a hospital, attended to by a disquieting Doctor and her mother, who perpetually calls her “Michael” and refers to her by incorrect pronouns. This nightmare scenario only gets worse, as Dr. Metzger tells her that there’s something wrong with her brain, and she’ll need immediate surgery before the problem leads to hallucinations, unwanted thoughts and feelings, and death. When next she wakes, she finds the door to her room locked, and a brusque nurse informs her that her mother has basically signed away Nomi’s medical power of attorney, meaning that she no longer has any choice in what happens to her. Cut off from the outside world or any sympathetic ear, Nomi becomes increasingly certain that there’s more to this surgery than Metzger is letting on: if she goes through with it, she dies.

This sort of gaslighting is a common enough trope in shows like Sense8, where physical abnormalities and apparent hallucinations are more likely part of the plot than they are a psychotic break, and the sort of conspiracies that capture, manipulate, and experiment on people are very real. The fact that Dr. Metzger points to a medical problem (as opposed to the sadly more common, ableist “She’s crazy, lock ‘er up”) is a refreshing change, but the story itself isn’t a novelty.

The fact that the nightmare is happening to Nomi, however, is much more significant. Most recent transgender storylines have focused to some degree on issues of acceptance. There are tremendous gaps in understanding and myriad indignities facing trans people, and those are readily addressed. What makes us angry, frustrated, upset, depressed, or hurt? How can we navigate relationships with family, loved ones, friends, or institutions? Some material even extends into what we need and the consequences of withdrawing it. But Sense8 takes a more primal tact.

What do we fear?

I’ve been incredibly lucky in beginning my transition—I’ve received nothing but love and support from family and friends, and I’ve had easy, affordable access to trans-related medical care. But most aren’t so fortunate, and it’s impossible to escape certain worries, knowing that even people you trust can surprise you in the worst way. When opening up to someone new, there’s always some sense of the thin-aired, falling-without-a-parachute feeling that I got when I started coming out. Expectations can be defined, but certainty can’t help but be contaminated by worst-case scenarios.

I won’t be believed. I’ll be dismissed. Someone won’t think my feelings are real. I’ll lose people, support, or safety because some people don’t accept me. I’m crazy. Or that’s what they’ll say, anyway, before someone tries to ‘fix’ me. I’ll be disowned, manipulated, hurt, dead. We’ve seen it happen before.

Every good experience makes those fears recede a little bit, but they don’t go away. It’s not that they’re always rational or well-founded, it’s that, at least at the beginning, your self can be in such a fragile state, and you’re putting it in someone else’s hands.

Nomi’s nightmare plays out the worst of these fears. Her mother spearheads the effort, willfully denying her identity, blaming everything she doesn’t like about Nomi’s life on hormone treatments and transitioning, and ultimately deciding wholesale that Nomi doesn’t get to make decisions about her own well-being. Meanwhile, medical professionals ignore her wishes, deny her rights, treat her as ‘mentally unfit,’ and threaten to destroy her with a treatment they keep promising will only help.

This last bit may sound extreme, at least to an adult, but practices like conversion therapy are still alive and well, whether for sexuality or gender identity, and the long-term consequences of this sort of ‘help’ are grave indeed. Further, it’s sadly common to see people trapped into these sorts of situations, especially minors, who are more likely to be subject to someone else’s decisions. Certainly, Nomi’s horror isn’t in the exact terms of reality, but that’s the power of these sorts of stories: they let us address and understand the worst things life has to offer in terms we can stomach. Sometimes fiction is easier to accept than truth. 

Every marginalized population has its own stories, its own boogeymen, from the mundane and daily to the extreme. Certainly, Sense8 doesn’t cover everything there is to be afraid of as a trans person, but it does recognize an important truth about them: you have to know those fears in order to ever truly understand someone.

Nomi does escape her plight. In the real world equivalents to her situation, some people don’t. Some people can’t.

Trans representation and broader cultural acceptance have a long way to go. There are legal and cultural battles to be fought, and many of the worst dangers and indignities have yet to be fully acknowledged. More and more creators are providing windows into what it means to be trans, and there’s so much more material to cover, so many more types of gender identity yet unexplored. There are plenty of things I’m still figuring out for myself. But this show, this story, is something new and important. This is raw, this is true, and this is something I haven’t seen before.

Rather than delving into the particulars of how anyone could possibly open Jurassic Park after the events of the first three movies, the filmmakers here elect to just skip that part. It’s not as clever a conceit as the original film’s animated film simplifying the process of reconstituting fossil DNA so much that the practicalities can be ignored, but it does the job just fine.

The film actually follows Zach and Gray, brothers sent on a trip to visit their aunt, Claire, who runs the park. This isn’t a great time for Claire, however, and she pawns the kids off on her assistant (who they promptly ditch to explore on their own), so she can meet with her investors and the park’s owner. The park is doing well enough, but operating costs are unsurprisingly astronomical, so Claire and the rest of the park team are committed to creating new attractions to reinvigorate ticket sales year after year. Under pressure from investors, the public, InGen (the biotech company behind the park), and the military, who are interested in combat-trained dinosaurs, they genetically engineer a new dinosaur, the Indominus Rex, larger and fiercer even than the Tyrannosaurus.

While the boys explore various attractions (all of which are suitably impressive), Claire enlists Owen Grady, a former soldier who is now training velociraptors to evaluate the security of the Indominus’s paddock. The Indominus soon escapes and overwhelms the park’s security forces in a slaughter that reveals it’s much more than it initially appeared, while its true genome remains classified. The boys nearly end up killed by the creature as well, and soon enough the entire park is under siege. Whether anything can stop the Indominus is anyone’s guess.

The film is awesome to behold from the outset. Like its predecessors, it’s built on a foundation of circumstances going from bad to worse, but there’s much more time to appreciate what is than in the second and third installments, before things start getting destroyed. While the kids aren’t necessarily central to the plot, they are important for precisely the reason that John Hammond brought kids to the island in the first movie—we need to see the park through their eyes, because they’re the ones that matter. And that holds true here. Claire quips that just seeing a dinosaur is no longer enough, and on screen, at least, that’s true. CGI has advanced enough that the masterpieces of practical and digital effects that went into the first film might not have the same effect for a 2015 release, where a new viewer has been seeing impossible things on screen for years. But because Zach and Gray are in the movie, we get to see the attractions through their eyes, we can imagine being there, seeing these things, getting the full experience.

For reference, this is a conversation I’ve now had more than once:

“So, if Jurassic Park existed in real life, it’d be a terrible idea. Like, obvious death trap.”

“Totally. If any of us went we’d die horribly.”

“…but you’d still go, right?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“Absolutely.”

“Of course. Multiple times if I could afford it. Maybe even if I couldn’t. Where do you sell organs…?”

“Shut up and take my money!”

Meanwhile, while Claire is initially very stressed and unsure of what to do with herself when it comes to the kids or Owen’s advances, she really rises to the occasion as the film progresses, becoming a more and more capable heroine with each passing scene. And Chris Pratt is a consummate screen-stealer as Owen, who’s written to be about as cool as he could possibly be, even before he rides a motorcycle through the jungle in formation with velociraptors.

The story is also classic Jurassic Park, all hubris and vision gone horribly wrong, with a few scattered decent people trying to save themselves and each other, and a whole mess of fools who seem to be actually trying to make things worse. And there’s something to be said for how much credit you get just for doing dinosaurs. They may be more heavily CGI-based than the originals, but they’re still spectacular to behold, and sometimes the rule of cool really does apply: some things are just awesome enough to elevate whatever they’re in.

Now, looking at the introduction to this review, you might be thinking that it’s a little short, or that it seems like it’s leading to a ‘but’ that never comes. Both, unfortunately, are true. Jurassic World did provide everything I wanted…but it also threw in some things that I didn’t. I do think that the movie eventually finds its footing with Claire, but so many of her early scenes are entirely based around clichés about uptight business women who need a rugged man or a pack of kids to calm down. I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m really not.

There’s actually a completely unnecessary scene where Claire is talking to the boys’ Mom on the phone, and as an aside, she reminds Claire that she’ll change her mind about having kids someday. Not only is that one of the most patronizing, holier-than-thou, belittling comments ever (all the more so for how common it is), but it’s also completely unnecessary. Claire’s obvious discomfort with the kids is overplayed at the beginning, but there’s nothing gained putting her down for it. She doesn’t need to awaken her maternal instincts to be a worthwhile character in the story, and nothing like that even happens. It’s neither an acceptable thing for someone to say to someone else nor a line that has any need to be there for plot or characterization.

These little cringey moments plague the first act of the movie, but we mostly leave them behind later on. You don’t see a profound change in Claire where she realizes that she has to throw away the corporate finery to function in a dinosaur rampage, she just sucks it up and adjusts to each punch the movie throws her way. But I said ‘mostly’ for a reason too, and there are some little things that keep cropping up to remind you, like the fact that she’s somehow gone through the entire movie in heels, which…why? It’s such a stupid little detail, but it’s so annoying, and they actually call attention to it at one point, and then do nothing about it.

There was a lot of room in that storyline for something progressive or interesting to occur, especially because Claire is functionally the only female character in the whole movie, but it seems it was not to be.

None of this is enough to overcome the things I liked about the movie, and most of those things are overwhelmingly great on their own. What’s more, Claire takes on so much action in the latter half that you can certainly walk out of the theater without thinking about those issues too much, but that’s kind of why it’s sticking in the back of my throat now. It’s thoughtless, and movies keep doing it because they know they can get away with giving female characters short shrift. This is hardly the worst offender out there, but it feels like the creative team gave me my favorite meal on a silver platter and then spat on it. Just a little bit, kind of on the edge, so I can basically eat around it, but it’s still there, and it doesn’t bloody well have to be.

Over two years after the first movie, the Barden Bellas are three-time national acapella champions, and on top of the world, until a very public wardrobe malfunction puts their status and ability to compete in jeopardy. Their only hope at redemption is to take part in and win the world championships, which they’re told is a snowball’s chance in hell, as they’ll have to contend with competitors from around the world, including the unstoppable German team, Das Sound Machine.

Preparations for this last-ditch effort are complicated, however, as main character Becca takes an internship with a prestigious music producer, an untested legacy member joins the group, and the rest of the Bellas’ lives are slowly affected by their looming graduation. Of course, the only way for them to win will be to pull together and rediscover their harmony, truly understanding the legacy they’ll leave behind, before it’s too late.

I’ve heard it argued that the plot, with Becca somewhat ignoring the Bellas in favor of her own interests, is too similar to the story of the first film, and that a lot of the characters feel even more reduced to ‘the one who makes this kind of joke’ than they were before. But this time there’s a fundamental difference there.

This time, I actually liked it.

So maybe I do need to revisit the first movie, because most of the tropey idiosyncrasies of the sequel really didn’t bother me. A lot of the characters are one-note, but if they hit that note and it’s actually funny, who cares? Many of the jokes I rolled my eyes at the first time around are also absent, or at least de-emphasized here (the whole projectile vomit thing is gone, for instance).

A second outing turning out like a carbon copy of the first is a pretty common problem for comedies, but that problem also lets those movies take time and weight away from what’s often a pretty lackluster story and focus more on just being funny. If you love the original, it feels like a cheap trick, taking all the soul out of the thing, but if you have no attachment to or fondness for the thing, it’s a welcome, refreshing improvement, refining the material and filtering out the less desirable elements.

Pitch Perfect 2 definitely has its flaws though. The most unfortunate holdover from the first movie is that some of the offensive humor, most often delivered by commentators played by John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks, remains. Personally, I don’t find offensive or shock-value humor to be inherently evil or valueless, but when it’s as obviously unfunny as many of these jokes are, that’s another matter. For the most part, there’s something else to laugh at quickly enough that you can settle back into the movie, but there are still too many racist or sexist stains on an otherwise strong comedic landscape.

There’s also a certain lack of character definition that pervades the named roles, but that’s another thing I take more as a holdover from the first movie than a fault of the second. If they didn’t even imply a life outside of this acapella group when they introduced these characters, they’re certainly not going to do it now. And, much like the first movie, the story rests on a fairly dubious ‘big idea’ (in the first, that seemingly no one had ever heard a mashup before. This time, that a song with a line like ‘You’re my flashlight’ could be taken remotely seriously by anyone).

Fury Road picks up with the same post-apocalyptic, war-ravaged desert familiar from previous films, but Max himself has been laid low. Not only is he no longer actively “fighting for a righteous cause,” but he’s worn out by all the fighting, killing, and loss that this world requires of him. At the beginning of the film, he’s almost immediately captured by a barbarian crew living under the tyrannical rule of a despot named Immortan Joe. Joe controls the water supply for his community, and so takes on a godlike aspect in their eyes, as slaves kneel far below him and his Imperators (lieutenants) and War Boys (soldiers) take to the road to gather more supplies and slaves for the empire, growing up hearing tales of glorious death and Joe taking their souls to Valhalla.

But all hell breaks loose when one of the Imperators, Furiosa, uses a mission as a chance to free Immortan Joe’s wives and escape with them to “The Green Place,” the peaceful encampment where she was born. One of the War Boys, Nux, takes Max with him in the pursuit that follows, using him as a blood bag (literally transfusing Max’s blood to fight illness, as Max is a universal donor), and the two eventually end up joining forces with the women in their efforts to reach the Green Place, as well as for the inevitable final conflict with Joe.

I’ve spoken before at length about the singular qualities that certain genres need in order to work, but the truth is that it’s rare for a movie to come out well when it focuses entirely on being funny, or scary, or cool. And yet, it would be easy to see Mad Max as a movie that’s successful because it’s so bloody-mindedly committed to style.

The setting, color palette, costumes, camera work, and editing are all so committed completing the movie’s singular style—fluid, vibrant, motion-driven, visually-focused but never difficult for the eye to follow—that any of its other virtues in themes, characters, dialogue, and story seem to spring from that style. In a cinematic culture frequently overrun with drab greys and browns, Fury Road uses bright orange as its base. Where cgi often dominates, this movie is built on the practical effects that made its predecessors great. And despite many action movies’ notions that they should make the actual action scenes a mess of twitching cameras and motion blur, director George Miller and film editor Margaret Sixel brilliantly place all the action in center frame and cut the film to make sure the audience’s view never loses its connection to what’s going on.

Again, it would be easy to say that every other good thing about the movie comes from that style, but there’s no way for me to know that for sure, and the truth is, all those other things are great. The story is in some ways simple, but the movie gives it a wealth of detail, particularly visually, that reward the conscientious viewer with an extraordinarily deep view into larger themes and world-building. Similarly, the dialogue may be sparse and a first-time viewer will lose track of some character names, but it’s all highly functional and compact, telling you just where to look for more information. Likewise with the characters other than Max, whose idiosyncrasies and unsaid lines tell you just as much as Max’s terrifying, fiery flashbacks and hallucinations. I promise you, google anything that confuses you about the movie and you’ll find a load of people who figured out the answer just from careful study of the screen.

But does it have a through line, a greater meaning, any of that stuff I’m always harping on major studio releases for? Damn right it does. For that matter, Fury Road lends itself to a whole slew of thematic readings. There’s the feminist narrative of Furiosa and the wives dismantling Immortan Joe’s patriarchy, helped along by Max once he realizes he shouldn’t try to overstep or control them. There’s the survival story, showing the necessity of banding together across cultures and generations, concluding that you don’t always have to leave everything behind to escape a bad situation—you shouldn’t have to forsake every good thing to escape the bad, you can take back what’s yours. And it wouldn’t do to forget the social-progressive stand, with the jaded Max recognizing the needs of others and helping to bring down the people and things weighing them down so they can remake their world as a kinder, more egalitarian place. It’s a movie about running and one about standing your ground and fighting. It’s about respecting what came before but also about forging something new.

It’s about ramping dirtbikes to throw live explosives at people driving a giant truck through the desert.

It’s about being the best damn action movie you could possibly see this summer, and probably a decade of other summers besides.

The movie opens on a family, the Bowens, moving into a new housing development. The father, Eric, has lost his job, and the family couldn’t afford to stay in their old home, while the kids each have their own issues. Teenage daughter Kendra feels isolated by the move, and is suitably sullen and resentful, while son Griffin is a consummate coward, afraid of everything that moves and some things that don’t, and youngest daughter Madison is perhaps a little eccentric, but otherwise fine.

As time passes, strange occurrences start cropping up around the house (electronics flickering, objects moving, strange noises), and the Bowens discover that the development was built on top of a cemetery, all the contents of which were supposedly moved. The activity becomes more and more pronounced, playing on the Bowens’ fears, until the spirits kidnap Maddy. Upon consultation with paranormal researchers, they figure out that Maddy’s strangeness indicates a high psychic aptitude, and the spirits (made into more malevolent poltergeists by the injustice done to their graves) hope to use her to cross over into the next life. From there, it’s up to the family and the researchers to rescue Maddy and escape before it’s too late.

The movie is not bad. The characters are well drawn and sympathetic, even Griffin, who’s relatively insufferable before Madison disappears, but steps up once action needs to be taken, and the script follows a solid horror movie progression, from unnerving beginnings to more active scares in the middle and twists towards the end. It’s also a suitable modernization, with the kids and their interactions with technology being fairly believable despite the original’s relatively tech-phobic leanings. It also has some fairly good scares, twisting the perceptions of the residents of the house, animating objects, and taking control of the space so that even an audience familiar with the franchise can’t anticipate everything (although some major set pieces, like the tree, are retained).

But it’s also not great. While the scares are perfectly fine on paper, they never come fast or hard enough to hit a fever pitch, and the danger rarely feels real. We can probably thank the movie’s PG-13 rating and family movie roots for that, but it feels a little more toothless than I like my horror, to the point it’s not really surprising as you pass scene after scene with a body count of zero. Perhaps Hollywood is just too squeamish about inflicting violence on children (Too much? I may be bitter about the braindead nimrods who decided to bring an infant to this movie and got exceedingly indignant about being shushed when they stopped attempting to quiet it. Maybe).

Perhaps I wouldn’t feel this way if my watching experience hadn’t been so perforated by nitwits who ought not to have reproduced, but when you’re given so many pauses, it’s hard not to ask the movie ‘why?’ and Poltergeist doesn’t have much of an answer. It’s a suitable update to the material and trims off some of the sillier sounding bits, but does it say anything new about the concept? Does the moving of the cemetery comment on greed, capitalism, overpopulation, suburban infill, anything? The original actually did a little more on that score, however bald-facedly expository it was.

A horror movie doesn’t need to do those things, but if not, why bother doing a remake? Does it showcase new fears, make the concept scarier, provide a contrast? No? Is it anything other than a cash grab?

To recap, in her storyline, Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, has an emerging romantic relationship with Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk, owed to how the two have built mutual respect and trust. After both are affected by the Scarlet Witch’s mind-altering powers, Bruce goes on a rampage and Natasha has traumatic flashbacks to her initial training as an assassin, where she was forced to suppress or eliminate any part of her that would make her a less effective tool or killer, to the point that she was forcibly sterilized. Her origins and Bruce’s inability to control his powers make them both doubt their ability to be heroes. Bruce will always be a monster, and Natasha, particularly after publicizing S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier will never be anything more than a killer, at least to some. They consider running away from the coming battle more than once, but Natasha ultimately realizes that heroism isn’t about others’ perceptions of you, it’s about choosing to do the right thing, to stand up and be heroic, no matter what.

Now, one guess as to which part of that story critics have taken issue with.

If you guessed “the baby thing,” congratulations. You win a whole lot of eye-rolling.

While not universally stupid (this article on Black Widow’s positioning as ‘The Girl’ throughout the MCU and how it does her a disservice by making it look like she’s romantically interested in every male character and reducing the amount of thought devoted to her story is a really great read), or universally focused on that one aspect (this pile of trash rambles like it was written on meth about how Age of Ultron is destroying the summer blockbuster, throws in mention of ‘the sexism’, practically as an afterthought), this is what the majority of critical articles and blog posts seemed to focus on.

Now, if the story had hinged on the revelation that Black Widow was infertile and therefore somehow incapable of being a fully actualized woman and human being, yes, that would be deeply sexist in a way that’s all too common today (if you know anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to have kids, ask them how they like it when it comes up at the office—because it will come up at the office, no matter how inappropriate that is). But here’s the thing:

That’s. Not. What. Happened.

We get Natasha’s flashbacks, disjointed as flashbacks often are, with the added bonus of being intentionally unnerving, since they involve psychological conditioning, assassin training, and obviously forced medical procedures. But full understanding of what she remembered doesn’t come until later, in the scene that people seem hell-bent on getting wrong.

In the scene, Natasha has isolated herself from the rest of the group, when Bruce comes to her. She laments that it was stupid for her to believe that she could be anything more than a killer, which is her through line, as much as Tony’s arrogance and self-destruction or Steve’s sense of justice and difficulty affecting real outcomes as a single person are theirs. In The Avengers, Loki taunts her about the ‘red in her ledger,’ while in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, she has to weigh bringing down the villains by exposing S.H.I.E.L.D.’s records and the personal consequences of exposing that ledger in the process. And here, after a psychic attack, she has to confront the reality that not everyone sees the Avengers as heroes, their actions can create whole new sets of problems, and she may be trapped as the villain of her own story, never a hero.

Bruce shows up, faced with the conflict of his own existence. While Natasha has said that part of what she likes about him is the fact that he’s not a soldier or a warrior at heart, he can’t ever control the violent side of him. After witnessing the havoc he’s just wrought and seeing Hawkeye’s happy home and family, he understands that he can’t escape himself. The danger is great enough that he can never have that normal, happy kind of life. Specifically, he can’t have kids, for fear of the danger he’d pose to them.

And it’s then, and only then, that Natasha reveals that she physically can’t have children. Of course it’s affecting her, it’s an unhealing scar from the life she wants so badly to leave behind, but revealing it is an act of solidarity, not a statement that it’s the primary problem she’s grappling with. Even if you take it as more significant than that, it’s not that she’s invalid as a woman because of it, it’s that it’s emblematic of her lack of choice as an assassin. She wasn’t allowed to decide not to undergo the procedure, not to kill, not to be a tool for her masters. She didn’t choose any of it, and now that she’s free of that, even free of S.H.I.E.L.D., she’s chosen to be an Avenger, and her past is standing there, saying that she can’t. Saying that she’ll be nothing but the thing they made. Killer, not hero.

Even if critics point to some other issue with the scene besides the misconstrued ‘it’s saying she has no value if she can’t have kids’ nonsense, I still can’t agree. Could it be that she needs a man to accept and comfort her? No, because she’s comforting him, if anything. Is it even that she’s lamenting her inability to have kids, that that’s something she might want? No, we’ve already established that having kids is not her principle issue (also, how dare the movie bring up forced sterilization as traumatic in a world where literal Nazis are an active force). There are plenty of ways to misread that scene and come to these conclusions, but that’s just it: they’re misreadings.

Of course it’s okay to have problems with Age of Ultron. I mentioned some of my own in my review, and there are plenty of others that people have pointed out, whether I agree with them or not (Quicksilver’s death is not an issue because it’s a Whedon moment, but because it’s not a Whedon moment; fight me). But this view of the Black Widow storyline is hard for me to take because it’s just not what the text says. You don’t have to tell me how demeaning and patronizing baby-emphasizing stories and lines are (god knows I’ve had plenty of rants to the effect of ‘adoption exists,’ and I both don’t want kids and may very well not be able to in a couple years), but this scene isn’t that.

And again, after that scene, it’s Natasha’s choice that puts both her and Bruce back into the fray instead of abandoning the battlefield. She takes back her ability to decide for herself, and she chooses to be a hero. Despite doubt, despite disaster, despite what anyone thinks of the Avengers, she keeps going. Not only is that a choice, it’s a definition. Not only is her story arc better-defined than most in the movie, it’s the one that makes the movie. It’s the damn central thesis.

Following up on the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and to an extent the Agents of SHIELD TV series (a little. Kind of. You still do not need to watch this show), the movie opens with the full Avengers team taking out a Hydra base in eastern Europe, which it turns out has been their modus operandi for some time now. Tony, perhaps not entirely recovered from his experiences in the first film, doesn’t believe that what they’re doing is enough, knowing that far larger threats lurk in the wider universe. After recovering Loki’s mind control scepter from The Avengers, and with a little manipulation from new meta-human characters Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch, Tony decides it’s time to bring his vision of an artificially-intelligent robot peacekeeping (and planet-defending) force called Ultron to fruition.

Not realizing that there’s also a new Terminator movie coming out this year, Tony doesn’t get that this is a blisteringly bad idea until it’s too late. Upon achieving consciousness, Ultron makes off with the scepter, launches a campaign to wipe out the Avengers (and the rest of humankind behind them), and integrates himself with the cloud, allowing him to operate multiple bodies and be anywhere in the world he needs to.

From here, there’s a fracturing of the team (nudged along by the Scarlet Witch’s mind-altering powers), a reknitting, a global cat and mouse game, and finally a massive showdown against the legion of Ultron and his ultimate scheme.

It’s pretty much what you’d expect, and everything you could reasonably expect to be good is in fine form.

The dialogue has Joss Whedon’s signature punch and quips, the story feels grand in scope without being convoluted, and the action scenes are to die for. There’s a brilliant balance between staying distant enough to appreciate the size of any confrontation while still zooming in to give the individual characters plenty of chances to strut their stuff. The moments when the heroes work in sync or even combine their powers reek of cool.

And Whedon delivers character work too. Some get sold a bit short, particularly Thor, who has no arc to speak of, and Captain America, who spends more time acting as a foil than as his own man (with the exception of one particularly excellent line near the beginning, comparing the eastern European distrust, distaste, and even hate for the Avengers to American responses to external threats in the World War II era). But Tony’s impulses to create Ultron and to take the defense of Earth into his own hands fit seamlessly into his development through Avengers and Iron Man 3, while Hawkeye finally gets something to do, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver quickly establish themselves, and a burgeoning romance between Hulk and Black Widow both connects them more closely to each other and more powerfully defines how distant they are from the rest of the group, with particular challenges to her self-image in the wake of her actions in Winter Soldier.

There’s also a smattering of side characters who at least begin to broaden the MCU, from Korean geneticist Helen Cho to smugglers from the fictional African country of Wakanda (where the upcoming Black Panther hails from). On top of that, the fact that the principle action of the film takes place in war-torn Eastern Europe significantly changes the film’s cultural context from the largely American Avengers. If that movie’s climax evoked 9/11 and Winter Soldier explored the themes of the war on terror, Age of Ultron brings the Marvel universe even further into the present day.

You’ve probably sussed-out at this point that I liked the movie. But you also probably remember my introduction, and can tell that I didn’t like it without qualifications.

I would conservatively estimate that there have been…a lot of articles written about this movie. Some have come at it like your average review, while some have paid more attention to how it stacks of to the comics and where the MCU will go from here. Some have approached the movie from the perspective of more staid cinema academics, and some have gone so far as to claim that Age of Ultron represents the end of movies (or at least blockbuster, popcorn movies) as we know them.

I certainly don’t agree with all of these people, or even most of them (and I will come back to the doomsayer in a later post), but my point is that it would be hard to argue that Age of Ultron isn’t a massive cinematic event. And yet, that’s exactly my problem with it.

Thematically, Age of Ultron builds off of the first Avengers and the intervening films. It’s about what power heroes can actually be said to have, how some people are out of their reach, and they will inevitably let down. It’s also about self-determination—how you can choose what to stand for and who to try to be, and the pitfalls of determining that you know best for everyone else. And character-wise, I’ve already talked a bit about the dynamics continued from the rest of the MCU.

But I can’t say that it offers anything new. The Avengers worked so well in no small part because the central question in the plot was the same central question around the whole enterprise: could they pull it off? On one hand, could these clashing heroes come together to save the day? On the other, could a studio bring these disparate pieces of intellectual property together to make a blockbuster? The two questions were so entirely intertwined that they ultimately heightened the tension and impact of the movie to a point it never could have reached in a vacuum. The fact that the answer to both questions was a resounding “Yes!” shook not just audiences, but entire cinematic landscapes.

And Ultron simply doesn’t have that sort of tectonic force behind it. Yes, people questioned whether or not Marvel could pull it off again, but that’s not enough. After something as off-the-wall as Guardians of the Galaxy managed to be wildly successful, there came a sense that Marvel could do no wrong, so the thunder storm tension of the pre-Avengers atmosphere couldn’t come back that easily. And unfortunately, that lack makes the movie’s other flaws all the more apparent.

True, not every character in The Avengers had a complete individual story arc, but here it seems almost none of them do. Yes, there’s time for several of them to contemplate what they’ve lost as part of their path, powers, or heroism (and the flashback sequences are powerful for some), but Thor and Captain America’s connection to the story is tenuous at best once they’ve established their reasons for being in the beginning of the movie.

Adding in another new character, Vision, at the eleventh hour also really pushes the envelope on making the movie feel bloated and unwieldy, to the point that cracks start to show even in otherwise strong sections. For instance, while I do love how Tony Stark’s character functions in the movie and how his well-meaning but misguided ego drives the plot, I also can’t help but notice that he doesn’t really change over the course of the film. He oversteps without consulting the other Avengers early on to spark the story, but he never really views this as a mistake, makes up for it, or overcomes it. Perhaps the preservation of this ‘good intentions outweigh catastrophic results’ attitude is a lead-in for future films, like Captain America: Civil War, but it feels sloppy here.

The film’s climax unsurprisingly hinges on a massive battle against an army of functionally inconsequential Ultron-created robot soldiers, and while the action is, again, excellent, and the set pieces cool enough to feel climactic, it’s difficult not to feel a bit disappointed that this final act leaves the movie feeling so structurally similar to its predecessor.

Much hay has also been made of issues with Black Widow’s storyline, and while there is some awkwardness to the seemingly sudden advent of her relationship with Bruce Banner (as many have pointed out, writers have built up her chemistry with quite a few characters over the course of her cinematic appearances), in general I strongly disagree with those critics, although that’s an issue for another post. In fact, Black Widow’s arc is in many ways the central thesis of the movie, it’s just that it, like some of Ultron’s better dialogue, gets a bit drowned out by everything else that’s going on.

Make no mistake, I really liked Age of Ultron, it’s just that I can see the things that would have made me like it more much more clearly than I would usually expect. I know there were constraints placed on the movie as far as length and certain things that had to be included, but I still have to point out that adding 20 minutes and subtracting a character could have made a tremendous difference, perhaps even enough to move Age of Ultron from the middle of the pack to the top of the heap, as far as my personal rating of Marvel movies goes.

Ultimately, it seems like someone placed a bit more significance on ‘big’ than on ‘great’ when outlining this movie, and it shows. Nevertheless, big counts for a lot. You’re not going to see any bigger or many cooler action set pieces this year, and Age of Ultron remembers why superheroes are so captivating to us. It knows how to push the right buttons on character moments, flashy combinations, and the sheer thrill of larger-than-life heroes banding together. Say what you will, I still dig the hell out of it.

The movie follows Caleb, a programmer for the world’s largest search engine (and generally most powerful internet conglomerate), Bluebook (yes, we see what you did there). He’s won a chance for a week-long retreat with the company’s founder, Nathan, at his enormous, remote estate. After signing the requisite non-disclosure papers, Caleb finds out what Nathan’s been working on: fully realized artificial intelligence. Specifically, a robot named Ava, who Caleb will be getting to know over the next few days.

His official task is to administer a Turing test--a process whereby a human observer determines if a machine has true artificial intelligence. It sounds simple--if exciting--but the task isn’t as straightforward as it appears, as Nathan’s eccentricities become more pronounced and Ava proves herself to be anything but a meek, servile machine. She’s inquisitive and forthright, which makes sense, but she’s also found a way to cause power outages in the lab, and uses this time to warn Caleb not to trust Nathan. Particularly disquieting is her openly flirtatious manner, and the fact that Nathan’s designed her to look like a beautiful woman. It doesn’t take long before Caleb has to wonder who’s testing whom and what Nathan is really after, not to mention what will happen after he leaves.

There are some interesting elements of cat-and-mouse gamesmanship going on here, but what really captured my interest were the characters. Ava is a unique existence, and her curiosity about the world doesn’t make her a doormat, and it’s tantalizingly unclear how much of her behavior is deliberately planned and how much of it she’s discovering as she goes along. 

Meanwhile, Oscar Isaac has a fantastic turn as the reclusive genius Nathan. I was hoping I’d see him doing more interesting work after the excellent Inside Llewyn Davis got so overlooked last year, and he completely exceeds my expectations here. There’s something brilliantly subtle about Nathan’s arrogance, from the way he wants to show off his work to Caleb to the fact that he seems to want to be both a bro and a boss, and even to the moments of genuine weakness and uncertainty shows, not to mention the seamless and unapologetic integration of his alcoholism. He’s a truly fascinating character, and the film does allow us to see a much larger portion of his thought processes than Ava’s, which strikes a really fascinating balance.

Caleb, meanwhile, is much more of an everyman, but his bafflement at everything the lab throws at him really ties the film together, and his confusion really highlights the extent to which all of these characters want something, but it’s not always clear what that something is. Caleb certainly doesn’t know when it comes to his own mind, but he still clearly sees himself as the hero of the story, and Ava and Nathan’s agendas are so subtle or opaque at times that the movie becomes a terrific interplay of ‘who’s playing who?’

If there are any weaknesses, I think that period of complete confusion doesn’t quite last for long enough, but maybe I’m in the minority on people who would’ve enjoyed spending longer asking “what the fuuuuuuck?” The ending also raises a lot of questions, and I’m still not sure how much I like some of its implications, but it’s damn interesting, at the very least.

The movie features pretty typical high school characters from the start. The lead, Blaire, skypes with her boyfriend and contemplates losing their virginities after prom. Textbook. But soon after starting a group video chat with their other friends, they notice something strange. There’s a user in the chat they don’t know, and they can’t get rid of it. What’s more, the account belongs to another friend, Laura, who died a year ago.

Laura had been mercilessly harassed after a humiliating video of her turned up online, and eventually committed suicide. It’s perhaps a bit on-the-nose or straight-from-the-headlines, but it works perfectly for this kind of movie. As all attempts to remove the unfamiliar user fail and more and more disturbing missives start filtering in through Facebook and instant messaging, it becomes clear that it’s Laura herself, coming after them from beyond the grave. 

Revealing early on that none of the group is innocent, Laura starts manipulating them into revealing their secrets, ranging from embarrassing to horrifying and pitting them against each other, with gruesome punishments for anyone who breaks the rules or tries to leave.

In classic horror fashion, they’re picked off one by one as we come closer and closer to the truth behind Laura’s story.

It’s been a little while since I’ve reviewed a horror movie, so let’s get this out of the way first. This is no It Follows. It’s not as engaging, nuanced, complex, or even as scary. Many of the characters aren’t that well defined, and none of the dialogue or performances really stand out, and it’s easy for scenes to devolve into screaming matches where none of the characters can get a word in edgewise.

But something about it just works. The premise is surprisingly strong, and the things that make a slasher great are all there (inevitability, screams, teenagers being punished in horrifying fashion). There’s also a much better sense of pace and buildup than in a lot of horror movies I’ve seen lately, as the characters are constantly engaged with their attacker, but still have enough moments of downtime to allow the movie some breathing room.

As for the computer-screen conceit? Your mileage may vary, but you owe it to yourself to give it a chance. Plenty of people considered the entire “found footage” horror concept to be a cheap gimmick when The Blair Witch Project came out, and plenty still do. Some people are going to be totally turned off here, and others are going to be completely sucked in. At the end of the day though, what’s the point if you can’t even give something new a chance?

For my money, the gimmick does work shockingly well, largely because of just how thoroughly the film commits to it. We see everything Blair does or tries to do on her computer screen, from exposition and attempts to be rid of Laura’s haunting to the aimless, nervous clicking that will be familiar to so many viewers. In her messages to Laura or her boyfriend, we also see everything she starts to type but thinks better of, which adds a new dimension to the conversation. This oddly specific point of view does limit our interaction with some of the scares, but it’s ultimately unique and engrossing, and I dug the hell out of it.

There’s also something to be said for the film’s presentation of what I can only describe as teen sociopathy, as so many of these characters seem to be pretty abysmal human beings. And while the face-value allegory of someone able to do horrible things to you because of their online anonymity is a little too straightforward, it doesn’t really become a problem, and there is something genuinely unnerving about just seeing the default user image staring back at you.

Neill Blomkamp is an interesting film-maker. For the most part, I mean that in a good way. His first feature film, District 9, remains one of the best science fiction films of the last couple decades, and he’s certainly one of the most socially conscious directors in the genre. That said, his second outing, Elysium, was really uneven, and didn’t meld its central allegories (immigration and health-care) into the story nearly as well as his previous work. 

You can imagine why I had some concerns when his new movie appeared to take on artificial intelligence, police militarization, gang culture, and the meaning of parenthood, among other themes. 

...with Die Antwoord.

Chappie weaves together a few different narrative threads (much more successfully than Elysium), revisiting the setting of Johannesburg. The city has enjoyed a rapid reduction of its previously staggering crime rate due to the introduction of a robotic police force, designed by programmer and engineer Deon Wilson. 

Deon wants to take things further, developing true artificial intelligence, but his superiors shoot him down, encouraging him to focus on what’s working now and what’s profitable. Deon decides to go ahead anyway, stealing a damaged robot from the decommission line. But before he can go through with his test, he’s kidnapped by gang members named Ninja, Yolandi, and Amerika, who want to hijack a robot to perform a heist and appease their boss. Their interests align just well enough that Deon is able to activate the robot with his AI program, and the group quickly dubs the result Chappie. 

From there on, the movie gets a little more unfocused and awkward. Yolandi is happy to treat Chappie as a child and raise him with the help of Deon and Amerika, but Ninja wants to use the rapidly maturing AI for their heist, and launches his own form of ‘education.' Meanwhile, one of Deon’s colleagues, a soldier-cum-engineer named Vincent Moore, is developing his own agenda to discredit Deon’s work and force the company and police alike to turn to his own more heavily armed robot design.

Throughout the story, all the characters find themselves under ticking clocks, as Ninja and co. only have a few days to come up with an enormous sum of money for their boss, Deon continues to risk discovery, and the damage to Chappie’s body make replacing his battery impossible...giving him only days to live.

As I said, there’s a lot going on here, but a lot of it is genuinely good material. The brevity of Chappie’s story allows it to work as a microcosm for childhood, presenting infant-like fascination, teen angst, and adult understanding of the basic workings of the world in short order, along with the complex development of the parent-child relationship, all trappings of trust, rebellion, betrayal, and understanding included.

Of course, that’s the principle of the thing. The practice isn’t going to work nearly so well for a lot of viewers. Chappie’s noisey, heavily accented robot voice will be enough to turn some people off, particularly when coupled with the various unorthodox speech patterns that come in turn with childhood and with the movie’s approximation of gang banger culture. The looks and sounds of Die Antwoord also play a role in this awkwardness, especially for viewers who will be encountering them for the first time. 

Much as anime has its own particular quirks and tropes (not to mention awkward translations and left-of-center uses of English in the source material), Chappie speaks entirely on its own terms, perhaps even in its own language--or at least a fairly unique dialect. For audiences who can accept or even revel in these eccentricities, they’re not a problem, but it’s not surprising that the movie didn’t do at all as well as it could have.

Truthfully, there are also a few structural problems worth considering. Vincent’s sub-plot has some useful things to say about obsession, excessive force, and militarization of both private companies and the police, but it’s all a bit over-the-top, to the point where it doesn’t have the breathing room to make those points stick. To an extent, that could be intentional, but while the subplot does allow for a more explosive climax, there’s another villain easily at hand who could have accomplished many of the same narrative purposes without taking up quite so much screen time or leaving so many threads unresolved. It would be easy to see this dissonance as something born of casting Hugh Jackman and wanting to make good use of him, but the same could have been said of Sigourney Weaver, who doesn’t get to do much at all here, and seems wasted on the film.

So, is Chappie another District 9? No. But on the other hand, does it fall as flat as something like Elysium? Also no.

Chappie is a bit bloated, awkward, and confused, but it also has a lot of thought behind it and a lot of heart within it. It has something to say, even if it can’t always quite grasp the words. 

The story is simple enough: girl meets boy, boy sleeps with girl, boy passes on inescapable curse-monster-spirit that will follow her until it kills her or she passes it on to the next person.

Okay, maybe not that simple.

Jay is living out an uneventful young-adulthood in suburban Detroit, splitting time between classes and childhood friends in a picture-perfect display of 90′s-00′s americana. But when she sleeps with new-flame Hugh, her life takes a darker turn. Hugh explains that he’s passed to her the aforementioned curse and unceremoniously dumps her back at home, traumatized and confused.

It’s easy at first to dismiss what Hugh’s told her, but it quickly becomes clear that something really is following Jay, and it’s not going to stop. It can look like anyone to her, no one else will see it at all, but it is very real, and it will keep coming, walking, until it catches up to her.

In other words:

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to bust that one out.

It Follows really, really deserves it. This is certainly the most unnerving horror movie I’ve seen since The Conjuring, but it’s also the most interesting one I’ve seen in a hell of a lot longer, easily exceeding even last year’s Under the Skin. 

What’s more, it does its work--provoking thought and fear--without being heavy-handed or leaning too heavily on any one theme. It’s not the sexual awakening and revenge horror of Teeth (although that’s definitely an element at play), or the bland sense of vindictive consequence endemic to the slasher genre (and the Jason films in particular). 

No, the thread of sexuality, adulthood, and responsibility is much more subtle and complex here, as it incorporates sex out of love, lust, convenience, and inevitability. And all that comes along with the constant warring sense that sex might solve all your problems, but it might just as easily not--passing on the curse doesn’t necessarily save you, and if the creature kills the person you passed it to, it’ll come after you again and keep going up the line.

And beyond the discussions of sexuality and relationships, beyond the obvious, visceral horror of this all-too-familiar boogeyman, there’s also something to be said for the existential horror of inevitability. The inevitability of adulthood, or how the faces of people in our lives may change, but the roles they fill will remain the same, of the slow march of time and the things that’ll always catch up to us eventually, right up until death.

For me, at least, that kind of conceptual complexity can excuse quite a few other foibles, but It Follows doesn’t have to. As much work as the script does, the film-craft does so much more. Director David Robert Mitchell has a brilliant sense of suspense and pacing, and his camerawork is the real star of the film. A keen manipulation of perspective puts the audience on-edge, constantly watching for approaching figures in the background, while judicious use of close-ups and some remarkable 360-degree pans keep us firmly planted firmly alongside Jay, looking over our shoulders at every turn.

This is the sort of film that will stay with you long after you leave the theater, prickling the hair on the back of your neck and quickening your steps...especially if there’s someone behind you.

It’s a movie that sticks in your elevated heartbeat and the churning of your thoughts. It’s a movie that’s so good I didn’t even realize until just now that it pulled off something I constantly long for in a horror movie: it got the heroes out of the house...and it didn’t make anything better.

This time last year, I was convinced that nothing would top The Lego Movie in 2014. This isn’t exactly the same feeling--I’m much more scared about getting up to use the bathroom this year--but 2015 has a clear frontrunner here, and I wouldn’t want to get on its bad side.

As you could probably tell already, the plot is pretty straightforward. Zoe (Olivia Wilde) and her fiance Frank (Mark Duplass) are medical researchers. Along with two lab assistants, Niko (Donald Glover) and Clay, and a videographer named Eva, they're developing a serum to stimulate brain activity and neuronal growth in coma and surgical patients, waking them up or giving doctors more time to work when someone's flat-lined. 

Of course, it actually goes further, bringing people back from the dead.

After successfully resurrecting a dog, the team celebrates, but notices some strange changes in the newly undead animal's behavior, not to mention the fact that the serum isn't leaving the dog's system--and it's growing and changing more and more parts of the dog's brain with every passing hour. 

Before they can figure out what's really going on, their research gets shut down. They desperately try to recreate their results before it's too late, but a freak accident puts Zoe on the table, and bringing her back to life turns out to be more of a mistake than any of them could imagine.

Zoe's resurrection and the continued effects of the serum quickly give her new abilities, but they also bring her childhood trauma to the surface, and, convinced that she was in hell before they brought her back, she swiftly turns on those around her, making the lab into a nightmare the equal of any asylum or haunted house.

Unlike Lucy, The Lazarus Effect keeps its pseudoscience simple and its characters as actual characters. What's more, rather than taking on a flat affect after her transformation, Olivia Wilde is all raw emotion, feeling betrayed, then terrifyingly freed by the fact that she no longer has to be good, but can take everything out on someone else. Zoe's no hero, but at least you can understand her.

There are definitely more solid character moments from the supporting cast than you'd expect as well. Sure, some of that comes from the simple expedient of having actors as talented as Duplass and Glover to back Wilde up, but it also means something that Frank and Zoe's domestic friction doesn't simply paint Frank as an ass, or that Nico's crush on Zoe doesn't force him into idiotic temptation. Clay and Eva are much more lacking in characterization, true, but even they seem more three-dimensional than standard horror stock.

On the other hand, the movie's abbreviated runtime doesn't give much opportunity for those character moments to breathe or to be entirely resolved. The short length also cuts the genuinely scary bits down quite a lot--I would have loved to see a cut of this movie that was twenty minutes longer. What we get is really quite solid, but it's a little anti-climactic, and the slow run-up to the real fear leaves the movie solidly in the realm of "good, but not great."

The direction is also unfortunately unfocused, at a few points seeming like it'll drift into found-footage horror and justify Eva's overly-central part in the action. But these camera-centric shots are few and far between, and are abandoned entirely by the midpoint of the film, giving it a hesitant, flip-flopping sense of style. The director gets a few passes because it's his first feature film, but too many of these choices could--and should--have been made well-before the final cut, and can't be ignored entirely.

The Lazarus Effect was a perfectly good way to spend an evening, but it feels like an appetizer, something you could have really sunk your teeth into under different circumstances, but as it stands mostly just prepares you for what's ahead. 

The movie follows Eggsy, a downtrodden young man who's gifted with a unique opportunity. Eggsy's father was a member of the titular underground intelligence agency (supposedly international, but all seemingly white, British, and very similar-looking), and a protege of Harry Hart (Colin Firth). An agent has been killed, and Hart puts Eggsy up for the position, both despite and because of his lower-class upbringing. 

Meanwhile, concurrent with the expected "prove yourself to the arrogant upper-class, but really to yourself" plotline, Hart investigates the circumstances that lead to his compatriot's death, uncovering a globally-threatening plot by billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) that oddly enough involves both climate change and communications technology (and Gazelle, the woman with the sword legs).

The broad strokes are of course quite predictable, with Eggsy growing into a more and more proficient spy candidate and eventually having to take responsibility and save the world rather than dealing with his own more petty problems, but the details are anything but.

The humor is almost all good, the aesthetic is perfect for the sort of cartoonish action that's at play here, and the camerawork is simply awesome. Between the camera's dynamic range of motion and technique, the out-of-left-field quality to Valentine's scheme and other plot points, and the frankly brilliant fight choreography, this is a kinetic, visceral freakshow, and it has simply the best action scenes I've seen in years. Each move in a fight is considered, but flows from the previous one at a breakneck pace, to the point that you never know exactly what to you'll get in the next shot. It's a ballet of the unexpected, and I'm overjoyed that people are still filming action scenes like this.

It's sword-legs all the way down (I will not stop harping on this point until you see the movie).

But again, it's not perfect. The gender politics of the film are a bit awkward, as Roxy, the other frontrunner to be a new agent, never actually has the opportunity to do much of anything badass (although the fact that she's not presented as a token love interest is a very welcome surprise), and there's a really awkward bit at the end that seems like it must be intended to satirize woman-as-reward tropes in movies like this, but doesn't really land and just reads as a trumped-up version of the same old thing.

There's also not much done with Eggsy's family (he looks out for his mother and deals with her abusive boyfriend, but disappears for weeks or months for training), so it's a bit droopy as plot threads go.

But overall, I look past the flaws. Colin Firth is the perfect spy-mentor, and Samuel L Jackson is an amazing evil genius--not to mention the fact that his plot isn't just greed or megalomania, but has genuine purpose behind it. The movie also has the single most hilarious, intense extended action scene I've seen since Shoot 'Em Up, and it doesn't even feature Gazelle and her sword-legs.

The movie begins with the parents of our protagonist, Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis). Her wide-eyed astronomer father was killed during a home invasion when the thieves went after his prized telescope (no, the telescope is not a space artifact or other MacGuffin), thus explaining her odd name and self-pronounced tendency to expect the worst from people. Her mother then immigrated from Russia to America (pasty British guy + pale Irish woman (playing pale Russian woman)=Mila Kunis? ...okay). Fast forward, and Jupiter lives a mundane life, cleaning houses with her Mother and considering selling her eggs for extra cash to buy a telescope like her Father's. But when she gets to the clinic to go through with the procedure, everything changes.

It turns out, through the strange quirks of genetics and Space Capitalism, she's the heir to a title of royalty and some very valuable property--namely, the Earth itself. Of course, other members of the powerful Abrasax family have their own designs for the Earth, and three siblings each want her captured or killed for their own ends. 

(I've heard criticism saying that this plot is difficult to follow, and while my summary isn't doing it justice, it's really not. It might be awkward to follow which sibling hired which set of aliens and mercenaries at first glance, but it all becomes clear quite quickly once you remember that there are three separate parties with their own needs for how events should unfold).

Jupiter barely escapes death thanks to Caine (Channing Tatum), a werewolf-like mercenary who's taken on her rescue and safe assumption of her inheritance in a bid to recover his lost honor and be reinstated to his former post (okay, some of these things seriously don't lend themselves well to summary). 

From there, it's a madcap sprint from safe haven to safe haven, discovering and/or dismantling each Abrasax sibling's schemes in turn and gaining a greater and greater understanding of how high the stakes are for Jupiter and the Earth at every step.

Again, despite the hash I made of that summary, the plot's not difficult to understand when you're in the theater, and it's even easier once you realize that it doesn't really matter.

This isn't a movie about dynamic space-society politics and machinations, or even about competing operatic or Shakespearean villainy and the corruption of immortality. It's about girl meets boy. No, not boy meets girl, but girl meets boy, and the distinction is very important. This is a movie where the love story isn't about winning the supporting character's hand by virtue of heroism, it's about the heroine saying "Hey, we should kiss," and wearing him down until he lets go of enough of his heroic baggage to do the deed. It's a movie where Kunis's costume changes are sexy, but in an "I want to wear that crazy, gorgeous outfit" way, without the obvious posturing of sidelong glances, underwear dropping coquettishly, and obligatory ogling. It's a movie where the action scenes aren't about what a badass the main male character is on his flying roller skates--yes, flying roller skates--(and good thing too, since he shoots about as well as a storm trooper), but about seeing Channing Tatum's muscles flex and contort. This is a movie where Kunis's heroism is never about glory, it's about escape and doing the right thing. 

In other words, it's a movie that, in a world where practically everything is steeped in the male gaze, actually manages to be from the female gaze. And that's pretty damn cool.

It doesn't necessarily make it good though.

Jupiter Ascending is a weird movie, and it's at times difficult to tell if its decisions are weird in a way that's considered and interesting, or just deeply stupid. The Abrasax infighting and the meditations on how, at a certain stage of development, the only truly valuable commodity is time? Complex and interesting. The depictions of bureaucracy necessary to claim Jupiter's birthright, and the shots of broader, more varied alien society? Fun and interesting. Sean Bean's statement that bees can sense royalty, which allows Jupiter to use what I must in good conscience refer to as bee-kinesis (for a couple scenes, after which it is no longer relevant)? Stupid. So, so stupid.

Depending on where you land on some of the broader structural concerns, the movie's penchant for melodrama can really help it or hurt it. It turns to camp of the highest order, especially when Eddie Redmayne is onscreen, since he plays Balem, the eldest Abrasax sibling, as though he has permanent laryngitis...except when he screeches like a harpy. Beyond that, there's a lot of expository dialogue, and some bits that have to be seen to be believed, like Jupiter discovering and expressing her feelings for Caine by repeating the sentence "I love dogs" multiple times (see, because he's basically part dog and--WHAT THE ASS IS THIS MOVIE?)

Finally, the feminist issue is pretty tough to call too. On the one hand, there's the badass, empowering aspect of the female gaze that I was talking about earlier. This is a movie that's genuinely centered on a very firmly human, female protagonist, and that's something to be celebrated in and of itself. On the other hand, there's the fact that most of the action of the movie consists of Caine rescuing Jupiter from increasingly dire situations, rather than her getting out of them herself. It's some really excessive damseling, even if you take into account that she's an everywoman in a sprawling scifi world. And even that could be overlooked if it weren't for her statement in the opening voiceover that she can't trust anyone...after which she proceeds to blindly trust everyone she meets. From Caine to the younger Abrasax's to her sleezeball cousin who's somehow going to take the lion's share of the money from Jupiter selling her eggs, the only one who she doesn't trust implicitly is Balem, who's been trying to kill her since minute one, lives on a floating black and red doom fortress, and is so bombastically evil that it might as well be his name. 

(Yeah, pretty much).

It's...frustrating to say the least, even before certain aspects of the movie's conclusion come into play, which probably bug me most of all, but that I won't spoil.

So, is Jupiter Ascending fun, wild camp, or is it a hot pile of garbage (or both)?

Whiplash focuses largely on the dynamic between two men, Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) and Terrence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). They are in turns allies and adversaries, one a student and the other a teacher, and the movie at times seems to be just waiting, seeing if and when one of them will break under the weight of the other's convictions...or their own.

At first, things seem to be looking up for Neiman, as his drum skills reach to new heights, he joins the Studio Band at the prestigious Schaffer Conservatory, and he finally goes out with the girl he has a crush on. But Fletcher's band is not a place for the faint-of-heart, as he curses out and abuses each and every student into top form, or into quitting. He rages, throws furniture, and wages psychological warfare on the students, and Neiman is no exception, torn between thinking that Fletcher's chosen him as some kind of golden-boy protege, or that he's barely hanging on by the skin of his teeth.

The tug-of-war continues throughout the film, as it becomes clear that neither Neiman nor Fletcher are the greatest people. Neiman's ambition to be 'one of the greats' is wrapped in a powerful arrogance and a sense that the people around him can't possibly understand. He ends up pushing people away even as he pushes his own body and soul to the brink of collapse.

Meanwhile, Fletcher's mind is difficult to fathom. He may be an abusive, power-mad psychopath, but he's not without purpose. Every attack, every insult or assault is made in the hopes that it will provoke greatness in response, that it will awaken or stoke that drive in a student, that same drive of Neiman's towards greatness.

Does it work? Is it worth it? Whiplash doesn't have the answers, but it's damn good at asking the questions.

J.K. Simmons has gotten by far the most attention of any aspect of this movie, even before his Oscar win, and for good reason. Fletcher is terrifying and electrifying, a powerful presence who, like so many of the best villains, truly believes in what he's doing. He's monstrous and vindictive, but utterly believable. Captivating.

But it wouldn't do to forget Miles Teller, or to ignore all the other excellent aspects of the movie. Teller is a fantastic anti-hero, with just as much force behind his convictions as Fletcher, and just as easy a dismissal of people outside his orbit. That said, he also generates genuine sympathy, making the audience feel every bit of punishment Fletcher inflicts on him, and all the pain he puts himself through, just for the hope of being good enough to one day be great. It's a powerful thing to see someone pushing so hard that he can barely remember why he started in the first place.

The tension of the movie doesn't only come from the actors though, the composition and editing focus on all the right details to stop your heart, from the blur of rolling drumsticks to a bloody hand plunging into ice-water to sweat beading and running free, never stopping.

And that's the thing about Whiplash: after a while, it just never stops. And it's that unwavering tension that keeps the movie strong, even at the few weaker, more obvious sections of the script. We expect things tied up, a beginning, middle, and end even if not everything is resolved.

But that's Whiplash's point, to a degree: when you're pursuing greatness, you forgo your right to that kind of story, and all you get is punishing, uncertain middle.

It sounds like a horrible way to live, but it's not something you can give up either. It simply is. 

The movie follows Chris Kyle, a Texan rodeo cowboy who enlists as a Navy SEAL (citing a hunting background for his innate shooting skill) after his girlfriend cheats on him and he witnesses a newscast of the 1998 US Embassy bombings.

(As an aside, can I just say how weird it is that 2014 featured not one, but two instances where a movie protagonist feels his freedom senses tingle, he sees a news report on terrorism, and we immediately smash-cut to him joining the armed forces? At least Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit didn't get nominated for Best Picture).

He gets married during training, and is called up to active duty as a sniper after September 11th. The scene in the trailer--where Kyle has to make the call on whether to shoot a woman and child carrying a grenade towards a convoy--turns out to be his first kill, which starts off an impressive career, not only achieving a record number of sniper kills, but also moving to the front lines, providing the benefits of his more advanced training to relatively green marines.

But when it's time for his tour of duty to end, Kyle doesn't want to call it quits, his duty to his fellow soldiers and the threat of an enemy sniper, nicknamed Mustafa, who's still at large, draw him back to the front, despite his growing family back home.

Kyle gains more and more renown--becoming known as "the legend"--but it's several years and many bodies before he finally finishes his fight against Mustafa and returns home to become a loving husband and father, as well as a great force for veterans' outreach and support.

If you don't see much conflict, or indeed, plot in there, you're not alone. The first act of the movie is fairly dull, blandly painting Kyle as a good, salt-of-the-earth man who just wants to serve his country and follow through on the heroic philosophy of his father. His courtship with Taya is brief and lends her little characterization, revealing through mutedly expository dialogue her mixed feelings about his pending service, and little else. 

Kyle's comrades in training and in arms are likewise drawn with a broad brush--good, all-American boys doing their duty with good humor and a pinch of boilerplate xenophobia. They joke and jibe at each other except when they get serious and gung-ho about fighting Al Queda, and I dare anyone to tell me they remember any of their names after the credits have rolled.

Of course, the movie isn't entirely dull. Bradley Cooper is in excellent form in his portrayal of Kyle. effectively capturing the incredible stress he feels stateside, his discomfort with the 'legend' mantle, and his overwhelming desire to do the right thing. 

But that's it. There's nothing more to it than that. Where the depictions of PTSD and the occasional moment where something truly goes wrong on the battlefield kind of recall The Hurt Locker, there's no overarching statement about war, or heroism, or addiction, or the moral ambiguity that comes from killing--even for a just cause. 

I mentioned in my Selma review my fear that the film would lionize its subject, rather than humanizing him, and to an extent that's what happens here. Bradley Cooper's Kyle is human, but he's so purely good that he might as well not be. The closing supertitles, indicating that Kyle was killed by someone that "he was trying to help" smack a little too much of a Christ allegory for my taste, and there's little in the rest of the movie to contradict that notion.

I've read people's frustrations before that we don't see movies exploring what it's actually like for people who live in these countries, we just get stories about soldiers who come in and kill them and feel bad about it. That's perhaps a little more severe than I would put it, but it's also not entirely accurate in another way: Chris Kyle doesn't feel bad about it. War is hard, but it doesn't ruin him. His decisions are difficult, but he doesn't doubt them. He kills a lot of people, but they were insurgents, they were the enemy. He did what he had to do, and he doesn't regret.

And that's...boring. I'm tempted to call it the cardinal sin for a movie (at least for me), but it's also irresponsible, a portrayal that does nothing to add to our understanding of war or humanity, or even Chris Kyle himself. Instead, it just reinforces a monotonous, robotic, 'support our troops' dogma that you could just as easily find in an ROTC pamphlet or any number of 12-year-olds without buying a ticket to this mess.

The direction is also frequently dull, with little visual imagination or even the gritty, boots-on-the-ground sensibilities that are often a signature of Eastwood's filmmaking. There is a little bit of horror, a splash of gore, a hint of trauma, but none of it is felt by the audience. Sadly, I'm starting to believe that Eastwood just doesn't have much of anything to say anymore.