Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
This week's theme was harder than I expected. Honestly, it's far more common for me to think I'll really love something and end up disappointed than the opposite. Simply put, life is too short to spend the time watching movies that I don't think I'll like. That said, if enough people I know and trust tell me something's good, or if a movie becomes such a huge cultural moment that I feel like I HAVE to see it, I will, and sometimes I do end up being pleasantly surprised.
Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016) Everything I had heard about this had me fearing that it was going to be a pretentious bore, nothing but watching Kristen Stewart affectlessly plod her way through a succession of pretty clothes while pondering death, or some other such European art film bullshit. But to my surprise, it turned out to be a surprisingly great, if somewhat low-key, thriller, and sexy as all hell. Ozon manages to make text messaging seem like the most stressful thing in the world, and while there is plenty of pondering about death, it's mostly underplayed, and is integrated really well into the whole. And it's ALSO a low-key ghost story, following Stewart's titular assistant/part-time medium as she deals with her fashion-world boss, the death of her twin brother, and being stalked, possibly by a ghost. I was pleasantly shocked by how much I enjoyed this.
Happy Death Day (Christopher Landon, 2017) While I'm fascinated by horror films, they're not usually my cup of tea. Especially PG-13 slasher flicks, which tend to be lazy jump scare after lazy jump scare with ciphers in the place of characters. But time and again I heard this praised as hilarious and clever, and the trailer for the sequel looked like a lot of fun. So I eventually broke down and watched this mash-up of Groundhog Day and trashy teensploitation horror flicks like Sorority Row... and really enjoyed it! No, it's not especially scary, but it's not nearly as interested in its slasher elements as it is in its comedic elements and its lead character, played by Jessica Rothe in a fierce, funny performance that should absolutely make her a huge star (she's even better in the sequel). Even if you're not into horror, give this a shot. It's fast, fun, and REALLY funny.
To All The Boys I've Loved Before (Susan Johnson, 2018) Look, after everyone was raving about how Set It Up totally reinvigorated the romantic comedy and I found it to be unbearably bland and insulting, I did not have high hopes for this other Netflix rom-com about a high school girl whose private, unsent letters to boys she felt intense passion for (one of whom just so happens to be her sister's boyfriend) at one get unwittingly mailed out, causing her quiet, safe world to come crashing down around her. So I was completely taken aback by how open-hearted and warm and genuinely funny this movie is. Lana Condor is an immensely appealing lead, and Noah Centineo makes for a fantastic love interest/obstacle. The film just has a spark that is somehow missing from a lot of the other similar Netflix "originals".
Well, it's finally that time of year. I always try to post my Best Of lists around the time of the Oscars - it makes everything feel officially official. But it's been rough this year trying to determine my final five in a LOT of categories. If I'm being honest, I don't think 2018 was one of the best years for movies or anything, but there were a lot of individual achievements that transcended the films that housed them. And in many categories, the distance between fifth and sixth (and, in some cases, seventh and eighth) places is infinitesimal. But I wouldn't be a movie blogger worth my salt (to the extent that I am one at all, heh) if I did not make the difficult decisions and made my end of year Best Of lists, so.... without further ado... I give you my "below the line" awards:
Best Makeup & Hairstling
Border
The Favourite
Mary Queen of Scots
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
Suspiria (WINNER)
The film itself may have been overdone to compensate for an undercooked script, but the fanciful character designs in Nutcracker really stood out as fantastic character creations. Beauty has never looked more wicked, and wickedness never more beguiling, than in The Favourite. Those unbelievably complicated braided hairstyles in Mary Queen of Scots are just gorgeous... all the better to contrast with Elizabeth's pox-marked face. Look at the lead actress of Border, and look at her character in the film. The transformation is unreal, and doesn't impede her ability to emote even one iota. All of these pale in comparison, though, to the monumental feat of makeup that was Suspiria, a film with so much great makeup in such varying styles, that I wrote a whole article about how it deserved the industry's highest honor.
Best Costume Design
A Simple Favor (WINNER)
Black Panther
The Favourite
If Beale Street Could Talk
Mary Poppins Returns
The use of color throughout If Beale Street Could Talk is exceptional, nowhere more so than in its beautifully wearable costumes. Sandy Powell's gorgeously fanciful, colorful creations for Mary Poppins Returns are the polar opposite of the technically ambitious, boldly black-and-white creations she designed for The Favourite, which is even further proof that she is the greatest working costumer we have. Ruth E. Carter won the Oscar for her wildly rangy, vividly memorable costumes for Black Panther, and deservedly so - they were perhaps the biggest piece of the puzzle of making Wakanda feel vibrantly real. That said, there were no more iconic costumes this year than the looks served up by Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick in A Simple Favor. The costumes alone tell you everything you need to know about these characters at first glance - and watch how Lively's Emily is always putting on or removing layers... just like we do with her character over the course of the film. It's highly covetable, genius-level, film-elevating work.
Best Visual Effects
Annihilation (WINNER)
Aquaman
Avengers: Infinity War
First Man
Mission: Impossible - Fallout
God bless practical stunts, and God bless Tom Cruise for continuing to insist on doing all his own, especially when it comes to the Mission: Impossible series. The HALO jump in Fallout is just mind-blowing, to say nothing of that helicopter crash. The practical effects are maybe even more impressive in First Man, for how emotionally impactful they are. Infinity War contains probably the most visual effects of any film this year, and many of them are stunners, but Thanos is maybe the most impressive motion-capture performance to date. No film this year had more fun with its visual effects budget than Aquaman, creating a believable underwater world and characters with lots of personality. No film had more mesmerizing visual effects this year than Alex Garland's under-appreciated Annihilation. The shimmer itself is impressive, but once we're inside, the scenery, the animals, and the heart-stopping finale all make a huge cumulative impact.
Best Production Design
Annihilation
Hereditary
Isle of Dogs (WINNER)
Mary Queen of Scots
Sorry to Bother You
That cave/palace in Mary Queen of Scots is maybe my favorite set of the year, a gorgeously rendered, authentic-feeling place that sets a perfect tone for the film. Sorry to Bother You goes to some crazy places, and the production design is key to keeping everything grounded in some kind of believable world. The miniature dollhouse aesthetic of Hereditary is stunning, and key to the look of the film, creating a living space that traps the characters, who are being manipulated and moved about by unseen forces larger than themselves. Annihilation's production design is responsible some of the most striking images of the year - those plants in the shape of people, that exploded body in the pool, the lighthouse - and all built from concepts moreso than actual things. Wes Anderson has a VERY unique aesthetic, and Isle of Dogs once again proves that animation is the perfect place for it. The sets on that trash island are indelible, meticulously crafted and lovingly shot.
Best Sound
Annihilation
A Quiet Place
First Man (WINNER)
Roma
Suspiria
I don't think a single sound mix this year had a more immediate effect on me than Suspiria, which wrapped me up and brought me ever deeper into its madhouse of horrors. A Quiet Place is all about sound, and the way the film plays around with what we can hear, and when we can hear it, is brilliant. Roma's sound mix is one of the most immersive I've ever heard, putting you right in the middle of quiet domestic scenes so that when the big moments come, they're even more overwhelming. The kinds of sounds we hear in Annihilation run the gamut from ordinary to extraordinary to WTF, that creepy bear-thing parroting a dead friend's last words being far and away the most impactful. The chaos of First Man's flight sequences are key to selling Neil Armstrong's character as the calm at the center of the storm, and the sound works in perfect concert with the editing and cinematography to sell it - the most vital sound work of the year.
Best Original Score
Eighth Grade
First Man (WINNER)
If Beale Street Could Talk
Hereditary
Mary Poppins Returns
Hereditary's creepy score is key in keeping the audience off-guard and unsettled throughout, until that hymn-like underscoring to the final scene as the film plays its final card, a brilliantly counter-intuitive choice. Marc Shaiman had the unenviable task of composing a follow-up to the greatest classic Disney score, one of the Sherman brothers' most tuneful, and he did so in magnificent style, creating something that feels at once familiar and completely new. If Beale Street Could Talk had the most beautiful score of the year, as perfect a rendering of young love as has ever been heard in the cinema. I've never heard anything quite like Anna Meredith's score for Eighth Grade, which feels so perfectly like the music playing inside the main character's head through all her shifting moods. But nothing else this year can quite compare to Justin Hurwitz's grand, grandiose score for First Man, which feels ever-so-slightly out of place until we blast off into space, perfectly mirroring Neil Armstrong's emotional journey.
Best Original Song
"Hearts Beat Loud" from Hearts Beat Loud
"Hollywood Ending" from Anna and the Apocalypse
"I'll Never Love Again" from A Star is Born
"The Place Where Lost Things Go" from Mary Poppins Returns (WINNER)
"Wrapped Up" from Vox Lux
Anna and the Apocalypse is one of the most unsung films of the year, and "Hollywood Ending" is a perfect encapsulation of everything it does well - there's teenage ennui, a perfect pop backbone, an earworm of a chorus, and some sly humor. "Hearts Beat Loud" is a real winner, and the scene where father and daughter collaborate to make it is one of the best scenes of the year. All of Sia's songs for Vox Lux have her typical polish, but "Wrapped Up" fits so perfectly with the character's story - it feels like a song a teenager would write after a scarring personal tragedy, and that the nation would embrace as a generation-defining hit. Not all of A Star is Born works, but the highly emotional, kinda-throwback-styled "I'll Never Love Again" finale goes a long way towards selling the impact of the central romance. It took a while, but after multiple listens, "The Place Where Lost Things Go" revealed itself as the most elegant, beguiling song of the year, starting with the fantastic line "Nothing's gone forever, only out of place," which perfectly encapsulates the film's ethos. And Emily Blunt sings it so perfectly.
Best Editing
A Star is Born
The Favourite
First Man (WINNER)
Hereditary
Suspiria
Movies in 2018 didn't get much meaner than Hereditary, and the brutal editing is one of its most important elements, constantly keeping the audience off their guard. Even if the rest of the editing was terrible, A Star is Born would earn its place on this list for those last two cuts alone; thankfully, it's pretty great throughout the rest of the film as well. Editing is an underrated tool for comedy, and The Favourite is incredibly smart about how it uses editing to either underline its jokes or to create its own off-kilter humor out of seemingly nothing. If there was a meaner movie than Hereditary, then Suspiria was it, and the editing of its dance sequences alone is filled with a sick, twisted energy that heightens the horror of what's happening. No film in 2018 made you feel like you were right there alongside the characters quite as much as First Man did, and the jaw-dropping editing of its flight sequences were key in creating that feeling.
Best Cinematography
The Favourite
First Man (WINNER)
If Beale Street Could Talk
Roma
Widows
The Favourite is one of the most distinctive-looking films of 2018, but not without purpose - those fish-eye lenses not only distort the images to add to heighten the absurdity of the film, but to make the characters feel alternately boxed in and very much alone in these gigantic spaces. Widows contains the best tracking shot of the year, outside of a car as it drives from a low-income Chicago neighborhood to a high-income one, a stunning feat in and of itself, but the nighttime cinematography is strikingly beautiful, allowing us to see all the action painfully clearly. Alfonso Cuarón clearly learned a lot during his many collaborations with Emmanuel Lubezki, as Roma is full to bursting with stunningly lit, crystal clear imagery and effortlessly complex camera movements. If Beale Street Could Talk is the most beautiful film of the year, and James Laxton's cinematography is key to the film's warmth; the use of color is simply stunning. But First Man is something else on a visual level, simultaneously intimate and epic. The switch to the full IMAX screen once Armstrong sets foot on the moon is the best use of the format in cinema history. Great final shot, too.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join our ever-growing group by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
NO! IT'S TOO EARLY!! I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN EVERYTHING FROM 2018 YET!!!
...he screamed unto the heavens, cursing release schedules and day jobs and Moviepass and NYC transit and and and....
AND THEN! He had a revelation. "Why don't I do the WORST films of 2018 instead of the best? At this point, I know what I'm gonna hate of what I haven't seen, and if any of them are worse than my current bottom three, well... they are SO not worth my time!"
And so it was, he chose three films from 2018 that you should absolutely NOT see. Under any circumstances. Speaking from personal experience.
Beautiful Boy (Felix van Groeningen) Oh lord. Look, I like Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell as much as the next gay guy, but... neither of them are very good in this. Chalamet comes close, but he's not helped at all by the script, which is cliché after cliché that does a great disservice to not just one book, but two (this is supposed to be an adaptation of both father David and son Nic's memoirs about Nic's addiction). I'm sure they thought they were doing something interesting with the structure of the film, and they're not exactly WRONG - mirroring the cyclic nature of addiction in the plot structure is certainly a valid approach - but it's so poorly done that it makes for a wildly unsatisfying movie on the face of things. And that's before we get to the terribly sloppy editing and utterly god-awful music cues (seriously the worst in any film I've seen in a LOOOOOOONG time). In any other year, this would very likely be the absolute worst, and certainly the most disappointing, film of the year.
Fifty Shades Freed (James Foley) SIGH. The absolute worst thing this franchise did was put the second and third movies in the hands of male writers and directors. To the extent that the first film was any good, it was because it had a point of view that unquestionably came from the female voices at the helm. Since then, poor Dakota Johnson has been working overtime to put these blander than bland sequels over, playing opposite a romantic lead who CLEARLY doesn't want to be there, reading lines that have to be contorted to all hell to sound like anything human beings would actually say. This third one isn't even particularly sexy, WHICH IS THIS FRANCHISE'S ENTIRE REASON FOR BEING. Of course, a lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the source material, in which literally nothing happens except people getting pissy about something they have no business getting pissy about, until the climax where suddenly everyone remembered that these things are actually supposed to have something called a plot, involving characters who, ya know, DO THINGS OF CONSEQUENCE. Anyway, this is deadly dull, and not even Dakota Johnson, brilliant as she has always been in these godforsaken films, can save it. In any other year, this would very like be the absolute nadir of film.
BUT NOT THIS YEAR.
Because this year, we had...
Life Itself (Dan Fogelman) I... I don't even know what to say. I mean... what on Earth CAN one say about something so fundamentally flawed and misguided that in ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCE, if it had EVEN ONE REDEEMING VALUE, it would likely go all the way past "abysmally awful" to become strangely admirable somehow. But, reader, I can honestly say: IT DOES NOT. For more of my unedited thoughts, check out my live-tweet (yes, I was high, and no, it did not help), but suffice it to say, it is PAINFULLY clear that everyone involved in making this thought that it was all clever and deep and meaningful and probably spiritual, but it is LOUSY with crazy structural ideas that not only don't work, but very specifically don't work IN A MOVIE THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE HEARTWARMING. I mean... at least, I'm PRETTY sure that's supposed to be the feeling we're left with at the end, when the movie pins its entire reason for existence and its entire emotional weight on someone we first meet in the film's closing minutes. But instead, the entire thing ends up being a complete WTF moment writ large, a faux-humanistic wannabe-meaningful story that only ends up being a massive joke played on its unsuspecting audience. Or, in short, the opening unreliable narrator gambit so completely loses the audience's trust that it would take a miracle to get it back, and this movie is wholly incapable (not to mention undeserving) of a miracle.
Written as part of the annual Girl Week blogathon hosted by Dell on Movies. Head on over to Dell's site and check out the other entries!
The year is 1977. Susie Bannion has run away from her Mennonite home in Ohio to join the Helena Markos Dance Company in West Berlin. Susie has long been obsessed with the dancing of the company, and its lead choreographer, Madame Blanc - she has studied the company's performances on videos from her local library, and even traveled against her parents wishes to New York City to see the company perform live. She was out of place in Ohio, feeling the need to express herself through the act of dance. Thankfully for her there is a spot open in the Markos Company, as one of the dancers, Patricia, vanished under mysterious circumstances (the rumor is that she was working with an activist anarchist group). More and more mysterious things start to happen around Susie, for you see, this dance company is run by a coven of witches. Yes, in outline form, the plot of Suspiria is the same as the justly famed Dario Argento film of the same name, but this Suspiria, directed by Luca Guadagnino, couldn't be further from that film. Where the original was a Technicolor wondershow, assaulting the audience with the most garish reds and blues you ever did see, the 2018 version has a mostly muted color palette, greyed out in the shades of winter in Berlin. Where the plot of the original sort of tumbles out in the form of a fever dream, the plot here is very linear, and extended to two hours and forty minutes, divided into six acts and an epilogue. And most importantly, whereas the original only cared about the dance academy as a setting, this one puts the dance front and center. And with that, it also throws the politics of the time and place into sharp relief.
Perhaps all of those things put you off. Perhaps that all makes Guadagnino's Suspiria sound like a chore, a piece of homework, a pretentious piece of claptrap wearing the clothes of horror. Maybe that's all true. But Suspiria got me right in the chest. This is a horror film about a dancer's body so scarily accurate that it feels as though it were made entirely by dancers. "When you dance the dance of another," Madame Blanc says, "you make yourself in the image of its creator." That's true. Watch any random episode of So You Think You Can Dance and you're likely to see a choreographer imposing their way of moving on a dancer unused to it. With each new piece you are a part of, you have to re-find your center, re-teach your body how to move, re-set your mind to the feeling of the new dance. It's why some dancers stay with certain companies for decades on end - when you find a choreographer whose movement vocabulary is close to your own, you stick with them, and they with you.
But dancing is also backbreaking work. When you're really in the moment, giving yourself over completely to the throes of the music and the choreography, injuries can happen if you're not careful. Anything from minor injuries like blisters, to injuries that will cause a huge set-back like a dislocated shoulder, to major career-ending injuries like a broken tail bone. There is one sequence early on in Suspiria of just such bone-shattering cruelty that I was thrown all the way back in my seat, eyes riveted to the screen, completely unable to look away. This is what it can be like to put your body through torture, day in and day out, to "dance the dance of another." It is one of the most horrifying, difficult scenes I have ever had to watch. And I loved every second of it - the bravura performance and makeup effects, the downright nasty editing, the blood-curdling sound design... it's stunning. And the film is only just getting started. Suspiria does feel exactly as long as it is - which is to say, very - but I was never once bored or unengaged with what was happening. I was completely involved with the characters and story the entire time. Part of this is due to the actors - Dakota Johnson continues to be a perfect vessel for audiences to project themselves onto, Tilda Swinton nails the mixture of imperiousness and groundedness that marks most great minds of modern dance, and Mia Goth is so easy to latch onto and root for as perhaps the most innocent (and thus, doomed) girl in the company. But equal compliments must be paid to Luca Guadagnino, who keeps thinking of new ways to make uninteresting plot scenes interesting. One noteworthy scene in the middle of the film is a long take of the coven members preparing and sitting down to a pot luck dinner, while a group conversation of theirs takes place on the soundtrack, clearly taking place after the dinner has finished. We never quite see who is speaking, but we don't need to. The soundscape of the film is filled with moments like this, where our ears are filled with diagetic sound that comes from an unseen source, or certain bodily exertions - breaths, laughter, cracking bones - that sound a lot louder than they should. It's some of the most stunning sound work of the year, and Thom Yorke's hushed, droning score complements it perfectly.
David Kajganich's screenplay is something of a marvel, weaving the supernatural elements into a story of different kinds of womanhood and motherhood, of how a ruined society treats women both before and after it falls. A key moment finds Madame Blanc saying that dance can never again be beautiful - a rebuke of the Third Reich's insistence that all art glorify the German nation and its people. And of course, the company's most famous piece is called "Volk," the German word for "people," and it is a violent, aggressive piece of choreography. The dancers pound on the floor and on their bodies, making the piece feel like a primal scream of femininity, perhaps its last.
In the background of everything, the period of Vergangenheitsbewältigung looms large. The process of the German people's reckoning with their culpability in World War II and the Holocaust echoes throughout the film, not only in the company's style of dance, but in the story of Patricia's psychiatrist Dr. Klemperer (played by Tilda Swinton in very convincing old man drag as "Lutz Ebersdorf"), who was separated from his presumed-dead wife during the war. When Patricia comes to him with her tales of a coven of witches at the dance academy, he is dismissive, believing she is talking instead of a rebellious political group who abide by a "constructed mythology." But as he reads her notes, and sees the academy for himself, and eventually becomes confronted with the horror of what happened to the women of his country while he watched and did nothing, he starts to believe that she may have been right.
It's a wholly unexpected thing to include in a remake of one of the most memorably violent films ever made, this melancholy story of national guilt being both weaponized and exorcised by women as best they can, but here we are in 2018, and a lot of these themes are more relevant than ever before. Guadagnino has taken the story of one girl's terror and transformed it into a tale of feminine power rising up from the ashes of a world destroyed by men, both those who abused power and those who watched and did nothing. It is a celebration of what women can achieve when they work together, and a condemnation of those who would seize and abuse power, no matter their gender. Despite its scenes of violence, Suspiria is an empowering film, reminding us of the vital importance of art, and how creation can be an act of rebellion. That a film this violent ends on a note of relative grace is a shocking glimpse of hope, however dimmed, however compromised, but still present. Hope that there is still compassion left, in even the darkest of souls.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon series hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Come along for the ride by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
I have always loved museums. There's so much to see and so much to learn, and I love learning. Trying to pick movies for this week, though, proved to be a bit harder than I expected. Despite the fact that museums are GREAT settings for a movie (so much to see, and such pretty, interesting settings!), there aren't a lot of movies about, or at least set largely in, museums. That said, there are some with very memorable scenes set in museums, so that's what I based my picking around.
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Poor John "Scottie" Ferguson. After a terrible accident on the job left him with horrible acrophobia and vertigo, he's let go from the police force, and he's having trouble getting over his fear. But an acquaintance, Gavin Elster, hires him to do some private investigating work: Trail his wife, Madeleine, who has been increasingly moody and obsessed with death (mostly her own). This leads to some memorable, mostly silent trips around San Francisco, including to the Legion of Honor Art Museum. A bit of a flop on release, it has since been named the greatest film ever made (in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll), and it's kinda hard to argue with that. This is one of Hitchcock's most beguiling films, with gorgeous cinematography and a hypnotic score by Bernard Herrmann (my pick for his best work). Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak give performances for the ages as the leads - particularly Novak, whose part is extraordinarily difficult and whose performance is hugely underrated. I got to see this on a 35mm print a couple of years ago and GOOD LORD is it gorgeous on the big screen. A haunting masterwork of obsession and PTSD, and a great mystery. I love everything about this movie, perhaps especially Barbara Bel Geddes's devoted Midge.
Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980) In the opening sequence of this, perhaps De Palma's most overt Hitchcock homage in a career full of them, the great Angie Dickinson goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and follows/is followed by a mysterious stranger. Being a sexually frustrated housewife, she ends up in a cab with him and they have sex. But on her way home, while in the elevator, her throat gets slashed by a mysterious blonde woman, who is seen by high class escort Nancy Allen, who then becomes the killer's next target as well as the police's prime suspect. This sequence, largely without dialogue, is utterly mesmerizing and absolutely fantastic. If nothing else in the film quite lives up to it, at least it is a very well-done thriller, with some great cinematography and a winning performance by Nancy Allen. But it's Angie Dickinson's performance that you'll come away remembering. GOD she's good.
Ocean's 8 (Gary Ross, 2018) Debbie Ocean has just gotten out of jail, and has spent her entire sentence coming up with the perfect job: Stealing a priceless diamond off the neck of an attendee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual gala. It's a film of modest pleasures, which is something of a disappointment after the starpowered fireworks of the George Clooney and Brad Pitt-led, Steven Soderbergh-directed Ocean's trilogy. But it is pleasurable all the same, mostly thanks to the chemistry of the ensemble cast, led by Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett, and with standout supporting performances by Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, and Awkwafina.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. It's easy and fun to play along - just pick three movies that fit the week's theme and write a little something about them!
So.... you've all seen the trailer for Ocean's 8, right? It looks FLAMAZING, right?!?
Well, it's not one of my picks this week, but only because I figure lots of other people will pick it, and also because I would trust this one more if Soderbergh were directing.
ANYWAY, in addition to Ocean's 8 and Ready Player One (which I mentioned a few weeks back), these are probably my most anticipated movies opening next year.
Annihilation (Alex Garland) I mean, as if the next feature from the director of Ex Machina wasn't already gonna be near the top of my Must See list, this one is based on by what is by all accounts a pretty good book, has an outrageously amazing cast, and some really cool-looking special effects. And if all THAT wasn't enough, this trailer promises some shirtless Oscar Isaac. I am SO. THERE.
Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Cruelly held back from American release until March 2018, this political satire is chock full of brilliant actors, but really, the star here is genius satirist Armando Iannucci. After In The Loop, The Thick of It, and Veep, I will follow him wherever he goes. Even if it may hit too close to home (hey, at this point, America will probably be a Russian outpost by 2018).
Widows (Steve McQueen) McQueen is kind of hit-or-miss with me, but.... THIS CAST. Academy Award Winner Viola Davis, Tony Award Winner Cynthia Erivo, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Jacki Weaver, Carrie Coon, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, André Holland, Daniel Kaluuya, Robert Duvall, Jon Bernthal... what more could you ask for? How about a screenplay written by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, based off an 80s British TV series written by crime writer Lynda La Plante, about the widows of three criminals who conspire to recreate their husbands' last failed heist! I've been in the tank for this one practically since it was announced.
