We The Animals Chronicles The Process of Growing Up In A Troubled Childhood

Note: For full disclosure, I am friends with Kat Hess, the first assistant director of We The Animals. 

After spending a decade helming documentary features, short films and documentary short, director Jeremiah Zagar embarks into the territory of narrative movies with We The Animals, an adaptation of a 2011 novel of the same name by Justin Toores. The film chronicles the troubled childhood of Jonah (Evan Rosado) and his two brothers, Manny (Isaiah Kristian) and Joel (Josiah Gabriel), who grow up under the same roof as their troubled parents who we only know as Ma (Sheila Vand) and Paps (Raul Castillo). Paps especially is a troublesome presence in Jonah's life given how often he turns to violent and aggressive behavior that takes its toll on Jonah and his siblings over time.

Skate Kitchen Goes In Some Well-Realized Unexpected Directions

SPOILERS FOR SKATE KITCHEN FOLLOW

On the surface, Skate Kitchen's premise about a teenager struggling with their own personal family woes finding some kind of solace in a group of skateboarder friends sounds like a good number of other American indie movies, particularly Jonah Hill's 2018 directorial debut Mid90's. But on closer inspection even just on a surface level, there's a number of details here, namely the focus on a group of female skateboarders, that make Skate Kitchen a horse of a different color. While actually watching the movie, any potentially similar movies vanish from one's mind as Skate Kitchen manages to carve out its own identity and secure a level of quality (one that is higher than Mid90's in my book, for the record) that allow it to stand out on its own. 

Minding the Gap Is Must-See Top-Notch Documentary Filmmaking

When director Bing Liu set out to make Minding the Gap, his primary goal seemed to be to look at the abusive childhoods that he and his two best friends had endured and how that abusive behavior had impacted their modern-day lives. It's hard to imagine that director Bing Liu ever thought, in the process of filming the everyday lives of his childhood pals, hed end up with something that has such precise build-up and tragic pay-off's that it feels like it could belong in a traditional narrative feature. In the confines of a film, these turn of events would be held back by the fact that they are, after all, fictional, just performers reading a script, whereas Minding the Gap is capturing reality itself, complete with raw revelations about the complicated lives of Bing's best friends.

Regina Hall Shines In Support the Girls, A Charming & Heartfelt Ode To The Underappreciated

If you read Barack Obama's list concerning his 15 favorite movies of 2018, you might have understandably wondered what Support the Girls was. Considering it got only the briefest of theatrical releases back in August, it's likely the film flew under many people's radars, though the endorsement of a former President of the United States should boost its profile nicely. Though I'm nowhere near as influential as Mr. Obama, allow me to reaffirm that Support the Girls is indeed something special and should be getting even more attention. This newest film from writer/director Andrew Bujalski is a humorous and heartfelt feature about people just trying to help other people and make it through another day.

Madeline's Madeline Is An Impressively Realized Surrealist Exercise That Hews Closely To Immersive Theater

SPOILERS FOR MADELINE'S MADELINE FOLLOW
In a Performances In Historical Context class I took last Fall, we learned about a form of theater storytelling known as Immersive Theater. Emerging in the 21st century, this format of theater broke away from traditional norms of stage performance to rely heavily on audience participation, allowing for the creation of a one-on-one experience between audience members and performers, while such shows also tend to incorporate social elements into the proceedings and take advantage of whatever environment the performance takes place in. Theater groups like Punchdrunk and Third Rail are probably the most famous examples of this format of theater storytelling that ensures that no two performances of any given show will be quite the same.

The Hysterical Lead Duo of Never Goin' Back Make This A Solid 2018 Indie Comedy

For the teenage lead characters of Never Goin' Back, it's all about getting to Galveston. Specifically, a Galveston vacation that life-long best friends Angela (Maia Mitchell) and Jessie (Camila Morrone) have been saving up money for, a not so easy task given the small paychecks they receive at their day-to-day job. The movie follows them over the course of a handful of days as things spiral wildly out of control in their lives as they got robbed, have their jobs threatened and accidentally gobble down some weed that sends them on one heck of a drug trip. During it all, they're both clinging to the hopes of managing to get to Galveston and also their crucial friendship.

To All The Boys I've Loved Before Is A Charmer Of A Film And A Great Showcase For Lana Condor

2018 will be known as many things in the future, most of them bad (especially in the realm of American politics), but on a happier note, maybe 2018 will also go down as the year Netflix's original movies division finally took off? After three years of trying to getting people's attention with pricey star-studded duds, turns out all it took for Netflix to capture the masses was to create films that aren't getting made in large quantities by major American studios, like romantic-comedies (Set It Up) or in the case of To All The Boys I've Loved Before, High School dramedies. Pity the theatrical studios aren't making more of these since not only is Netflix making a killing appealing to these underserved audiences but they're also making charming movies like To All The Boys I've Loved Before.

The Wife Is Aided By A Strong Glenn Close Performance But Dragged Down By Gratuitous Flashbacks

As the old saying goes "Behind every man is a good woman, well, I think that's a lie/cause when it comes to you I'd rather have you by my side". Wait, sorry, those are actually the lyrics to a Keith Urban song. Anywho, the ancient adage of a woman influencing a man's creative work certainly must have been on the minds of those creating the new drama The Wife. Based on a book by Meg Wolitzer, The Wife is all about a woman who plays a very big part in the creative process of her famous author husband. Just how extensive of a role she plays in this man's work and what kind of identity she's forged for herself during the course of their marriage are the primary concerns of this motion picture.

Kin Is Part Laserblast, Part Good Time And All Mess

What exactly is Kin trying to be? Even after watching it all, I'm not really sure what directors Jonathan Baker and Josh Baker were going for in adapting their 2014 short film Bag Man into a feature-length motion picture. Kin as a movie is a jumbled mess that's trying to do a whole lot of stuff but mostly comes off as just an awkward hybrid of Laserblast and Good Time, two movies I'm pretty sure nobody would ever think to put together in any other context. Sometimes pairing up two widely disparate elements works like a charm and other times it just results in a mess and the latter end result is what's happened with Kin.

Searching Is As Technologically Savvy As It Is Thrilling

As its marketing has made clear, Searching is a movie that takes place on a computer screen. This format of storytelling is introduced in a brilliant opening sequence that feels akin to that iconic Up opening where we see the married lives of Carl and Ellie go by in the span of a montage. Similarly, Searching opens with a montage that follows the life of 16-year-old Margot Kim (Michelle La) and her family, which also contains her parents David (John Cho) and Pamela (Sara Sohn), from her birth to the present day via various internet functions like home videos and social media posts performed on a computer outfitted with Windows 2001 software (oh God, just seeing the default Windows 2001 background took me back!).

Alpha's Doggone Best Elements Are Also Its Most Original Tendencies

Stories about a boy and his dog (or some kind of other creature standing in for the dog) are a dime-a-dozen in the wide world of cinema, but Alpha looks to set itself apart from the pack by telling the story that explores the very first time man and canine bonded. Such a tale occurs during the ice age thousands of years ago as Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) travels with various members of his tribe, including his father, chief Tau (Johannes Haukur Johannesson), to hunt buffalo. It's an important mission for a number of reasons, including the fact that Keda see's this as a potential rite of passage of sorts that can prove to his father that he has what it takes to be a proper chief.

Hey, A Movie! Hopefully One That's Better Than The Happytime Murders!

Taking children's entertainment icons The Muppets and filtering them through an R-rated perspective is the central conceit of The Happytime Murders, a new raunchy comedy from director Brian Henson, son of Jim Henson. If that sounds like a slightly familiar premise, it's because Happytime Murders is one in a surprisingly long line of projects that have tackled this idea. Most notably, Peter Jackson provided a gruesome peek behind the curtain of a Muppet Show pastiche in 1989's Meet The Feebles while Broadway musical Avenue Q sent up Sesame Street with its depressingly realistic take on how unfulfilling adulthood can be. Both of these projects, especially Avenue Q, were of a level of quality that Happytime Murders only wishes it could rise to.

The Thoughtful Romantic-Comedy Crazy Rich Asians Is Entertaining As Heck

There's a scene a little over halfway into Crazy Rich Asians that seems like a great barometer for determining if this movie will be in your wheelhouse or not. The film's protagonist, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), is about to go to a splashy wedding and needs to get the proper outfit for the occasion. With her former college roommate Goh Peik Lin (Awkwafina) and her boyfriend's cousin Oliver (Nico Santos) in tow, she proceeds to try on a variety of different dresses while her two companions offer critiques on her choices as a cover of Material Girl blasts in the background. Yep, this is a Clothes Shopping Montage, a staple of romantic-comedies that's been lampooned in all sorts of tv shows like Family Guy or 30 Rock over the years.

The Meg Is A Shark Tale With Too Many Boring Humans And Not Enough Shark Carnage

There's a big o'l shark in the water in The Meg and not just any shark, oh no. This is a megalodon, a gigantic type of shark with a powerful bite that was thought to be extinct for millions of years. Now a surviving megalodon has been discovered at previously uncharted depths of the ocean by a Chinese research facility and it's attacking a stranded vessel containing three still alive scientists. Who could possibly go so deep into the ocean and save them from this massive shark? Jason Statham of course! Statham plays Jonas Taylor, a diver who has spent years in hiding in Thailand after a mission went sideways thanks to this very same megalodon. He's got a score to settle and rescuing this trio of scientists might just be the way to do that.

Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman Is A Triumphant Examination Of Past & Present Racism

Far too many American movies dealing with racism in America's past do so, usually with a Caucasian white savior protagonist in tow, with the purpose of reassuring white moviegoers that "Everything is fine now, look how much better things are now compared to the past!" Horrors of the past and the lives of the disenfranchised who had to endure the brunt of such horrors are reduced to being simply a way to reassure privileged members of present-day society that everything related to race in the modern world is cool, everything is fine. That's certainly not the case with Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, which is all about using a story about a black cop infiltrating a KKK charter to explore how racist horrors of the past still heavily influence a modern-day world where bigotry runs rampant.

Like Father Is A Sappy Extended Advertisement For Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines

Watching a movie that can't seem to quite figure out what it is is a fascinating experience. Every movie, from Mad Max: Fury Road to A Bulldog Christmas, is such a massive undertaking requiring the help of countless human beings that it feels tragic to watch all that effort be put into the service of a movie like Like Father that's so confused about its own identity. Is this supposed to be a light-hearted comedy about a father and a daughter reuniting after many years apart? Is this supposed to be a darker drama examining the struggles of the two interacting with one another for the first time in decades? Or is Like Father simple hawking the services you can find on a Royal Caribbean cruise line? Perhaps it is all of them in addition to being underwhelming as all heck.