The Mule Is Super Messy But Also Has More of a Personality Than Most Late-Period Clint Eastwood Fare

For the last decade, Clint Eastwood has directed movies that have followed a rigid formula. Eastwood has been fascinated by straightforward biopics about normal people doing heroic things while frequently being persecuted by "the man". Chris Kyle, Sully, the trio at the heart of The 15:17 to Paris, Richard Jewell, these have all been Eastwood's central focus in the last ten years. Unfortunately, Eastwood never has much to say about these people. His films don't render famous faces as people but as statues, monuments to ideas of human goodness without a trace of humanity in sight.

Destroyer Channels Green Room and Mikey & Nicky In Its Exquisitely Crafted Dark Tone

"We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us", so goes one of the most memorable lines from Magnolia and Destroyer is a crime thriller about a human being whose present-day circumstances are tormented by the past. Such a set-up, unsurprisingly, results in a grim movie that has little time for levity or hope, this is a bleak examination of a person not looking for redemption so much as a way to make the emotional pain stop, even for a moment. Such a pervasively mirthless affair won't be to everyone's liking, but me? I absolutely adored Destroyer, it's an absorbing movie that executes its dark tone with exquisite filmmaking that echoes the harrowing rawness found in Elaine May's Mikey & Nicky or Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room.

Cold War Follows In The Footsteps of Au Hasard Balthazar and Silence In Being A Compelling Story of Human Anguish

It used to be common for a movie to manage to score a Best Director nomination without managing to capture a Best Picture nomination, but ever since the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences re-expanded the amount of Best Picture nominees from five to anywhere from five to ten in 2009, only two movies have managed to achieve this feat. The first of this duo emerged four years ago with Foxcatcher, which managed to score a Best Director nod and two acting nominations but got snubbed from Best Picture. The other movie was Cold War, director Pawil Pawlikowski's first directorial effort since his acclaimed 2014 feature Ida, and it actually got nominated for Best Director without scoring a simultaneous Best Picture nod just a month ago.

The Thoroughly Delightful Stan & Ollie Makes An Iconic Comedy Duo Proud

By the early 1950s, famous comedy duo Stanley Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly) were looking to revitalize their careers by way of a Robin Hood motion picture that Laurel had written. In order to both help secure funding for the prospective project and prove that there was still a viable audience for their comedy, the pair embarked on a tour across Europe that saw them reuniting for the first time in ages. Why had they split off? Well, that's in the past now, though over the course of their extended trip across Europe, turmoil from years gone by just might resurface as they come to terms with what the future might hold for each of them.

On the Basis of Sex Is A Standard But Agreeable Biopic About RBG

Ruth Bader Ginsburg gets her very own biopic with the Mimi Leder directed motion picture On the Basis of Sex. After the first half-hour or so chronicles Ginsburg's formative years at a Harvard law school, we flash-forward to 1970 New York where the majority of our story takes place in. Ginsburg, now a professor, is hungry for the chance to be a lawyer in a case that could make a difference in the world, particularly on the front of gender-discrimination, a cause she's immensely passionate about. She gets her chance in the form of a tax case that says an unmarried man cannot be given a tax deduction for nursing care. If she breaks through with this case, she could set a precedent that helps make a giant leap forward for gender equality in American society.

Peter Jackson and Company Do A Remarkable Job Restoring World War I Footage In They Shall Not Grow Old

I've been saying for a while now that it would be a dream come true to have director Peter Jackson's first post-Hobbit directorial gig be a motion picture in the vein of his earliest grindhouse works, most notably Meet the Feebles, something demented, warped and low-budget. Wouldn't it be great to see that side of Jackson again after so many years of only seeing him use his filmmaking skills on big-budget productions? Well, it turns out his actual first directorial effort after those Hobbit movies is something far removed from the likes of Meet the Feebles but that's not at all a bad thing. On the contrary, They Shall Not Grow Old feels like a return to form for Jackson as he uses groundbreaking VFX in the service of human beings and not the other way around for the first time in ages.

The Best Parts of Mary Queen of Scots Make It Stand Out From Typical Period Piece Costume Dramas

In 16th century Europe, Mary (Saroise Ronan) took up the throne of Scotland, a move that put her as the next in line to inherit the throne of her cousin, Elizabeth (Margot Robbie), the queen of England. Mary's status as a ruler generates plenty of controversies, whether it comes from Elizabeth and her confidantes not wanting her to ascend to the position of Queen of England or it's enraged male members of Scotland society who don't like that a woman is holding a seat of such massive power. Mary's tenure as a leader is full of rebellion and destruction of the norms, but it's also a constant fight for her to be seen as a rightful queen by subjects far and wide and it's a fight that she's more than willing to fight for years on end.

Ben Is Back Has Good Performances But Derivative Screenwriting

MILD SPOILERS FOR BEN IS BACK BELOW

On a seemingly routine Christmas Eve, Holly Burns (Julia Roberts) returns home to discover that her son, Ben (Lucas Hedges), has come home. Ben, the titular lead of Ben is Back,  has been away at a rehab center trying to get clean from his drug habit and now he's returned out of the blue into Holly's life. Holly is at first overjoyed just to see her son back in her life but Ben's siblings and Holly's husband, Neal (Courtney B. Vance), don't like this situation and want Ben to return to the rehab center. Holly proceeds to make her son a deal: he can stay with the family for the next 24 hours but she'll watch him like a hawk, he is to never leave her sight. A task already immensely difficult only increases in how arduous it is as the 24 hours march on and some figures from Ben's past re-emerge to threaten Ben and his family.

If Beale Street Could Talk Is Masterful Emotionally Resonant Filmmaking That Should Not Be Missed

Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) was only 19. Fonny Hunt was only 22. They were deeply in love in New York City in 1974 and are all set to start a life together, but then tragedy struck in the form of Fonny being arrested for a crime he did not commit. Shortly after he's arrested, Tish learns that she's pregnant with his child, a revelation that she shares with Fonny in one of the opening scenes of the new Barry Jenkins directorial effort If Beale Street Could Talk. From there, the rest of the story, which is based on a 1974 James Baldwin novel of the same name, chronicles Tish and her families attempts to try and free Fonny from his prison sentence as well as numerous flashbacks showing pivotal moments in Tish and Fonny's romance.

Vox Lux Hits Equally Ambitious High And Sour Notes

Vox Lux makes it clear early on that it's aiming to get people chattering like teeth in the Arctic wintertime. Making one of the opening scenes of your movie an on-screen depiction of a school shooting is the kind of thing that'll certainly generate conversation but is there more going on with Vox Lux than just surface-level references to hot-button political issues and intentionally discomforting imagery? There actually is but it's buried underneath some weirdly executed narration and lackluster directing. The ambition clearly present even in these flawed oddball traits is admirable but said traits also have a tendency to be a distraction rather than an enhancement to highest notes Vox Lux manages to nail.

Bird Box's Better Aspects Get Let Down By An Overly Convoluted Script

Over the course of the last few days, Bird Box has become one of the most talked-about movies of the moment, with memes (which seem to be coming from genuine real-life people despite early reports to the contrary) centered around the movie popping up everywhere and Netflix bragging about their record-breaking viewership numbers for the film. Well, I guess since the internet is now so abuzz with so much talk regarding Susanne Brier's new movie Bird Box, I suppose now is the time for me to pen down my thoughts on the motion picture, which I never could have imagined generating so much widespread conversation, for good and for ill.

Vice Is A Sprawling Saga of Corruption That Kind of Works (Surprisingly Well, In Fact) In Spite of Its Worst Elements

Adam McKay is mad as hell and he's not gonna take it anymore. Even when he was making ridiculous (though often highly hysterical) comedies that involved Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly licking dog turds, McKay clearly had some bitterness over how normalized powerful corruption was in America. Even a disappointingly rote Anchorman sequel managed to find time for commentary on how much 24-hour cable news is fixated on sizzle but not substance while the end credits of his comedic masterwork The Other Guys are dedicated to explaining how Ponzi schemes work. Is it any wonder then that his shift over to dramatic features with The Big Short and now Vice would tap directly into that frustration? What was subtext in his comedies is now the entire point of these more serious-minded, though frequently comedic, motion pictures that serve as McKay's most recent directorial efforts.

Welcome to Marwen Is Too Enamored With Empty CGI Spectacle To Go Beyond The Valley, Er, Town Of The Dolls

Gotti. Life Itself. Red Sparrow. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. These are the worst movies of 2018 and their newest companion is none other than a brand new Robert Zemeckis directorial effort. The man responsible for making toons and humans interact, for taking us to places that don't require roads and for making us all cry over a volleyball can also now be known as the filmmaker guilty of bringing Welcome to Marwen into the world. Clearly meant to be a stirring inspirational drama, Welcome to Marwen is instead a staggeringly inept endeavor, a whole bunch of motion-capture animated nonsense that doesn't even try to be thoughtful or introspective regarding the experiences of its lead character.

Bumblebee Has Got The Touch And Also Has The Power To Emotionally Move Viewers

Bumblebee takes the live-action series of Transformers movies into a bold new direction, namely in the direction of actually good filmmaking! It's also taken the series into prequel territory, which means this feature takes place in 1987, about twenty years before the first Transformers movie, with Bumblebee arriving on Earth to help establish a new base for his Autobot brethren. While arriving on this unfamiliar planet in a damaged state, an 18-year-old girl named Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld) stumbles upon Bumblebee in his VW bug form and takes him home as her very first car. It isn't long before she discovers that this new automobile of hers is actually a robot and the two develop a friendship just as two evil Decepticon robots come to Earth searching for Bumblebee.

Mary Poppins Returns Is Far Too Familiar Given Its Unpredictable Lead Character

Mary Poppins Returns kicks off in 1935, twenty-five years after the first Mary Poppins movie, with Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) now being not just an adult but also a single father of three kids who is under incredible stress to find the necessary funds to keep his families house. All of these efforts to try and make ends meet aren't just put on the shoulders of Michael, his three kids are also all business and no imagination. Clearly, things are glum around the Banks household and that means it's time for a certain Nanny to return. Yep, here comes Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) to take care of Michael's offspring and teach them, plus their father, some important lessons.

Aquaman Is 2018's Answer To G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. That's A Compliment.

Aquaman has been given a bum rap in American pop culture. Because Family Guy and The Big Bang Theory (the paragons of pop culture contemplation) made jokes saying Aquaman was stupid, that's been his reputation in the 21st-century pop culture landscape, which is a pity because of how much fun the character can be in properties like his "Outrageous!" portrayal in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Much to my delight, James Wan's Aquaman movie decides to eschew constantly apologizing for the weirdness of the character and his world and just embraces all the high-concept underwater absurdity that Aquaman could possibly get into, a choice worthy of a mighty Jason Momoa delivered "YEAH!".

Roma Is A Showcase For Impressive Camerawork And A Similarly Superb Performance From Yalitza Aparicio

For his 21st century directorial efforts, Alfonso Cuaron has gone big in scale. He's helmed films about time-traveling wizards, a post-apocalyptic chase movie and also a struggle for survival in the vacuum of space. Though all of these films were heavily character-driven, they spared no expense in communicating the grandeur of the situations its protagonists had become entangled in. Though his newest movie, Roma, has its fair share of scenes depicting events like wildfires or revolts that are large-in-scale, this is a more intimate affair compared to what Cuaron has done in his 21st-century filmmaking career, one informed by his own personal childhood rather than fantasy worlds concocted by J.K. Rowling.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse Is Pure Cinematic Joy

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse feels like a movie just made for me. The heavy usage of hand-drawn animation, its specific style of humor that's both extremely self-referential yet avoids becoming arrogantly snarky, the various actors in its voice cast and its heartfelt attitude towards its characters, it's all just like catnip for me. No wonder then that I fell head over heels for Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, a movie that allows the animation studio behind (shudder) The Emoji Movie the chance to step up their game to the next level and deliver something special both in terms of actual story and in terms of animation.

Orson Welles And All His Complexities Make For A great Documentary In They'll Love Me When I'm Dead

The saga of filming The Other Side of the Wind for years on end is a fascinating story in and of itself, there's more than enough material in that saga to fill up a whole documentary or two. But though They'll Love Me When I'm Dead primarily concerns itself with the multi-year process of filming this motion picture, it uses that tale as a springboard for a larger exploration of the career of Orson Welles, which kicked off with a bang with Citizen Kane but spiraled into endless creative difficulties as he struggled to work with studio executives who hindered or outright ignored his work. Welles is a mythic figure of cinema in the modern age just as he was for many young directors at the start of the 1970s, but his career was rife with difficulty that gets explored throughout They'll Love Me When I'm Dead.

Mortal Engines Is Nonsense But More Often Than Not, It's Enjoyable Nonsense

Mortal Engines is as imaginative as it is messy. Based on a series of books by Phillip Reeves, this story goes for broke in all the weirdness it can imagine occuring in a post-apocalyptic fantasy landscape where cities move around on wheels. You've got a giant vehicle that looks and moves like centipedes, the wardrobe's visual aesthetic seems like a collision of all kinds of different time-periods and an undead robot warrior all inhabiting the same story, which makes for a plot that doesn't hold together at all but at least it's usually different enough to be passably entertaining while it's unfolding in front of your eyes.