The 2023 Movie List

Finally! A really good year for movies. Box office was up and people showed they’d turn out for movies they really liked. Of course this is in large part because of two movies that, in lucky happenstance, premiered the same week. Apparently, this wasn’t the plan but the anticipation, critical approval, and popularity of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” resulted in the two films reinforcing each other. I know I wasn’t the only one who saw them back to back. And not only were they popular, they were GOOD.

The films that were not so good and not so popular were the big franchise movies, especially of the superhero variety. Good riddance to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. And while I did enjoy the latest Mission Impossible movie, I’m not sure I will bother to see its sequel and find out how it ends.

So here’s hoping that Barbenheimer will convince Hollywood to take more chances on original stories, reward creativity and not take the audience for granted. With that as a preface, I saw 25 movies last year and here they are rated from best to worst.

1. Barbie

Yes, I think Barbie was a better movie than Oppenheimer, and not because I’m a sap for message movies. By reversing the gender power dynamic, it showed how clueless a privileged class can be (the women in Barbieland are no more sensitive to the feelings of the opposite sex than your your standard Lax Bro). More important “Barbie” teaches what it means to be human; Barbieland is a feminist Eden, but like Eve before her, Stereotypical Barbie wants knowledge, even if means accepting pain, and ultimately death.

2. Oppenheimer

I was lucky enough to see this movie in an IMAX theater and it was a remarkable, enthralling experience. I saw it again online and it was almost as good (being able to watch a second time with subtitles was a big help). Christopher Nolan is one of the last Great Event filmmakers and he really delivered. It’s a sprawling story about the making of the atomic bomb and the subsequent implications for Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the bomb’s development. (By the way, for those of you who listen to podcasts, check out the episode of my American presidents podcast, “The Celluloid President,” in which we discuss “Oppenheimer.” You can access it here.)

3. Past Lives

What claim does someone you loved as a child, a teen, or a young adult have on you when you become a mature adult? That’s the question at the center of this very moving and thought-provoking movie about childhood sweethearts in Korea who separate and then reconnect 12 years later and 12 years after that. They still have a hold on each other even though their lives are completely different. Now what?

4. Living

Technically this lovely film is from 2022 but I couldn’t see it until it appeared on Prime in mid-2023. Set in a 1953 British Public Works office, this is NOTHING like the TV show “Parks and Rec.” Bill Nighy plays a formidable, stiff-upper-lip department chief who is as far removed from Ron Swanson as you can get. Almost everyone in the department is scared of him, and since he can’t really relate to his family, he has no emotional resources to fall back upon when he gets a fatal cancer diagnosis. Having rarely if every experienced joy, he finds a way to leave a real legacy.

5. American Fiction

The funniest movie of the year. A Black author with literary aspirations is so put off by the public’s preference for racially stereotyped writers and the efforts of white would-be allies to absolve themselves of their guilty feelings that he pens an over-the-top fake memoir (“My Pofology”) that unexpectedly becomes a massive best-seller. He’s also got a messy personal life that requires some attention, too.

6. Anatomy of a Fall

Did she or didn’t she? A French movie about a successful novelist who is arrested and charged with murder when her husband is found dead from a fall from the third floor of their ski chalet. Their young son is a key witness who wants to save Mom from jail, but even he’s not sure if she’s innocent. Very absorbing courtroom drama and a fascinating look into the French justice system, which is very different from ours.

7. Air

It’s been quite a year for Matt Damon. He was the funniest character in “Oppenheimer,” and then he starred in “Air” as the real-life guy who saved Nike by signing Michael Jordan as the face of the company. This is a very enjoyable, supposedly true story, with Ben Affleck as Nike founder Phil Knight, and Viola Davis as MJ’s mother. In addition to providing insight into how the sports marketing business works (or used to work), it’s also a great vessel for early 80’s nostalgia.

8. The Holdovers

Speaking of nostalgia, the main kid in this movie seems to be the same age I was in the year during which this is set (early 1970’s). He’s attending a fancy prep school outside of Boston and is held-over at school during Christmas break in the care of a cantankerous unpopular teacher played by Paul Giamatti. They really bond during a trip to Boston, which looks very much like the grimy Boston I remember from those years. Terrifically written and acted.

9. Poor Things

Wow this is a weird movie. It’s like someone merged The Bride of Frankenstein with Alice in Wonderland and sprinkled in some soft-core porn. Set in a fantasy Victorian world where it’s possible to combine and reanimate parts of dead bodies, a mad scientist plants a baby’s brain into the body of a recent suicide and we watch her consciousness rapidly progress from that of a toddler’s to a mature woman who has a very health appetite for sexual pleasure. This is wildly imaginative and an impressive intellectual exercise, but a little difficult to warm up to.

10. Killers of the Flower Moon

The scariest moment of the year was when I looked at my watch two-and-a-half hours into this movie and realized there was still another hour left. This Martin Scorsese epic is movie-making at its ponderous best, dealing with complex moral issues through beautiful cinematography and great writing. I’d have ranked it higher except that both Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro are way too old for their parts. This is especially true for Leo, who’s character is supposedly about 25 years old.

11. May December

Julianne Moore portrays a woman who, having been sent to prison for statutory rape after having sex with a young teen her son’s age, marries the kid when she gets out of jail. Twenty years later, Natalie Portman is an actress who shows up to shadow Juianne Moore because she’s playing her in a movie. Not surprisingly, she finds a strange family dynamic where the young husband is emotionally stunted and their kids are very confused, but maybe not as confused as the actress, who tries to figure out what’s going on behind the surface and ends up exploiting everyone. There is a lot to think abut here.

12. Maestro

This is a movie about the beginning and end (but not the middle) of Leonard Bernstein’s career as the most famous figure in American classical music, a genius who wants to do everything. He wants a glamorous wife and numerous male lovers on the side; he wants to write classical music and Broadway musicals; he wants to be on TV and also be taken seriously. Bradley Cooper does a tremendous job in embodying Bernstein’s many contradictions and probably should have been nominated for best director as well as best actor.

13. The Boys in the Boat

Practically a remake of Chariots of Fire, except that it’s about an American crew team in the 1936 Olympics instead of British runners during the 1924 games. There are no surprises but director George Clooney does such a good job depicting the desperation of these Depression-era athletes that it really works.

14. Golda

Helen Mirren is almost unrecognizable as Golda Meier, who was prime minister of Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. It’s a very fascinating look at how the Israeli government works in a crisis, but the movie does presume a high degree of knowledge about the war’s timeline and its major players.

15. No Hard Feelings

Jennifer Lawrence is hired by the parents of a shy 19-year-old to “bring him out of his shell” (if you know what I mean) before he goes to Princeton and hi-jinx ensue. It’s very funny and very sweet if you can get over the ickiness of the parents paying a down-on-her-luck Long Island local to deflower their son.

16. Dumb Money

The protagonist of this movie if from my hometown of Brockton, Mass (where “no one here can kick our ass.” That’s actually a football chant.) Disappointingly, the movie was filmed in New Jersey and looks it. Based on a true story about the financial analyst, played by Paul Dano, who helped spur the GameStop stock mania of 2021 by touting it on Reddit. I remember it as a crazy story when it happened in real life because a whole lot of small day traders were able to bring a few short-sellers to their knees by buying an over-priced stock. Not mentioned in the movie, but after the protagonist made $20 million, he immediately moved out of Brockton!

17. Blackberry

Another true life business story, this time about the rise and fall of the Blackberry, which I still miss because my fat fingers make so many mistakes when I’m typing on an iPhone. This is one of those classic stories about a nerds/business shark marriage that works for a while and then goes astray because of hubris and incompatibility issues (and of course a superior competing product from Apple).

18. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part 1

Very good action movie that, like “Top Gun 2” last year, was supposed to bring people back to the movie theater. Alas, Barbenheimer did that instead. I enjoyed it but as is often the case in movies that depend on thrilling chases to keep the audience’s attention, right now I can’t remember what the whole thing was about.

19. The Book of Clarence

This movie is as offbeat as they come and I don’t know who it is aimed at. It’s a little bit funny, but not funny enough to be a comedy like “The Life of Brian,” which it most closely resembles. It’s pretty religious but not enough to be taken seriously like “The Chosen,” which it resembles a little bit. The gist of the plot is that Clarence, the brother of the Apostle Thomas, is the bad seed of the family. As bad seeds do, he decides to pose as the Messiah for the perks of being the Christ, but after getting crucified himself realizes that Jesus is the real deal. There’s also a racial angle since all the Jews are played by Black actors and all the Romans are white.

20. Guardians of The Galaxy

Guardians of the Gallery has been the only Superhero movie franchise I have been able to stomach for the past ten years, and the saga ends with a satisfying denouement. Having said that, I think one, possibly two, episodes in this franchise would have been enough.

21. You Hurt My Feelings

This has to be one of the lowest-stakes movies ever. The conflict is right there in the title. A Manhattan husband doesn’t like his wife’s new novel but tells her he does, because as every husband knows, the wrong answer to the question “Do you like my novel?” can be ten times more devastating than “Do you like my dress?” But her feelings are hurt when she eavesdrops on him and finds out the truth. That’s the proximate justification for the movie, but the film is REALLY about the disgruntlement of middle-class New Yorkers who just aren’t very good at their jobs.

22. The Lost King

To like this movie it helps a lot if you care whether Richard III really killed his nephews in the Tower in 1484. This is the mostly true story about how Phillipa Langley, a depressed Englishwoman who really believes in Richard’s innocence (which I do NOT), was able to find his body buried under a parking lot in the town of Leicester.

23. American Symphony

The year 2021 seemed to be a very good one for Jon Batiste, perhaps best known as Stephen Colbert’s bandleader. He won all kinds of awards, including an Oscar and a couple of Grammys, and had a hit record. Regrettably, his wife, the NYT columnist Suleika Jaouad, learned that her Leukemia had returned and she needed bone marrow treatment. Also, Batiste was trying to write a major classical piece called American Symphony. This documentary film captures all of this in intimate detail and you can only marvel at the highs and lows that people can experience simultaneously.

24. Elemental

Can fire and water coexist? Can they form a romantic couple? Pixar wants to know. The ancient elements of earth, wind, fire and water (and no, this is not a based on the 1960s rock band) are cartoon ethnicities trying to live in harmony in this very imaginative movie. The movie is not shy about addressing issues like racial assimilation, the immigrant experience, etc. but still manages to be fun.

25. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Was anyone asking for a fifth Indiana Jones movie? Not me. Harrison Ford looks pretty good for a guy his age. The movie begins in 1969 Greenwich Village, where Indy is being chased by Nazis (again!!!) who are trying to go back in time and change the end of World War II. There’s one excellent chase scene on a horse in the subway, but Indy is so crotchety now that the movies lacks its original zest.

26. Taylor Swift Eras Tour

I thought I’d check out what the Taylor Swift thing is all about and I mostly get in now that I’ve seen this concert film. I will say this — the single most thrilling moment of the year, cinematically, is when she dives into a previously unidentified hole in the stage. Whoa! As in many concert movies, your enjoyment depends to a large extent on how well you know the music. So I enjoyed it when I recognized the songs and was a bit bored when I didn’t. (Very impressive costume changes, though.)

27. Champions

Woody Harrelson is a talented but hotheaded basketball coach who is sentenced to community service coaching a basketball team with people with learning disabilities. This movie is very sweet but you can predict what’s going to happen. This movie is possibly listed lower than it should be, but the problem is that when I saw the title on my list of movies seen during the year I had to Google it to refresh my memory.

28. Good Grief

Dan Levy from “Schitt’s Creek” wrote, stars in and directed this story about an American in London who seems to have it all until his husband is killed in a car crash at Christmas. A year of unassuaged grieving occurs and things aren’t improved when he learns that the husband had a secret apartment in Paris where he entertained his secret boyfriend. Everyone in the movie has a lot of unresolved issues, which are eventually resolved through a series of confrontations and hard discussions.

29. Theater Camp

This an arch, semi-satirical look at the self-important counselors at a theatre camp who seem to think they are Broadway producers. It’s charming and funny for a while and then you wish everyone would just get a life.

30. You Are So Not Coming to My Bat Mitzvah

Adam Sandler has a producing deal with Netflix for which he knocks off one-to-two movies a year. This Bat Mitzvah movie is a family affair, though. Not only is he in it but his wife and daughters are too. The story revolves around the tween angst of wealthy, Jewish California girls who believe that their Bat Mitzvahs will be the crowning achievement of their lives — that and kissing a boy for the first time. The movie is a little bit funny, a little interesting but I am definitely not the target audience.

31. Are You there God? It’s Me Margaret

I am not the target audience for this movie either. It’s a dramatization of Judy Blume’s best-known novel, which takes a hard look at how difficult the tween years can be. I was surprised to see how significantly religion figures into the equation even though God is mentioned right there in the title. I respect the effort, and empathized with poor overly hormoned Margaret, but the movie gives off too much of made-for-TV vibe for me to care a lot.

32. 80 For Brady

Now this is a movie that was targeted for an audience of one: me. Four senior ladies in Boston find meaning in worshipping Tom Brady, travel to the Super Bowl and watch the greatest comeback in football history (the 34-28 win over the Atlanta Falcons in SB LI). But if you’ve ever watched Frankie and Gracie, you know the kind of antics that Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin will pull (i.e. far-fetched). These antics are fine but not really my thing.

33. Eric Clapton: Across 24 Nights

In 1991 and 1992, Eric Clapton played 24 concerts at the Albert Hall and this documentary is a stitched together presentation of the highlights, with some of his greatest hits and some lesser known songs. With no narration or subtitles explaining who he’s playing with, this movie is really for super-fans (see Taylor Swift, above). Still, experiencing “Layla” played on the big screen is worth the price of admission.

34. Murder Mystery 2

Another Adam Sandler production for Netflix. I like him, I certainly like Jennifer Aniston, and I like the European backdrops, but this is the kind of thing you only stream when there are four people in the room who can’t agree on anything else to watch.

35. Beautiful Disaster

This is the only legitimately bad movie on the list, but that’s OK because we watched in advance of attending a live podcast called How Did This Get Made?, where they dissect really sub-par movies to hilarious effect. I’d summarize the plot for you but it’s just too ridiculous.

Best Movies of 2022

It’s hard to get excited about the Oscars this year. At best, this was another so-so year for going to the movies. My wife and I made a concerted effort to support the cinematic experience by getting off the couch, driving to the theatre, and seeing as many films as possible on the big screen, even movies that we could have watched for “free” on our streaming service just a week later (i.e., “The Glass Onion”). And since seeing movies in the theatre is the best way to do it, my big regret of the year is letting the critics talk me out of viewing “Nope” upon release; when I decided to check in on it on Peacock, it turned out to be my favorite film of the year. I can only imagine how much more exciting it would have been in a theatre.

In furtherance of the in-person experience, I also attended my first film festival this year — the Sonoma International Film Festival (or SIFF) — which in additional being a lot of fun gave me a chance to see a lot of unknown small movies in person that I would have otherwise missed, which explains why there are so many movies on this list that you’ve probably never heard of (we saw seven movies in three days, and the only one that made a commercial splash was “The Lost City”).

I noticed two major themes in 2022. The first was an outright hostility to the rich, who were portrayed as clueless, out of touch, entitled and malevolent in a way we haven’t seen since the “Occupy Wall Street” days. I don’t know what was driving that theme but it was clearly manifested in “The Glass Onion,” “The Menu” and “Triangle of Sadness.” But an even more common subject this year was the pursuit of artistic excellence and how it causes people to go a little — or a lot — insane. And the “art” in question was wide-ranging, from music (“Tar,” “The Banshees of Inishirin,” “Elvis”) to film (“The Fablemans,” “Babylon”) to food (“The Menu”). You could even make the argument that Tom Cruise’s character was also driven by the pursuit of art in “Top Gun: Maverick,” if you can classify flying jets as an art form.

Some major omissions from the list this year. I made plans to see the new “Avatar,” but in the end I just couldn’t be bothered. I also thought I might watch “All Quiet On the Western Front,” but the war in Ukraine is real enough and I thought the movie would just be emotionally punishing. I understand there’s a movie called “Women Talking” that’s been nominated for best film but I don’t know anyone who has seen it, so — no thanks. Also not on the list — Superhero movies (except for the one Spiderman that I saw out of curiosity), horror films, or kiddie movies.

With that said, here’s the list:

1. Nope

Five years ago Jordan Peele was justly celebrated for his debut film “No Way Out,” but “Nope,” possibly the most original movie of the year and a major hit as well, gets no love. Not a single Oscar nomination and mediocre reviews. Maybe the subject matter — an apparent spaceship lurking over the California countryside — wasn’t to everyone’s liking, but this was not only thought-provoking but thrillingly directed. I have a feeling the critics didn’t like it was that it didn’t fit neatly into any particular genre — horror, drama, social commentary.

2. Top Gun: Maverick

OK, this is not a great movie, by any stretch. But the single best experience I had at the movies this year was watching the Top Gun sequel. I haven’t felt this enchanted in a movie theatre in a long time.

3. Apollo 10 /12: A Space Age Childhood

If you want to see what live was really like in the 1960s, watch this Richard Linklater nostalgia-fest. The hippies, the riots, and the assassinations get all the attention, but here’s what it was like to grow up in a normal middle-class house. The conceit of the movie is that this fourth-grade boy daydreams Walter Mitty-like that he is secretly recruited to fly the first mission to the moon. I have been begging people to watch this movie but no takers.

4. Everything Everywhere All At Once

I’ve seen my share of Metaverse movies but was still unprepared for the cornucopia of ideas that came flowing out of this story about a Korean immigrant family caught in the disjunction of the limitless universes that usually only exist in superhero movies. But then, it turns out to be a superhero movie after all, showing that we have hidden abilities we barely dream of and multiple destinies even if we can only live out one of them.

5. Babylon

This epic three-hour depiction of Hollywood as it transitioned from silent to sound movies is not for everybody, that’s for sure. According to Damien Chazelle (of “La La Land” fame), the late 1920s were a feverish, orgiastic dreamscape, where life was cheap, ambitions unbounded and raw talent rewarded and exploited. The whole thing was way over the top but I wasn’t bored for a second.

6. The Banshees of Inisherin

I read that this was being marketed as a comedy, but if so, the Irish have very dark senses of humor. Two old friends on a remote Irish island break up when the smarter one can no longer tolerate the boring, repetitive musings of the other one and demands to be left in peace to work on his music. I should put “smart one” in quotes because he chops off a finger each time the dumb one talks to him. Haha.

7. Tar

The life of an imperious symphony orchestra director spirals out of control when her “Me Too” sins catch up with her. This is Art with a capital A. You need to work hard to follow the thrust of what’s happening, which is fine because it’s mostly rewarding when you figure it out. The acting, directing, set design and writing were all great but I’d have rated it higher if the last half hour hadn’t been so confusing. I am told now that it might have been a dream sequence, which, if true, is a massive cheat.

8. The Fabelmans

A thinly veiled autobiographical depiction of Steven Spielberg’s childhood, “The Fabelmans” is a lesser Spielberg and two movies in one. The first movie is about his preternatural talent as a youthful film-maker. The other is about the collapse of his parents’ marriage. And both are suffused with a gauzy dream-like nostalgia. Every scene, as is usual in a Spielberg movie, is beautiful and stylish, but the movie as a whole doesn’t quite come together.

9. Down With The King

The best film we saw at the Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF) was this story about a rapper who had a nervous breakdown and is recuperating in an isolated but beautiful region of the Berkshires. Nor surprisingly this very urban guy has some trouble adjusting to life in rural Massachusetts, but he eventually makes friends and attempts a comeback.

10. Spirited

Ryan Reynolds and Will Farrell — a great pairing that should have occurred to someone sooner than this — update A Christmas Carol to amusing and clever effect.

11. Good Luck To You Leo Grande

As much as I admire Emma Thompson, I never really felt the need to see her in a nude scene, but here it us. She plays an extremely uptight widow, who, having never experienced sexual pleasure, hires a sex worker to do the deed the right way. There are some surprisingly interesting themes afoot here, particularly the power dynamics among genders, classes, ages, and incomes.

12. Where the Crawdads Sing

I am surprised that this movie didn’t get more love from the awards circuit given that it was popular hit in a year where they were hard to come by. I didn’t read the best-seller this is based on but can see the appeal. It’s a murder mystery wrapped within a swamp-gothic love story and a female empowerment fantasy.

13. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

I don’t know if anyone saw “Phantom Thread” a few years ago, but this is a happy-happy version of that. Both movies are about the snobbiness of European high fashion houses in the 1950s and star Leslie Manville, but in “Mrs. Harris,” there’s no weird psycho-drama and everything works out well for the people who have good hearts.

14. Ticket To Paradise

Julia Roberts and George Clooney, divorced and rich, have a daughter who wants to marry a Polynesian sea farmer she met while on vacation. Somewhat amusingly, they squabble and insult each other while trying to prevent the poor girl from throwing her life away on kelp. The movie has a gorgeous setting but would have been better with sharper and less cliched writing.

15. Vengeance

There’s a lot happening in this BJ Novack-written murder mystery about a shallow New York D-bag who learns down-home values in Texas when he launches a podcast about a murder victim he once casually hooked up with. When it’s sharp and witty, this is terrific, but when the murder is solved, all those hard-won values go out the window.

16. The Lost City

This is inspired by those “Romancing the Stone” movies and it’s great to see Sandra Bullock traipsing through the jungle. I can’t quite figure out why it’s not more fun, though. The movie only really comes to life when Brad Pitt shows up.

17. The Glass Onion

What a surprise — this “Knives Out” sequel is not as good as the low-budget original. Set on a Greek island, it’s more beautiful than the first one, while the murder was conceived, committed and solved in a large rambling house. Expanding and opening up the setting gives the director, Rian Johnson, more opportunity to be self-indulgent, and exposes Daniel Craig’s acting idiosyncrasies as vaguely absurd.

18. Weird

Everything about this mockumentary on Weird Al Yankovic’s life, starting with the casting of Daniel Radcliff as Weird Al, is hilarious in 15-minute bursts but it’s a lot to absorb over a full-length movie.

19. Bros

This was positioned as a ground-breaking “gay rom-com,” but what’s really innovative about this isn’t that the protagonist is gay but that he’s so neurotic, self-absorbed and unlikable. Bold choice! It’s undeniably funny and does have a conventional cisgendered pairing off, but the route to this happy ending was more than a little tortured.

20. Spiderman: No Way Home

This is another multiverse story with a clever premise: the Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland Spidermen all live in different universes and and need to join forces to fight and evil nemesis. The movie is fine but I immediately forgot the plot the second I left the theatre.

21. The Menu

A celebrity chef with an insanely devoted staff goes a teensy bit off the rails as he seeks to avenge himself on his rich customers who don’t appreciate his artistry. The movie is beautiful and fascinating until it spins out of control. One thing it has going for it is that one of the protagonists — Anya Taylor-Joy — plays a character who hails from my hometown of Brockton Mass.

22. Triangle of Sadness

Another movie about the wretchedness of the top one percent (see “The Menu” above.) In this version, the obnoxious rich get their due when their luxury cruise ship sinks during a hurricane and various guests and crew are washed up on a deserted island. Status and power now reverts to those who can enhance survival and having been a male model doesn’t really cut it any more.

23. Sr.

Before there was Robert Downey Jr., there was Robert Downey Sr., a 1960s avant garde filmmaker (“Putney Swope” being his most famous film). Jr. commissions a documentary about dad so they can have a nice bonding experience. This is not a “warts and all” treatment but the film does make it clear that Jr.’s well-document drug problems almost certainly stem from Mom and Dad’s casual approach to drugs when he was growing up.

24. The Rose Maker

A French rose farmer on the verge of bankruptcy takes on three work release employees who know nothing about agriculture or roses but somehow manage to save the farm. Light and charming in that French way.

25. Come Back Anytime

If you’ve seen “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” this is the ramen version — a documentary about a small restaurant owner in Tokyo who wants to retire. WE come to understand the impact that will have on his regular customers, who consider the place their home away from home (like the “Cheers” bar or a Black barbershop). Given that being in community with other humans is a universal need (ranging from bowling leagues to QAnon message boards), it’s interesting to see how other cultures achieve that.

26. Elvis

This is not a good movie but somehow got a Best Picture Oscar nomination anyway. Go figure. “Elvis” is a PowerPoint version of Presley’s life; it hits the highlights, which seem accurate enough, but misses the complexity in between. Maybe the better analogy is “Elvis for Dummies.” It doesn’t help that the movie is narrated by Tom Hanks, in his worst role ever, as Col. Tom Parker. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the music isn’t very good, making it hard to understand what made Elvis so wildly popular.

27. To Olivia

Hugh Bonneville (aka “Lord Grantham”) portrays the children’s author Roald Dahl, who was a complicated figure. He’s married to the actress Patricia Neal and the movie covers the period in their life when they have to grapple with the sudden death of their daughter Olivia. Not all movies have to have happy, life-affirming endings, but this one essentially peters out.

28. The Pact

Karen Blixen, who was better known as the author Isak Dinesen, lives a life of lonely luxury back in post-war Denmark. She takes on an aspiring writer as a protege, and then, creepily, tries to take over his life.

29. Martin Eden

Based on Jack London’s semi-autobiographical novel about an ambitious working class schmoo who works his way into the high society that he despises. This is an extremely low-budget movie theoretically set in early 20th century Oakland but filmed on Nantucket (!!!!).

30. We Feed The World

A Ron Howard documentary about the super-chef Jose Andres and his non-profit World Central Kitchen, which rushes to disaster areas to feed people devastated by hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. The story itself is inspiring but the film itself inexplicably falls a little flat. Ultimately there’s no narrative — it’s like a long Sixty Minutes piece.

I’m a Podcaster Now Too

I remember the first time I heard a podcast. It was in the late 1990s, when you could only get good Internet at work, and I was killing time in the office when I should have been billing clients. I had previously discovered Bill Simmons, then known as the Boston Sports Guy, who was a sports blogger on Boston’s AOL Digital Cities site. I clicked on the site on afternoon and instead of reading his blog I discovered him talking about the Red Sox with Seth Meyers, then the Saturday Night Live head writer. As hard as it is to believe now, the idea that people were talking on the Internet, was disorienting. I don’t think they even called it podcasting yet.

Since then, Bill Simmons has built two podcasting giants — first Grantland for ESPN, and then The Ringer, which is now owned by Spotify — and there are reportedly more than three million podcasts available for our listening pleasure. During that time, I’ve sampled several hundred podcasts and am currently subscribed to about twenty podcasts myself, picking and choosing what to listen to depending on the episode’s subject.

Clearly the world doesn’t need another podcast but my college friend Jim Robinson and I have taken the plunge anyway. I’m not sure why — we’re definitely not going to make much, if any, money on it. I suppose we just want to keep our minds sharp at our advancing ages.

Since there are thousands of podcasts about movies and thousands more about politics, I thought it might be interesting for us to do something about the intersection of movies AND politics, so we came up with “The Celluloid President,” in which we discuss how American presidents are depicted in film. Jim and I were American Studies majors together in college and we can finally deploy what we’d learned about analyzing history through a cultural context to explore what the filmmaker was REALLY trying to say.

Our first two podcasts are by two talented directors whose visions of America are completely at odds and who, unsurprisingly, created films that couldn’t be more different.

Our first podcast out of the gate was on Oliver Stone’s “Nixon,” a three hour and 20 minute biopic that is a perfect match of a dark, brooding conspiratorial filmmaker with a dark, brooding conspiratorial President. Jim and I had been pro-Nixon allies in college but we don’t really see eye-to-eye on him any more, although we are still fascinated by Nixon and even a bit nostalgic about Watergate, which seemed so important at the time. To learn more about that journey and to listen to the podcast, click here: [Nixon Podcast]. You might also want to check out the movie trailer first to get a flavor of Oliver Stone’s approach.

In contrast to Stone, Steve Spielberg is in love with what America can be, even though it doesn’t always live up to its ideals. The movie “Lincoln” is ostensibly about the 16th President but it’s really about how America struggles to become a more just place. Rather than a traditional biopic about Honest Abe, Spielberg decided to depict how Lincoln rammed the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery, through the House of Representatives even before the end of the Civil War.

To Spielberg, this achievement — the legal end of slavery — shows that democracy can work, especially if a visionary, talented politician steps forward embodies the better angles of our being, which is what Lincoln did. “Lincoln” is fundamentally a civics lesson in how democracy works — how the people’s will can be fulfilled through a messy combination of self-interest and idealism. To my mind, “Lincoln” displays more mature understanding than “Nixon” of how the American government works. Oliver Stone opts for a simplistic explanation of why things happen the way they do — because a secret cabal of corporations and security agencies drives events behind the scenes. But “Lincoln” shows that our country is too big, with too many interests, for any conspiracy to succeed for long. If anything, the danger is inertia — with nothing happening because the bickering groups can’t reach a compromise. For more elaboration on this, check out the podcast here: [Lincoln podcast]

And to get a flavor of what “Lincoln” is about, check out the trailer below.

As they say at the end of all podcasts, be sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, etc. You can find both of The Celluloid President podcasts so far below at https://thecelluloidpresident.buzzsprout.com.

Let us know what you think.

The 2020 Movie List

Frances McDormand in the film NOMADLAND. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2020 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

I think we can all agree that 2020 was the worst year in cinema that any of us can remember. The film industry, with its heavy emphasis on redundant and blockbustery comic book movies, was already headed into the toilet when the year began and the pandemic only drove the nail into the coffin. I deeply missed going to the theater for the big screen, in-person experience, but even the movies I saw at home tended to be disappointing. When, at the end of the year, I looked at the “top ten” lists from the major critics to see what I was missing, I saw that they had selected small, independent, depressing movies I’d never heard of. Watching someone else’ trauma didn’t really appeal to me this year, but what was the alternative? The usual mainstream movies with movie stars and well-known directors were absent, apparently being withheld by the studios until the pandemic is over and it’s safe to go to the movies again.

The last time I watched this few movies (and when I say “movies” I am including films that were or could have been released in a movie theatre but which I streamed at home) was more than 20 years ago when my son was too small to sit still for a full-length picture.

However, once the Oscar nominations came out I made a special effort to watch the Best Picture contenders and I’m glad I did because one of those small, independent depressing movies — “Nomandland” — turned out to be a masterpiece that salvaged the year after all, and many of the others were pretty good.

1. Nomadland

Every once in a while there’s a movie so original that you not only can’t predict where it’s going, you can’t even understand the parameters of HOW to predict where it’s going and need to just let it wash over you. Last year it was “Parasite” and a few years earlier it was “Boyhood.” I’ve never seen movie characters that seemed as real as they do in “Nomadland” and that’s because they actually are real-life modern nomads, who have chosen a deliberately rootless life, unencumbered from anything that will tie them down. Before I watched it, I thought this was a movie about the victims of capitalism but discovered it’s really about a certain kind of personal brokeness can only be salved by kindness, temporary community, and flight. The Frances McDormand character isn’t “houseless” because she has to be, but because she wants to be. Just like Huck Finn, Natty Bumpo and a dozen other characters in American literature and cinema before them. The director Chloe Zhao will probably win best director but I hope they don’t put her in the “identity” box as the first Asian woman to win because she’s much more than that. Although born in China, she’s a great AMERICAN director.

2. Soul

All year long I resisted subscribing to Disney+ out of principle but I finally plunked down seven dollars for a month’s subscription so I could watch “Soul.” If I hadn’t done that I probably wouldn’t have written a movie list at all because until then I didn’t have a legitimate Number One. “Soul” turned out to be a piece of art that literally changed the way I look at the world like nothing else has since I sat through “Our Town” for the first time — a work that expresses similar themes. I knew “Soul” was a Pixar movie about a guy who loved jazz but I didn’t understand until halfway through that the title referred to a person’s literal soul. Wrapped within a a very charming, funny, gorgeously presented, easy-to-digest animated movie is the answer to the profoundest question — how should you live your life? Here’s a hint — you should live you life by living it to the fullest.

3. Tigertail

I need to make it very plain that this movie is definitely NOT “Tiger King,” that uber-trashy Netflix series about big cats. “Tigertail” is a deeply affecting story about the personal choices made by a working class Taiwanese immigrant with conflicting dreams. This quickly becomes an allegory about the emotional price paid by generations of ambitious new Americans who sacrificed love, family and their own mental health to pursue an economically better life in the U.S. Beautiful filmed with understated acting.

4. Minari

Like “Tigertail” (see above) this is a the story of the Asian immigrant experience, except more optimistic. The family in “Minari” is not as damaged by broken dreams and although they face the usual setbacks (although not, surprisingly, any discrimination in their little Ozark town) there’s enough love to pull everyone through.

5. Judas and the Black Messiah

It’s one of those odd quirks of the year that two Oscar nominated movies — “Judas and the Black Messiah” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” — both revolved around a related series of events from Chicago in 1969. “Judas” twists the facts a bit to make the cops and the FBI look even worse than they were, but it’s a David McCullough-quality history compared to “The Chicago 7,” which is a cartoon version of reality. “Judas” is about the betrayal of the charismatic Black Panther organiziser “Chairman” Fred Hampton, who was killed (or assassinated, as is claimed here) in a police raid. The filmmaking is compelling, story story is though-provoking, and the acting is superb.

6. Emma

We probably didn’t need another adaptation of a Jane Austen novel, but what a treat it was to have this one to entertain us in the early days of the pandemic. The title character is played by Any-Taylor Joy, who gained far more notoriety this year as the alcoholic chess whiz on “The Queen’s Gambit.” She was great, as was the entire cast except for Johnny Flynn, who lacked Mr. Knightly’s gravitas. Each generation gets the “Emma” it deserves and this one rightly focused more than others on the class distinctions among the characters. Very fun.

7. News of the World

I’m so sorry I didn’t get a chance to see this Tom Hanks western in the theatre because the cinematography of the wild west was just beautiful. I don’t know if this is a deliberate homage to “The Searchers” but it has some of the same plot points — young girl kidnapped by Indians who brutally massacred her family and then adopted her being returned to her kin. In a normal year this would have been a hit, but in 2020 it dropped into obscurity. Too bad.

8. 63 Up

The last movie we saw — in our beloved Avon Theatre — before in-person movie-going shut down for the pandemic. The “Up” series, which has followed the lives of a dozen British subjects as they aged from 7- to 63-years-old is the greatest documentary project of all time. This will probably be the last in the series (which has updated every seven years) because the director Michael Apted has died. Given that several of these people, who we’ve been watching grow older over decades, have also died, are dying, or are grieving other personal losses, this particular episode is unusually elegiac. I’d encourage anyone who cares about film to go back and watch the original “7Up” and then follow the updates one by one. It’s amazing to experience how a life really rolls out and how some people turn out exactly like you think they will and others surprise.

9. The Sound of Metal

What happens when a drummer with an addiction problem and nothing to live for except the love of his girlfriend-the-vocalist goes deaf? It’s not good. So many movies about damaged people this year! And yet all credit to our protagonist, who’s not really very smart but has a lot of courage as he addresses this challenge.

10. My Octopus Teacher

Certainly the dreamiest documentary of the year, about a man who makes friends with an octopus. I learned a lot about cephalopodas. The underwater filming, in an ecosystem I never even knew existed, is remarkable, as is the anthropomorphizing that occurs within this movie. I mean, can you really be “friends” with a mollusk? Still, the fact that this was made at all is astounding.

11. Mank

This is the movie I was most looking forward to this year: David Fincher’s account of how Herman Mankiewicz wrote the first draft of “Citizen Kane.” It’s told in lush black and white with a curlicue narrative, and since you can’t always tell what flashback you’re in as the movie unspools, it’s not that easy to follow. I loved the first half, with its scene-setting and depiction of old Hollywood, but the historical story goes way off the rails as Fincher tries to establish that Mankiewicz’ motivation for attacking William Randolph Hearst via the fictional Charles Foster Kane is somehow connected to California’s 1936 gubernatorial campaign. Huh??!! And then there’s the movie’s unpersuasive assumption that the “Citizen Kane” story and the Kane character were both conceived solely by Mankiewicz and not in collaboration with Orson Welles. It’s ironic that a movie about a near-perfect screenplay has, itself, such a messed up screenplay.

12. One Night in Miami

A play made into a movie with a lot of “Capital A” Acting. It’s a fictionalized look at the night when Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke all find themselves in a hotel room debating and soliloquizing about very big ideas. I generally don’t like film adaptations of plays but the subject is so fascinating and the acting so compelling that it generally held my interest.

13. The Truffle Hunters

A documentary about the elderly men in a northern Italian village who live to find and dig out truffles from the forest floor. Absolutely nothing happens but it’s nice to spend time with these charming old men, their florid Italian mannerisms and their cute dogs.

14. Da 5 Bloods

Spike Lee is a great director but he goes intermittently goes off the rails, Rambo-style, in this story about four Black Viet vets of varying disposition who return to ‘Nam to reminisce and resolve some unfinished business. It’s exciting and emotional, especially when you admire the performance of Chadwick Boseman, who has since died, but some of the plot twists are asking too much of us.

15. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Heartbreaking and intense, with great high-octane acting by the dying Chadwick Boseman and the very-much-alive Viola Davis. Unfortunately, this is essentially a filmed play, complete with stilted theatrical dialogue and long monologues. Watching this I finally admitted to my self that I’m a philistine who just doesn’t like dramatic plays, even by someone as talented as August Wilson. The music was great, though.

16. Let Them All Talk

This movie is a hot mess. Meryl Streep is a novelist who wants to reconnect with her two former best friends from college (now estranged, played by Diane Weist and Candace Bergen) by taking them on a trans-Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary. Oh and her nephew’s on board too. Also her book agent, who’s is secretly spying on her. And then there’s a fabulously prolific John Clancy-type author who admires her greatly. Some conflicts get solved; some don’t; nothing really makes sense but it’s fun to watch everybody experience luxury cruising.

17. The Bee Gees: How Deep in My Love

Watching this documentary is more than a guilty pleasure — its a look back at two decades (the 1960’s and ’70’s) of rapidly evolving pop music. It’s the kind of movie that tries to make you feel guilty for ever scorning the amazingly prolific Bee Gees and largely succeeds. Be warned, though, that if you don’t like disco it’s because you are either racist, homophobic, or both (this, in a movie about three of the whitest, straightest, most hirsute guys in the business).

18. The Trip to Spain

This is the third “Trip to” movie involving a couple of British comics who go on exotic trips, eat fantastic meals, do Sean Connery impersonations, and have at least one existential crisis. The formula is always enjoyable but is wearing thin now. I literally had to go back and read a recap to refresh my memory about what happened in this one.

19. Wonder Woman ’84

This actually wasn’t as bad as the critics said, but in a year when a lot of movies “didn’t make sense,” this was the most disappoining. I had admired the original “Wonder Woman” in 2017 and hoped the director Patty Jenkins would build on that ,but WW84 was a sad step back into Marvel-grade territory. As usual, the future of the planet is in doubt, this time because a Donald Trump-like businessman has a self-esteem problem. Gal Gadot is great, though. I enjoyed watching her, even in civilian clothes.

20. The Book Sellers

I have nothing against this documentary, which is a pleasant, genteel look at the rare book store business in New York City, but it’s a trifle dull and doesn’t deliver the “Wow” moment of a great documentary.

21. Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band

Another perfectly fine documentary about a marginally interesting subject — the band called “The Band.” This is not that different from the knock-off movies of other bands that you can watch on Amazon Prime and I only included it in the list because it was theatrically released and we paid to watch it during the first month of the pandemic.

22. The Trial of the Chicago 7

With a paint-by-numbers screenplay that sets out to hit all the usual beats and frame the action around the usual dramatic opposing protagonists, this Aaron Sorkin travesty reduces one of the most climatic and bizarre events of the 1960s to a banal, Hollywood-ized conventional movie. It’s possible that if you never heard of the Chicago Seven, who were on trial for causing a riot during the 1968 Democratic Convention, you might find some of this plausible but almost every dramatic high point was concocted so that Sorkin can reach a couple of simple conclusions. No complexity allowed here. And are we seriously to believe that this wimpy Tom Hayden will go on to entrance and marry Jane Fonda?

23. The Prom

If you ever watched Ryan Murphey’s “Glee,” you can’t be surprised by the massively uneven way his full-length movies turn out. “The Prom” has an interesting premise. Four Broadway stars — Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and Andrew Rannells — cynically try to rehabilitate their careers by cynically taking up the cause of a high school lesbian in Indiana denied admission to her prom. You’l never guess what happens! Oh wait, you will. As in “Glee” there are some genuinely affecting moments, but they are buried beneath strata of cliches, absurdity, and blatant emotional manipulation.

24. Cats

I hate to pile on, but this really was terrible. I never saw “Cats” in the theatre or or even listened to the soundtrack before but didn’t realize that, except for “Memories,” the score is actually pretty bad. And that’s just the first problem. The plot is apparently about alley cats competing to see which of them will win the chance to — it’s a chance to die, right? I literally cannot explain how this Broadway musical became such a musical sensation.

The 2019 Movie List

I never thought I’d say this three months ago, but when I look back at what I saw this year,  I realize there are more good movies now than ever before — certainly more than ten years ago.  Of course there are more bad ones too and it’s a worrisome sign that so much of the box office goes to comic book adaptations that seem to tell the same story over and over.

The big news this year is the rise of Netflix and Amazon Prime, which is increasingly blurring the lines between cinema and television.  This creates a bit of a quandary when it comes to ranking: what to include?  For this year at least, I am including any movie that was released on a big screen even if I saw it at home on a streaming service.  Mostly, though, I do try to get out to see movies as they were meant to be seen — outside the house — and I feel that the effort for the good ones (“The Irishman” this year, “Roma” last year) is worth it.

Another ongoing trend is the many movies that are supposedly based on real events.  I saw nine of them this year (and that doesn’t include the documentaries) and in every single case I came home and fired up Google to see what was true and what wasn’t. Come on Hollywood.  Make up your own stories, instead of stealing someone else’s life and changing it around to make it more interesting.

1. One Upon a Time in Hollywood

I was so bowled over by this fairy tale about late Sixties Hollywood that I saw it twice.  It’s visually arresting, better at capturing what it was like to be alive in 1969 than anything made since 1969.  I usually stay away from Tarantino movies because of the violence, but for once the mayhem was cathartic and justified.

2.  1917

The level of tension goes up to the maximum in about five minutes and stays there the entire movie.  War is hell, particularly World War I, yet there are so many thrilling scenes here that you quickly lose track.  And speaking of tracking, the one long tracking shot is, on the whole, a little too distracting.  Still, what an achievement.  I’m glad it’s a hit.

3. Jo Jo Rabbit

An extremely dark comedy about Nazi Germany, which also has a lot to say about the way that people who feel powerless can sometimes fall under the spell of a charismatic leader who’ll make them feel part of a broader movement.  This movie is not realistic in any way so don’t cavil that “this couldn’t happen.”  The question is whether it is emotionally real.

4. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

When I went into the theater I never expected to come out ranking the last of the Skywalker movies this high.  And yes, the the first half of the film was kid of dull and it has plot problems so extreme that I cannot now recount 95 percent of what happened, but I do remember that I was emotionally drained at the end.  We were so wiped out we stayed through every last credit, until the blank screen came up.  I do recognize, that this movie undoes much of what was established in “The Last Jedi,”  and to that I say: good.

5. The Irishman

Slow and long but absorbing when seen on the big screen.  I imagine viewers might be easily distracted while watching on Netflix, which is why the traditional movie experience is better than one in the living room.  (In other words, don’t tell me it’s “too long” if you watched it at home.  Of course it is.)  Another remarkable recreation of the Sixties, almost of par with “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”  It’s also very male.  I don’t have a problem with that, but some do.

6. Parasite

“Parasite” is the most original, genre-bending movie of the last five years, and not just because it’s Korean, a culture about which most of Western viewers know little. Going to see this is an experience that you won’t want to have “spoiled,” so I hope it’s not going to far to say that the first half is an amusing domestic comedy and the second half is a thriller, kind of.  And what, or who, is the parasite, you may ask?  The answer is: every character in this movie.

7. The Farewell

This movie is based on a story from “This American Life,” which I listened to when it aired.  In a way this is a good antidote to “Crazy Rich Asians.”  Both concern themselves with what members of extended Chinese families, some of whom have emigrated and some of whom stayed behind, owe each other.  But one is a fantasy and one is reality-based.  The family dynamics at work here seem true to life regardless of your ethnicity, though.

8. Where’d You Go Bernadette?

Bernadette is depressed, by what we don’t know until the end, although being a strikingly original person doesn’t help.  Fortunately she’s married to a Google big shot, who’s sensitive and supportive as well as rich. Cate Blanchette is great, as usual, as a famous architect who’s dropped out of her career and needs to recover her passion.  A surprisingly thrilling ending.

9. The Two Popes

You wouldn’t think a movie that boils down to a long conversation between two celibate septuagenarians would be so fascinating, but there you have it. Popes Benedict and Francis debate theology, guilt, humanity, and leadership in some of the most beautiful Roman locations I’ve ever seen.  Alas, most of it is made up but it’s still really thought-provoking. (Although I have to be honest, when I saw this in the movie theatre, there was only one other person that my wife and I and she left half-way through.)

10. Bombshell

Who ever thought that in this ideological landscape there’d be a movie in which Megyn Fox was the hero?  An acerbic look at what it it must have been like to work at Fox News.  It’s funny but also smart about the compromises that people (not just women) will make to get ahead.

11. Richard Jewell

This is Clint Eastwood’s taut, well-told story about the attempted framing by the FBI of the security guard who discovered and warned authorities to the bomb that would eventually explode at the 1996 Olympics, thereby saving numerous lives.  It’s funny that out of all the true-life stories depicted in the movies this year, many of which depart significantly from the facts, this is the one that the media are claiming foul over because they don’t like the way the portrayal of the reporter who first smeared Richard Jewell.

12. Little Women

Great adaptation by Greta Gerwig of the Louisa May Alcott novel.  I’d be more than happy if Saoirse Ronan won best actress Oscar this year.  My only hesitation with this film is that the timeframe flips back and forth so much that it’s hard to tell what period we’re in. I pity any husband or boyfriend dragged to this who hasn’t read the book and can’t figure out what the heck is going on.

13. American Factory

Fascinating documentary about a Chinese glass-making company trying to re-open a plant in Ohio.  This is told from the perspective of both the Chinese management and American workers and the film-makers don;t really take sides on who is right.  You learn a lot about the difference between the U.S. and China but also about manufacturing itself.

14. Knives Out

A fun whodunnit that would make Agatha Christie proud.   This is something that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would LOVE if they actually had a sense of humor.  The One Percent are HORRIBLE.

15. Ad Astra

Brad Pitt is an astronaut with daddy issues — a space cowboy who bends or outright breaks the rules in order to save earth.  Good action sequences.

16. Ford v Ferrari

Now that Daniel-Day Lewis has retired Christian Bale is the most actorly Hollywood movie star, really inhabiting each new role.  Here he’s a wild man auto racer hire by semi-wild man Matt Damon to win the LeMans car race for Henry Ford II.  The car races are fine but the moral dilemma posed by the need to compromise within bureaucratic institutions is the most interesting part of the movie.

17. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Someone else has daddy issues — the Esquire reporter hired to interview Mr. Rogers.  Tom Hanks is perfect as the man in the red cardigan sweater.  The movie tried to pull at the heart strings but doesn’t succeed as completely as the Mr. Rogers documentary that came out last year, but still, this is very sweet and worth seeing.

18. The Downton Abbey Movie

Not really a movie — more two episodes of the TV series smooshed together and inflated for the big screen.  As usual, the plots are preposterous, although not as lame as the story in the TV show about Mr. Bates being a murder suspect.  The production values are taken up a notch, though, with all that Hollywood funding, so it’s visually luscious.  Just go and turn your brain off.

19. Rocketman

This is a more ambitious and thoughtful bio-pic than “Bohemian Rhapsody” but not as much fun.  (They’re both about closeted British rock superstars who burn the candle at both ends.)  Maybe it’s just that Elton John songs don’t translate as well to the Big Screen at Queen’s?

20. Booksmart

This was supposed to be the girl’s version of “Superbad,” but it lacks the courage of its tasteless and hilarious precursor.  The premise is that two nose-to-the-grindstone high school seniors try to have a blast on their last night of high school.  It’s funny but not a riot and the plot elements are a little absurd.

21. Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice

A great documentary about Linda Ronstadt.  I was never a big fan, although I don’t know why not, now having seen how remarkable her career was and finally appreciating her voice.

22. Late Night

Mindy Kaling, who also wrote this somewhat acerbic depiction of late night television, plays the first female staff writer for a talk show starring a burned out Emma Thompson, who shows little solidarity with her own gender.  Very witty and knowing about TV writers’ rooms, but it never quite takes off.  And like “Booksmart” (see above) it’s burdened with a convoluted and pretty implausible plot.

23. Yesterday

Perhaps my expectations for this were too high but this was a bit of a letdown.  It’s perfectly enjoyable — what movie about Beatles songs wouldn’t be? — but even within the internal logic of the film, it doesn’t quite add up.  “Yesterday” posits an alternative universe in which there are no Beatles, aside from one man who remembers them from his original world.  And yet in the new world everything is the same, which doesn’t make sense because the Beatles literally changed modern culture.  Definitely worth seeing but keep your expectations in check.

24. Toy Story 4

After the highly emotional and tear-jerking conclusion of Toy Story 3, no one needed another sequel.  This is fine as a standalone movie but somehow the antic thrills and near escapes don’t have the same emotional resonance as they once did.

25. My Name is Dolemite

Saw it on Netflix instead of the theater and maybe I would have been more captivated if I had seen it on the big screen.  It’s a remarkable story about a dreamer and self-believer who somehow makes a hit comedy record and then a series of cheesy movies that appeal to Black audiences.  A classic American story, in fact.  It’s nice to see Eddie Murphy back too.,

26. El Camino

A sequel to “Breaking Bad” that picks up five minutes after the end of the TV series.  Although released as a movie, this is a lot like “Downton Abbey” in that it’s really a two-hour TV episode masquerading as a feature film.  It’s very well-done but if you are not extremely well-versed in the “Breaking Bad” universe or don’t have a photographic memory of a show that ended six years ago, it can be tough to pick up the nuances.

27. Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love

A documentary about Leonard Cohen and the beautiful woman who was his “muse” and girlfriend when he transformed from a impecunious novelist living on a romantic Greek island to a world famous rock star.  He moved on, she didn’t really.  Leonard comes across as the classic self-absorbed jerk artist that everyone forgives because he’s so darned sexy and talented.  This movie did make me want to move to a Greek island, though.

28. Hustlers

My expectations were a bit too high for this and I ended up being bored.  I was amazed at what great shape Jennifer Lopez is in and I appreciated that the film doesn’t try to make gender or class heroes of these women, who first drug, then steal from guys they pick up at a strip club.  Still, it’s hard to sympathize with anyone in the movie, which implies that everyone is always hustling everyone else.

29. Shazam

Cute. I always enjoy a boy-trapped-in-a-man’s-body movie.  But I forgot almost everything about it an hour after I left the theater.  The only comic book movie I saw this year.

30. Amazing Grace

This is ranked last but it’s not a bad movie.  Back in 1972, Sydney Pollock filmed Aretha Franklin performing at a Baptist church in Los Angeles, but for various technical and legal reasons it wasn’t released until after she died.  Aretha’s great, of course, but I did feel like I was watching somebody’s home movie.

The “Downton Abbey” Movie

The thing to know about the new “Downton Abbey” movie is that if you liked the TV show you’ll like the movie twice as much because it’s twice as long as a regular episode.  Because make no mistake, this is a TV show that just happens to be projected on the screen.  Film purists would gag if they ever saw something like this referred to as “cinema.”

Not that it isn’t fun to see the thing in a movie theater full of fans.  The Dowager Countess’ quips go over so well with an audience predisposed to love them that the laughter persists so long you can’t hear the follow-up dialogue.  Overall, it’s a delightful experience.  It’s like drinking a fine white zinfandel on a warm summer afternoon.  On ice.  And with a couple of squirts of seltzer water.  It just takes the edge off reality without diving too deep.

The first clue that this is not what cinema snobs would call a real movie comes at the very beginning.  Instead of opening credits, we have a ten-minute “previously on” catch up reel, in which the actors playing Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes, appearing as their thespian selves (Jim Carter and Phyllis Logan) provide a brief recap of the six seasons of the show, complete with clips. Can you imagine Mark Hamill and Carrie Fischer doing that at the beginning of “The Return of the Jedi”?  Inconceivable!  This intro is clearly aimed at spouses and others being dragged to the movie, who need to be introduced to the twenty main characters; “Downton” auteur Julian Fellowes don’t want to strain the mental capacity of any viewer who might not immediately grasp who Tom Branson or Isabelle Crawley are.

All credit to Lord Fellowes for recognizing that the series evolved into a high-end, but silly soap opera over the years. This opening recap makes many wry nods to some of the most preposterous plot twists over the years, making it clear we’re all in on the joke.  But nothing in this recap is as funny as the moment when a glimpse of reckless driver and one-time heir Matthew Crawley first appears on screen and there’s an audible sigh of appreciation from the ladies in the audience.

As for the movie itself, the plot revolves around the upcoming visit of the King and Queen, who are taking a tour of the north country and want to use Downton as an AirBnB for one night.  This would be King George V and Queen Mary (the grandparents of the current monarch).  Now, if you’ve ever seen any movies or TV shows about British royalty, you’ll know that these two (especially her) are usually portrayed as formidable, scary, and humorless, but in the “Downtown” film they are basically good sorts who happen to be stuck in a tough but necessary job.

To the extent there’s a theme in the movie, it’s that the rich and titled have a rough life too so we should get off their backs.  Poor Lady Edith, now a marchioness, has to serve on a lot of committees that bore her, and Lady Mary is stressed about keeping the roof repaired.  But that’s nothing next to burden of the king’s daughter, Princess Mary, who is stuck in a loveless marriage that she cannot escape because of the call of duty.  But in case anyone is too dim to understand the benefits of a landed aristocracy,  it’s a servant (!!), Lady Mary’s maid, the sainted Anna, who explains it to her:  Downton is the glue that holds the county together by providing jobs, continuity and a way of life that might otherwise disappear without the Crawleys.  So Mary agrees to suck it up and continue to live her privileged existence.  (Phew, that was close.)

Like many Downton episodes, the movie seesaws between the immensely consequential (i.e., will an assassination attempt be thwarted?) and utterly inconsequential, such as who will cook for and serve Their Majesties, which is barely one level above the Denker-Spratt feud.  And both are treated with the same amount of gravitas.

Part of the problem is that “Downton Abbey” is positioned as an Upstairs/Downstairs-type drama, where the lives of both the staff and the toffs are given equal weight.  But Lord Fellowes’ heart is not really with the downstairs staff.  Their lives could not seem less interesting or important.  Many downstairs characters, like Mr. Bates and Mrs. Baxter, have nothing to do except serve as wallpaper. And the actual plots: Andy the footman is jealous because his fiancee is ogling a handsome boiler repair man; someone is pilfering nick nacks; Barrow gets his nose out of joint because Carson comes back to manage the Royal Visit; the royal staff is overbearing.  Wow, whose fertile imagination dreamed up all these fascinating stories?

Another sign that the deck is stacked in favor of the aristocracy is the character of the anti-Monarchists.  One’s an assassin, another is a thieving servant, and then there’s the nitwit Daisy, whose class consciousness is so jumbled that says she will cook for the aristocrats but declares she won’t cook for their servants.  Way to show solidarity!  In fact, the bitterest battles are between the Downton and Royal servants, who squabble among themselves over who gets the honor of changing the royal bed linen. (And as the New York Times noted in its review, the Downton servants are so committed to their betters that they fight bitterly to deny themselves a well-earned day off when the royal staff arrive.

And returning  to the King and Queen for a moment, they have a remarkable common touch that is completely a-historical.  He worries about his son, the Prince of Wales (as well he should, given that said prince will eventually marry Mrs. Simpson and abdicate).  She worries about her daughter in her loveless marriage.  They show remarkable sensitivity to the needs of Edith and her husband. They seem to know all the personal gossip about the peers of the realm. And at the ball, the King even walks up to Tom Branson to thank him for his services to the crown, which seems highly irregular.  I’m pretty sure that when His Majesty wants to talk to a commoner at a public event he gets a flunky to fetch him and doesn’t just go striding over to chat him up.

Anyway, there’s a lot more of this nonsense during the two-hour run time.  If you like nostalgia, the British nobility, soap operas, and beautiful clothes, this movie is for you.  And to make an industry-wide observation, what’s interesting about this situation is that turning a TV show into a movie is the antithesis of the Netflixication of entertainment, in which everything except blockbusters is aimed at home entertainment.  This is a film event to get fans off their couches to congregate in front of a big screen like they’ve been doing for over a hundred years.  Whether this will start a trend is unclear.  There’s a subtle hint, though, that this might be the beginning of a “Downton” series.  I assume all that will depend on the box office.  So if you want to see more “Downton” movies, be sure to turn out.

Stray Thoughts:

— To be fair, there is one personally significant story thread involving a servant — Thomas’ first experience at a gay hang-out — but even that has an air of unbelievability.  On the very night the King and Queen visit, Thomas takes off with a member of the King’s staff (who has remarkable gaydar — he recognizes Thomas as a kindred spirit with one glance).  Thomas is surprised to learn that there is not only a gay bar in Downton (or was it York?  Not clear) but an underground gay nightclub too. Not that anyone ever uses the words “gay,” “homosexual,” or “queer.” Thomas’ euphemism is “men like me.”  I think we’re supposed to assume that Thomas and the staffer have sex but it’s only gently implied with the decorum of 1940’s Hollywood censor.  As is the case in many “Downton” plots, Lord Fellowes wants to have his cake and eat it too:  he introduces a contemporary theme to get the credit for being woke but hides it under layers of gauze to avoid offending the older, sensitive members of the audience who didn’t sign up for, you know, actual man-on-man action beyond one chaste kiss, which seems to be the sole reason for the film’s PG rating.

— I have a feeling that Julian Fellowes believes that if they showed what life was really like back then, modern audiences would be repelled.  For example, I find it very hard to believe that the dinner with the King and Queen would be as informal as presented here.  There are only three footmen serving the dinner and everyone looks pretty relaxed and convivial.  Compare that to a regular family dinner from the original “Brideshead Revisited,” which was made only 40 years after the period in question and is much more likely to be historically accurate (see video below, starting at 0:50). For half as many guests the “brideshead” family has twice as many footmen and the whole atmosphere is stiff and formal.  No sane person would want to live like that today, yet that’s how the upper classes conducted themselves less than a century ago.

— I know we’re supposed to be sympathetic to Tom Branson, but boy, is he a guy who keeps failing upward.  He’s a crypto-socialist who enjoys the fruits of his in-law’s largesse, despite having no apparent occupation (and whatever happened to his auto partnership with Henry Talbot?)  He abandoned his wife in Ireland when the Irish police were after him; he allowed himself to get seduced by an avaricious maid, creating a blackmail scheme that Mrs. Hughes had to extract him from.  And yet somehow he manages to sniff out an heiress before anyone else does and it looks like he’ll soon have his own unearned fortune to complain about if the final scenes are any indication.

— Why is Matthew Goode even in this movie?  His Henry Talbot shows up for the very last scenes, having raced back from the USA to attend the King’s visit.  I can only assume that Goode was filming another movie and could only be spared for a day’s worth of shooting.

— There was one nice subtle touch about the relationship between the peers and the monarchy: Lord Grantham is unimpressed by the news that the King is coming for a visit.  “Oh him?” his shrug implies.  The villagers are losing they minds but Robert Crawley probably remembers when George V was just one of Queen Victoria’s prat grandsons.

— “Downtown” usually likes to spoon feed the plotlines but I was completely confused about Lady Maud Bagshaw, who is apparently both the Queen’s BFF and the Dowager Countess’s cousin.  I think I figured it out in the end but it was only after piecing together several elliptical and muffled lines of dialogue.

— Speaking of Lady Bagshaw, she is played by Imelda Staunton, who is the wife of the actor who plays Mr. Carson — the aforementioned Jim Carter (see below).  She’s also better known as Delores Umbridge in the “Harry Potter” movies.

— Julian Fellowes, who likes to sprinkle some historical references into his stories, is a little stingy with the broader historical context.  Except for the presence of cars, you get the impression that the movie could be set anytime between 1870 and 1930.   But there is one line to date it: the King asks the Dowager Countess about the region’s reaction to the recent general strike.    This happened in 1926, when the coal miners went on strike and much of the rest of the country also refused to work in sympathy with them.  The Dowager Countess’s response is classic — all she knows is that her maid was “curt” for few days — demonstrating once again how out of it she is.

— Completely preposterous?  The idea that Tom Branson could stumble across the King’s daughter, the Princess Mary, on a bench and not recognize her.  Then, as now, and even without social media, the Royal Family were the biggest celebrities in the realm.

And don’t forget — Machiavelli is frequently underrated!

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Beatles Movies

“Yesterday,” the fantasy movie that imagines a world in which only one person remembers the Beatles music, goes into wide release today and I can’t wait.  No matter how lame the film itself turns out to be, any movie with a lot of Beatles songs can’t be half-bad.  The Beatles themselves only made four or five movies (depending on how you count “Yellow Submarine”) and two of them — “Help” and “Magical Mystery Tour” are just not good.  Still the boys from Liverpool have inspired a whole sub-genre of films, of which the following ten are my favorites:

1.  A Hard Day’s Night

The first and still the best.  I saw it when it first came out in 1964 thought it was a romp but as I’ve rewatched it over the years I’ve come to believe it’s the best rock and roll movie ever made; which is remarkable because this was just supposed to be a cheap exploitation movie.  The Beatles themselves are witty and exuberant, still enjoying their monstrous fame.  But you begin to see how closed-in and claustrophobic their lives have become, crammed onto trains, cars, dressing rooms, and narrow halls.  Then suddenly, when they’ve had enough, they burst out, race down a fire escape, and run wild to “Can’t Buy Me Love.”  An exhilarating scene.

2,  Concert for George

https://vimeo.com/254978316

It’s a mystery that George, the third-ranking Beatle, should have been the one with the best post-Beatle career and turned out by far to have been the “deepest” one of the whole group.  He explored the harder questions of life with eyes wide open and had a remarkable capacity for friendship.  When he died too early at age 58, his friends (and what a group of friends: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Billy Preston, Ravi Shankar, and Monty Python) celebrated his life with a concert that still moves me every time I watch it, especially any number in which his look-alike son Dhani participates.

3.  Across the Universe

This is a movie that shouldn’t work, but somehow does solely through the power of the Beatles music.  The film purports to depict the culture’s transformation of the Sixties, including the flower power movement, the Vietnam War, urban riots, elite campus privilege, Weathermen-style violence.  The main characters all take their names from Beatles songs — Jude, Prudence, Jo-Jo, Max, Sadie and Lucy — and the full Beatles catalog gets a good work-out.  It’s all a little mind-blowing.

4. How the Beatles Changed the World

The world broke in two in 1964 — there were people who came to maturity before the Beatles and those who came after them, and their sensibilities could not have been more different.  This is a fairly recent documentary about how the Beatles influenced youth culture and created the way we look, talk, dress, think, and act today.

5.  George Harrison: Living in the Material World

A Martin Scorcese documentary that is a good companion piece to “The Concert for George.”   Given George’s wide range of artistic and spiritual interests it’s not surprising that he inspires the most thoughtful commentary.

6.  Backbeat

The teenage Beatles transformed themselves into an electrifying rock and roll band when they went off to play the seedy clubs in Hamburg.  This is that story, framed through the lens of a love triage among John Lennon, the fifth Beatle Stu Sutcliffe, and Stu’s German girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr. No classic Beatles songs, just the rock and roll covers they performed during this time.

7.  Yellow Submarine

A trippy cartoon feature once experienced most fully by stoned teens is now marketed as a multi-generational family movie.  This is best seen in the theaters or on a big-screen TV because the animation is dazzling.

8.  Nowhere Boy

A dramatization of John Lennon’s teen years, particularly his fraught relationship with the mother who abandoned him and the aunt who raised him.  The sub-plot is the creation of the Beatles themselves, including the famous meeting with Paul and the recruiting of George.

9.  John and Yoko: Above Us Only Sky

When John and Yoko sat down to record the “Imagine” album they brought along a camera crew to document their every move.  This narcissistic strategy resulted in a surprisingly compelling window into early Seventies life.  There they are, smoking constantly, lying around their pig-sty bedroom, or eating greasy food at the communal breakfast table.  But it’s undeniably fascinating to watch the songs on this album evolve over the course of the recording session.

10.  Let It Be

https://vimeo.com/294268030

This documentary about the making of the “Let It Be” album is a little hard to follow given the lack of a narrator.  It’s also painful to watch how far apart these four former mates have grown.  They barely speak to each other except when they can’t avoid it.  And the constant presence of Yoko in the recording study casts a giant pall over the whole enterprise. But the movie is redeemed by the great ending, when they play together live for one last time on the roof of their recording studio in the middle of London.

A Running Diary of the 2019 Academy Awards

Prelude:  I love the movies and I love being judgmental so the Academy Awards is right up my alley.  I have seen more Oscar telecasts than Super Bowls, although until the emergence of Tom Brady, both events were usually episodes in futility.  In fact my first Oscar memory is one of disappointment, when Julie Andrews (“The Sound of Music”) lost Best Actress to Julie Christie (“Darling” — a movie I still have never seen.)

But this year has stretched my patience.  Like all other legitimate movie fans I opposed the Academy’s crazy plans to offer a “Most Popular Movie” Oscar and to eliminate the broadcast of four movie awards, including Best Cinematographer.  But what really chapped me was the Kevin Hart fiasco, in which he was unceremoniously dumped as host because of some old tweets that seemed “edgy” five years ago but in retrospect seem insensitive today.  And what a surprise — after the Academy buckled in the face of Twitter, no one else wanted to host, so we now have an unchaperoned ceremony.  That’s bad because one of the fun things about the event is complaining about the host.  So we’re already off to a bad start this year.

Red Carpet:  I really don’t want to watch this but my wife hops on Twitter to see what the dresses look like.  Marie Kondo looks cute but what is she doing there?  Spike Lee is in a purple tux but that’s not the weirdest thing.  Here’s some guy is a tux gown.   He’s named Billy Porter and he’s actually trending on Twitter. How gender-bending.

I look at Twitter myself and wait, there’s Joe Alwyn, but without Taylor Swift?  Meanwhile my wife yells from the computer room: “Wait until you see what Glenn Close has on.”  Me from my laptop: “She LOOKS like Oscar!”

By now, I am starting to get nervous that my favorite — “Roma” — might not win because of the new preferential ballot counting method, instead of the straight up and down method in which the winner is the one who gets the most votes (A description of preferential voting is linked here.)  Great. Why not? Let something else win — my first choice rarely does get the Oscar.  Last year’s win by “The Shape of Water” over “Dunkirk” was a travesty, for example.

7:10 — We break from social media to watch a “Modern Family” recording of an episode that ran when we were away last week.  It has a Super Bowl theme?  Haven’t we moved past that?

7:45.  Back to the red carpet just in time for an interview with Bradley Cooper.  Awkward.  The interviewer praises him to the sky but he still looks like he’s entering a pain palace.  He knows he’s a dead man walking.

7:50: Someone’s delivering Oscar predictions on Best Actress.  Says it’s definitely Glenn Close. Thanks. Why should we watch now?

7:55: There are a lot of tweets about Lady Gaga, who looks great.  Reflecting on it, I think she’s getting screwed this year.  Her performance really was the best this year.  And while we’re at it, Bradley Cooper deserved better too.

8:00:  With no host who is the first face we will see?  Finding out now.  And its ….. Queen!!!  “We Will Rock You.” Up goes the volume on the TV.  “We are the Champions” with Adam Lambert as front man.  OK, whatever. The critics have been crapping on this movie all year but this opening will probably be the high point of the night.

8:04: First montage.  Great scenes of this year’s movies.

8:06:  Three “Not hosts,” Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph, come out and do a hilarious bit.  Why weren’t they the hosts?  They must have turned it down. A random line from Maya Rudolph: “Just a quick update, in case you’re confused. There is no host tonight, no popular Oscar category, and Mexico is not paying for the wall.” (Watch the video below for the whole thing):

8:08: Here’s the award for supporting actress, with an awkward reminder that Emma Stone performed in something that looked a lot like blackface.  Regina King wins and Chris Evans helps her make it up the stairs when her dress gets stuck. Is that sexist or “man-helping” or any of the other presumptuous things that men do to “rescue” women?  In any event, she delivers a tearful and moving tribute to James Baldwin, God and her mother.

8:14: Here comes the royalty.  Jason Momoa, who played the Dothraki Khal, and Helen Mirren, who played Queen Elizabeth.  I can’t imagine there will be a weirder combo tonight but both are pretty in pink.   They are presenting for Best Documentary and I’m still outraged that the Mr. Rogers doc didn’t get nominated.  I was assuming the political favorite  “RGB” would win but it’s “Free Solo.”  And here’s the first bleep of the night when the winners come to the stage and exclaim “Oh shit.”  “Free Solo” is about a guy climbing El Capitan in Yosemite without a rope so it was a potential snuff film.  I passed on this. And here’s more crying.

8:23: Who the heck is is this introducing the “Vice” montage?

8:25:  Time for best make-up and the winner is “Vice.”  This is probably the high point tonight for this movie and the acceptance speech is terrible, with three women tag teaming and fumbling over themselves as they try to share the spotlight.  Couldn’t they practice?  It wasn’t exactly a surprise that they’d win for making Christian Bale look like Dick Cheney.

8:28:  Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry are dressed in parody 15th Century British costumes accessorized with bunny puppets.  Ha Ha. This is for costume design.  It should be “Black Panther” and it is.  Standing ovation.  I assume they know this is one of their few wins so they go for the African Royalty theme hard.

8:38:    Production design also to “Black Panther.”  Another standing ovation.

8:42:  Here’s Tyler Perry.  Isn’t he the Madea guy?  Why is her announcing Best Cinematography?  As it should be, the winner is Alphonso Cuaron for “Roma.”  Cuaron is up for a number of awards so he keeps his speech short and doesn’t blow his whole wad on his first trip to the stage.

8:46:  A pretty actress comes out to introduce the song from “RGB.”  She says “Khaleesi has nothing on” Ruth Bader Ginsburg and that “if you want to borrow the dragons let me know.”  Hey, wait a minute, is this Daenerys Targaryen?  I wonder if she chatted with Jason Mamoa backstage? Jennifer Hudson then becomes the second American Idol star to sing tonight.

8:54:  Serena Williams emerges to present the Best Picture montage for “A Star is Born.”  I guess that makes sense?  Although I wonder if she’d give up her career if her husband became an alcoholic like Ally Maine was willing to do.  That part of the movie is not the empowerment message Serena is pushing tonight.

8:54: Sound editing. “First Man” gets screwed and not for the first time.  “Bohemian Rhapsody wins.”  True, there was A LOT of sound in that movie but it’s mostly based on pre-recorded songs so I don’t really see the logic.   Meanwhile, there’s a shot of Rami Malek, who seems wound up tighter than Freddy Mercury himself.

8:58: Sound Mixing: This really really should be “First Man” but it’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” again. No no no.

9:03: Queen Latifah comes out to introduce “The Favourite” montage.  Already there have been many many references to queens and to Queen tonight so I wonder if she was asked to do this because she calls herself one.  In any event she takes an extremely subtle dig at the current president by describing the court of Queen Anne in a way that sounds a lot like the current White House.

9:04: Best Foreign Language film goes to “Roma,” of course, and here’s Cuaron again, getting a little more eloquent. “No walls or barriers can divide us.”  “Roma” is the first movie from Mexico to win foreign language.  Camera shots of his kids.  Cute.

9:08:  Keegan-Michael Key descends from the ceiling holding umbrella.  Gee, I wonder what he will introduce? Surprise!  It’s the song from Mary Poppins performed by Bette Midler.  Her skin is smoother and her bosom bigger than it was when I bought “The Divine Miss M” album in college 45 years ago.  The song itself — “Where The Lost Things Go — is sweet but somewhat forgettable. I’m noticing that they are performing shortened versions of the songs to save time.  Another standing ovation — I’m going to stop mentioning them because they come as frequently as they do at the State of the Union.  My wife says she would have loved it if Bette had broken into a rendition of “Hello Dolly.”  Yes!  BTW, this performance is followed by a Samsung ad that uses “Que Sera Sera” as its background track.  That song comes from Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” and is a reminder of a time when the movies routinely produced great songs.

9:16: Trevor Noah, who is actually African, comes onstage to introduce the “Black Panther” montage.  He’s pretty funny on the overuse of the “Wokana Forever” salute.

9:16:  Michael Keaton announces the Best Editing award, which goes to “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  This is hardly deserved except that the actual shooting of the movie became a disaster when the pedophile director was removed half-way through production, so simply pulling together a coherent movie from that mess is an achievement.  The winner turns out to be American — I think this is the first white American man — to win anything.

9:20: Daniel Craig and Charlize Theron are here.  She doesn’t look particularly sexy in that gown. They are announcing Best Supporting Actor.  Adam Driver deserves it but I bet even he hopes his name isn’t called because that would mean a white guy would have won one of the few awards for “BlackkKlansman.” Sam Elliott also deserves to win for making every straight guy cry during the driveway scene in “A Star is Born.”  But the winner is Mahershala Ali again, which is also not a bad choice.  I’m not sure what that hat is all about, though.  If his head is cold maybe he should grow his hair back. Sweetly, he dedicates the Oscar to his grandmother, “who’s been in my ear my whole life.”

9:28: Laura Dern arrives to pay tribute to the Academy’s museum of movies in Hollywood.  I’m really excited to visit, until I realize that it’s not even open yet.  Given how they are squeezing people for time all night, I think we could have waited another year to see this self-loving video.

9:29: It’s time to announce Best Animated feature and here’s Pharrell Williams in short pants quoting First Corinthians (“When I was a child, I spoke as a child” etc)  This sets up the false premise that these are kids movies, when they have multi-generational appeal.  “Spider-man: Into The Spiderverse” is the very deserving winner, and up come two white dudes talking about diversity.  Does every speech tonight have to be about some bigger issue?

9:32:  I hated “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” especially the scene where title character sings “When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings,” but when the composers perform it now as a traditional Country & Western song, it resonates a lot better than it did in the movie.

9:40:  Here are Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey:  They look pretty old but sound just like their “Wayne’s World” characters.  It is entirely appropriate that they introduce the “Bohemian Rhapsody” montage since they did so much to keep Queen relevant when the band went out of style in the 1990s.  And you know what? Watching this montage makes me mist up a little.  The film definitely has a crude emotional power.

9:42: Awkwafina and John Mulaney come out to introduce a couple of short film categories and are both very funny.  It’s occurring to me that the show doesn’t really need a host if they can string together some funny presenters.  All the animated shorts revolve around heart-breaking stories of parents missing their kids when they grow up.  Sniff.  The winner is “Bao,” the creepy cannibal-themed short that was shown before “Incredibles 2.”

9:46:  Awkwafina and Mulaney are back to announce short documentary.  All the nominees are incredibly depressing and you have to wonder if two hilarious comedians are the best presenters for this.  Maybe Sir Patrick Stewart would have been better. Anyway, the winner is “Period. End Of Sentence.”  I never knew there was such an issue as “menstrual equality,” but my consciousness is now raised.  This is a good reason not to shunt the short films into a different awards show — every year the winner of this category has a worthy cause to promote.  (In this case it’s “A period should end a sentence not a girl’s education.”)

9:54:  A couple of guys speaking a lot of Spanish come on to introduce the “Roma” montage.  One of them is a chef so the introduction is laden with culinary references:  “People of the world, each person’s lives is a recipe all on its own with different measures of joy and sadness. Struggle and success. Love and loss. The results are unique every time, even though all the ingredients are universal.”  It’s sweet and the montage is a good reminder of how emotional the movie ultimately turns out to be.

9:56: Paul Rudd and Sarah Paulson are here to present “Best Visual Effects.”  This really, really REALLY should be “First Man” and it is. Phew! There’s some grumbling on Twitter that this should go to a superhero movie but it’s a lot harder to show what it was actually like to be in a space capsule than it is to CGI the crap out of everything and create a fake world.

9:59: Here’s the moment everyone is waiting for. There isn’t even an introduction — just music playing when Lady Gaga and Bradly Cooper walk up the steps to sing “Shallow.”  Cooper is performing as himself, i.e., not as Jackson Maine, so he uses his real voice, not that deep bass from the movie.  The performance is great, of course, but deeply unsettling since they are acting like real lovers, with soulful stares and the whole nine yards.  When Gaga hits the high notes, it’s a thrill but my wife points out that her throat is really straining against that $30 million Tiffany necklace.  The song ends on an extreme close-up and thanks to my giant hi-def TV I can see every pore and wrinkle.  There’s a huge standing ovation at the end but what’s the real relationship between these two?  Twitter predicts that “Bradley Cooper is 100% sleeping on the sofa tonight.”

Hilariously, Dave Itzkoff then posts this photo on Twitter (thanks to my wife for sharing):

10:07:  After all the Gaga/Cooper action I am too discombobulated to notice what’s next.  Apparently it’s live action short.  The winner is “Skin,” which I never heard of, but which is described on the Internet thusly: “In a small supermarket in a blue-collar town, a black man smiles at a white boy across the checkout aisle. This innocuous moment forces racial tensions to the breaking point and sends two gangs into a ruthless war.” This sounds depressing, but the winners are as exuberant as any Oscar winner ever.  Maybe just short of James Cameron shouting “I’m on top of the world”

Do these people look like they just produced a movie about racism and violence?

10:09:  Samuel L Jackson comes on stage to tell Spike Lee that the Knicks just won. And also to announce Original Screenplay.  Weirdly, he’s giggling.  In any event, the winner, announced by a very sour-looking Samuel L Jackson, is  “Green Book.”  Hmm. This is a very problematic win because the real-life family of a main character — the pianist Don Shirley — objects strenuously to how he was depicted in the movie.    In any event Peter Farrelly calls out the entire state of Rhode Island, which delights my wife, who’s from there.

10:14:  Jackson then awards the Best Adapted Screenplay to Spike Lee, who literally jumps into his arms.  (I note for the record that for all the guff that “Green Book” received for bending the truth, no one took issue with the many factual liberties in the BlackkKlansman script.)  Spike starts the speech vaguely incoherently and I first think he’s going off on a numerology tangent but it’s actually about how about slavery was introduced in Virginia 400 years years ago this year. My heart sinks when I see he’s reading from THREE pages of yellow legal paper but somehow he condenses it with the most overtly political remarks of the night.  “The 2020 presidential election is around the corner. Let’s all mobilize, let’s all be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love versus hate. Let’s do the right thing!”  This eventually draws a Twitter response from the President (sigh.)  Having said that, I do appreciate that there has been an effort tonight to keep the political commentary to a minimum.  Maybe the Academy has woken up to the idea that half of America hates award shows because they feel insulted all the way through.

10:22:  The Oscar for best original score goes to “Black Panther” and wait, the winner is a white guy?  For “Black Panther”?  I’m jealous of the luxuriantly flowing locks but maybe this would have been the right time for a man bun?  And then we learn that this person is a college buddy of Ryan Coogler’s.  Huh.

10:25:  Wearing a great gown, Constance Wu announces the least surprising thing of the night: that the Best Original Song went to “Shallow.”  Lady Gaga is crying and can barely make it up the stairs because she’s so overcome with emotion.  “I worked hard for a long time.  It’s not about winning, it’s about not giving up.”   When she’s done they basically carry her off the stage.

10:29: Here comes the death montage.  I guess this means we’re not going to get the usual special collection of clips illustrating how much movies have meant to us over the years.  To make up for that, the roster of the recently departed seems longer than usual.  They even honor a publicist, which makes me happy — in a somber way of course.  There’s Burt Reynolds, Penny Marshall, William Goldman and Tab Hunter.  Who’s left to get the closing position?  It’s Albert Finney?  Really?!   In any event, this montage provides the most breathing room we’ve had all night.  The presenters have raced through the awards and there’s been no fat in this show.  But I kind of miss the old days, when Ellen brought in pizza for all the stars.  It was dumb but humanizing and fun.  BTW, what they should have done, death-wise, is show a montage for the most important person who died last year — Stan Lee.  His superheros are what keep the studios afloat these days.

10:33: And then there’s a 60-second Hennessey ad produced by Ridley Scott.  Scott, of course, created the iconic 1984 Apple Super Bowl ad and maybe the drinks-maker thought lightning would strike twice?  Nope.  I have no idea what I’m watching.  Are they advertising chocolate brandy?

10:39:  Barbra Streisand comes out by herself to introduce the “BlackkKlansman”  montage.  Of course she makes it all about her.  She calls it Spike Lee’s masterpiece, which it’s not, and says it tells a story that is just as relevant today, which is extremely debatable.

10:42: Gary Oldman and Allison Janney present the Best Actor to Rami Malek. I would have given this to Bradley Cooper but am not upset by the outcome.  Rami’s speech is completely under control and pretty eloquent.  He compares himself to Freddy Mercury in that he was also the son of immigrants who struggled with his identity.  Then he thanks his girlfriend (who, interestingly, played Freddy Mercury’s “girlfriend” — that’s weird).  So maybe he didn’t struggle with his identity quite as much as Freddy Mercury did.  In any event, Twitter is quick to announce that he’s the first actor of Arabic descent to win an Oscar, although I am also quick to note in response that Omar Sharif — also Egyptian and a major movie star in the 1960s — was nominated for “Lawrence of Arabia.” So let’s not overdo this identity stuff.

10:53: I am very surprised to see Congressman John Lewis introducing “Green Book.” This movie has been under attack all awards season for telling the story of 1960’s racial segregation through the eyes of a white driver.  To have John Lewis out there saying that that “Green Book” accurately captured that period of American history (“It’s seared into my memory”) is really pulling out the big guns.  Here’s my position on “Green Book”: Peter Farrelly probably thought he was doing everyone a favor by resurrecting the memory of Don Shirley and telling a feel-good story about how people can change and grow.  If Farrelly were black there  wouldn’t be any question about this movie.  I find the whole question about cultural appropriation and who “owns” history  really tiresome.  On the other hand, I think this is just a B+ movie.  It’s fine, but pretty old-fashioned and predictable, so although I understand the appeal, it’s not my favorite.

10:56: Time for Glenn Close’s coronation.  Myself, I would have voted for Lady Gaga.  I didn’t see “The Wife” but from what I can tell, Glenn Close does a lot of scenery-chewing ACTING.  Clearly this is going to be her make-up award for 40 years of being shut out.  So I’m as shocked as anyone when it’s Olivia Colman.  What a boon for Netflix since she is going to be the star of “The Crown” for the next two seasons.  Twitter jokes:  Glenn Close but no cigar. Obviously everyone else is shocked too, including Colman.  They sat her out in Siberia, not in the front row like Glenn Close, so it takes her a long time to make it to the stage.  Her speech is hilarious and touching. She even apologizes to Glenn Close and shrieks in delight when she notices Lady Gaga.  Next to the “Shallow” performance this is the high point of the night.

11:06: Best Director goes to Alphonso Cuaron, who makes the first reference of the night to Netflix.  This is the fourth time Cuaron came to the stage tonight and he certainly deserved this win.  “Roma” is definitely a masterpiece that people will be watching forever.

11:13:  Here’s Julia Roberts, still looking great, to announce Best Picture. When she says the dreaded works “Green Book,” I screamed out loud and almost fell on the floor.  I haven’t been so shocked since since Malcolm Butler intercepted a Seahawks pass to win the Super Bowl four years ago (that night I actually did fall on the floor from that same chair I’m sitting in now.) This is one of the worst Oscar wins in Academy Awards history and I have to think it was Hollywood veterans pushing back against all the politically correct criticism of the movie.  Peter Farrelly comes back on stage to thank a lot of people, including Stephen Spielberg, who must be thinking, “hey, leave me out of this.”  Twitter is ablaze with jokes about how they hope there was a “LaLa Land/Moonlight” type of mistake, but no luck.  My mood is enhanced only by the cries of pain from progressive Twitter, who haven’t been so surprised since the 2016 election.  When will they learn that cultural bullying creates a backlash?

11:17: Final remarks from Julia Roberts: “Thanks to Bradley Cooper’s mother and my children.”  Amen.

Some final thoughts:

The lack of a host wasn’t really a problem but the show did feel rushed.  I’d like to know how much time is devoted to commercials, which is the real reason the show has gotten so long.

The Academy obviously tried hard to overcome its reputation of being stodgy old coots.  They added a lot new members of color and XX chromosome and had diverse presenters everywhere.  If “Roma” had won, Hollywood would have been patting itself on the back for successfully navigating to a new generation of multi-cultural film-makers.  Having “Green Book” beat “BlackkKlansman,” “Black Panther,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and Roma” blew that out of the water.  I guess we’ll have to wait another year for New Hollywood to put Old Hollywood out to pasture.

It’s possible that “Roma’s” real problem, in addition to being black and white and in Spanish, is that it’s a Netflix movie.  Hollywood hates and fears Netflix, which is putting TV out of business and now apparently coming for film.  Of course the company also creates many many jobs for Hollywood, so you’d expect the fear to be tempered somewhat with gratitude.  But if Netflix becomes a major force in motion picture production it could change the whole way people interact with film.  That’s scary and maybe the Academy is reacting to that.  Or maybe they just have bad taste, which has been a problem for 90 years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eleven Hot Takes On “Mary Poppins Returns”

In the fall of 1964 my mother took my sister and me to see “Mary Poppins” at the new General Cinemas duplex in the Brockton (MA) Westgate Mall.  More than 54 years later she took me and my wife to see “Mary Poppins Returns” at the Regal Theaters in the Mashpee (MA) commons mall.  Like many Baby Boomers I was anxious to re-experience the Poppins magic.  The verdict?  I’d give it a strong “pretty good” with these specific observations:

1. The real villain of the movie is — Michael Banks! It’s so depressing that the cute   optimistic Michael Banks of the original MP has grown into the broken, incompetent, strangely-mustachioed Michael Banks of MP Returns.   Played by the creepy Ben Wishaw, who just won a Golden Globe as Jeremy Thorpe’s vengeful lover in “A Very British Scandal,” Michael is a non-entity, who, when he’s not producing lousy pen and ink sketches on the back of valuable stock certificates, is forgetting to pay the bills and sending off his kids to beg for food.  There’s no sign that he has any artistic talent yet he wasted many prime career-building years and is now stuck as a teller.  Snap out of it man!  Support your family!

2. This is not to let The Fidelity Fiduciary Bank off the hook, however.  It is the job of the bank to make money for its shareholders but its business model seems simply quite atrocious.  As we learned during the financial collapse of 2008, the last thing a bank wants to do is repossess a house in a depressed real estate — especially when the buyer is willing to keep paying back the loan.  That makes the balance sheet look bad.  And also, what kind of interest rates are they paying when an invested tuppence can grow large enough to pay off a house loan in 25 years?  I understand the magic of compounding interest, but I just did the calculations, and to get one dollar to grow to $5,000 in 25 years you’d need a 35% interest rate.

3. I can’t believe I’m writing this but I think Emily Blunt is a “better” Mary Poppins than Julie Andrews.  Not a better singer obviously, but warmer, more mischievous and just more real (I don’t believe for a second that the very pretty, very hoity-toity Julie Andrews is a nanny.)

4. Lin-Manuel Miranda tries too hard to be likable.  Stop smiling so much!  You’re great as Alexander Hamilton, the ambitious, vain, angry, young immigrant.  You’re not a Dick Van Dyke clone.

Are there people who find this charming?

5. And that budding romance with Jane Banks?  Forget it.  What are the chances that a banker’s daughter will find love in the arms of a working class lamplighter?

6. Speaking of Jane Banks, I just discovered that Emily Mortimer is the daughter of John Mortimer, the author of the Rumpole of the Bailey books and the screenwriter for “Brideshead Revisited.” Huh.

7. The music sucks.  Everyone says this so it’s not exactly a “hot” take.  Most of my fondness for the original “Mary Poppins,” isn’t for the movie itself but for the sound track, which, as a ten-year-old, I played endlessly on our hi-fi.  But as I sit here now, I literally cannot remember one song from “MP Returns.”

8. Meryl Streep is not that great.  There, I said it.  She’s fine in accent-related dramas but in comedies, forget it, and she’s not funny as the orange-mop-wearing Cousin Who’s-It.  In fact, that whole upside-down sequence is a drag.

9. Thank God for Dick Van Dyke.  Who didn’t choke up when he came on screen or smile in admiration as he danced?  An animal — that’s who.

10.  Was that final balloon song written with Julie Andrews in mind?  I hope Disney was never dumb enough to think Julie Andrews should come back and play a balloon lady at the end.  Again, she’s too upper-crust for that and in any event I want to remember her as her younger self in “Mary Poppins.”  As it was, Angela Lansbury is another welcome reminder of previous Disney greatness (“Beauty and the Beast” and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”).  The woman has had quite a career, which stretches back to 1944’s “Gaslight,” (from whence the term “gaslighting” originates, btw.)

11. As in the original, it’s Michael and Jane Banks who need rescuing.  In the original movie, the brother and sister are two naughty children who have been allowed to run wild because the parents are so neglectful (Mom is more interested in being a suffragette and Dad in being a banker).  In “MP Returns” the kids are high-spirited but not misbehaved.  They don’t even have a nanny and have to fend for themselves because dad is so useless (see point 1 above).   So Mary Poppins’ job is to fix Michael and fix up Jane (and poor Jane, her subplot is an after-thought to an after-thought.) The kids are all right.

The 2018 Movie List

I’ve read that 2018 was a good year for the movie industry, fueled by superhero movies (Black Panther and Aquaman), remakes (A Star Is Born), sequels (Mary Poppins Returns, Jurassic World), and animated movies (The Incredibles 2 and Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse).  There was another trend this year that wasn’t quite as pernicious but still hinted at a lack of imagination — movies that were based (sometimes very loosely) on “real” events: The Death of Stalin, The Favourite, The Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody, BlackkKalnsman, Can You Ever Forgive Me, and First Man.

So this was not the biggest year for original story-telling.  And yet there were plenty of good things to watch.  I made a point of seeing Roma on the big screen even though it was free on Netflix — and I’m glad I did.  That’s a movie that benefits from the kind of  concentration that is difficult at home.  And I was delighted by the documentaries I saw this year (Won’t You Be My Neighbor and Three Identical Strangers) as well as some of the animated movies, including The Isle of Dogs and the new Spider-Man.

So from a content perspective, I thought it was a pretty good year, with a lot to choose from.  I didn’t get to see everything, having, you know, a life, but among the movies I did see, here are my favorites, ranked down to my least favorites.

1. Roma

Sometimes the most deliberately artsy movies really are the best ones.  Roma teeters on the brink of parodying 1950’s neo-realism mashed up with early Ingmar Bergman but through its steady accumulation of details, slowly builds into a compelling portrait of a 1970-era Mexican housekeeper.  The last 45 minutes — starting with deadly a street riot though a beach rescue — are ten times more gripping than anything in any superhero movie this year.

2. The Death of Stalin

Dark, dark, VERY dark satire on the unlamented death of Joseph Stalin, brought to you by the people who produce “Veep.”  It’s a brutally hilarious depiction of the horrors of communism that George Orwell would have appreciated.  The functionaries vying for power after Stalin’s death are mostly ridiculous idiots, which is the way lackeys to evil should be remembered.

3. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

This gentle, fond documentary about Mr. Rogers has grown men weeping silently in their seats.  Somehow the movie manages to evoke the fear and confusion that all of us suppressed from our early childhoods and makes us wish we had a Mr. Rogers to explain life to us back then.  The biggest shock at the Academy Awards this year is that this was not nominated for anything.

4. Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse

I was literally shocked at how much I liked this movie.  Having seen three previous Spider-Man origin stories I went reluctantly to a fourth only to experience the most startlingly original movie of the year.  It’s funny, thought-provoking, touching, exciting and beautiful.

5. Bohemian Rhapsody

I was also surprised that I liked Bohemian Rhapsody as much as I did since I have never gone out of my way to listen to any Queen song.  But it’s a tribute to the band’s ability to implant their music so deeply in your limbic system that you respond viscerally when you hear it again.  I even forgave the many lapses from the historical record.  Oh, and Rami Malek is fantastic as Freddy Mercury.

6. First Man

As someone who remembers all the major events of the early space program I was captivated by the behind-the-scenes account and amazed at the courage it took to hurtle through space in what was basically a tin can on top of a bomb.  Fascinating insights into the emotionally repressed Neil Armstrong.  Regrettably, Ryan Gosling bungled the PR for the movie by implying the NASA achievements weren’t an American success, which mired the film in controversy before it even came out.  It should have been seen by more people.

7. A Star is Born

The scene where Lady Gaga comes on stage to sing “Shallow” is one of the great cheesy cinematic highlights of the year.  And I do like all the acting performances and most of the music.  Having seen an earlier version, though, (the one with Judy Garland), I couldn’t really enjoy it knowing from the very beginning that we were going to go through a gut-wrenching conclusion.

8. They Shall Not Grow Old

Peter Jackson’s great documentary on what it was like for the average British soldier to serve on the Western Front contains the greatest dissolve from black and white to color since the Wizard of Oz.  The transformation of ancient herky-jerky WWI footage into smooth-running color is a technical triumph that actually does bring these soldiers back to life.  They seem as real to us now as they would have been to their contemporaries.

9. Three Identical Strangers

What a fascinating documentary about three identical triplets separated at birth.  My mouth was agape from beginning to end.

10. Isle of Dogs

This is an allegory about the politics of maintaining power through the fear of the “other,” a great story about heroism and love, a breathtaking animated movie, and an interesting glimpse into the weird mind of Wes Anderson.

11. Aquaman

Another “huh.” I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did.  I really enjoyed the undersea world and didn’t mind the aquatic battles as much as I usually do in terrestrial superhero movies.

12. Mary Poppins Returns

A lovely remake/sequel to the original.  As everyone says, the songs truly are forgettable so the strength of the movie comes from Emily Blunt’s portrayal of Mary Poppins and the design imagination of the fantasy scenes, all of which are great.  But the highlights are clearly the dance routine by the 93-year-old Dick Van Dyke and the closing number by 94-year-old Angela Lansbury.  Too bad they couldn’t have squeezed in Betty White somehow.

13. Green Book

A white chauffeur drives a black jazz pianist through the segregated south in the 1960’s and has his consciousness raised.  On its own terms this is inspiring and heart-warming. Unfortunately this Driving Miss Daisy approach to movie-making has become very politically incorrect, focusing as it does on the white guy’s transformation instead of the black guy’s experience.   (By the way, has anyone aged faster than Viggo Mortensen, the once-great King Aragorn?)

14. The Favourite

Two women vie for the favors of the mercurial Queen Anne back in the early 1700s.  Acting awards all around for Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone.  I might have appreciated this more if my expectations hadn’t been raised by the many critics who cited it as their top film of the year.  Among other things, I had expected it to be funnier.  If this is a comedy, the humor is drier than parchment.

15. Cold War

A little bit like “Roma” — foreign, luminous black and white, stately (i.e., slow), set in the near-distant past, requiring your full attention.  This is about a love affair that occurs over 15 years and multiple countries on both sides of the iron curtain.  It’s intense!

16. Black Panther

Wildly inventive.  I liked the Wakanda scenes and the acting.  The racial politics were thought-provoking.  But it’s still just a superhero movie and I was kind of bored by the battles.

17. The Upside

A somewhat more politically correct take on the Green Book theme (stunted white man enabled by friendship with black man).  “The Upside” is more plainly a comedy so more acceptable.  Kevin Hart becomes a caretaker to a rich rich rich paralyzed misanthrope and transforms him into a caring human being.

18. Crazy Rich Asians

Asians celebrated getting their own Rom-Com, which went on to show that rich people of all nations can be vapid, snobby, ridiculous and selfish.  A major step forward in racial equality!  The movie is funny, as long as you close down the thinking part of your brain.

19. BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee is a very talented director and when the film sticks to the narrative it’s interesting and compelling, but he can’t help himself and loads it up with overt and unsubtle propaganda.  Too bad, because the story itself — about a black cop who infiltrates the Klan — is strong enough on his own and makes the point pretty clearly.

20. Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Melissa McCarthy “stretches” in a serious role about a struggling and dyspeptic writer to who in desperation to get veterinary care for her ancient cat begins to write fake letters from literary figures (e.g. Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, etc.), which are bought by collectors.  This film, like “The Favourite,” was inexplicably beloved by a certain kind of critic this year.  I guess I understand why a lot of writers would be entranced by a backstage peak at the literary world but in reality this was only a moderately insightful portrait of a damaged crank.

21. Eighth Grade

Maybe I should admit up front that I didn’t hate my own personal experience in junior high school.  Is it worse now than then?  Sure seems so.  This is an excellent portrayal of a young girl who hasn’t quite mastered certain important social skills yet is desperately trying to fit in.  But if there was one movie this year that felt like taking your medicine, this was it.

22. Tully

What if you were strung out by trying to raise your young children and the perfect nanny showed up?  Much as in Mary Poppins Returns, the nanny here is trying to fix the parent rather than the kids.  This offers some very sharp observations on the perils of modern parenting and semi-useless husbands.

23. Mary Queen of Scots

A perfectly adequate but somewhat confusing dramatization of the conflict between Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I.  But you would never know from this movie that except for Churchill, Elizabeth was England’s greatest ruler.  The focus is more on Mary’s shenanigans, which result in her getting kicked off the Scottish throne and eventually beheaded.  Saoirse Ronan is obviously a great actress, but she portrays Mary as a heroine instead of an impetuous, reckless ruler who lets her emotions and desires get the best of her.

24. Blaze

A very serious look at the life of the largely unknown (unknown to me, at least) Country musician Blaze Foley.  Although this is also about a bearded singer-songwriter who drinks too much and dies too early, this is the exact opposite of A Star Is Born in tone, theme and execution.

25. The Incredibles 2

This sequel is not as original and witty as The Incredibles itself.   Maybe we’re too inured to the premise.  It’s funny enough and I suppose kids will like it, but I started feeling antsy midway through.

26. Jurassic World

I’m not sure what compelled me to go see this.  Chris Pratt is great but his charm is on the verges of wearing out its welcome.  The dinosaurs are remarkable, as ever, and the early action sequences are fun.  But it quickly becomes a ridiculous story about the predatory and evil rich.  They are so one-dimensional that I’m surprised the bad guys don’t twirl their mustaches.

27. Solo

A generic Star Wars movie with a lot of space chases.  I pity that poor guy trying to portray the young Han Solo in the shadow of Harrison Ford — he’s really unmemorable.  The movie is mildly exciting but makes little impact.    BTW, it seems like there are a lot of orphans in the Expanded Star Wars Universe.

28. Game Night

Cute.  Nothing wrong with this but it would be better to watch this on, say, an airplane than in a movie theater.

29. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

This is the only movie of the year that I actively hated — and I have a lot of respect for the Coen Brothers, usually.  The six separate vignettes that comprise this anthology are supposed to provide a caustic look at the motifs of the traditional Western.  They are beautifully shot but either overly broad, too cynical or overly fatalistic.