Film Impressions: The Matrix Resurrections

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS is a weird and wonderful mess of a movie, and while I don't yet fully understand what's happening, I did enjoy the ride.  The film does a curious thing where it wallows in nostalgia while simultaneously lampshading it.  The filmmakers start breaking the fourth wall, and that early section is easily the most strange and thrilling sequences in the whole movie.  Unfortunately, RESURRECTIONS eventually moves towards a more conventional direction, with action sequences that feel mostly perfunctory as well as a pretty traditional hero's journey narrative.  The film's second half feels particularly rushed, moving through worldbuilding and characters at a breakneck pace.  Remarkably, a lot of the emotional beats work for me even if I couldn't actually explain to you what exactly is  happening.  Maybe it's just nice to spend two hours in this world with these familiar characters.

(THREE AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho's gorgeous visuals and bravura direction brings an otherwise straightforward thriller plot to life. The film's technical trickery initially feels showy and distracting, but as Eloise gets drawn into the intrigue, I did as well.  The film's craft is impressive, and especially remarkable is its sense of pacing – each scene ratcheting up the tension and unease bit by bit, with enough ambiguity to keep me guessing exactly what's real and what isn't.   Perhaps the only false note here is the film's over-reliance on the "zombie" chase sequences – the creatures just aren't visually scary, and it's unclear what threat they pose to Eloise in the context of the narrative, so it's hard to invest emotionally in those moments.  Last Night In Soho isn't a particularly deep movie, but it's a well-made one, and it's a fun ride.

(THREE AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: Nomadland

An understated and moving portrait of an individual living on the fringes of American society.  On paper, Nomadland might initially seem like standard "misery porn" drama, but the material is elevated by its masterful execution: the environments are so beautifully photographed, the performances are so intimate and naturalistic – every detail of Fern's nomadic lifestyle is so precisely depicted that I found myself rooting deeply for her in a matter of minutes.

Despite touching on topical issues like inequality and the decline of the American working class, the film largely refrains from coming across as being overly preachy or dogmatic.  To me, Nomadland actually seems the least effective as a cinematic experience when it deploys its emotive musical score – while the tracks are lush and gorgeous on their own, the use of music in these moments feel like a fairly conspicuous attempt by the filmmakers to tell me how to feel, in way that took me out of the movie more than I'd have liked.

(FOUR AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: I'm Thinking of Ending Things

I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS is a well-acted, beautifully crafted nightmarish vision of... exactly what, I'm not actually sure.  The film's surrealism is initially immersive and effectively unsettling, but the weirder things get, the more the whole movie started to lose me on an emotional level.  This culminates in a final act that's imaginative, and well, unique, but imparts virtually zero emotional or even intellectual effect on me whatsoever.  It's too bad, because there's some really wonderful and nuanced relationship stuff going on here between Lucy and Jake (Buckley and Plemons are terrific), but all the escalating weirdness just gets in the way of that.  The dialogue is sometimes interesting and sometimes just self-indulgent - often the characters just feel like mouthpieces, spewing out neurotic ramblings from Charlie Kaufman's innermost unconscious brain.

(TWO out of five)

Film Impressions: Weathering With You

Despite its gorgeous animation and an incredible look and feel, WEATHERING WITH YOU is marred by an overwrought love story and cliched characters.  As with director Shinkai's previous film YOUR NAME., this film hinges on a farfetched supernatural premise that often gets in the way of me actually relating with the characters and the story.

The film does have some emotionally effective moments – I was moved by the fireworks festival sequence, for instance – but more often than not, WEATHERING WITH YOU leans into full-tilt melodrama, spending entire scenes wallowing in grand sappy emotions, backed by one schmaltzy pop ballad after another.

(TWO AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: Cats

What more is there to say that hasn't already been said about CATS?  Yeah, it's an exceptionally baffling film, both conceptually and also just in execution. Sure, the film's central conceit is weird: there's an underground society of singing, dancing cats, some of whom are wizards, and they compete to be selected for reincarnation via a hot air balloon.  But there's a version of this story that could still work if the filmmakers didn't choose to slather all the performers in disturbingly uncanny valley CG.  There seem to be some impressive dance performances here, both in term of choreography and athleticism, but the bizarre animation really gets in the way of appreciating it.

Thankfully, CATS also works as a campy, surreal experience that gives you a lot to gawk at: much of the lyrics are wacky and dumb, we get to watch esteemed actors like Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench intentionally or maybe unintentionally debase themselves by prancing around like animals, Idris Elba's feline genitals are disturbingly absent, and all the cats seem super horny for each other.  The zany nonsense isn't consistently entertaining for the movie's entire 110-minute duration, but it's weird enough to be a pretty fun time at the movies.

(TWO AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: Uncut Gems

UNCUT GEMS is both manic and meandering, and it's a great character showcase for a delightfully greasy Adam Sandler as a degenerate gambler/jeweller who's in way over his head.  Aside from seeing the actor inhabit the skin of this loathsome scumbag – which he does with remarkable ease – the film doesn't have too much else going on, but Sandler is just so fun to watch that his skittish screen energy (and the film's accompanying jarring visual style and sound design) is basically enough to keep the movie going for its 2+ hr runtime.  My predominant feeling towards Sandler's character was that of disgust and ridicule, but at times his character seemed so compulsively and inexorably wired for self-destruction that there are moments you can't help but feel sorry for him.

(THREE out of five)

Film Impressions: Little Women

Alternately funny, heartwarming, romantic, and moving, LITTLE WOMEN is a pitch perfect portrayal of the coming-of-age journey of the March sisters. The film manages to be sweet without being schmaltzy, particularly as the March family's innate warmth and optimism runs up against the unexpected curveballs that their lives throw at them.  Adding to the film's richness is the depth to which it tackles the character and thematic complexities: questions of marrying for love vs. material comfort, of grappling with loss, of pursuing one's own dreams vs. satisfying what society or family expectations.  Questions are raised with no easy answers, and the yearning, conflicted desires of all the sisters are clear to see.  The cast is uniformly terrific – Ronan and Pugh singularly phenomenal standouts – and the characters all feel like real, lived-in people.

Even just from a basic filmmaking pacing perspective, LITTLE WOMEN just moves: you might expect a period piece literary adaptation to be slow or maybe a little stodgy, but its 2+ hour runtime just zips by.  The film's momentum never flags.  The dialogue and crackles with wit and energy.  The decision to present the story in a non-linear way, which might seems unusual, totally works on an emotional one.  Also every shot of the film is gorgeous.

I'm honestly having trouble finding any fault with this movie.  It might be the definitive telling of the LITTLE WOMEN story.

(FIVE out of five)

Film Impressions: 1917

1917 is a thrilling, immersive cinematic depiction of a story set on the front lines of World War 1.  While the core story is fundamentally a simple one, 1917's unique, bravura presentation (the entire film appears to be a single continuous shot) makes this a type of war story I've never quite seen before.  This visual approach is a perfect fit for the material, and remarkably, it never feels showy or distracting.  The film also mostly avoids melodrama and the conventional large scale battles typically expected from a movie of this genre, which lets us linger on moments that are quieter, more intimate, but no less gripping.

(FOUR AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is a movie that basically approximates the look and feel of a classic, rip-roaring Star Wars adventure: it's got lightsaber battles, charming roguish pilots, plucky unexpected heroes, sinister hooded villains.  The Millenium Falcon zips around the galaxy at lightspeed.  It's got that lush John Williams score.  Yeah, on the surface, EPISODE IX looks and sounds great – but most of the movie is so rushed and overplotted that little of it is actually fun.  The characters are so busy running around chasing one macguffin or the another that very few of the emotional beats actually land properly.

Furthermore, the film expends a great deal of energy actively undermining and undoing the character and thematic groundwork laid by its predecessor, THE LAST JEDI – a film which itself represented a fairly radical shift from established mythos.  The result is a muddled overarching story that feels constantly in conflict with itself.

There's no denying the visual direction and overall production values here are excellent: on a moment-to-moment basis, THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is a basically watchable space adventure.  But taken as the conclusion of what initially seemed to be a promising new trilogy of Star Wars films – not to mention, the apparent last chapter of the now 42 year-old "Skywalker saga" – it's a pretty low note to go out on.

(TWO out of five)

Film Impressions: Knives Out

KNIVES OUT is a well-made, well-acted, and terrifically entertaining murder mystery, but it never fully subverts or upends the basic expectations of its genre in the ways I thought it might.  Maybe I'm expecting a bit too much, but after seeing a thriller like PARASITE, or even director Rian Johnson's previous output (i.e. THE LAST JEDI, the Breaking Bad episode FLY), I was hoping for something a little more twisty or radically subversive than what we ended up getting.  Which is to say, KNIVES OUT is a film in which people are killed, lies are told, and characters' allegiances shift to and fro in overly convoluted flashback reveals that are somewhat hard to follow.  In other words, it's basically just a murder mystery, though it's a pretty great one.

(THREE AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: The Farewell

Considering its tragic familial premise and its cultural specificity, THE FAREWELL initially seems tailor-made to tug at my heartstrings.  But something about the film's execution just doesn't quite work for me: the characters are ill-defined - their interactions stiff and not quite real, not quite lived-in.  Their dialogue is almost all text, and no subtext.  Scenes of big family dinners that should be brimming with chatter and energy, feel stagey and flat.  I just don't buy that I'm actually watching a big Chinese family.  Even the music is too overtly melodramatic.  That's not to say there aren't some beautiful or touching moments in THE FAREWELL, but on the whole the film left me mostly lukewarm.

(ONE AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: Once Upon A Time in Hollywood

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a flabby, rambling, intermittently entertaining film that doesn't seem to really be "about" anything, except Tarantino's desire to splash aimlessly around in period Hollywood nostalgia for nearly three hours.  Thankfully, Pitt and DiCaprio have terrific chemistry, and the film's craftsmanship is undeniably impressive, so the movie is generally watchable, but there's a sense of empty self-indulgence about the whole thing.

(TWO AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: Avengers: Endgame

[SPOILER WARNING, sorta: No explicit spoilers, but my write-up vaguely alludes to plot elements that might be best left unknown prior to seeing the film.]

It's hard not to be impressed purely considering how many different plotlines, characters, macguffins, and tones the filmmakers have to juggle here.  That even half of it makes sense and actually lands, emotionally is to their enormous credit.  AVENGERS: ENDGAME is part heist flick, part time-travel story, part CG superhero extravaganza, part meditation on loss and failure.  The movie handles that last thing surprisingly poignantly for a big summer blockbuster, and the moments it stops to spend exploring the various emotional aftermaths of our heroes' defeat at the hands of Thanos are probably my favourite aspect of this whole shebang.

Another really cool thing about ENDGAME is how it rewards viewer knowledge of the previous movies.  The filmmakers echo elements from earlier scenes in the series in ways that feel meaningful, and not just as superficial callbacks.  Sure, some of it is cute and fanservice-y, but a lot of it is deeply satisfying, paying off character arcs for some of our heroes in a conclusive way.  As an audience member who's more or less stuck with the franchise since 2008's IRON MAN, ENDGAME retroactively makes it all feel kind of worth it.  I can't think of another pop culture product that's tied the bow quite this nicely before.

Its remarkable strengths notwithstanding, the film still has the typical Marvel flaws: ENDGAME lost me in its big, actiony third act.  Sure, a couple moments pop here and there, but the CG mayhem all just piles up into a kind of a muddle.  And at 181 minutes, the whole thing's too long, with an ending that feels particularly sappy and drawn out.  Still, as a last chapter to over 10 years of character development, worldbuilding, and plot wrangling, AVENGERS: ENDGAME is a remarkable cinematic achievement.

(FOUR out of five)

Film Impressions: Captain Marvel

Buoyed by its charismatic and likeable performers, CAPTAIN MARVEL is an enjoyable but basically average superhero movie.  The 90s-era Americana gives the adventure a colourful backdrop, and Larson and Jackson have some terrific buddy-movie chemistry on screen.  Much like with Chris Evans' Steve Rogers, Larson imbues the character with a lot of inherent, unspoken heroism, and she makes it easy to root for her as a protagonist.

On the other hand, the actual superhero-y parts of the movie where characters shoot and punch each other don't really have much emotional or visceral impact.  The action just feels like an empty pile of CG effects, and as is the case with most of the Marvel movies now, is probably the least interesting aspect of the film.

(TWO AND A HALF out of five)

Film Impressions: Shoplifters

A perfect slice-of-life film, SHOPLIFTERS provides us glimpse into the world of its group of misfits who live on the fringes of modern Japanese society.  Featuring a pitch-perfect ensemble cast (including incredible performances by not one but TWO young actors), each character adds their own unique perspective and balance to the scenes, playing off each other in some funny and interesting ways.  The filmmakers here have a deft grasp on its tone -- while scenes could've easily becoming saccharine or cloying, its humour and drama remains totally grounded and genuine throughout the story.  And while the film treats its characters with warmth and compassion, it also doesn't shy away from showing their very human complexities and their sometimes troubling contradictions.

An understated, emotionally heartfelt drama, SHOPLIFTERS has my unqualified recommendation.

(FIVE out of five)

Film Impressions: Cold War

Visually gorgeous and atmospherically spellbinding, COLD WAR pulled me into its bleak and romantic world and it never quite let go.  The film's structure is strangely elliptical, often eliding over huge chunks of time and plot, and I wish the characters were a little more fleshed out: Wiktor is just kind of a brooding cipher, and Zula doesn't totally transcend the "hot mess" trope.  Even the specific source of their malaise or dysfunction isn't totally clear to me. Nevertheless, their on-screen chemistry together is terrific, and never for a moment did I not desperately root for them to be together.

(FOUR out of five)