Lady Bird (2017)

  Another one I forgot to write about!  This one makes me angry because I suffered through watching this goddamn thing and then I didn't even get the views for it.

Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is a teenage girl growing up in California desperate to get her life started.  She attends a private Catholic school and dreams of being noticed by the popular set, finding a boyfriend, going to an East Coast college, and becoming an actress.  Along the way, she is a total asshole to every single person she knows.

I do not understand how this movie is so relatable to people.  This character is rude, disloyal, bitchy, and a pathological liar.  Everything about her is The Worst.  Watching this film made me hate Greta Gerwig even more than Frances Ha and I didn't think that was possible.  This is peak pretentiousness.

Coco (2017)

  I can't believe I forgot to review Coco!  I watched this weeks ago with Bethany and Tyler and never wrote a review.

Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) is a young boy with a dream to be a great singer like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt).  The only problem is that Miguel's entire family hates musicians ever since his great-great-grandfather abandoned his wife and child to pursue his dreams of stardom.  Miguel is desperate and on the Day of the Dead, he crosses over to the underworld in order to prove his talent by meeting de la Cruz.  Unfortunately, the star is just as popular in death as in life, so Miguel enlists Hector (Gael García Bernal), a ragtag skeleton, to help him get an audience.

This was Pixar's first attempt at a musical and it's not a bad one.  It doesn't reach Disney levels of musical greatness but it's all right.  It won an Oscar for Best Original Song in "Remember Me," a weepy ballad that's played too often in the film, so clearly some people liked it.

The story is easily predictable if you've ever seen a Disney film.  Let's face it, though, you're not really watching it for the story.  It's Pixar so the visuals are stunning.  Especially that marigold bridge.    And it does find some real emotion in the smaller moments, basically the stuff that has nothing to do with Miguel.

This isn't my favorite Pixar by a long shot.  Honestly, I thought The Book of Life had a better story.

On Body and Soul (2017)

  This is a deeply weird Hungarian film that is streaming on Netflix right now.  It got nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars.

Endre (Géza Morcsányi) is a manager for a slaughterhouse in Budapest.  He is attracted to Maria (Alexandra Borbély), the new quality control inspector, but finds her cold, detail-obsessed manner off-putting.  Apparently, there is no Hungarian word for autistic.  Maria finds it incredibly difficult to connect with other people and both of them have basically resigned themselves to lives of unfulfilling loneliness.  Then a theft at the slaughterhouse prompts a police investigation, complete with psych evals for all employees.  Endre and Maria learn that unbeknownst to one another they have been having the same dreams of being deer in the forest.  This prompts them to try and forge a connection in real life, much more difficult than in dreams.

The forest shots are just beautiful cinematography.  The concept is a little weak and there's not a lot of real character building or understanding that would push this film into being great.  It's watchable, but the whole time I kept wondering why Maria was having to do all the work.  Endre is not shown to be any real prize and there's no Tragic Backstory for him to explain.  He comes off as a lonely, older man who is clearly damaged inside and out that a young, pretty, blonde woman is inexplicably attracted to and that narrative has never made sense to me.  She is shown pushing way past her comfort zone while he makes almost no effort.  And the ending is hilarious in a fucked up way which also seemed tonally inconsistent.

I don't know that I've ever seen a Hungarian film before.  If for no other reason, I'm glad I watched it but it's not one that I'd recommend to all my friends and family as Must See.

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

  Finally making some progress on these Oscar nominees.

Elio (Timothee Chalamet) is a seventeen-year-old boy living with his parents in a type of intellectual bohemianism in northern Italy.  At first he is resentful of his father's (Micheal Stuhlbarg) new grad student, Oliver (Armie Hammer), taking over his room and garnering attention from the local girls, but soon Elio realizes he is also attracted to Oliver.  Over the course of the summer, their affection grows from a fling to a real connection.

I'm kind of over coming-of-age/sexual awakening movies.  They tend to follow the exact same beats, whether they are comedies or dramas, gay or straight, and never in any way bear resemblance to my personal experience.  Maybe I'm atypical or maybe they're overwhelmingly about men, I don't know. But I find them boring.  Also, what is up with dudes fucking food?  Is that just a facet of teenage boyhood that is universal and I've just never been made aware?  Stop putting your dicks in things people eat!  That's unsanitary!

Hammer and Chalamet have undeniable chemistry and the film itself is lovely to look at.  Stuhlbarg is once again putting in great presence in roles that don't deserve him.  In particular, he gives probably the best "dad" speech I've ever seen on film which almost makes up for him having very little to do the rest of the time.

Other than the bizarre sexual gratification with peaches, this is a pleasant, innocuous teenage exploration of desire.  If that's your bag, have at it.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

  I also watched this on the plane ride back from Ireland.  It was a long flight.

Mildred (Frances McDormand) has had enough of waiting for the police of her small town to find her daughter's killer.  She pays for three billboards, dragging the police into the public eye and sparking a tide of resentment that exposes the underlying divisions in the community.

This won two Oscars out of seven nominations and both were extremely well deserved.  McDormand is a force in this film while Sam Rockwell turns what could have been a one-note character into one with surprising growth.  I was prepared for how emotional I thought it was going to be, based on the marketing.  I was not prepared for how hilarious it was.  I laughed through this whole movie.

I hated In Bruges and thought Seven Psychopaths was overrated but Martin McDonagh finally came through for me.  I was really dreading this film and it turned out to be my favorite of the Oscar bunch so far.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

  I watched this on the plane coming back from Ireland.  It proved to be a good choice.

Detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) has been summoned from Istanbul to consult on a case in England so he gets the last ticket on the Orient Express.  The manager is his good friend Bouc (Tom Bateman), no stranger to Poirot's eccentricities.  When a shady businessman named Ratchett (Johnny Depp) is killed on board, Bouc turns to Poirot for help solving the case before the police can turn it into a PR debacle.  The great detective soon learns that everyone on the train has something to hide and it may be one of his most painful cases yet.

I had previously seen (and reviewed) the 1974 version of this Agatha Christie tale so I was really just evaluating this one for style and performances.  All of the actors here are top-notch and they really sell the mysteries of each character, but this is Branagh's show from top to bottom.  He throws himself into this role like the modern-day Olivier.  (Hey, if anybody has a shot at that title, it's him.)  The only other standout is Johnny Depp and not in a good way.  He looks puffy and tired in every scene and just seems to lack all energy.  Ten years ago, he would have personified malice but now it's just kind of sad.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

  This was a disappointing entry to the franchise for a couple of reasons.  The first is that everything in it feels recycled and not in a good way and the second is that any sense of fun is totally gone.

Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) has changed after her encounter on Isla Nublar.  She now works as a coordinator for a non-profit aimed at protecting the last dinosaurs, especially as a long-dormant volcano threatens them with re-extinction.  When a philanthropist and long-time friend of John Hammond's contacts her with a possible solution, she jumps at the chance to rescue at least a dozen of the animals.  The only catch is that she will have to reach out to Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) once more in order to have a chance at rescuing Blue, the last velociraptor.

This thing is so paint-by-numbers that you've probably already filled in the rest of the plot and what points you haven't will be telegraphed to you within minutes of their introduction.  That wouldn't be so bad if the film weren't so relentlessly grim.  Nobody seems to be having any fun except the Indoraptor and she doesn't have enough scenes to really carry the film.

The only way to salvage this franchise is to have Owen and Claire team up for one-on-one extractions now that **SPOILER ALERT** the little dino-girl released them all to raise havoc on North America.  **END SPOILERS**  I want Blue out there terrorizing the suburbs with a pack of coyotes that have accepted her as their leader.  I want Owen and Claire contending with pissed off orange farmers after apatosaurs eat their crops.  I want a film that actually deals with the consequences of having dinosaurs.  That's really the only way I'm going to see Jurassic World 3.

Tomb Raider (2018)

First, I have to apologize and then we'll get to the movie.  I missed posting all last weekend because I was in Ireland.  It was kind of a last-minute thing but not so last minute that I couldn't have set something up to tell people if I had thought to do so, but I didn't.  I just left you guys in the lurch.  So I'm sorry about that.    Okay, so this is the new Tomb Raider.  And it is .... not going to break the video game movie curse.  I mean, it's a'ight.  It's just not great and not really an improvement over the last version.

Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) is a bike messenger, scrounging up cash wherever she can because to come forward and claim her multi-million dollar inheritance would be to admit that her father (Dominic West) is dead and not just missing.  Her former caretaker, Ana (Kristin Scott Thomas), finally gets her to sign the paperwork and Lara discovers that her father has left her a puzzle box that leads to a secret room in the crypt of their enormous-ass house.  She starts poking around and uncovers pieces of the mystery her father was trying to solve, including his possible last location.

From this point, you should just watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Honestly, there's practically no difference.  I like Vikander as an actress but this script gives her almost nothing to do except get her ass beat 40 different ways.  If that's something you're into, give this movie a whirl.  It also gets points deducted for criminally underusing Daniel Wu and Walton Goggins.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

  I didn't initially want to see this movie.  I thought it was guaranteed to suck and never do justice to the original and I was half-right.  It doesn't do justice because it's a totally separate movie.  It is not trying to recreate Robin Williams' performance or play on nostalgia or anything.  It's just a fun, action-filled popcorn flick that is great to watch while you are hammered.

Four kids in detention come across a battered video game while cleaning out a basement.  They press play and are pulled inside the game to become their avatars:  Dr. Smolder Brimstone (Dwayne Johnson), intrepid leader of the team; Moose Finbar (Kevin Hart), walking backpack and sidekick; Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan), badass; and Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black), animal specialist.  In order to escape the game, they must retrieve a stolen gem and put it back into place before losing all three of their lives.

That's it.  That's the whole plot.  You're really only here to see Karen Gillan kick some ass, watch The Rock and Kevin Hart banter, and hear Jack Black talk like a spoiled, rich white girl the whole film.  Grab some friends and some drinks and have a good time.