1. Roma
2. The Favourite
3. Shoplifters
4. Zama
5. First Reformed
6. The Death of Stalin
7. Black Panther
8. Sorry to Bother You
9. Cold War
10. First Man
Honorable Mentions: Capernaum, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Sisters Brothers, BlacKkKlansman, and Birds of Passage.
I'm not saying that Ginsburg doesn't deserve such accolades; I am saying that I wish the movie had delivered them in less routine ways.
Still, the value of On the Basis of Sex lies in its overall thrust; the movie reminds us that it wasn't all that long ago that even the most accomplished women had difficulty advancing within the legal establishment -- not to mention the society at large.
And, yes, I know that despite progress, gender equality remains an on-going battle.
Can we buy Felicity Jones as Ginsburg? I guess, but the documentary RBG proved that Ginsburg made a better Ginsburg than Jones, and as directed by Mimi Leder, the movie quickly becomes a catalog of the insulting ways professional women were treated during the late 50s and early '60s.
Working from a script by Daniel Stiepleman, Leder begins the story when Ginsburg enters Harvard Law School, an institution that in 1956 still harbored gender bias: The dean of the law school (Sam Waterston) believes a coveted place at prestigious Harvard Law could be better utilized by a bread-winning man.
At Harvard, Ginsburg received unwavering support from her husband, Martin Ginsburg (Armie Hammer), a genial man who also was enrolled in Harvard Law and who never underestimated his wife's brilliance.
Ginsburg quickly emerges as a super-woman who can take care of a newborn, tend to her ailing husband when he's diagnosed with testicular cancer and excel as a student -- not only in her classes but when filling in for the recovering Martin.
Ginsburg ultimately transferred to Columbia University's law school because Martin landed a job in New York. After graduation, she found that most of the major Manhattan law firms had no interest in hiring a woman.
As a result, Ginsburg began teaching at the law school of Rutgers University in Newark. She and Martin eventually came across a case that opened a door to tackling gender discrimination. Ironically, it involved a male.
The movie spends a good deal of time on litigation involving Charles E. Moritz (Chris Mulkey), a Colorado man who had been denied a tax deduction for taking care of his ill mother on the grounds that caregiving roles were restricted to women.
Martin became involved because he was a highly regarded tax attorney with tons of court-room experience. But as the proceedings unfolded, Ruth Ginsburg found her legal voice. She took charge of gender elements in Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue.
You'll learn a lot about this 1972 challenge of a tax-court ruling: how it was chosen, the various legal arguments it generated and why it connects to broader gender discrimination cases.
Leder also devotes time to Ginsburg's relationship with her daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny), a young woman whose views about institutional gender bias were more advanced than her mother's. Initially, Jane was skeptical about her mother's insistence that an unfair system could be changed from the inside.
Justin Theroux signs on as an ACLU lawyer who's eventually cajoled into allowing the organization to join forces with the Ginsburgs.
On the Basis of Sex never transcends by-the-book filmmaking. It's an okay big-screen bio that exemplifies what happens when a movie has an important story to tell but could have told it in a more compelling fashion.
A postscript: There are movies and then there's real life. Every follower of news knows that Justice Ginsberg recently was operated on for lung cancer. If RBG and On the Basis of Sex provide even a glimpse of Ginsburg's fortitude, it's difficult to imagine that she won't be around if someone decides to make a movie about the second half of her career.
Regarded by many as the insidious power behind George Bush's empty presidential throne, Dick Cheney represents one of the strangest of political anomalies: Throughout his career, Cheney occupied a variety of power positions without ever revealing anything resembling an intriguing personality.
In excoriating Cheney, Vice, introduces us to an empty vessel of a man who tried (and mostly succeeded) at filling himself with power, either being near it or having it himself. It's a thesis of sorts, but Vice is too busy being clever to get much beyond that. At times, I wondered if the movie weren't more about its own comically rueful tone than it is about Dick Cheney.
Director Adam McKay delivers a free-wheeling, but not entirely fresh satirical indictment of Cheney and, only by inference, of many of the Neocons who supported similar positions.
McKay (The Big Short) leaves no doubt about where the movie stands. Vice opens with a howlingly drunk Cheney, as a young man, being pulled over by the cops. McKay then jumps to 9/11 as the vice president bypasses the president and gives the Defense Department authorization to shoot down any plane deemed a threat. This is followed by a quick view of real footage depicting a beleaguered America that would have fit nicely into a Michael Moore documentary.
The approach seems clear: Pieces of Cheney's career will be juxtaposed in ways that create a dizzying mosaic of bold strokes and blunt observations. Some work; some don't.
Still, audiences may want to see Vice for Christian Bale's impressive disappearing act of a performance as Cheney or for Sam Rockwell's amusing turn as an eager George Bush or for Steve Carrel's unashamedly conniving Donald Rumsfeld or for Amy Adam's no-nonsense portrayal of Lynne Cheney, the woman who evidently launched Cheney's career. She insisted that Cheney, then her fiancee, shed his wastrel ways after getting kicked out of Yale.
In his post-Yale days of the early '60s, Cheney had been spending his time in his home state of Wyoming working as a telephone lineman. When he got his second DWI, an embarrassed Lynne laid down the law; shape up or she'd find a more suitable partner. Cheney began to straighten himself out.
McKay's wild -- some might say "scattered" -- approach worked well in The Big Short, but it's overdone here with the movie racing through Cheney's resume: a stint as an intern to then-congressman Rumsfeld, a turn as Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff, 10 years in the House of Representatives, service as Secretary of Defense and, of course, an eight-year run as George W. Bush's vice president.
According to the movie, when Cheney took the vice presidential job he was determined to run the show. Desperate to have the more experienced Cheney as a running mate, Bush agreed to allow Cheney to take over the burden of matters such as foreign affairs and the military.
Vice takes a scalding -- and many will say appropriate -- view of Cheney's vice presidential activities, which include maneuvering the country into the Iraq war, justifying torture and ... well ... the list is long and, at times, as messy as McKay's movie.
McKay seems to have adopted a more-is-more approach to the material. At one point, Alfred Molina shows up as a waiter at a Washington restaurant who recites the menu, which for comic purposes has been turned into a checklist of Cheneyesque ideas. How about some "enhanced interrogation?" Care for some Guantanamo Bay?
The movie also features voice-over narration by Jesse Plemons and a last-minute reveal about why Plemons’ character is narrating the movie. At times, the narration makes it seem as if the movie is being read to us.
A set of fake end-credits rolls at a time when, or so the movie fantasizes, Cheney could have retired from public life in order to protect his gay daughter Mary (Alison Pill) from unwanted scrutiny. Fantasy, yes, but the closest the movie comes to saying anything positive about Cheney involves its depiction of his supportive relationship with Mary. Cheney tries his best to stand by her, although expedience eventually wins out.
You'll probably see Bale's name on the short list for a best-actor Oscar. Prosthetics and weight gain help, but he has captured Cheney's incipient smile, his understated venality and the matter-of-fact attitude he seemed to bring to even the most outrageous suggestions. He was a big believer in the unitary executive theory that concentrated power in the president's hands and minimized the need for any balance of power. The idea seemed to come to its fullest fruition after 9/11, the point at which the movie begins to bog down in expositional chores.
What's missing from all of this? New insight into Cheney, a politician whose career was punctuated by heart problems that become more prominent in the latter part of the movie.
Vice tells Cheney's story and, by extension examines what can be seen as an on-going deterioration of American political life. But the movie's dramatic potential is undercut by its view of Cheney as a political hollow man driven only by ambition and a thirst for power: He's pretty much the same guy from start to finish.
There's entertainment in McKay's movie and a variety of sharp-edged comic performances, but by the end, you may find yourself vainly waiting for McKay to pull the thematic string that unifies his jigsaw of a movie and keeps Vice from falling onto the side of the ledger where disappointments are recorded.
If you stop to think about it, you might be hard-pressed to come up with a long list of movies that portray love with tenderness, soul-deep commitment, and true devotion.
Among other things, a tender depiction of such a love is precisely what distinguishes If Beale Street Could Talk from normal Hollywood fare. director Barry Jenkins' follow-up to his Oscar-winning Moonlight, has moments that are illuminated by the characters love for each other and by Jenkins' love for them.
But if Beale Street -- set in New York during the '70s -- only dealt with love, it would not be doing justice to the 1974 James Baldwin novel of the same name. If Beale Street Could Talk also assays the impact of racism on the innocence of two lovers who have known they should be together since childhood.
Tender feelings collide with harsh realities that test the devotion of a young man and woman who want little more than to live, raise a family and continue loving each other.
The casting of the couple obviously becomes crucial in a movie such as Beale Street and Jenkins' has done well. Stephan James portrays Alonzo, a.k.a. "Fonny," a 22-year-old with ambitions to make sculptures from wood. KiKi Layne portrays Tish, Fonny's 19-year-old fiancee and also the story's narrator.
Jenkins invites us to fall in love with this sweet couple and we do, but he also plans to break our hearts. Tish is pregnant and it's entirely possible that Fonny will be in jail when his child is born.
Set up by a racist cop (Ed Skrein), Fonny faces a false rape charge. Tish fights to clear his name. She knows that the Puerto Rican woman who identified Fonny in a line-up did so in a confused panic. Fonny wasn't even in the vicinity of the crime.
The movie contextualizes the relationship between Fonny and Tish by bringing their respective families into focus as it shifts between the present with Fonny awaiting trial in jail and the past in which Fonny and Tish developed their relationship.
Fonny's mother (Regina King) supports her pregnant daughter; her father (Colman Domingo) also makes his love for Tish clear; he understands that he's going to have to get involved with some hustling to raise money for Fonny's defense.
In an early scene, the two families meet and sparks fly. Fonny's religious mother (Aunjanue Ellis,) disdains Tish and treats her as a wanton woman who's ruining her son's life. Fonny's father (Michael Beach) takes a different view. He hauls off and belts his wife in the kisser, a slap that turns a comic scene into something harsh and harrowing.
Perhaps Baldwin was trying to highlight poles of belief within the black community: staunchly religious conservatism vs. love-infused tolerance, the latter born of an understanding about what's needed to carry on.
Brian Tyree Henry turns up as an old friend of Fonny's who has just been released from jail and who can't shake the emotional damage of incarceration. He didn't belong in jail any more than Fonny will.
Jenkins respectfully extends scenes to allow the actors to live within them, but some of them go on too long and you begin to feel the movie's length.
Maybe it doesn't matter because If Beale Street Could Talk doesn't feel rooted in a specific time and place as much as it feels like an extension of imagination lodged in an essential moment -- one built around a deep understanding of harsh American realities and an unconquerable capacity for hope and survival.
If Beale Street Could Talk poses a heartfelt and heartbreaking question: Why must two lovers pit their happiness against a world that doesn't want to give them a chance? That sounds like the trailer for a romance novel, but -- in this case -- it's an indictment of racism that tries to crush the sweetness out of everyday life.
For perhaps a quarter of its length, Aquaman proves enjoyably silly, but -- for me at least -- enjoyably silly eventually morphed into an impatient question: Would this display of CGI magic, preposterous plotting and accumulating episodes ever end?
Where that point is reached for you in a two-and-a-half hour movie -- or if it's reached at all -- depends on how much-sustained entertainment you find in this overstuffed water ballet.
The origins story for Aquaman has been placed in the hands of director James Wan (The Conjuring), who creates a DC Comics extravaganza that immerses us in an underwater sea world full of dazzling colors, improbable technologies and a battle over who will rule Atlantis, the sunken city of myth.
A reluctant Aquaman (Jason Momoa) becomes a contender for the throne; the son of a surface-dwelling earthling (Temuera Morrison) and an ocean queen (Nicole Kidman), Momoa's character is presented as a longshot for success.
Also vying for the top job: King Orm (Patrick Wilson), another son of Kidman's Atlanna. Put Orm in the arrogant jerk category. He believes he should be king because of his pure bloodlines. Atlanna married his father after leaving her surface-bound husband -- for good and noble reasons, of course.
Momoa's Aquaman boasts a strong physique and a nonchalance about his various battles with evil, which begin with an attack on a group of pirates led by a vicious character named Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).
I'm not going to try to elaborate on the undersea world because it requires blind acceptance about such matters as how beams of fiery light exist in the depths of the ocean, how residents of Atlantis breathe without gills and ... oh well ... why go on listing all that's silly in this cornucopia of silliness?
Lest Aquaman become lonely, he's accompanied on most of his adventures by Mera (Amber Heard), a redhead who initially regards him as a hopeless case, but who eventually and unsurprisingly accepts him as the rightful king of Atlantis.
The supporting cast finds Dolph Lundgren playing King Nereus, an underwater noble who must decide where to place his loyalties. Willem Dafoe does Yoda-like duty as Vulko, an Atlantis adviser who becomes Aquaman's mentor.
Characters are made to seem as if they're floating in the depths of the sea, their hair flowing upward. How anyone gets a haircut in Atlantis remains one of the movie's many mysteries.
If you're after action, Aquaman tries (boy does it ever) not to disappoint. Wan has included everything from martial-arts combat to battles with monsters to trident vs. trident mega-bouts.
Did I mention that Aquaman's quest sends him a search for a trident that only a true king can possess, a plot device that takes the movie to the Sahara Desert, as well as to a small coastal town in Sicily?
I also forgot to mention that Aquaman's given name is Arthur and that the great triumphant moment of the film centers on Arthur's emergence as Aquaman, trident raised over his sculpted torso in comic-book glory.
Watching the movie is like reading a variety of Aquaman comics in succession, with a little ecological concern tossed in for good measure. At some point, though, you may get bored and wish you could put the books down and reach for a copy of Batman.
There's plenty of visual invention on display, but the eye can't totally silence a question from the mind: How much underwater spectacle does an Aquaman movie need before we start to drown in it?
If you know what I'm talking about, you're already familiar with the Transformers movies, noise fests staged with ear-splitting competence by the director and action king Michael Bay.
The time, Travis Knight ( the animated Kubo and the Two Strings) takes over the directing chores turning Bumblebee into an origins story that explains how the Autobots arrived on Earth.
More importantly, screenwriter Christina Hodson establishes an emotional connection between an alienated teenager (Hailee Steinfeld) and the Autobot, a robot she finds in a junkyard disguised as a beat-up, yellow VW Beetle. Before being dubbed Bumblebee by Hailee's Charlie, the Autobot is known as B-127. He's in bad shape having been deprived of his voice and his memory in an opening-picture battle with Decepticons.
Set in 1987, the movie makes use of '80s music and follows a familiar arc in which the US military -- under the command of a gung-ho soldier played by John Cena -- predictably picks the wrong side in the fight between Autobots and Decepticons.
Amid additional '80s bric-a-brac -- from an image of Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club to VHS tapes -- Charlie emerges as an outsider with skills: She knows how to work on cars, is upset about the recent death of her father and in more or less constant argument with her mother (Pamela Adlon).
Aside from Bumblebee, Charlie's only real friend is the kid next door (Jorge David Lendeborg Jr).
Scenes in which Charlie and a frightened Bumblebee -- the sweetest hunk of metal yet to find its way into a movie -- form their bond are well done and Steinfeld gives the movie a strong female center, but I don't want to get too excited about a movie that feels as if it's trying to further lower the age of Transformer fans while giving new life to a series that simply won't go away.
Yes, Bumblebee has a more human feel than its five previous predecessors, but it’s still aligned with its five predecessors, and let's be honest: In Bumblebee smashing things becomes an inevitable accompaniment to mending hearts.
Welcome to Marwen is based on the life of Mark Hogancamp, a photographer whose work consists mostly of taking photos in and around Marwencol, a fictional miniature Belgian town he built in his backyard and populated with dolls and other toys.
If that sounds familiar, it could be for two reasons: Hogancamp’s photographs have been featured in several New York galleries and Hogancamp’s life was the subject of a fascinating 2010 documentary by Jeff Malmberg.
Those who’ve seen Malmberg's documentary already know Hogancamp’s backstory. In 2000, he was severely beaten outside a bar in upstate New York by five thugs who objected to him talking about the enjoyment he got from wearing women’s shoes. Hogancamp was in a coma for 40 days, lost all memory of his personal life prior to the assault and then began to channel his anxieties and rage into World War II tableaus in Marwencol. He had a particular fascination with battling against Nazis and his fantasies took on a pulpy, comic-book quality.
So what was left to say after the documentary? As it turns out, not much.
In Welcome to Marwen, the stories that take place inside of Marwen (all enacted with dolls that resemble characters from Hogancamp's life and voiced by actors) aren't all that interesting and the overall story vacillates between being creepy and heart-warming, never quite making up its mind which map to follow.
Using his terrible beating as an explanation, Carell portrays Hogancamp as a shattered man who long ago lost the ability to read social signals. He's briefly enamored with a new neighbor (Leslie Mann), mistaking her kindness for romantic interest.
Meritt Wever plays the owner of the local hobby shop Hogancamp frequents and Diane Kruger provides the voice of Deja Thoris, a witch-like figure who haunts Hogancamp and his Marwen alter-ego figure, Cap'n Hogie.
Working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Caroline Thompson, Zemeckis takes a stab at illuminating serious issues involving hate crimes, personal freedom (symbolized by Hogancamp's preference for wearing women's high-heeled shoes) and tolerance.
Alan Silvestri's score might have been better suited to a magical fantasy; here, it seems at odds with Hogancamp's story.
I wondered if Tim Burton, a director more willing to lean into weird material, might have been a better choice for this story. Zemeckis largely remains outside of Hogancamp's world, turning us into observers.
Welcome to Marwen offers some clever visual touches but never makes it clear what we're supposed to feel about Hogancamp: Is he a crackpot? An emotionally crippled victim? An artist? The movie didn't need to answer all (or any) of those questions, but unlike the documentary, I left without wanting to give them much further thought.
Ben is Back, the story of a mother dealing with her son's drug addiction, proves observant and smart -- until a mid-picture plot twist alters its course.
A convincing Julia Roberts portrays Holly Burns, a mother who’s shocked to see her addict son Ben (Lucas Hedges) make an unannounced visit to the family's upstate New York home. Ben, who's supposed to be in rehab, claims that his sponsor endorsed the trip.
After many attempts to deal with Ben's addiction, Holly is happy to see her sober son, but she'd be a fool not to worry. Hadn't everyone agreed that Ben would complete his rehab before he returned to the family? Could this visit be a prelude to yet another failed attempt by Ben to pull his life together? Hasn't Ben already put his family through enough hardship?
Director Peter Hedges, Lucas' father and author of the screenplay, deftly reveals the family dynamics revolving around Ben's unexpected return.
Ben's stepfather (Courtney B. Vance) is appropriately skeptical, as is Ben's younger sister (Kathryn Newton), another child from Holly's previous marriage. Two children from Holly's current marriage are too young to feel anything but delight at the appearance the playful big brother who treats them with obvious affection.
Ben's return prompts tension but Vance's Neal and Holly negotiate a deal: Ben can stay for one day. There are conditions: He must agree to drug testing and he's never to leave Holly's sight.
Holly's love for her first-born is palpable. She wants to believe that her faith in Ben can bring him back from the brink of self-destruction. Hedges' performance makes it clear that Holly isn't entirely deluded. Ben has many admirable qualities: He's smart, capable of love and seems open and realistic when talking about his addiction.
During a particularly stressful moment, he even insists on attending a meeting of fellow addicts so that he can talk through his anxieties. Holly goes with him.
This portion of the movie gives Hedges an opportunity to suggest some of the damage that Ben has left in the wake of his addiction, most notably his relationship with the mother (Rachel Bay Jones) of one of his former girlfriends, a young woman he introduced to drugs.
The movie shifts gears when the family returns home from church on Christmas Eve and discovers that the house has been visited by intruders who've made off with the family dog.
Ben knows that the intruders want to scare the family and that they are connected to his former life.
Hedges' screenplay then finds another gear: Holly accompanies Ben as he makes contact with people from his worst days and what has been a carefully observed family drama takes on a new dimension.
Roberts and Hedges do their best to sell this part of the movie -- encounters with a string of unsavory types -- but I found Holly's behavior difficult to buy, perhaps because the screenplay doesn't adequately explore the impact of her persistence on the rest of the family. The effect she's having on Vance's mostly patient character is clear, but also underexplored.
There's no faulting the work of either Roberts or Hedges. Hedges, also seen in the recently released Boy Erased, understands and makes real the duplicitous ways of an addict, but the movie eventually pushes the larger family dynamics aside to concentrate its focus on mother and son.
It's possible to think of Ben is Back as a kind of companion piece to Beautiful Boy, another movie about a parent -- in that case, a father -- trying to cope with a son's addiction. The release of the two movies at roughly the same time may be coincidental but clearly suggests that middle-class addiction has become a national preoccupation.
Based on a true story, Beautiful Boy tries to pull its drama from reality; Ben is Back takes a fictional approach to finding its truth. In the end, neither movie totally succeeds, but both have moments that tear at the heart.
