Creed II doesn’t have any surprises. Anyone who has watched a couple Rocky movies knows exactly what is coming, but damn if it still isn’t incredibly thrilling. Adonis Creed (the fantastic Michael B Jordan) is the world heavyweight champion when he is challenged by Viktor Drago, son of Ivan Drago, the boxer who killed his father back in Rocky 4. Rocky thinks agreeing to the fight is a mistake and isn’t in Adonis’ corner when it goes down, and Adonis loses, badly. Adonis returns to Rocky with his tale between his legs, and Rocky takes him back in order to train for the rematch. Even with the lack of surprises, the film is well written and more exciting that you can imagine; it’s the type of movie where you’ll find yourself cheering aloud and yelling at the screen. Now the question becomes if they make a third film. The original Rocky and its sequel were great, but the series definitely took a bad turn on the third and only recovered because of Stalone’s tenacity in keeping it going through the torturous bad films.

I didn’t see Kin in the theaters because of the bad reviews. I didn’t stream it online later for the same reason. I only watched it recently when it hit the cable circuit. And it is proof again that you can enjoy a movie even when everyone tells you that you shouldn’t. Kin is about a young teenager who finds a high-tech weapon, sort of like a pocket rocket launcher/laser cannon. Shortly after his hidden find, his adopted father’s hooligan son comes home and gets the old man killed from some people to whom he owes money. When those people come looking for the son, the two adoptive brothers go on the run together. Little do they know, they are also being chased by the people looking for the weapon. Really the only thing the film suffers from is poor writing, and the story is indeed very rough. But the acting is decent (if sometimes a bit over the top), the sci-fi scenes are extremely well done, and the action sequences are thrilling. Maybe I only liked it because I went it with very low expectations, but I did enjoy it.

Vice lives up to its well earned reputation as a film featuring fantastic performances by all involved. While Christian Bale is in the lead as Dick Cheney, he is backed by Amy Adams, Steve Carrell, and Sam Rockwell as a bumbling George W Bush, and all are great. However, the movie so clearly has an agenda that it becomes tough to take seriously, even as a piece of entertainment. The movie follows Cheney’s life, starting at his early days in politics, but the film almost plays out like a Michael Moore documentary. And as such, I don’t think it does any good for the people that made it, many of whom attack Trump for bending truths and telling lies. Even as someone who didn’t vote for Bush or Trump, I have a problem with any party who tells flat out lies to attack the other party. Much of what the film shows as shady, behind-door deals Cheney and his cronies did over the years cannot be verified, but is presented here as fact. I have no doubt that Cheney is as crooked as depicted here, but I can’t enjoy this film as it was made.

In the really good historical films, the actor disappears and you forget that this isn’t the real person in front of you, but an actor portraying them. In Stan & Ollie, Steve Coogan and John C Reilly become Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy right before your eyes. In fact, they look and feel more like Laurel & Hardy than Coogan & Reilly. The film starts with a scene in 1937 where Laurel is leaving the film studio where the duo has worked, in search of more power over the films they make, but Hardy is still under contract, and makes a final film with someone else. The movie then jumps ahead to 1953. Laurel and Hardy are attempting a comeback, first doing a tour of small theaters in front of empty seats, but with the hope of securing backing for a new movie. Over the course of the film, they find renewed popularity, while at the same time we are treated to an exploration of a pair of comedic geniuses who have lived with a lot of buried animosity from all their years together. A beautiful film about a pair of comedy’s all-time greats, but just as important, one of its all time greatest friendships.

Jonathan is a drama with a sci-fi twist. Brothers Jon and Jonathan are two very different people. Jonathan is a type A personality, very structured, whereas Jon is more laid back and go-with-the-flow. What makes this film unique is Jon and Jonathan share a body. Jonathan controls the body from 7am until 7pm, when Jon takes over. Each has a job, and they’ve grown to adulthood by following very simple rules (such as no girlfriends) and leaving each other video messages to let each other know who they ran into and what is going on with each other’s life. However, it becomes messy when Jon falls in love and Jonathan only finds out when he hires a private investigator to track him. When Jonathan tells Jon he must break up with her, Jon does so, but then stops leaving messages for Jonathan. Jonathan goes weeks not knowing what his brother is doing with their shared body at night, and in the meantime, Jonathan starts falling for Jon’s ex-girlfriend too. When Jon finds out, he starts sinking into depression. A very interesting film for a lot of reasons, and sometimes very tense. Since we only see the film through Jonathan’s eyes, we don’t know what Jon is doing, and that creates quite a bit of suspension. I really enjoyed this one, great film, and great acting by Ansel Elgort in the lead as a split person.

Federico Fellini began his career in the 40’s as a screenwriter and received attention for a couple screenplays written for Roberto Rossellini. It was in the 50’s though that he started writing and directing his own films, so today I’ll look at 5 films from his first decade in the business. In 1950, Fellini launched what would be a prolific and acclaimed career with his directorial debut, Variety Lights (co-directed with Alberto Lattuada). Not as polished as movies that would come later, it is still a nice little tale. The manager of a traveling variety show, Checco, becomes smitten by a local girl, Lily, who dreams of being a star. He puts her in his show despite protests by other actors there, and builds a new show around her as her popularity (due to her good looks) grows in each city. The viewer quickly catches on that Lily will do anything to advance her own career, so it is no surprise when she dumps Checco at a very inopportune time, though he obviously doesn’t see it coming. Not a deep film, nor necessarily a great one, but there are nice moments, and the film is more grounded in realism that some of his more fantastical movies that would come later, though is obviously still focuses on desire, something Fellini would often make a focal point of his movies.

I haven’t seen some of Fellini’s later, more famous films yet, but out of these first few, The White Sheik is my favorite, though from what I understand, it is one of his lesser known pieces. A tremendously funny movie (I was laughing out loud by the end) but also emotionally endearing, it is a true masterpiece. It follows two newlyweds, Ivan and Wanda, who come to Rome to visit his upper class family. Wanda though is there secretly to meet one of her idols, a character in a photo strip series named Fernando, “the white sheik.” She secrets away to meet him, but this quick trip turns into an all day affair, and Ivan has to stall on his family, not knowing where Wanda ran off to, and starting to fear the worst, that she has suddenly left him. Of course in the end, Fernando is nothing like his character, and a let-down Wanda returns to Ivan with her tail between her legs. I laughed and nearly cried, just a great film.

I Vitelloni from 1953 is a funny drama following a quintet of adult friends. They lead aimless lives but dream about getting out of their small town, though no one does anything to achieve their goals, much less get a job to support themselves. One friend impregnates another friend’s sister, marries her and gets a job to support her, but his wandering eye continues to stray. A third friend dreams of writing plays for the big stars of the stage and screen, but when he meets one of his heroes, the actor doesn’t meet his expectations. Just when you think that nothing will ever change for our characters, one (the silent one throughout) boards a train at the end and heads out of town, with nary a word to anyone. Funny and endearing, it has all the aspects of a great Fellini film, including plenty of heart. Even if you don’t typically like foreign films, or if you think they are often too “artsy,” this is one most people can enjoy.

The first Oscar for the Foreign Language film category was awarded in 1956, and the answer to the trivia question of what film won the award for the first time is Fellini’s La Strada (“The Road”). It is a beautiful film about a traveling one-man show who takes on a girl as an assistant. Zampano travels town to town performing feats of strength. He’s a bit of a lady’s man, but when his last girl leaves him, he offers a local family 10,000 lire for their oldest daughter, to which the poor, tearful family accepts. Zampano isn’t kind to Gelsomina, calling her ugly and beating her when she doesn’t obey him correctly, and she longs to leave, but she has no where to go. Eventually the duo stumble upon a traveling circus that Zampano used to work for, and an acrobat named simply The Fool to whom he has a long-running beef. This confrontation leads to a dire situation for our leads. From early in the film, Gelsomina captures the audience with her big doe eyes, her naivete, and her adorable, shy nature, and while we should hate Zampano, I found myself hoping that he would change his ways. Whether he does or not before it is too late is up the viewer’s interpretation of what you consider “too late.” A ton of heart, a load of comedy, this is a film that anyone can enjoy, even if you don’t usually watch foreign films. Incidentally, because it was common practice at the time in Italy to film with no sound and add the dialogue later, the film was shown for a long time in America using only the English soundtrack, which seemed to help its popularly here since its two leading males were recognizable American actors (Anthony Quinn as Zampano, Richard Basehart as The Fool).

Fellini followed up his Oscar win in 1956 with another the next year, this one for Nights of Cabiria. I think I liked La Strada better, but this one is definitely a more nuanced film, and shows off the same actress using more of her skills, Giulietta Masina (Fellini’s real life wife, and she won Best Actress at Cannes this year for her role here). Cabiria is a prostitute searching for real love in all the wrong places. The opening scene sees her robbed and thrown in a river by her supposed boyfriend. She spends the rest of film identifying different Johns as possible mates, but nothing ever seems to go her way. Finally a real love falls into her lap and she has to admit, albeit grudgingly, that she may actually be happy. She sells everything she owns and they plan to marry, but on a walk by a lake, she realizes the scary familiarity of the scene, and that he is going to try to kill her for all her money. The man chickens out of killing her, but does take everything, leaving her completely broke with nothing to fall back on. Cabiria walks slowly down a street alone, crying, but when a young group of paraders stroll down, singing and dancing, she looks into the camera and cracks a smile. The viewer has to believe, with her, that things will be ok. Honestly for parts of the film I was a bit bored, but the tragic (and maybe uplifting?) ending saved it for me. Have to say, my initial foray into Fellini’s filmography has been a great joy, he may go down as one of my favorites. What can I say, I enjoy a good emotional film.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is a hard book to summarize. I can give you the loose plot elements, but the meaning of the book is so much more than the plot itself. There’s a lot going on here in its meager 200 pages.

The book follows Billy Pilgrim, sort of a nobody, below-average person. Not physically imposing nor handsome, not bright nor athletic, he’s not even an every-man. The book reads in a non-linear fashion, because Billy’s life has been non-linear. At some point as an adult, Billy is kidnapped by aliens (Tralfamadorians) and he becomes “unstuck” in time. The Tralfamadorians see 4 dimensions, the fourth being time, and somehow this rubs off on Billy. One moment he’ll be fighting in World War II, and when he blinks his eyes, he’ll be a child again. The overall plot deals with these large moments in Billy’s life: his alien abduction, his capture by Germans at the Battle of the Bulge, his handling by them at labor camps, and his survival in a cellar at Dresden during that city’s famous bombing. Throughout the book, Billy seems only a witness to all of these events; though he is an participant, it seems things are going to happen regardless if he is there or not. That leads to (I think) the overall argument of the book: the balance of fate vs free will.

There’s a poignant time during Billy’s time with the aliens. He tells them about the atrocities on his planet Earth, that he thinks over time, they can create weapons that will not only endanger themselves, but that they’d take these weapons in space to endanger all civilizations on other planets. The Tralfamadorians laugh, saying that isn’t how the universe ends. Because they see all of time the same way a human looks at a mountain range from the distance, they know that one day, one of their own will be working on a new space engine when something goes wrong, and it will wipe out all of existence. Billy asks, if they know this will happen, why don’t they stop it. They are confused, maybe even make a little laugh, and reply that, it all ready happened, it will happen, it is all the same. In the same way, when he asks why they chose him to take, they answer back, why him, why them, why anything? This greatly affects Billy’s outlook on life, knowing that events are going to happen no matter what he or anyone has to say about it. This is in start contrast with everything Billy thought he knew as a younger person, raised a Christian, and he tries to reconcile his previous thoughts of free will vs the Tralfamadorian’s view of “fate.”

For a book that seems so deep, it also has a lot of humor. Because death is practically meaningless to Tralfamadorians (because they exist before and after death at the same time), when someone dies, they simply replay “so it goes,” meaning, it’s just another moment in their life. So anytime anyone dies in the book, whether gruesomely in front of Billy during the war, or quietly at home, Billy doesn’t get upset, it is simply, “So it goes.” His sort of deadpan outlook on life is funny from page to page and never gets old. I enjoyed this one a lot more than the previous book I’d read (Cat’s Cradle) and it may get me to read some more Vonnegut in the future.

Throughout this crusade of mine to read these classics, every now and then I am completely blown away by a book, and such is the case by Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. A true masterpiece, it is a tremendous novel about the devastation of war and the tenacity of man.

The book follows Robert Jordan, an American volunteer fighting on the side of the Republicans and Communists against Franco’s fascist regime during the Spanish Civil War. Jordan is an expert dynamiter, and has been given orders to blow up a bridge on a key route just before a renewed assault. Jordan is sent to the area alone, and is to team up with the local guerrilla soldiers fighting in the hills to succeed in his mission. It is not a short book, coming in at nearly 500 pages in the version I read, but I’ll try to sum it up succinctly.

Jordan falls in with a group lead by a man named Pablo, who made a name for himself earlier in the war but who has since become complacent, unwilling to take big risks. Jordan recognizes him as a coward who will most likely hurt the outcome of the mission, but has no choice but to go along with him for the moment. In Pablo’s group are several fighters and a gypsy, and two women: Pablo’s girl Pilar, who is the de facto leader of the group because of Pablo’s increasing wariness, and Maria, a beautiful girl rescued from a life of rape and torture during an earlier raid. Jordan is to blow up the bridge in 3 days, and he spends that time learning the land, watching for enemy troop movements on the bridge, and evaluating the members of the troop. Unfortunately, he also falls in love with Maria, and Robert begins to worry how these feelings will affect his mission.

The day before Robert is to carry out the mission, a small band of their group is discovered by the enemy and a gunfight ensues. Not only do none of that group survive, threatening the numbers Robert needed to blow the bridge, but now he has to worry that the enemy is aware of activity in the area. The coward Pablo worries the same, and he attempts to sabotage the mission by stealing the remote detonators and throwing them away. Only just before the attack does Pablo return and fess up, and agree to go through with the attack as planned. The day finally dawns (not without a tense midnight ride by a courier sent by Jordan to give details to the general, telling of their dire straights and cautioning that the overall attack plan may not go well) and Jordan and the group do their jobs. Many are killed in the process, but a handful survive to make the final getaway. In the last dash though, Jordan is cut down too. He is too injured to continue, and after a heartfelt goodbye to Maria, he sets himself with a machine gun to await the enemy cavalry and make a last stand. Jordan reflects on his life, the moments that got him here, and revisits people in his life as he waits for death.

Firstly, the book is masterfully written. Jordan is an American and fluent in Spanish (he was a teacher there before the war), but the dialogue is still written as someone thinking through a second language that is not their native. This style really pulls you into the book, creating an environment in which you feel a part. To go along with the tremendous style, the book is completely engaging from its opening moments. There are side tracks here and there (to tell Pablo’s past story, or the train bombing that brought Maria to the group) but these serve to not only flesh out the main characters, but also these short diversions make you crave more of the current story. And throughout, we feel the impending doom of the mission, an uncertain and increasingly grave, doom-filled event that is approaching with all of the speed of a slow-rolling tank. One of the best books I’ve read in a quite awhile.

At Eternity’s Gate is a tour de force for Willem Dafoe as Vincent van Gogh. The film follows van Gogh’s middle and later life. Already an established, though poor, painter, the movie focuses on his views of the world around him, and most disturbingly, his descent into madness. He tells a few close friends early on that he feels he is losing his mind, and sure enough, we see it happen over the course of the film. Sometimes van Gogh isn’t aware of the insanity of his actions, and sometimes he is, but he is always aware of the voices in his head. Dafoe’s acting, the brilliant camera work that goes for close ups in lieu of more encompassing shots, and often moving with van Gogh so we are seeing his point of view, together create a very immersive film that the viewer feels a part of. Despite (or admittedly maybe because of according to himself) his madness, van Gogh is also a brilliant painter: he turns ordinary scenes and objects into something quite different and unique. He worries about his legacy though, and wonders if he will ever be appreciated. A wonderful character driven film showcasing Dafoe’s mastery of his craft.

What was the last film of Tim Burton’s you really liked? For me it was Sweeney Todd, and that goes back over 10 years ago. He’s had lots of duds since then, and unfortunately the newest Disney remake, Dumbo, is one of them. It’s a story that everyone knows: a misfit elephant is born with big ears that allow him to fly, and he spends most of the movie earning for his lost mother. He keeps trying to get back to her, with help from his friends. The movie has Burton’s colorful sets but none of the charm, and even the quality actors (Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Evan Green, and a cameo from Alan Arkin) cannot bring life to this dull, and frankly boring, film. The few moments of joy that happen here and there don’t last long enough, and the “comedic moments” drew about 2-3 chuckles out me for the entirety of the movie. Skip this one, and go watch the original cartoon again.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is one of those biographical dramas that is pretty good overall, with good acting and an almost unbelievable (but true!) story, but in the end, I just thought “ok” with a shrug. Melissa McCarthy takes a turn in a serious role (but still with some humor) as Lee Israel. Lee is a failing biographical writer in the early ’90’s who finds that, with her talent for writing in the same style as her subjects, she is able to write fake letters as famous authors and pass them off to legitimate collectors as authentic. It’s one of those things that would probably never work today with the internet and quick authentication checks, but she gets away with it here, and did in real life too, for awhile. McCarthy is very good in a rare non-comedic role, as is co-star Richard E Grant, but it has the feel of a movie that, while decent, isn’t quite “fun” enough to watch more than once.

Bumblebee is the newest film in the Transformer series, but serves as a prequel of sorts. In fact, it starts on Cybertron, as we see the Autobots abandoning the planet during their war with the Decepticons. Optimus Prime sends his trusted warrior B127 to Earth, to prepare it as their future base. Unfortunately B127 is met by a Decepticon shortly after arriving. B127 is able to emerge victorious, but is gravely wounded, losing his memory and no longer able to communicate. A couple years later, B127 is discovered in a junkyard by the teenager Charlie (played by the young great actress Hailee Steinfeld) in the guise of an old yellow volkswagon bug. Charlie learns his secret soon and names him Bumblebee. It isn’t long before two more Decepticons find that Bumblebee is on Earth, and come to capture him to find out what Optimus Prime’s plans are. Without his memories, Bumblebee doesn’t know why they want him or what is going on. The film has all the action that the Transformers movies are known for, but it has something those last few were missing, and that is heart. By the end of the film, Bumblebee is as endearing as any human actor, and we are rooting for him and Charlie to survive. Hopefully the team behind these films can use this as a launching pad to jump start this franchise.

I love it when I go into a movie expecting one thing, and get something entirely different. I didn’t think I’d like If Beale Street Could Talk, mostly because I’d recently read another book by the author of the book from which it was based, and didn’t care for that book. I only watched this movie because a co-worker with good taste in films told me I needed to. I’ll eat crow on this one, because this movie is fantastic. It takes place in the inner city of New York in the early 70’s and centers on a young, in-love black couple. The young woman is pregnant, but her boyfriend and father of her baby is in jail, accused of raping a Puerto Rican woman. The family is doing their best to prove his innocence, but as a black male with no money, the system is stacked against him. Throughout, we get flashbacks to their upbringing and early romance. The movie paints a pretty bleak picture of the struggle of black men and women in that era (and most likely still today). It is easy to say keep your nose clean and you’ll be fine, but when the only other alternative for so many young minorities is to work a dead-end job that can’t afford to pay the bills, the only choice is to hustle on the street to support your family. Very powerful film, with amazing acting by Regina King as the pregnant girl’s mother (King would win the Oscar).

Today I’m going back to some of the earliest films directed by the great director Ingmar Bergman. Crisis was his directorial debut in 1946 (he had written one previous film, Torment, directed by Alf Sjoberg). The opening narration tells you this is not going to be an explosive film, but is a small drama about a small town. From that intro, we meet Nelly, a beautiful young woman who wants to move to the big city. She’s been raised by a woman named Muttie, but is now about to be whisked off to a new adventure by her long-abandoned mother Jenny. However, Jenny’s young boyfriend Jack sets his eyes on Nelly. Once in the city, Jenny finds the grass was most definitely not greener. She returns to Mutti and the small town, and a man whose been waiting patiently for her love. You can tell Crisis was made by a young director. The plot is OK, but the actors are one dimensional and the direction and setting feel haphazard. There are however a few peaks at tormented characters, something obviously Bergman would go on to explore in depth later.

A Ship Bound for India came a year later in 1947, and this one is much better. Johannes is a sailor returning home after 7 years at sea. He has come to find Sally, the love he left behind all those years before. He finds her as a defeated, sad woman, and he falls asleep that night thinking about the events that got them there. As a young man, Johannes was tormented by his father Blom, captain of a salvage ship. Blom treated his family poorly but dreamed of leaving them for the beautiful young dancer Sally. Sally however doesn’t allow herself to really get attached to anyone, for fear of being dropped herself one day. She loves Johannes but refuses to admit it to herself, because of that fear of abandonment. Blom really only cares about himself, and his fear of approaching mortality. When Johannes finally stands up to him, all of the family secrets are laid bare. Johannes tells Sally he will return for her one day when he is able, and departs for the high seas. His return seven years later is the culmination of that promise. This is a much better film, with improved camera work, more fleshed out characters, and an emotional plot. It feels more like a Bergman film.

Port of Call is a rare dud from Bergman, in fact, I’d go so far as to say it probably would never be shown today if not for its famous director. It is about a former sailor who falls in love with a woman with a past, a woman who’s been in and out of reformatory, but seems to be a good girl deep down. She just comes from a bad family and keeps ending up in the wrong situation. The actors here are all wooden, and the girl playing Berit is really just a pretty face. It’s one of those movies that I’ll be hard pressed to remember a year from now. If Bergman took a step forward in A Ship Bound for India, he took a step back on Port of Call. It’s not entirely unexpected; at this time in his beginning career, he was under contract by the studio to pump out 2-3 movies a year, and not all are going to be good, or even decent films.

This was the first of Bergman’s early films that I thought was a really, really good movie. Thirst is an engaging, well developed story about interconnected lives. It begins in a Hitchcock-like suspenseful style, with a woman, Ruth, who seems to be not exactly sane. We see a few rapid scenes, showing her interactions with others, and the viewer don’t know what is a flashback and what is current day. As the film settles into a flow, we find that Ruth is married to Bertil, but each is haunted by a past relationship. Ruth once had a fling with a married military man, but when she got pregnant, he forced her into an abortion which left her infertile. Meanwhile, Bertil remembers an older widow he was with named Viola. Viola herself suffered from a mental breakdown, and when she was approached for a female fling by a dancer (Valborg, who the viewer realizes is a friend of Ruth), Viola commits suicide. Thirst shows Bergman learning who he is as a director, and focusing on the female psyche for the first time. It came out in 1949, so he was quickly approaching the hits of the ’50’s that would make Bergman a household name in Sweden, and an art-house hit across the world.

To Joy is about two violinists, Stig and Martha, who fall in love, get pregnant, get married, and have a bumpy life together. Stig has aspirations of becoming a renowned soloist, but doesn’t have the skill to do so. Together, the couple have a rough marriage. Stig brings his frustrations at work home with him, which leads to strife with Martha. Eventually they decide that she’d be better off living away from the city, and once she’s gone, Stig starts to stray. Unfortunately for Stig, he doesn’t realize how much he loves Martha until it is too late. A very emotional film, it shows Bergman as a young director coming into his own.

Widows is a very entertaining heist film with a twist, putting women in the forefront instead of the traditional strong male lead. The film starts with a quartet of men making a getaway from a job, but all are killed by the cops during a standoff. The stolen money is destroyed in the process, and the people it was stolen from come after the dead thieves’ widows for repayment. These women band together and, along with notes left from their husbands’, plan their own heist to get the needed cash. The film has a lot going on, with dirty politicians to go along with the crooks, and a few good twists to keep the viewer guessing. The cast is great, chuck full of award winners, and all brought together by the talented director Steve McQueen (Hunger, 12 Years a Slave).

I’ll set you up with the opening scene. A pilot is in a test flight to get just on the other side of the atmosphere in 1961, flying in something not much better than a plane with a rocket attached to it. It is shaking and creaking and sounds like it will fall apart at any second. Something inevitably goes wrong, and the pilot has to make quick decisions to get him back on land safely. It is one of the most gripping scenes in any movie that I can remember in quite awhile. There are a few such scenes in First Man, detailing the life of Neil Armstrong and the American space program trying to get the first person to the moon and back. Moments like the nearly ruinous Gemini 8 mission, the deadly Apollo 1 test, and the landing of Apollo 11 all make from great cinema, interspersed with the private life of Armstrong as he and his wife deal with the death of a daughter. Ryan Gosling plays an Armstrong who often is not in touch with his emotions and doesn’t know how to deal with his family; as such, he comes off as very cold and impersonal. Personally I thought the movie felt a little long, and the slower scenes, meant for dramatic affect, sometimes crawled by, but the charged and emotional action sequences more than make up for those slower moments.

In the safety of the USA, it is easy to ignore the cost of lives of wars happening on the other side of the world. A Private War is about journalist Marie Colvin, who traveled to places where she was often not supposed to be, in order to put human faces and tell human stories of civilians and innocent casualties caught up in the wars of their nations. She traveled to Sri Lanka (where she lost an eye), to Afghanistan, to Libya, and to Syria, where ultimately she was killed. When I’ve heard of press members killed in these dangerous zones, I’ll admit I’ve previously wondered if they had a death wish, but seeing this film and hearing Colvin’s story, I see now the importance of their work. They are telling stories that governments are trying to hide and would otherwise be untold; they are risking their own lives in order to make sure the world knows the truth. This is a tremendous film, with Colvin portrayed brilliantly by Rosamund Pike as a woman who believes in what she does, yet struggles with alcoholism and PTSD from the horrors she has witnessed.

I had the same reaction to Aquaman that I’ve had to most of the DC Universe films so far: pretty much a shrug and a “that was OK I guess.” An origin story of the Aquaman character who showed up in a couple previous DC films, and portrayed by Jason Momoa, the film is about the war that some who live underwater in the lost city of Atlantis want to wage on “surface dwellers,” and the prophesied king who will return to unite them all in peace. Momoa is all right, but I did have a problem that he seemed pretty indestructible, taking hit after hit and displaying superhuman strength. I thought the world only had one Superman? Beautifully shot with tons of computer-aided scenes (it seriously looks like the whole film was shot on green screen), there are some good moments and some funny banter, but overall the film just isn’t that great. This series continues to struggle against the juggernaut that is the Marvel Universe, though they still keep making good money, so they’ll continue making them. I keep hoping they’ll turn the corner and get better.

I also finally got around to watching A Star is Born, the much talked about remake of the rags-to-riches story of a singer, Ally. Portrayed by Lada Gaga and co-starring Bradley Cooper as mega-star Jackson Maine (also his debut as writer/director), the movie lived up to the hype for the first 45 minutes to an hour. Jackson discovers Ally in a drag bar and instantly recognizes her talent, and also becomes smitten by her down-to-earth personality. He drags her onstage at a few of his stadium concerts and she becomes an instant hit, and that’s where the film lost me. Ally up to now seemed to know who she was and what she wanted, but here she started to let a record producer change those things to create her image, changing her hair and making her dance on stage to her music, complete with back-up dancers. I understand that’s what the industry is, but Ally’s half-ass, feeble protests amounted to nothing. Along with her meteoric rise, Jackson sees a precipitous fall, due to his continued alcoholism, drug use, and tinnitus with worsening hearing loss. There are good, tender moments, but I found the overall film fairly average. I’m not even sure why Gaga received so much acclaim. The soundtrack is good, but any scene she shared with Cooper was lost to him, even when she was supposed to be the focus. Cooper’s just too good and takes over the camera. Worth a single viewing, but I doubt I’d want to watch it again.

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is an important novel for the 60’s counterculture/anti-establishment movement. Unfortunately, it is also a great bore for anyone younger, like myself, who lived outside the era and the people this novel was speaking to.

The book is based on Kerouac’s own travels across the country with his friends in the late ’40s and ’50s. The main character and narrator is Sal, a smart young writer who likes to party and lives a very bohemian lifestyle (although a bit of a fake one, since he regularly asks his aunt for money to fuel his escapades). Sal has a huge bro-mance with a fellow wanderer named Dean. Sal idolizes Dean, who is a completely carefree spirit and rebel against the system. The book starts out fun enough, detailing Sal’s trip from New York to San Francisco to meet up with Dean, with a stopover to hang with friends in Denver. Sal bus’s when he has money, hitchhikes when he doesn’t, and makes it all the way on just $50. His ordeals on the road make for great reading. He makes friends, meets lots of eccentric, like-minded people, and takes it all in stride.

Unfortunately the rest of the book is more of the same. There are periods when Sal settles down for a few months here and there, taking an odd job or something, but most of the book is the regular cross-country trips, either alone or with Dean and other friends. The joy and excitement of the trips wears after awhile, and my “type A” personality wanted to start shaking Sal and tell him to get away from the lowlife Dean and do something with his life. Sal himself finally does realize this (but not before his other friends foretell it) when Dean abandons him during a trip down to Mexico. Whereas Sal is “growing up” and ready to start a family, Dean can’t stay in one city for a few months before he starts getting itchy and wanting to move on. Dean has dotted the country with girlfriends and ex-wives, and even at the end of the book, he shows no inclination of slowing down, despite the hardships his life has taken on his body.

I don’t argue that this was a defining novel for a generation, but it’s just not my generation. A fine enough book, but I don’t think it belongs in this list of “greatest ever.”

The Favourite received a bunch of acclaim this past awards season, especially for its lead actresses, Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz. Directed by the fantastic young director Yorgos Lanthimos, it follows Queen Anne’s short rule in the early 18th Century. Anne is portrayed as a bit of a simple woman who relies on her life-long friend, Sarah Churchill, to run the household and give good advice on running the government. A distance cousin of Sarah’s, Abigail, arrives to the palace to serve as a maid, but Abigail has her sights set on rising up the hierarchical ladder. Abigail needles her way into Anne’s good graces, and when Sarah pushes back, Abigail finds ways to undermine her. In this film, I think the acting supersedes the movie. I thought the film’s story was just OK (not as great as Lanthimos’ last 2, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer), but the acting by all three leading ladies is truly special and worth watching.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a surprise hit last year, which swept in to take away the best animated film Oscar from the Disney and Pixar heavyweights. Featuring a unique comic-book-like animation style inspired by its source material, it is visually stunning but also has a great story. Peter Parker dies early in the film, trying to stop Kingpin from opening a rift between worlds, and the young Miles Morales must learn how to control his new Spider-Man powers if he is going to take up the mantle. Kingpin’s experiment did open the rift wide enough to let in a bunch of Spider-Men versions, all of whom band together to stop Kingpin with Miles. This is a film for all to enjoy, with lots of humor (even a few fourth wall breaks in Deadpool style) and a much more lighthearted approach to our superhero, more in line with his comic book origins than what we typically see him as in the movies. Don’t avoid it just because it is a cartoon, it really is a fantastic film.

The Sisters Brothers is a much deeper, more emotional film than what you might expect on the surface. The named brothers are Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) and Eli (John C Reilly), a couple gunslingers on the hire by a powerful man known as the commodore. The commodore sends them out to hunt down a man named Warm (Riz Ahmed), whose location has been found by a scout named Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal). The younger Charlie is a violent man, drinking, whoring, and killing without remorse, but his older brother Eli, while equally deadly with a gun, is more introspective and dreams of a better life. When they catch up with Warm and Morris, it is revealed that Warm has developed a method to aid in gold prospecting, which the commodore wants. Warm doesn’t want to use his method to get rich, but wants to build a utopian society. As the climactic conclusion approaches, we learn why Charlie is the way he is. A fantastic film, I think it bombed at the theaters due to poor marketing. The ads made it seem like a zany western, and while it has a lot of humor and takes place in the wild west, that’s not what this movie is all about. While it didn’t get much attention here in the states, it received a lot of awards overseas, including at the Venice Film Festival and in France, where it won 4 Cesar awards (their version of the Oscar) among 9 nominations.

Cold War is a gut-punching foreign film about a couple living just after World War II. A man and his partner start a school promoting local folk music in Poland in 1949, and the male teacher, Wictor, falls in love with one of his students, Zula. The school is under increasing pressure from the Communist-leaning government to sing songs promoting Stalin and other Russian ideals. Wictor decides to make a run for it, and while performing in Berlin, he and Zula plan to defect. Zula however gets cold feet and doesn’t meet Wictor, so he leaves alone. A few years later in 1954, they meet again in Paris, where Wictor has been working, while Zula is still with the troupe, now traveling around Europe. He sees her perform a few times around Europe, but is caught by Polish government officials, who give him a warning to steer clear or he’ll find himself brought home to face charges. More time passes, and Zula comes to visit Wictor in 1957. She has married an Italian man in order to leave Poland, but has left him to be with Wiktor. However, they find life together to not be as cracked up as they had always imagined it to be. By 1959, she has returned to Poland, and he is arrested when trying to go to her there. She vows to get him out before his 15 year sentence, and sure enough, she marries a higher-up in the government to make this happen by 1964. An emotional roller coaster of a film, it was nominated for best foreign film at the most recent Oscars. Shot in 4:3 and black and white, it has the feel of a classic foreign film, with fantastic acting by its two leads.

All About Nina is one of those “really real” independent films that tries so hard to be real, that it comes off as contrived. Nina is a female comic struggling against sexism in her professional life, which bleeds then into her personal relationships. She acts like her fellow male comics, telling sex jokes and whatnot. When a guy does it, he is just “being a dude,” but when she does it, the crowd thinks she is easy and try to hook up with her after her sets. In reality, she’s coming off a bad relationship and doesn’t know what she wants in life. When she really falls for a guy, she doesn’t know how to handle it. I had a hard time connecting with the character even though the part is played very well by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. And like a lot of comic hacks, the movie goes for shock value over real substance. However, it does do a good job of showing the uphill battle women comics face in the business, including the limited opportunities for women, and the lack of support for each other due to the limited chances.

Up today is another director associated with French New Wave, Jacques Demy. Though he was a contemporary of Jean-Luc Godard, Demy’s films are much different (especially Godard post-1970), with more optimism, and frequently about love, though usually with a melancholic feeling, like a lost love. The word most often used to describe Demy’s films is bittersweet.

Lola is one of those films where all of the characters’ lives intertwine, usually without their knowledge. Roland is a young, aimless man, who can’t hold a job and doesn’t know what he wants. One day he stumbles upon a childhood friend, Cecile, who has grown up to become a cabaret dancer and goes by the name Lola. She is Roland’s first and true love, but she doesn’t return his affections now as an adult. Instead, she misses her first love, Michele, who abandoned her as a pregnant young woman 7 years ago. Lola is pursued by Frankie, and American sailor, who is the focus of infatuation of a young girl named Cecile (the same name is obviously not a coincidence), whose mom is attracted to Roland, etc, etc. Obviously the film is about love, and particularly, how strong our “first love” can be. The film is much less esoteric than Godard’s stuff, and is a great date film if you want to try to dip your toes in the French New Wave without getting all wet.

I didn’t like Bay of Angels much at all, in fact the only thing that really sticks with me is its visual style. The movie is about a young man, Jean, who is introduced to gambling by his friend. Jean earns half a year’s salary on his first day at the casino, and goes on a vacation. You think he is going to cut with his winnings and be happy, but he finds himself at a casino again in the Riviera, where he meets a slightly older woman who is definitely addicted to gambling. Together the duo spend the rest of the film winning a lot, and losing it all, a couple times. Very little plot that I could tell, and I wasn’t impressed with the acting of the lead guy; I couldn’t make up my mind if we were supposed to like him or not. The one thing that was done well was the visuals. You could tell Demy was going for the starkness of black or white, right or wrong, etc. Everything is black or white, from the walls of the hotel to the dresses worn by the woman to the furniture in the buildings. Other than the visual appeal, the film was a dud.

Demy redeemed himself with his next film, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, his first major hit, and the one that launched Catherine Deneuve’s career. A musical, it is completely sung-through. It was his first color film, and he made good use. The bright, bold colors are beautiful, as is the jazzy music. Guy is a local mechanic, and he is in love with Genevieve, who works at her mother’s umbrella shop. The mother does not approve, because Genevieve is just 16, but she isn’t too worried because Guy is only 20 and hasn’t served his compulsory time in the French army yet. When Guy is called up, he and Genevieve “say their proper goodbyes” and leaves, and of course, shortly afterwards, she finds she is pregnant. She decides to not to continue to wait for Guy’s return, and instead marries a man who has had his eye on her, none other than Roland, who has finally moved on from his first love, Lola. This film is often cited as an inspiration for the recent hit La La Land, and it is easy to see why. Though the stories are different, there is still that bittersweet, longing feeling, and ultimately both are about a young couple who fall in love but are separated by real life. Other similarities such as the bright and beautiful colors (remember the deep blue sky, Emma Stone’s yellow dress, etc) are shared across both films. And even the opening tune of Umbrellas is musically very thematically similar to the main song of La La Land, City of Stars.

The Young Girls of Rochefort followed, and from the opening scene when a group gets out and stretches from what looks like a long car trip, and the stretching suddenly becomes a dance number accompanying the opening music, we know this will feel more like a traditional American musical than the previous film. Twins Delphine and Solange (real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac) are each seeking love, and the film plays out in as a series of missed opportunities and near-misses. Delphine wants to marry an artist, and it just so happens a young artist has painted a picture of her as his vision of the ideal woman. Solange wants to marry someone talented in music like she is, and it so happens a composer is in the area (a surprising French role by the talented American legend Gene Kelly). The twins’ mother runs a local restaurant, and she reminisces about her first true love, whom she fled years ago, and he happens to be a musician friend of Solange. These are just a few of the cosmic-level coincidences that the viewer watches play out in this colorful and beautifully shot movie. A lighthearted film, it was dismissed as fluff when it was first released, but I think it is much better than that.

Donkey Skin is Demy’s adaptation of the famous (or infamous?) French fairy tale of the same name. A king’s wife dies, but on her deathbed, she makes him promise that he will not marry anyone less beautiful than she was. The king decides that the only person suitable in his kingdom is his own daughter. This incestuous plot is probably why the story is less well known here in the west. To flee her father, the princess has his prized donkey killed and skinned, and wears the skin as a cloak. This causes people to think she is ugly and smelly, and she moves to a new kingdom to live as a scullery maid. The prince of this new kingdom sees through her disguise though, and seeks to marry her. The movie isn’t perfect, for instance, the princess’s father disappears from most of the film once she flees, despite his supposed insistence on marriage, but it is a very enjoyable movie. Was also Demy’s most successful commercially.

Demy’s other films weren’t as successful, but there are some worth watching. Model Shop is an American-made film which serves as a semi-sequel to Lola. In it, Lola finds herself in the USA after Michele has left her to run off with the woman gambler from Bay of Angels. A film made in the 80’s, Une chambre en ville, is also sung-through like Umbrellas, but is a much darker film, and was nominated for 9 Cesar awards when it was released. Definitely worth watching. Demy is definitely one of those directors who doesn’t have the name recognition, but has some real treasures.