2018 Movies

I saw six movies at the theatre in 2018, two of them very excellent films.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri.  Although this was a 2017 film, I saw it early this year and I thought it should have won the Best Picture Oscar for last year.  It's a very complicated film, and very violent, which has created a lot of controversy about it, but doesn't that describe the way life is?  Anything with Frances McDormand is bound to be a riveting film.

The Green Book.  This is my choice for Best Film this year.  It's also a complicated film with violence, injustice, suspense and subtle humor, and which involves loyalty to clan, duty and self, as well as growth and redemption.  Its depiction of an at-heart-a-good-man Italian bouncer, trying to support his family in 1960s New York City through dubious enterprises and low-level crime while remaining true to his tribal community, is fascinating and the film features jarring culture clashes from which compromises, accommodations and friendships emerge.  I am sad to say that until I saw this movie, I had no knowledge of the Green Book, although I was fully aware of Jim Crow America.  It features noteworthy performances by Viggo Mortensen as the Italian protagonist Tony Vallelonga, who drives and protects black classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley, portrayed by Mahershala Ali, on his musical tour of Southern American towns.

First Man.  This film features Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon as he famously said, "A small step for a man, a giant leap for all mankind."  This is a film depicting a different America, a crew-cut time of greatness when America could and would accomplish astonishing things like landing a man on the moon within ten years of setting out to do so.  Included are the heart-breaking setbacks like the module fire that killed three astronauts to the soaring triumphs like the successful moon launch.  This is nothing like the current America.  A fun, quasi-suspenseful look back.

The Nutcracker Suite and the Fourth Realm.  A musical, live and animated action mashup that was entertaining for its 90 minute length.

Vice.  (Seen December 31st.)  A movie about a dark and truly evil man, Dick Chaney, basically a psychopath turned vigilante says one reviewer, who was instrumental in leading our country down the path towards ruination as Dubya's VP and the chief whisperer to that reckless fool.  I thought it might be funny because if you can't laugh at tragic events you are just left to cry.  But it's not funny, except for a few guffaw moments like watching Dubya try to shuck and jive his way through his handed-to-him-by-Scalia presidency.  This black biopic just gets grimmer and grimmer as we watch our nation get taken down a darker and darker inglorious path by power-drunk powerbrokers.  I might as well as have spent 132 minutes in a dentist's chair as looking backwards at this grim exposition of America's tragic missteps so far in this century.  

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  An animated tale of petty revenge and venality perpetrated by a crabbed, self-centered man living alone by circumstances and choice trumped by redemption engendered by love, devotion, civility and inclusion.  This obviously is a morality tale on how the current America might yet emerge back to greatness.