With a Hitler youth and his imaginary friend Adolph as central protagonists, it’s stunning that Taika Waititi’s WWII-set black comedy Jojo Rabbit (B-) gets its satiric tone right even some of the time. Blending what could only be described as a Wes Anderson aesthetic with a coming of age story (oh, that was already done in Moonrise Kingdom?), Waititi writes, directs and even plays a sassy version of the make-believe Nazi mastermind with acerbic aplomb. While marquee stars Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell and Rebel Wilson lend deft performances, it’s really the kids on center stage: the staunch ten-year-old German boy (Roman Griffin Davis) who finds his mother (Johansson) is harboring a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in her attic during the waning weeks of the war. A grab bag of gags and droll set-ups give way to somewhat unearned sentiment. By far, McKenzie is the VIP here as the teen who’s largely the only grown-up in the room. Waititi disarms viewers with his unusual point of view and waltzes just a bit toward schmaltz. Still, it’s daring, occasionally funny and sometimes insightful. I expected more hop and less garden variety, more revisionism and less requiem. This will likely be the only movie remotely like this getting a rather wide release.
Adam McKay’s genre-hopping Vice (B) is a distant cousin to Oliver Stone’s similarly dark comedic Natural Born Killers, admirable for creative storytelling about issues ripped out of the headlines but a bit confounding in what it’s intending to explore about its caricatures. Christian Bale is as good as you’ve heard brilliantly inhabiting the enigmatic role of Dick Cheney at various points in his life; he’s best in his quietest moments utterly lacking in expected reactions (his multiple heart attacks are treated like an occasional case of the hiccups). Amy Adams is magnificent as his deeply humanizing wife Lynn; she’s in fact his beating heart and just as ruthless. Many others in the ensemble simply feel like stunt casting, although Sam Rockwell does indeed make a spiffy W. The plot largely explores the build-up of the case for unilateral presidential (and strong vice presidential) authority and for the Iraq War. McKay so blissfully plays with the conventions of cinema – never trust a closing credit scroll or that a sequence won’t show up in iambic pentameter – that he often loses track of his central themes. In the film’s straight down the barrel of a shotgun portrayal of Wyoming’s famous son who stays pretty resolute in his principles and doesn’t care if you like him or not for it, you can find traces of character to please both sides of the aisle. But largely it’s a blistering assessment of power and an indictment of what the Cheney/Bush (or was it the other way around?) administration did with said power when they had it. There wasn’t a big record to clear up here, and the film doesn’t attempt to rose color it.
None of the characters in Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya (C) are going to win top honors in The Nice Capades, but I give the actors credit for their commitment to a biopic that is equally uneven in its tone and its point of view. The faux documentary style largely works in chronicling the real-life tale of a conspiracy to injure a competitor in the figure skating world, but the knowing commentary breaking the third wall mid-action sequences is a misfire. Margot Robbie is gloriously tragic as driven athlete Tonya Harding, and she gets solid, stone cold support from Allison Janney and Sebastian Stan as her abusive mother and husband. The funny bits aren’t darkly comic enough to counterbalance what is largely a tale of domestic and psychological abuse. The parts don’t add up to a cogent enough theme; and once they do, the director spells it out a bit too obviously. It doesn’t pulse with enough love for its protagonist to pierce the ice on the surface and actually melt misconceptions or your heart. And it doesn’t add all that much to the “well, this is what America is now” canon.
Martin McDonagh’s unconventional revenge drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (A) is one of the finest films of the year, upending expectations about a collection of well drawn characters in Small Town, America. Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell give rich performances as a grieving mother of a murdered teenage girl and the seemingly incompetent local policemen she coerces into action to solve her daughter’s cold case. McDormand in particular delivers a performance for the ages, showcasing an indomitable spirit as she waged a grassroots campaign to right her family’s fissure in a world that’s gone out of its Ebbing mind. Lucas Hedges and John Hawkes are superb as her son and ex-husband, and Peter Dinklage adds a droll turn as a mysterious townsman. McDonagh maintains a dark comedic tone as he plumbs thorny issues in a shadowy microcosm of the justice system. For folks who enjoyed Hell or High Water, Fargo or this director’s own In Bruges, this will be your film to see this awards season.
An absurdist sci-fi fantasy, a cunning comedy and a metaphorical meditation on the oddities of being a single person on the planet earth, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster (B) is a beguiling think piece that both advances the contention that Colin Farrell has become one of film’s great comic actors (a great companion piece to In Bruges) and the notion that a puzzle of a movie can still be a jigsaw short of its razor-sharp intentions. Farrell plays a sad-sack single who checks in to a rigorous retreat center where guests either pair up with a companion based on a very superficial physical trait or permanently transform into an animal. This droll, deadpan fable is largely able. Alas the episodic structure doesn’t provide much of a compass to guide viewers to where this is all heading (nor does the ending); but like Her, Gattaca or Dogville, it follows some intriguing internal logic. The dark comedy largely delivers; and even with some final act problems, it is a remarkable production that will stimulate discussion. Farrell’s fussy scruffiness, the craziness of his road to wellville and some fierce supporting characters (Ariane Labed as a hotel maid, Ben Whishaw and John C. Reilly as fellow guests at the recovery residence, Léa Seydoux as a freedom fighter and Rachel Weisz as a mystery woman) buoy this indie original.
Quentin Tarantino’s hybrid western mystery gangster epic The Hateful Eight (B+) has all the trappings of the writer/director’s best work from outstanding ensemble acting to wicked dialogue to twisty plot conventions to pulpy action and inventive use of music. To some extent, it’s at times a bit too much of a retread of his most common conventions. Filmed as a Cinerama presentation in classic 70mm Panavision with gorgeous Ennio Morricone overture and an intermission, the saturated colors of this post-Civil War tale come vividly to life. Unlike his experiments with grindhouse double features, this homage to cinematic history pays off. As long as it is, it’s a film that nonetheless will reward repeat viewings. The pre-intermission proceedings appear to be too preoccupied with exposition and campfire tales before Act Two truly delivers the mixtape of Agatha Christie style mystery and vicious bloodbath that fans of the auteur will crave. Kurt Russell is impressive as a villainous vermin channeling John Wayne on a bad day, and Samuel L. Jackson steals the show as a charismatic bounty hunter with a surprising past and nearly all the film’s most iconic lines. Walton Goggins is a revelation as the sheriff of Red Rock with unlikely cunning, and Jennifer Jason Leigh unfurls a crackerjack of a performance as a duplicitous prisoner. Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern and Channing Tatum are all effective in their roles. The only weak link, possibly from misdirection, is Demián Bichir. Expect extreme language and violence and vintage Tarantino. It falls just short of some of his tighter and tidier work, but it’s more splendid fire in his canon.
Equal parts extraordinary and exhausting, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (B+) is a cynical cautionary tale wrapped in a fetching fantasia of decadent and grotesque true-life characters. Aside from the master director stunningly realizing his vision, Leonardo DiCaprio sinks his teeth into his role with grandeur. I don’t think the actor has ever been in such command of his craft, and it may be the greatest performance he has ever given. Somewhere in the second, third, maybe fourth act, however, the storytelling teeters a bit into true-crime formula. But there are so many devilish parts to relish. The film features the most seminal sequence involving stairs since Battleship Potemkin and some of the most darkly comic moments set to film involving addiction to drugs and dollars. No detail gets missed, from an ironic playing of “Mrs. Robinson” to fake get-rich-quick commercials. There are prolonged vignettes so good they needed to remain fully intact, but there are just too many of them. Scorsese wields a three-hour sledgehammer when subtler tools could have made a bigger statement. All in all, this is Leo’s tour de force and quite possibly the ultimate indictment of corporate corruption gone amuck.
Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (B+) is an audacious piece of revisionist history that imagines what WWII might have been like if a couple of clever factions of bounty hunters, cinephiles and revenge seekers could have tried to kill Hitler at a movie screening. Leave it to Tarantino to take such a high-concept idea to such delicious detail and cast his film with such relish, especially with Christoph Waltz as a particularly menacing Nazi officer and Brad Pitt as a motormouthed mercenary. Some moments are uneven, but overall, this one hits the mark.
At around an hour and a half, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love (B-) is a quirky trifle from a director who’s accustomed to directing an opus. Adam Sandler’s character is a schmuck with rage issues, but he’s paired with the super-sweet Emily Watson in a romance. To the tune of Jon Brion’s harmonium and through bizarre sequences with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and others, this is PTA’s version of After Hours. Sandler glows from the great writing and direction.