Avengers: Infinity War

It's hard to write about Avengers: Infinity War, without some spoiler alert to allude to. But my visceral reaction was that it was good, not necessarily better than the other Avenger movies and certainly not the recent Black Panther. It was an ambitious undertaking a decade in the making to culminate all these storylines and super hero characters into what is essentially part one of a larger movie with half the heroes left in tatters. In that endeavor, Infinity War felt noticeably too big for it's britches in it's unevenness in storytelling and in trying to cram everything in while simultaneously leaving out key characters. Where was Hawkeye and Ant Man? Maybe part 2 will fix that. Again, it was good. But, this fuckin supersized Paul Bunyan of a villain Thanos, killing everyone and jacking the galaxy for infinity bling. Well, he was a bit laughable. The most satisfaction was seeing how the relatively new Marvel characters mixed in and worked with the older characters, especially in the action sequences. Thor gets funnier with each new movie and so having him team with the Guardians was something most of us saw coming to bridge the storylines. The banter with him and Chris Pratt's character was one of the funniest scenes. There was plenty of action at 2 and a half hrs. No surprise there, but they could have worked on the sense of urgency of the plot better juxtaposed with the humor, especially for what we were left with at the end of this part anyway.

Love

So my friend told me about this film tripping about the pornographic nature of it, but saying it had a real story and they were showing it on Netflix.  So I had to see this for myself as it's been some years since I've seen anything like this and it was always foreign.  Well, shit the opening full monty sex scene just about guarantees  audience attention and throughout 2015's Love is peppered with that, threesomes, a full on club orgy, and even a transsexual encounter.  Directed and written by Gaspar Noe, the film centers on a young American man (Karl Glusman) living in Paris with his current wife  and infant son recalling his tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend (Aomi Muyock).  Through a series of flashbacks, character narration, and an unabashed displays of sex not normally seen in mainstream film, Love seeks to explore it's very nature from Glusman's point of view.   I liked what it strived to do and the plot seemed promising enough, but takes a while to really get going with any sort of meaningful coherency.  The erotic scenes aren't bad being spaced apart throughout appropriately and mostly set to music and with enough good cinematography. Yet they tend to distract and unnecessarily take away from the overall story arc that develops quite late and Noe is no Wong Kar Wai.  Because of his approach, the central female characters are unfortunately left quite undeveloped, noticeably uneven to their arguably overexposed bodies.

The Shape Of Water

Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape Of Water has finally been watched and it is indeed a beautiful movie. It's also a fairy tale/monster movie that he has long been cultivating. Throughout the film, I kept thinking of one of my favorite French movies, Amelie, because of the rich look of the film, use of color, fantasy, music, and because of the performance of actress Sally Hawkins imbued with love and humanity beyond all reason. There are certainly other good performances with the likes of Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins, and of course the heavy of the story, Michael Shannon (who is like an old Hollywood villain actor with his menacing face). But also like Amelie, all these elements remind me of that special imaginative quality that movies of long ago used to have in abundance. On paper by itself, the idea of falling in love with a creature doesn't quite work so easily and so it needs to be bolstered by the script, performances, pushed with imagination, and other elements. But none more important than earnest love for the idea, perseverance, and diligence in executing the other elements. Guillermo is the writer and director of this and he does what I think no other writer/director could do to see this vision through in the finest form. Like he explains, "love and water are the most malleable things in the universe".

Call Me By Your Name

Beyond the obvious accolades and nominations since the release of director Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name, a friend has been talking my ears off about this film since for the longest, turning every conversation back to this. So at the very least, I knew the film would be good. So after finally seeing it, yeah I get it and would have to agree. It's a great coming of age love story starring Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet. Dustin Hoffman's The Graduate and Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together are what immediately came to my mind. Sure, the homosexual story aspect is an obvious identifier, but it's not even a point of contention, discomfort, or distraction. Set in the picturesque setting of northern Italy in the early 1980's, the authentic exterior and interior locations along with the artwork and beauty of the region were really nice to see. That was probably the first element that got me, captured by the beautiful 35 mm single lens work of Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom that gives it a kind of still photo quality that helps to unfold the story and characters. The acting was very naturalistic with minimum dialogue from the main characters, but an abundance of subtleties and gestures. Witness Chalamet's humorous peach scene or the wrenching end credit scene and you have some examples of great acting. When you add a great soundtrack to sprinkle over all this, you can't go wrong. It's also worth mentioning that the monologue of actor Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays the dad of young Chalamet's character, was just one of the best and most aspirationally moving and noteworthy of lines I've ever heard before in a film and indeed something every viewer should take something away from and ascend to. Call Me By Your Name transcends a gender label in favor of universal themed stories of love awakening and love loss with Stuhlbarg's monologue putting a gem of an empathetic punctuation on that point. It's that transcending universal theme that makes this film shine beyond any gender label.

Suburbicon

Suburbicon comes with a ton of talent. Directed by George Clooney, written by the Coen brothers, and starring Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Oscar Isaac; it is a black comedy set in a 1960's White suburb.  The black comedy aspect amidst this setting is enough of an interesting contrast, yet it also alludes to another layer to throw in the soup, that being a racially charged environment just underneath the homogenized oasis of White America.  Because of this ambitious aspect in subject matter and genre, it certainly wasn't expected to win in popularity, box office, or even critical fanfare.  Nonetheless, Suburbicon is an important film that diabolically and effectively makes the point relevant to a divided America we currently live in, where issues that were seemingly swept under a neat rug get exposed for what they are, and what it says about us.  It says a lot, as it's funny, sinister, sobering, and even managing to muster a glimmer of  much needed hope for our young protagonist.  I would even go so far as to say that Suburbicon in this vein, is a White approach to themes usually associated with Spike Lee films.  It's certainly a bold in film in that way, but however mismatched and uneven in genre bending to the viewing palate it might be, it's what it strives to do and show us that is the real winner for me.