The Circle

The Circle is an interesting enough contemporary cautionary tale with an A level cast.  However, it fails to rise up to it's full impact.  Probably because the current debate over an ever growing social media infringing and intersecting on the rights of privacy have already been going on for quite a while with an increasing urgency.  Can someone say Russian hacking into our election process?  That being said, The Circle feels, dare I say, a bit dated and unoriginal; as we've seen this sort of post modernity tale displayed more effectively in other films.  Tom Hanks less than transparent allusion to a composite Steve Jobs- Mark Zuckerberg tech guru  and Emma Watson's rapid metamorphosis from green intern to insider whistle blower and saviour, is nothing new or profound here. What I will remember this film for is as Bill Paxton's final film.

Molly's Game

You've got great performances and dialogue between Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba and it starts off at an interesting pace and with plot promise.  However, Molly's Game unevenly morphs into a tale of character introspection that's quite under-developed against the slick criminal scheming, first person narrative caper it successfully leads with.  Add to that are the disjointed flashbacks that only serve to confuse the film as something else more conventional it might have had more success with.  A promising narrative with a great cast but Molly's Game ultimately turn into an audience's shell game.

BlacKKKlansman

I think Spike Lee has been waiting a long time to really take helm of a film pointing out the racial divide that is ever growing in this country and more relevant than ever.  But lest we forget that in all the trappings and techniques and even criticisms that come in some of his what some might characterize as "racially charged" films, may we not forget that this was an extraordinary true story that was not so seemingly long ago.  Recent racial uprisings, notably the Charlottesville incident emboldened by the callous indifference of President Trump's remarks, are interspersed with images from Gone With The Wind and The Birth Of A Nation; the latter giving rise to the KKK in this country.  In an era of fake partisan news and distorted truths, it's often and ironically left up to cinema to take up the mantle of truth telling and to simultaneously elevate the morality and aspirations of a country purported to be the greatest or to be made back great and the ugly implications that reside in that notion.   BlacKKKlansman stars John David Washington (Denzel's son) along with Adam Driver and they do a really solid job. Note the Lee-Washington collaboration is passed down a generation.  Perhaps what the film may suffer from a bit, is not knowing how to be categorized or taken and the mashup of humor, docudrama, satire, spikeism, etc. potentially taking away from the much needed point.  In this regard, it's no different than Tarantino's Django or Inglorious Bastards including the deserved accolades.

Red Sparrow

This was a great spy thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence.  It very much hearkens back to the great spy thriller films of the 1970's like Three Days Of The Condor and The Day Of The Jackal in it's tone and sense of reality.  Lawrence plays a promising young Russian dancer turned spy who is highly compelled to just survive in that murky world and she gives a truly great performance, fleshing out what would normally be just a one dimensional villain or hero.   It is that fleshing out of her character, backstory, and drive with fairly limited dialogue against the backdrop of a an intricate plot I think, that really make this movie compelling to watch.  The action certainly and refreshingly, doesn't feel contrived or genre obligated and perhaps at the box office expense of Red Sparrow.  But of course, box office splash doesn't always equate to bad movie either.  The only major drawback for me was the under developed supporting  characters side of the story, particularly the CIA operative (Joel Edgerton) which didn't seem motivating or romantically compelling enough to justify helping Lawrence.

12 Strong

Good cast,  action, and true story, but it so lacks in character development it's not even funny.    It just feels like a formulaic and overly obvious, patriotic film that is overzealous in it's execution, confusing in it's plot, and wooden in it's acting.  I can appreciate the historical and military significance, but somehow all of that just gets lost in the sauce and 12 Strong is instead reduced to just decent action movie at best.

Hostiles

Goes without saying the acting is great in Hostiles.  You've got Christian Bale, Wes Studi, and Rosamund Pike among other equally riveting actors.  Like The Revenant, it's a visually stunning film with a beautiful landscape that plunges into the realities of the early American indigenous peoples and the inequalities and complexities.  Films like this that look at our past to understand our present situation, are very meaningful.  In doing that also, Hostiles elevates the the western genre to something simultaneously beautiful, complex, soul searching, and with some measure of hope.   

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.