Deadpool 2 (2018)

Director: David Leitch. Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, T.J. Miller, Eddie Marsan, Bill Skarsgård. 119 min. Rated R. Action/Comedy.

So they came up with the cool new idea of a vulgar, violence-ridden, other-movie-referencing, fourth-wall-breaking, superhero movie in the original, and it was successful, so they said hey! Let’s make the sequel another vulgar, violence-ridden, other-movie-referencing, fourth-wall-breaking superhero movie! Simple as that. And to round it up, they keep drilling in the fact that in the Marvel Universe, whoever dies, no matter how prolonged and heart-wrenching the death scene, they never stay dead. Never, ever, ever. With Thanos and Cable (The Terminator!), curious how strong Josh Brolin’s connections were to end him up with 2018’s two best Marvel villain roles.

 PS: Funny fraction-of-a-second Brad Pitt cameo, but other cameos discovered later? Matt Damon and Alan Tudyk.

Mo says:

Thoroughbreds (2017)

Director: Cory Finley. Cast: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Paul Sparks. 92 min. Rated R. Drama/Thriller.

Poison Ivy. Heavenly Creatures. Ginger Snaps. When two eccentric teenage girls bond an unlikely friendship, it’s a forgone conclusion that someone, somewhere, will die, and Thoroughbreds is no exception. But it’s about the journey, not the destination, and this story of a smart but cold provoker and her rich but undecided follower will keep you involved till the very end. The final scene almost shies away from an impactful dark ending the way Ingrid Goes West did, but the combined performances of Olivia Cooke (Ready Player One) and Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch) are so memorable, you’re willing to forgive.

Mo says:

Fahrenheit 451 (2018)

Director: Ramin Bahrani. Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Michael Shannon, Sofia Boutella, Keir Dullea. 100 min. Sci-fi.

Of course it's an opportune time for remakes of older dystopian novels, such as "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Fahrenheit 451". But in an era when the government is openly attacking the press, only a few steps from burning books, this story in particular loses its cautionary power, because the fiction part of the science-fiction, is becoming reality. I was expecting Bahrani to see that, and while updating scientific aspects of the story, to add new sociopolitical layers to the original concept. Combined with the vagueness of the protagonist's motives and metamorphosis, this movie becomes worthwhile, but not lasting. 

PS: Fahrenheit 451 shows the Iranian-American indie filmmaker, Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo, At Any Price, 99 Homes), once named by Roger Ebert "the new great American director" (who wrote this movie with another famed but exiled Iranian filmmaker, Amir Naderi), is inching toward a Hollywood career. I hate to see them corrupting him with the next Marvel movie ...

PPS: Short appearance by Keir Dullea, of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame.

Mo says:

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Director: Ron Howard. Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Joonas Suotamo, Paul Bettany, Jon Favreau, Erin Kellyman, Linda Hunt. 135 min. Rated PG-13. Action/Fantasy.

A month ago, I predicted on Facebook that Solo will consist of how Han met Chewie (check), how he flew the Kessel run (check), how Lando lost the Falcon to Han (check), how their separation was sub-optimal (check). So in a middle-finger gesture at my prophetic skills, Disney/Ron Howard also hint at Solo’s Jabba the Hutt employment, and put the “Han shot first” question to rest. And since a post-credits scene is somewhat shameful in the Marvel era, they suddenly bring a long-dead character to life ... pre-credits. So unexpected! The sole creative element here, is a feminist droid. Yep.

Mo says:

Anon (2018)

Director: Andrew Niccol. Cast: Clive Owen, Amanda Seyfried. 100 min. Germany. Sci-fi.

Andrew Niccol is at it again: turning a brilliant, palpable sci-fi concept, into a story. Unfortunately in this case, it’s just too brilliant for a story, because the idea of a future where everyone’s POV experience is continuously recorded and accessed by others, is not only minimally explored here, the magnitude of such an invention is so severe, it could only end in a society’s collapse. And since the screenplay requires characters staring into space watching other people’s POV, this results in a frustratingly slow pace. Still waiting for Niccol to attempt something as great as Gattaca.

PS: Produced by and available on Netflix.

Mo says:

Revenge (2017)

Director: Coralie Fargeat. Cast: Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe. 108 min. Rated R. France. Thriller.

Three men abuse and leave a young woman for dead in the middle of the desert, and she returns for retribution. That simple. You may say the fact that every man in this world is evil, or that the heroine’s major pain for half the movie being a phallus-like structure sticking out of her body, tells volumes about the female director’s stance towards men - but it’s not hard to predict with its minimalist cast, stunning cinematography, tense screenplay, occasionally humorous gore, and especially opportune timing during the #MeToo movement, this little film will become an icon of our times.

Mo says:

MoMagic!

A Fantastic Woman (Una Mujer Fantástica) (2017)

Director: Sebastián Lelio. Cast: Daniela Vega, Francisco Reyes, Luis Gnecco. 100 min. Rated R. Chile/Germany/Spain/USA. Drama.

There are Almodóvar films, or films like Tangerine where a character is by-the-way-also-transgender, but I don't recall a movie dedicated to the life of a transgender. As a minor character speaks for us here, we don't even know how to react to this man/woman, let alone feel how she feels when she loses her only loved one. Numerous shots show her holding onto something, literally being blown away by the wind, or watching her "other" self in a mirror - even a wobbly, unstable self. Intentional or not, you will feel sorry for this person, and think about her afterwards.

PS: This year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner.

Mo says:

Game Night (2018)

Director(s): John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein. Cast: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Jesse Plemons, Michael C. Hall, Danny Huston. 100 min. Rated R. Comedy/Mystery.

A well-devised screenplay stunt. A game night between a few couples that is supposed to be a fake kidnapping mystery, becomes a real kidnapping. So during the first half characters are clueless about a crime taking place right before their eyes but the viewer is fully aware, and then during the second half the characters become aware but then the viewer is not sure - is this still real, or fake? With Bateman and McAdams (like always) shining in main roles and Plemmons (like always) as the creepy neighbor, this is entertaining till the very end ... but no further.

Mo says:

Borg vs McEnroe (2017)

Director: Janus Metz. Cast: Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård. 107 min. Rated R. Sweden/Denmark/Finland. Biography/Sport.

The historic 1981 match between stressed-out anxiety-driven 4-time Wimbledon champion, Björn Borg, and self-loathing obscenity-hurling newcomer, John McEnroe. I didn't follow the match at the time, so the ending was a surprise to me. But that's not the point. Similar to Foxcatcher, with its dead-pan cinematography and lingering close-ups, the film sets a "mood": how an uber-competitive sport like tennis may not be such a fun game to play (the same feeling in Andre Agassi's memoir, "Open"). And I cannot imagine how they found a carbon copy of Borg in actor Sverrir Gudnason.

Mo says:

The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015)

Director: Matt Brown. Cast: Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, Stephen Fry, Toby Jones, Jeremy Northam. 108 min. Rated PG-13. UK/USA. Biography/Drama.

The true story of Newton-level genius Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, who in the 1910s resisted racism to gain acceptance at Cambridge's Trinity College. Like any shark movie that will be compared to Jaws, any mathematician film will have A Beautiful Mind looking down on it, and that's where The Man Who Knew Infinity cannot keep up. There's even an attempt at melodrama between Dev Patel and his wife waiting for him back home in India, but compared to the romance Jennifer Connelly pulled off with that other distracted genius mind, this doesn't hold a candle.

Mo says:

In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts ) (2017)

Director: Fatih Akin. Cast: Diane Kruger, Denis Moschitto, Numan Acar. 106 min. Rated R. Germany/France. Crime/Drama.

This Golden Globes Best Foreign-Language Film winner and Cannes Best Actress winner opens with unfathomable calamity befalling a German mother - and ends with a concept which people of a certain region of the world are commonly accused of subscribing to. A mention of the concept would entirely spoil the ending, but the movie skillfully demonstrates how when desperate, any of us are capable of performing such acts. It's not about which country you're from or how you're brought up. The film suggests ... it's human nature.

Mo says:

Network (1976)

Director: Sidney Lumet. Cast: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty. 123 min. Rated R. Drama.

'In 2005, in preparation for what would eventually be a scrapped project for a live television adaptation of this film, George Clooney screened the film for a group of teens and young adults in order to determine their reactions to it. He found, much to his surprise, that none of the young people recognized the film as satire. "I couldn't understand it", Clooney told the Associated Press. Then he "realized that everything Paddy Chayefsky wrote about had happened." '

That IMDb trivia fact is key. You just need to replace the word "television" for "internet" through the entirety of this major Oscar winner, and it would become as relevant today as it was in the 70s (ironically, you don't need to change the title - "Network" works just fine). Re-watch Holden, Dunaway and Duvall in their prime, and how Finch screamed his way 'mad as hell' to the first posthumous Oscar ever awarded. Then come to understand how every generation has their own media horror.

Mo says:

The Commuter (2018)

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra. Cast: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern. 105 min. Rated PG-13. UK/France/USA. Action.

Speeding train without brakes is almost derailing.

Conductor yells: "Remain calm!"

Passenger asks: "... Why?"

That sums up the movie: a package of preposterous lines and implausible moments. A movie with a so-called 'idiot plot', where the villains' most elaborate impossible scheme to eliminate a witness to a crime could've been avoided simply by bonking him/her on the head. Parading famous actors in the beginning and then suddenly forgetting them exposes their roles as surprise villains, and while the movie begs for Neeson to remain an action star, I honestly never saw him as one in the first place.

Mo says:

Paterno (2018)

Director: Barry Levinson. Cast: Al Pacino, Riley Keough, Kathy Baker. 105 min. Biography.

Levinson has recently been tackling prominent figures (Jack Kevorkian, Bernie Madoff), but his look into Joe Paterno, the disgraced Penn State football coach who "could've done more" when he heard his assistant Jerry Sandusky was committing pedophilia right under his nose, is a notch above the rest. He wisely avoids focusing on Sandusky, and dedicates the film to what a winning coach's position in the society is, what Paterno was thinking, and in effect, what you as a viewer would've done - because is there any such thing as an "innocent bystander"? The final line ("... you said 1976?") is screenwriting gold.

PS: For a documentary version of the events, check out Happy Valley. It's cool to have reported on the coming of this Pacino-starring movie 3 years back - even though DePalma didn't direct it.

Mo says: