Loving Vincent (2017)

Director(s): Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman. Cast: Douglas Booth, Chris O'Dowd, Helen McCrory, Saoirse Ronan, Jerome Flynn. 94 min. Rated PG-13. UK/Poland. Animation.

This film is like a beautiful canvas ... literally. Using motion-capture, more than 100 animators tell a flashback story of Vincent van Gogh's last days, by painting over images of live actors with van Gogh's post-impressionist style. So the artist's aficionados will recognize numerous of his famous paintings smuggled into the story. The imagery is so hypnotizing, so calming, you not only understand van Gogh's brilliance ... you're distracted from the story, and paradoxically find yourself dozing off. I appreciate the insane amount of work to bring this film to fruition. Just that film was probably not the right medium.

Mo says:

Molly's Game (2017)

Director: Aaron Sorkin. Cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong, Chris O'Dowd, Bill Camp, Graham Green. 140 min. Rated R. China/USA. Biography/Drama.

I'm not well-rounded in poker, but even if you are, you'd still need to be fully caffeinated to follow Aaron Sorkin’s first shot at directing. The grand-master writer of The West Wing, A Few Good Men and The Social Network, has created such an impressive product of rapid dialogue, dizzying editing and spell-binding acting (with great monologues by Elba and Costner, and Chastain's continuing crusade of strong female roles in a male-dominated world), you’d suspect this to be Sorkin's attempt at self-promotion, declaring: "This is how you make a movie." Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Trivia: This film reunites Kevin Costner and Graham Greene, the main stars of Dances with Wolves (1990). Cool, huh.

Mo says:

The Florida Project (2017)

Director: Sean Baker. Cast: Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite, Willem Dafoe. 111 min. Rated R. Drama.

Honest truth: just a few minutes in, I was thinking this is a combination of Tangerine's storytelling, and Wes Anderson's visual style. And of course! It's made by Tangerine's director. Can't pinpoint a specific story-line here; other than it displays random vignettes in the lives of a few cute, smart, foul-mouthed preschoolers in a Florida motel/project, how their parents survive, and how their heart-of-gold manager (Dafoe) fends for them. You will laugh, you will mesmerize, and you will cry - but by God, you'll never be bored, and think twice the next time you pass by one of these projects.

Mo says:

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

Director: Jake Kasdan. Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Bobby Cannavale, Colin Hanks. 119 min. Rated PG-13. Fantasy/Adventure.

Remember the unseen jungle in the 1995 original, where the Robin Williams character returned from after 26 years? Well, we see it here now. Other than that, a modern switch from board-game to video-game, and a subtle homosexuality theme slipped in by changing a character's gender and having her/him fall for another male ... the sequel is a remake: players are accidentally (and much less believably) sucked in, and need to act as a team to end the game. There's even a cruel/crazy/loving father waiting for his son to come home. Enjoyable fun, and "the Rock" can surprisingly be funny.

Mo says:

Loveless (Nelyubov) (2017)

Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev. Cast: Maryana Spivak, Aleksey Rozin, Varvara Shmykova. 127 min. Rated R. Russia/France/Germany/Belgium. Drama.

I don't recall watching a movie where characters thrived through such simmering hate - without inflicting bodily harm on each other. The story is about a couple going through an ugly divorce, and the gnarling hatred between them (and an in-law) is so brutal, it's eating them alive ... in lieu of their son going missing. Not sure if this is a reliable snapshot of the current Russian society, as the director has been accused of casting a negative spotlight on his country. Still, I found myself deeply involved, wondering how these characters are able to function, carrying such heavy burdens.

Mo says:

I, Tonya (2017)

Director: Craig Gillespie. Cast: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Bobby Cannavale. 119 min. Rated R. Biography/Sport.

In preparation, I recently watched the 30 for 30 documentary, The Price of Gold. Then during I Tonya, realized the movie attempts something confusing: it assumes you already know the story with all the details (weird expectation), but never uses the extra luxury it provided itself by passing that narrative hurdle, to deliver director/writer level introspection into the real-life characters; which begs the question: is this solely an opportunity for Margot Robbie to prove how well she can impersonate? Because after all, she's one of the producers. Supposed to be a movie; not a half-baked reiteration. Not a photo-op.

Mo says:

The Shape of Water (2017)

Director: Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg. 123 min. Rated R. Canada/USA. Fantasy. 

Guillermo del Toro continues his Pan's Labyrinth style of telling fairy-tales for grownups containing sex, violence and profanity, but fairy-tales nonetheless. Here he counteracts an American subculture of racism and homophobia by trying to promote and normalize diversity, through (of all things) ... bestiality. The ensemble of Hawkins, Shannon, Spencer and Jenkins shine throughout, and del Toro again boasts his usual strong, captivating visual style, but I have yet to click with the man's concept of a good movie - even though evidence (e.g., the Netflix documentary Five Came Back) suggests he's probably a lovely guy to chat with.

Mo says:

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

Director: Luca Guadagnino. Cast: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg. 132 min. Rated R. Italy/France/Brazil/USA. Drama.

This tale of unrequited homosexual love set in 1983 Italy (possibly intentional, right before the AIDS scare), makes the age-old mistake of LGBTQ films: to create a palatable setting, it switches heterosexual and homosexual demographics, and creates an imaginary world where the majority of people are homosexual, and the last remaining heterosexuals never blink an eye. For every Call Me by Your Name, I would take a The Kids Are All Right, which takes place in the real world and talks about real interactions. But of course, people will be admiring this film in droves ... many before even seeing it.

Mo says:

Darkest Hour (2017)

Director: Joe Wright. Cast: Gary Oldman, Lily James, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn, Stephen Dillane. 125 min. Rated PG-13. UK. Biography/History.

Scent of a Woman was all about Al Pacino, There Will Be Blood was all about Daniel Day-Lewis, and there's not a single moment in Darkest Hour you're not thinking about the actor, buried under all the makeup, who plays Churchill. Of course, the movie is about how Churchill persevered against Nazi appeasers during WWII, how he "mobilized the English language and sent it into battle". But while Gary Oldman doesn't look like Churchill one bit, by the end of the movie, you're thinking maybe Winston Churchill mysteriously looked like Gary Oldman; you just never noticed. Expecting an Oscar win.

PS: The second time Dunkirk is being mentioned in a major movie the same year.

Mo says:

Victoria & Abdul (2017)

Director: Stephen Frears. Cast: Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Eddie Izzard, Micahel Gambon, Olivia Williams. PG-13. 111 min. UK/USA. History.

In the late 19th century, Queen Victoria finds an unlikely acquaintance in a significantly younger Indian teacher. Judi Dench is an actress whose mere presence is sufficient to watch a movie, but her motivations to strike a relationship with a socially inferior constituent of the British Empire in such a astoundingly racist court, are quite vague. How come only she is so enlightened? Does she have a crush on this man, or just feels indebted for his teachings? Either way, is offering him such high honors considered ... wise? These ambiguities are never resolved, and the viewer is abandoned in confusion.

Mo says:

I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore. (2017)

Director: Macon Blair. Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood. 93 min. Comedy/Crime.

Comically-easy setting to empathize: middle-aged female wonders why every single living creature around her is a jerk. So she decides to fix one such occasion, and with the help of a weird associate, sets out to deliver vigilante justice on someone who robbed her home. This derails the story off its original concept, into a violent realm that's not quite funny anymore. In the meantime, I'm amazed (and admire) how out of the Winslet-Lynskey duo first recognized in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994), one become Titanic-level famous, while the other to this day successfully continues to brave the indie scene.

Mo says:

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

Director: Elio Petri. Cast: Gian Maria Volontè, Florinda Bolkan, Gianni Santuccio. 115 min. Rated R. Italy. Crme/Drama.

Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner boasting an interesting concept. Vain police chief murders female companion, just to prove to himself he's above the law. Even when an innocent person is implicated, he drops clues for the investigation to reroute them towards himself, because hey ... if an innocent is taken in, that wouldn't prove he's untouchable, right? The story is mixed with Italy's contemporary fascist politics to further advance that point, but the grand message of how humans behave when absurdly secured in their comfort zone, even without the ingredient of fascism, holds true to any time or place.

Mo says: