Advance: DARKEST HOUR

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

Gary Oldman has long been impressively chameleonic as an actor, disappearing in roles from Dracula to Zorg in The Fifth Element to Sirius Black in the Harry Potter franchise to Commissioner Gordon in the Christopher Nolan Batman movies – among a great many others. But he has never disappeared quite so completely as he does as Winston Churchill in <i>Darkest Hour</i>, a truly great performance in – well, okay, it’s a very good, if not great, movie.

It’s easy for a performance to get weighed down – so to speak – or distracted by the massive amount of prosthetics Oldman wears here, reportedly weighing half his own weight. This transformation alone, really, should garner <i>Darkest Hour</i> on Oscar for Best Makeup, because from the moment he appears on the screen, you don’t even realize you’re looking at Gary Oldman. Granted, Churchill was Britain’s Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955 (this movie focuses on the first stretch), and he died in 1965, so I’m not sure it means much for me to say I really felt like I was looking at Winston Churchill. And some could argue quite easily that John Lithgow did a better job of portraying him in the Netflix series The Crown in its first season last year – he certainly had better enunciation in his delivery. A quick search for the audio of any Winston Churchill speech, however, quickly reveals that Oldman’s is the more realistic one, adding one more element to the astonishing way in which this consummate actor completely transcends any limitations put on him by this production.

That is to say, Gary Oldman alone makes Darkest Hour essential viewing, even if the movie overall is imperfect. I still use the word “imperfect” with some hesitation, because it is also thoroughly entertaining from the start, mesmerizing from the opening frame, and its contrivances play on the audience’s emotions in all the ways they come to the movies specifically for. Getting to the multiple layers of critical appraisal is one thing, but if you enjoy historical biopics in general, movies made for adults, then this is definitely for you.

Now, to call Darkest Hour “Oscar Bait” is both on the nose and an understatement. It’s a period piece set in Britain with a famous actor in the lead giving a stellar performance – anyone with an eye on the coming Oscar race quite rightly places Gary Oldman as the current front runner for Best Actor. It’s early enough, though, that his momentum could still falter, although given the current slate of competitors it seems unlikely. I feel so strongly about this other category that I’ll mention it again, though: this movie deserves Best Makeup. Specifically, Kazuhiro Tsuji as Gary Oldman’s prostethic makeup and hair designer.

There are other actors in this movie, of course, and the two other standouts are women: Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine Churchill (although her apparent role of “woman who keeps her powerful husband grounded” seems slightly problematic); and Lily James (seen earlier this year in Baby Driver) as Elizabeth Layton, Churchill’s personal secretary. There’s also Ben Mendelsohn (now perhaps best known as the Imperial Commander Orson Krennic in last year’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) as the only slightly stuttering King George VI. The presentation of the initially strained relationship between Britain’s king at the time and its new Prime Minister Churchill is much more subtle than the movie is overall, making it one of its most compelling relationships.

And, indeed, most of the rest of Darkest Hour, which details the first couple of weeks after Churchill first became Prime Minister, engages little with subtlety. For a movie of this sort, however, it strikes all the right notes for giving its audience what it wants; few people who aren’t professional critics but have an interest are going to have any complaints. And to be sure, this movie, as directed by Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement), looks at a rather fascinating time in history – at the very beginning of World War II, when the U.S. was studiously trying to remain neutral, honestly a rather shameful (among many) points in U.S. history. A brief scene can say a lot, such as when Churchill makes a phone call to U.S. President Franklin, practically begging for assistance, and getting none.

Darkest Hour certainly provides a lot of uncomfortable things to consider in retrospect. The focus of this story is on Churchill’s ultimate decision whether or not to engage in peace negotiations with Hitler, something he resists with all his might from the beginning. It seems obvious in retrospect that he clearly made the right decision to fight rather than acquiesce to anything Hitler wanted, but the uncomfortable truth is that no one knew this for certain in 1940 – and how do we gauge any similar decisions that might be made by world leaders today? Churchill is at times characterized here as a guy who seems to many like a babbling lunatic, bringing uncomfortable visions of the current American president. Churchill, by contrast, came down on the side of hard, if brutal, logic in the end – a man of integrity in the face of a world crisis, an important distinction.

It was, of course, Britain’s handling of the Dunkirk situation that brought things around for them from the start. One has to wonder what the deal is with the sort of “Dunkirk renaissance” that occurred in 2016 – this is the third movie this year whose story is either all about or hinges on the Dunkirk evacuation. Their Finest, about the making of a British movie about the Dunkirk evacuation starring an American actor in an attempt to persuade the U.S. to get involved, was released in May. Christopher Nolan’s much-talked about Dunkirk, all of its action set in the thick of it, came out in July. Darkest Hour, which features the leaders in Britain making the decisions that set the evacuation in motion – most notably calling on the civilian boats to cross the English Channel to assist – is the best of these three films, doing the best at delivering what it promises. (Incidentally, Joe Wright’s own Atonement had its own sequence set in the thick of the Dunkirk evacuation, which multiple people have said was far more realistic than the entirety of Christopher Nolan’s film.)

World War II is so ingrained in our pop culture psyches, from entertainment alone, it’s easy to oversimplify what a cataclysmic time it was – and the difficulty of the decisions the people in charge had to make. Gary Oldman plays Winston Churchill as a bit of a blowhard, but a man of conscience. How do you live with sacrificing four thousand soldiers in order to save three hundred thousand? It’s cold blooded math, and there is merit to his argument that great nations that fall rise again, but those that willingly subjugate themselves do not. One of Darkest Hour’s many rather contrived scenes involves Churchill shocking the public by taking his first-ever ride on a London Underground train, to ask random citizens their opinion: would they fight the Nazis even when the odds are stacked against them? You can imagine how they all answer – but, for this movie’s purposes, it does the trick, and quickly gets to the heart of Britain’s national mood at the time. “Never surrender” sounds like a cliché now, but in the context of 1940 Britain, it was a notion that had real weight, and as such this movie does too.

Is that Gary Oldman or Winston Churchill himself? I can't tell!

Overall: B+

JANE

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B

Jane Goodall is a woman of extraordinary historical significance, a key element in mankind's understanding of chimpanzees, ourselves, and how the two relate. It seems this woman's amazing life continues unabated: Jane is a documentary filled with early 1960s footage of her very first research, thought to have been lost -- until 2014.

To say it's fascinating to see this footage from the vantage point of the 21st century is an understatement, and writer-director Brett Morgen (Cobain: Montage of Heck; The Kid Stays in the Picture) curiously sidesteps some of the more obvious questions -- perhaps most notably the question of how chimps might have been affected by the mere act of being studied. This was the first time chimpanzees were observed in the wild; Goodall was initially chosen for the project precisely because she had no scientific training at the time; for some time, she interacted with them directly. And this was thought to be a study of how chimpanzees behave in the wild.

That said, this is still a woman who made observations never made before, which shook the worldwide scientific community. And here, in Jane, we see plenty of the footage first demonstrating these observations. For instance, a primate other than a human fashioning and using tools.

Nothing is said of the quality of the film stock discovered in 2014. It is simply presented here, often with plainly creative editing to enhance dramatic effect -- that part is a minor disappointment, when so much of the footage can clearly speak for itself. Most of it is of stunning quality for something thought lost since the sixties, thanks to the process of remastering.

I must mention my one major complaint, which is the original score by Philip Glass, usually an indispensable composer. And perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way, but I found this score to be pointlessly obtrusive and distracting, full of dramatic crescendos entirely unneeded. Unless it's a musical, I don't usually grade a film's music or score as its own element, mostly because I have so little musical knowledge or insight. That said, it could be argued that the score is very much an aspect of sound editing, and therefore the editing overall -- which is why that gets the lowest grade here. I stand by the solid B, as the story this film tells is compelling from beginning to end. But it is slightly sullied by this score.

Otherwise, Jane is a documentary more than worthy of being seen. Morgen interviews a present-day Goodall, who reminisces about her early research on chimpanzees, how they informed her own outlook on life, and how becoming a mother herself helped her understand the instincts of the mother she observed mating and then birthing in the wild. We see a large amount of related footage, including a whole lot of a young Goodall herself.

We see footage of the era when she met her first  husband, wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick, and the son she raised for the first three years of his life in Gambia, around the chimpanzees she was studying. Knowing what more we know now, a lot of this is stunning -- early on we hear Brett Morgen ask from behind the camera about how chimps were capable of tearing their faces off. Goodall just says matter-of-factly that there was no wildlife research on these animals at the time: they just didn't know. So, she lived among them, after months became accepted by them, and ultimately found herself disheartened to become the person who discovered they can be just as brutal in primitive warfare as human beings can.

A lot of these discoveries are common knowledge now, and it almost seems quaint to hear about those who had no clue. It's incredible, though, to hear -- and see -- the story of those who made these discoveries and first-time observations. It's too bad Goodall was the only one interviewed in the present day; van Lawick passed away at the age of 65 in 2002, but some insights from their son, who she called Grub, could have been invaluable. Instead we only get footage of him as a toddler, and a brief bit of footage as a young man with his father. At one point Goodall notes that Grub "always hated chimpanzees." That seems like something ripe for exploration, but here that's both the start and the end of it.

Jane Goodall's life is rife with amazing stories, and Jane is but one, a slice rather than anything approaching true biography. That said, so much of the footage is jaw dropping, you can never look away from this movie.

An unconventional relationship indeed: Jane Goodall and one of her many unprecedented subjects.

Overall: B+

THE DISASTER ARTIST

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

It turns out you don't have to be a fan of "so bad it's good" movies to be a fan of movies about the making of a "so bad it's good" movie. That is, I am one of the likely relatively few people seeing The Disaster Artist who has never seen The Room, and still has no particular interest in seeing The Room -- and I still very much enjoyed The Disaster Artist.

So, in case you're one of the few who don't know, The Room was a notoriously terrible 2003 film about . . . well, I couldn't tell you what it was about. Even actors in the movie, as portrayed in The Disaster Artist, talk about how they don't quite know what it's supposed to be about. Here, I'll just give you the iMDB.com synopsis:

Johnny is a successful banker who lives happily in a San Francisco townhouse with his fiancée, Lisa. One day, inexplicably, she gets bored with him and decides to seduce his best friend, Mark. From there, nothing will be the same again.

That's about the best you're going to get as far as that goes. Suffice it to say, its score on MetaCritic (based on 5 reviews) is a 9 out of 100; it's Rotten Tomatoes score (based on 27 reviews) is 27%. People now flock to midnight screenings of this movie like it's The Rocky Horror Picture Show, turning it into a cult classic that's actually turned a profit.

The Disaster Artist is the story of how this movie came to be -- and it clearly has plenty of fans in Hollywood itself, what with James Franco as writer-director-star Tommy Wiseau; Dave Franco as his best friend and costar Greg Sestero; and Seth Rogen as Sandy, the script supervisor. James and Dave Franco may be brothers actually playing best friends here, but this movie has some amazing makeup and costuming, because the two never look at all related here.

The supporting cast includes a bunch of recognizable names in parts of varying sizes, including Alison Brie, Jacki Weaver, Josh Hutcherson, Megan Mullally -- even Zac Efron shows up, so well costumed as one of the cast members that I didn't even realize he was in this film until I looked at the cast list after I got home.

All of these people are great, but James Franco is a revelation as Tommy, the hilariously enigmatic movie maker with the bizarre accent and grammatically weird dialect, who consistently insists he's younger than he could possibly be. He's so deluded it moves into the realm of being endearing. And there's actually something sweet, maybe even authentic, about the bond of friendship between him and Greg.

You may wonder how well they recreate the scenes from The Room here. I've never even seen that movie and I can tell you they are immaculately recreated: the ending treats us to split screen presentations of scenes from both this film and The Room. It's actually the most amazing part of The Disaster Artist, and kind of a thrill to watch.

The climactic scene at the movie's premiere is where The Disaster Artist becomes a little much. Could the audience really have loved it as much as depicted here, so immediately, upon its very first viewing? Maybe it was -- I wasn't there -- but it seems a little overdone. In spite of that, The Disaster Artist is an eminently entertaining film whether you've actually seen The Room or not.

So bad it's good? A scary thought.

Overall: B+

ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ.

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

If you want people to remember the title of your movie, and thereby know what to purchase tickets to at the multiplex, maybe don't use a title as fundamentally cumbersome and unmemorable as Roman J. Israel, Esq. Also if you want people to stay interested in your movie, maybe don't start and end it with transparent contrivances, including the lengthy narration of a legal brief detailing a man evidently suing himself.

On the other hand, if you want a great actor to play the title role in such a movie, who can single-handedly keep the story compelling in spite of its shortfalls, by all means hire Denzel Washington. Israel is so socially awkward that I squirmed in my seat repeatedly, while also finding it easy to believe this man had a deep knowledge of criminal law. Who knows how realistic it is? I'm not a lawyer, and neither is Denzel Washington.

We never actually meet Israel's partner, who does all the courtroom lawyering. We see his body in a hospital bed, in a coma after a heart attack -- the event that sets this story in motion. Israel has spent three and a half decades immersing himself in legal texts to serve as his partner's most knowledgeable legal advisor. Now he's suddenly out of his depth, attempting to cover for him in court.

Meanwhile, it turns out the firm has been "operating at a deficit" for years, and Israel is faced with losing his job. In comes another lawyer from a huge firm (Colin Farrell, adequate in performance and stunning in appearance -- I may have a bit of bias here) to help close things down, and ultimately offer Israel a new job.

The plot gets much more complex from there, but suffice it to say that Roman J. Israel, Esq details the descent of an idealistic defense attorney with activist roots into greedy nihilism. With that in mind, this is a surprisingly cynical movie, and it's difficult to gauge what to think or how to respond to it. What are we, as audiences, supposed to do with this?

There's a lot of places writer-director Dan Gilroy could have gone with this movie, and ultimately he never goes anywhere as interesting as it could be, or as Denzel Washington makes you want it to be. This would not be half the movie it is without Washington's performance, which nearly makes it worth seeing all on its own.

It's engaging enough: while watching this movie, the script, even as the film's weakest element, never allows the mind to wander. There's a grounded sensibility here that winds up being a bit of a double-edged sword: it feels more real than most legal dramas, but it also lacks much in the way of excitement. It's a compelling ride while it's being taken, and pretty forgettable in the end. That doesn't make the movie bad per se. It just makes it no better than good enough for now.

I did find some fascination in the details, particularly in the cinematography and production design. Gilroy offers a very evocative Los Angeles as his story's setting, and although I suspect this was not intentional, a couple of shots felt a lot like a presentation of the real present-day L.A. largely in the style of Blade Runner. It's not often you see present-day L.A. presented as a dense urban environment, but that's how it often looks here. One shot in particular seemed almost obvious, with its camera looking through a cityscape from the middle of a city alley between aging residential complexes, drenched in rain.

Plenty of the story takes place in bright daylight as well, from inside high-rise office and even one pseudo-chase scene on a remote highway in the desert, presumably on the outskirts of town. "Outskirts" in Los Angeles are always a long way away, so I was left to wonder how Roman J. Israel got that far out so quickly. But I like to nitpick, I guess.

And this is an easy movie to nitpick. It's also an easy movie to experience  pleasantly, without being too critical. A story like this, with a mostly black cast and frequent references to civil rights, should really have a greater amount of thematic depth. Gilroy makes little effort to challenge his audience here -- but he succeeds in superficially entertaining them.

Observe, an interesting guy who is unpleasant to be around.

Overall: B

COCO

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Animation: A

Oh, Pixar -- how great it is when you are great! And you are great more often than most, if less often than you used to be: Pixar films were reliably worth the time and money, without exception, with every film released between 1995 and 2004. I'll never really understand the enduring appeal of Cars (2006), their first movie that was really good rather than great, yet is the second of their franchises to spawn not just one, but two sub-par sequels (in 2011 and 2017; Cars 3 was the first-ever Pixar film I never even bothered to see, from sheer disinterest). For the past decade or so, they've been churning out about two adequate movies for every great one.

Case in point: after 2015's truly spectacular Inside Out was followed by the undeniably entertaining mixed bag that was The Good Dinosaur later that same year; the delightful yet by-definition unoriginal Finding Dory  last year; and then Cars 3 earlier this year -- two sequels in a row, in fact. And if there's any company that benefits most from not recycling material, it's Pixar -- who steps up to the plate yet again with Coco, a movie lacking in the thrills of the Toy Story series or The Incredibles or WALL-E or the sophisticated wit aimed at the adults in the audience found in most of Pixar's output, but containing all the visual dazzle now long expected of the Pixar brand, and a refreshingly straightforward amount of depth and heart.

I didn't laugh as much at Coco as I have tended to at most Pixar films in the past. I may have cried more than I have at any other Pixar film -- and that includes the opening sequence of Up (2009). This is a genuinely moving film, with pretty universal messages of the importance of familial love, and a very specific context in which to give it: during the Mexican tradition of honoring ancestors on The Day of the Dead.

Should I mention the ways in which Coco is unwittingly politicized? Talk about uncanny timing: animated features of Pixar's type are many years in the making, and when work on this began, no one had any idea it would be released to an America with Donald Trump as president, a man who has whipped up hatred toward immigrants and Mexicans in particular. And here comes along a film about a Mexican family, starring a clearly deliberate all-Latino voice cast -- you won't find any white people speaking with fake Mexican accents here.

And the script, by Adrian Molina and Matthew Aldrich (with additional original story credit by Jason Katz and co-director Lee Unkrich), is pretty close to perfect. There is a semi-provocative sequence regarding skeletal ancestor characters passing through check points to visit family on the Day of the Dead that's pretty evocative of immigration, but it stops short of being any direct commentary on immigration issues. This would have been an interesting choice for Mexican characters regardless of the era of the film's release, though.

As it happens, the film's original title was Dia de los Muertos, but when Disney made the clearly misguided attempt at trademarking the phrase and it understandably caused a backlash among Mexican-Americans (who all was in the room when everyone present thought that was a good idea?), the title was changed to Coco. This is the name of a minor but key character, the oldest living relative -- great-grandmother -- of a little boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez). He is the central character, and he loves music, but is forbidden to play it because his great grandmother forbade it after her musician husband abandoned the family in favor of his musical passions. The family went on to become shoemakers who for generations refuse to have music in their homes. Sounds pretty depressing, no?

There's something a little flimsy about that premise -- only in an uber-manufactured world like a cartoon would such a scenario fly -- but, oh well. When Miguel attempts to steal the mounted guitar at the grave of his musical idol, the strum of the guitar on the night of the Day of the Dead passes him through to the world of the Dead.

It is here that he meets all the deceased ancestral characters, each with the same basic design as the skeletons typically decorating the scene at Dia de Muertos celebrations -- stark skeletal features on which are imposed stenciled patterns. Miguel finds himself in a spectacularly rendered "Land of the Dead," where the animation is on the level of all the best Pixar films that came before it -- painstakingly colored, awe inspiring in its detail, dazzling in its scope. This can even be said of scenes in cemeteries where people have brought offerings and candles to honor their dearly departed.

It's tempting to ask if Coco is like Corpse Bride, just because both feature skeleton characters. The key difference is that Coco places them in a very specific cultural context, and expands the imagination and the world they inhabit. Coco also has far greater depth in its themes, storytelling, and even its visual palate. Miguel meets his ancestors who began this moratorium on playing music in the family, and they must find a way to help him return to the land of the living. The aforementioned singer (voiced by Benjamin Bratt), and Hector (Gael García Bernal), a man denied entry to the land of the living to visit for the Day of the Dead because he no longer has living family to remember him, also feature prominently.

I suppose it should be noted that not only does Coco deal pretty directly with the concept of death and dealing with the loss of family members, actual murder does fit into the plot. I'm not sure how appropriate it would be for the smallest of children, who could be frightened by some of it. That said, children of at least Miguel's age (about ten, I suppose?) are certainly perfect audiences for Coco's themes of family and honoring elders lost.

Rarely is an animated film as textured in its storytelling as it is in its visual scope, and Coco delivers in spades on all fronts. The final fifteen minutes or so are particularly moving, and tie it all together in ways not easily predicted from the beginning of the story. This is a movie that is beautiful both on sight and in feeling, an accomplishment that belies its surface simplicity. It's family entertainment done right.

Visiting the Land of the Dead is more fun than you might expect.

Overall: A-

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: A-

There's a lot to love in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Sometimes, however, a movie is really good, yet not quite as great as great as the critical consensus might have you believe. My response to this film was indeed generally very positive, but still a bit more tempered than some who heap praise upon it. I'm not sure how many people quite see its subtle, perhaps even minor, element of tone deafness.

It's easy to go back and forth on this, and the cynic in me is tempted to say writer-director Martin McDonagh -- who gave us two superior films in both In Bruges (2008) and Seven Psychopaths (2012) -- is being deliberate about that. Observed with a minimum of thoughtfulness, this is a movie that could entertain both the so-called liberal "snowflakes" and those who would call them that. The thing is, those previous films were characterized by comic violence and drawing attention to the nature of storytelling itself. Three Billboards attempts to take a point of view rooted in a realism of the American south, and I'm not sure the British McDonagh knows quite enough about that to pull off the many layers attempted here. How does this play to audiences of people who actually live in Missouri, I wonder? That's a compelling question regardless of political leanings.

I'm just not sure the timing is quite right for yet another movie featuring cultural racists and casual misogynists who turn out deep down to have hearts of gold (spoiler alert!), even if it takes a traumatic experience to ignite a change of heart. In a weird, somewhat backward way, some of the characters in this story are the result of too much effort to make them nuanced and multi-dimensional. There are moments when it feels inauthentic, especially when a black woman who is the subject of a key subplot gets strangely little actual screen time, in favor of all the white principal characters.

So, okay: those are the complaints. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is imperfect in precisely disappointing ways. But imperfect is hardly the same as unworthy, and this movie is still absolutely worth the time, for both its riveting storytelling -- in spite of the aforementioned flaws -- and in particular its excellent performances. Frances McDormand's badass turn as Mildred, the mother of the slain young woman whose murder remains frustratingly unsolved many months later, is easily worthy of an Oscar nod. And the fact that this year has offered a great many great female lead performances, which actually somewhat diminishes McDormand's chances, is a good problem to have.

Woody Harrelson is Chief Willoughby, the man called out -- perhaps unfairly -- by the billboards Mildren has paid for just outside of town. Sam Rockwell is saddled with the most problematic character, Dixon, a local cop with a history of, to put it euphemistically, bias against people of color. Rockwell, long well deserving of the respect he's gained as a character actor, pulls off an impressive feat by making a character so vile ultimately sympathetic. The question remains as to whether he deserves to be, but Rockwell gives Dixon a unique set of layers.

The cast is rounded out by the likes of John Hawkes as Mildred's ex-husband; Lucas Hedges as her son; Abbie Cornish as Willoughby's wife; and Peter Dinklage as a local guy with a crush on Mildred. There is certainly no shortage of talent in this cast -- although, to be honest, it would be nice for there to be more substantive parts for women than just that of the lead character, a dynamic still far too common.

And, to be sure, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri is not for anyone easily triggered by the use of epithets, be they in reference to women, black people, gay people, or little people. This film features such language to a somewhat surprising degree for a mainstream film these days, the intent seeming to be a realistic representation of the ignorance among typical small-town Southern Americans -- particularly straight, white ones. To his credit, McDonagh at least never uses any of these words as punch lines, and only as a reflection of ignorant biases.

The story moves along in this context, and is so well paced, you barely have a chance to think about such nuances. I fear I'm making it sound like Three Billboards is not quite as good as I actually experienced it to be -- I just feel it's important to acknowledge these points. This is a small town affected by a broader culture that informs how Mildred deals with her specific situation -- which is the unsolved crime of a daughter raped and murdered less than a year before.

There is also a great deal of very effectively disseminated humor in this story, impressive in its integration into such a heavy scenario. Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell both give uniquely tragicomic deliveries, and I laughed a lot, even if a lot of it was in uncomfortable circumstances. This is a very specific kind of comic relief, where you feel like these characters are making very bad decisions, and then the humor lets out some of the tension -- even when bad decisions, guaranteed to have somber consequences, are being carried out.

There is nothing simple about this movie. Some of its complications are unnecessary and avoidable; arguably more of them are what make it on the whole better than its shortcomings might otherwise  suggest. This is a film that's not quite as good as it could be, but remains far better than most.

One of the great unsolved mysteries: why Mildred always wears this pair of coveralls.

Overall: B+

LAST FLAG FLYING

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Here is a movie I would not normally respond to, and to be honest, I have mixed feelings about how well I did respond to it. It works quite well as a movie for someone with zero background and nearly zero knowledge of military culture and protocol; I can't help but wonder how actual veterans I know would respond to it. How authentic is it, really, I wonder? I literally have no idea. It seems important to admit that up front. This is the kind of detail that can make or break a movie for people who have gone through the same kinds of things these guys went through.

That said, Last Flag Flying -- with its annoyingly tongue-twisty title -- may be a pretty male-centric movie, of which there is still no shortage, but when it comes to male relationships, and particularly friendship and loyalty among straight men, it really stands out. I'm a gay man who exists worlds apart from any character in this movie, and still I responded to it. This movie made me laugh, I cried just a little bit, it moved me.

The key there is Richard Linklater, the brilliant director and writer behind such films as Boyhood and Before Midnight. His name alone is what, like me, might attract viewers to a story like this when it could have been easily overlooked as a film by most other directors. Linklater has a knack for getting to the heart of characters; he specializes in dialogue, and doesn't distract with pointless action or snappy editing.

And the three main characters in Last Flag Flying are multi-dimensional, fully formed -- I may not know how authentic all the military content is, but these three certainly come across as authentic people. Steve Carell continues his work as an underrated actor of subtle precision as Larry "Doc" Shepherd, the Vietnam veteran whose son has just died in Iraq just two days before the story begins.

Doc finds two Vietnam War-era buddies not seen in decades, guys who could not be more different from him or from each other, but who were all bonded by the experience of serving in the war. Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston, only slightly over-the-top in obnoxiousness) is an alcoholic owner of a run-down bar; Reverend Richard Mueller (Lawrence Fishburne, suitably dignified most of the time) is now sober and working as the pastor of a church. Doc, recently widowed only months before the death of his son, is quiet and somber in his grief. His way to deal with it is to look up Sal and Richard and go to them to ask that they come with him to pick up his son's body.

Linklater infuses a surprising amount of humor into this otherwise downer of a story, which happens organically and is a welcome element. All three of these men come across as flawed people simply doing the best with what they have to work with.

The setting is 2003, giving Linklater a chance to draw plenty of comparisons between the pointlessness and wastefulness of both the Vietnam and the Iraq Wars. This plays pretty well and never feels too forced; however, he does rely a little too heavily on the supposed newfangled-ness of things like The Internet and mobile phones. 2003 may have been fourteen years ago, but these things had been pretty common for several years even then. It could be argued, perhaps, that the perceptions of much older men at the time changes things -- but one would think even someone their age in 2003 would not have been that surprised that they could be tracked down using the Internet.

So: Last Flag Flying lacks the seamlessness of some of Richard Linklater's other more recent output, but it's far from fatally flawed. This is a movie really worth a look, and I'm saying this as someone who typically has zero interest in a movie like this. The actors truly sell their characters, and make for a couple of hours with them very well spent.

This movie is way more fun than this photo makes it look, I swear!

Overall: B+

MY FRIEND DAHMER

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

My Friend Dahmer is a peculiar film indeed, the kind of thing that can make you wonder what it’s target audience is. People with truly morbid curiosity, I guess? Presumably that includes me; I was interested in seeing it, after all. That said, the Regal Meridian Cinema downtown in Seattle is the single theatre in the area it’s playing in, and even there it’s not exactly selling out. This is not a story with wide appeal. Perhaps the world has had its fill of cannibal mass murderers.

Then again, maybe not. Still, I’m not even sure what there is about this movie to recommend to others, unless increasingly unsettling awkwardness counts. Certainly the performances are excellent: 21-year-old Ross Lynch plays an 18-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer, and the resemblance is uncanny. His stiff social awkwardness among peers is maybe slightly overdone, but is always thoroughly effective. And Anne Heche is inspired casting as Joyce, Jeffrey’s erratically crazy mother. How’s that for “on brand”? Jeffrey's father (Dallas Roberts) finds it increasingly difficult to control her, and also frets about Jeffrey's own apparent lack of friends.

The story is based on a 2012 graphic novel of the same name by Derf Backderf, who tells of befriending Dahmer during their senior year of high school. In the film, he’s played by Alex Wolff, although director Marc Meyers does not maintain his single point of view. Dahmer starts “spazzing out,” seemingly as a joke, and Derf and a few of his friends think it’s funny. They go so far as to create the “Dahmer Fan Club,” encouraging him to disrupt classes and the school overall in this way. It’s increasingly unclear to what extent Dahmer is in on the joke. 

Meanwhile, Dahmer himself slowly reveals himself to be a little unnerving, potentially dangerous. We never see him commit any of his heinous crimes here, only living the year of his life that leads up to it. He has an excessive fascination with roadkill -- one of the first things seen onscreen in the film -- and dissolving animal carcasses in acid. At one point we see him taking a dog into the woods, and that sight alone is effectively frightening. 

It’s widely known that Dahmer was gay, and it’s strange how that is only barely suggested in this movie. But maybe it was something Derf, as the original teller of this story, never quite realized. Or maybe Meyers doesn’t want to come across as over-focusing on it. The shifting nature of identity politics is one thing; the straightforward truth of a matter is another.

Either way, My Friend Dahmer is a uniquely creepy movie, increasingly so as it goes along with its subject slowly awakening to his own monstrous impulses. It is thus particularly memorable and effective, if you’re into that sort of thing.

One of these things is not like the other.

Overall: B+

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+
Special Effects: C

After seeing Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express, I'm rather eager to see Sidney Lumet's 1974 original. I've spent years insisting that movies should be judged on their own merits, but that's just the thing here: Branagh's apparent "update" only barely stands on its own merits. The original, at least, still has a sort of fame -- more than forty years on, it still has name recognition, anyway. And trust me on this one: no one's going to be talking about Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express in 2060.

For now, the current version has its moments, and that's about all it's got. Branagh stars as the famous Inspector Hercule (pronounced "Er-Cule," he notes several times) Poirot, complete with a mustache stretched so far across his face it could only called majestic. And I hate mustaches! Poirot's gets its own bit of humor, though, complete with a plastic covering vaguely in the same shape of it which he sleeps in. Anyway, Branagh puts himself center stage, hamming it up onscreen seemingly more than the rest of the A-list ensemble cast combined. As with the story itself, it gets a mite tedious after a while.

This most problematic element of the story is clear from the very beginning, with an extended introductory sequence not even set on the fabled train out of Istanbul. We see Poirot address a crowd of adversarial religions accusing either a priest, a rabbi or an imam of theft. Branagh is introducing us to the cleverness of this central character, here thanks to the well-timed placement of his cane into the Wailing Wall. The thing is, he takes a tad too long with it. I just found myself thinking, When the hell are we going to get on the train?

Poirot finds himself with a last-minute need to get on the train, and once he finally arrives at the station, here we are introduced to all of the first-class passengers who will later become suspects to the murder of a nasty businessman played by Johnny Depp -- who, let's face it, is phoning it in. Many of the other characters are much more fun: Judy Dench as a surly elderly princess; Josh Gad as the businessman's assistant; Willem Dafoe as a suspicious German; Penélope Cruz as a semi-comically pious woman; Michelle Pfeiffer as serial widow Caroline Hubbard continues her recent streak of being great in not-so-great movies. There's more, but in continuing the list we get right back to the aforementioned tedium. As in: some of these passengers are delightfully shady characters; others are fundamentally forgettable. Daisy Ridley is also in this movie, apparently.

I did get a good laugh a few times at this movie, which is peppered with some well-placed gags and quips. There are too many characters, however, and not enough time spent with any given one of them -- all the while far too much attention is focused on Poirot himself. This guy and his Belgian accent could have benefited from taking it down a notch.

There is an inherent appeal in the mystery of a whodunit on a train careening through Eastern Europe. It's too bad so much of the scenery is transparently done via green screen, rendering what should be majestic landscapes rather inert and static. There isn't near enough depth to the visuals in this film as there should be. And then there are the odd staging choices: sitting all the suspects along a table just inside the opening of a train tunnel, spaced out like they're staging The Last Supper. Meanwhile, Branagh as Poirot is literally sharing half the screen with the huge stream train behind him as he works out who the culprit is. Okay, we get it! There's a train!

I do wonder how many people unfamiliar with the story are able to work out who the murderer is. I suppose it's to the credit of original novelist Agatha Christie that I was genuinely surprised by the revelation at the end. Until that point, though, Poirot leads a great many conversations that overstay their welcome. That runs counter to the intrigue we're supposed to be gripped by all the while. This is one train ride that could have used a jump in pacing -- rather than literally stalling on a CGI railroad bridge in the mountains.

Kenneth Branagh's majestic mustache leads a train to nowhere.

Overall: C+

LOVING VINCENT

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B
Animation: B+

At first glance, the concept for Loving Vincent is intriguing indeed: as we are told in the first frame of the film, every frame (and thus including the one we are looking at) was hand painted, by a team of over 100 artists. The subsequent story they tell, such as it is, is entirely told in the visual style of Vincent van Gogh -- who is also the subject of the story. That makes this movie truly unlike any other, so there's that.

Van Gogh is seen a fair amount, but talked about much more. Co-directors and co-writers Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman use Citizen Cane as a vague inspiration in story structure, with the character Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth, getting the most screen time) talking to many citizens of the town where van Gogh died, a year after his somewhat mysterious death. Armand's dad, a postal carrier, was good friends with van Gogh, and has tasked Armand with delivering one of his final letters to a man in the town.

Each of these town characters are inspired by one or another famous figure from a van Gogh painting, brought to life. The way this was shot seems largely similar to the rotoscoping style of Richard Linklater's 2001 masterpiece Waking Life. Except here, instead of tracing over the actual footage, this time the actors shot their scenes, which were then projected onto canvases, over which literal oil paintings were painted.

The end result could have been spectacular in the vein of Waking Life, but the way the story was structured just didn't work for me. I'll fully concede that this is largely a matter of taste, and possibly even of education. Clearly anyone with a deep knowledge of van Gogh's work and life will find a far greater richness and reward to Loving Vincent (the phrasing of which, by the way, refers not to the act of loving him or his work, but to the way he signed his letters). I am not one of those people.

Furthermore, the animated brush strokes, so painstakingly rendered to mimic those of van Gogh himself, are often a distraction. Often a single frame of this movie is truly beautiful, but the way it moves when animated is often jarringly unnatural, with seemingly odd choices of colors, particularly when it comes to human skin tones. Perhaps that's just another element of typical van Gogh art?

But then there are the flashback scenes, which come with literally every conversation Armand has with the people in this town, and are always in black and white. This counter-productively mutes, if not outright nullifies, the effect of creating actual oil paintings for every frame of this movie. Who wants to look at van Gogh-style paintings in black and white? And it felt like nearly half the film's run time is dedicated to these flashback scenes.

It's a little fun, at least, to recognize the actors being depicted. Chris O'Dowd, Helen McCrory, Aidan Turner, Saoirse Ronan and more were literally costumed for the scenes they shot, and the artists render paintings of them rather than more directly mimicking the van Gogh paintings on which they are based. More fun, perhaps, than sensible: I also found this a bit of a distraction.

Aside from the visual inventiveness onscreen, the focus in the story is pretty much exclusively on conversations, and contemplation of the circumstances of van Gogh's death -- did he really commit suicide or was he shot? Unfortunately, I never found these conversations all that interesting. Again, it may be completely different for audiences with intimate knowledge of Vincent van Gogh. I can't imagine those audiences are very great in number though.

Armand wonders how to make this movie more exciting.

Overall: B-