#ive been thinking of trying to write a sequel to the theatrical cut but i have like 3 different plots for it in my head and i cant choose

[carneflower13]

god i wish little shop of horrors had a sequel..... it’d probably be terrible, but id probably love it anyway

[duhragonball]

Talkin’ ‘Bout Star Wars

I just realized someone might see this title and think it’s a review of Episode IX, which I kind of forgot about.    Actually, I was gonna talk about this Count Dooku audiobook I bought, but I guess I only got back into Star Wars books because of Episode IX, so maybe I should back up.

I liked Rise of Skywalker.   I went in unsure of what to expect, because a lot of people hated Episode VIII, and I thought it was awesome, so when I saw scathing criticism of IX, I had no idea whether to take that seriously.    “Man if you thought VIII was bad, IX’s even worse.”  Stuff like that where I didn’t know how to interpret it.    

The fundamental problem with IX is that they were going to do a Leia-centric movie and Carrie Fisher died before they could get started.    I’m pretty sure this had a lot to do with why Darth Sidious is all over the movie, but maybe he would have been in it regardless.   He definitely brings a lot of star power to the movie.    He makes it feel more important than it would have been if it was just Kylo Ren horsing around as the main bad guy.    And while I enjoyed Carrie Fisher as the hardboiled-but-sensitive General Leia, she never seemed quite as comfortable on-screen in the sequel movies as Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford.   I mean, she was in VIII, but she spent most of it in a coma, and Laura Dern seemed to be her understudy.    Maybe Carrie was just waiting for the spotlight of Episode IX, and maybe she would have risen to the occasion, but if not, they would have done well to have the Emperor in the same movie, just to carry some of the load.  

I’ve seen complaints about how fast-paced Episode IX is, and how ridiculous some of the revelations are, but you know, Episode IV realllly drags for the first half-hour, so I’m happy they made a new one that caters to six-year-old me’s desire to get on with things.   As for the whole Rey Palpatine thing, I don’t know, was that any less absurd than whatever fan-theories were floating around in 2016?

I liked Rey’s character arc in this movie, where she goes from having no family to being terrified of her pedigree, to declaring herself to be “Rey Skywalker”.    Also, I dig her yellow lightsaber, even if she never got a chance to use it in the movie.   In fact, let me get a picture of that up here....

Niiiice.   Whenever I look this up, I see all these links to fan theories about what this means, or how it’s a callback to eight other characters from the comics who had yellow lightsabers, but I’m pretty sure she only ended up with this color because they wanted to give her something different and uniquely her own.    If she had a blue or green blade, fans would think she took the crystal out of one of Luke’s old lightsabers, but this indicates that she built her own from scratch.   Also, Rey even having a lightsaber is probably intended to demonstrate that she still has a mission in the galaxy, even after the First Order and Sidious are defeated.   

Anyway, the main issue I have with the movie is that it does play fast and loose sometimes.    It felt like they had a plan for Finn and a plan for Poe, but both plans sort of got lost in the shuffle, and we sort of have to take their big victory as newly minted generals to serve as a finish to their character arcs.    Leia’s big moment is basically her lying down to take a nap, and I get it, that was probably the best they could do, but still.    I read Nein Numb got killed in the movie, and that kind of pisses me off.    

Mostly, it just doesn’t hold up as well as “The Last Jedi”.   I think part of the reason “Revenge of the Sith” is the most popular prequel movie is because it pays off the thing everyone wanted to see: Anakin becoming Darth Vader.   I remember the first time I saw “Attack of the Clones”, and I was kind of surprised to see Anakin kill all the Sand People, like they were turning him evil a little too early, so that had me wondering if he might turn to the dark side in that movie, which sort of distracted me from what was actually happening on the screen. With Episode III, you knew exactly what you were getting, because they couldn’t save any big moments for “Revenge of the Sith, Part 2.”    In a similar vein, I think the big thing audiences wanted from the sequel trilogy was to find out whatever happened to Luke, and Episode VIII answered that question completely.    It sort of undercut Episode IX, and I guess that was what J.J. Abrams was complaining about.

Darth Sidious’ whole comeback is kind of a problem.   I love the character, and it makes sense that he could somehow survive and come back.    In the movie, he just quotes his line about “unnatural” abilities and that’s the only explanation we get for how he survived Endor, built his new fleet, and made Snoke.    People call it a cop out and they’re not wrong, but he’s the one character who can get away with it.    That said, his return raises far more questions than answers, and somehow he’s even stronger than he was before, which raises even further questions.    I mean, if he could just go to this secret planet and build a fleet of planet-destroying ships, why did he bother running for public office?     

I’m sure there’ll be a novel that tries to tackle some of those issues, but the bigger problem here is that Episode IX made me realize that I missed the more vulnerable Darth Sidious from the prequels.     What I love about Episode I is how you’ve got the Sith, looking very similar to the Emperor and Vader in Episode VI, except they don’t have the might of the Empire behind them.    In Episode I, Sidious can’t just force choke his subordinates when they displease him, because he needs those guys.  Darth Maul can’t send a legion of troops to capture Queen Amidala; he has to do it by himself.  They have to be sneakier and trickier than they are in the original trilogy, because they’re still trying to get the Empire set up, and that’s really fascinating to me.   Even in the original trilogy, Palpatine is supreme, but still vulnerable.    He dissolves the Senate, but only once the Death Star is available as an alternative.   He worries that Luke Skywalker “could destroy us.”       

In Episode IX, he seems to have no worries at all, I guess because he’s counting on Rey to murder him for whatever essence transfer he was planning.   I suppose this was why he finally died to his own Force Lightning, with Rey deflecting it with two lightsabers.    Critics ask why he didn’t just stop shooting lightning, but that’s kind of his deal.    He kept shooting at Mace Windu, even when it wrecked his face, and he kept shooting when Darth Vader turned on him.   I mean, if he stopped shooting lighting at Rey, what then?    His fleet would lose the battle, and Rey would refuse to kill him, and he’d just be stuck.    The Sith crave power, and power only matters when you exercise it, so it makes sense that all the Sith characters get wrecked because they bit off more than they could chew.   If you asked Sidious why he didn’t just turn off his lightning, he probably wouldn’t even understand the question.

I think it might have been cooler if Darth Sidious had been a ghost, or maybe an electronic backup of his brain, or something like that.   He looked pretty cool hooked up to that life support system, and I liked the idea that he was reduced to a shell of his former self, but even that would still be a grave threat to the heroes, especially if he got Rey or Kylo Ren to take orders from him.    Maybe he should have actually gotten to possess Rey, and then he would finally get all the gonzo powers he displayed in the movie, and Rey would have to kick him out of her body.   I dunno, maybe that’s not so different from what we actually got.   

I see fans talking about all these alternative versions of Episode IX, like that leaked script, or the concept art, etc.    They lament “Why didn’t we get this movie?” and I think that misses the point.    Maybe one version or another would be better, but in the end you really only get one movie, one shot at telling the story.   At some point, someone has to make the decision as to what makes the cut and what doesn’t.   The problem with writing a story is that the version in your head always looks better than it does in print, because in your head it’s this nebulous, ever-changing thing.    When you sit down to write it, you have to commit to one version, and decide whether to do this or that.   In this day and age, it’s a lot easier to find out about alternate versions and unused drafts.     You can watch the “This” version of a movie, and then go on the internet and see details about the “That” version they didn’t use.    And it’s easy to complain that they made the wrong call.    “Justice League” fans are convinced that there’s a secret “Snyder Cut” of the movie that would somehow be better than the version that actually made it to theaters.   That’s kind of sad, because they clearly must have enjoyed the theatrical cut to some extent, or they wouldn’t care about some other version of the same movie.   But instead of appreciating what they got, they obsess over a supposedly better version that may not even exist.   

I’m probably no better, because I sort of went into Episode IX figuring that it didn’t matter if it was good or bad, because there would be comics or novels that might expand on the stuff I wanted to see.     I think what I really want is a story of how Sidious survived Endor, and how he got set up on Exegul or however you spell it.     That, and Rey buckling some swashes with that yellow lightsaber.   Everyone’s mad about Rose Tico getting a small part in Episode IX, but to me it almost doesn’t matter, because she can be in whatever Rey comic series they make after this.   I mean, that doesn’t do Kelly Marie Tran any good, but I think she’s got a good career ahead of her, with or without Rose Tico. 

I don’t know, maybe this is why I don’t watch movies very much.   I’m mostly into franchises, where the movies themselves are just tentpoles for all the other media.   They don’t really need to be good, so long as some good lore comes out of them that someone else can use.    I was thinking the other day about how Episode II is widely considered one of the weakest Star Wars movies, but every Clone Wars story that came after it was directly inspired by that film.   And there’s a lot of good Clone Wars stuff out there.   It just makes me wonder if Episode II can really be as bad as they say it is.   Then again, it probably doesn’t make sense to say that spinoffs can retroactively fix what should be a standalone work.  

Anyway, I started this post because I wanted to talk about how YouTube keeps recommending me Star Wars meta videos, mainly about the Sith, because that’s what I’m into, and they’re usually covering stuff I already knew.   There’s at least three channels devoted to recapping stories from comics and books, or just straight up repeating information that was directly stated in the movies.    “Did you know Palpatine wanted to KILL Darth Vader?”   Yes, I’ve known since 1983.   He told Luke to kill him and he wouldn’t do it.  Then he and Vader killed each other.   It’s not complicated.   The funny thing is that I watch all these different Star Wars videos, and I can tell they’re narrated by different people, but they all sound like the Burger King Foot Lettuce guy.  

I got bored with these, so I started listening to the Dooku audiobook that came out last year.     It’s been pretty decent, but I was hoping for more Sith lore, and this book seems mostly focused on Asajj Ventress learning about Dooku’s Jedi career.   I’ve only got a half hour left in the book, and Dooku hasn’t even resigned from the order yet, so I don’t think I’ll see much of what he was up to between Episodes I and II.  

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2018, Part IV

Scroll down for Parts I, II, and III. VERY GOOD MOVIES THAT STILL AREN’T TECHNICALLY GREAT--SEE, I LIED, NEW CATEGORY, WHICH REALLY SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT THIS TIER IN 2018 AND MAYBE HINTS THAT THERE WEREN’T MANY MOVIES THAT I GENUINELY LOVED

44. Hotel Artemis (Drew Pearce)- It should be illegal to watch this movie before midnight because it is an exploitation flick to its core. Is it a problem that it's shaped like a triangle, that it starts wrapping up its answers the minute we understand what the questions were? Yes. Is that a problem that Jeff Goldblum, playing the Wolf King, wearing a double-breasted camel's hair coat like a shawl, can't fix? No.

43. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (Stefano Sollima)- Considering how much I liked Sicario, I'm impressed by how close its sequel came to its chilly hardness. Strangely enough, the craft suffers more from the absence of Jóhann Jóhannsson than it does from the absence of Denis Villeneuve. Aside from a lull at the two-thirds mark and the pulling of exactly one punch, this entry feels as vital and astute as the last one.

Which means the real auteur must be Taylor Sheridan. His script mimics the structure of the original while twisting its characters just askew enough to breathe new life into the material. His screenplays just sort of unfold in a way that I find organic--it's hard to even say what the conflict is until halfway through most of the time. And if he wants to write five more of these, I'll gladly take them.

42. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)- Like almost anyone else, I'm grateful that The Other Side of the Wind exists at all. The fact that it's so more personal and experimental than I expected is a bonus. It's kind of a mess until it congeals at the drive-in, but every choice still seems labored over. (The claustrophobic nature of the party versus the wide open spaces of the film-within-the-film, for example.) Nonetheless, it's hard to go to bat for a movie whose backstory is more captivating than the final product.

41. The Mule (Clint Eastwood)- Besides the breezy glide of the pacing, the performances stand out. Eastwood's is the type that we haven't seen from him in a while. He smiles a lot. He sings and dances and flirts. He's generally carefree and loopy. And he's contrasted with* a nervy Bradley Cooper in one of those humongous-star-taking-the-back-seat performances, sprinkling charisma the way Sean Connery did in The Untouchables.

But there is no elegance at all. Besides Chekhov's cough and the cheesy elbowing of "If only somebody had $25,000 to save the VFW Hall," we get the messy racial politics of Eastwood once again. Whereas Gran Torino worked for me because it's aware of its own racism, this one thinks that it's doing some good. The subtext is that an old White man would never catch trouble from police, but the text is a Hispanic man getting pulled over and nearly pissing himself for laughs. Hard to argue this isn't a fun time at the movies though, despite the fact that it's almost entirely about regret.

40. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)- Too theatrical and outre for my taste, but it's easy to get lost in its cosmetic pleasures: the lush colors, the lavish costumes, the immaculate close-ups, the best score of the year. I liked it, especially the Brian Tyree Henry tangent, but as the movie is swooning over itself, it's easy to catch yourself thinking, "What is this even about?"

39. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller)- Can You Ever Forgive Me? hits every beat you would expect from an "in over her head" crime movie, but the time that the film dedicates to the central relationship creates a rare intimacy. If you stopwatched it, I imagine the majority of the film would be McCarthy and Grant talking to each other. That focus, along with a resistance to smoothing over the characters' rougher edges, elevates a kind of boilerplate story.

38. Blockers (Kay Cannon)- Even if the ending is kind of exhausting, desperate to give each character his or her moment, this is hilarious. Not so much in the setpieces showcased in the commercials but frequently in an expression or line reading. The Blu-Ray has a line-o-rama gag reel that is funnier than some entire movies. It's pretty progressive and fair in its portrayal of young female sexuality too.

37. Game Night (John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein)- It gets a little tidy and full circle for my taste, but this movie has some great laughs while being a good example of a film that nails both the characters' "want" and the characters' "need." Rachel McAdams is winning, and Jesse Plemons steals all of his scenes.

Game Night also has way more of a filmic identity than one might expect, since it doubles as a sort of Fincher parody. Besides Cliff Martinez's insistent electronic score and some CGI-for-no-reason establishing shots, Daley and Goldstein borrow the auteur's desaturated palette, locked-down camera, and narrow light range. There's even an elaborate one-r. The visuals elevated a premise that had the potential to be really dopey.

36. First Man (Damien Chazzelle)- I think this is exactly the movie Chazelle wanted to make, but, to match my expectations or his filmography, it's not quite good enough. Cool to the touch, though anything else would be antithetical to who Armstrong was. In the shape of suspense, but with an outcome that is obviously never in doubt. Flipping to the IMAX ratio the second the crew docks onto the moon is a cool trick, but it's as innovative as things get.

The cast is game. Gosling's fastidious brooding resists any of his Movie Star charm but still holds every scene, and the framing of Armstrong's motivation works very well. Foy's reading of "a bunch of boys" is about to become a t-shirt. Kyle Chandler and Jason Clarke and the suddenly mature Patrick Fugit all get their moments. The final scene places the film into the Chazelle tradition of people whose calling is greater than even their most transcendent relationships, and a protest sequence is a welcome break from the eraser-streaked perfectionism.

I'm sorry that I wanted Apollo 13 instead of a hipper Apollo 13.

35. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Perischetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman)- Within the course of one year, we got two possible solutions for the "problem" of inspiring but self-serious origin stories. At the beginning of the year, Black Panther mastered the form and presented it so solidly that it couldn't be argued against. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse goes the other way, so impressionistic that the final sequence is people flying through abstract shapes and colors, so irreverent that a character cuts someone off mid-sentence as he says, "With great power comes..." Though I would have trouble explaining the film, all of the dimensional comings-and-goings make sense in the moment, and it's easily the funniest Marvel movie ever made.

Maybe purposefully, it is overstuffed though. Six different iterations of Spider-Man is enough to juggle; I definitely didn't need a cadre of villains that was even less defined. I have to admit, even though I couldn't tell you what to cut, I was exhausted by the end, even if I was huffing and puffing fresh air.

34. Boy Erased (Joel Edgerton)- Many characters do bad things in this movie, but they're people trying to help and doing their best, justifying the pain that they're causing. This is a film that easily could have been drawn in caricature, and it never is. It does, however, draw the characters as fairly as they deserve, so the Joel Edgerton gay conversion therapist does wear bad ties and pronounce some words incorrectly. The Russell Crowe character, especially in the powerhouse final scene, is more complex and real, at least if I'm to judge by my own father, who has disturbingly similar moral authority and power moves k thx bai.

33. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville)- This one is more cohesive than 30 Feet From Stardom, but these Morgan Neville docs are sometimes too slick for their own good. If you've never made the "jerking-off motion" with your hand, then you'll be tested when he asks his subjects to close their eyes and imagine someone special to them.

That's not to say that the nearly pornographic reverence of Fred Rogers is not deserved or effective. And one of the most daring notes of the film is the suggestion that, in our hostile times, Rogers's message might not have stuck. The jabs at Trump aren't overplayed, but the president is sort of a pall over the entire film. When Rogers says, "The most essential things in life are invisible," it's hard not to imagine the person on our TV daily who is the antithesis of that idea.

32. Hearts Beat Loud (Brett Haley)- This is a heartwarming movie that ends on a high note with solid music. (Important because, if the music that the father and daughter made had been bad, the whole thing would have fallen apart.) Occasionally, it falls into that ensemble problem of "Good news: We got Ted Danson. Bad news: We have to find something for him to do." And it's a weird sideways ad for Spotify. But if I gave Begin Again three stars, then I have to kick this Once-core entry up to three-and-a-half.

If I may, though, I would like to analyze a recommendation that Offerman's record store owner makes to Collette's character. Since she's buying Dig Me Out by Sleater-Kinney, he puts her on to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, an album she has not heard of. Which is absurd. Forget that Animal Collective should not be recommended to any woman ever. Any person who knows Sleater-Kinney also knows Animal Collective. She would have heard of them if only because they would be a bad match for someone who likes Sleater-Kinney. But here he is all like, "Check out 'My Girls'--killer song." You're going to recommend the lead single, fam? You're not even going to go out on a limb and push "Bluish"? No wonder your store is shutting down if you're pushing free folk/art-punk onto riot grrls.

31. Western (Valesta Grisebach)- While I was watching Western, I can't say I was having too much fun. It seemed like an adequate story told in a patient, austere way. But in the days since then, I haven't been able to get it out of my head. The way that Grisebach gets so much out of non-professional actors, the way that each character seems to exist not so much as a person but as a totem for something like aggression or labor or exploitation or occupation. Like few other movies--though Beau Travail comes to mind--it's a portrait of masculinity that seems really resigned about its conclusions. 30. American Animals (Bart Layton)- I worry about the potential Boondock Saints effect of this movie: Do I want to be in the same number as the college dorm crew attracted to it only for its style? Is it only style? I don't think it adds up to much ultimately.

But it does have style, and it's way too fun of a caper flick to resist. It presents an interesting bridge in Bart Layton's career, from non-fiction that is a bit too fictional to fiction that is a bit too factual. The segments with the real people involved in the heist serve as decisive punctuation to the florid sentences of the narrative. I also appreciated that the film didn't dwell too much on the trial, since we know exactly where the boys faltered and what evidence did them in.

29. The Land of Steady Habits (Nicole Holofcener)- I loved the rich characterization of the first half, which resists hand-holding as it plops the viewer into a post-divorce setting that is familiar but specific. The film bounces off into tangents from there, some of which are great, but Edie Falco seems to draw the short straw. There are three actors on the poster--weird-voiced Ben Mendelsohn, Thomas Mann, and Falco--but her character is left undeveloped, a bit unfairly, as the proceedings favor the men. The film is still another ground-rule double for Holofcener, a filmmaker who gives the impression that she has no idea what a ground-rule double is.

28. Private Life (Tamara Jenkins)- I don't know anything about Tamara Jenkins's personal life, but there's no way that the details and emotion of the central couple's infertility don't come from her own pain. That frustration and obsession take center stage, and we get filled in with the rest of the details patiently as the film goes on. I don't think we even know what Giamatti's character does for a living until forty-five minutes in, and that's okay. The movie cares more about the supporting characters than I did, but I appreciated the lived-in realism of an apartment with books filling up the fireplace.

27. Flower (Max Winkler)- Although I didn't believe Zoey Deutch as a seventeen-year-old, I was impressed by this script, which moves slowly until it doesn't. I guess "Flower" is good branding since there doesn't appear to be a movie called that already, but I kind of wish this had just been called "Erica." It builds that character carefully, plants her in an impossible situation, then unleashes hell upon her.

An advantage of a movie with teenage characters is that they don't necessarily have to make the most logical decision in a given moment, so even when these characters are being dumb, they're being true to themselves. As the most prominent Zoey Deutch stockholder in North America, I actually thought about bumping this up an extra half-star.

26. Leave No Trace (Debra Granik)- Leave No Trace is partly about how existing outside of society can be as much of a contrivance as buying in, but the way the movie delivers that message is less ham-fisted than my description due to the intense performances at the center. Ben Foster, uncharacteristically restrained here, reportedly worked with Debra Granik to excise 40% of his dialogue, and that choice speaks volumes about the trust the film has for the audience in limiting the exposition.

The only thing holding me back was how exclusively internal the father-daughter story is. Unlike Granik's Winter's Bone, which functions as both a (similarly compassionate) coming-of-age story and a race-against-the-clock thriller, Leave No Trace is tracking only emotional growth. Will and Tom aren't headed anywhere in particular, which is part of the survival-versus-living point. But, you know, get you a Debra Granik movie that can do both.

25. Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)- Socially terrifying when it isn't being effortlessly funny. Sometimes the protagonist is downright frustrating, which the film doesn't shy away from, but the vulnerability of Elsie Fisher's performance grounds everything around it. Besides nailing adult condescension, Burnham's script works because the big social disaster is always averted until it suddenly isn't, and that's when the moment hits the hardest. Somewhere in the back of my mind though, I kept thinking that perceptive realism is easy to do if that's your only goal. To quote the kids: "Some shade."

I spent most of the movie thanking God that YouTube channels didn't exist when I was thirteen.

24. Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle)- I'll be the millionth person to write "truth is stranger than fiction" with regard to this movie. And sometimes having no idea where a movie will go is enough. 23. Green Book (Peter Farrelly)- When a dramatic director makes a comedy, it often feels self-conscious and overt. I'm thinking about Von Trier's The Boss of It All, in which the technique is more important than any audience joy or release. Or Michael Haneke explaining tirelessly why he thinks Happy End is "actually a comedy." Unsurprisingly, the results work a lot better when a comedy director of twenty years decides to go more serious. He knows what audiences want, he already understands how to wring tension out of each scene, and all he needs is the right subject.

The last item is where Green Book suffers. In the end, this is still a movie in which a White guy learns not to be racist. The first third, there seemingly to insist that Tony is the main character, is shaggy. I would wager the men don't get into the car inside of forty minutes. But once we're on the tour? Man, is this a crowd pleaser. The men's respect for each other grows gracefully, and the film's proud sentimentality powers its best moments as they fly by at a clipped pace. I had given up on Farrelly after Hall Pass, which felt amateurish, so a work of such professionally manicured (manufactured?) emotion was a shock.

On a different note, are any of you interested in a thousand words on Linda Cardellini's posture?

22. Den of Thieves (Christian Gudegast)- Despite the February release date, a director with no track record, and the most #basic studio lead there is, Den of Thieves is a caper film as sprawling as it is humane. Even Potato-face Butler is perfect for his role.

I watched the unrated version, which should be called the "depressing version," since I know exactly what was cut. (Hint: The wordless scene of Butler's jilted family ignoring him when he sees them in the grocery store, not anything from the shoot-out.) There's a spot where I would end the movie, and it's way before the Keyser Soze epilogue, but this was a welcome surprise for me. The movie seems to find its star in O'Shea Jackson, Jr. as it goes, and I completely agree. Many more like this please.

21. The Front Runner (Jason Reitman)- Reitman starts with a complicated oner that cranes up and down, zooms in and out of new characters, and times itself perfectly to catch snatches of conversations about "how can you even lay this much cable?" And in all of its Altman-esque indulgence, it's kind of the movie in a nutshell. Something simple--a scene shot with one take--commenting on how damned hard it is. What seems like a straightforward thesis moves at a breakneck pace with a game ensemble until you realize that it was all more complicated than it seemed.

Hugh Jackman has the challenge of playing someone essentially unknowable, but he has an amazing moment in the first third. On the chartered boat called Monkey Business--such a bad look, dude--Gary Hart is composed and dignified until a woman we don't see* sits down across from him, and his whole affect changes. His guard drops, and he seems absorbed by her, giggly. We can't hear what he's saying, but he's asking her about herself and joking about himself. Both or one or neither of those personalities is the real guy. The Front Runner is a movie about a tragic Great Man, and they're always described as if they can't help themselves, as if they're fighting their demons until the magic moment when they aren't. Jackman made that magic real for me when Hart's personality fell out.

20. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)- Patently uneven and bizarrely sequenced, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs doesn't stack up to the Coens' major works--though it demands another viewing. I did think, in all of its bleak absurdism, that it belongs in their neighborhood. To me, there's a dichotomy that most of the brothers' films trace. We're all doomed, but the force that does us in is sometimes fate (A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Hudsucker Proxy, No Country for Old Men) and sometimes the stupidity of other people (The Big Lebowski, Blood Simple, Burn After Reading, Miller's Crossing). This new movie seems to start with the latter, waver sometimes in the more interesting middle stories when Zoe Kazan and Tom Waits break my heart, then end up at the former. Tracking such a thing in miniature can be really instructive.

19. The Tale (Jennifer Fox)- If you can look past Common's goofy voice and the more afterschool special aspects of this movie, then you can realize that it should actually, as disturbing as it is, be an afterschool special. It spins its wheels sometimes, but the questions that this movie asks about memory and abuse are invaluable. Presenting a downright shocking portrayal of grooming and secrecy, it avoids easy answers and over-sympathizing with the protagonist all the way through. (Especially notable because the character is "Jennifer Fox," and the director is Jennifer Fox.)

Laura Dern remains Laura Dern, but I loved Jason Ritter in this. Exactly because he has been in a hundred failed sitcoms, he is terrifying here as a devilish knock-off of the type of guy approachable enough to be on TV.

18. Paddington 2 (Paul King)- At first, during the extended introduction, I was worried that Paddington 2 was falling prey to the curse of the sequel: more, not better. But as each family member pays off what we learned about him or her in the introduction during a sprightly train setpiece that owes more than a little to Keaton, I realized that I shouldn't have doubted the Paddington empathy machine. This one carries over the humor and sweetness but goes even harder on the pathos in its attempt to convince us to have good manners and care about the people around us. I'm not sure any other movie this year hit me harder than when the Browns don't show up for their weekly meeting at the jail.

Hugh Grant, an actor who always seems to be having fun, has never seemed as if he is having more fun.

17. Set It Up (Claire Scanlon)- I guess I believe in true love now.

16. Blindspotting (Carlos Lopez Estrada)- The stylized climax is going to be polarizing, but I thought it was a heightened, artful moment whose seeds had been sown throughout. The film meanders, but its angles on subjects like gentrification and probation and identity show tenderness and openness, and Estrada's visual energy recalls early Spike Lee or Jarmusch or Aronofsky. It's worth seeing if only for its fresh sense of place.

The two leads play off each other especially well. If Daveed Diggs is the fourth lead or whatever of Hamilton, then I guess I finally have to see it.

15. Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird)- Incredibles 2 is a good example of a sequel rhyming with the original in a way that doesn’t feel like a retread. Accidentally topical in its subtext about just rule of law, the film hits upon some of Brad Bird’s ideas of exceptionalism and hope for the future while being slightly more cogent in that messaging than the original. (Slightly. The villain problem is still there. If superheroes are already illegal, then why employ and promote them at all if your goal is to make them even more illegal?)

This entry is a bit more overstuffed, less timeless, and less funny than the original. There’s nothing on the level of “Honey, where is my super suit?” which I still say to my wife fourteen years later. But the fight choreography and the textural animation take advantage of the gap in between films. The Paar family dynamic is altered only slightly, but it’s enough to re-invent the proceedings. Violet has more confidence in herself, Dash is more in control of his powers, and it’s the, yes, thicc Elastigirl who is working solo this time. Especially in the opening sequence, we see how each character’s skills complement the others’. If Finding Dory is the bar for “sequels to Pixar movies that didn’t need sequels,” then Incredibles 2 leaps over that bar.

14. Chappaquiddick (John Curran)- "We need to tell the truth. Or at least our version of it."

After the Kennedy Curse claimed JFK Jr., it seemed as if the culture reached a saturation point with Kennedy coverage. Aside from the occasional "Look who's dating Taylor Swift," we gave them their space. Who would have thought that twenty years later would be the perfect time to dust off the coldest case in the dossier?

See, now that we're having a national conversation about who gets the breaks, there's a little bit of extra weight lent to a scene of Ted Kennedy waiting for a sheriff he summoned as he drafts a statement at that absent sheriff's desk. A sheriff who then helps Kennedy to escape through a backdoor lest he answer any untoward question about his manslaughter. The film is delivered with an even pitch--especially the Jason Clarke performance that could have been overdone--but it makes no mistake about its real subject: privilege.

The attempts to keep Kennedy safe become more brazen as the film goes on, and each dodged consequence--getting Teddy's driver's license renewed on the low, for example--is balanced by Ed Helms's desperate performance as a voice of integrity. In all of the best tragedies, we know what's going to happen in the end. All along, the Kennedy Curse was that they are not like the rest of us.

13. Love, Simon (Greg Berlanti)- Can we all agree that an anonymous gossip web site for a high school is a bad idea? And that, though the film doesn't pursue this angle, the vice principal is the one maintaining it?

This propulsive, observant, and witty movie is an outright pleasure from beginning to end. Hocking spitballs at its PG-13 rating, its greatest strengths are having the courage to get dark and having the wisdom to give every supporting character his or her own moment.