There's nothing wrong about watching a film on Netflix or another streaming service, but I prefer my first-run films in a darkened movie theater, a bag of freshly buttered popcorn at my side. It's something I enjoy doing regularly. Here are some of my favorite and least favorite experiences at the movie theater this year.
— Howard Wilkinson
The very good
Frankenstein
When you walk into a theater to see a film with director Guillermo del Toro’s name on it, you are guaranteed a well-crafted tale and an experience you will remember long after the closing credits have rolled and you have returned to real life. That’s just how good Del Toro is at his craft. If you saw his 2017 film, The Shape of Water, you know why it won the best picture Oscar that year.
The story of the creature patched together and brought to life by Dr. Victor Frankenstein, first told in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, has often been repeated over the years, but none of its predecessors have come anywhere near recreating the spirit of Shelley’s work. And no one has done more to portray Frankenstein’s tortured, confused and lonely creature than actor Jacob Elordi. It is an amazing performance.
Hamnet
Chloe Zhao directed this film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 largely fictional account of the marriage of Anne Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) and William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and the tragic death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet. The boy’s death was the inspiration for his play, Hamlet. Good story, if somewhat grim, but the real attraction is Buckley’s performance as Anne. Golden Globe- and Oscar-worthy. Buckley alone is worth the price of admission.
Nuremberg
In 2001, Russell Crowe won a best actor Oscar for his performance as Maximus in Gladiator. This year, a decidedly more mature Crowe should get another consideration for his portrayal of the arrogant, unrepentant Hermann Goring, second only to Hitler in the Nazi high command, as the principal defendant in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. The film centers around the relationship between Goring and Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), whose job was to question the belligerent Goring to determine whether or not he is competent to stand trial. It’s an intense battle of wits pitting Kelley against a man so arrogant he refuses to even acknowledge that millions of Jews and others hated by Hitler were slaughtered on his watch. A cautionary tale from director James Vanderbilt aimed squarely at Americans of today who stand by and say nothing as powerful politicians target “illegal immigrants” to be made to disappear.
One Battle After Another
I’m pretty sure this Leonardo DiCaprio film is going to walk away with a boatload of awards, maybe even best picture. DiCaprio is a washed-up ex-revolutionary named Bob Ferguson, living off the grid in a near-constant fog of booze and drugs. But he is intensely, totally dedicated to Willa (played brilliantly by newcomer Chase Infiniti), the daughter of a Black revolutionary, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, whose character is gone far too soon in the film). An old nemeis, Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn) resurfaces to haunt Willa and Bob, who recruits a friend, karate teacher Sergio (Benicio del Toro) to help hide Willa and be at Bob’s side. Del Toro steals the show. Best supporting actor, hands down. And, believe it or not, this film has one of the very best car chase scenes I have ever seen, up and down the sand dunes of the Mohave Desert. Great fun. Great story.
Marty Supreme
A brand new, late-December theater release. I set off some serious pushback among friends when I said that this might be Timothée Chalamet’s best performance yet. Not Dune, not Wonka, not A Complete Unknown. Chalamet is Marty Mauser, a kid in the early 1950s, whose big dreams go far behind his dead-end job in his uncle’s New York City shoe store. What Marty wants is to be the world’s greatest table tennis player — a skill the U.S. public doesn’t care about, but is the passport to wealth and fame in places like Great Britain and Japan. In pursuit of his dream, he is being forever knocked down, humiliated and rejected, but somehow keeps fighting — alienating along the way nearly everyone who could help him escape the messes he creates. It’s a dark comedy — very dark — about a young man willing to lie, cheat and steal to get to the top of a game his countrymen don’t really care about. Chalamet at his best.
The very bad
The Naked Gun
Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson star in this decidedly unfunny follow-up to the original with Leslie Nielsen. I can honestly say I left the theater unable to remember a single joke or sight gag in the entire movie. I count myself as being lucky.
Jurassic World Rebirth
Scarlett Johansson plays the leader of a covert team dropped into the dinosaur park to collect genetic material from the creatures, some of them mutated, for a pharmaceutical company in order to create a potentially life-saving drug. The dinosaurs are not cooperating. They express their displeasure. This is the seventh in the series of Jurassic Park movies, which is about six more than I consider necessary.
Weapons
In the fictional town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, 17 third graders awake at 2:17 a.m. and run from their homes into the night, seemingly disappearing. All except one, Alex Lilly, who is the only student left in the class of a teacher, played by Julia Garner. Naturally, the teacher is the prime suspect. Josh Brolin plays a grief-stricken father trying to solve the mystery. A heavily made-up Amy Madigan shows up as Alex’s crazy Aunt Gladys who sorts it out in her own bizarre way. Again, it’s hard to understand why this movie was made.
The Fantastic Four
It seemed for a time last year that Pedro Pascal was in every other movie released. In this one, he is a leader of the superhero team as Dr. Reed Richards. This was not Pascal’s finest moment. Watch Gladiator II on Netflix instead.
The Near-Misses
Sinners
Michael B. Jordan playing dual roles as ex-Chicago gangsters coming back to the their sleepy hometown in the Mississippi Delta to buy an old sawmill and turn it into a juke joint. Jordan is amazing, the music is hot as a firecracker. But, in the end, the joint attracts an Irish vampire and his fellow undead and the whole show transforms into an incredible bloodbath the likes of which would make Quentin Tarantino blush.
Bugonia
Any time director Yorgos Lanthimos and my favorite actress, Emma Stone, team up on a film you can expect a very good experience. Well, they came up just short this time. Bugonia is about a powerful CEO (Stone) who is kidnapped by a conspiracy theorist (Jesse Plemons, another Lanthimos regular) and his dim-witted cousin. They believe she is really an alien from outer space here to destroy the human race. It’s a most satisfying experience, in a dark comedy kind of way, until the last 15 minutes when it veers off the tracks into an ending so bizarre that you will, if you are like me, leave the theater scratching your head and asking yourself, What the hell was that all about?
Highest 2 Lowest
A Spike Lee Joint, starring Spike’s old pal, Denzel Washington. Can’t lose, right? Well, not exactly. Denzel plays a music mogul facing a moral dilemma when kidnappers mistakenly take his driver's son instead of his own, forcing him to choose between saving the boy and blowing a business deal. Before it is over, you will realize you never cared a whit about anybody or anything in his movie.
Eleanor the Great
Ordinarily, all you have to do is say the name “June Squibb” and I am hooked. And I was for a while in this film, Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, until the plot started falling in on itself. Eleanor Morgenstein (played by Squibb) moves from Florida to New York City for a fresh start after the death of her oldest friend, a Holocaust survivor. Eleanor wanders into a support group for Holocaust survivors and takes her deceased friend’s story as her own; and as the lies grow, her well-intentioned deceit takes on a life of its own. It’s as if the screenwriter wrote a complex script and couldn’t find a way to get out of it. I was more disappointed with this one than any movie I’ve seen this year.
The Surprisingly Good Film Most People Haven’t Seen
The Baltimorons
This little film appeared in indy theaters for a couple of weeks and then drowned in a sea of big budget blockbusters. But it’s well worth finding on a streaming service. The plot is simple: A newly sober young man's Christmas Eve dental emergency leads to an unexpected romance with a considerably older dentist and they end up exploring Baltimore together. Thoroughly charming. Liz Larsen as the dentist; Michael Strassner as her Christmas Eve patient.
