Stability: 2016 in Review

Other Years in Review.

In a year when the finely woven tapestry of our reality began to unravel at the edges, it's been nice to have a platform to try to make sense of things. That's one way to think of criticism: a quantifying, qualifying act of sense-making. Society makes sense of a chaotic world, art makes sense of society, and criticism makes sense of art.

Although I had fewer total blog posts than last year, I had a greater focus on watching and reviewing new films. That made for less post-to-post variety, but I've gotten into a good rhythm that has allowed me to work on the nuts and bolts of my review style. I have also made a point of tightening up my numerical evaluations. This has been the year with the lowest average review score yet.

Though not nearly as expansive as last year's various series, I still made room for a February retrospective of woman directors, a Captain America/Iron Man series, and a goofy exploration of the Final Destination franchise.

In the future Post-Credit Coda may find the occasion to diversify once more, but for now we have found a comfortable pattern. Here are the year's statistics.

This year Post-Credit Coda featured a total of 56 blog posts, including 54 movie reviews, 30 reviews of 2016 films, 1 top ten list, and 1 editorial.

Of the 56 movie reviews, the average score was a 7.4 out of 10.

No perfect 10s were awarded this year, so the highest score was a 9.5, belonging to six movies: Arrival, Carol, Don't Think Twice, The Lobster, Speed Racer, and The Witch.

The lowest score, a paltry 2.5, belongs to the 1979 Captain America TV movie.

The breakdown is as follows:

Score - Number of Movies with that Score

10 - 0
9/9.5 - 17
8/8.5 - 13
7/7.5 - 10
6/6.5 - 5
5/5.5 - 3
4/4.5 - 2
3/3.5 - 3
2/2.5 - 1
1/1.5 - 0
0/0.5 - 0

The total number of hits for this year: 15,425. The total number of hits for each 2016 post adds up to 3,778.

Of the 56 eligible posts, the average number of hits per post was 67.

The highest number of hits: Finding Dory with 211.

The lowest number of hits: The Hitch-Hiker with 27.

As always, thank you for reading! It's been a solid three years. Keep dreaming, everybody.

JACKIE: Mythmaking in America

Director: Pablo Larraín
Writer: Noah Oppenheim
Cast: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Crudup, John Hurt, Greta Gerwig, John Carroll Lynch, Beth Grant, Caspar Phillipson
Runtime: 100 mins.
2016

"God doesn't care about stories. God cares about the truth."

So says the priest who Natalie Portman's Jackie Kennedy seeks out for counsel and understanding. It is for this reason that Jackie has little use for God as she endeavors to craft her late husband's cultural legacy. Pablo Larraín's version of Jackie is a student of history, and a newcomer into one of the more privileged families in America; she knows that the truth is created by stories, and the stories are crafted by those with power. While the world projects onto Jackie a young, frightened, grieving widow, Jackie sets about using her social position to shape the history books forever to come--all within the context of that youth, that fear, and that grief.

Such is the nature of this shockingly complex and impactful biopic of Jackie Kennedy, a movie that chooses to dig deep into her most crucial weeks rather than draw a lazy sketch of her entire life. The essence of this character is captured more elegantly in this limited timeframe than it could be in an epic overview. This is what sets every moment of Jackie apart from its floppy biopic peers: Larraín fills Jackie with the crackling energy of a thriller because he has an urgent story to tell, as opposed to the typical biopic approach of "important people's lives are important because they're true."

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY - A Newer Hope

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Gareth Edwards
Writers: Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy, John Knoll, Gary Whitta
Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, James Earl Jones
Runtime: 133 mins.
2016

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the second of Disney's new era of Star Wars films to be successful despite near fatal flaws. The difference between the two is that every time I reconsider Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it gets worse in my memory, to the point that I regret the relatively high marks I gave it. Rogue One, on the other hand, holds up well to scrutiny even as its messiness becomes clear.

Of course, this is far from a universal perspective. Rogue One has turned out to be one of the more divisive blockbusters in recent memory for a whole slew of reasons. I've been a cheerleader of director Gareth Edwards for a few years now, so it's no surprise that I come out on the positive side of the divide. Edwards himself is divisive, as previously manifested in the 2014 Godzilla reboot. His trademark directorial style involves framing and composition far more grandiose and sophisticated than any of his peers, coupled with character work that is apathetic at worst, functional at best.

Lo and behold, Rogue One is a Gareth Edwards movie through and through, which I consider to be something of a triumph. The movie underwent some serious reshoots, and composer Alexandre Desplat got swapped out for the more crowdpleasing Michael Giacchino; folks took this as a sign of Disney trying to neuter Edwards' approach to the material. Those fears are mostly unfounded, although the reshoots have left their grubby fingerprints all over the film.

STAR WARS: EPISODE I - THE PHANTOM MENACE: George of the Bungle

As Rogue One: A Star Wars Story sweeps the planet, let's dig into the first major Star Wars prequel.

More Star Wars Reviews.

Director: George Lucas
Writer: George Lucas
Cast: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, Ian McDiarmid, Pernilla August, Ahmed Best, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Frank Oz, Andy Secombe, Lewis Macleod, Ray Park, Keira Knightley
Runtime: 136 mins.
1999

Much like Onan shamefully spilling his semen on the ground after intercourse with his brother's widow (Genesis 38: 6-10), many words of criticism have been frivolously sloshed into the dirt concerning Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace. Arguably the most rabidly anticipated feature film of all time, Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace released itself upon the public on May 19, 1999. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The meteoric impact of disappointment was so significant that we have still not seen the end of its aftershocks. One could even argue that J. J. Abrams' rehabilitation of the franchise was shaped in direct refutation to Lucas's prequel trilogy. For the past seventeen years, folks have not been able to shut up about how bad Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace turned out to be.

What, then, is there left to say?

LA LA LAND: Livin La Vida La La

Director: Damien Chazelle
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, J. K. Simmons
Runtime: 128 mins.
2016

There's really nothing to the story of La La Land. An aspiring actress named Mia (Emma Stone) and a passionate jazz musician named Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) have several chance encounters, fall in love, and encourage each other to follow their dreams. In fact, if you were to sum up all that this movie has on its mind, it would amount to nothing more than that feverish exclamation: "Follow your dreams!" It's unabashedly boilerplate. That extends to the personalities, too. Supporting characters are one-note at best, no-note at worst, and only show up briefly to present vague obstacles before disappearing from the movie forever. Even our heroes lack depth, content to be ciphers who are only passionate about one thing.

None of that keeps La La Land from being extraordinary. Damien Chazelle, fresh off the intense Whiplash, sets about presenting us with a beast thought to be extinct: a contemporary high profile Hollywood musical not based on any preexisting material. Being entirely illiterate regarding the era and genre Chazelle is homaging, I couldn't begin to tell you about the references to the golden age of movie musicals that Chazelle litters throughout the film. But I do know enough about the era to point out that oftentimes the characters in these films were purposefully blank, written only as vessels for the great movie stars of the age to embody. La La Land follows that pattern, which makes its narrative simplicity entirely forgivable--sometimes all we need is to watch Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone sing, dance, and fall in love.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA: A Death in the Family

Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Writer: Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams
Runtime: 137 mins.
2016

Manchester by the Sea is an iceberg movie. Rather than pursue the melodramatic structure of a classical tragedy, wherein misfortune after misfortune get heaped upon an individual until they are crushed by the weight of it, Manchester features characters already anchored by past tragedy. When the not-unexpected death of a family member kicks off the plot, nobody breaks down. The characters handle it with weariness and gravitas as we are given watery glimpses into the mass of sorrow that lurks beneath the surface.

The main character in question is Lee (Casey Affleck), a man. Unlike most movies, it is vitally important that Lee be a man, as Manchester is very much about a particularly masculine flavor of grief. Lee is stoic, silent. The iceberg of masculine emotional self-abnegation paralyzes him, disallows vulnerability, kills new connections before they've even begun. When his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies and leaves Lee to be the caretaker of his son Patrick (Lucas Hedges), Lee must reconcile his self-exile from the world with his newfound responsibility for one of the only people remaining in the world that he cares about.

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS: Emission Admission

Director: Tom Ford
Writer: Tom Ford
Cast: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Isla Fisher, Ellie Bamber

Nocturnal Animals is a bit of a formal experiment and a bit of a revenge thriller, but mostly it's designer mogul Tom Ford's strained attempt at baring his soul. The film begins with an art exhibition that I won't spoil as it is the most delightfully weird part of the entire enterprise. As it turns out, this exhibition was curated by Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), a high profile L.A. artist whose heart isn't in her work anymore, even as she's reached the top of her craft. Part of her malaise is disillusionment with her success, and part of it is being stuck in a loveless power marriage with businessman Hutton Morrow (Armie Hammer). This comes to a head when Susan's ex husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) sends her a transcript of his soon to be published novel that he has dedicated to her. She becomes fixated, both on the story of a family that encounters unthinkable tragedy, and on her memories of her relationship with Edward, perhaps the only genuine thing she's ever had in her life.

It's hard not to read Ford himself into Susan's character, a bourgeoisie artist who emerges from decades of irony and cynicism to try to rediscover empathy, only to find those bridges may have been long burned. At the very least that makes Nocturnal Animals a worthwhile autobiographical nugget for those interested in Tom Ford's life, which I am not. My enthusiasm rather centers around the story-within-a-story structure. In addition to Susan reading the novel, we get to experience it as well in the form of a film version that is intercut with Susan's frame narrative. As the movie progresses, these two worlds are also spliced together with flashbacks featuring the history of Susan and Edward's relationship. To double down on the messaging, Gyllenhaal portrays Susan's ex husband Edward as well as Tony Hastings, the protagonist of his novel, a choice that deliberately connects the threads and gives us a window into Susan's psychology. The transitions between these stories are crisp and playful, featuring a lot of match cuts and pertinent parallelisms. It's an auspicious way to structure a film, and it pays dividends, as each story fractal greatly enhances the others.

Unfortunately, none of the three individual stories are any good on their own. Edward's novel (or perhaps Ford's movie based on Edward's novel?) is a tacky revenge thriller that has little up its sleeve beyond gaudy miserabilism. It's like Cormac McCarthy without the rich language, nuance, themes, or grand meditations on humanity. It's supposed to be Edward's magnum opus, but it mostly plays petty and shallow. The tension works well enough, but that's all there is to it. Nocturnal Animals is universally buoyed by strong performances; this boilerplate revenge narrative would have been far more insufferable without the always brilliant Michael Shannon stealing the show as flintnosed deputy Bobby Andes, who aids the Gyllenhaal character in his quest. Props also go to Aaron Taylor-Johnson for being unrecognizable in his one-dimensional role as piece of human refuse Ray Marcus.

The flashbacks are even worse. They fill out the characters well enough, but their method for doing so is overwrought melodrama. These characters speak to each other by summing themselves up in the most abstract terms. "I'm pragmatic and you're idealistic and therefore our relationship cannot work," a character might proclaim. It's like a screenwriting exercise for essentializing character motivations that was meant to be replaced by real dialogue later.

My favorite of the three timelines is the initial framing narrative, even though about two things happen in its entirety. Or maybe one. One and a half? Much like Shannon in the West Texas story, Amy Adams singlehandedly carries a large swathe of this movie on her back. Also she lives a pretty dope arty life that's fun to see her wander through. Ford's visuals seesaw between inspired and bland throughout, but this world is the most consistently good to look at, perhaps because it's the world Ford knows best. It also contains, for no particular reason, one of the most effective jump scares I've seen all year.

So we have a movie that is greater than the sum of its parts, though the parts are mediocre enough to make that no large compliment. One could say that the mediocrity of the seed narrative is meant to illustrate the thematic exploration of the tension between high class sophisticate art forms and low class exploitation entertainment. There's merit in that, but any way you look at it, the concept of Nocturnal Animals is superior to its actuality. Despite that, it is worth checking out, and at least it has the dignity to begin and end perfectly.

2.5 / 5  BLOBS

ARRIVAL: It's About Time

Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writer: Eric Heisserer
Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg
Runtime: 116 mins.
2016

Director Denis Villeneuve, a rising awards darling whose work consistently elevates the scripts that he chooses, specializes in atmosphere. Villeneuve's movies creep forward, slowing down the onscreen activity, forcing us to occupy the experience of his characters. In a feat of uncommon wizardry, Villeneuve's movies become increasingly riveting as the pacing slows. Arrival is not only the perfect movie to reap the benefits of Villeneuve's talents, but Eric Heisserer provides him with a screenplay that he need not elevate because it's exactly as good as he is.

After a series of impressionistic flashbacks establish the main character, Louise Banks (Amy Adams), the film jumps straight to the point. Aliens have come to Earth in the form of twelve pitch black ovoid vessels that hover silently above twelve apparently unrelated parts of the world. Louise, being one of the planet's great linguistic minds, has been summoned by the American military, as embodied by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker). Her goal, a challenge that stretches across the entirety of the film's 116 minute runtime, is to learn how to communicate with the aliens well enough to pose the all-important question: Why have they come?

OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL - Most Improved

Director: Mike Flanagan
Writers: Mike Flanagan, Jeff Howard
Cast: Annalise Basso, Elizabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Henry Thomas, Parker Mack
Runtime: 99 mins.
2016

Movie sequels have problems. Books and video games can often equal or even improve upon their predecessors, but a follow-up to a film typically signals a death knell. I suspect it has something to do with the purity and rigorous structure of cinematic storytelling, though there is a precedent for films that improve upon the formula offered by their franchise starter. Movies like The Dark Knight, The Godfather Part II, or even Final Destination 2 started with something special, and made it better.

I've been racking my brain; I cannot think of a single instance of an awful movie that made a great sequel. That's why, as far as I'm concerned, Ouija: Origin of Evil is an unprecedented historical event.

I've found a graphic that maps sequel quality as against the quality of the original, measured by Rotten Tomato scores. It's a flawed metric, but as good as any for making some sort of objective data set. Here's the chart. I've marked in red where Ouija: Origin of Evil would land if included.

Here's a link to the chart if you want the bigger version. That's a Rotten Tomatoes net improvement of 75%. The only movie that even comes close is The Wrath of Khan, and that differential is 42%.

OUIJA: Bored Game

Director: Stiles White
Writers: Stiles White, Juliet Snowden
Cast: Olivia Cooke, Ana Coto, Daren Kagasoff, Bianca A. Santos, Douglas Smith, Shelley Hennig, Sierra Heuermann
Runtime: 89 mins.
2014

Ouija is a movie in which you get to watch characters floss on two separate occasions. Ouija is also rare in that 80% of its title is comprised of vowels. I'm stretching for interesting factoids, but I've quickly run dry. There are probably about twenty collective seconds of good movie in here somewhere?

Ouija belongs to the unfortunate pantheon of films based on board games, so the creative team should be given a bit of leeway for being shackled to that premise. It's unclear whether director Stiles White and co-writer Juliet Snowden shat out the quickest most slapdash film that would still satisfy their corporate overlords, or whether they were actively trying to subvert their thankless task by crafting the most unappealingly cliched movie they could muster. Either way Ouija amounts to a feature length toy commercial, even going so far as having a character toss out the plasticine line, "They sell these things at toy stores," as if it were pertinent to the spooky situation. Indeed, the game is so lazily mythologized that the characters rattle off the sacred rulebook by memory, and are punished mightily for breaking them.

DOCTOR STRANGE: Misery Acquaints a Man with Strange Bedfellows

Director: Scott Derrickson
Writers: Jon Spaihts, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Rachel McAdams
115 mins.
2016

The Marvel juggernaut has become such an entrenched cultural institution that any commentary comes with baggage. Part of me loves the cavalcade of colorful superheroism that hits our multiplexes several times a year, and part of me is disturbed by Marvel's safe and easy placating approach, a dilemma I wrote about at some length a few weeks ago. Doctor Strange is yet another perfect embodiment of that dynamic. We have yet another endearing story with incredible atmosphere hobbled by safe narrative choices and tepid drama.

Doctor Strange is about a white man. The whitest of white men, Benedict Cumberbatch. After suffering a crippling accident that precludes him from going any further in his career as a hotshot surgeon, he has lost his sense of purpose. His journey in search of healing leads him to one Ancient One, as portrayed by Tilda Swinton, and this whitest of white women proceeds to instruct this whitest of white men on the practical value of Eastern mysticism.

I'm being glib, but the racial politics of Doctor Strange aren't great. When your story about the power of Eastern cultures has three white people as its central figures--Mr. Strange, Ms. One, and Mr. Kaecilius, the rogue villain--it's clear that you're not fully or properly engaging with the subject matter. Marvel made some strong moves with genderbending and pivoting certain characters' roles, but they try to cover over the whiteness of their movie with a few lampshading lines of dialogue, and that's not good enough.

HALLOWEEN: Who Is It That Wears the Mask?

Director: John Carpenter
Writers: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Nancy Kyes, P. J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Tony Moran
Runtime: 91 mins.
1978

Halloween is, adjusted for inflation, one of the most profitable indie movies of all time. Made on a shoestring budget of $300,000, it's the film that shot horror great John Carpenter into the mainstream consciousness. Boy is it apparent how cheap it is, too.

One could hardly blame low budget horror for looking like low budget horror. It's just funny to note the ridiculous inconsistencies that rear their head in every other scene. It's supposed to be Halloween, yet every street full of lush greenery. Except for the arbitrary scene when they sprung for a bunch of dead brown leaves to blow down the sidewalk in a half-assed attempt at seasonal atmosphere. The screenplay also shows the shabbiness of a cheap, rushed production. Any cursory scrutiny will reveal plot chasms and incomprehensible timelines for what ought to be a rather straightforward set-up: a couple of teenagers stuck babysitting instead of going out to enjoy the Halloween festivities, and the monstrous killer who stalks them.

FINAL DESTINATION 5: Bridge over Troubled Waters

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Steven Quale
Writer: Eric Heisserer
Cast: Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Ellen Wroe, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, P. J. Byrne, Arlen Escarpeta, David Koechner, Courtney B. Vance, Tony Todd
Runtime: 92 mins.
2011

Final Destination 5 begins with one of the truly ugly credit sequences of our time. Computer-generated objects hurtle towards the screen, shattering it over and over again as if that pesky fourth wall just didn't know when to quit. The film ends much the same way, with a much snazzier supercut of every death in the storied franchise. As much as is possible, FD5 has a great respect for the franchise it has inherited, and with that respect comes attentiveness, both to what has worked in the past and what hasn't. Thus FD5 is in some ways the most functional entry.

It is also the first to exist outside the dueling paradigms of James Wong and David R. Ellis. Not since Final Destination 2 has an entirely new creative team taken the reins on one of these movies. This time the helmsman is Steven Quale, making his mainstream directorial debut after a handful of high profile second unit directing gigs scattered over a decade. Writing the script is Eric Heisserer, a horror journeyman who most recently wrote Lights Out and is signed on to adapt Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. With this fresh blood comes a clear-eyed perspective not brought to the proceedings since, again, Final Destination 2. We spend a surprising amount of time getting to know the characters before their work-related bus trip turns disastrous on an enormous suspension bridge. A few of these characters actually have rudimentary arcs before their timely deaths, an astounding development for a Final Destination entry, especially this late in the game.

THE FINAL DESTINATION: NAStyCAR Race

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: David R. Ellis
Writer: Eric Bress
Cast: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Mykelti Williamson, Krista Allen, Andrew Fiscella, Justin Welborn, Stephanie Honore, Lara Grice, Jackson Walker
Runtime: 82 mins.
2009

One would be forgiven for thinking The Final Destination to be the ultimate entry in the franchise, purely on the basis of its misleading title. This is not the case. In fact, despite its arbitrary jettisoning of the numbered sequel naming convention, this feels more like a run-of-the-mill numbered sequel than any other entry in the series. Very little is decisive or definitive about this particular entry.

That's not to say there's nothing unique about it. In a strange departure, this is the first Final Destination movie with an inciting incident that does not involve the paranoia of riding in a mechanical vehicle. Rather, our heroes are observing others riding in mechanical vehicles at some sort of stock car race. If we were to be generous, we would suggest that the film is establishing its theme of audiences and the act of watching. If we were being less generous, we would suggest that this is Death's most rushed and contrived initiating disaster yet.

The Cult of Star Wars - Diversity and Disney's Galactic Empire

Preface

A couple weeks ago, Red Letter Media dropped a bomb on Youtube: Plinkett's review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. For those of you not in the know, Plinkett is a fictitious facetious centenarian serial killer sociopath who also reviews movies. He skewers films with structural analysis buffered by short skits of him doing or saying over-the-top awful things. Sometimes it's entertaining, sometimes it's simply gross.

The reason any of this is important is that four years ago, Plinkett released a series of videos ripping the prequel trilogy to shreds. These videos were funny and insightful enough to be catapulted into mainstream consciousness. The highest trafficked video now sits at almost seven and a half million views. Everybody in the nerd community was talking about these things. The videos did their part to shape the landscape of online film criticism for better or for worse.

Part of their appeal was the methodical way Plinkett dissected the prequels. He took his time and delivered hours of criticism about what exactly went wrong. For that reason I think Star Wars fans found the analysis cathartic in a way. Released seven years after Revenge of the Sith, folks were finally ready to view the prequel abominations with a clear head and a sense of humor.

So Plinkett has selected this moment to share his views on The Force Awakens--sufficient time for the post-release hype to settle down, but not yet distracted by Rogue One. After all, it's not like he could have waited until the trilogy was finished for his analysis. They're going to be making these movies until you die.

In much the same way that the original Star Wars trilogy was a breath of fresh air that invigorated and reshaped the industry and The Force Awakens was a pandering and ultimately unsatisfying remix of that formula, Plinkett's new video feels like a hollow imitation of his culturally resonant videos from four years ago. You can take a peek at it here, though I will caution that it is long and not terribly fruitful.

The video is crippled by baffling structural choices. Although it purports to be a Force Awakens review, precious little of its runtime is dedicated to The Force Awakens, and even that is hardly substantive. Most of the video insists on revisiting the prequels, ostensibly to explore how the cultural discussion on them has shifted in recent years. It ends up feeling redundant. Plinkett continually brings up the importance of his original videos apropos of nothing, a narcissistic move that is arguably in character, but isn't really germane to the discussion at hand.

But the worst of it comes an hour and twenty-six minutes in, when Plinkett tackles diversity.

FINAL DESTINATION 3: Loop-Die-Loop

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: James Wong
Writers: Glen Morgan, James Wong
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman, Kris Lemche, Alexz Johnson, Sam Easton, Jesse Moss, Gina Holden, Texas Battle, Chelan Simmons, Crystal Lowe, Amanda Crew
Runtime: 93 mins.
2006

After Final Destination 2 did all the good work of elevating the franchise, embracing a consistent tone, expanding the mythology, and adding a layer of meta-commentary, Final Destination 3 does the work of dismantling all that progress in favor of sexist reductive schlock. It was fun while it lasted.

Final Destination 3 is still fun in the way that a franchise about death invisibly hunting teenagers through Rube Goldberg machines must be fun, but this entry sure squeezes a lot of air out of the premise. Final Destination 3's initiating incident takes place on a roller coaster. Straight off the bat the movie lets us know we will not be caring about any of these characters. It also makes a needlessly big and complicated deal of who is sitting where on the coaster, for shaggy plot purposes. Then it hits us with the most ridiculous coaster-gone-wrong sequence that one could possibly imagine. Again, there is fun to be had with the inflated nonsense, but the sequence disrespects the dread surrounding FD1's plane crash, or the intricacy of FD2's car pile-up.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION: A Revolting Development

Director: Nate Parker
Writers: Nate Parker, Jean McGianni Celestin
Cast: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Penelope Ann Miller, Jackie Earle Haley, Mark Boone Junior, Colman Domingo, Aunjanue Ellis, Dwight Henry, Aja Naomi King
Runtime: 120 mins.
2016

Sometimes it's impossible, or at least unethical, to discuss a movie without its cultural context. First of all there's the title, a blatant reference to D. W. Griffith's 1915 opus Birth of a Nation, a historically important film that functions as a glorified argument in favor of the KKK and slavery. This mirrored title is a thematic inversion, a statement of intent, and also a cheeky way to generate buzz.

Awards buzz, specifically. The anticipation for this film has come with the built-in assumption that it would be in some capacity as Oscar contender, as it is the sprawling biopic of Nat Turner, historical leader of a famous slave revolt in the early nineteenth century. And the Oscars only seem to pay attention to black films if they're about slavery.

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN: Train, Interrupted

Director: Tate Taylor
Writer: Erin Cressida Wilson
Cast: Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Edgar Ramirez, Laura Prepon, Allison Janney
Runtime: 112 mins.
2016

The Girl on the Train is a trashy thriller with higher aspirations. The film begins almost impressionistically, as we are exposed piecemeal to the mental landscape of Rachel (Emily Blunt), the closest thing we have to a protagonist. Her life in disarray after the implosion of her marriage, all she does anymore is drink and ride trains. One particular train, actually, the one that passes her old house where her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) has a child with his new wife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). Emily watches their lives unfold through panes of glass, just as she has become fascinated by the lives of their neighbors two doors down, Megan (Haley Bennett) and Scott (Edgar Ramirez). Once this tripartite dynamic has been established, an inciting incident occurs in a tunnel that neither we nor our protagonist are exactly clear on (her being in a drunken stupor when it played out). What happened in that tunnel and even who it involved are obscured to us, presented only in brief flashes. We merely know that something went down.

From there we're off to the races, as the stories of each of the three women are lugubriously fleshed out with liberal use of flashbacks and perspectival shift. The Girl on the Train is certainly a more formally bold thriller than it has any right to be, though one can guess that the somewhat crystalline structure of the truth surrounding these three women is a holdover from the novel by Paula Hawkins. It doesn't always pay off.

FINAL DESTINATION 2: Life Is a Highway

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: David R. Ellis
Writers: J. Mackye Gruber, Eric Bress, Jeffrey Reddick
Cast: A.J. Cook, Michael Landes, Ali Larter, Keegan Connor Tracy, Jonathan Cherry, Terrence C. Carson, David Paetkau, Lynda Boyd, James Kirk, Tony Todd
Runtime: 90 mins.
2003

It is as if the powers that be heard my complaint about Final Destination--the way it waffles between tones without fully finding its feet--and decided to commit wholesale to the campy ridiculousness of the freshly franchised premise. You've seen it all before; disaster strikes, but not before our main character has borne witness to a vision that lets her prevent a select group of victims from being victimized. But Death doesn't like that very much. Death likes that so little that it will hunt you down and butcher you in ridiculous and sometimes demeaning ways.

That's not all. Our hero Kim Corman (A.J. Cook) soon realizes that her averted accident, a deadly traffic pile-up on a highway, occurred exactly one year after that crazy business with the airplane from the last movie, and she must convince her fellow survivors of the relevance of this fact. Once they've all banded together, they are just one clunky expository scene away from figuring out what exactly it is that connects them all. Let's just say that Death is fastidious, and prefers to do some spring cleaning every so often.

FINAL DESTINATION: The Walking Dead

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: James Wong
Writers: Glen Morgan, James Wong, Jeffrey Reddick
Cast: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Amanda Detmer, Chad Donella, Kristen Cloke, Seann William Scott, Tony Todd
Runtime: 98 mins.
2000

The premise of Final Destination is one that filled me with dread many years before I was allowed to watch the movie. What if death has a grand plan? What if that plan was disrupted by a vision that caused the saving of people who shouldn't be saved? What if death were petty and proceeded to hunt those people down by subtly manipulating their environments into complex death traps? This is the very situation that protagonists Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) and Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) find themselves in after Alex freaks out and gets a handful of people expelled from an airplane right before it explodes on take-off.

Final Destination finds itself at an odd nexus between the goofy teen slashers of the late 90's, as trailblazed by Scream, and the self-serious torture porn films of the 00's, as pioneered by Saw. It is a film caught in the middle, as evidenced by its schizophrenic approach to the material.

On the serious side, the film plays hard at drumming up dread. Devon Sawa's sweaty jitters work best in the first act, as Alex experiences a great deal of anxiety over the prospect on getting on an airplane for his class trip to France. Something just feels wrong about the whole thing. The entire sequence is designed to play hard on the audience's anxieties about flying. We may know intellectually that planes are safe, but there's a certain primal instinct that won't let us forget that we are defying nature every time we propel an enormous metal tube through the air.

SAUSAGE PARTY: Clean-up on Aisle Five

Directors: Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon
Writers: Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jonah Hill
Cast: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, Edward Norton, David Krumholtz, Salma Hayek, Nick Kroll, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, James Franco, Paul Rudd
Runtime: 89 mins.
2016

Sausage Party is blatant, and Sausage Party is naughty. Sausage Party is both a coming of age story, and a story about community upheaval. Sausage Party thinks it's being really deep, but Sausage Party doesn't really think it's being deep.

Sausage Party is an animated film about a sentient hot dog named Frank.

The idea is that all the food at the grocery store is actually alive, even though we're not aware of it. This is actually explored more thoroughly than your typical "talking ______s in a world of humans" film, with the camera occasionally shifting to the humans' drab normal perspective. This is one of the many ways in which Sausage Party uses its form to strong effect. Another is the base pleasure of getting to see all this weird grocery food anthropomorphized in the most juvenile way possible. These characterizations are as a rule tied in with some crass joke about class, race, sexuality, religion, or gender. We'll get into that more later.

Frank (Seth Rogen) wants what any hot dog wants--to get taken to the Great Beyond by the gods (shoppers) and to be inserted into the love of his life, a hot dog bun named Brenda (Kristen Wiig), for some sweet sweet lovin'. Contact before that time is forbidden, because according to grocery store lore, the gods would find that to be impure, and you'd miss your chance at the afterlife. So Frank and Brenda stay in their packages, yearning for that fateful day. However, through a needlessly complicated series of events, Frank and Brenda find themselves out of their packages far away from their aisle, and Frank comes to be armed with the knowledge that the afterlife is not what foodkind thought it was.

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS: Guitar Hero

Director: Travis Knight
Writers: Marc Haimes, Chris Butler, Shannon Tindle
Cast: Art Parkinson, Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, George Takei
Runtime: 101 mins.
2016

Kubo and the Two Strings is both an action blockbuster and an animated children's movie, yet it succeeds where those genres typically fail: It is a tight, well-crafted dramatic narrative that amounts to something more thematically substantial than the rote "be yourself" morality of most youth entertainment. In fact, the film is in many ways a direct refutation of the individual-obsessed attitude of the Disney/Dreamworks brand of Western animation. Kubo is the protagonist and the hero, but his hero's journey involves no refusal of the call. He is never anything but kind and caring to his community of friends and family. His ultimate triumph comes not from a sudden discovery of inner strength, but from connection with his predecessors and peace with his legacy.

Certainly it can be said that Kubo plays heavily with cliches. His home destroyed, he sets out in search of three mystical items of warfare, collecting a crew of colorful companions along the way. Yet in the telling of the story, these cliches barely register because 1) They are always earnestly in service of the story rather than propping it up as a crutch, and 2) The true value of Kubo lies in its craftsmanship.

I don't believe I've seen a more beautiful film this year. Since Coraline, studio Laika has cemented itself as the last bastion of stop animation in the mainstream contemporary landscape. Here they've honed their craft and made a film so gorgeous that it also functions as a compelling argument for the survival of the medium.* From the opening scene of a minuscule boat set against the backdrop of an ocean in turmoil, it is clear that Laika is committed to filling every frame with life, beauty, and wonder.

*Though not fiscally. Nobody goes to see these movies. Each of Laika's films since Coraline has made less than their budget in the domestic market. It's likely that the only reason the studio hasn't folded is that it's bankrolled by a Nike billionaire as a passion project for his son (Laika studio head and director of this film Travis Knight).

DON'T THINK TWICE: You Only Laugh Once

Director: Mike Birbiglia
Writer: Mike Birbiglia
Cast: Keegan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs, Mike Birbiglia, Kate Micucci, Chris Gethard, Tami Sagher
Runtime: 92 mins.
2016

I expected Don't Think Twice to be a goofy little movie. It's a film about improv, so I anticipated a lot of funny jokes and a fair amount of charisma. What I did not expect was for this film to be emotionally devastating.

The story follows six comedians who together make up a successful improv troupe called The Commune. Unfortunately, their venue is closing down, so The Commune as they know it will either have to adapt or die. This means something different to each of the characters, as they all have their own personal drama to contend with. Jack (Keegan Michael-Key) is driven to transcend the improv community by becoming a member of Weekend Live, a transitional process which alienates him from his friends. Sam (Gillian Jacobs) has the potential to be on the same trajectory as Jack, whom she has been dating for a while, but she is in danger of squandering that potential because she feels uncertain about her path. Miles (Mike Birbiglia), on the other hand, does not have that same potential, and refuses to admit it to himself despite continuous failed attempts to rise up in the comedy world. Bill (Chris Gethard) is mourning the death of his father and trying to find renewed meaning in life. Allison (Kate Micucci) dreams of publishing graphic novels, but fears appraisal of her work. And Lindsay (Tami Sagher), whose wealthy parents preclude her from ever having to work a real job, is in a weed-scented rut.

Alone, any one of these narratives would make for a functional if not original film about artistic aspirations. Birbiglia is careful about showing us, sometimes subtly and sometimes not, every step of these characters' journeys, and every arc is dramatically sound. But the real beauty of the film comes from the intertwining of these arcs. Everyone's personal drama feeds back into the group dynamic and significantly affects the way that The Commune, the seventh character, develops. With each character's personal baggage influencing the trajectory of the group, it almost feels like a low-stakes Avengers movie, except that Don't Think Twice is so personal and earnest that the stakes feel far higher than any superhero shenanigans.

LIGHTS OUT: The Abyss Gazes Also Into You

Director: David F. Sandberg
Writer: Eric Heisserer
Cast: Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Maria Bello, Alexander DiPersia, Alicia Vela-Bailey
Runtime: 81 mins.
2016

Horror is trendy. Like Hollywood blockbusters, the horror genre goes through phases of acute innovation, aggressive imitation, and creative devastation. Halloween cemented the formula for the golden age of the slasher film. Saw trailblazed the torture porn genre of the 00's. Now horror in the 10's seems to be congealing around the brainy indie horror prospects offered by Jennifer Kent's 2014 film The Babadook. These films are low budget but high concept, often with a heavy thematic underpinning that has to do with Serious Issues.

As yet, Lights Out might be the most unabashed benefactor of the model set down by The Babadook. Both are stories about children struggling with the specter of their mothers' chronic depression, as made manifest by a horrible shadow creature infiltrating their home. Despite the clear similarities, the experience of watching Lights Out feels visually and structurally different enough to avoid being branded an out and out copycat. Unfortunately, where the films do overlap, Lights Out is worse in every way.

The protagonist of the film is pretty girl Rebecca (Teresa Palmer). We are introduced to her in a cutesy dialogue exchange with her sort-of boyfriend, pretty boy Bret (Alexander DiPersia). From there, these two characters get embroiled in the plight of Rebecca's little brother, Martin (Gabriel Bateman), who has been dealing with a mother who speaks to the darkness as if someone is speaking back. But Rebecca has discovered that someone really is there: a predatory silhouette named Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey). She is a visible, physical threat in the darkness, but disappears entirely when exposed to any light source. Rebecca soon learns that her family will never be safe from Diana unless they confront the problem head on. These are the basic building blocks for our drama.

THE NICE GUYS: Black Is the New Black

Director: Shane Black
Writers: Shane Black, Anthony Bagarozzi
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley
Runtime: 116 mins.
2016

The worst thing I can say about The Nice Guys is that it's no Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, writer/director Shane Black's other neo-noir comedy. That film, one of my favorite meta-narrative movies, may upstage Black's latest directorial effort, but by any other reasonable metric The Nice Guys is a rousing success.

Beginning with a hauntingly beautiful scene of a child discovering a dead porn star in the wreckage of a mangled car, The Nice Guys firmly establishes itself in the seventies. Our heroes are Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), a bruiser for hire who gets embroiled in detective work despite his better judgment, and Holland March (Ryan Gosling), an inept P.I. who mostly coasts by on alcohol and exploiting the elderly. The other major player is Holly March (Angourie Rice), Holland's hypercompetent daughter, only the most recent in the storied line of child actors in Shane Black action movies who manage not to be annoying at all, but are in fact quite charming. I'm going to cut off the plot summary hardly before it's even started, as I cannot remember much about the twisty narrative details. Though in this case, that's no detriment; the joy of The Nice Guys has little to do with its plot intrigue, instead putting all the eggs in the bounteous basket of how delightful Crowe and Gosling are to watch bounce off each other for an hour and a half.

They both bring their A+ game. Between this and Noah, it's great to see Crowe in the midst of a career resurgence. He's cribbing from John Goodman here, playing Healy as paunchy but vivacious. Plus, Crowe is capable of selling the hell out of the movie's isolated moments of tragedy. Meanwhile, I have been a Gosling advocate for years (Drive, Only God Forgives, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Half Nelson, Lars and the Real Girl, etc. etc.), but he manages to shift into a new tier of talent in The Nice Guys, at least comedically. His physical comedy is far more committed than anything we could reasonably expect from a Hollywood A-lister. Black likes to beat the hell out of his characters, and Gosling sells every painful mishap.

All things considered, The Nice Guys is an exemplary if somewhat traditional noir. It may not transcend its own structure like the aforementioned Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but The Nice Guys sees a cavalcade of tremendous talents at the top of their game, knocking it out of the park as if it were routine to do so.

3.5 / 5  BLOBS

HIGH-RISE: Jump Cuts

Director: Ben Wheatley
Writer: Amy Jump
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy
Runtime: 119 mins.
2016

I've never seen a movie edited like High-Rise. It's a 1970's period piece follows the occupants of a towering apartment complex. The narrative focuses in particular on neurophysiologist Laing (Tom Hiddleston). The socially stratified high-rise--richer up top, poorer at the bottom--provides all necessary amenities to its occupants, including food, drink, schooling, and entertainment. One would never need to leave the high-rise if one were so inclined, and that is exactly what happens. Its occupants are sequestered there by their own vague need to stick around, even after the parties turn sour, the rich begin siphoning resources from the poor, and the social system careens into violent anarchy.

More than anything High-Rise reminds me of the early Cronenberg film Shivers. The reality of this world is just off-kilter enough to be especially disturbing and surreal. Characters make choices that they only seem to be loosely in control of, and everybody tacitly refuses to acknowledge the weirdness cropping up around them.

What truly defines this film's unique tone, though, is the way the editing slips in and out of scenes like a moray eel. A great deal of High-Rise is told in montage, buoyed by Clint Mansell's brilliant score.* This formal choice emphasizes the passage of time and thrusts the viewer into a dreamlike state. We get snippets of clips that can more or less fit into our conception of the plot, but large chunks of these montages feel unmoored from reality. Deprived of context and set to music, even everyday moments, like forgetting something and turning around to retrieve it, seem uncanny and bizarre. Then there are clips of Laing dancing down a hallway with what appear to be five stewardesses dressed in red, and you have no idea what you are watching.

*No question, in the running for best soundtrack of 2016. Unsurprising coming from Mansell, whose work on Moon was the first film score I ever loved.

These alienating storytelling methods do become exhausting after a while, but they never lose their bite. High-Rise may be to on-the-nose to achieve the allegorical insight it's shooting for, but the result is a treat of crackling madness nonetheless. Watching High-Rise is like stepping into a Normal Rockwell painting that slowly morphs into a Dali. Director Ben Wheatley and writer/co-editor Amy Jump paste together a uniquely offputting experience from a great many familiar elements, which is one of the prime gifts of art: seeing old things in a new way.

3 / 5  BLOBS

JASON BOURNE: ReTreadstone

Director: Paul Greengrass
Writers: Paul Greengrass, Christopher Rouse
Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed, Ato Essandoh
Runtime: 123 mins.
2016

You were the best of friends with this guy. Over the course of the half-decade-plus when you were in direct contact with him, he always proved a reliable companion, and your bond only grew stronger as you shared new experiences over the years. Eventually you had to part ways. You both knew that no matter how much you intended to keep in touch with each other, life was dragging both of you down separate paths--and that was for the best! You revisited his memory every so often, remembered the good times, but that's it. You've met people like him since, but without the exact balance of charisma and savvy that made him special. You've moved on.

But lo and behold, you'll be in the same area as each other this summer, so of course you plan a visit. You know it won't be like it was, but at the very least you expect to fall into some old nostalgic patterns that would not be sustainable long term, but are gratifying, pleasant, and perhaps even healthy in the moment. Although you have other things more prominent on your mind, you look forward to this meeting. Then you see him, and he's kind of... a shell of his former self. In the intervening years, life has run your old friend ragged. His signature personality quirks are muted to the point of banality, and all of his mediocre traits have spread and taken over. The worst thing that could have happened to this kind of friend has happened. He has become dull.

Such is the experience of watching Jason Bourne, most recent in Hollywood's current Sisyphean trend of perpetual reboots. Having earned the ill will of fans with their 2012 Jeremy Renner-helmed sequel The Bourne Legacy, Universal has desperately scrambled to get the band back together. In this case the band consists of Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, Paul Greengrass directing, John Powell* scoring, and Christopher Rouse editing (plus picking up a screenwriting credit this time), among others. One must be dubious of naked cash grab reboots, but that's a lot of talent. Besides, a movie like this can survive a less than great reboot so long as it delivers on the basic promises of the series in a somewhat satisfying way.

*As best I can tell, Powell is the only individual who contributes really good work to this film.

THE NEON DEMON: Skin Deep

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Writers: Nicolas Winding Refn, Mary Laws, Polly Stenham
Cast: Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Keanu Reeves, Karl Glusman, Desmond Harrington, Christina Hendricks
Runtime: 118 mins.
2016

Nicolas Winding Refn broke into mainstream consciousness with 2011's Drive, the Ryan Gosling action vehicle. If you've never seen Drive, the phrase "Ryan Gosling action vehicle" probably conjures all sorts of expectations, few of which would sync up with the experience of watching Drive. Audiences were so distraught, in fact, that one Michigan woman brought a class action lawsuit against the film's distributor for releasing a deliberately misleading trailer, as the end product bore little resemblance to something in the vein of The Fast and the Furious. The critics, meanwhile, by and large heralded Drive as a brooding thriller, and a fascinating deconstruction of the masculine hero figure.

Two years later, Refn released Only God Forgives, and this time neither audiences nor critics were on board. Sitting at a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, some excoriated the film for being laborious and impenetrable, while some lambasted it for being too on the nose. For my part, Only God Forgives was one of my favorite movies of 2013. It went even deeper down the rabbit hole of deconstructing Ryan Gosling's persona as part of its critique of the violence and perversion inherent in toxic masculinity. The central visual motif of the film is that of the hand: unclenched in supplication, clenched in violence. This commentary develops in glacier-slow sequences underpinned by Cliff Martinez's infectious score.

So it is to my absolute pleasure, and the distress of many others, that The Neon Demon is the perfect counterpart film to Only God Forgives. Whereas the latter follows violent gangs and the sex trade in Thailand to immerse us in toxic masculine culture, the former thrusts us into the Los Angeles modeling scene in order to put a lens on toxic femininity. The Neon Demon is Only God Forgives refracted through the prism of gender.

THE CONJURING 2: They Ain't 'Fraid of No Ghosts

Director: James Wan
Writers: Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes, James Wan, David Leslie Johnson
Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe, Frances O'Connor, Lauren Esposito, Benjamin Haigh, Patrick McAuley
Runtime: 134 mins.
2016

There are many things I love about the freshly franchised Conjuring movies. Foremost among them is the opening title card that features some ponderous purple prose detailing the "true" nature of this story, scrolling up the screen in enormous spidery yellow text, accompanied by music of ill portent. If the events as portrayed were even vaguely "true," this film would likely be in bad taste, but luckily the movie has no compunctions about letting us know early and often that there is not a whiff of accuracy to what you're seeing onscreen. The film uses its "based on actual events" as schlocky window dressing, a mood-setting gesture no more accurate than "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." This is to our tremendous advantage; instead of making some self-serious loosely-biographical slog, we have been treated to a couple of the most delightfully scary haunted house stories to ever grace the genre.

Wan's sequel kicks off with a statement of intent. Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) Warren are in the midst of investigating the haunting at Amityville, one of the most heavily mined source materials in paranormal history. Lorraine goes on a little spirit walk that involves stepping into the shoes of the possessed killer, at which point she is confronted with a gruesome premonition about the future of her and her husband. This is not one of the better scenes of the film, but setting the opening stinger in Amityville effectively establishes two important points: 1) Wan is not afraid to upstage his horror-making brethren, and 2) This particular Conjuring chapter will have far more of a focus on the ghostbusting duo than the last.

THE LOBSTER: Love in the Time of Anomie

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Writers: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Lea Seydoux, John C. Reilly, Ben Whishaw, Jessica Barden, Ariane Labed, Angeliki Papoulia
Runtime: 119 mins.
2016

The Lobster follows protagonist David (Colin Farrell) through his stay at The Hotel, a resort with one central purpose: to help its tenants find love and stable relationships with each other. Those who fail to find a partner by the end of their stay will be turned into an animal of their choosing. Life at the resort is rigorously structured, from the No Masturbation rule, to the strict meal and dance times, to the staged presentations about the superiority of couplehood, to the daily morning routine that involves a maid grinding on the male tenants' laps until they become hard--but not a moment longer. Everything about the place is meant to maximize the romantic desire and viability of its occupants; everything except the hunting of the Loners, that is.

Every day the tenants get on a bus with tranquilizer rifles in hand and head into the woods to hunt radicals who have defected from The Hotel and chosen an aggressively single lifestyle together. If you capture a Loner, one day is added to the duration of your stay. At first David participates clumsily in the hunt, but as his time runs out his relationship with the Loners becomes more complex.

If you were to go into The Lobster expecting some sort of sci-fi thriller, you would be mistaken. If you were to go in expecting a romantic comedy of sorts, you would also be mistaken. In fact, if you were to go into this movie expecting anything in particular, there's a significant chance of you walking away feeling frustrated or unsatisfied. The Lobster is so singular in its presentation that it doesn't fit into any boxes we typically stuff movies into. The closest comparison I can draw is that it is something like an extremely perverse version of a Wes Anderson movie, but even that fails at capturing what The Lobster is up to.

GREEN ROOM: Got a Little Fight in You

Earlier this week, a freak accident took the life of twenty-seven year old actor Anton Yelchin. This review was written before the accident, but I have since edited it to put more of a spotlight on Yelchin's incredible contributions. His career was about to explode, and it would have undoubtedly been long and accomplished. Unfortunately, we are relegated to looking back for his greatest artistic achievements, and Green Room is certainly one of them.

Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Writer: Jeremy Saulnier
Cast: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart, Joe Cole, Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner, Mark Webber, Macon Blair
95 mins.
2016

Thusfar Jeremy Saulnier's career consists of tense slow burn ruminations on the way that violence begets violence that also have a color in their title. He kicked this off with the 2014 film Blue Ruin. First films rarely conduct themselves with such swagger, but Blue Ruin lives up to the mellifluousness of its title. With Green Room, his sophomore effort, Saulnier makes it clear that he is a talent who will continue to demand attention. I am certain there are those who prefer the melancholy of Blue Ruin, but for my money Saulnier has topped himself here.

The story can be boiled down as follows: a punk band accidentally witnesses something they shouldn't witness at a backwoods venue--a venue that is actually a front for a cabal of neo-nazis led by the incomparable Patrick Stewart as Darcy. As a result, they are locked in the green room as both our heroes and their relentlessly pragmatic and levelheaded antagonists try to figure out how best to handle the situation.

The term "thriller" often gets bandied about without a second glance, but Green Room truly thrills. Or at least thralls. From about half an hour in, the film had its tendrils firmly wound around my gut. Not once does it let go until the credits roll. Blue Ruin is the essentialized version of the sentiment: "What is going to happen next??" I cannot remember experiencing quite this brand of continually ratcheted stakes since Breaking Bad went off the air.