Mr. Henson delays the birth of his child to spread the good word about Black Panther.  It gets spoilery, so you really should see the movie right meow.

Panther pun.

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Yes!  A PG-13 movie that could have easily been an R!  I know that someone was tempted.  I know that there was probably a draft that contained the F-Bomb as much as it possibly could.  But this movie didn't need to be R.  I'm probably patting a studio middle man on the back pretty hard.  He probably was looking at the bottom line, knowing that PG-13 movies tend to be more lucrative.  But c'mon.  This movie was PG-13 for a good reason.  Geez, who am I anymore?

DIRECTOR: Dan Gilroy

Why am I so anxious to write a review for Roman J. Israel, Esq.?  I think it probably comes down to the fact that I probably have the same opinion that everyone else has.  I am so afraid to be hackneyed that I'm shirking my responsibility.  I've watched so many movies since then.  It's not like I've rested on my laurels over here.  I tend to only write these reviews during my planning periods or my lunch breaks, depending how busy I am.  I don't write on weekends or days off because I know that my kids don't really give me enough peace to develop any sense of flow.  Well, I'm writing this at 12:10 in the morning just so I have some quiet in the house and that I can start catching up on the backlog of movies I've watched.  Regardless, I will try to write the best review I can and not worry if I'm treading the same ground that others have.  Besides, I don't know many people who have seen this movie anyway.  Why am I worried about repeating what other critics have probably also said.

It's odd that a movie that has a 51% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes has any play whatsoever.  I saw this trailer and thought it looked pretty Oscar-baity and it really is. Dan Gilroy, who I did not know wrote this and a couple of other great movies like Nightcrawler, knows what gets attention.  When it got pretty panned critically, I thought that was going to be it.  Then Denzel Washington was up for a Best Actor category and I thought that Denzel was starting to become like Meryl Streep.  For those who don't know my beef with Meryl Streep, I think she gets nominated almost as a legacy thing.  It is the polite version of the running gag.  I think both Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington are great actors, but they aren't as great as the world makes them out to be.  Last year, Meryl Streep drew my ire when she was nominated for Florence Foster Jenkins and that's where I lost it.  She was terrible in that terrible movie and I started to lose faith in the nomination process.  When I saw that Denzel was nominated for a movie with a 51% approval rating, I thought that this was the same deal.  I am happy to say that both Meryl's and Denzel's respective nominations are thoroughly valid this year.  I don't think either of them is going to win, but they both knocked out some pretty solid performances in their movies this time, so I'm going to give it to them.  Considering that I watched this movie for Denzel Washington's performance, I suppose that might make a firm foundation for this criticism.  Denzel Washington is the most interesting part of this movie.  Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a better movie than a 51% approval rating, but it isn't that much better than that.  The movie is full of holes and flaws, which I'll talk about in a second. But Denzel doesn't see that in this movie.  I'm going to give him credit where credit is due.  I don't think I ever see Denzel Washington phoning in performances.  He's better sometimes.  He's worse other times.  But I always feel like he is giving the performance of his life, regardless of success.  In this case, I really think that Denzel Washington thought he was going to make one of the greatest movies of his career.  There are a lot of elements that could have made Roman J. Israel a truly phenomenal film, but it's problems hold it back.  Regardless, Denzel does a lot with what could be considered a stock character.  The movie never calls Roman Israel autistic, per se, but it does definitely let us know that there is something going on with this character.  We've seen Roman Israel in other forms and it can be really distracting when an actor has such a temptation in front of him.  Many lesser actors (probably myself included if I ever had the opportunity) would lean heavily into the autism and let it guide every decision I make.  I would telegraph the crap out of that character.  Denzel doesn't really do that.  He has his mannerisms and he lets the audience know that Roman can't make the same choices that most people could make.  But he also retains the humanity in Roman Israel that makes him such a compelling character.  He is sympathetic because he is never playing the Hallmark Upworthy version of the autistic lawyer.  Rather, he is a lawyer with beliefs and integrity and a moral code who happens to function in a different headspace than the rest of us.  That is what makes this movie super worth watching.  Denzel Washington makes this character, who on the page is outside the norm appear absolutely normal.  That is fascinating.  His nomination totally makes sense because of the choices he makes.  Occasionally, I do remember that I'm watching Denzel Washington rather than Roman J. Israel simply because Denzel Washington does rely on a bag of tricks.  It is a really good bag of tricks, but it is a bag of tricks regardless.

The story is what is problematic.  The movie is not quite sure what it wants to be and has a really clunky third act.  The movie is founded on moral choices.  Roman Israel is a good man who sees consistent corruption in the legal system and in the treatment of people of color in America.  He has the legal know how to defend the defenseless, but not the legal charisma associated with most lawyers.  As a framework, that works really well.  Every time I stepped back from the movie, I really liked the whole forest.  But it is when it gets close, that's when things fall apart.  The movie should really be a character study sooner than it should be a legal drama or a formal narrative because the movie's character is far more interesting than the plot that is structured around this character.  It never reaches the level of its basic premise and that power structure really highlights when flaws come into the movie.  Like most tales about either inherently good or bad characters, there has to be a corrupting force to that moral ideology.  Some element of chaos has to be thrown in there to make the character consider changing his or her way of life.  With a grump like Scrooge, the ghosts show him the past, present, and future.  For Roman Israel, it is the death of his partner and mentor that lets him explore the legal world without support.  I love this idea so much.  If the movie was just about him losing faith in a legal system, it would have been boring but good.  Instead, the movie tacks on this story about how Roman makes money illegally and how that eventually comes to bite him in the butt.  I like the idea that Roman Israel is corrupted by the world and I'm not saying that there's nothing there, but the A plot reads so much like a B plot that it is often distracting.  Gilroy, who both wrote and directed the movie, really wants to explore the problems with the legal system, especially when it comes to criminal defense.  There's this great scene that echoes my frustration with progressive cannibalism that everyone needs to watch.  But the movie is composed of all these great scenes that are all character studies that it constantly interrupts the main focus, Roman himself.  Instead, to bring it back to Roman's character being important, Denzel Washington often has to say these aphorisms that often have little content and simply sound wise.  My daughter does the same thing.  She is a very smart kid and knows what combinations of buzzwords make something sound smart.  But if you really listen to Olivia or Roman Israel, you realize that these words just sound great but don't actually mean all that much.

The interesting theme running through the film that I haven't really seen is that corruption might actually be mutual and symbiotic.  Roman is corrupted by a law firm that offers him far more money than he's actually been able to receive earlier.  It is not like this is a new idea, that money and power corrupt.  But what is new is that Roman tends to corrupt those around him with his goodness.  Colin Ferrell, who I did not know was in this movie, goes from being sleazy rich guy lawyer to genuine good person by the end of this film.  I really like that as a concept, that Roman is still accidentally doing good despite the loss of his soul.  But it also doesn't make all the sense with the structure of the film.  One thing that the movie keeps on accidentally proving is that Roman J. Israel, Esq. is not that effective as a lawyer.  It is not the point of the movie.  Roman keeps losing cases and clients because the movie is stressing how A) lazy the legal world really is to hard work and B) that Roman's social difficulties are a constant impediment to him.  But that makes me wonder how he is that influential in this business.  Roman never really seems to be winning cases, but in the course of three weeks he keeps failing upwards and it is only due to lucky breaks left and right.  It doesn't really make a lot of sense and this eventually leads up to a really screwy third act.  The entire movie really telegraphs the end of the movie.  I'm really not spoiling anything if you've seen the trailer, but you know that the movie becomes a question of not if Roman is going to do the right thing in the end, but how and when he is going to do the right thing before the end.  The movie gives Roman the most obvious character choices and solution to this problem that the final act of the film becomes an odd cliche.  The subplot that the movie keeps reminding us is going to happen, happens.  Roman is going to make the decision to do the right thing, and in the most obvious manner possible.  The tone is clear that things aren't going to end up roses for Roman because everything else falls in place for him in the middle of the movie.  We've seen these tropes too many times before, which makes this movie kind of boring by the end.  Even Denzel Washington's performance starts becoming a little one note by the end because there isn't much for him to do besides question the same obvious answer that we've all come to before this point.  It seems like the movie was shot without a final act and that the last part had to be written on the fly.  There is even this questionable romantic subplot that was thrown in there just to give the moral element gravity and it doesn't even fit a little bit.  That chemistry isn't there because the story is not about that, but it still somehow made the movie.  

The thing is that I kind of liked it as a whole.  I paid attention the whole time, but I knew that I kept seeing things that made me just raise the "nope" flag over and over again.  I probably liked this movie better than most people.  I'd go as far as to say that it got a 70% approval rating from me (which means 70% of my body and mind liked it because Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregate rating site).  But is it a good movie?  No, probably not.  If you are hardcore into legal jargon, you might dig it.  Or if you are Derek, you'd probably find all the faults with it because it seems to wear these faults on its sleeves.  Regardless, this movie is a matter of personal tastes, not objective value.

And now to go to bed...at 12:46.  Sorry, Lauren.

I try to take my film class to go see an Academy Award nominee in the theater.  There's only one PG-13 movie still in theaters and they all saw it on their own.  I guess I should be glad that they are seeing film in the cinema on their own.  Regardless, I'm jazzed that there's a PG-13 movie that can still be nominated.  I'm pretty sure Dunkirk is also on that list.

DIRECTOR: Joe Wright

What is it with movies with very specific storylines falling in the same year?  There were the apocalypse movies.  There were the Mars movies.  Now it's the Dunkirk movies?  I guess we should all be happy about this movie existing because I know that a lot of the hullaballoo behind Dunkirk is that it never mentioned Churchill.  After watching Darkest Hour, I guess I get it.  It was his baby, but I don't think the narrative of Dunkirk would have made sense with the back and forth of locations.  Dunkirk is the soldier's story.  Darkest Hour is the politician's story.  They both should exist and I guess it is kind of a blessing that they came out in the same year.  I keep having mental connections to Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, but these were two separate projects unrelated outside of content.

Someone on the Catholic Film Group on Facebook talked about how Gary Oldman is one of the greatest actors of our generation.  I was skeptical about that statement, but that might be Darkest Hour's biggest contribution. Gary Oldman is amazing in this movie.  I have been saying for a while that I don't want to see anything else with Winston Churchill.  I get it. I like Churchill just fine, but I've seen too many interpretations of Churchill that are all phenomenal.  It seems like a roll that's built for Oscar bait because he's such a personality and, assuming that you have a solid actor who doesn't over-rely on impersonation, you have a solid performance.  In the past few years, I've seen Ian McNiece, John Lithgow, and Gary Oldman all crush the role and I didn't think I wanted to even watch the Oldman one.  Honestly, shy of getting directly invited to go see this movie, I wouldn't have watched this movie independently if it wasn't an Oscar nomination. But it is totally worthy.  Gary Oldman crushes.  The biggest compliment is that he pulls off what the other two actors hadn't.  When I watch The Crown, I'm always so impressed with John Lithgow.  But in my mind, I'm saying "John Lithgow is doing a great job."  Instead, I watched Darkest Hour, completely engrossed in the character.  I often forgot that I was watching Gary Oldman and I suppose that is the point.  Part of that comes from the fact that he had an extremely effective makeup job.  At the beginning, I found myself squinting to see Oldman in the role.  It's in the eyes.  I guess he's used to physically becoming other characters.  I flashback to Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (I'm never sure what to italicize in that title).  I think it has to be tempting to lean too heavily on the makeup, but I don't ever really see Oldman doing that.  He portrays Churchill as a hero, but a brute at the same time.  I'm sure that many people might argue against that, but Wright and Oldman portray Churchill as a lovable grump.  This is where people might differ on performance styles, but I like the tale of the lovable grump.  This is, after all, a political drama.  Having the protagonist as completely unlikable would be a weird choice.  When a movie is as dry as people sitting in a room discussing secret agendas, there has to be a somewhat likable portrayal to grab the audience.  Oldman pulls that off in spade.

I like bold font choices (pun intended).  Wright instantly grabs my attention with the font design and the color scheme.  This is a gorgeous, if not a visually dark, movie.  I think that WWII London has a look at this point.  Wright doesn't really do anything to fight against that look.  I'm not talking about much of the mise en scene, but I'm talking about the way a movie is shot.  I think this might actually be the best call.  Wright isn't lazy, by any means.  There are some stylistic choices that really work for the film.  The intercutting of bombing runs are extremely effective to return focus to the war, especially about when the movie becomes about winning popularity.  Spielberg did the same thing with Lincoln.  I don't want to constantly be comparing this to other movies, but Wright seems to have learned a lot from other movies and is kind of showing it in Darkest Hour, perhaps unintentionally.  The real problem with this movie is that there isn't that much that is wholly original.  Joe Wright is known for his period dramas.  They are great.  He did Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and Anna Karenina.  When I saw Atonement, I thought it was genius.  It took the period drama aesthetic and superimposed it over a much heavier movie.  But looking at Wright's style of filmmaking, I'm a little bummed that he hasn't pushed himself further.  Darkest Hour isn't going to win.  (Watch, now it is going to win and I'm going to feel dumb.)  The reason that Darkest Hour isn't going to win is that it never really decides to push the envelope.  It is a very safe movie with moments of absolute genius.  The look of the movie works and I know that I was just asking that the movie look like it does, but I'm also tempted to see this movie explore a little bit more.  I'm a little worried that in three years, I'm going to completely forget about this movie.  I will know that I've seen it, but I probably won't be able to say anything beyond, "Gary Oldman was really good in that."  Gary Oldman didn't allow the makeup to take over the part, but it seems like Joe Wright let the era take over his movie.  The best things, from Wright's perspective, are the font choices and the intercutting of bombing runs.  

I want to figure out what to think about this movie.  I think there is a problem that comes with biopics.  Biopics are interesting, but I rarely feel a deep love for the story.  Perhaps they are the ultimate fan service.  For Churchill nuts, this movie is either great devotion or problematic blasphemy.  But for the rest of us who just want to watch a good movie, regardless of subject matter, the movie only has a certain degree of depth.  We know how history views Churchill, (although I had no idea that people now hate Neville Chamberlain) so that leaves the end fairly unambiguous.  This is a major moment in human history, which kind of kills the suspense.  The problem is that this movie really relies on a degree of suspense to carry the story.  So the biggest argument that Wright can present is how Churchill got to the level of fame that he did.  I love biopics.  I do.  It's just that they never really stick to the ribs.  The only one I really like is An Adventure in Space and Time, and that's a cop out because I am a huge Doctor Who fan.  That's the problem.  I've nailed it.  I liked the movie just fine, but biopics have always kind of played it safe, with the exception of Marie Antoinette.  Now that's a biopic that I like.  It seems like it is a shaky place to stay saying that filmmakers should take risks with historical narratives.  But history in these movies is already extremely tainted.  Establish early on that events presented are somewhat skewed and have fun with it.  I guess I shouldn't ask a movie entitled Darkest Hour to have more fun, but I just wanted risks and biopics rarely offer that.

The movie is good.  I'll go as far as to say it is great.  But it is also just another movie with the exception of Gary Oldman as Churchill, which is the only association most people have with the movie right now as is.

The original Beauty and the Beast was rated G.  The new Beauty and the Beast is rated PG.  I'm not saying this version shouldn't be PG, but the original is pretty much equally scary.  Yeah, it's not live action.  I don't know what it is that makes me so upset about this, but I am upset.  Very upset.  Also, sleepy.  Hungry.  All these things.  

DIRECTOR: Bill Condon

I watched the remake of Beauty and the Beast for the same reason that I watched the live action Cinderella and the live action Jungle Book.  These movies keep getting technical nominations for the Academy Awards and I keep leaving with the same take, if not even moreso than the previous entries that are live action remakes.  The live action remakes are a fun experiment to see if animated films can be made into live action films, but they offer practically nothing else of substance.  I know that I'm going to upset some Disney fans out there, especially those fans who consider the original films incapable of doing wrong, but there was no need for this movie.  We get it, Disney.  You can remake these movies and people will pay to see them.  But they are never going to be these precious movies that people hold in high esteem.

I have to talk about the only real positive of this movie and that's the fact that they embraced that it is a musical.  I know fans of the Beauty and the Beast Broadway show wish that they incorporated some of the music from the stage production, but I don't mind that they made this something wholly new (while parroting the original movie?).  The thing that the other movies have only dipped their toes in was the music.  Jungle Book had two songs, but Beauty and the Beast not only decided to do all of the old numbers, but they made some new songs as well.  Okay, that's fine.  I'm not married to any of the old songs...with the exception of that tune all about Gaston.  (I swear, if it is named "Gaston", I'll eat my hat.)  I hear that the Mulan remake is going to scrap all of the songs and I think that is a poor decision.  I am going to throw down some more blasphemy and state that I've never actually seen the original Mulan either.  Sorry.  There was a time in my life where I had no reason to watch Disney movies.  I know.  I'm offending left and right over here.  But the things that kind of make Disney movies work so well is that they are charming and grounding these stories in reality actively fights against the whimsy that the animated form presents.  By reintegrating musical numbers, there is something at least somewhat bigger than life.  I don't need to see a live action adaptation of the Disney version.  Other versions of Beauty and the Beast exist (not excluding the super accurate CW version...sarcasm intended).  The story has been told time and again and the only thing that really makes this a memorable thing is that there is music.  I've heard complaints that Emma Watson can't sing.  I didn't mind her.  I think people just be haters when it comes to that kind of stuff.  But this might be the only real praise that I have for this adaptation of the story.

This is a digital dumpster fire.  The movie should be called Beauty and the Uncanny Valley because nothing really looks right.  Okay, I'll already backpedal.  Mrs. Potts and Chip look fantastic.  Some of the objects look okay.  The Beast would look digitally amazing if it was 1999.  There had to be a mandate somewhere in the Disney offices saying that the digital effects had to push the limit.  Remember how much hullaballoo the scene in the banquet hall caused.  People were mesmerized by what a computer could add to the animated world.  I know that there was probably no intention make the Beast a live action performer with makeup.  There was this insane pressure to knock socks off and that was the big mistake.  Think about if this movie decided to just do amazing creature effects.  I'm sure that Dan Stevens probably didn't want to do nine hours of makeup daily, but c'mon.  That would have been so much better. (I would also like to talk about the projects that Dan Stevens chooses, but that might be a discussion for a later date.)  But this movie just looks bad.  I can't handle it. There is this odd dark tone to the movie that is impenetrable.  I know that the framework for the story is pretty dark, but look at the vibe of the first movie.  Even the disturbing parts still live in a fantasy world.  This movie tried to be so grounded and none of the charm really translates.  I'm probably going to bury this part here because I'm trying to avoid controversy with my writing, but this movie turned some heads when it was going to introduce Disney's first homosexual character with LeFou.  The results of this probably made everyone mad.  Conservatives weren't happy that Disney was being so overt with its sexual politics.  Liberals couldn't have been happy with that stereotyped portrayal.  It was uncomfortable, guys.  Regardless of what politics are, this seemed to be a step back for humanity than anything else.  I thought we were past portrayals like LeFou.  The joke is tired and the relationship is bizarre.  I read somewhere that LeFou was with Gaston because of their military history.  Gaston's evil was meant to be tempered by LeFou, but I didn't glean any of that.  There is one line, but that relationship is as superficial as I could possibly imagine.  Why would Disney take such a risk and not flesh it out to make it interesting?  I don't like any of it.

The biggest argument is that these movies don't need to exist.  The Jungle Book was probably my favorite of the live action adaptations.  But you know what happened after I enjoyed The Jungle Book.  I didn't care.  That's a really bad payoff for a big risk.  The movie didn't stick with me at all.  The only reason that I reference it right now is because Beauty and the Beast is pulling the same card.  None of these live action versions of classics become classics in themselves.  They're all cheap and temporary and feel like we're trying to make a buck.  The most charitable version of that story is that Disney is patting itself on the back for being able to recapture the magic.  But it doesn't recapture the magic.  It just lets me see the flaws in the whole narrative.  The worst part is that Beauty and the Beast is a problematic tale to begin with.  I'm really surprised that anyone is revisiting that well, especially so poorly.  I think about the Renoir (Cocteau?) version of Beauty and the Beast and that holds up because it was a different era.  This movie addresses that it is an icky narrative and almost does something to course correct.  But the problem with being slavishly married to the original movie is that any fundamental choices cannot be tolerated.  Belle goes from being a woke feminist to the product of Stockholm Syndrome.  I don't even want to die on that sword so much as the message of the story is that "you can make someone love you."  That's such a bad message and I hate that it has to kind of exist to make the movie work.  The beast is an abusive guy who is changing his tune, but why did that have to be romantic love?  I would love the relationship of Belle as therapist and that their relationship is a platonic love.  I know.  Disney movies don't work that way, but I really don't love the "I can make you love me" trope.  It sends a really weird message out to kids.

Next year, I'm going to be griping about Mulan.  (But, Tim, just don't watch it.  I'M A COMPLETIONIST!)    I really don't want to watch any more of these movies.  They do not make me happy and I find myself horribly bored.  Beauty and the Beast might be the worst of the three, despite the fact that it made some of my favorite choices.  Spare yourself.  Unless you are a die-hard Disney fan, and you probably are, avoid Beauty and the Beast.

This one is a special kind of R.  This is an R-rating that involves kids saying horrible things.  Points to this movie for reminding me of curse words that I only heard while working at Oyler.  While I absolutely loved the movie and it only secures my place in the system for these kinds of movies getting made, who lets their kids be in these kinds of movies?  These kids are my kid's age and I never want to hear 1/100th of the things that these kids say coming out of her mouth.  R for language and for dark dark content.

DIRECTOR: Sean Baker

I haven't seen Tangerine...yet.  Between trailers and posters and hype, I know that this movie was made by the same guy who made Tangerine.  I like his style.  I know that there is a lot of carryover based on things I've read about The Florida Project and I'm really interested to see how that plays out in other movies.  My wife is a bit of a saint.  When we first started dating, we really got into Academy Awards season.  This meant that we went out to the movies a lot and that was always a pretty good time.  Now we have two kids and Lauren is very, very pregnant with our third.  I don't know if she's having such a good time simply watching these movies on iTunes, but she is watching them with a more critical eye than I am.  I go into these movies enthusiastic.  I think Lauren came out of this movie with a bit of anxiety.

The big thing is that this movie is another one of those movies filled with terrible people doing terrible things.  I understand my wife's anxieties throughout this movie.  I can't stand when kids are affected by the horrible choices that adults make.  (I think that carries over into my stress about the fact that child actors are saying such horrible things because there is a bit of irony when it comes to a child's innocence lost due to the choices that their parents make.  I also refuse to believe that a six year old is capable of making the decision to be an actor, but that's me.)  The thing about Halley, Moonee's mom, in this one is that she is a real person.  When I worked at Oyler, I met Halleys every day.   Something broke Halley in a very real way that makes her terrible to everyone around her if they aren't completely supporting her every decision.  This drove my wife nuts.  She couldn't handle watching Halley.  In fact, she even said that Bria Vinaite wasn't a great actress.  I had to completely disagree.  I thought Vinaite was brilliant.  (If you didn't guess, Vinaite plays Halley, but I have too much momentum to hit backspace or take my hand off the keyboard.)  Vinaite captures that insanity of that character so brilliantly.  She has those insane ups and those insane downs.  There is that thick as thieves attitude until there is a slight double-cross and then she is pure fury.  The only big difference between Halley and many of the parents that I met is that Halley does genuinely see the value in Moonee.  Sure, Halley is corrupting Moonee with every decision and choice that she makes, but there is no ill will towards it.  Halley thinks that the one thing that she is doing right is taking care of Moonee and that creates such a conflicting moment for viewers.  Halley, for sure, is one of the worst types of parent imaginable.  Moonee should have so much more than Halley can give her and Moonee should be developing independent skills and a moral code that Halley isn't providing.  Instead, Moonee at six has already gained a sense of entitlement and learned helplessness that is going to be hard to break.  But Moonee also is attached deeply to her mother.  She sees value where no one else really does. Removing Moonee from this life is the best thing for her, but she cannot leave without breaking in a totally different way.  There is this very complicated moral lens on this movie that doesn't paint anything as black or white.  This character dynamic is extremely complicated and that's where The Florida Project thrives.

The reason that this is up for an Academy Award is for Best Supporting Actor.  I'm shocked that it isn't up for Best Picture.  The movie is so good, but I also see the Best Supporting Actor.  (This isn't a binary thing, by the way.  It could have been up for both.  There's also one more slot open and what the heck, Oscar?  The Academy Awards are chosen by a guy named "Oscar", bee-tee-dubs.)    But Oscar got it right when they gave the nomination to Willem Dafoe.  I like Willem Dafoe.  A lot of people don't.  But I also acknowledge that he tends to stay in his wheelhouse.  He is pigeonholed as the creeper or the villain because he looks super weird.  I really like him as Bobby.  Not only do I like him as Bobby, but I like Bobby himself.  Dafoe does this nuanced performance of riding the line between being a father figure to both Halley and Moonee and staying distant.  There is this really fine line that Dafoe plays.  He is a character that is ultimately aware of the boundaries he's allowed to cross and those that he isn't allowed to cross.  He cares and loves for the unloved.  He has that moral crisis of, while ultimately being a good man regardless of which way he goes, having to second guess every one of his decisions.  He seems to love and care for his tenants.  It isn't his job to love them or care for them.  He has a mediocre job taking care of a hotel that is standing in spite of everything that is trying to knock it down.  But he has to make a decision every time he interacts with anyone who lives there.  He can be hard on them and ask them to become independent.  But he knows that often won't happen and that they'll slip deeper into despair.  But then he also wants to show compassion and help the helpless, which leaves them in the same state of learned helplessness presented at the beginning.  Halley is the prime example.  I have to believe that Bobby cares for everyone in that hotel.   And Halley's narrative works because it is typical of every other person in that hotel.  So when Bobby goes out of his way to find Halley a place to stay for the night, Dafoe's face reflects the frustration of his predicaments.  He is constantly put into a place where he has no right answer.  It's why it is so darned satisfying (LIGHT SPOILER) when Bobby catches the pedophile.  There is no moral gray area for what Bobby has to deal with.  Regardless, Bobby proves his worth through a singular trait: compassion.  (I think I found my Catholic News Agency article theme.)  Dafoe presents this brilliantly.  I never thought I'd see him play the caretaker so well, but there is this love in his face every time his heart is broken.  I love it so much and I want Dafoe to win so badly on that one.  

I'm going to be a hypocrite here.  I talk about how I don't want a six year old to play Moonee, but I loved her performance.  Every kid in this movie is absolutely genius.  The movie has this very odd dynamic.  Since the movie focuses on Moonee and her friends first and foremost, there is a dark innocence to this movie (and other paradoxes).  There are so many charming moments of childhood portrayed in this movie because it looks like the kids are honestly having fun.  My soul is a bit darker because I know that there are so many Moonees and Halleys out there, but I also found myself grinning at many of Moonee's mannerisms.  The interaction between these kids is beautiful, even when they are setting fire to stuff.  They treat people terribly and there's a sick part of me that really like that.  I'm going to be really snobby and compare the odd feeling I get watching The 400 Blows.  As a teacher, I would go home crying in a heap of misery.  Moonee would drive me crazy.  But form a perspective of being her peer, I loved when she would get into trouble.  That's a weirdly specific emotion that the movie captures and I really have to applaud director Sean Baker and actor Brooklynn Prince.  They crafted a very challenging moment.  While the movie wasn't about the plot, it was about capturing very complicated realities about life.  There sometimes isn't a right answer that is easy to get to.  That's what makes The Florida Project so great.  It is complex and difficult.  If the movie solved Halley and Moonee, it would be the biggest uphill climb only to have to repeat the same thing again and again.  The world is far more complex than movies normally care to admit and The Florida Project is the prime example of that. 

I loved this movie, but it is another movie that is deeply unsettling.  I don't know if I could watch this one again, but I find it fascinating.  I recommend it, but be prepared.  It is intense.

Remember when we just discussed the Best Documentary category for the Academy Awards?  What if we just skipped every other category and got to Best Picture?

Sure.  That'll work.  Also, if you have strong opinions about Meryl Streep, you might love or hate this episode.

​Click here to listen!

I'm not saying the movie is marvelously offensive.  I'm saying that the movie is a well-deserved R.  There's a pretty intense and extended sex scene with an awkward aftermath.  There's a good amount of cursing.  A young homeless girl is blown up using intentionally bad special effects.  Also, there's a sequence with a guy with Tourette's.  Like, you know...R.

DIRECTOR: Ruben Östlund

My wife fell asleep.  I loved it.  I hope there's no correlation there.  For a guy who is always preaching about the value of art and passion, I really like stories that kind of crap all over the world of art.  Appropriately, one of my favorite plays that I've read and directed is Yazmina Reza's Art. This movie toes that fine line.  I think that's what I like about this movie so much.  It might hole my exact philosophy of art and that is that, while it is great, it shouldn't take itself too seriously.  

It's almost unfair to judge this movie as a whole piece.  The movie is more a matter of an exploration of tone.  The movie follows Claes Bang, who portrays Christian, throughout his frustrations with being an art museum curator.  Christian, for the most part, is a pretty great guy.  This is what makes him compelling.  He's a pretty good guy who screws up from time to time.  He does nothing out of ill will, but keeps on making some really realistic dumb calls.  I often found myself calling him a moron, but then realizing that I don't know what I would have done in a similar situation.  His choices are the wrong choices, but they are also remarkably human.   When I had my laptop stolen when I was in college, I tried a very similar maneuver that he did.  I knew out of a large group of people, one of them had to have it.  So I pretended that I knew who had it.  For me, it just ended with me not actually knowing who did it and not getting my laptop back.  For Christian, he ends up in a world of crap.  It's a movie about unintended consequences over seemingly innocent decisions.  Perhaps that might be more horrifying than what the filmmakers intended.  Christian never really makes bad decisions, but he should have thought his decisions out.  No decisions were all that bad, but if he just took another two seconds to think of how that might have played out, much of the movie could have been avoided.  I love that so much.  I don't know why.  I don't like when characters do overtly awful things, most of the time.  (I just watched The Florida Project and I'll talk about that then.)  But Christian is a good man for the most part who ends up doing some subjectively awful things.  He ends up pushing a kid down the stairs.  The worst part is that I think that I might have pushed that kid down the stairs.  (Watch the movie, he totally deserved it.)  But it is also a reflection of a selfish culture.  I can't say that the director is making an overt criticism of the state of the culture, but much of Christian's problem lies with the fact that society asks him to watch out for himself.  It does not like to be stirred and offended, but that might be the role of art itself.  There's a LIGHTLY SPOILERY moment at the end where Christian is asked to apologize for something that his museum produced that might be considered offensive.  He resigns for the good of the museum, but then is accused of insulting the nature of art.  There have been artistic controversies in my lifetime that I wish hadn't happened.  But art is meant to challenge and it is really interesting that this movie is a commentary about the nature of commentary.

What I love most about this movie is that Östlund has created a tonally perfect film for what I am actually watching.  This movie could have been extraordinarily heavy handed, but it instead knows that comedy works.  I contrast The Square to Three Billboards in the fact that Östlund uses jokes to maintain the proper mood of the movie.  There's some heavy stuff.  Nothing too heavy, mind you.  Not like Three Billboards, but it knows when it needs to lighten up and when it needs to double down on the intensity.  The promotional artwork that is on the poster and on all of the digital download stuff is from a scene that barely involves the protagonist.  Rather, it is this vignette about the nature of controversial art.  The movie lets me often know that art is for the old, where it rarely serves to challenge anymore.  The movie is full of grey hairs and how they interact with art as a social occasion.  Terry Notary, who seems to be amazing at playing apes in movies, does this wildly uncomfortable performance piece that epitomizes why this movie works on the level it does.  Notary's performance, at first, is extremely hilarious.  A shirtless man embraces that he is an ape (which is foreshadowed throughout the movie) and all of the old benefactors find it charming.  Notary as an ape is pleasant, until he is not pleasant.  The entire thing seems like a Disney show about a jungle tour that always presents fake danger.  But real art can be dangerous and that's what Notary's Oleg presents.  When he gets aggressive, this light piece almost becomes a horror movie.  There's this narrative about how frightened we get of danger and dangerous scenarios.  All of the people at the table freeze and put their heads down as to avoid confrontation with Oleg.  It is remarkable, and I think that this is completely accurate, that people forget that Oleg is just a man pretending to be a gorilla and fear this beast because he had crossed that line in performance art that makes this a show and becomes a moment in time. He accosts a woman and only after the show has gone on far too long does anyone stop him.  There's a moment AND THIS IS FULL ON SPOILERY, where I wonder if they beat him to death.  Yet this scene belongs in the movie.  I get why they put the still on the poster because it is haunting.  But that is how a director balances intensity and comedy.  The scene works in the right order and that's what Three Billboards needed to learn.

I'm going to be preachy about this movie, but I do have to give some other criticism.  The movie isn't perfect.  I can see why my wife fell asleep.  I often mention that I'm sometimes cool with boring.  For me, the movie flew by.  It was the fastest moving two and a half hours because the movie was almost a series of vignettes.  I can get behind episodic adventures sooner than I can long periods where nothing happens.  But I also have to be aware that the movie really is just two and a half hours about people discussing art and philosophy.  It's odd that Elizabeth Moss and Dominic West are in this movie because they don't really need to be.  I love that it adds to the the completely American legitimacy of the whole piece, but they do really stand out for me.  I'm not saying that they are a good thing.  I'm not saying that they are a bad thing.  It does take me out of the reality of the movie, but their performances are great and kind of fun.  (Dominic West doesn't really fit in the movie, but it is fun seeing McNulty talk about art and I really like him as an actor.  Elizabeth Moss is actually somewhat integral  to the plot and she's an absolutely phenomenal actress, so I tend to forgive.)  But again, this is a movie about art and how silly it is, which is a deep sense of irony because this art talking about art.  I also acknowledge how it also hits a very specific sweet spot for me because I love this kind of film.  It's super snobby while being accessible.  I don't know who else will love this.  I feel the need to justify that I'm not loving it ironically, but rather as one of my favorite movies this year.  Yeah, the snob in me is getting fed, but I don't feel bad about this one.  

Not rated, because who needs ratings in 1942?  Besides the people of 1942, I guess.  I'm actually teaching this era in film right now.  It's that time period where Americans are making movies during the war, but not necessarily about the war.  I guess when a good portion of America is gearing for war, people don't care about how a movie is rated.  But this is an adorable movie.  I could play it in front of my kids, if I wasn't concerned for its anti-woman overtones at times.  Oh, the 1940s!

DIRECTOR: George Stevens

​I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MOVIE IS TRYING TO SAY!  All I know is that it seems sexist.  There.  I said it.  I'm calling you out, movie-I-now-own.  Like, it might be more than 1942 sexist.  It might be less.  I'm not sure.  But I just get an icky vibe from it at times.  I'm also going to play that hugely misogynist card and say that I kind of like the movie for being mostly adorable, but even that has a bit of a caveat.  The movie is a rom-com...in the most "kinda" kinda way.

On the surface, this movie screams comedy. The very setup is adorable and rom-commy.  Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn just can't get along until they do.  I'm sorry.  Sam Craig and Tess Hardy can't get along until they do.  They have this feud that turns into the best kind of relationship.  The whole Benedict / Beatrice thing is firing on full cylinders and that's in the first ten minutes of the movie.  From here, I would say that it is a great and hilarious rom-com.  Sam Craig is old fashioned.  Tess Harding is a working feminist.  I love it.  She doesn't get baseball.  He's a sports writer.  She's a foreign correspondent.  He doesn't know most languages.  Look at that premise!  That is comedy gold.  And I love it.  It's cute.  I find myself smiling a lot.  My wife, who has seen this movie before, is not as charmed, but I forgive it because she's seen it before.  I'm all in.  Then they get married!  Mind you, this is still the first half-hour of the film.  They get married in a ten minute ceremony because DAD is also a workaholic.  I'm still on board.  I love it.  Then the movie goes into this weird diatribe about how marriage is the worst and the movie gets really uncomfortably serious for the most part.  I kind of love this idea, but I don't know if George Stevens really pulls it off.  I like the idea of having a movie about the consequences of romantic comedy.  I'm tend to watch these movies saying that "these people know nothing about each other" and that they are probably pretty toxic together.  That's a brilliant idea for a film...

...if it wasn't so one-sided.

Woman of the Year makes Sam Craig the hero of the story.  I don't like that one bit.  Yeah, I will say that the movie establishes that Tess Harding is a workaholic and makes some really selfish decisions before the movie gets rolling.  But it never really comments that Sam Craig should have been thinking about these issues before the whole marriage bit.  He has this moment where he realizes that he's in love with Tess, warts and all, but then becomes shocked when those warts don't go away in marriage.  Sam, somehow, is without warts.  That's at least the way that the movie presents him.  He is the everyman character who views Tess's behavior through the eyes of the viewer.  He sees that Tess's workaholism is getting out of control and he is the one to make demands of her.  As part of it, I kind of get the vibe this is where the anti-feminist themes kind of pop their heads up and I get a little icky from the whole thing.  The main message is that Tess needs to learn how to give up being a working woman and just be a woman first.  I don't deny the idea of placing focus on the family is a good idea.  But the movie presents this almost as an extreme narrative.  It isn't supposed to be a binary.  Sam needs to learn that he's not the center of attention in Tess's life and Tess needs to learn to strike a healthy balance between family and work.  If the message was, "I don't NEED to be Woman of the Year, but it'd be nice", that's great.  I don't know why she had to go complete psycho the second they got married. There was this insane personality shift that took her caricature to this weird level.  She adopts this refugee without telling her husband and then decides to leave him home alone, giving Sam this moral high horse that completely screws up the power dynamic of the story.  She becomes this unsympathetic character that is only villified more when the Greek refugee doesn't want to live with her and would rather live at the orphanage.  Dear little Greek boy, remember how Sam also lives at the house and wants to take you to the zoo and baseball games?  Why so vehemently anti-that house?  It's this choice from a screenplay's perspective that is so nail-in-the-coffin for one of the characters.

I really like Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, despite the real world drama that my wife told me about.  They still have a pretty good chemistry in this movie, despite the fact that the movie really downplaying Spencer Tracy's age.  It's always funny when Hollywood pretends that someone is a studio heart throb, when...in fact, no, he isn't.  Hepburn is actually not being ol' lady Hepburn that I'm used to seeing.  I have a hard time divorcing my associations with them that I have from other films with what the movie presents here.  I know that she's the romantic lead in a lot of movies, but I can't get the old, overused impersonation out of my head.  But these two really work together.  I think the problem in the movie is the inconsistent tone of the film.  The movie really is two separate films and it really wants to be both.  The movie ends on such a slapstick ending considering what is actually happening in the movie that it is borderline almost inappropriate.  It has a happy ending when there is an 800 lb gorilla in the room that we're all meant to ignore.  I love slapstick romantic comedy, but the movie gets to a really dark place.  This isn't traditional conflict that we see in the romantic comedy.  There are some fundamental problems with their marriage that don't really get patched up easily.  It leaves the movie saying, "Accept this as what marriage is", but doesn't ask us to think where the characters go from there.  A positive note about the ending is that does talk about the value of forgiveness and that's pretty great.

I like the movie, but it is weird accidentally.  I can't shut my brain off from the major problems that the characters face, but I like it overall.  

This might be the most offensive thing I've reviewed.  I had no idea when I started watching it.  I usually like to go into movies kind of blind, but this was a movie that really didn't need to be as sexually explicit as it was.  There is actually a scene where a character watches pornography and we see what she sees.  Also, the movie takes place in a slaughterhouse, so you get to experience a cow from life until packaging in one really long scene.  The movie is an uncomfortable R.

DIRECTOR: Ildikó Enyedi

Like I mentioned, I knew nothing about this movie going in.  All I knew is that it was up for a foreign language Academy Award and that it was streaming on Netflix, so I was going to watch it before the Oscars.  My wife thought it was a rom-com.  Apparently, the Hungarians have a weird definition of rom-com.  It is romantic, in the weirdest way possible.  But for a romance, this movie is remarkably bleak.  I don't know if it is a Hungarian thing.  I don't think it necessarily is.  I think a lot of this comes from writer / director Ildikó Enyedi.  The movie is insanely intense, but the problem is that I don't think that the content of the movie necessarily needs to be that bleak.  

Because this movie is fairly unknown (I think. No one I know has heard of it), the movie follows Endre and Maria.  Endre has a dead arm and Maria seems autistic.  There isn't much tie to Endre's dead arm considering it seems to be a talking point that doesn't really affect his character.  I want to go into this for a while, but I need to get the plot out.  In the course of an investigation of an odd theft, it is revealed that these two have had the same strange dream about being deer.  Because Maria is awkward and doesn't react traditionally, there is a gap between these two people that eventually becomes a romantic relationship.  I really like this concept.  I'm not saying that this movie has to be an uplifting film.  I don't need it to be fluffy, but Enyedi goes out of her way to make this story as shocking as humanly possible.  I've seen worse than this movie.  It isn't even going to make anyone's top ten list of most offensive films.  But I will put it at number one for most surgically grafted offensiveness.  This movie really wants to explore something important.  It wants to look at how inorganic relationships really are, especially from the point of view of someone with a degree of autism.  There's so much to explore and there's so much to feel.  Even pornography and someone's reaction to pornography should be explored.  But there is a way to film that without having to show how shocking this movie could be.  I know that Enyedi believes that these scenes should make the audience uncomfortable.  There might be a place for that in film.  People shouldn't always be comfortable, but the tonal choice of this movie doesn't match the content.  This is a story about two people with the same dream and how unnatural relationships are.  There is a moment in the movie that is really jokey.  Maria wants to find a CD and she comes up with a stack of CDs and they range from death metal to muzak.  The movie acknowledges that comedy is important to the whole experience.  But these moments are thrown into a stew that has hardcore porn and cow mutilation in it.  As part of that, the movie has to make us like these characters.  I genuinely don't really like any of the characters, let alone want them together.   I admit that I have sympathy for Maria, but I don't want her with this guy.  Enyedi presents him as pretty unlikable, but the point of the movie is that Maria finds a way to communicate her feels.  So what is there to root for?  I want her to have a human experience, but that only leads to her downfall.  Meh.

I partially feel like Enyedi had some really good footage of deer and managed to revolve a movie around it.  The weird thing about this whole movie is that I thought that I was enjoying it for a while.  Maybe that is all that defines "enjoyment", but I swore that this movie was actually pretty genius.  But like a big old dope, I had a bowl of cereal and fell asleep.  I came back on day two, swearing off sleep-inducing carbs.  But then I realized it might not have been the carbs.  It may have been a mix of twee, darkness, and nothing happening.   Part of what makes it so dull and sleepy for me is the fact that the choices made by the characters are absolutely bizarre.  Endre seems like a decent sort.  But every time that Maria makes a step towards encouraging a relationship, he does something that is both perplexing and terrible.  There's no real reason for it.  He is inherently a selfish guy, which can only be gleaned from watching the movie as a whole. Every time we are exposed to Endre, he is kind and compassionate.  He seems like he has a good head on his shoulders.  But then he treats Maria terribly at times and these scenes don't make a lick of sense.  Perhaps the message is that both people in a relationship are really the ones who have something to work through, but the sympathetic character is Maria.  As part of this, and I'm going to get REALLY SPOILERY, is that Maria attempts suicide without any foreshadowing.  I never really get that she was suicidal or depressed so much as she marched to her own beat.  Any of this can be written off as the fact that real depression isn't necessarily telegraphed, but I also can say that it doesn't fit with the movie.  It kind of falls into that whole "shock-for-shock value" element of the movie.  Also, Endre never really reacts to the whole thing.  This makes him look like an absolute monster and I don't think that is what Enyedi is shooting for.  These scenes should be major developmental moments for the character, but the tone wants to treat these major moments with an eye of detachment.  I don't like that.  I don't really know the rules of the movie and that is really troubling.  Does nothing matter in this world?  Are choices not meant to be consistent?  Endre vocalizes his moral code with his interactions Sandor, but then acts totally differently?  If that was his character, fine.  But no one ever reprimands him for this behavior.  No one even addresses each others choices.  There are just these weird moments of misbehavior that are ignored.  If that's what Hungary is like, I don't want to go back.  Sorry, Czaba.

The aesthetics of the film are the only things that really work the way that they are supposed to.  The tone, as I mentioned, is challenging.  As part of that, the visuals, considering how intense they are, really work.  The color palate of this movie really enhances the overall mood.  I don't know why Enyedi wants her romance movie to be cripplingly depressing, but her visuals really support that whole thing.  Setting the movie in a slaughterhouse needs to have a certain dirty, yet sanitary feeling to it and this movie gets that across pretty well.  Also, the fact that both Endre and Maria look like normal people does help.  I don't know if we're supposed to find Endre as a handsome male lead, but his general presence sells the character in the way that the character is supposed to be interpreted.  I guess he's "head-of-a-Hungarian-slaughterhouse" handsome?  That's a thing, right?  Regardless, all these women find him attractive, so I'm going to let that go.  But the movie really shines with its deer footage.  The movie keeps cutting back to the deer.  The deer are supposed to represent something, I suppose.  I know it is the two of them and they have discussions about the relevance of their dreams, but the shots just look cool.  There is a tracking shot of a deer in the woods that I'm not sure how they got to look so fluid.  I question whether if that scene was CG or just a very talented cinematographer.  But the dream sequences help give the movie a relevance that it probably wouldn't have without them.  This movie would actually be remarkably superficial if it wasn't for the dream sequences constantly cutting in, reminding me that I'm watching art.  Sorry, I'm also very superficial, so I guess I shouldn't be throwing stones at this movie.  But watching those sequences made me at least really invest in the movie, even if I didn't necessarily get the payoff I wanted.

I usually like the international choices a lot.  These are the hardest movie to get a hold of before the Oscars, but they usually have some chops to them.  This is not a good start to the whole category.  I'm going to try and watch The Square tonight because I need something to root for in the category.  I hope to never have to watch this movie again because I need something less bleak in my life.

PG-13 for all the talking monkey violent action that you can handle.  Are you bored with your normal talking monkey action violence?   No.  You aren't?  Well, I'm going to stop this convention and just talk about how a lot of monkeys fight both humans and each other.  There's some big explosions and some dead monkeys.  Is there cursing?  I don't remember.  It's probably some monkey stuff.  Oh, there's also poop.  Also, don't get mad at me for calling them monkeys.

DIRECTOR: Matt Reeves

I wanted to like this movie.  I'm sorry, Mr. Murray.  I know you loved this movie, but I just couldn't get into it.  I loved the first two in the franchise.  These were movies that I saw alone in the theater.  My wife was jazzed when I offered to watch this one in the basement instead of in front of her while she worked on her puzzle.  I wanted to come up the stairs and tell her how good the movie was and how she missed out.  I can't say that it was all that amazing.  Maybe I just needed it to be better, which is unfair to the movie itself.  The biggest problem?  It was a two hour and twenty minute movie when it needed to be an hour and forty minutes.  

I think that the biggest problem, besides the criminal runtime for the film, is Hollywood's love of recreating the magic of the reboot.  I know that there are a few franchises that are in the three-boot eras, but I'm talking about when movies want to recreate Casino Royale.  Casino Royale, for the Bond films, showed that taking a character back to basics kind of works.  As part of that, sequels to that film tried to continue the origin of the character.  But the movies start to really scrape the bottom of the barrel.  Think about if Batman never got to The Dark Knight?  We get it.  Batman is Batman.  I want to get to Batman Batmanning everywhere he goes.  The Planet of the Apes needs to learn this lesson.  I can't handle another origin story for the apes.  We get it.  The treatment gave us hyper-intelligent apes.  We're getting sick.  That's it.  That's all you need to know.  By the time we get to this movie, the movie is going out of its way to explain where every element from The Planet of the Apes came from.  Where did Nova come from?  I don't care.  Why can't humans speak?  I like my answer better.  The needless explanations are absolutely a waste of my time.  Caesar has become the leader of the apes.  I get that he was going to start forming society for the apes.  Why do I need to have every single moment explained to me beat-by-beat?  I now question my like for the first two films.  It seems like I really hated this movie. I didn't.  Overall, it was better than okay.  But, golly, I was bored.  I threw my phone across the table so I couldn't reach it and three separate times I got up just to distract myself from how boring this movie got at points.  Boring isn't bad, I guess.  But apathy was one of the worst things that could have happened with this franchise.

I need to talk about how my nerd knowledge was kind of let down about this one.  I hate when reviews fanboy, but this franchise wasn't ever that precious to me.  Sure, I watched them with my dad when I was a kid and I overall enjoy them, but there really isn't anything sacred about the classic Planet of the Apes movies.  In fact, the majority of the movies are actually pretty rough.  But I also get that the main idea is that humanity has been enslaved so long that it has forgotten that it knew how to speak.  I like that idea.  That is far more telling.  But the idea that a virus that makes humans primitive is just stupid.  There's no moral lesson to a virus. When Charleton Heston shows up and speaks, it's not meant to be "Oh, he survived the virus."  It's supposed to be, "He's remembered.  They are going to revolt."  Nova is supposed to learn from Heston.  That means generations of apes have dominated humans.  Remember how there was a whole ape society.  Is the argument that Heston landed in the midst of the only ape civilization, let alone the one that originally started by Caesar.  I don't like that.  No.  Not for me, thank you very much.  But by making these origin stories time and again is that it shrinks the world to a point where it isn't a PLANET of the apes.  It's a small district that was found by Charleton Heston.

The movie also really doesn't know what it wants to be.  Caesar has had some pretty solid character development over the last three films.  I like that he is the balance between the two worlds.  He has embraced that he is ape and that he has the ability to lead.  He is morally conflicted and that makes him really interesting.  They even gave Caesar something to do in this movie.  He is in a vulnerable place for this movie.  This movie starts off as a great revenge film and I would have loved that.  He keeps having these Koba flashbacks and that really sets up for a great movie.  Admittedly, it would be a little bit of a rehash of the other movies, but I would have loved to see a revenge film with a monkey.  But then it becomes a tracking movie. Sure, it is in the name revenge. But there's a lot of just looking around in the snow.  And this is where the movie starts to fall apart.  There's a lot of just looking around.  He meets Nova, but it doesn't really change Caesar.  Nova should be a central conflict for Caesar.  He has just willed himself against the colonel, and more importantly, man.  But that moral crisis is quite minor for Caesar when he interacts with Nova.  Caesar should be questioning his own morality in this moment.  I don't mind that he accepts Nova.  Caesar is a good ma--monkey.  He should see the difference between the colonel and Nova.  But I want him to question his entire mission because of Nova.  Instead of actually having Nova be a moment of character development, she is there as a nod to fans.  There are so many beats that I feel have been covered, but there could have been a deep conflict within Caesar that got ignored.  I don't need the "ape v. ape" theme again.  That was covered and covered well.  I get that apes fighting is interesting.  There's a lot of that going on here.  But that's not the central conflict.  This movie goes from being about Caesar as a leader, to a revenge film, to a chase scene, to a prison escape movie and it doesn't do any of those well.  Instead, it takes four plots and kind of just makes it boring.  That's kind of a sin.  You know what it doesn't actually do?  It never really makes it a war.  The closest I got was a prison escape movie.

There's also a "just because" moment that is pretty unforgivable.  There's a moment that we all know is coming.  Red Donkey and his change is pretty telegraphed throughout the film, but as an audience, we have to wonder what is the straw that breaks the camel's back.  The answer is...nothing.  It is a lightswitch moment.  Red Donkey is part of an allegory that is pretty thin, so I won't go into the allegory too much, but I would like to say that Red Donkey is part of establishing such a bleak mood in this film that I can't ever really get past it.  Matt Reeves made a dark movie.  The whole trilogy is actually pretty dark, which is fine I guess.  But at the end of the day, I'm watching a movie called The Planet of the Apes.  I know that it is a sci-fi message movie.  But it's supposed to be a good time as well.  Thank God for Steve Zahn's Bad Ape because the movie desperately needs a laugh every once in a while.  But really, it is almost like screaming into the void because the movie as a whole is pretty darn bleak.  I'm grateful for every moment that Bad Ape is in the film because for a whole second, I get to experience not misery.  I like bleak stuff and I like misery, but this movie takes itself so darned seriously considering that it an ape v. human war movie.  Also, was the colonel right?  I know that they painted Woody Harrelson's Colonel as a crazy pants jerk, but some of the things that condemn him make a bit of sense.  If we're all dying of a horrible disease, shouldn't we do everything that we could to save the human race?  Yes, he takes it way too far, but Caesar's judging him before the evil stuff shows up.   I don't know why the Colonel had to do the evil stuff. That seemed thrown in there just to ensure that you knew that he was the bad guy.  I just wish that they made him more sympathetic.  But I'm sure it is hard enough to sell a movie where the audience watching the film was the bad guy, let alone in your big summer blockbuster tentpole film.

I spent a lot of time crapping on this movie.  It's not terrible.  It is just a movie filled with missteps that unfortunately make a movie that should be very exciting remarkably boring.  Boring might be a death knell for The Planet of the Apes franchise because they should be preachy, but fun at the same time.  I don't want to watch hours of apes tracking people in the snow as clues to the future franchise is dropped.  Also, does anyone really care about the old Planet of the Apes enough to be dropping clues to how it plays out anymore?  No, we get it.  Just tell a good story and have the apes in change by now.