Filmspot 2016 catchup:
Hacksaw Ridge (Mel Gibson, 2016)
This year's
American Sniper, with Gibson mirroring Eastwood's willingness to completely demonize The Other. The results are about the same: an adequately entertaining yet occasionaly awkward film based on real events, pendulating between the glories and the horrors of war.
Grade: B-
Eye in the Sky (Gavin Hood, 2015)
As modern and academic as
Hacksaw Ridge is old-fashioned and sentimental — to similar benefit. The script is just okay, and the presentation feels very small screen.
Grade: B-
Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015)
A visually striking and intriguing film that's ultimately a bit undone by a herky-jerky narrative and thematic mumbo-jumbo. Still pretty good, though.
Grade: B
The Invitation (Karyn Kusama, 2015)
There's a certain style of low-budget film in which I can almost see the screenplay superimposed on the screen.
The Invitation is one of those films, at least early on. It's partly the quality of the performances and partly the 'written' quality of the dialogue, but also the deliberateness of every shot and how effortful it all feels. I did eventually warm to the film and came close to liking it, but in the end it felt just a little too rote, or something. (I honestly don't remember the exact reason for my eventual disappointment.)
Grade: C+
Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson, 2016)
The modern day equivalent of an old Republic Serial. Perfectly disposable and largely silly. I don't understand the rules of the game.
Grade: C
X-Men: Apocalypse (Bryan Singer, 2016)
I'm really surprised to have liked this — and I probably said the same thing about
First Class. There's a ton of silliness and even stupidity here — e.g., the Four Horseman serve zero purpose for 99% of the movie — and the thoughtless murder of government soldiers is unsettling, but it's still a nice ride. The writing and editing do a really impressive job of juggling dozens of characters and storylines — it's like a 13-episode season compressed to two hours — and I've never been more impressed with Fassbender than here. The gravitas he brings to this bit of popcorn fun is downright staggering.
Grade: B-
Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016)
A very sensitively directed and aethetically pleasing rendering of a very mediocre script. Villeneuve does well to disguide the story's weaknesses with a truthiness approach to narrative — with the film discouraging us from thinking about story logic, instead encouraging us to
feel that it all makes sense. Well, it doesn't. This is a world of cartoonish international relations; a world where cell phones don't exist so you have to steal a satellite phone from the one person you really shouldn't be stealing from; a world where all stakes are imaginary, so Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker, in the most thankless role ever, serves only to tell Amy Adams, "DEADLINE!"; a world where Dumbledore has all the answers but wants Potter to figure things out himself because reasons. And yet it's all a bit too precise, with every moment carrying such on-point import. It's a shame the script never breathes the way that Villeneuve's direction does, but it still works alright because inkblots are cool.
Grade: B-
I also reviewed (in more depth) a handful of Flimspot-eligible documentaries in
the DOCember thread, handing out an A-grade to the one inelgible entry.
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