THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

Yorgos Lanthimos's follow-up to 2015's truly fantastic -- and weird and disturbing -- The Lobster, leans much more into the uniquely horrifying. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is similarly odd in tone, but less like an alternate reality, even though all the characters have this largely static, deadpan delivery.

This is more like a Sophie's Choice for the 21st century, repackaged as vengeance rather than spite. The thing is, young Martin (a brilliantly unsettling Barry Keoghan) thinks of it not as vengeance, but as justice. It's easy to endure the tensions of this movie and wonder what the point of it was. What masochist would put themselves through a story like this? Well, I did. And it does bring to light how thin the line between vengeance and justice can really be.

Still, it can be difficult to decide how to feel about The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Martin has been hanging out with surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell), who we eventually learn was the surgeon working on Martin's father when he died on the operating table. We never get any explanation of how Martin has this power -- apparently it's beside the point -- but when Steven's youngest child, Bob (Sunny Suljic), suddenly loses all feeling in his legs, Martin takes responsibility. Not only that, but he tells Steven that since he killed a member of his family, he must kill a member of his own family as well. If he does not, then one by one, his two children, as well as his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman), will in turn suffer the same paralysis, then be incapable of eating, and then as soon as their eyes start bleeding, that will mean they are hours from death. The only way this can be prevented is by killing one of them outright -- hence, of course, the film's title.

And that's just the premise. The script is the weakest element here, but to its credit, over and over it moves beyond where other movies would go with its mysteries. This is not a movie where what's going on is kept secret from its characters until the very end. Surprisingly early on, Anna, Bob and teenage Kim (Raffey Cassidy) are all fully aware of what's going on. Like The Lobster, this film has some dark humor, although it doesn't indulge in it nearly as much. Ther's a darkly funny scene in which the siblings sadistically needle each other about which of them will be chosen to be killed.

It's difficult to describe this movie without making it seem just pointlessly weird. It has a deeply unsettling tone to it, camera shots slowly pulling out of or tightening in to images of beautiful composition. This happens whether it's near a large tree in a yard at sunset or in the corridors of a hospital. And here we have a middle-aged, married couple, grappling with the choice between choosing death for just one of them, or certain death for all of them. All except for Steven, who is assured he must live with the consequences either way.

The performances, the often oddly deadpan delivery notwithstanding, are solid all around. Nicole Kidman can convey an astonishing amount with just a sustained shot of her face with no dialogue. And Alicia Silverstone appears briefly as Martin's mother, quite literally unrecognizable: I saw her name in the credits and was taken aback: Wait, what? Where was Alicia Silverstone? She was in Martin's house, trying to seduce Steven by awkwardly sucking on his fingers.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer exists in a world much closer to our actual reality than did The Lobster, but still consistently feels vaguely otherworldly, even when characters are not getting ailments that local medical professionals are incapable of explaining. Yorgos Lanthimos has a knack for injecting just a dash of the supernatural, giving his world a sense of subtle yet disturbing wonder. He is a truly singular writer and director.

Perhaps he's singular to an excessively stark degree, for some. This is a film that will stick with you, but depending on who you are and what kind of tolerance you have for the specific, genuine psychological horrors it has to offer, it could stick with you in unwanted ways. And the end is slightly disappointing, having left me thinking, Um . . . okay? This movie left me incapable of being any more precise than that.

Martin wants to play the worst game ever.

Overall: B

SUBURBICON

Directing: C
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C

Here is a movie with great pedigree -- this isn't the first rodeo for anyone involved. George Clooney long ago proved himself a more than capable director; Joel and Ethan Coen have been writing solid scripts for ages. Bring them all together as a team, and how could Suburbicon not be great? Well, hey -- who is this fourth member of the script writing team, Grant Heslov? Maybe he was the one who ruined it! Well, except he wrote three of Clooney's previous films.

Who knows what derailed Suburbicon? Something did. This is a film that kind of has its heart in the right place, within the context of intended satire, except the end result is a muddled mess, most of which is almost shockingly dull.

Although I would actively recommend avoiding this film, I will still avoid straightforward spoilers. What I will say is that the movie you wind up seeing is something far different from what the trailers suggest it will be. It also makes liberal use of a subplot involving a black family moving into an otherwise all-white 1950s community, which the trailer hardly even hints at. That may be because this subplot somehow manages to be frustratingly vague and heavy-handed at the same time. Not every movie has to have something to say, but this movie clearly feels it does, and yet it's impossible to figure out exactly what it's saying.

The central characters make up a single family, headed by the usually wonderful -- or at least capable -- actors Matt Damon and Julianne Moore. Moore even plays both the parts of the mother and the mother's sister. No one ever says whether they're supposed to be identical twins. One of the is blonde and the other is brunette.

The plot structure is itself worthy of the Coen Brothers' body of work, with some delightfully dark turns. The problem is how long it takes to get there, the story plodding along with a score Alexandre Desplat so weirdly old-school mellow, given the subject matter, it's liable to make you drowsy.

In the meantime, the community's vitriolic response to the back family moving in serves as a subplot never directly connected to the main story, but occasionally providing distraction and cover for the evidently unrelated events happening in the house where the Lodges reside. There's a break-in; the family is tied up to chairs; consequences result in a cloud of suspicious circumstances. Their young son, Nicky (Noah Jupe, who is pretty great), befriends the black boy his age who lives next door.

Suburbicon pointedly focuses on this black family while also giving them short shrift. The woman playing the mother (Karimah Westbrook) gets a few lines, as we see her being treated with severe passive-aggression at the local grocery store. I couldn't even tell you who plays her husband, because the man literally gets zero lines in the film. Did he have any lines in the shooting script, I wonder? I hope so; then at least he got paid more than he would as a Featured Extra, which is all he is in the final cut. And if this family is so clearly supposed to be vital to the story, presenting them in this way is both pointless and counter-productive. The young black boy, played by Tony Espinosa, gets a few lines, at least.

All this is to say, Suburbicon operates on a series of intended connections that miss their marks completely. It's possible the trailer was cut in such a misleading way because not even the marketers themselves could figure out how to say what this movie is really about. People die; the couple at the center of the main story become heavily involved; most of the characters turn out to be different people from who you thought them to be at the beginning. By the time that becomes clear, however, you've moved far past caring.

Julianne Moore and Matt Damon look dispassionately back at a bored audience.

Overall: C+

MARSHALL

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

I have to tell you, I watched Marshall and I thought about how many movies like this were greenlit while Obama was still in office. What potential is there for the Trump Era to usher in more movies that inch closer to "white nationalist" -- or more overtly white supremacist -- perspectives? Honestly I think that given the nature of Hollywood, and the Bush years as a reference, more films about resistance are likely. Then again, who knows? Are these paranoid thoughts? Just consider this nation's history. To think things can't get bad again is a little naive.

Marshall focuses on an early, key case in the life of Thurgood Marshall (played by Chadwick Boseman), the man who would go on to become the first African American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967. Some three decades earlier, he was the sole lawyer working for the NAACP, and he comes to a Connecticut town to represent Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown), a black man falsely accused of rape.

It's too bad such an early, landmark case has to be framed in such a way, which makes things uncomfortable in unintended ways, particularly in our current cultural climate of unprecedented numbers of women speaking out about sexual assault. We currently live in an era, after all, when years of associated silence equals complicity on the part of sexual predators, be they Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby. There's a lot of intersectionality to unpack there, but that's not the purpose of this review.

The flip side is that a whole lot of cultural context was flipped around eighty years ago, a time when some Civil War veterans were still living. A wealthy white woman (Kate Hudson) has consensual sex with a black chauffeur, then panics at the thought of a great many things far more frightening to someone in her position than they would be now: not just getting caught by her husband, but the chance of getting pregnant, and how she will then be treated by her community. Never mind how black people are treated by the community to begin with, of course.

So it's complicated, and honestly, director Reginald Hudlin oversimplifies it a bit, with writers Jacob and Michael Kaskoff packing their script with subtle yet unmistakable contrivances. There's a slightly odd tone to this movie, particularly in the beginning -- it's as though the movie is a little too proud of itself for being profound. Except Thurgood Marshall was himself far more profound than this film could ever be. It's a tone that will likely work fine for most viewers, but it didn't quite work for me.

But then the details of the case at hand come to the forefront, and we get lots of courtroom scenes, including a great supporting performance by James Cromwell as Judge Foster. Foster is the one who declares local lawyer Sam Friedman (Josh Gad), who thought he was just offering a quick favor to get Marshall on the case, will be lead council for the defense. Friedman is himself a Jewish man, and there are a few references to the rise of the Third Reich. This gives Friedman a means of empathy as a member of another oppressed minority, an element of his and Thurgood's relationship -- particularly when Friedman gets assaulted just for being associated with Thurgood -- that gets laid on a little thick. So, some things in this movie are less subtle than others.

Still, the court scenes, complete with the prosecuting attorney played by Dan Stevens (Matthew from Downton Abbey), are the tasty meat of Thurgood, and are what made it worth seeing. The approaches of both sides reveal a lot about the "arc of the moral universe," as it's called, in the history of America, if you're paying attention.

That said, given the historical significance of the man, this film could have done better justice -- so to speak -- to the memory of Thurgood Marshall. Here there are solid performances and a worthy story, but nothing likely to be remembered for long. Would that the movie about him could have the same impact the man himself had. Imperfections notwithstanding, this is a story that deserves attention.

Josh Gad, Chadwich Boseman, and Sterling K. Brown, bending toward justice.

Overall: B

THE FLORIDA PROJECT

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

Director and co-writer Sean Baker's follow-up to the superb 2015 film Tangerine is not quite as memorable or distinctive, but it's certainly its own animal, I'll give it that. Instead of transgender sex workers in West Hollywood, the focus shifts to children living in temporary housing in Orlando.

To say these people live in the shadow of Disney World is an understatement. If it's not the dregs of Disney society here, then at the very least it's the outskirts. Maybe the slums. There's a sad irony to a place called The Futureland Inn, with a derelict marquee that reads, Stay in the future right now, amidst a place that has clearly seen better days.

That's where young Jancey (Valeria Cotto) lives with her mother and little brother, where she's met by the central child character, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), who lives in her own pastel-painted apartment complex called The Magic Castle. She and her friend who lives one floor down, Scooty (Christopher Rivera), like to run amok and cause trouble. But they are by and large good kids, who simply lack discipline and structure.

These kids are all around six or seven years old, and they take up a lot of screen time. They are at an age too young to fully understand the nuances of acting, and I found myself wondering how much of the footage was just cut down from hours of taping the kids simply let loose. There is the telltale element of the somewhat stilted performances of child actors, but it feels more prominent in the trailer than it does in the complete film. It actually doesn't take long to get used to these kids, and contentedly go along for the ride with them.

That said, Baker sure takes his time here with emerging themes of parenting and responsibility. For quite some time after the film begins, the camera just follows the kids around, doing typical kid stuff, often amusing, and incredibly well shot in memorably kitschy locations. Eventually we discover that Moonee's mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), is a bit of a hustler. She has no regular job, and makes money buying perfume from a wholesaler and then selling them in nicer hotel parking lots. The number of people she actually manages to convince to buy perfume from her is the one thing in this movie I found a bit implausible. But then, who knows? Florida is known for its eccentrics, I guess.

Willem Dafoe plays the building manager at the Magic Castle Motel, and he's the single famous face in this film. Dafoe is a great character actor, in spite of the severe features of his face that made him look like an old man even thirty years ago. He's unusually soft in character here, a guy who takes what the residents dish out amiably, and far more affection than irritation for the kids running around the place.

I suppose it should be noted that things get pretty sad in the end, an unauthorized cameo by Disney World itself notwithstanding. I'm not sure how many people will have the patience to get that far. Who is the audience for this movie, I wonder? Certainly lovers of thoughtful, independent film. That's not a large number. Although there is some crossover -- I would count myself among them -- most people who go to the movies or blockbuster entertainment won't have any interest in this.

For much of The Florida Project -- named for the early development name used for Disney World -- I could not quite pinpoint exactly why I was so engaged. It takes a while for a story arc to make itself clear, but these kids have a unique chemistry and charm. That underscores the tragedy of their lives, as they are brought up by parents either unwilling or unable to get their lives together. Most of the time, these kids live joyfully in the moment, blissfully unaware of the implications of their futures, the adults surrounding them walking signposts of their own possible futures.

I guess all I can say is I quite liked this movie. I can think of few other people easily convinced they would too, but I don't suppose that matters. Sean Baker is clearly a director with singular vision, and I for one truly look forward to what more he has to offer.

Willem Dafoe and Brooklynn Prince look back on an intersected life in The Florida Project.

Overall: B+

GEOSTORM

Directing: C-
Acting: C-
Writing: D-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: C

Geostorm makes The Day After Tomorrow look like a Stanley Kubrick film. Sure, it brings everything you expect from a typical disaster movie: thinly drawn characters, preposterous scenarios, a barely coherent plot. No one expects a movie like this to be in any way an intellectual endeavor.

The thing with Geostorm, which was directed and co-written by Dean Devlin, is that it's like someone took the standard disaster-movie formula and willfully made it even dumber. Devlin wrote the screenplay for the original Independence Day, which was a unique film in that it had a self-awareness of the ludicrous cinema conventions it also gleefully participated in. For Devlin, that level of sophistication seems to have stopped there: he also wrote the dreadful 1998 version of Godzilla, and . . . oh, wait. He has no feature film writing credits since. Who the hell greenlit this movie?

If Geostorm has any truly impressive achievement, it's that it makes the audience wistful for a movie like Deep Impact. Disaster movies are a dime a dozen anymore, and hardly any effort even gets put into them. To call this script terrible would be a criminal understatement. It's like Devlin just took buzzwords like "mainframe," "code," and "OS" and just offered as many arrangements of them he could think of to have tumbling incomprehensibly out of his characters' mouths. And the plot, such as it is? Even a high school Sophomore's creative writing teacher would be like, "This is so contrived, I expected more from you."

It's the near future, you see. The world's nations have come together! They created a worldwide systems of satellites that control the weather, as a means of solving severe weather patterns from climate change. But -- oh my god, someone has weaponized it! Can the single man who designed the entire system (Gerard Butler, slumming even by his standards) who was fired by his estranged brother (Jim Sturgess, always coming across as a weasel even when he's meant to be a hero), make it back up to the International Space Station in time to whip a ragtag group of international scientists into enough shape to stop it in time? The suspense is killing me!

I'm kidding, this movie has zero suspense at any single moment. Usually the one redeeming quality of a disaster movie is the thrill of watching the disaster actually happen. Geostorm spends a lot of time setting up a premise that would be implausible even if the producers bothered to consult a single real-life scientist -- which they clearly did not -- using characters so one-dimensional that trying to care about them is like trying to have a relationship with a utility pole. 

Then, freak weather occurrences do begin. There are flashes of excitement when this happens, most notably when a huge tidal wave crashes through the Dubai skyline. Of course it has to happen there, because it's the site of what is currently the world's tallest building, the 163-story, 2,717-ft tall Burj Khalifa. We get to watch that building get damaged, and then stop short of falling at an angle even a ten-year-old would know is not possible. In another sequence, underground explosions in Hong Kong cause skyscrapers to topple into each other, literally like Dominoes. What is this truly sadistic post-9/11 trend of movies showing countless skyscrapers falling down?

The "Geostorm" of the title, however, is what all these freak weather events are working toward: the idea is that so many such weather events occur that they all blend together to become one single, global weather even that destroys the world. Or something. I never said this movie made sense. Spoiler alert! (Frankly, I don't care if anyone gets mad that I spoil the "plot" of this garbage movie.) We never actually get to see the "Geostorm" happen. The heroes prevent the very thing we came to this movie to see!

What we do get to see, on the other hand, is Gerard Butler doing a bit of space-parkour in his space suit outside the International Space Station as it self-desctructs, tons of debris flying everywhere except where he happens to be at. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, and a herculean effort a it for a disaster movie is par for the course. But literally not one thing is believable in this movie. Not even that Gerard Butler and Jim Sturgess are brothers worth caring about.

You might rightly wonder why the hell I went to this movie in the first place. Surely I already knew it was going to be terrible? Indeed, I did. But I wanted to experience a "4DX" presentation at least one time, just so I can say I did. And so, a side not on "4DX": it really would not matter what the movie was, seeing a movie this way is distracting and confusing. The movement of the seat corresponds to a wide range of perspectives, from those of the characters to a simple crane shot of the camera. The seats even shake during a fist fight, leaving no sense of whose jostling we're supposed to be experiencing. There is no consistency.

One could argue, I suppose, that such inconsistency is well matched to a movie like Geostorm, which hasn't even the slightest sense of the most basic physics. That argument would be misleading. There is really no reason to see this, or any movie, in "4DX." There are even fewer reasons to see Geostorm.

Hmmm, seems like we've seen something like this before?

Overall: D+

TWIST Advance: BPM (BEATS PER MINUTE)

Directing: A
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A
Editing: A

I have only good things to say about this movie, which offers a window into an era not well enough remembered, from the unusual vantage point -- for Americans, anyway -- of another culture.

Maybe straight people today aren't as familiar with ACT UP, the radical activist organization started in New York City to fight for the rights of people with HIV and AIDS. The same could be said of younger queer people today, who have no real understanding of the vast devastation this epidemic unleashed on sexual minority communities. And the U.S. was hardly alone in this.

BPM tells the story of ACT UP Paris in the early nineties. The reference point to which director and co-writer Robin Campillo regularly returns is the organization's weekly meetings, the opening scene being a quick orientation of new members. These activists squabble and organize, disagree on certain key points and band together. They discuss whether or not a demonstration going unexpectedly is good or bad for them, and the story flashes back to a group of them storming the stage at a speech by a government official. Cut back to the weekly meeting, all these activists assembled in a large classroom with stadium-style seating. They move on to their plans to throw fake blood all over the offices of a pharmaceutical company that is not acting quickly enough to save lives not deemed valuable enough by the public at large. Then we're in a flash-forward to the actual scene, these angry activists making a mess of an otherwise very normal-seeming office setting.

As such, from the very start, BPM pulsates with tension and urgency; it crackles with excitement until it inevitably evolves into the dread of personal loss. You don't expect this kind of energy when the setting starts in a classroom of political activists discussing strategy.

All these transitions are done with impressive grace, the entire film edited beautifully, shot with a uniquely tender intensity. We meet several of the activists, but the story zeroes in on Nathan (Arnaud Valois), one of the new recruits who has somehow managed not to get infected, and Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), the HIV-positive activist Nathan falls for. They grow close, become a couple, and also emblematic of everything ACT UP fought for.

The sex scenes between Nathan and Sean are unusually frank, and I think this is important to mention. The things they do with each other are very common, arguably even "vanilla," and yet there are few American distributors, if any, who would quite be able to stomach it. The thing is, not only is the sex seen here no more graphic than virtually all straight sex seen onscreen -- it is also among the best I have ever seen depicted, in terms of its parallels to real life experience. Here it is not voyeuristic or necessarily titillating to anyone besides the characters involved. It's a reflection of humanity, an authentic intimacy, a depiction of comfortable sex-positivity gay people have had for ages but gets very little accurate representation on camera. ACT UP was all about fighting stigma, which is what makes BPM's sex scenes so appropriate.

It should come as no surprise that BPM ends in sadness, and a kind that is likely to cut very deep for any viewers who actually lived through the era it depicts. Of course there are countless movies that in one way or another depict the AIDS epidemic, but BPM taps deep into the very specific anger about government inaction, and does justice to the disruptive activists who made a difference.

I found myself thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement as I watched this film. Anyone who insists their disruptive demonstrations are counterproductive would do well to consider groups like ACT UP. Sometimes disruption is the only option available. And with both groups, they were -- and are -- talking about literal lives at stake, lives undervalued by the public at large. These are courageous people fighting to make the world a better place.

Even in my forties, I barely missed the era of HIV and AIDS killing a staggering number of people -- I can barely fathom what the experience was like, both for those who died and for survivors who saw their entire social world decimated, at the same time many of them had families rejecting them. BPM doesn't focus on the latter element (in fact, Sean has an incredibly supportive mother), but it never lets up on the kind of urgency set upon this community. And here is a film that depicts it with finesse. You won't soon forget it, because ACT UP demanded that we never do.

Nahuel Pérez Biscayart and Arnaud Valois fall into each other amidst organized chaos and expected tragedy.

Overall: A

TWIST Advance: APRICOT GROVES

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Here is a unique story if ever there was one, weaving threads through Armenia, Iran, America, Christianity, Islam, and above all, gender identity.

One wonders how Apricot Groves would play to someone watching it cold, not having gotten the bit about gender identify from a synopsis or description. There is a moment at the end that feels like a reveal, the first time the main character specifically states "sex reassignment surgery." Anyone paying close attention should easily have figured it out by then, but writer-director Pouria Heidary Oureh is still pretty coy about it.

Narbe Vartan plays Aram, a young trans man who has not yet had his surgery, now returning to Armenia to propose to the girlfriend he met while living in America. The story takes place over roughly twenty-four hours, and after a brief sequence depicting his being taken into surgery prior to the opening credits, it begins with his brother, Vartan (Pedram Ansari) greeting Aram at the airport. Their first major order of business of the day is to visit Aram's girlfriend's family for a traditional "proposal," which comes with many expectant rituals that never quite happen.

But first: a haircut, and a fitting with a tailor. Until the haircut is actually half finished, the camera only follows Aram from behind, never quite revealing any kind of identify. Aram's face is finally revealed in the barber's mirror -- an incredibly soft face, but with stark black eyebrows. He asks for the hair to be cut even shorter, and once the cut is done, that paired with his face makes him quite easily convincing as a man.

Not a whole lot is ever revealed about Aram's and Vartan's family background -- only that Aram immigrated to the U.S. when young, Vartan did not, and right now as brothers they are evidently the only family they've got. Vartan did spend some time in the U.S., as I recall, and maybe that's what opened his mind. He is almost shockingly at ease with his brother, and his transition process. Here is depicted an incredibly loving sibling relationship.

Aram spends much of the story just staring around, as though in a daze. Presumably he is overwhelmed by how fast things are moving, between the official proposal to his girlfriend and a scheduled surgery in neighboring Iran (where, although homosexuality is punishable by death, sex reassignment surgery is actually subsidized by the government -- creating a rather unique society in which trans people are less oppressed than gay people, and gay people are often pressured into changing their gender). The girlfriend's family struggles as you might expect, but begrudgingly accepts Aram.

The girlfriend, by the way, is a bit of a jarring reminder of how differently performances can come across in foreign languages. It's not until Allison Gangi delivers a few of her lines in English when she and Aram have a brief private conversation that you realize how oddly flat she is. I couldn't decide if it was just her or if it was everybody, just less noticeable in a language I don't speak. Most of the time, the performances are totally convincing, Aram's persistently dazed look notwithstanding.

A side note on Narbe Vartan playing Aram. This is a film with very little information published about it online. I found Vartan's Facebook page (that's the real-life Vartan, mind you, as opposed to the character Aram's brother Vartan -- confusing), and he is clearly a man. Is he trans? One would never assume so. I found myself studying both Vartan and Pedram Ansari (as the brother, Vartan) closely while watching the film -- I could clearly see Ansari's Adam's apple, for instance, and could not see one on Vartan. This made me figure that Vartan was either a trans man playing a trans man, or a woman playing a trans man, but not a cisgendered man playing a trans man. Which is it? Does it matter? It would be tempting to say no, except for the longstanding sticking point regarding the desire for trans actors to play trans characters.

All that aside, the story stands well on its own. I was particularly touched by the brother Vartan's support of Aram in all things on this incredibly specific journey: meeting potentially hostile future in-laws on the way to surgery. For a story that only takes place over mostly one single day, the pacing takes its time a bit. You get to know these characters, though, mostly in the moment, and in spite of the specificity, it's easy to sympathize with them. This is the rare film that could broaden the horizons of virtually anyone who watches it.

Pedram Ansari and Narbe Vartan are a uniquely tender pair of brothers in Apricot Groves.

Overall: B+

LUCKY

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: A
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

Lucky won't be for everyone. It's too bad. This is a movie that operates at a slow burn and gradually turns into something profound.

It's also a poignantly appropriate swan song for legendary character actor Harry Dean Stanton, here in a rare lead role. This guy, who just died last month, is 90 years old in this movie. How many other lead roles in wide release films have been acted by someone that old? Are there even any others?

This should be said up front though: Stanton's age also makes for a bit of a double-edged sword in experiencing this movie. I would hesitate to call Stanton's performance all that notable, or even nuanced. He walks around delivering his lines like he's in a deadpan dream. You know how many young children in movies deliver their lines like they don't quite understand they're acting? This is almost the same thing, just at the other end of life. Certainly Stanton understands he's acting -- he's got literally sixty years of experience -- but he also, well, in his own words, doesn't give a fuck. The end result can feel very similar.

On the other hand, director John Carroll Lynch and co-writers Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja here craft a story very well suited to Stanton at this point in his life -- to wit, at the end of it. This is Lynch's debut feature, and at times it shows, albeit slightly: this film lacks the assuredness of more experienced directors. The pacing is nearly as slow as Stanton himself, although that proves one of many surprisingly effective elements in the end.

Stanton plays the title character, and it's a while before we learn specifics about the origin of this nickname. Suffice it to say he's very old, and in excellent health for someone his age. Much of the beginning of the film just follows Lucky around on his daily routine in his tiny desert town, including daily morning yoga exercises he's been doing for years. It should also be noted that for a small town depicted in a motion picture, it's unusually diverse: the cafe Lucky frequents has a mostly black staff, and the woman who operates the small grocery store where he gets his cigarettes invites him to her son's 10th birthday fiesta.

The local bar Lucky hangs out in has a mixed, if generally rather old, crowd. And here we see how Lucky's supporting cast is rounded out by other screen legends and longtime character actors: a drinking buddy obsessed with his tortoise that ran away is played by none other than David Lynch; another barfly played by James Darren. Barry Shabaka Henley plays the operator of the cafe, in which Tom Skerritt shows up for an extended cameo with a monologue about encountering a Japanese girl in World War II that will really stick with you. This scene is a wonderful on multiple levels, as this is the first time Stanton and Skerritt have shared the screen since 1979's Alien.

And Lucky is filled with these artfully written monologues, increasingly revealing themselves to be a collective meditation on getting old. Because just when you start to wonder whether the entire movie is just going to follow Lucky around on his daily routine, he has an inexplicable fall in his kitchen. His doctor (Ed Begley Jr) can't find anything wrong with him except that, well, he's reaching the end of his life. Most people don't make it this far, he notes. So what of the ones who do?

Here is an unusually honest portrayal of how scary it can be do to nothing more than age. Death is coming for all of us in one way or another, after all, even if we live to a ripe old age. Even when you've still got your wits about you, it can be a fearful experience. Lucky is never particularly dramatic about this; he deals almost exclusively in subtleties, as does the movie overall.

How appropriate, then, for Harry Dean Stanton to be the star? You can practically feel him walking around onscreen delivering his lines dutifully while thinking, fucking whatever. All these players surrounding him complement him well. When a young waitress from the cafe visits his house to check up on him, they share an unusually tender and frightening moment. Even the young have to face their own mortality at some point.

I suppose it could be argued that there is something nihilistic about Lucky, in the end. Except for the very end, which pointedly finds joy in all of it. And it's not exactly a surprise when that happens; the story is sprinkled with regular bits of humor. And sweetness. And a huge heap of compassion. Lucky is a film that defies expectations that last well into its first half. It turns a uniquely dark mood into a delightful surprise.

Harry Dean Stanton gains a new understanding of the way out.

Overall: B+

TWIST Advance: SATURDAY CHURCH

Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Music: B+

Back in 2008, there was this thoroughly charming, coming-of-age / coming-out movie that was also a gay-themed musical, called Were the World Mine. Its music was so wonderful that I bought the soundtrack. Ah, those innocent -- or maybe ignorant -- cisgendered, white-centric days.

That's not to denigrate Were the World Mine in any way, as to this day I would eagerly recommend it to anyone. Its Shakespearean themes are magically interwoven into its story, and it remains a unique vision worthy of attention. But a lot of time has also passed since then, and we now live in a post-Tangerine world. In 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected, we lived in a time of naive hope. The 2017 Trump era underscores the need for attention to wider ranges of oppressed communities, and to intersectionality, and Saturday Church couldn't be coming at a better time.

Indeed, it should be very much considered a compliment to say that Saturday Church bears notable resemblance to Were the World Mine. It doesn't rip it off in any way, and neither is it literate in the same way -- rather, it expands upon similar concepts, and draws a clearer line between fantasy and reality, even as it indulges in fantastical musical numbers. These are all literal fantasies of its main character, Ulysses (Luka Kain, fairly new to feature films after some experience in both commercials and on Broadway, very well cast here), a young teenager withdrawing from the harsh real-world reactions to a budding interest in women's clothes.

With Saturday Church, writer-director Damon Cardasis is not preoccupied with gender identity, particularly when it comes to his main character. The hard-nosed Aunt Rose, recruited to look after Ulysses and little brother Abe (Jaylin Fletcher) in the wake of their father's death as their mother has to take on extra work, is the only one who makes a point of characterizing Ulysses as both "a black boy, and he's gay." But Aunt Rose, played by Regina Rose without much nuance perhaps because her character is the most one-dimensional, clearly doesn't know what she's talking about.

Ulysses takes the subway into Manhattan, encounters a group of young trans women, and gets invited to the Saturday Church of the title, inspired by a real-life church program for LGBTQ youth.  These transgender women, who are a few years older, takes Ulysses under their wing, along with a young boy, Raymond (Marquis Rodriguez), who develops a sweetly romantic interest. Neither he nor any of Ulysses's other new friends spend any time discussing labels -- an almost ironic notion, given that Saturday Church is one of very few films in which trans women of color are actually played by trans women of color: the only other notable one that comes to mind is, again, Tangerine. That said, for all their entertainingly jaded sarcasm, they prove to be real friends to Ulysses, very much encouraging the blossoming of interest in makeup and high heeled shoes.

In its way, Saturday Church is also a coming-out story, only within the context of gender variance. And make no mistake, there is some real emotional pain and some sexual trauma, a realistic reflection of what too many people go through in order to survive. This movie goes out of its way to reflect the stark realities of many trans women of color in particular, the wide range of attitudes toward sex work and the constraints on finding lasting relationships. What makes this movie truly stand apart is how it spends equal time on the unequivocal joys that can also be found along the journey of authentic self-discovery.

To say I found Saturday Church deeply moving would be an understatement. Sure, it made me laugh, it made me cry. It made me cry for multiple reasons. I shed tears for the familiar tensions Ulysses endured in the face of ignorant family members, contrived as they sometimes were. But for perhaps the first time at a movie with so much focus on transgender issues, I shed far more tears of joy, quite literally, as I watched a young person never specifically gendered find an authentic self.

The musical sequences, used both sparingly and effectively, are icing on the cake. Unlike a more conventional musical, where characters burst into song for no discernible reason, here the singing is always part of the main character's elaborate fantasies, which still grounds them in the real world. Compared to Were the World Mine, which I just can't help doing because the films are so similar in concept, the songs are not quite as good, the lyrics less refined or clever, but on average the vocal talent here is far better.  Saturday Church features some truly great singing, albeit paired with choreography that could have used a little more polish.

That said, any minor complaint I might have about it is nothing but nitpicking. It's all about the story, and even with at least one particularly one-note character, this story is deeply affecting. Saturday Church has charms all its own, unlikely to be forgotten for some time.

Luka Kain turns tragedy into beauty in Saturday Church.

Overall: A-

THE FOREIGNER

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

There's a shot that opens The Foreigner that immediately makes the film feel like something with potential, a birds-eye view of students exiting a school building that's so well composed, you think this movie might be more than just a suspense procedural, maybe something a little artful.

Well, that's also where that potential pretty much ends. The cinematography remains solid throughout, but it doesn't take long for the unfolding of the story here to prove it's by the numbers. A lot of this is in the details, only noticeable if you find yourself looking for it. This, I suppose, is the double-edged sword of seeing movies far more frequently than most: "movie magic" has to make far more of an effort to woo critics than it does regular audiences. The swiftness with which computer forensics zeroes in on the details of things like video surveillance of a vehicle license plate -- none of that is ever realistic, but if it were, these movies would be very dull.

The Foreigner is hardly perfect, but neither is it at all dull. Anyone going to a movie like this will get all they're asking from it -- and possibly more, in fact. The plot is a little more complicated than just Quan Minh (Jackie Chan, in an unusually dramatic tole) seeking revenge on the terrorist bombers who kill his daughter in the film's opening sequence.

A whole lot of the movie involves Minh doing a bit of terrorizing of his own, aimed at Irish deputy minister Liam Hennesy (Pierce Brosnan, never better and giving easily the best performance here) in an effort simply to get the names of the bombers. Minh never kills anyone, just uses his extensive background of special forces training to scare the shit out of Hennesy and his staff and bodyguards with nonlethal explosions and traps, going so far as to follow him to his secluded farmhouse and hide out in the nearby woods.

There is an intriguing backstory to all this, involving the IRA and a new faction behind the terrorist bombings calling themselves "The Authentic IRA." This taps into some real-world politics in the UK, and it bears noting that American audiences are perhaps more likely to swallow any historical details here without question -- that part all seems realistic enough to me, but who knows how British audiences will perceive it.

In any case, Quan Minh finds himself inserted into the midst of some very messy and violent political activism just by virtue of his daughter being collateral damage. The unfolding of this plot offers much more food for thought than movies of this sort tend to have, and that is to its credit.

In the end, though, The Foreigner is just a straightforward revenge flick, with a martial arts legend proving he's still got the goods at age 63. Chan has long been famous for doing his own stunts and he's not letting up here, which makes a lot of the fight sequences a joy to watch. They do take a while to get to, because the story comes first, which is refreshing in the midst of today's endlessly brainless blockbusters.

Here is a movie with much going for it, and also a lot of unrealized potential. Chan himself is great as an action star, and serviceable as an actor. Engrossing though the story may be, ultimately this is still a genre flick, and one that will please those with interest, and leave everyone else assured they aren't missing anything vital.

Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan find themselves with shady connections.

Overall: B