​Isle of Dogs, the ninth and newest effort from the other (other) filmmaking Anderson, is his most humane film in some years. Since Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson’s films have done something worse than spiral—they’ve remained static. Each increasingly consumed by his well-documented quirks, in the Anderson-verse the auteur comes before the art. Isle of Dogs is hardly a break from any of the above, but stop motion animation pumps something sanguine into his little manicured world.
 
The premise is incredibly thrifty. Framed by a legend about a boy samurai who defends dogs against the cat loving Kobayashi clan, we quickly jump to a now dystopian Megasaki City. An industrial, polluted hellscape, renewed anti-dog hysteria is at fever pitch. Dogs have been relocated to Trash Island, and young Atari goes on a quest to rescue his dog Spots. The narrative remains tightly wrapped around this concept as it runs the length of its lean 101 minutes. And along the way, there are some conspiratorial notes, cautious friendships, and valuable lessons learned.
 
Where this is all good and well, I’m really just here for the takes. And does any director give us more molehills to refashion into mountains than Wesley Wales Anderson? BRING ME ALL THE SPICY TAKES!
 
Cats/Cat People are Lame
People on world’s worst website, Twitter.com, are pissed about what they describe as the film’s, “anti-cat sentiment.” But if a hot take falls in the truth forest, is it just a fact? Yes, where Anderson seems like a human cat in a corduroy jacket, homie is a dog person. And therein lies Isle of Dogs’ easy hook: dogs are good and cute and smart and the best. And goodness, every time their little dog eyes well with tears? Effing bawling.
 
So much of the film’s kindness is lived through our titular dogs. Where their interactions are stilted and emotionally distant—Anderson’s love language—the characterization fits the mind of a mutt. Kind in a perfunctory way, loyal as almost genetic predisposition, their sincerity is a welcome, warm infusion into Isle of Dogs. And where this film does trade in the cat versus dog versus their insane human companions cliche, the story is useful as a meditation on entrenched power. Where it comes from, the motivations behind, and this power as a profound corrupting force. The cats and dogs could have just as easily been swapped, but through this age old polarity Isle of Dogs asks s a more covert question: Why are there even sides?

​All the same, dogs rule.
 
Wes Anderson Made the Same Movie...Again
If this is the axe, let me be your Tormach PSG 612 surface grinder. In a 2012 interview with Terry Gross, Anderson offered the following, “I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.” This strange creative ambition has somehow enabled and stifled his oeuvre all at once, and Isle of Dogs does not break the spell.
 
This film is more successful than previous forays into his universe for several reasons. One, there are more voices in the room. With credited writers including Anderson as well as Jason Schwartzman, Kunichi Nomura, and Roman Coppola (with whom he has previously collaborated), the overall tone feels more varied. Also, as bizarre as this may be, perhaps non-humans are a better vessel for Anderson’s mannerisms. Arrested development and singular motivations suit dogs, teenagers, and myopic politicians.
 
But we’re here for torrid takes, and Anderson making the same film again and again is hardly even balmy. So my fire ass take? Wes Anderson should make a bad movie. Isle of Dogs is good, very likable, but let’s feeeeeeeel something. Splurge the creative capital accrued over twenty years! Make an out-of-the-comfort-zone fever dream of a project. Make it sweaty and haggard and insane. For lest we forget, another Anderson had the guts to redraw his creative boundaries, and he emerged as the finest filmmaker of a generation.
 
Cultural Appropriation
Now to the takery core for some truly molten POVs. L.A. Times critic Justin Chang wrote an excellent review of Isle of Dogs. Paired with his praise, he asks some relevant questions about the film’s treatment of Japan as a place, people, and culture. Two of his critiques are resonant above the rest. One is the use of language. Dogs speak in English, and all others speak in their native tongue with no subtitles. Chang asserts the approach makes the Japanese characters foreigners in their own city. The other, our pro-dog resistance leader is played by a young white American woman who repeatedly pushes back against stereotypical Japanese timidity.
 
This conversation is frustrating but necessary. As Chang took the dialogue to social media, he offered there was nothing malicious about Anderson’s portrayal, but the dastardly trick of harmful representation is passing itself of as something benign. In the end, Chang’s argument delves into culture being used as a prop on no terms of its own. Anderson would likely make an impassioned defense citing hours of research, diligence to cultural aesthetic, time spent worshiping the heroes of Japanese cinema, but a narrow ledge separates tribute and fetishization.
 
“So, a white person can never make a movie about Japan?” one million anime avatars on Twitter cry out at once. No, instead it’s a call for artists and admirers of any culture to create space where they recognize their position as the outsider. A space to learn and to have their best held notions upended and to be surprised by a culture they believe to know. Anderson failed to create that space. Yes, the problem of xenophobia and some current politics color Isle of Dogs. As such, this comes off as more a problem of Anderson’s unyielding vision than it is willful appropriation, but any effort to gloss over this point makes for a nearsighted evaluation of the film. 

This does not, for me, destroy the experience. In an effort to be a more empathic observer of art, it’s part of the conversation, but several other facets elevate Isle of Dogs to Anderson's most successful film in years. It may read as a cop out, but perhaps the searing takeaway from this film—whether in regard to cats, dogs, cinematic monotony, or cultural appropriation—is that nuance may be the most provocative take of all.

—Monte Monreal

There are few qualities more dispiriting in a major motion picture than no sense of fun, but to describe the new Tomb Raider in a word: it’s joyless. Bereft of personality or identity, this movie doesn’t even distinguish itself enough to be a straight ahead bad movie. Stiff, chilly, unimaginative, it’s hard to grasp just how this milled out to something so aggressively average. But as yet another disastrous video game film shuffles across the national cinema stage I can’t help but continue to wonder, who is this for?

Tomb Raider seemingly had lots of good things going for it. With a widely recognized gaming franchise to lend some cache and a cast of bonafides like Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins, and McNulty, how did this end up as such colorless gruel? Even gruel feels too hearty and nourishing to use as a descriptor. Cellulose maybe? Anyway, the fate of this film is sealed for a few pretty inescapable reasons. 

The story beats are so perfunctory, the characters so gossamer thin, it is damn near impossible to coax energy, much less excitement, out of any film element. The twists are like slight veers, the climax is hollow, and even the set pieces—the bread and butter of this kind of picture—are downright languid. From a talent standpoint, it’s hard to imagine, but this film manages to cast a pallor over Vikander’s endless, irrepressible charm. McNulty is practically in absentia. I mean, how are you not gonna at least give Goggins some scenery to gnaw on? Isn’t that what you’re paying for?

From the comfort of my armchair, it seems as though handing in a likeable romp would have been a breeze, but somehow Tomb Raider is just tired. The sets, the extras, the score, all lumbering across 122 uninspired minutes. Not brave enough to be pulpy, not smart enough to be taken seriously, this movie has no sense of self. It’s all so vacuous, I’m not even mad. I’m weirdly in awe. Did no one want to fight for this movie? Was there simply an insurmountable lousy script at the core? Is it mired in thousands of references to the game I just don’t get? I’ll never know, but the final product is fit to be rolled out on a gurney. And these no goodniks even have the audacity to setup a sequel! Lord, grant me the hubris.

Who are these movies for? Bruh, for true, I do not know. The first game installment came out in 1996 and birthed two films with Angelina Jolie released in 2001 and 2003. Where these did yield some financial success, I don’t recall anyone just loving them, lost on both critics and fans. Over the ensuing years, the Jolie helmed Tomb Raiderfilm never took on cult status, nor cracked the regular orbit of Sunday afternoon cable television filler. So, again, who is this for? I know you can roll out the nostalgia trough and people will choke down even the paltriest fare, but who was clamoring for this film? I have to know! 

If there was anything this film accomplished, it made me appreciate Wrinkle in Time more? So, I was supposed to write a review for Wrinkle last week (downcast eye emoji). In the end, it turned out to be a 759-word screed against white supremacy. Nobody wants that, so it was relegated to the robust personal archive. Where Wrinkle in Time was a deeply (deeeeeeeeply) flawed vessel for its message, it swung big—a burden Tomb Raider wouldn't dare take on. 

Wrinkle put its big, stupid heart out there, and Tomb Raider is almost catatonic. But as of right now, that damnable Tomatoery has Tomb Raider scored higher. I won’t ascend the soapbox with tinfoil hat askance to explain the real reasons for this disparity, but my goodness... Our expectations and perceptions are utterly fuckered when a crappy, yet well-meaning film (with occasional transcendent moments) gets dogged for daring to try, while Tomb Raider gets a wider berth for its relentless pursuit of mediocrity.

So, in the spirit of the film I’m really going to phone in this concluding paragraph. Tomb Raider opens today and runs two hours and two minutes. I hope Alicia Vikander can skirt the wreckage and at least land a Marvel franchise. The end. 

—Monte Monreal

​Dear friends, hello. I have some startling news.

The shape of it feels so fragile in my mind, I’d as soon whisper these words into a piece of paper, burn it, and let the ashes drift from my upturned palm into the slate winter sky. But as I strike each key in an attempt to make this fledgling hope something real, I’m ready to swallow hard, square myself, and speak my truth: Game Night is good.

Like, good good. Not better than it needs to be, not just a catch-it-on-HBO-someday—it’s actually good and funny. And charming! And even a bit thrilling. With a great cast to lift a tight, well-conceived script, this picture traverses the gap from February cinema graveyard to sleeper gold. It isn’t something poetic or profound, but Game Night is a hearty, self-actualized, and easy to like studio comedy. 

So many comedies now opt for a rambling style as popularized by the Apatowites. Actors will have a framework for a scene. Directors will flip on the camera. Then everyone riffs and bebops until they stumble into some passable jokes. Game Night is a welcome antidote with a well-constructed script at its core. Riddled with sharp jokes, adroit physical comedy, and plenty of trap doors, it’s the tightest straight ahead comedy in recent memory.

Where the writing is solid, the superb lineup is allowed to play to what they do best. You’ll see a lot of familiar faces playing to type: Jason Bateman as beleaguered guy, Billy Magnussen as beautiful dumdum, Sharon Hogan as the caustic wit, and Jesse “Da Gawd” Plemmons out there just Plemmin’. But instead of having to do all the heavy lifting with these personas, the characters are firmly grounded in a self-assured narrative. The funny feels easy.

Where this seems like the space for an obligatory plot explainer, each point revealed would leach an equal amount of joy out of the film. Though the overall premise is pretty familiar, nice idiots unknowingly in over their heads. I’ll leave it at that, but for those of you with a dedicated crew of hardcore Settlers, Game Night will serve as a gentle reminder to reset the boundaries of your competitiveness and credulity alike. 

With all of the above in mind, the best part of the movie? It’s funny. It made me laugh. There was even a guffaw or two. Nasty without being cruel, dark without being bleak, provocative without bullying, buttons are pushed and lines are crossed—but never into a despicable space. Decent people are poached in the squid ink broth as opposed to the darkness coming from within. There’s some overly sweet notes, but it’s a movie about a bunch of thirty-something couples having a game night. As I’m describing my actual life, I can confirm: that shit is corny sometimes. With a core cast of six actors plus a handful of tasteful cameos, that’s lots of jokes, and they dutifully keep the film’s engine fired. 

Among some of the more unexpected surprises in this surprise laden picture, it’s visually coherent. There is a style and aesthetic and couple of meaty set pieces. Also, one of our talented directors is none other than John Francis Daley (Google him, you’ll recognize that mug)! Another bonus, each of the main three couples is given a dynamic to sort out. A pretty scant expectation, but to give multiple characters a pronounced interpersonal thread and offer some reasonable satisfaction? Nobody was gonna be mad if they didn’t do that, but damned if the effort wasn’t there. 

And that’s the story of Game Night; small, concerted efforts. Little stitches to make it tighter, make it smarter, make it twistier, and, one by one, they yield a satisfying comedy with teeth and brains. We’ll see if this scrappy comedy can land a box office haymaker and pave the way for more of its kind. Though, for now, the joy is in watching the film, which is smart, funny, quality work with a great cast and a great script. And if that last sentence reads like the boilerplate checklist of what should go into any film, maybe buy a ticket for Game Night, because it feels a lot more like a joyful aberration than what has become the accepted norm.  

—Monte Monreal

I’m not sure how William Goldman get’s to officially claim this quote, but if there is one notion at the crux of Alex Garland’s Annihilation it would be this old chestnut, “Nobody knows anything...... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.” 

The idea permeates our troubled film from internal narrative crisis all the way to the bizarre–potentially watershed—drama of Annihilation’s distribution. This identity crisis, the not knowing, works against Alex Garland’s newest, and all sympathies to my dude. Is Annihilation bad? Eh, it’s like a "Yes, but..." or "No, if…" thing—though this I can confirm: it’s a hot goddamn mess. That’s not entirely a negative, but to get there, first we have to talk about Stalker.

Annihilation’s similarities to Stalker are, you know, it’s a thing. Sure, for some of the immediate reasons—both are loose adaptations, both feature a mysterious zone triggered by an extraterrestrial event, both center around a journey into said zone and its effect on the passengers—but this is something more: a feeling, a tone, an atmosphere of deliberate disorientation. I recognize it’s unfair to outright compare the two. Stalker is not the paragon of originality. Garland poured soul and creativity in this project. But there isn’t enough distance between the two to avoid the conversation. Furthermore, what makes the comparison so jarring is Tarkovsky hacks his way through those tricky elements and emerges with a masterpiece. Garland’s Annihilation, well, it’s a dog’s breakfast. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a Blade Runner type sitch, but more on that later.

One thing is clear, Alex Garland is ambitious. Riding the wave from his stellar debut Ex Machina, Garland was rightly given the helm to a massive project with lofty expectations. But part of Ex Machina’s success, it’s a claustrophobic, dread soaked film with three characters. Annihilation is scaled up to a large cast with an entire world to build. There are few questions as to whether Garland possess the skill to handle a production of any size, but this movie is undermined by so much minutiae. I didn’t like the visual tone (can we please, please kill off the lens flare), I thought Area X looked built not grown, there is no meat on the bone for our actors, and perhaps the biggest disappointment, they story is shambolic.   

At best, I could talk myself into Annihilation as a meditation on not knowing–those words again—but uncertainty is a volatile element with which to tussle. I’m very much on board with no finite answers, but it never felt like this film knew what questions it was raising. That’s like god-level discombobulation, and if that was truly the thrust, why bother? Why spell out realizations about Area X? Why the very deliberate climactic sequence? Why the breadcrumb trail of videos peppered throughout the film? Why?

Unfortunately, within what story we are offered, the answers to the above questions mills out to something kinda, er...kinda dumb. Instead, if this is all meant to worship at the feet of enormous ambiguity, let’s go there. Fumigate me with existential dread. Pillory me with intrigue. Inoculate me from any and all understanding. But don’t tip your cards with an empty hand, and if you insist, at least play it with some clear-eyed bravura.

There is enough grace and intelligence here to save Annihilation from Interstellar-level fatuity, but I can’t help but wonder if Paramount Studios just did my guy dirty. Garland already proved what he can accomplish when left to his vision, but movies have an enormous surface area. When the money lenders at the top lose faith, the shit truly rolls downhill. Off screen battles are generally pretty boring, but the power struggle here signals something much more severe. 

Paramount so wholly doubted Annihilation, they sold the international distribution rights. That is not only unheard of, it’s utterly mind bending, and portends terrible things. This movie will only be released in theaters in America and China (not even Garland’s UK home) and everyone else will get it via Netflix. That’s really bad. Bad for Garland, bad for filmgoers, bad for already gun shy studios, and bad for auteurs; the William Goldman dictum mutated to hideous new proportions.

So did some of the offscreen chicanery seep into the film? Maybe. The word seems to be Garland got his final cut, but I can’t help but wonder if once the fighting began, things both micro and macro just begin to unravel. There is an interesting film peeking out in places, so maybe, if we’re lucky, this is like a Blade Runner type sitch. There are seven different versions of Blade Runner. The original U.S. theatrical release is my least favorite, and it’s largely due to studio intervention. Some 20 years later, Ridley Scott released Blade Runner: The Final Cut, and for my money, it’s the superior version. Will we someday get a 19 hour, frenzied work print of Annihilation that is pure bliss? We can only hope so, but who knows?

The studio doesn’t know. The characters meandering through Area X certainly don’t know. Audiences around the world may never get the chance to know. And me, I don’t know a damn thing. Because nobody knows anything, not really. Where that can work to our surprise, in this case, it’s the not knowing that sinks Annihilation.  ​

​—Monte Monreal

As we kick off the holiday season in one of the most explosive years in modern American politics, it seems like the perfect time for good progressives to gather together and be uplifted by a story about a passionate crusader for civil justice. But if you walk into Roman J. Israel, Esq. expecting the Battle Hymn of The Resistance, you might come out disappointed.
 
The film touches on inequality in the justice system and some other topical themes, but it veers away from those discussions without really exploring them in much depth. Instead, we follow the title character as he stumbles and mumbles through three weeks of internal conflict, acting as both plaintiff and defendant in his own personal trial of the century. The film is more enjoyable if you look at it as a character study rather than a structured narrative, and Denzel Washington’s strong performance saves a film that might otherwise might be pretty tough to get through.
 
Washington plays Roman, a rumpled legal savant whose noble ideals and bold fashion choices are rooted in a bygone era. He’s worked behind the scenes at the same tiny defense firm for four decades, but abruptly must strike out on his own after the lead attorney suffers a heart attack, leaving him jobless. Thus begins a meandering odyssey in which Roman improbably finds himself fending off job offers from a high-powered defense attorney (Colin Farrell) and kindling a tepid friendship with a kindhearted community organizer (Carmen Ejogo). His ensuing journey dances around the question of whether an old-school approach to grassroots activism can still hack it in a time when civil rights have been derisively rebranded as “identity politics.”
 
Roman is idealistic, principled and persistent, at least on his best days, but his crippling awkwardness all but obscures these strengths. This is where Washington’s talent as a physical actor really shines through: Roman walks with a clumsy gait that progresses into an even clumsier run, and the combined effect of his bad posture and nervous tics make him look uncomfortable and out of place pretty much wherever he goes.
 
It’s not long before Roman is tempted by the allure of the corner office, and despite believing that he’s in it for all the right reasons, he struggles to resist the flirtations of wealth and power and criminal intrigue.
 
“I’m tired of doing the impossible for the ungrateful,” he says, defensively revealing a core frustration of being a committed advocate: putting in an immense amount of thankless work, often with little in the way of tangible payoff.
 
It’s not a bad message, but it gets muddled by an uneven tone. Is this a legal drama about an underdog who crusades against injustice, breaks all the rules, and wins cases that ought to be sure losers? A dark comedy about a bumbling but endearing do-gooder and his quest to find love? A crime thriller about a regular guy who somehow gets mixed up in the criminal underworld? The film somewhat erratically skips around between each of these storylines, never really committing to one coherent thread.
 
In one sense it’s good that the film defies categorization—for long stretches we get to see Roman just being himself, for better or worse, without knowing where the story will take him. However, the uneven tone does make it harder to swallow some pretty lazy plot shortcuts.
 
This meandering approach worked much better in writer/director Dan Gilroy’s terrific 2014 thriller Nightcrawler, which also happens to focus on a character who just kind of floats through life, taking advantage of whatever opportunities happen to fall into his lap. But while Jake Gyllenhaal’s antihero in that film is essentially an unhinged bottom-feeder, Roman acknowledges his moral quandaries and does his best to navigate a justice system that isn’t built for noble causes.
 
But at the end of the day, neither Roman J. Israel, Esq. nor its title character really know what they want to be.
 
— Rob Heidrick

Surrounded by such easily accessible excesses in our lives, it can be tough to know when to tap out—when to say “enough.” “Maybe it was a bad idea to marathon Stranger Things until 3 a.m.” “Perhaps spending my morning reading plot synopses for every film in the Saw series out of morbid curiosity wasn’t the best use of time.” “Why’d I have that third taco?” Etc.

When you’re drinking from the firehose, you end up feeling hosed—and can find your thirst replaced with a sense of drowning.
​
That’s where I’ve found myself with superhero movies. Like others who grew up squandering their allowances on Toy Biz X-Men figures and Kenner Batman toys, when Iron Man came and rocket-blasted my adult-sized Superman socks off, I was thrilled with the prospect of a decades-long run of shared comic-book universe films following the colorfully costumed do-gooders of my youth. But then I realized for every Iron Man, there must be an Iron Man 2; for every Guardians of the Galaxy, I’d have to power my way through an Age of Ultron.

The biannual conveyor belt never stops, and after a years-long force-fed binge of superhero schlock, I had become numb to any sense of joy I once derived from seeing the heroes of my childhood comics and cards come to life on the big screen by the time the third Iron Man landed around in 2013.

Enter stage right, Thor: Ragnarok.

I wasn’t. No. I have become wary even of critical acclaim after too many just-OK films got labeled must-sees. “Dude... Logan,” you may have heard. “It’s actually good. Like, it might get a Best Picture nomination—and it should!” (It won’t, and it shouldn’t.) “Captain America: Civil War has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes,” you may have read. (What? No. Why?) Heck, even the The Dark Knight, the would-be Citizen Kane of comic-book movies, only seems like such a beaut' because it’s surrounded by its plain-looking entourage of superhero film friends.