The Favourite

A Clockwork Lyndon applies Lanthimos’ self-aware style to an otherwise conventional albeit hilarious premise to shockingly entrancing effect despite a seemingly stroke-slowed final act. All About Emma features animalistic actresses wigging out wonderfully amidst sea of wigged men while wielding wickedly smart dialog that feels equal parts Shakespeare and Sorkin.

La La Land

La La Lash substitutes Crazy Stupid Lovers for Damien’s demonically driven drummer in another tale of uncompromising pursuit of artistic excellence. Technically impressive filmmaking perfectly remixes traditional musical style into a visually and aurally delightful Los Angeles love letter. Suffers pacing st-st-stutter midway, but even this feels like deliberate artistry.

The Amazing Spider-man 2

Amazingly comic-booky film fully embraces tone of source despite overlong runtime and villainously deceptive advertising.  A fun physics-free farce featuring plenty of in-jokes, and a few electrifying tidbits of emotion.  Ray plugs in as Spidey takes a dip in the deadpool with endless thread of witty asides.  Oh, and Rhino.

Birdman

Black-Swan-man embraces gravity with style despite feather-ruffling from Norton’s Norton and stoned Stone.  Watts electrifies with return to Mulholland while Galifaeioukis galls by emerging from comedic ferns.  Inairitu’s mockery of editing and soundly designed sound design give wings to a film that seemed like a long shot and still does.

Movie 43

Outstanding cast of A-listers assemble to breathe life into SNL rejected short scripts… and fail. Stolen jokes, weak performances, and senseless frame story further ensure disaster.  Like ‘Funny or Die’ but mostly the latter as each segment manages a moment of humor, then milks it to painful and poisonous death. 

Gangster Squad

Gangsterland proves that with enough star-power, a terrible script can be transformed into an equally terrible movie.  2-dimensional characters babble clichéd lines throughout an overly dumbed-down condensed TV-series plot.  Gosling and Stone make one Crazy Stupid decision after another and Brolin decides this is No City for Penn’s bulldog mask.