Green Book

Despite cliched cover, Green is hardly just black and white. With wit, compelling comedy and impressive empathy, simple story traverses tricky territory, driving past race into territories of class, sexuality & self-defeatism. Deftly spins savior setup so both broken heroes require redemption and each ultimately achieve it without heavy-handed Help.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spine-tinglingly sensational cinematic experience weaves a wonderful alternate world where ground-breaking arachnimation, comic comedy, and philosophical depth can co-exist simultaneously, and even as the brilliantly genre-bending cast of characters struggle to thwart trans-dimensional fusion they introduce our less-advanced reality to futuristic concepts like… genuine diversity, moral ambiguity, and increased spider-sensitivity.

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Free State of Jones

McConaughey isn’t savior enough to rescue this messy movie from the poorly paced pitfalls of its divided story. Bizarre flash-forwards only further undermine a peculiarly instituted structure that dies with the confederacy. Title cards supply documentary tedium while Ali and Mbatha-Raw struggle to serve the masters of shoe-horned in subplots.

Moonlight

Brilliant casting and creative score and cinematography shine precious light onto the utterly dark subject matter of this gritty poem, and careful pacing allows it to break free of the independent slums and into the mainstream. In a film about denying who you are, every actor fills his/her role beautifully.

Hidden Figures

Candy-coated historical fairytale about the time we solved racism. True story is fascinating and worth telling but it struggles to reach orbit while bearing the weight of trying to be so universally likeable. Everyone gets what they want and everyone learns a math lesson: Inhumanly flawless people = adversity overcome.

The Place Beyond the Pines

Cianfrance’s bloody valentine is a three headed mutant character study, with slow deliberate pacing, kept entertaining through some of the curviest curveballs ever thrown and a cast who knock them out of the park.  Powerful and shocking drama boldly introduces hyper-Aristotle’s 3x3 act structure.   Awfully long run-time, but squashes it.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Fincher uses a gimmick to make slow-moving mundane story enjoyable to watch, and the result is exquisitely beautiful, both visually and emotionally. Blanchett and Pitt both shine through not quite satisfactory makeup and visual effects. Hurt slightly by occasional moments of excessive screen-writer cleverness and by similarities to Forrest Gump.