Lady Bird

Lady Bird is not about the former First Lady of the United States. A film about her husband, LBJ, came out at the same time to less than noticeable box office. No, this Lady Bird is the central character of Greta Gerwig's tale centered around her hometown, Sacramento. This isn't her directorial debut, having co-directed Nights and Weekends, but it's her first solo directed effort. And it's a memorable one.

Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), aka Lady Bird, is on her senior year in Catholic High School in 2002. She wants to get far away from Sacramento, preferably New York, for College. Her parents, Marion (Laurie Metcalf) and Larry (Tracy Letts), try to deal with her stubborn personality. She gives the theater program a try. She attracts a few boyfriends, Danny (Lucas Hedges) and Kyle (Timothée Chalamet). She deals with her friendships with Julie (Beanie Feldstein) and Jenna (Odeya Rush). In the end, she learns that growing up isn't what she thought it is.

The film gets going with its dry sense of humor. The first scene goes from a typical teen/mother argument to Lady Bird jumping out of a moving car (she's fine). Lady Bird's attempt to show off a strict nun (Lois Smith) earn her the Sister's good humor instead. That Lady Bird lives "on the wrong side of the tracks" was amusing too. The jokes directed at Sacramento got a few chuckles from me and the Modesto audience I watched it with. It does know when to get serious and you'll feel for Lady Bird when things go wrong.

Ronan and the ensemble are a great assembly of actors. Lady Bird and her classmates act like High Schoolers instead of grownups playing teenagers. Their chemistry is perfect. Lady Bird herself is a strong protagonist. She makes mistakes and ruffles feathers but she tries to make amends. Her Mother's unwillingness to connect with her amends understandably gets her mad. The final scene is open-ended but it leaves Lady Bird on a positive note.

One of the best technical aspects is Nick Houy's editing. The editing can turn a sweet scene sour, like a few climactic scenes which expose some of Lady Bird's immature fibs. They're both total plot swerves. Sam Levy's cinematography also illuminates the city scenes in rich colors. Jon Brion's score was fine.

Lady Bird is a film you'll hear more about in the next few months. It goes by quick and clearly for 93 minutes. It's definitely worth the unanimous praise heaped upon it. Even if you don't live in the vicinity of Sacramento, you'll find plenty of humor and drama in this portrait of teenage confusion and life itself.

Coco

Coco is Pixar's latest guaranteed Oscar winner. Why? It's the most entertaining and emotional animated film this year. It's just as emotional as Inside Out. Let's see what it's about.

Miguel Rivera (Anthony Gonzalez) comes from a family of shoemakers in Santa Cecilia, Mexico. He wants to be a musician like his idol, singing sensation Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), who died in a mishap on stage. His great-great-great grandpa left the family to be a musician, so his family have shunned music ever since. The only photo of the man has his face mysteriously ripped off. His great grandma Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguía) is declining with age and wonders when her papa will come home.

On the Day of the Dead, Miguel finds out that he might actually be de la Cruz's grandson. He wants a guitar to participate in a concert that day. So he decides to take de la Cruz's. One strum and Miguel finds himself in the Land of the Dead. His ancestors recognize him and decide to help him return home. But that involves swearing off music forever. So he goes off and meets Hector (Gael García Bernal), a scoundrel ghost who wants to see his last living descendant before it's too late. Hector decides to help Miguel find de la Cruz so he can bless him back to the living world. They'll have to hurry because at sunrise, Miguel will be a permanent resident and Hector will be deader than dead.

The screen story was conceived by four writers, including director Lee Unkrich. It's the kind of animated story that ought to win an Oscar (but probably won't). Once Miguel figures out his connection to de la Cruz, the story seems all too easy to figure out. But it goes off in unexpected ways. His family's resistance to music seems unfair at first, but they have more sympathetic reasons for it. Hector turns out to be far more important than he appears. Dante, a dimwitted street dog, is great comic relief who also turns out to be more than he seems (kind of). It's an understandable story with an emotional resolution.

Miguel is a likable protagonist with a reasonable goal. We can feel how unfair his family's restrictions are for him. We're surprised when the mysteries surrounding him, his family, Hector and de la Cruz are revealed. We're also entertained by his adventures with Hector and Dante. And that ending...

Pixar's track record for technical excellence continues. Both the Lands of the Living and Dead are colorful locales. The ghosts are an eclectic cast of characters. The sound designers and editors get their jobs done. The music is headlined by another memorable Michael Giacchino score and Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez's ballad Remember Me.

Coco is another unforgettable Disney/Pixar film. Its story and characters will get to you long after you leave the theater. It deserves to be seen on the big screen, flatscreen or 3D, night or day. That's how great this is.

The fiesta begins, like it or not, with a 20 minute long short starring Olaf the Snowman. Olaf's Frozen Adventure has him go around and find holiday traditions for Anna and Elsa. It's a fun short but it's length was a bit too much for a feature starter. My theater had a disclaimer warning patrons it would play before the movie. But rest assured. Coco is worth the wait.

The Florida Project

The Florida Project. It took me a while to process my thoughts on this film. I'm still trying to figure them out as I type this review out. Let's see how I do.

This is a kind of movie I classify as a "stuff happens movie." There's not much plot, as far as I can tell, but it consists of scenes in an a life. In this case, it's the life of Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), a poor girl in Kissimmee, Florida. She lives in a motel, the Magic Castle, with her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), located near Disney World (the title being a codename for the resort). Moonee mainly hangs out with her friends, Scooty (Christopher Rivera) and Jancey (Valeria Coto) and gets into all sorts of adventures. They ask people for change, shut the motel's power for giggles and pull pranks on people. They even set a vacant house on fire!

Bobby Hicks (Willen Dafoe) is the manager of the Magic Castle. He lets impoverished guests stay as long as needed. But Halley's rancid attitude prompts him to put his foot down. He brings in the DCF when Halley's attitude goes too far. So Moonee has to act and...

That's the moment the movie ends!

The minimal plot and its vignettes might be too much at 115 minutes. The bleak tone is an even worse problem. Halley has a believable problem as a poor, single mother, but her attitude makes it hard to sympathize with her. Meanwhile, Moonee's own attitude led to some incidents. But it later becomes clear she doesn't know any better. She sees the world as special even as the adults don't. It makes one want to tell her "don't grow up to be your mother." But what kind of point did the abrupt ending have to make?

The MVP is Dafoe. He's warm, protective and funny as Bobby. In the best vignette, Bobby hushes away a trio of cranes who walked into the driveway of his motel. He also doesn't hesitate to chase a creepy old man away from the kids. He also tries his best to assure Moonee even when Halley's attitude grates on him.

Director/Editor/Co-Writer/Co-Producer Sean Baker, who shot his last film Tangerine on I-Phones, gives cinematography duties to Alexis Zabe. The images exemplify the pastel colors of Moonee's neighborhood motels and the nightlife in Kissimmee. The editing especially works during the vacant house incident. Scooty lights a pillow and sets it in the fireplace and it cuts to them running. We can tell it figuratively and literally went up in smoke. The last scene switches from 35mm film to digital which contributes to its weirdness.

The Florida Project is a film that's sure to throw you off on first viewing. That's what happened to me. But then again, Baker probably intended to challenge a few perceptions of poverty. You'll probably understand these intentions even if the bleakness overwhelms you. What am I to do?

Justice League

Marvel has had its heroes together on the big screen for years. It's now time for DC to get its Super Friends together. The Justice League is here to fight for truth and justice and redemption with moviegoers. The end result has some issues, but it's amazingly coherent given the turmoil it experienced this year.

The evil Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) wants a pack of Macguffins called Mother Boxes. He had them years ago but a Last Alliance of Fantasy Characters thwarted him. Why does he want them? Because they can terraform planets to make it like his home planet, Apokolips, when they're assembled. He's going to Earth and get them back.

Meanwhile, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) join forces to save the day. They bring together The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) to their team. Flash is the only one who jumps at the call while the other two wait a while. And what of Superman (Henry Cavill), who perished at the end of Batman v. Superman? The Man of Steel comes back in eerie fashion late into the narrative.

Co-Writer Joss Whedon came aboard when director Zack Snyder, who has story credit, departed after a family tragedy this year. His screenplay with Chris Terrio is a serviceable spine of a film. The heroes have to stop a bad guy from doing stuff. That's understandable. Its plot points are solved reasonably, save for how Steppenwolf acquires the last Mother Box. But Steppenwolf comes across like a third-rate Sauron with a thin goal. Cyborg and Aquaman only join the League when Steppenwolf knocks on their front doors. The Flash is already an eager hero as we see he has a wrongly incarcerated dad (Billy Crudup). Aquaman's backstory is brought up once with no pay off. That's a lot to stretch for two hours.

The film's saving grace comes with Ezra Miller as The Flash. His eagerness and humor were aspects that Man of Steel and Batman v Superman needed a lot. He has a convincing character arc where he learns to be a capable hero. It also helps that his speed abilities were the visual highlight of the film. I very much want to see a movie with this character.

Wonder Woman was also great too. Her rescue of civilians from a terrorist attack was outstanding.

There's an acceptable league of technical professionals. The editors did all right with the action scenes but they overdid it sometimes. They also did their best to coalesce the scenes shot during this year's reshoots. A few others have thought ill about the end results (especially regarding Cavill's scenes), but I didn't notice. Danny Elfman has another memorable score which incorporates his theme from Batman and John Williams's Superman March. The production design was fine comic book scenery; Gotham City, in particular, looked straight out of Batman. Cinematographer Fabian Wagner's use of color on our heroes' suits is striking.

Justice League isn't the deepest film about superheroes but it gets the matinee job done. It avoids some of the most divisive mistakes of its predecessors and introduces some new ones. It's a hard film to think about even when the plot is so basic. I hope this inspires future franchise makers to know what they're doing before they sally forth. You don't want to spend $300 million per installment on snap decisions.

Murder on the Orient Express

Agatha Christie's iconic Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is all aboard for a cinematic makeover. One of his most famous cases, that of the Murder on the Orient Express, was most famously presented on the big screen in 1974. That version had Sidney Lumet directing Albert Finney as Poirot and an all-star cast of suspects. This new take has Kenneth Branagh direct himself as Poirot and an all-star cast of suspects. The end result is one enjoyable scenic mystery tour.

Poirot opens the film by solving a robbery in Jerusalem. Afterwards, he goes to Istanbul and books a return trip to London on the Orient Express. One of the passengers, a shady businessman named Mr. Ratchett (Johnny Depp), wants to hire Poirot as his bodyguard. Poirot refuses to take the job. Eventually, someone kills Ratchett in the dead of night, while the train derails after an avalanche.

Poirot gets to work when the deed is found. Because of the train's circumstances, he figures the murderer is still snowbound on the Orient Express. He interviews an eclectic cast of characters, which include Ratchett's assistant MacQueen (Josh Gad), rich widow Mrs. Hubbard (Michelle Pfieffer) and Dr. Arbuthnot (Leslie Odom Jr.). Poirot wants to punish the guilty party even if Ratchett wasn't exactly nice. But Poirot figures he might have to this time once he determines the motive of the case.

The screenplay by Michael Green breezes by capably for 114 minutes. Poirot's opening case made for a great display of his personality and skill. It also showcases his sense of humor, even a joke I sensed a mile away (is that good?). You'll have to pay attention to the investigation scenes or the summation might lose you a bit. The flashback scenes, especially those which elaborated on the motive, were striking. 

The murderer's row of actors was pretty good. Kenneth Branagh portrayed Poirot as a delightfully smug and competent detective with a distinct Daddy Walrus mustache. The case's solution certainly affected him. Josh Gad proved he could play a dramatic role (as far as I know) as MacQueen. Mrs. Hubbard made her most impact once she revealed her relevance to the case. The same was true for Dr. Arbuthnot. Count Andrenyi's (Sergei Polunin) sudden ballistic attack on a paparazzi belonged in a pure comedy, but it was still funny weird. Other highlights included Willem Dafoe as Dr. Hardman and Judi Dench as Princess Dragomiroff. 

There's also a fine technical crew aboard for this mystery. Jim Clay's production design visualizes the best looking train station since Hugo and a fine train to set the story. Hans Zambarloukos's cinematography pulls off several impressive long takes and scenery shots in 65mm. Alexandra Byrne's costume design and the makeup design give the characters great period looks. There's also a strong score by Patrick Doyle, which do their best work when the Express disembarks the station and in the Flashbacks.

Murder on the Orient Express is a good introduction to Hercule Poirot. It's an entertaining, involving and panoramic event movie that gets things going from the studio logo on. I'd be set for another Poirot movie in case they make one more. They already hint at the location of his next case, which was already filmed in the 70's.

Thor: Ragnarok

He sat out of the Civil War, but Thor has made it back to the big screen. Once again embodied by Chris Hemsworth, the Norse God of Thunder as envisioned by Marvel is here in Thor: Ragnarok. It's the best solo adventure from this electric Avenger.

Our hero opens the film by fighting his way out of the domain of Surtur (Clancy Brown), the fire demon prophesied to end Asgard in the titular Ragnarok. Thor puts down the demon and returns to Asgard. He promptly exposes Odin (Anthony Hopkins) as Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in disguise. The real All-Father is on Earth. After Thor and Loki reunite with him, Odin dies. As if on cue, they're greeted by Hela (Cate Blanchett), their sister and the queen of the underworld. She destroys Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, and banishes them to Sakaar, a junk planet owned by a petulant Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum).

Loki sits pretty with the Grandmaster while Thor fights as a Gladiator. His opponent is The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo/Lou Ferrigno), who was last seen going AWOL in Age of Ultron. The Gladiator Games are fun but Thor has to get going to stop Hela from taking over the multiverse. Using his brains and brawns, he gets Hulk, Loki, and the Asgardian bounty hunter Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) into his team, The Revengers, on a mission to escape Sakaar and fight Hela.

This sequel is directed by Taika Waititi, who also plays Surtur and a rock guy named Korg via motion capture and voices the latter. The end result is a lively cosmic adventure. Everything from the costume and production design on Sakaar to the chemistry of the stars is colorful. It knows how to balance humor and seriousness pretty well. The ending was a surprise.

Our heroes, Thor and Loki, are reliable Marvels as always. Valkyrie's entrance was hilarious and her personality was perfectly tough. Hulk and his alter-ego, Bruce Banner, were also welcome. The Grandmaster was likable at first until he sinks to petulance during the Gladiator Games. Korg is great comic relief. Meanwhile, Hela is a formidable, hammy villain while Skurge (Karl Urban), her Executioner, has a fine, yet somewhat rushed redemption arc. There's also a nice cameo from Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), expanding upon the mid-credit scene from his movie last year.

I've already mentioned the colorful production and costume design. I can also elaborate on the point. There's a wide variety of amazing aliens and warriors to behold on Sakaar and Asgard. The visual effects and makeup departments do their parts well to visualize these characters. The CGI here has visualized the best version of the Hulk so far, Korg's rocky appearance and the scary Surtur himself. Hela's horned battle form also employs some great editing with some CGI. Mark Mothersbaugh's score suits the film's grand tone and it makes excellent use of The Immigrant Song twice.

Thor: Ragnarok is another Marvel from, well, Marvel. Its 130 minutes make it another meaningful trip throughout the cosmos. Thor loses friends and allies, including some absentees from this film, but he triumphs. It's a fine ending to Thor's story even though you know it's not the end. The end credits promise he'll return in Avengers: Infinity War, and the mid-credit scene apparently sets it up. The post credits scene is another amusing bit with the Grandmaster.