Based on a memoir titled Black Klansman by retired police officer Ron Stallworth, BlacKkKlansman, the a 2018 film from auteur director Spike Lee, will leave you feeling comforted, impassioned, and enraged, by both our country and its characters. Above all else, though, BlacKkKlansman may leave you frustrated by Lee’s unconventional methods and murky politics.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos’s third movie in four years, The Favourite, was released at the end of 2018. A period piece about the reign and relationships of England’s Queen Anne, The Favourite isn’t afraid of having fun at the expense of its subjects’. Movies like The Favourite rarely allow the audience the lavish pleasure of believing that its characters were living, breathing, fallible human beings at one time or another. The Favourite is different. Its characters are cutthroat, duplicitous, and petty, and the result is worth witnessing.
As in the last 30 minutes of The Wolf of Wall Street or Goodfellas, Vice is the unusual extravagance that will have you watching through your fingers. Equally maddening and nauseating, writer-director Adam McKay’s messy Dick Cheney biopic is a must-see for historians and the politically interested alike.
Created in 1966 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Black Panther was the first black superhero published by Marvel Comics and the first notable black comic character published in the United States. Black Panther’s unique characterization as the genius king of a hidden, technologically-advanced African nation made him an obvious target for an adaptation in an era of the superhero-dominated box office. Comic book fans had been clamoring for a Black Panther movie for years, and writer-director Ryan Coogler, alongside the powers that be at Disney, did not disappoint.
Roma is the intimate story of a live-in housekeeper and the family that surrounds her in Mexico City. In spite of the film’s narrow purview, writer-director Alfonso Cuarón’s semi-autobiographical story teems with life.
In unorthodox fashion, Steve McQueen followed a dramatic period piece about slavery with a heist movie centered around a cast of mostly women. That heist movie, Widows, is based on a British crime show of the same name that ran from 1983 to 1985. McQueen, the director and co-writer of Widows (alongside all-star crime-thriller novelist Gillian Flynn) has created an all-time heist movie. While the pair created a timeless thriller, they may have juggled one too many plot points for a two-hour film.
Heartfelt performances from Lady Gaga and actor/director Bradley Cooper are enough to make Cooper’s directorial debut worthy of an encore. A Star is Born, the third remake of the original 1937 film of the same name, is another successful retelling of an apparently ageless story of fame, music, and love.
Over the course of the last five years, the horror movie genre has been on a tear. From the psychological (The Babadook) to the satirical deconstruction (Happy Death Day) and the thriller (Get Out), we seem to have reached a new golden age for scary movies. Hereditary, the first film by writer-director Ari Aster, only adds to that list.
Nearly 500 scripted TV shows aired in each of the last two years, and that number is expected to grow moving forward. As such, your television backlog is probably already overwhelmingly long and getting longer by the minute. Still, BBC America’s Killing Eve, a cat-and-mouse game between MI5 agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and psychopathic assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer), deserves a spot atop your binge list.
A Mixed Review 