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So that happened...

So Many Movies Happened

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Hey! What did you guys do last year? Did you watch some great TV shows, binge some fabulous whatnot from Netflix? Maybe have a life? Not us! No, sir, we watched 352 movies. And you know what? It was awesome!

Here it is – MaddWolf’s year in movies.

  1. Camera Person
  2. Anomalisa
  3. Sing Street
  4. Weiner
  5. Bright Lights
  6. Live by Night
  7. Gozu
  8. The Autopsy of Jane Doe
  9. Patriot’s Day
  10. Silence
  11. Detour
  12. Trespass Against Us
  13. Split
  14. Don’t Knock Twice
  15. xXx: The Return of Xander Cage
  16. Founder
  17. A Dog’s Purpose
  18. Soul Survivors
  19. Comedian
  20. Resident Evil: Extinction
  21. Reckoning
  22. The Abominable Dr. Phibes
  23. Salesman
  24. Neruda
  25. Saving Banksy
  26. Rings
  27. The Space Between Us
  28. Hidden Figures
  29. La La Land
  30. House of Wax
  31. Monster squad
  32. Hell or High Water
  33. John Wick 2
  34. Oscar-nominated Documentary Shorts
  35. Oscar-nominated Live Shorts
  36. The Red Turtle
  37. The Last Horror Movie
  38. Sorcerer
  39. I Am Not Your Negro
  40. Theater of Blood
  41. Masque of the Red Death
  42. Love, Dance
  43. The Fall of the House of Usher
  44. Fist Fight
  45. Great Wall
  46. The Cure for Wellness
  47. Last Man on Earth
  48. House on Haunted Hill
  49. Dark Night
  50. The Girl with All the Gifts
  51. Get Out
  52. Collide
  53. A United Kingdom
  54. Socially Relevant Shorts
  55. Wolverine
  56. The Shack
  57. Logan
  58. Kong: Skull Island
  59. Stitches
  60. The Ottoman Lieutenant
  61. Staying Vertical
  62. The Lure
  63. Kedi
  64. My Scientology Movie
  65. Beauty and the Beast
  66. The Arcadian
  67. The Belko Experiment
  68. The Street Where We Live
  69. Hollow Child
  70. Two Trains Runnin’
  71. Capture, Kill, Release
  72. Trainspotting 2
  73. Power Rangers
  74. Chips
  75. Devil’s Candy
  76. Blackcoat’s Daughter
  77. I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House
  78. Boss Baby
  79. Dutchman
  80. Ghost in the Shell (anime)
  81. The Unwilling
  82. Ghost in the Shell (live action)
  83. Raw
  84. Endor
  85. A Closer Walk with Thee
  86. Phobia
  87. Frantz
  88. Queen of the Desert
  89. Gifted
  90. Aftermath
  91. Going in Style
  92. Prevenge
  93. The Void
  94. Demons Don’t Knock
  95. Mission Control
  96. Rupture
  97. F8 of the Furious
  98. We Are What We Are
  99. Free Fire
  100. Personal Shopper
  101. The Devils
  102. Born in China
  103. Hounds of Love
  104. Colossal
  105. Eraserhead
  106. Three Dead Trick or Treaters
  107. Dry Blood
  108. Three Dead Trick or Treaters
  109. You’re Next
  110. Graduation
  111. Below Her Mouth
  112. The Transfiguration
  113. Sleight
  114. The Circle
  115. Guardians of the Galaxy 2
  116. Norman
  117. The Dinner
  118. Titticut Follies
  119. The Haunt
  120. Murder Made Easy
  121. King Arthur
  122. Antichrist
  123. Snatched
  124. The Wall
  125. Hounds of Love
  126. David Lynch: The Art Life
  127. Lovers
  128. Everything, Everything
  129. Bay Watch
  130. Alien: Covenant
  131. Chuck
  132. The Survivalist
  133. Pirates of the Caribbean 5
  134. Berlin Syndrome
  135. Violet
  136. Wakefield
  137. Wonder Woman
  138. Mulholland Drive
  139. It Comes at Night
  140. The Mummy
  141. Cousin Rachel
  142. Megan Leavy
  143. The 9th Configuration
  144. Lunacy
  145. Stonehearst Asylum
  146. Things Fall Apart
  147. House Sitters
  148. Hell of a Night
  149. Cars 3
  150. 47 Meters Down
  151. They Look Like People
  152. Free to Ride
  153. The Bad Batch
  154. All Eyez on Me
  155. Glass Coffin
  156. Rough Night
  157. The Beguiled (1971)
  158. Memory of a Murder
  159. Among the Living
  160. Transformers: The Last Knight
  161. War for the Planet of the Apes
  162. Baby Driver
  163. The Beguiled (2017)
  164. Beatriz at Dinner
  165. Okja
  166. Happy Hunting
  167. Found Footage 3D
  168. Despicable Me 3
  169. Spiderman: Homecoming
  170. The House
  171. Romeo’s Distress
  172. Two Pigeons
  173. Samurai Rauni
  174. Unnuyayuk
  175. The Hero
  176. American Valhalla
  177. The Big Sick
  178. Tony
  179. Killing Ground
  180. Easter Sunday
  181. After Image
  182.  I Saw the Devil
  183. Wish Upon
  184. Maudie
  185. It Stains the Sands Red
  186. Dunkirk
  187. Defiant Ones
  188. Dawson City
  189. Girls Trip
  190. A Ghost Story
  191. First Kill
  192. Valerian
  193. Little Hours
  194. Gracefield Incident
  195. The Code
  196. Atomic Blonde
  197. Landline
  198. The Emoji Movie
  199. Creature from the Black Lagoon
  200. Down Terrace
  201. Goon 2: Last of the Enforcers
  202. An Inconvenient Sequel
  203. Detroit
  204. Dark Tower
  205. Kidnap
  206. Detroit
  207. Midnight Son
  208. Ice Cream Truck
  209. Big Lebowski
  210. Annabelle: Creation
  211. The Reflecting Skin
  212. A Ghost Story
  213. The Glass Castle
  214. Nut Job 2
  215. Good Time
  216. The Ghoul
  217. Hitman’s Bodyguard
  218. Whose Streets?
  219. Dave Made a Maze
  220. Wind River
  221. Logan Lucky
  222. 2001
  223. Nosferatu the Vampyre
  224. Bushwick
  225. Thale
  226. Dance of the Dead
  227. Lemon
  228. Leap!
  229. Ingrid Goes West
  230. Patti Cake$
  231. Logan Lucky
  232. The Trip to Spain
  233. The Oath
  234. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
  235. Salem’s Lot
  236. Beside Bowie
  237. Charismata
  238. Megan is Missing
  239. It
  240. Crown Heights
  241. Home Again
  242. Mothman of Point Pleasant
  243. Twins of Evil
  244. Devil Rides Out
  245. Brides of Dracula
  246. Columbus
  247. Dracula: Prince of Darkness
  248. Vampire Lovers
  249. Red Christmas
  250. Menashe
  251. Frankenstein Created Woman
  252. Ginger Snaps
  253. mother!
  254. The Spawning
  255. Loon
  256. The Muse
  257. Hostile
  258. Torment
  259. She Was So Pretty 2
  260. Nightmare
  261. Woodshock
  262. Battle of the Sexes
  263. Super Dark Times
  264. Nothing Bad Can Happen
  265. American Made
  266. Rabies
  267. Feed
  268. Blade Runner
  269. Gerald’s Game
  270. Blade Runner 2049
  271. Dead Alive
  272. Le Accelerator
  273. The Mountain Between Us
  274. New Nightmare
  275. Rock, Paper, Dead
  276. Flesh of the Void
  277. Tragedy Girls
  278. Greasy Strangler
  279. Marshall
  280. Happy Death Day
  281. The Foreigner
  282. Professor Martsen and the Wonder Women
  283. Hellions
  284. Brawl in Cellblock 99
  285. Spielberg
  286. Blade Runner 2049
  287. Capture, Kill, Release
  288. Jungle
  289. Only The Brave
  290. Mark Felt
  291. Snowman
  292. Same Kind of Different as Me
  293. The Florida Project
  294. Suburbicon
  295. Thor: Ragnarok
  296. Bad Mom’s Christmas
  297. Wonderstruck
  298. Blade of the Immortal
  299. Killing of a Sacred Deer
  300. Jigsaw
  301. Goodbye Christopher Robin
  302. LBJ
  303. Thor: Ragnarok
  304. El Topo
  305. Daddy’s Home 2
  306. Murder on the Orient Express
  307. Big Bad Wolves
  308. Mayhem
  309. Poor Alice
  310. Hex
  311. The Square
  312. Lady Bird
  313. Justice League
  314. Wonder
  315. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
  316. Strange Frequency
  317. Deadtime Stories
  318. From a Whisper to a Scream
  319. Creepshow
  320. The Man Who Invented Christmas
  321. Who Is Lydia Loveless?
  322. The Disaster Artist
  323. Coco
  324. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
  325. The Post
  326. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamar Story
  327. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
  328. Lady Bird
  329. BPM
  330. Sweet Virginia
  331. Downsizing
  332. Last Flag Flying
  333. Thelma
  334. The Big Sick
  335. I, Tonya
  336. Wonder Wheel
  337. War for the Planet of the Apes
  338. Shape of Water
  339. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
  340. Jane
  341. Frailty
  342. Ferdinand
  343. Call Me By Your Name
  344. Loving Vincent
  345. Darkest Hour
  346. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
  347. Pitch Perfect 3
  348. All the Money in the World
  349. The Greatest Showman
  350. Molly’s Game
  351. Mudbound
  352. Mom and Dad

New In Theaters

Big Top PT

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The Greatest Showman

by Hope Madden

In so many ways, The Greatest Showman is a wildly inappropriate vision of the life of PT Barnum—a politician, spokesman for temperance, abolitionist and, above all things, an outsized promoter and self-promoter. He’d been all these things for decades before he dipped his toe into the circus industry, but what fun is that story?

Let’s rewrite. We need romance, lessons, heartwarming children and resolvable, tidy drama. Barnum as a tot, working dirty-faced and split-shoed besides his father, tailoring for Dickensian clients and wages. But he has dreams. Big dreams.

Yes, the film simplifies the actual story of Barnum’s life to its barest lessons-to-be-learned minimum. The oversimplification spills into the core conflict (of many) in the man’s actual history: his presentation and monetization of “human curiosities.”

But maybe that’s where this movie is closest to the truth. It is selling you an enjoyable time, spinning your head with breathless setpieces, color, glamour, surprise, happiness. Sleight of hand. And at the same time selling the tale that, no matter how Barnum may have used these people for his own profit, this is really a story of empowerment.

“Some critics might have even called this show a celebration of humanity,” says Barnum’s harshest critic, New York Herald writer James Gordon Bennett.

As genuinely if superficially enjoyable as The Greatest Showman is, there is something unseemly in embracing so tidy a view.

Still, Hugh Jackman—maybe the most charismatic performer in modern film—is in great voice in yet another big, big musical. His earnest likeability and exuberance convince you to disregard your instincts on this film just as surely as his Barnum uses the same tactics to lure uncertain outcasts out of the shadows and onto the stage.

Michelle Williams fares less well as Barnum’s wife Charity, saddled as she is with the bottomless devotion and forgiveness that is the mark of the underwritten spouse character. Rebecca Ferguson mines for emotional clarity in a small role and a magnetic Keala Settle is a natural fit for the heart and soul of Barnum’s “curiosities.”

Director Michael Gracey, working from a script by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon, crafts a Moulin Rouge-esque vision that transports you, which is appropriate when tackling the life of PT Barnum.

It also works to convince you that all this—the spotlight, the manipulation, the exploitation, the laughter and the admiration—was the best possible thing for Barnum’s performers.

Barnum might have liked that spin, too, but maybe that’s the problem.

New In Theaters

The Pitch is Back

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Pitch Perfect 3

by Hope Madden

Did anyone think to themselves this Christmas season, I wonder what those acapella singers from Pitch Perfect are doing now?

Me, either. And yet, Pitch Perfect 3 hits theaters this weekend.

The Bellas have mostly graduated from college by now, dealing with careers, the daily grind and wishing they were still singing in an all-girl, no-instrument band. So they take their talents to the USO to compete with a country group, a rock band and a hip hop duo to land the opening slot for DJ Khaled.

I know that almost sounds like a plot, and there is this side bit about an international criminal and a kidnapping, but honest to God, this is the most disposable, pointless movie of the season. (Full disclosure—I haven’t seen Father Figures yet.)

Director Trish Sie can’t find a pace or visual style to suit the project, which only emphasizes the weakness in any shadow of a storyline.

Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson, along with most of the Bellas, return to vocal action. There’s nothing fresh or appealing about the music, but if that’s your bag, there you go.

Wilson’s Fat Amy still says amusingly inappropriate things, as do the always welcome John Michael Higgins (“We’ll stick to you like mom jeans to a camel toe,”) and Elizabeth Banks. Why are the announcers of the college acapella championships involved in a USO gig?

Writers Key Cannon and Mike White realize this makes little sense, so they devise a knowingly ludicrous excuse for it. In fact, it’s this self-referential tendency that provides the film’s only clever laughs.

Well, “laugh” is a strong word, but there are passably enjoyable moments. The rest of it is mainly insufferable: catty, meandering and needless.

New In Theaters, Slider

Fightin’ Words

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Darkest Hour

by Hope Madden

Back in the day—before the mustachioed Commissioner Gordon or the bewitching Sirius Black—back in the way back of the 80s and 90s, Gary Oldman was known for disappearing into real-life characters. Whether it was his Sid Vicious or Lee Harvey Oswald or Ludwig Van Beethoven, Oldman could cease to be, leaving nothing behind but the most amazing reimagining of true life.

So the fact that he’s magnificent in Darkest Hour should come as no surprise.

Besides his physical transformation, thanks to what may be the single greatest achievement in fat suits in all of moviedom, Oldman convinces by capturing the spirit of Winston Churchill.

In retrospect we know Churchill’s fighting spirit was desperately necessary— his nation was facing unfathomable odds and dealing with an establishment’s inclination toward surrender. But it’s Oldman’s performance that makes us understand why so very few were able to trust not just Churchill’s vision, but Churchill.

With the aid of an excellent turn by Kristin Scott Thomas as Churchill’s wife Clementine, Oldman makes the Prime Minister knowable: driven, insecure, passionate, drunk, uncertain, romantic and somehow lovable. The performance is effortlessly layered and authentic and honestly the best work the veteran actor has done in decades.

Credit a crisp screenplay by Anthony McCarten for providing context by way of illuminating points of view, each one deftly animated by an understated ensemble delivering nuanced performances. Ben Mendelsohn’s King George and Stephen Dillane’s Viscount Halifax, in particular, quietly but assuredly manifest the uneasy but shifting perspective of a nation on the brink of possible annihilation.

Joe Wright’s direction sometimes feels fanciful given the seriousness of the story, but he works mightily with his poetic camera to enliven what could otherwise have been a claustrophobic chamber piece.

Instead, he’s crafted a fine bookend to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. Darkest Hour glimpses the backroom politics that led to the ingenious and breathless rescue of England’s armed forces the summer of 1940. It lacks the gut-punch or cinematic mastery of Nolan’s film, but it does boast one hell of a performance.

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of December 18

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Get excited, people. What may turn out to be the best film of 2017 is available this week on DVD, as is undoubtedly the most polarizing and discussed flick of the year, mother! Get you some!

Click the film title for the full review.

Dunkirk

(DVD)

mother!

(DVD)

The Lego Ninjago Movie

The Screening Room

The Screening Room: STAAAR WARS! (ALMOST) NOTHING BUT STAAR WARS!

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Action packed week in The Screening Room. We run down the spoiler-free pros and cons of  Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Shape of Water, Wonder Wheel and Ferdinand and have a look at what’s new in home entertainment.

Listen HERE.

New In Theaters

Seeing Red

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Ferdinand

by Hope Madden

I’m thrilled to announce that Ferdinand, the new animated feature from Carlos Saldanha (Ice Age, Rio), did not ruin my childhood.

Whew!

The story of a peaceful if enormous bull who’d far rather sniff flowers than fight matadors was my favorite book as a little kid, but to stretch these 32 or so sentences into a 90-minute feature-length film, there would have to be padding.

I worried about the padding.

Credit a team of six screenwriters for finding—for the most part—organic ways to develop the story. We meet Ferdinand as a young bull being raised with a handful of other bulls specifically to fight in the ring. Then we follow him on his adventure to freedom from the ring and back into the sights of the matador.

That doesn’t mean the film never feels padded. It definitely does. But a slew of vocal talents including John Cena, Bobby Cannavale and Kate McKinnon helps to keep the film afloat.

Rarely laugh-out-loud funny, a bit bloated and a tad dark at times, Ferdinand still manages to entertain. It looks good, bears a social conscience and remains more or less true to the simple “be who you are” core that made Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson’s picture book so lovely.

New In Theaters

Swimming in Romance

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The Shape of Water

by Hope Madden

In its own way, The Creature from the Black Lagoon is a tragic romance. But what if it weren’t? Tragic, I mean. What if beauty loved the beast?

It seems like a trend this year.

An unforgettable Sally Hawkins—an actor who has never hit a false note in her long and underappreciated career—gets her chance to lead a big, big show. She plays Elisa, a mute woman on the janitorial team for a research institute in Cold War era Baltimore.

Enter one night a malevolent man (Michael Shannon), and a mysterious container. Color Elisa intrigued.

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro is an overt romantic. So many of his films—Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, Crimson Peak—swim in romance, but he’s never made as dreamily romantic or hypnotically sensual a film as The Shape of Water. And he hasn’t made a film this glorious since his 2006 masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth.

Del Toro favorite Doug Jones—Pan’s Pale Man and Hellboy’s Abe Sapien—gets back into a big, impressive suit, this time to play Amphibian Man. His presence is once again the perfect combination of the enigmatic and the familiar.

The supporting cast—Shannon, Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins and Michael Stuhlbarg—are among the strongest character actors Hollywood has to offer and del Toro ensures that they have material worthy of their talent. Each character is afforded not only his or her own personality but peculiarity, which is what makes us all both human and unique—important themes in keeping with the story. With Hawkins and Jones, they populate a darkly whimsical, stylish and retro world.

Characteristic of del Toro’s work, Shape of Water looks amazing. Its color scheme of appropriate greens and blues also creates the impossible truth of sameness within otherness, or the familiar with the alien.

The aesthetic is echoed in Alexandre Desplat’s otherworldly score and mirrored by Dan Laustsen’s dancing camera.

The end result is a beautiful ode to outsiders, love and doing what you must.

The Screening Room

The Screening Room: Master of Disaster

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We have one full week to wait until the new Star Wars. What will we do? Well, there are a couple of great movies you can see in the meantime. We talk through The Disaster Artist and Thelma, plus hip you to what’s new in home entertainment.

Listen to the full podcast HERE.

New In Theaters

Free Bird

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Thelma

by Hope Madden

A surprising, gorgeously filmed prologue creates a mood: a little girl, bundled in a red coat, follows her shotgun-toting father across a frozen pond into the snowy woods. She looks periodically through the ice at the fish moving beneath the ice. In the quiet woods, the two spy a deer. The girl holds her breath, staring silently at the animal while her father prepares to shoot.

The film never again rises to the exquisite, icy tension of its opening scene, but it does work your nerves and keep you guessing. As we follow that little girl, Thelma (Eili Harboe), through the uncomfortable, lonely first weeks of college we gather that her parents are very Christian and very over-protective.

Things could have gone all predictable and preachy from there, but co-writer/director Joachim Trier knows what you’re thinking and he plans to use it against you.

Thelma is a coming-of-age film at its cold, dark heart. The horror here lies in the destructive nature of trying to be something you are not, but here again, nothing in Thelma is as simple or cleanly cut as the beautiful framing and crystal clear camera work suggest.

As familiar as many of the conflicts feel, Trier never lets you forget that something’s not entirely right about Thelma. She seems normal, maybe just sheltered, but that opening scene nags at you.

Like Julia Ducournau’s magnificent coming-of-age horror Raw, Thelma dives into the issues swirling around post-adolescent freedoms and taboos in daring and insightful ways. Trier also fills the screen with metaphorical dangers of indulgence and self-acceptance, although his protagonist’s inner conflicts lead to different results. Where Raw’s horror is corporeal, Thelma’s is psychological.

Thelma takes its time and lets its lead unveil a fully realized, deeply complex character full of contradictions—inconsistencies that make more sense as the mystery unravels. Though the result never terrifies, it offers an unsettling vision of self-discovery that’s simultaneously familiar and unique.