Tag: 10s

3SMReviews: 2018 at the Movies

I use Letterboxd to keep track of my movies. If you’re not familiar, it’s like Goodreads, but for movies.* It’s great for keeping track of what you’ve watched, and it also allows you to make as many lists as you want, which is handy when you want to slice and dice things. Among other lists, I keep a list of movies I’ve watched in a given year in movie theaters.

*If you’re not familiar with Goodreads, then do some googling as both of these sites are great for list-making fans who like to give opinions (or not).

Because nearly all movies I watch at theaters are current releases, this list also doubles nicely as a Top-10 list.

And we’re going to get to that Top-10 List in a second. But first, I need to pick my favorite movie of 2018.

Without further ado, my favoirite movie of 2018 was……

3SMReviews: Eighth Grade

Eighth Grade

Eighth Grade is written and directed by Bo Burnham and stars Elsie Fisher who carries that movie on her slumped shoulders. Read my original review here.

Without further ado, here are all the films I watched in 2018 in theaters, ranked.

3SMReviews: 2018 at the movies

My 2018 five-star movies (top 10 are bolded)

  • Eighth Grade
  • Lady Bird
  • Tully
  • I, Tonya
  • The Rider
  • A Star is Born
  • Won’t You Be My Neighbor
  • The Hate U Give
  • Widows
  • The Favourite
  • Coco
  • Black Panther
  • Avengers Infinity War
  • First Man

Of note: The Lady Bird poster isn’t part of my 2018 Top 10. This was my third in-theater viewing, catching a friend up with my 2017 top movie. (It was also the last second-run movie I watched at the Laurelhurst Theater.) Coco is the same deal. It was a 2017 movie I caught up with in 2018.

2018 four-star reviews:

  • A Simple Favor
  • Can You Ever Forgive Me?
  • Outside In
  • Three Identical Strangers
  • Ocean’s Eight
  • BlackKKlansman
  • A Quiet Place
  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
  • Sorry to Bother You
  • Every Day
  • Mary Poppins Returns
  • Love, Simon
  • The Florida Project
  • Phantom Thread

2018 three-star reviews:

3SMReviews: 2018 at the movies
  • Bohemian Rhapsody
  • The Post
  • Darkest Hour
  • Crazy Rich Asians
  • Solo: A Star Wars Story
  • The Shape of Water

2018 two-star reviews:

  • The Sisters Brothers
  • A Wrinkle in Time
  • First Reformed
  • Boy Erased
  • Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
  • Flash Gordon

There were no one-star reviewed movies in the theaters in 2018!

And here’s my list of theaters visited: Academy Theater, Century 16 Eastport, Hollywood Theatre, Kiggens Theater, Laurelhurst Theater, Living Room Theater, McMenamins Baghdad Theater, McMenamins Mission Theater, McMenamins Kennedy School Theater, McMenamins St Johns Theater, Regal City Center Stadium 12, Regal Fox Tower, Regal Lloyd Center, Regal Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin

3SMReviews: Hearts Beat Loud

3SMReviews: Hearts Beat Loud

In director Brett Haley’s Hearts Beat Loud we get the story of a daughter and father in transition.* They write a song during a family jam session, and it gets some play on Spotify, which catapults one-half of the duo into fantasies of this band being the one makes it. This is one of those making music movies and it’s also a family transition movie and I’m a sucker for both of kinds of films.**

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: free via Kanopy Streaming Service (Multnomah County Library for the win!)
Where watched: at home

*The father, played by Nick Offerman, is closing his Brooklyn record store after 17 years, the daughter, Kiersey Clemons (so good in Dope and Neighbors 2,) is headed off to UCLA to start her pre-med journey to become a doctor.
**Plus, there’s a very sweet beginning of a romance with Sasha Lane (who I just really liked in The Miseducation of Cameron Post). Plus, Toni Collette is in it, and all movies are made better by Ms. Collette’s presence.

3SMReviews: Boy Erased

3SMReviews: Boy Erased

Unlike Joel Edgerton’s The Gift, a taut thriller that just keeps ratcheting up the stakes, the energy and momentum in Boy Erased is constantly being depleted by the movie’s flashbacks. There are a lot of heartfelt performances in this movie, but they cannot overcome the movie’s structure. Which is too bad, because there’s good stuff in examining what it’s like to want to be something you aren’t because you can’t be something you are.

Verdict: Skip

Cost: $4.00
Where watched: Academy Theater with S. North
Based on the book Boy Erased by Garrad Conley

3SMReviews: Anne with an “E” seasons 1 and 2

3smreviews: Anne with an E

Anne with an “E” takes the Anne of Green Gables story and characters, grounds it in a trauma-informed viewpoint and steers the series in a different direction than the books.* Amybeth McNulty as Anne carefully balances the tightrope that is Anne’s enthusiasm and (potentially annoying) unbridled joy. The rest of the supporting players are very good, especially Geraldine James and R.H. Thomson as Marilla and Matthew;** plus they have cast the excellent Lucas Jade Zumann*** as Gilbert Blythe.

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home
Adapted from the book: Anne of Green Gables

*I’ve talked to two people who say that the 1985 Megan Follows Anne of Green Gables was THE Anne of Green Gables and there is no reason to ever make another version. One was rather vehement in her statement. I disagree with this view. After all, I watched four versions of the same movie this year. All were made in different decades and brought different things to their recycled plot. Just like this version’s focus on how Anne’s time as an orphan would reverberate even after she was adopted.
**Also quite good: the belt Geraldine James wears throughout the series.
***Who was so amazing in 20th Century Women

3SMReviews: Leave No Trace

3SMReviews: Leave No Trace

In Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie do more with less acting as a father/daughter pair living in a city park* This movie is Tom’s coming of age story as the discovery of their home-in-the-park sets her and her father into “real life” and wakes Tom’s typical adolescent yearning for something different.** Chock full of good, quiet acting by both leads and by a handful of smaller performances (Dale Dickey was particularly good as was Isaiah Stone**), this is a quiet movie of growing up.

Cost: $3.99 via Google Play because I didn’t get around to watching it when it was on Netflix.
Where watched: at home.

*Forest Park, in my own Portland, Oregon. It’s a huge park with trails for miles. This movie is based on a book that was inspired by the mid-2000s discovery of a father/daughter pair living in Forest Park. The story was well-covered by the local media and has stuck with me.
**Not that this leads to acting out like most teenagers would. This entire movie is full of small moments and subtle performances.
***Both actors were also in Granick’s very excellent Winter’s Bone

3SMReviews: Juliet, Naked

3SMReviews: Juliet, Naked

In Juliet, Naked, Jesse Peretz crafts an extremely awkward romantic comedy and takes advantage of the facility of uncomfortable comic timing of Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd and even Ethan Hawke. It’s a great catalog of people in a middle-age place of stagnation and transition with one especially spectacular scene that takes place in a hospital room. I think this movie didn’t quite know what to do with the ending, and that felt a little bumbled, but other than those last five minutes, this was a very fun film.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: $1.50 from Redbox*
Where watched: at home

*I have been stalking this movie at Redbox since Thanksgiving weekend when I checked five different machines. It was always checked out.

3SMReviews: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

3SMReviews: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse wasn’t at the top of my watch list, but it was at the top of the boyfriend’s and so we went. And I’m so glad because this movie has the most stunning, innovative animation I’ve seen in a very long time.* The introduction of other Spider-Men/Women/Animals added a layer of fun and the voice acting was superb.**

Cost: $9.40
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12 Cinemas with Matt as part of our Christmas Eve movie viewing tradition.

*Now that animation is growing ever closer to looking like film and the Uncanny Valley issue grows ever smaller, it was great to see this film play with crisp, realistic images and then also use a bunch of other things (that probably have names that I don’t know) to ground us fully in an animated world.
**Shameik Moore (so good in 2015’s Dope) was great as Miles Morales and Jake Johnson (as Peter B. Parker) was perhaps my favorite Peter Parker ever. *** I’ll leave you to discover the other voices.
***Though I have a bit of a Jake Johnson thing. Win it All, Drinking Buddies, Safety Not Guaranteed

3SMReviews: Mary Poppins Returns

3SMReviews: Mary Poppins Returns

Director Rob Marshall provides a worthy sequel in Mary Poppins Returns, gathering both actors worthy of the weight that is continuing a beloved story and also by sprinkling in cameos that do not feel forced. The songs were good, if not spectacular, though the full-cast dance sequences were spectacular and carried the music.* Overall this was a good way to spend an afternoon.**

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: $9.00
Where watched: Living Room Theaters with my friend MM and an audience that included children (who got somewhat squirrely near the end.)

*I think Rob Marshall excels in capturing this aspect of the movie musical. With a stage production, the audience gets to choose where to set their eyes on the 20+ performers onstage. Marshall is very good at still letting us do this while not feeling like the camera is static. I still can visualize some of the ensemble scenes in Chicago. Contrast that with Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! with so many quick cuts that it’s hard to focus on anything.
**I didn’t love it like I love the original, but the original is the original and from my childhood. Recreating that sense of wonder in my 40s is a pretty impossible task.

3SMReviews: The Favourite

3SMReviews: The Favourite

Yorgos Lanthimos gives us the Christmas gift of three amazing actors in The Favourite and I enjoyed every moment of the characters’ slow-motion train wrecks. Aside from great acting and an intense story, there are amazing costumes* and a scene so good that it caused people in my screening to break into applause. Despite its drawing room appearance, this movie changes things up (like a traditional formal dance at a ball that morphs into all sorts of current dance moves) and is contemporary in every way.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: $9.00
Where watched: Hollywood Theatre with friend Kelly.

*The women look good in their gowns, but Nicholas Hoult really dazzles in his fancy dress and powdered face and wig.

3SMReviews: First Man

3SMReviews: First Man

Damien Chazelle teams up with Ryan Gosling in First Man, a very feelings-based telling of Neil Armstrong’s story. Both Gosling and Claire Foy (as Janet Armstrong) are very good as the stoic couple who never thought they would be public figures. This movie has the White Guys in Suits* problem, and I would have rather watched it with subtitles as the dialogue gets lost in places amid the very industrial sound design, but I loved this movie’s focus on a man with a lot of feelings who never lets any of them out.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: $4.00
Where watched: at the Academy Theater with S. North and an audience that wandered in and out of the theater during the movie, plus a guy behind us who commented loudly and often.**

*It was very hard to get names of the supporting cast and match them with faces. Being the 60’s, there were a lot of similar looking men in shirtsleeves with ties. This movie also had the same problem as in Lincoln: there were so many “Who is that guy?” moments.  Patrick Fugit I recognized from the get-go, but there was also the guy from Girls, the guy from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the guy from Mudbound, the guy from Inception, the guy from the first Ant-Man movie, etc. etc. etc.
** “Space junk!” was perhaps my favorite of his eruptions.***
***He didn’t bug me tremendously, as it reminded me of when S. North and I saw the preview for this film and it so annoyed an audience member he loudly proclaimed, “WHY ARE THEY TRYING TO MAKE IT TENSE? We already KNOW what happens!” Both of us laughed.