How is everyone enjoying season 8 of RuPaul’s Drag Race? For my money, thus far it is among the best seasons, fulfilling plenty of hopes for the season! The talent pool is among the most diverse we’ve ever seen and this season finds the balance in giving the audience what we want without phoning it in with repetitive storylines we’ve heard told better. However, that momentum could turn sour if it becomes predictable or weak performances like Derrick Barry keep getting a free pass.

Leading up to the premiere, there was The 8 Days of RuPaul’s Drag Race where I featured fun things like lipsync wishes, guilty pleasures, and the highest squirrelfriend of them all. What better week to hop back into the Drag Race realm than that of everyone’s most-anticipated episode: Snatch Game!

Snatch Game is a real make or break episode for each season’s batch of racers. Aside from Queen Henny herself, Stacy Layne Matthews, no queen has ever taken a Snatch Game win to less than fifth place. There may be the odd Courtenay Act or Phi Phi O’Hara slips on their celebrity impersonation, but no queen has ever done a lipsync after Snatch Game and gone on to the final 3. Bad news for Naomi Smalls!

While the best individual performances are easy to recall, what are the best overall Snatch Games and which season entries left us wanting?

Season 7

Sure, season 7 is somewhat the reigning punching bag (at least in these parts) but do you remember a moment or joke from this uninspired lineup? This season’s Game is most criminal for opening the can of worms that is previous Drag Race contestants. Perhaps that comes from a naive group of contestants lacking in pop culture references, but going self-referential is a bit of a buzz kill. If we want Alyssa Edwards, we can always go back and have the real thing. The tie of Ginger Minj and Kennedy Davenport is a cop out from awarding the deserving winner (Davenport) for her controversial risk.

• Bet You Forgot: Pearl as Big Ang
• Shoulda Lipsynced: Miss Fame as Donatella Versace
• Crunchiest: Max as Sharon Needles

Season 8

The biggest disappointment is that this current season’s edition of Snatch Game is not a significant improvement on last year. Bob The Drag Queen’s risk of playing multiple characters gave him a win, but was it just having a slight edge over an absurdly repetitive runway that sealed the deal? The attempt was there across the board (you can’t say that for season 7), but the entire cast was fairly unfocused and imprecise. Even Thorgy Thor couldn’t quite land an easy target like a Blanket Jackson joke AND they wasted a perfectly good Charo appearance!

• Meh, But That Look Though: Derrick Barry as Britney Spears
• The One You Will Forget: Robbie Turner as Diana Vreeland
• Best, But Really Who’s To Say: Chi Chi DeVayne as Eartha Kitt

Season 4

A Snatch Game so overrun with tomfoolery it caused the sweethearted Latrice Royale to unleash her fury back in the workroom. But when even her flat Aretha Franklin was among the best, you’ve got a very lackluster year. How did this shitshow rise above the worst of the seasons? The obvious: Chad Michaels as Cher. It’s fitting that this was the one of the worst, because no one else stood a chance.

• Coulda Won in Another Year: Willam as Jessica Simpson
• Why Would You Ever Choose to Impersonate: Beyonce
• Crunchiest (Ever): Milan as Diana Ross

Season 3

Probably one of the most solid choices of impersonations, from the weird and off-kilter (Imelda Marcos), to the current (Mo’Nique via Precious), to the iconic (Tina Turner). Too bad that didn’t result for very many memorable moments or quotables. Stacy’s win as Mo’Nique can probably be attributed more to story arc than her rising above Manila Luzon or Raja’s equally funny takes.

• Bet You Forgot: Carmen Carrera as Jennifer Lopez
• Are You Playing the Celebrity or Yourself: Shangela as Tina Turner
• Crunchiest: Mariah as Joan Crawford

Season 2

The inaugural season! The queens were at the clearest disadvantage of each of these seasons, playing Snatch long before its benchmarks had been set and resulting in the likes of Morgan McMichaels relying on a look without any jokes. Everyone praises Pandora Boxx’s imprecise (but moreso than Bob the Drag Queen’s) Carol Channing and often incorrectly remembers her as the winner, but the rightful crown belongs to Tatianna’s Britney “I got lost” Spears.

• Bet You Forgot: Jujubee as Kimora Lee Simmons
• Why Would You Ever Choose to Impersonate: Beyonce
• Crunchiest: Sonique as Lady Gaga (“Trust.”)

Season 5

Here’s the real power of Snatch Game: Jinkx Monsoon went from quirky outsider to instant frontrunner with a character mostly unknown to the show’s primarily young audience. It’s exactly how you win Snatch Game: capture the look perfectly, use iconography (but never as a crutch), and be funniest when interacting with the other queens. Even without Jinkx, there would be a few queens still vying for a worthy win. The worst performance even gave us some unintentional laughs instead of the usual outright cringes.

• Meh, But That Look Though: Coco Montrese as Janet Jackson
• Bet You Forgot: Alyssa Edwards as Katy Perry
• Crunchiest: Ivy Winters as Marilyn Monroe

Season 6

The best, and also the toughest to call. BenDeLaCreme served iconic Snatch Game quote (“We originated the language”) on a character of barely recognizable as the celebrity, but I’d vote giving the win to the creepy accurate and affectionate take on Anna Nicole by Adore Delano. Here’s one where Bianca Del Rio’s reputation for hilarity hurt her – how could she ever win this with the bar set so high for her? As a non-Real Housewivesian, I had exactly zero clue what Joslyn Fox was doing or saying, but I laughed every moment. The absolute widest gap between best and worst of any Snatch Game, and the worst of this season were far from the worst of all time.

• Are You Playing the Celebrity or Yourself: Gia Gunn as Kim Kardashian
• Bet You Forgot, But It Was Actually Good: Darienne Lake as Paula Deen
• Crunchiest: Milk as Julia Child

And don’t forget to spray and neuter your neighbors’ pets.

Jeff Nichols has been steadily becoming the prominent American writer/director voice for the rural American male after the masterful psychological nightmare of Take Shelter and the open-hearted fable of Mud. His latest, Midnight Special is a bit wider in scope and ambition while keeping one foot in the pool of his previous efforts Americana environment. Nichols is playing with genre this time, a soft sci-fi effort that shows his ability to captivate an engaged audience with his confident control of craft. However unlike those previous efforts (along with the underseen Shotgun Stories), the screenplay rarely cracks the surface of the world he provides for us. The film’s eyes are bigger than its stomach.

Nichols staple Michael Shannon plays Roy, who is on the run with his childhood friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) with Roy’s mysteriously gifted son Alton (St. Vincent‘s Jaden Lieberher). Alton’s powers remain vague for much of the film, but he is wanted by the government for perceived threat to national security. Those powers had led Alton to be praised as some kind of deity by the cult he was raised within, an organization reminiscent of recent polygamist raids whose leader had taken claim over the raising of Alton. After kidnapping Alton and meeting up with his birth mother (Kirsten Dunst), Roy must deliver his son to the fateful coordinates that Alton had prophesied.

This is a lot of juggling to be done narratively, with themes of religious fanaticism, familial brokenness, and parental sacrifice coming into play before even diving into the genre elements. The result isn’t so much an overstuffed, cumbersome film like recent emotional sci-fi like Interstellar, but one that drops plot strands like hot potatoes. Nichols knows how to make every one of these elements intrigue, but never lets them take root over the film’s perhaps too short run time. The cult is appropriately chilling, lived in if without detail, but amounts to just an early side step from the ultimate path of the movie. Things get more vague when explanations for Alton’s gifts come to light and passed over, perhaps one of the more unsatisfying elements of the film.

It’s frustrating to have the writer/director expand his ambition only to somewhat lose sight of his own gifts of building detailed and fully realized character insights. Here, the minutiae is a blink and you miss it experience, with some bits worthy of more exploration than Nichols grants. It’s odd that a filmmaker so previously interested in fatherhood and maleness (and unburdened by the traps of bro-ness that trip up his contemporaries) doesn’t specifically explore the ripe opportunities for such examination in his own screenplay.

The craft here isn’t to be denied, with layered cinematography by Adam Stone and a foreboding score by David Wingo both doing much of the heavy lifting to establish the film’s frightening and optimistic tone. An uncompromising editing job by Julie Monroe delivers the films jolts and builds tension while informing on character. The film’s clear Amblin-inspired pastiche still flares of originality of design when dealing with familiar genre elements.

Some of the more satisfying elements come from the ensemble, for Nichols is an underrated actor’s director. Joel Edgerton and Adam Driver are frill free, but give the film it’s small blips of humor. More importantly, Special is the rare showcase for the sensitive side of Michael Shannon, an actor who can do so much within the space of a silence. No director understands Shannon and his abilities better than Jeff Nichols, and this film is a nice companion to Take Shelter as a showcase for the actor’s unique brand of emotionality. He’s an actor of so much more than the villains and mentally disturbed that he’s typically cast.

But the film’s unexpected emotional core is Kirsten Dunst. Rarely does the actress speak in the film without you being surprised and wanting more of what’s in her head. Whether she’s alluding to her previous life in the commune or accepting her son’s nature, the actress fills in the gaps of the screenplay with the sadness in her eyes. The actress has been growing in esteem in the past decade or so, and her work here will hopefully reignite interest in her understated talent. Her final beats in the films finale provide the film with the kind of complex emotion that it had been needing all along.

A bit too elusive narratively, but solidly crafted otherwise, Midnight Special isn’t likely to be the standout in Jeff Nichols’s filmography. The film makes for an agreeable spring diversion against such film horrors as Hardcore Henry and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, even if it is far from complete or as satisfying as it could be. Later this year, Nichols has the civil rights era marital story Loving, hoping to make further good on his directing and screenwriting promise and expand on his growing ambition.

B-

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If you take my perspective from childhood, Witness is a horror movie. Yes this film, like Pretty Woman and Blazing Saddles, is one that I saw way too young and with what I view now as an insane amount of normalcy. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

The on-screen murder witnessed by the titular Amish child is an abruptly vicious moment, one that I first viewed through my fingers. Mom at least had instructed me to cover my eyes for the scene, but the punishing music cue in the score by Maurice Jarre brought out my childhood curiosity. I peaked through my eyes long enough to see a jet of blood shoot from the victim’s neck onto his bare chest, and the young Lukas Haas to peak through the bathroom stall. It was like we were witnessing it together. I’m sure my fellow members of the VHS generation can also attest to seeing similar shocking moments at far too young an age, considering we were among the first to have ready accessibility to movie mayhem. But this scene was a formative introduction to the power of cinematic violence – while I’d been taunted by the promise of Freddy Krueger, for the life of me I can’t remember seeing an actually violent scene before this one.

Perhaps I wasn’t too traumatized, because I remember falling asleep later in the film. Forgive seven-year-old me for not being intrigued by Witness‘s developing themes of pacifism and brutality.

The sudden flashes of glamorized harsh violence are contrasted throughout with the elegiac Amish environment, interrupting the almost fetishization of the Amish peacefulness. Cinematographer John Seale, Oscar-nominated here and more recently for Mad Max: Fury Road, uses lighting to paint sin as lurid (the red of a car light, the brown grime of the city) and goodness as pure (the uncomplicated raising of a barn). It’s the same kind of binaries of good and evil, sinner and saint that the screenplay is so fascinated with.

The film, like its hero John Book, falls somewhere in the muddy middle: fascinated by the allure of peace, but complacent to the cycle of violence. He may have ultimately stopped the villain with righteousness instead of bullets, but by leaving the Amish settlement, he hasn’t been fully taken in by the mystique. The film feels oddly inconclusive about its subject, perhaps even passive.

How does this influence my choice of Best Shot?

How does violence affect a child? This occurs after the murder, where Samuel had been depicted only obscured momentarily by a stall door, but directly. Here Samuel is shrouded in darkness, barely visible as Book shoves a suspect in his face, reigniting the fear of what he witnessed. The moment not only speaks to the impact of violence on the psyche, but of how the lingering effects of torment can outweigh the initial moment of white-hot panic. It’s an unambivalently grim shot that says more about the power of evil over good than the film eventually says about good triumphing evil.

Luckily no viewer of the film is as traumatized as poor, adorable, hat-loving Samuel. Myself included.

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Coming off of his massive critical and award-winning success of Boyhood, writer/director Richard Linklater returns to the vibes of his beloved cult classic Dazed and Confused with his latest film Everybody Wants Some!! Set over the weekend before the start of college, Linklater follows the freshman inductees and upperclassmen antiheroes of a baseball team as they party and hunt for sexual conquests. True to Linklater’s form, it’s a dialogue-driven enterprise that’s character-focused and purely watchable.

However, even with his rich character depictions and natural conversations unfolding with his usual expect touch, that watchability is tainted with quite unsavory machismo.

The brusque, bro-y maleness it has on display is decidedly un-politically correct and amused with itself, almost relentlessly so. There’s ample frank dialogue that’s free with the use of female diminishing expletives and the only pursuits driving its male clan is the thirst for more sexual conquests and dominance over one another. Though some may find the film’s rambling dialogue a slog, the real tough sit is the barrage of nasty assertion of maleness. Unaccustomed to the kind of private company of men featured in the film, I had to ask myself “Is this really how men talk to one another when no one is listening?”

But Everybody is not without perspective or judgment regarding the characters’ actions. Without feeling like a tacked on bit of audience servicing, the film’s themes finally come to cohesion around the final half hour when the guys begin to express passions outside of booze, babes, and balls.

The film moreso presents these behaviors as something to be grown out of rather than admonished for their destructiveness to both men and women. It’s hard to tell if Everybody Wants Some!! is coming along at the wrong time or exactly the right time with the conversations being had about male and female representations on film. This film doesn’t so much have a woman problem (all the women are fully aware that these guys are idiots) as it does have a man problem of accepting boorish behavior as charming.

But the slippery thing is that the film is quite charming. Even if the aww-shucks angle he takes on his characters’ crassness never jives with the humanistic approach he approaches them, but each is uniquely drawn and memorable. Linklater’s dialogue flows as freely as you would expect from his work, even here working with largely inexperienced young actors. The “spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused” selling tool is easy to forget while viewing Everything because the connective tissue between the two hardly exists. What makes the connection apt is the exact lax episodic tone and the exciting breakthrough cast. Like the cast of Dazed, you can rest assured you’ll be seeing a lot more from this cast in the future.

Much of the film’s pallatability must be credited to this very winning cast, each of which give enough nuance to keep us entertained and curious through the poon-chasing. Chief among them is Glen Powell as the kinder of the upperclassmen teammates, the one motivated to meet girls “on their level”. You can imagine his performance here being remembered similarly as Matthew McConaughey’s Dazed and Confused performance, though Powell is featured far more significantly. He’s the wittiest and sharpest piece of the ensemble, but they all seem to circle his orbit.

We may not need another film about (especially pre-middle aged) male maturation, but at least this one has Linklater’s sensitivity and sensibility to make it worthwhile. Linklater is not one to forcefeed a narrative to an audience, let alone an agenda – Everything expects the audience to get those subtle threads that these manchildren are misguiding themselves. While there will be fans of the film that Linklater has overestimated the maturity of, he has made a film as solidly constructed as anything in his filmography. If nothing else, he’s given us a sunny and optimistic film in a spring filled with grim ones.

B+

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Unsurprisingly among the recently announced Cannes Film Festival competition lineup (they love their returning auteurs), is Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon. Originally conceived for his Drive damsel Carey Mulligan, the film stars Elle Fanning as a young girl breaking into the modeling industry. The whole thing looks very Suspiria meets perfume ad – and I mean that as a compliment.

These visuals? Forget about it – I’m full blown obsessed. From the trailers, it looks like we’ll be getting something as brooding and heightened as Refn’s Drive but not as impenetrable and alienating as Only God Forgives. The cinematography from Natasha Braier (who gave bravado to The Rover) is immaculate in these first glimpses – tense, sexy, simple. While I wouldn’t expect it to be a prize winner at Cannes, it looks like Amazon Studios has a treat coming for us this summer.

Trailers NSFW:

Don Siegel’s The Beguiled hadn’t ever entered my radar before recent remake news – nothing like Sofia Coppola announcing a new project to pique my interest. The female cast makes it all the more enticing: Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning. Yes please!

The original star Clint Eastwood is one I have always been mostly chilly to, so on the surface it’s plain to see why I hadn’t sought the film out prior to the Hit Me With Your Best Shot assignment. The film also was released in the same year as Siegel and Eastwood’s next collaboration Dirty Harry, so that maybe explains how it’s skipped in the history books.

The oversight is a shame on a few fronts. Firstly, the boarding school setting provides excellent fodder for some delightful actressing. While the always flawless Geraldine Page should have been enough to draw me to the film sooner, there’s also great varied work from Elizabeth Hartman, Mae Mercer, and Jo Ann Harris. Secondly, Eastwood’s mystique has rarely been used with such sexual self-awareness. His macho persona is used here as an object of lust, one he uses to his advantage to manipulate the women holding him captive.

But the thirst each of these women have for Eastwood’s McBee is a prison of its own, a reminder of the limitations placed upon their gender during this binary Civil War time. It’s not just the shame of lust, but the promise of some kind of primal freedom against the strictures of being a proper lady. Visually, the women are often obscured, particularly when facing the prospects of McBee’s manipulative proclamations. He’s more a mirror of their own culturally imposed limitations than a potential rescuer.

The film is shockingly director of photography Bruce Surtees’s first, quite sensual and emotionally attuned for a first effort. You can see much of the same eye he granted to follow-ups (and Eastwood starring) Play Misty for Me and Dirty Harry, Establishing an aesthetic here organically. The Beguiled is the most luridly visual of the three, guided by the sexuality that is constantly brimming over the surface.

The imagined orgy sequence is perhaps the most entrancing in the film, as suggestive but unprofane as McBee’s flirtations. For all of its titillations, the fantasy is also ghoulish – like having a sex dream that’s slowing morphing into a nightmare. That kinky and disturbing tone is a fascinating portrayal of how these cloistered women view the prospect of sexual congress: enticing, stimulating, but fundamentally deviant.

There has increasingly been the threat of brutality and sexual violence upon the women as the war comes dangerously closer to the plantation. McBee’s wounded intrusion contrasts against the gruff salaciousness of other potential rapists, but he has weasled and contorted them all sexually for his own interests too. Hasn’t McBee manipulated them sexually all the same, or is he absolved for trying to save his own skin? The mounting sexual tensions and threat of the war outside build to the film’s Best Shot:

A wicked and simple shot: McBee has been the surrogate for the women’s sexual longings, but now he finally experiences their collective violence. The camera is nauseated throughout the sequence, dizzying between the fraught reactions of the women. Page is focused, her shadow behind her as the frame disembodies her from the act, as if it could be any of the women performing the act. It’s a loaded mix of  her stringent maternal instincts, anger in sexual deceit, vengeance for opposition in war, rage against predatory men, wartime survivalism – a dramatic frame with the stain of blood.

The shot itself is as captivating and off-putting as anything in the film, a shocking build to its most conflicting moment for the audience. Admit it: you want to know what this kind of violence looks like when directed by Sofia Coppola.

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Call me morbid, but MacBeth is my favorite Shakespeare. Having just hit the 400th anniversary of his death, it seems appropriate to celebrate one of his most death-obsessed pieces of work, here with the bold reinterpretation done by Akira Kurosawa in Throne of Blood.

Kurosawa folds in elements of Noh theatre to a streamlined, brisk version of Shakespeare’s text, creating perhaps the stagiest adaptation of the Bard this side of Baz Luhrman. The Noh angle creates a more archetypal experience for the actors and the audience, somehow getting to the root of the original text in a way that more naturalistic adaptations by Roman Polanski and Justin Kurzel have missed. This “Scottish” king and his Lady M (Taketoki and Lady Asaji) are physical embodiments of their fury and calculations, the contrast between his brazen madness and her anxious guilt never more clearly defined on film.

And these are two brilliantly physical performances. Toshirô Mifune’s Taketoki flailing rage is barely contained by the frame, all clenched teeth and sudden movements. Isuzu Yamada takes the notoriously difficult role of Lady M, her Asaji an effortless swing from contained to manic. The murder at the center of the text is often glossed over for the highs of their guilt to come, but in Throne Mifune and Yamada fill the moment with the trauma to fuel the final act filled with madness. Dare I say they’re our best cinematic examples of these towering roles.

Taking a more fundamental approach takes the emotion to its necessary heights, but it also makes for a unique viewing experience for the audience. The pacing is deliberate and decisive, the frame patiently delivering Shakespeare’s brooding mood with gorgeous visuals. Director of photography Asakazu Nakai (a Kurosawa regular) lights the film to mystifying effect – Lady Asaji fading into the night, inescapable fog, overexposed ghosts brightening the space unnaturally. Kurosawa and Nakai are using Noh to reinterpret film as much as they are with Shakespeare, using the camera to integrate stage elements with the cinematic.

My choice for Best Shot fuzes the theatrical and the cinematic with a simplistic bit of stagecraft and camerawork, a perfect example of the film’s elemental approach:

In one fluid movement, the camera pulls in to see Taketoki’s horrified reaction, then pulls back to show the ghost of the slain occupying the once empty space. The camera becomes like a piece of stagecraft, a scrim removed to reveal the ghost on stage. It’s remarkably simple (rudimentary, even) but the effect is impressive and fascinating for how it informs Mifune’s performance in the moment.

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After all these years, Death Becomes Her is still a delightful romp – a broad blend of old Hollywood diva mudslinging, morbid farce, and goddess worship. As much as the film satirizes gratuitous ageism thrust upon women and its impact on the ego, the film adores its actresses. Isabella Rossellini reigns supreme, but Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep are audience catnip even at their most vicious. With this much talent, wit, and glamour in the frame, its no surprise that director Robert Zemeckis and director of photography Dean Cundey frame them like the queens they are.

No wonder gays and drag queens have kept the film alive with all this operatic idolatry – though where are the drag queens impersonating Rossellini’s sexual septuagenarian Lisle von Rhuman? Perhaps I just missed that one by a decade.

There is also a classic monster movie element to the actresses visual representation in the film. Mad and Hel are frequently scene lurking around a corner, behind a bush, stalking into the foreground to frighten Bruce Willis’s Ernest. Their eyes are lit like Dracula, their sexuality as threatening as it is enticing. What is Lisle if not a vampire empress, pulling you in precisely because she’s a bit spooky?

But the monster of Death Becomes Her isn’t the Wolfman or the Mummy – it’s the ego within Madeline and Helen striving to be younger, thinner, adored. The film holds this satire equally with its farcical violence, giving us villains that ultimately are laughing along with us. The blend of Looney Tunes, Roger Corman, and pre-Real Housewives vapidness is a lot for the film to shoulder, but it sticks the landing smartly by having the combative twosome (mostly) put aside their differences in favor of humor and teamwork.

They aren’t a Frankenstein victimized by their own pursuit, Mad and Hel witches laughing as they go up in flames.

Could you make this exact comedy today without prompting the inevitable “problematic” thinkpieces”? Is it irresponsible to visually present these women as monsters when the real evil is society’s demand that they stay fuckable? But what the high camp masks is two raised middle fingers aimed at anyone still perpetuating such expectations. It helps that Streep and Hawn are clearly having a ball – both from mocking these expectations and from the power of their collective energies. Zemeckis and Cundey visually make them a pair to be reckoned with, stronger women as they begin to decay.

The balance of satire, camp, and actress deification are held in glorious unity throughout the film, its wit as present visually as it is in the actors and script. Sight gags are given almost Austin Powers-level mileage, relying heavily on the film’s Oscar winning visual effects. It’s Robert Zemeckis we’re talking about here, so even the CGI wizardry that seems dated now still lands a strong visual impact or laugh.

So with so many options and flourishes here, what element was most at play in the Best Shot?

The film is first and foremost a complete gas. This shot I had absolutely no recollection of from my childhood obsession, so it took me by surprise to see the fourth wall broken ever so fleetingly, a wink to the audience to say “Isn’t this divine?”. Madeline Ashton catches her own reflection and gives a cheeky little smile, and thanks to framing she’s also looking right at the audience. By sharing that grin with us, we’re staring at ourselves and our own pursuit of youth – if we laugh at Madleine, we’re really just laughing at ourselves. And of course, the frame worships her.

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It’s shorts week for Hit Me With Your Best Shot, a branch of film that I’m unfortunately not well versed. Outside of wide release for each year’s Oscar nominated shorts, accessibility is the issue – though that seems to be changing as more streaming services hit the market. However, without the level of discussion and coverage given to feature length films it’s difficult to discover which ones to seek out.

This was not the case last year for Don Herzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow (long available on Netflix and other platforms) thanks to high critical praise and vocal fandom since its debut at 2015 Sundance Film Festival. It’s easy to know that a film exists if major critics are calling a film one of the year’s best, feature-length or not.

And Tomorrow is quite special. Set in an unspecified future where clones are common and our consciousness is uploaded to cubes for the purpose of posterity and consumption, the film features a toddler named Emily Prime that travels time with her future third-generation clone to see what becomes of her scientific progeny. In a brisk fifteen minutes, the film moves at a fierce clip, edited sharply to deliver quick laughs even as it deepens its own well of sadness.

Memory is valued above experience, what is lost forever while imprisons us to the past. Like the braindead clone David preserved for our fascinated amusement, we’re more beholden to what is already or will be lost to the point we lose appreciation for what is alive around us. This melancholy that Herzfeldt infuses is both precise and vague, a comment on the current that can be extrapolated to many facets of our culture: reliance on technology, climate crisis, structural dehumanization.

But World of Tomorrow isn’t a downer, I swear! If not optimistic, the film is at least humanistic and non-accusatory.

Herzfeldt’s rudimentary visual aesthetic is deceptive in its simplicity, just as the film’s brief length is packed with more insight than most feature-length animations. Somehow the stick figures and solid colors still create an immersive and entrancing experience, lulled by the soft tones and spacey depression of third generation clone Emily. The sadness that pervades even the moments of visual vibrancy is reflected in Emily Prime’s juvenile adorableness against her adult clone’s removed disposition. Our young heroine is often framed within less complex imagery compared to her counterpart, where time and context is blurred.

It’s pedestrian to simply say that adult Emily’s world reflects our own (a world of “images of other people watching viewscreens” and chasing other people’s consciousness through technology), even if Herzfeldt finds profundity in the obvious metaphor. The visual spark comes from Herzfeldt’s wholely unique rendering of a future commonly seen in science fiction – even the expected robots and orbiting satellites feel original in their design. It’s rare for post-Matrix age science fiction to feel this fresh or underivative, even outside of the mainstream – plainly put, Tomorrow is more thematically and visually diverse than most of its genre contemporaries.

My choice for Best Shot is (again) one that holds all of this thematic and narrative accomplishment in one moment.

Here the third generation Emily clone is both in the moment and watching it reoccur – a capsule of Tomorrow‘s take on the impossibility of being in the moment. The visual layers within the frame are gorgeous, the textures and colors as intertwined and complex as the themes at play. For the short film that covers a lot of ground in short span, this shot is one of the few that gets most of its ambition in one bite: diverse visuals and thematic resonance with big, intimate ideas.

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Patrice Chéreau’s Queen Margot is hardly the prim and proper costume drama meant just for the blue hairs. Set unflinchingly during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (where thousands of protestants were slaughtered), the film’s embrace of historic brutality destroys the nonchalance of middle school history books. The violence is moderately relentless, sudden flashes of blood returning just when you think we get a break from the viciousness. It’s a small reminder that your costume drama need not shy away from the darker realities of the period when recreating its aesthetic beauty.

Don’t worry, it never skimps on the beauty. I’m not much of a fan of the film, but the visual experience lulls you into a trance.

Shot by now Hollywood mainstay Philippe Rousselot, the film’s best visual compositions are stoic but expressive. The camera is undeterred by the violence on display without being fascinated by it, detached while allowing it to shock. We’re accustomed to seeing this type of slaughter (throat slashings, coughing up blood, a sword to the head) in a horror film, but here it’s more shocking for historical context.

Rousselot’s peak skills are controlling light. what Margot specifically lacks in ambition for movement and thematic depth in the frame, it makes up for with confoundingly precise shadows and light. Pillars of sunlight cut through the darkness like the romance breaks through the scheming. It’s both cheap and accurate to call many of the shots “painterly”, each of the compositions painstakingly precise.

Like Rousselot’s other best works, Interview with the Vampire and Dangerous Liaisons, he missed out on an Oscar nomination here as well. Perhaps like those examples, its gorgeous, but unimposing austerity is easy to pass over in favor of the other showier design elements.

The best shot comes in the film’s final moments, a small capsule of grotesque and sad romanticism.

Like the most evocative of paintings, the frame tells the whole story that preceded it – ghastly, emotional, fatalistic. Rousselot’s lighting somehow enhances the emotion and revulsion within the moment, finding the soul that has been so fleeting present throughout. It’s as ghostly as it is ghastly.

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As much as the first Neighbors examined reinforced broski attitudes and behaviors long accepted by American culture, its sequel Sorority Rising explores feminism through the new generation.

Which is to say: not as deeply as it could. The progressive mindset behind the film is more of a framework for the plot than an agenda to be pushed, for the laughs are always the main focus (and they rarely let up). The new focus gives the film an edge that is almost necessary to follow up a film that didn’t beg to be sequelized, and keeps the antics from being too much of a tired rehash even though the whole structure have been lifted from the original. It’s admirable to see a male-focused comedy team contemplate these themes, even if it doesn’t dig as deep as the opportunities presented. For example, why present a toddler girl’s love of the word “no” within moments of a frathouse sign reading “no means yes” without mining the defiant “no” for its inherent power?

Chloë Grace Moretz is the Zac Efron stand-in here, but oddly Efron is the stand-in for Seth Rogen, as the older couple takes somewhat of a disappointing back seat in this installment. Efron’s Teddy is still on the journey of growing up, as his frat brothers have all progressed onto larger ambitions while Teddy bemoans having to wear a shirt to the menial job he still holds at Abercrombie and Fitch. While Moretz and her new friends (Kiersey Clemons and Beanie Feldstein) begin their own sorority to buck the chauvinist traditions in both male and female Greek life, Teddy helps them establish themselves to help preserve his manchild lifestyle.

Next door, Rogen and Byrne’s Radners are expanding their family and hoping to sell their house to move to the suburbs. Their escrow selling arrangements are threatened by the arrival of Moretz’s clan, and you can imagine where it goes from here. Ike Barinholts and Carla Gallo (unfortunately, the original’s weakest element) also return as the Radner’s grotesque friends, and allotted screentime you wish could be spent on the always welcome charms of Byrne and Rogen. There’s a sweetness missing in this one that the original had in full supply, and that’s probably due to the lack of space granted to the married couple caught in the cross hairs. At least Byrne still gets to save the day with her hilarious and plainspoken honesty.

The topical new approach defies the potential paint-by-numbers that this sequel could have been, and is another great showcase for the underrated Efron. If Rising doesn’t match the highs of the first film, it does succeed by keeping the laughs relentless and the character insights natural and sincere. It’s a solid summer sequel that satisfies even as it leaves you wishing for a little more.

B

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Like the best of John Hughes and the most confident of modern musicals, Sing Street is addictive and rousing. The newly minted high school band at its center may have dreams beyond their Dublin suburbs, but the film only yourns for the audience’s toes to be tapping.

Along the course of Sing Street, the central teen’s musical tastes develop from exposure to the various subgenres present during its particular 1985 setting. Naturally, his style changes abruptly to incorporate swabs of makeup, bleached patches of hair, and a nuked mane to mimic the influence of Duran Duran and The Cure on his musical infancy. The specificity lent to the film by the exact moment in (especially British) music actually goes to underscore the timelessness of the film and the transforming power of the artform.

That Sing Street can organically chart these seismic shifts happening daily to our hero Conor (a charming and genuine Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) through the lens of music is to be somewhat expected coming from director John Carney. His humanistic approach to character and connection through music have worked previously in Once and Begin Again, with this effort being the best among them. Carney’s characters have always defined themselves through music, but never has he shown more depth to that identification. Like our constantly evolving taste in music and the shifting landscape of popular music, our identities are diverse and mutable, something entirely different from one day to the next.

Teen years are therefore the perfect ground for embodying that relationship, the time when our sense of self is most in flux and we’re most tied to the music filling our world. Sing Street is smart to not approach its youthful struggles with even a whiff of judgment or cynicism. Much like his Carney’s previous efforts, the film wears its heart on its sleeve without becoming cloying or trite over Conor’s lovelorn attempts to woo the cool Raphina (Lucy Boynton). No, this love story is as modestly pure and absorbing as the pop hits that blare on the soundtrack.

The film is engaging enough on its own merits, but it can’t be as rousing as it quickly becomes without the necessity of truly catchy tunes – and it doesn’t disappoint. The familiarity in their rhythms and melodies are true to Conor’s loving rip-off of the bands inspiring him, but are each fresh and radio friendly. From the sweetly soaring “Up” to the anthemic “Brown Shoes”, even the crabbiest viewer is going to be won over by the winning songs (and surely there’s an Oscar nominee in here, somewhere). If “Drive It Like You Stole It” isn’t your song of the summer, you’re not doing it right.

While the ensemble of young actors gets small moments to charm without fail, the primary focus is drawn to Conor’s struggle to get the girl and deal with his disintegrating family unit (even the greatest bands are all about the lead singer, after all). The familiar story still engages thanks to the songs, each drawn from Conor’s not always requited longings for the typically elusive Raphina. There is much of Sing Street that we have seen done before and often, and occasionally very well – but it remains a cut above because of Carney’s growing directorial abilities and unmanipulative sincerity. This film is a particular leap forward in his control of the film’s compassion and heart to thrust the story along without the meandering malaise of Begin Again.

Consider it my early fan favorite of the summer. There is a potential cult classic here, or if the word of mouth continues to grow, an outright box office hit. With no cutesy preciousness of youth or cynical adult judgment to sour the proceedings, Street is the kind of joyous experience for any optimistic audience. Its pitfalls come when it gets forced into plotting, with Jack Reynor’s older brother an increasingly superfluous and flat device to push Conor along. The family dynamics never pay off like the love story or the bullying, but maybe they needed their own song? Rest assured that will show up in the likely stage adaptation.

Like that great album you spend an entire summer listening to (maybe skipping that one track every now and again), Sing Street is the best type of pop confection: one that gets into your heart on first listen and takes its hold until you keep coming back again and again.

A-

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The audience vibe was more electric than any I’d experience in some time time when I finally caught Star Wars – The Force Awakens (two days after opening because we thought we’d be avoiding the crowds – ha!). You could feel the optimism buzzing in the crowd. By now we had heard that the film was strong, and nothing of the garish prequel trilogy that had eviscerated so much good will in passionate and casual fans alike. On that first weekend, most fans were polite in keeping spoilers avoidable, an act of kindness true to the film’s elusive marketing. Even those who might know significant details couldn’t have one of the franchise’s key elements spoiled until now: the visual experience.

One of the (many) key mistakes of the prequels is its pedestrian visual style. You can’t simply blame an overabundance of CGI on a lack of context or character insight – those films just have little interest in action depth than a standard contemporary blockbuster. Sure, we already know the fate of Anakin Skywalker, but why forget that visual mythbuilding is part of what inspired our imaginations in the first place.

Director J.J. Abrams and cinematographer Daniel Mindel haven’t forgotten. The long-running marketing blitz for the film made a talking point of the kind of care that Abrams and his team were giving the film, specifically to character and the aesthetics. While the film has its share of CGI, the surroundings are often tactile, true to the grubby and worn look of the original. And, what do you know, you can describe any given character by more than their physical appearance.

In the age of IMAX, Abrams and Mindel want to make the most of these huge canvas compositions. These images are meant to be seen on a massive screen, but even a laptop viewing can’t diminish its somersaulting wooziness. It’s easy to complain that our franchise films don’t develop character the way that Awakens does, but they also don’t shoot action sequences like this either. The Millennium Falcon rushes away from oncoming threat in several long takes, the camera barely keeping up with its flips and turns as the First Order attacks from all sides. The First Order fleet imposes on the limits of the frame as they march toward domination. The climactic lightsaber battle gives us the iconography we crave without stooping to phony posturing or hacking our eyeballs to bits with indecipherable action. The threat is visceral and imposing with the battles equally intimate and expansive.

The thrills get to breathe, both in the frame and in the editing. How can you root for Rey if the shot composition muddies what is happening to her?

However, it’s the mythbuilding that the film most excels at visually. Like Luke staring off into the double sunset, we know that Rey and Finn long for more and are destined for something important. The same sense of scale that makes the flight sequences a rush is also present in quieter character moments to emphasize their modest standing. Rey may be a fateful hero eventually, but for now she’s just a small piece in a large galaxy.

The choice of Best Shot for The Force Awakens is all about payoff.

Rey wasn’t explicitly foretold to be the hero by the film’s marketing, which allows a classically cinematic moment like this to really sing. Here she is as powerful as any of those starships previously dominating the frame. The film has been building to this moment with Rey all along: a modest beginning, strength gained and lost, and ultimately standing on her own as a strong woman. The frame is straightforward, but that brings with it a clarity of vision. Gender politics contribute to what makes this such a heart-leaping, rousing moment – we cheer for the character to take her rightful place, but we also cheer to finally have a woman do the same in an action franchise. This is how you make us root for a hero.

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There is some fascinating lighting work on display in Blonde Venus, a Marlene Dietrich star vehicle about a stage performer stifled by the patriarchy. The tedious home life of Dietrich’s Helen is all shadows and bursts of overexposed light, a harsh and jarring atmosphere that evaporates as she takes the stage. Characters move naturally about the set, sometimes going in and out of their light to the point of being completely obscured. This may be a distracting technique of examining the oppressive forces working against Helen’s hunger for the stage, but it also speaks to the path of the artist.

Of course, this effect only highlights Dietrich’s magnetism. If the lighting is a literal representation of the desire to create, then Helen is as much chasing the spotlight as the spotlight is chasing her.

But for every moment the blinding light is cast on future star Helen, there’s a shadowy man lurking outside her spotlight or a dark corner of a room waiting to close the walls around her. The ghastly quality cinematographer Bert Glennon gives these shots reflects the binaries thrust upon Helen: she can be either mother or tart, responsible or reckless, selfish or dutiful. For the time Venus is progressive, especially as it clearly portrays all of her setbacks as imposed upon her by men. The film sides with Helen even in craft by making this pull to the spotlight a physical representation.

The staging also embodies that overbearing relationship, with Dietrich’s face obscured and hidden in moments of her robbed agency. Perhaps this is a peek-a-boo to mask Dietrich’s acting limitations, but it’s impactful to have Helen face away from the audience or duck underneath a hat when she is not in control. But if you go to a Marlene Dietrich film, you go for that transfixing face. It’s like we’re being deprived our happiness as she’s deprived her own.

The film avoids drawing comparisons between the ebullient adoration of the audience and the unqualified love from her child as much as it can. As the film agrees with Helen that she can have both, their relationship is portrayed less visually complex when those outside forces aren’t in play. Just like when she takes the stage (especially in the final performance of the film, naturally decked in white as if she was the spotlight herself), the frame is much less fussy when Helen is in her element.

That performance is a near miss for Best Shot, but the two are narrative and stylistic parallels. In a long unbroken take, here we see her smooth performance the camera glides through to heartlifting climax. The Best Shot is more of a wade through hell.

Also one long tracking shot, filled with background detail and specificity, Helen hurtles toward punishment, literally caged in the frame. It’s a gloomy, shadowy shot that shows her as one of the masses thrust out on her luck by society’s limitations, the first time the film reaches for the larger implications of the gender limitations holding Helen down. The rock bottom crafted here is so palpable and wallowing that is makes the performance in the mirroring shot feel all the more triumphant.

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Those flabbergasted reports out of Sundance haven’t exactly misled you: Swiss Army Man contains of symphonic flatulence and magical boners. But behind the cruder devices you’ve undoubtedly heard about is an uncommonly openhearted and non-judgmental film. A remarkable debut by Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, also their first screenplay) the film is imaginatively crafted at almost every turn, more original than almost anything seen this summer. Don’t let the pubescent fascinations fool you, this film is more soulful than you would expect.

Swiss wastes no time getting into the adventures, opening on Hank (Paul Dano) preparing to hang himself after being stranded for an extended time alone on a tiny island. The dead body of Manny (Daniel Radcliffe) washes ashore to not only derail Hank’s death, but also to play savior and survival tool via that post-mortem gas and boner compass. As Manny becomes more (re)animated and the all-purpose device of the title, Hank is also educating him on the boy-child psyche that freezes him mentally back on the mainland.

You could consider it Eternal Sunshine of the Boy Scout’s Mind (at Bernie’s), but the film defies being so easily reduced or compared. Its puberty ruminations alone are rarely this sincere and charming, without the twee pitfalls too commonplace in the tired “man learns to grow up” Sundance heartwarmers.

The script is silly and serious, never coddling ideas of fragile masculinity but nevertheless kind to its subject. It’s unexpectedly refreshing to have a film dive into the psyche of boner jokes and daddy issues without the usual self-service (Garden State) or self-congratulation (The Hangover) that make young adult male stories often insufferable – though you may obviously disagree if the steady sound of farts in this one puts you off. No one dies so that Hank can learn to grow up, no magical illness in a loved one to bring out his better qualities – through Manny, Hank has to explain himself, justify his bruises. To the film’s credit, he’s not off the hook after he’s done so.

Dano and Radcliffe have surprising chemistry in this most bizarre of odd couples. Like last year’s Love & Mercy, Dano continues to show that he’s one of our more underappreciated young actors, capable of emotional depth and believability in even outstanding surroundings. He’s likely to be outfavored by the physical prowess of Radcliffe’s hilarious work, though the two feed off eachother’s energy in remarkable ways. Radcliffe ability for humor and physical nuance exceeds expectations though, somehow giving Manny depth beyond the script’s punchlines.

The film fumbles by abandoning most of its better qualities in the finale, muddying both the fantastical charm and its own identity analysis. The reckless abandon of the Daniels’ confidence is immediately missed with the film unclear of how to complete itself, becoming a completely different and less intriguing film at its close. But despite the major final missteps, the film’s melancholy glee cannot be contained, sending you out buzzing on its imagination.

B+

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Now that we’re half way through the year, I’ve brought back the Oscar predictions. You can find them in the top search bar and you can also click here. The first half of the year has been solid on quality films, but few are going to break the Oscar mold of nominating late year releases. The most likely candidate: Zootopia, an outside Best Picture contender and surefire Animated Feature frontrunner (I’ll finally be catching up to it this week).

Oscar Predictions

You can see why Working Girl was a hit in its day – its emotional arc satisfies like a machine built to crank out warm fuzzies. It may not have the visual gravitas of Mike Nichols’s The Graduate, but similarly Nichols elevates the material to its full potential (even if Working Girl‘s ceiling is substantially lower). Melanie Griffith’s role is well suited to her unique balance of blue collar modesty and understated drive, playing directly to her natural abilities to star-making effect. Sigourney Weaver’s expressive subtlety is a great contrast, her directness merely a facade hiding deep insecurity and lack of self-awareness.

However, the film doesn’t hold up to contemporary scrutiny for its feminist intentions. Griffith’s Tess may be our hero, but the script is hell bent on treating her with pity rather than sympathy, defining her more by her foolishness than the gumption that makes her achieve her goals. As the villain, Weaver’s Katherine doesn’t fare much better. The actress is measured in making Katherine vapid, hilarious without tipping into farce. That lack of self-awareness is her downfall, for she’s as blind to her own patriarchal subjugation as she is to her ability for cruelty. The film is all too pleased to punish her when Weaver reveals her to be most vulnerable and human.

Not to mention the film ignoring that the career Tess aspires to is basically, you know, evil. The logic of the film is that it’s excusable for Tess to be so cutting because she’s adorable and has a heart of gold really, but Katherine is vain and desperate so she should be publicly punished.

Side note: It’s a problem that the best Harrison Ford can do in the film is take his shirt off, right? (Not that I’m complaining.) But there’s a reason that the film is best remembered for its women than its top billed box office draw, for he and Nichols never craft him into a consistent character.

While the film isn’t much of a visual experience, Nichols and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus do bookend the film with grand visual statements of New York City that invite the audience into Tess’s journey. The opening tracking of the ferry and the packed city streets paint Tess as one of the endless nobodies, and the final pull out from her new office reveal her to be also one of its countless success stories. It’s the narrative arc writ large, a satisfyingly scaled moment that allows the audience to implant themselves into Tess’s shoes.

That Statue of Liberty shot at the top is another brief scene of intimate and universal complimenting eachother, and almost my choice for Best Shot. The blurry monument in the distance is a far off as Tess’s thwarted dreams, the actress’s silent tears one of her best moments in the performance. The sadness of the scene is genuinely felt and necessary to launch the film to its triumphant conclusion.

But my Best Shot choice is slightly more informative of character:

How oblivious (and lonely) must you be to throw yourself a party in a hospital for your broken leg? The frame is silly and candy coated in contrast to the film’s gray stiffness, a loud reminder that Katherine isn’t a cliche frigid bitch but hilariously and awkwardly unaware of her demands on others and herself. She’s so focused on achieving and attaining that she doesn’t sense the emptiness until it’s too late, and here she is at her most fruitless.

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Oh, to have a straight-forward musical comedy like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes these days. In a brisk 90 minutes the laughs keep coming not just from the mile-a-minute punchlines, but also from the editing and shot compositions. The melodies are genuinely infectious and brightly optimistic without being cloying. The whole film works its ass off to entertain you without cracking a sweat, something the cynicism of recent musicals fails entirely at – especially the ones working even harder to apologize for their own genre.

Generally the film is as visually alive as its witty screenplay, all pops of color and effortless iconography. The director/cinematographer team of Howard Hawks and Harry J. Wild is harmonious in building the musical numbers to truly entertain, and almost in as much awe of the Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe power pairing as we are. In fact, that joyous actress revelry in two key songs is more than enough for one post, so let’s.

The “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” sequence is the film’s catchiest tune, but so instantly iconic that it’s a career benchmark for more than just Monroe. It doesn’t even matter that the actress essentially repeats her arm extension choreography umpteen times in the number with the camera and set design making it surprisingly complex. But who cares, this is peak Marilyn, hilarious, glamorous, and demanding every ounce of your attention.

After all, the camera bathing her in gemstone lights from ruby to onyx to diamond, gives her all of the excess she longs for. But with the revelatory performance, it’s the audience that feels like they’re indulging.

If you watched Blondes as a child as I did, “Anyone Here for Love?” is perhaps… um… not the same when you’re an adult. Even her earrings are anatomical! As many laughs as are mined from Russell’s ogling of the Olympic team, the number is just as funny for their complete ignoring of her. Sorry Jane, these gentlemen prefer dudes.

*whispers* Though that’s absurd because any self respecting gay would be basking in her brassy flawless glow… I’m not sure what’s more subversive for a 1950s musical: the overt gay subtext going on or that Russell is the sexiest thing in the frame with while basically singing about how she just wants to knock the boots. The scene is completely homoerotic without mocking Jane for lusting after them or mocking the men’s queerness, a refreshing lack of internalized homophobia considering the era.

There is plenty of low hanging fruit (pun obviously intended) in the sequence, so naturally, I chose its lead up as the Best Shot:

Simple perfect goddessery. Try being this ferocious on screen, contemporary screen mavens! No, seriously, please try – this is the level of perfection we crave.

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I’m not among the many vocal admirers for Zootopia. The amusing character design and relationships are a delight, and of course it has a fiercely progressive (and unpreachy) message for children that is hard not to root for. While the film’s upsides are front and center, they still don’t mask the film’s flatness and unpropulsive energy, and even the social commentary becomes a little muddled by the end. On first glance the animation looks unrefined, but there’s an expressive attention to lighting and tone that probably does more to push the emotions than the screenplay itself.

But Zootopia‘s core is so warmhearted and well-thought out that focusing on its faults feels a bit mean-spirited, and downplays how accomplished it is visually.

The film’s visual world is packed with wit. Character details and world creation generate steady laughs throughout the film as it details how animals big and small can live harmoniously. Even simple gags like the movement of the sloths produces laughs and furthers the world building. Whether it’s public transit or boroughs within boroughs, the film is not lacking for details in the corners of frames to delight on repeat viewings. Like the most diverse of communities, it’s the microcultures that give Zootopia its intrigue and uniqueness.

A sense of scale not only creates many of the film’s gags, but it also helps establish the differences between species that play directly into Zootopia‘s commentary on contemporary racial divides. Power struggles are foretold with simple framing, explaining the culture of domination and subjugation in a visual language that children can easily comprehend. The “predators” to be feared are never more terrifying than one species visually expressing their desire to overpower over another.

So… Best Shot?

Even the cute and cuddly Bellwether can intentionally exert her dominance over others in Zootopia. The film’s lesson of appearances vitally works in both ways, teaching that sometimes the ones it appear are the most trustworthy (in this case, adorable and funny) can also have the untrustworthy intentions. Here Bellwether is controlling the narrative from her stoic perch, with the pit below a vision of the more primitive way she views the world.

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