February 2, 2018
The Sisters Brothers (2018) **
Grim western starring John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix and Jake Gyllenhaal.
First Man (2018) **
Unlike "The Right Stuff" (1983) and "Apollo 13" (1995), this film about the NASA astronauts is curiously eccentric, focusing on the less heroic aspects of the space race.
Stan And Ollie (2018) **
A biopic about the famous comic duo, set after their Hollywood career. Touching and quite sad.
Crazy Rich Asians (2018) **
A pleasant rom-com that turns into an over-the-top soap opera in the third act.
BlacKKKlansman (2018) **
A very powerful ending, connecting the events of the film, set in the early 70's, to the Charlottesville rally in 2017. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is quite predictable, even thought the set-up is certainly unusual. Far from Spike Lee's best film, but certainly his most ambitious one in a very long time.
Black Panther (2018) **
First, let's get the politics out of the way: this is a smart pro-Trump movie, celebrating a conservative country that embraces border security, isolationism and refuses to accept refugees, but because it's set in Africa and promotes a Wakanda-first (rather than America-first) policy, nobody can accuse it of alt-right sympathies. And the film's villain is a radical leftist who wants to fight racist oppression and start revolutions everywhere. That said, the film itself, while quite impressive on many levels, is way too long, way too slow and way too reminiscent of Disney's "The Lion King". It could have used more action scenes as well. There is an excellent review on Breitbart here, which sums up the film's politics perfectly: "The movie's hero is Trump, the villain is Black Lives Matter".
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