So many great movies come out in December, so I went to the theaters five times—that’s easily my record for any month last year. The best of the films I saw was Yorgos Lanthimos’s “The Favourite,” which is set in the court of Queen Anne in 18th Century England. It’s a sumptuous feast of palace intrigue, baroque art direction and surprisingly apt off-kilter camerawork. This is Lanthimos’s first period film, but its vision of a bizarre, distorted reality that’s blithely accepted by its inhabitants will feel familiar to those who have seen his previous films. Like those, “The Favourite” features vaguely dystopian, science fiction-like qualities. And like all good sci-fi films, this movie is as much about the year it was made as it is about the year the events it depicts ostensibly took place. If there was a time for a movie about the tragicomic art of manipulating a feckless head of state, it’s right now.
Not quite as richly auteuristic but nevertheless terrific in its own right: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Super-hero movies are in a major glut right now (I couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm for any of Marvel’s own “cinematic universe” movies in 2018) but this one is a breath of fresh air. It’s the best Spider-Man movie by far, one of the best super-hero movies ever made, and probably one of the best computer-animated movies of all time. Kudos to the team who made it, and, credit where credit is due: kudos to the studio that somehow also made “Venom.”
Here are all eighteen movies I watched last month.
- “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” For die-hards only.
- “Clue” Less fun than the board game.
- “The Net” A perfect document of extreme ignorance.
- “The Polar Express” Horrifying.
- “Hackers” The information superhighway has changed so much.
- “The Getaway” Steve McQueen, the actor, was overrated.
- “The Favourite” Very, very close to a masterpiece.
- “Searching” I never thought a movie like this could be so good.
- “Mary Poppins Returns” Casting Emily Blunt was a stroke of genius. Then they stopped there.
- “Isle of Dogs” Deeply flawed but still a wonder.
- “Bel Canto” Shallow.
- “Holiday” My favorite Christmas movie.
- “The Other Side of the Wind” I really wanted to like this. I didn’t.
- “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” This documentary about “The Other Side of the Wind” is more entertaining than the real thing.
- “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” A major step down from the original, but not that bad.
- “Aquaman” No more or less dumb than the Marvel cinematic universe.
- “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” The best “Spider-Man” movie and one of the best CG-animated movies ever.
- “The Rider” Excellent.
I’ll be posting a full round-up of what I watched last year soon, but in the meantime, if you’re interested, here are the monthly round-ups for November, October, September, August, July, June, May, April, March, February and January. You can also see my complete list of everything I watched in 2017 and follow along with my film diary over at letterboxd.com.
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