Logan Lucky

— It’s hard to believe I chose to see a film whose one-line summary is “Two brothers attempt to pull off a heist during a NASCAR race in North Carolina.” This may be the perfect plot for an end-of-summer release, but without Stephen Soderbergh directing and some decent stars (Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Katie Holmes), I’m sure I would have passed. It’s easy to see a bit of “Ocean’s Eleven” in the film and plenty of weird and deadpan humor, but it’s hard to know who’ll see the hillbilly humor as offensive and who’ll see it as just having fun. Either way, it’s a clever script in the hands of a crisp director, resulting in a good time without a lot of glitz and without a lot of angst.

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[2017. 119 min. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Starring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, and Farrah Mackenzie.]
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/24/logan-lucky-review-steven-soderbergh-channing-tatum-daniel-craig

Lady Macbeth

— This is a beautifully photographed period piece with a lead actor who’s fantastic. It’s one of those films where you start off being uncertain whether you like or dislike the main character. I assumed my ambiguity was because I sometimes get a little tired of a particular type of feminist heroine, but pretty quickly the film darkens and it’s hard to decide if she’s victim or villain. In the third act, it gets even darker and ends somewhat abruptly, but you can’t help but be taken in by its visual appeal and bizzare plot. Definitely worth seeing.

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[2016. 89 min. Directed by William Oldroyd. Starring Florence Pugh, Cosmo Jarvis, and Paul Hilton.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/lady-macbeth-2017

Detroit

— I was a little embarrassed to be so completely taken in by “Detroit.” It’s hard not to think of it as factual when it’s really only based on fact and, probably, skewed to parallel current-day news stories and popular feelings about the police. I thought it was very good as long as viewers remember it is “fiction” even though it depicts something from the past, so the views may not reflect current day views, only remind us from where we come and what we had and have to overcome.

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[2017. 143 min. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Starring John Boyega, Anthony Mackie, Algee Smith, and Jacob Latimore.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/detroit-2017

A Ghost Story

— It’s been a while since I’ve been more irritated by a film. “A Ghost Story” is at its best when it’s over, because it grows on you once your patience is no longer being tested. It may have been too poetic or too meditative for my consumption. The first quarter of the film went on forever—long, long scenes with hardly any dialogue or narration and not much background music. From there it was nearly laughable as the ghost left the morgue wearing a sheet, appearing to have donned a cheap Halloween costume, and returned to his ranch home to watch his wife deal with her grief, while he dealt with his own loss of love and life. About halfway through, background music and dialogue were fully implemented, but the ghost could do little more than observe life without him, becoming the embodiment of sadness. Just before the film took a sudden shift for the better, I had begun to think about tedious foreign films of the 1960s and ‘70s, and I even fantasized about bolting for the exit when, onscreen, past and present and future became jumbled. The film managed to pull things together by focusing on human emotion, spiritual connections, and legacy—or something like that! What began as the dullest film I’ve seen in ages, left me scratching my head and wondering what the heck had just happened when the credits rolled. It raised lots of questions about love, loss, and legacy, but I think any answers are ours to find.

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[2017. 92 min. Written and directed by David Lowery. Starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-ghost-story-2017

Spider-Man: Homecoming

— I’ve seen the earlier Spider-Man films, some good and some not so good. I understand the allure of a high school kid thrust into superhero-dom, but at some point isn’t enough, enough? Evidently not. The good news is that “Spider-Man: Homecoming” may be the latest in a 15-year-old franchise, but it still feels a little fresh thanks to the focus on Spider-Man when he’s 15 years old and dealing with issues of puberty, geekiness, acceptance, and dating while experiencing Avenger-envy. Although it’s another CGI extravaganza, the focus stays on the human side of Peter Parker, leaving a film with plenty of action and a sometimes exasperating but always relatable teen hero.

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[2017. 133 min. Directed by Jon Watts, Starring Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr., Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, and Gwyneth Paltrow.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spider-man-homecoming-2017

Baby Driver

— This one would be worth it for the music alone since the main character, Baby, always has earbuds and an iPod with a playlist going, but that’s just part of it. To enjoy it, I think you have to embrace plenty of clichés and smile as you see them pass before you. It’s fueled by high-speed chases, whacked out robbers, and a young driver who’s what I imagine his contemporaries think of as "cool as a cucumber." Of course, Baby’s a good boy in a bad situation and you have to love him. Oh, and did I mention it’s a love story too? Best line, and this pretty much says it, “Sometimes all I want to do is head west on 20 in a car I can't afford with a plan I don't have—just me, my music, and the road.” Don’t we all?

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[2017. 112 min. Written and directed by Edgar Wright. Starring Ansel Elgort, Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzalez, Micah Howard, Lily James, Kevin Spacey, and Jamie Foxx.]
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/02/baby-driver-edgar-wright-ansel-elgort-review

Dunkirk

— I was amazed at how tense a nearly 2-hour film could be when the basic plot takes little more than a sentence to tell, but time flew by and my eyes were glued to the screen during “Dunkirk,” not because of bombs and bloodshed but because the very human emotions of the situation seemed so real. The story’s told from the perspective of a few, very normal people representative of the 400,000 Allied soldiers trapped by the German army on the beach at Dunkirk and of those trying to help them, but in a more subtle way so it isn’t a story in the American fashion with one or two swashbuckling heroes. Even the special effects are unusual—very well done but without endless blood and horror. It’s a film of long shots and close-ups with ambient sounds sometimes overpowering dialogue, depicting human triumph on a large-scale (about 300,000 people were saved) and a small scale (400,000 were specks on a beach and the more than 800 civilian boats that tried to help were specks in the ocean). If you’re not opposed to films of this genre, it’s worth your time to see. 

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[2017. 106 min. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Fionn Whitehead Damien Bonnard, Aneurin Barnard, Mark Rylance, Barry Keoghan, Michael Fox, Tom Glynn-Carney, Tom Hardy, and Lee Armstrong.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dunkirk-2017

The Hero

— Sam Elliott plays a once popular western star now in his early 70s and doing voiceovers for commercials. He’s been divorced for years and is estranged from his daughter, but he isn’t the cliché “old guy” we’re used to seeing in films. Instead, he’s just trying to survive while coming to terms with a life of missed opportunities, with past notoriety now mostly gone, and with considerably fewer days ahead of him than behind him. His fairly quiet life shifts in another direction when he meets a young woman with whom an unlikely romance eventually blossoms at about the same time he’s diagnosed with cancer. Elliott does a remarkable job of maneuvering the shifts and cycles, living in the here and now while his past pushes heavily on him. There’s a bit more sentimentality than I like and, after developing such a realistic character, I was a little dismayed when they chose a May/December romance as the vehicle to allow him to move forward, but through it all, Elliott is mesmerizing and you can't take your eyes off him any more than you can turn a deaf ear to his smooth voice. It’s not as full or layered as last year’s “I’ll See You in My Dreams”, but you can't help but see the similarities in both films.

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[2017. 93 min. Directed by Brett Haley. Starring Sam Elliott, Laura Prepon, Krysten Ritter, Nick Offerman, and Katherine Ross.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-hero-2017