2020s

The Gray Man

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Gray Goose

In 2003, an unnamed young man (Ryan Gosling), facing a lengthy prison sentence for murder, is approached by the mysterious Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton), who offers to end the man’s sentence then and there if he comes to work for the CIA.  Now, known only as Sierra Six, the man is tasked with the CIA’s most covert operations.  On an assassination mission in Bangkok, Six realizes that his target is a fellow agent (Callan Mulvey), who in his dying moments hands Six a jump drive containing incriminating evidence against the CIA’s smarmy new head, Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page).  Six goes rogue to save himself, and Carmichael enlists psychopathic operative Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) to put him down.  Outmanned and outgunned, Six’s only allies are the now-retired Fitzroy and his agency colleague Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas).

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Bodies Bodies Bodies

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Late Zoomer

When its title card arrived alongside a grating hyperpop song, I was worried that Bodies Bodies Bodies would be an exercise in empty, insufferable style.  Bodies isn’t without an aesthetic, mind you, but it’s never as punishing as the opening might lead one to believe – its titles simply set the tone for its Gen-Z vibe, which the movie captures with varying degrees of success.

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Beast

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Claws for Alarm

In this age of endless reboots and remakes, it’s heartening to see that a good old-fashioned unoriginal movie can still get made.  To its credit, Beast isn’t a direct rip-off of any particular man-vs.-nature flick, but it has no interest in doing anything new with the genre, and that’s fine by me.

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Prey

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Tribal Warfare

The Predator series has always been willing to play with its formula, tweaking its setup with each new installment to varying degrees of success.  The gimmick this time around is setting the movie in 1719, depicting the alien’s “first hunt on Earth” – this tidbit comes from the trailer, and feels somewhat lazy since it’s never mentioned in the movie.

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Bullet Train

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Trained Killers

I’m a sucker for movies set on modes of transportation.  There’s something about the contained space combined with the inherent sense of momentum that makes for easy, comfortable viewing.  Bullet Train understands the appeal as well, using its propulsive setting to stage a story in the curious subgenre of movies about wacky assassins.

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Nope

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B.E.T.

Nope isn’t a horror movie in the purest sense, but it contains one of the scariest sequences of the year so far – one that tops anything from Get Out in sheer nerve-fraying tension.  The scene is unnecessary and borderline irrelevant to the plot, but it’s such a creepy, compelling horror short unto itself that the movie is better for its inclusion.  There’s something about it that’s symbolic of Nope as a whole: sometimes confused, but gripping in the moment.

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Minions: The Rise of Gru

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And They Were All Yellow

I have a confession to make: until now, I had never seen a Despicable Me movie.  As a millennial, my animation touchstones were Toy Story and Shrek, and at 18 I was too old for the original Despicable Me when it came out.  But sometimes the universe (along with an aggressive marketing campaign) gives you a sign.  I couldn’t stop watching the original #gentleminons video on social media, and for the past month three yellow faces have stared at me from a poster at my subway stop.  When Minions: The Rise of Gru was the most convenient option at the theater, the time had come to stop resisting and succumb to the meme fever.

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The Black Phone

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Dead Line

The year is 1978, and a spate of child disappearances have rocked a suburban Ohio town.  The culprit is an unidentified figure (Ethan Hawke) nicknamed “the Grabber” by locals.  13-year-old Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) and his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) are aware of the kidnappings, but have more pressing concerns in the form of vicious bullies and an abusive father (Jeremy Davies). 

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Hustle

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Mentor Sandman

The 2010s weren’t the best decade for Adam Sandler.  He had settled into a comfortable niche starring in movies whose quality generally ranged from tolerable to dreadful, and his lack of interest only became more apparent in the movies he made under his lucrative Netflix contract.  But in 2019, his performance in Uncut Gems reminded us that he could be a compelling dramatic actor when he wanted to – although the release of Hubie Halloween less than a year later dampened hopes of a McConaughey-esque late career renaissance.  The Netflix sports drama Hustle sees Sandler back in more serious territory, to mixed results.

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Jurassic World Dominion

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“Now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs in your dinosaur movie, right?”

As the (alleged) finale of its franchise, Jurassic World Dominion clearly wants to be a bigger, better movie than its two predecessors.  It expands its scope by letting the dinosaurs run rampant across the globe, and what’s at stake is that reliable old chestnut, the survival of mankind.  But these attempts at escalation backfire, cheapening the dinosaurs as well as the plot.  By making the dinosaurs a part of everyday life, the movie robs them of their mystique; and by threatening us with an ending far too bleak for such a corporate piece of filmmaking, it renders the stakes non-existent. 

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