Now Available: July 3, 2018

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

Welcome to Now Available, where we’ll give you a quick review of a film we didn’t cover when it was released in theaters that’s releasing for home viewing this week, along with a list of everything else and where you can see our coverage on it. 

It’s 1982 and Lebanon is embroiled in civil war. Former US Diplomat Mason Skiles (Jon Hamm) is compelled to return to the city where his wife was murdered ten years earlier to negotiate the return of a kidnapped former colleague. Racing against the timeline of the abductors, Skiles must attempt to meet their demands while navigating around multiple obstacles in the form of the State Department and the CIA.

Brad Anderson’s Beirut is a tense thriller that’s elevated by what may be my favorite film role in Jon Hamm’s career. For the most part, I’ve found Hamm’s dramatic film roles to be pretty bland, but as any Mad Men fan could tell you, playing a highly functional alcoholic with the keen ability to tell people what it is they want to hear is right in his wheelhouse, in fact it might be his wheelhouse. Rosamund Pike is, of course, great, and a little under utilized, as CIA officer and Skiles’ handler Sandy Crowder. When the story threatens to get bogged down with one too many complications, Hamm and Pike never let it become anything less than interesting. The cinematography is occasionally too dark, but for the most part it’s perfect in its dirty, gritty aesthetic. The story is intriguing, although occasionally it threatens to spin too tangled a web. Setting the story against the backdrop of an actual historical war is a nice touch that gives even the calmer moments a sense of urgency. 

Overall, while it doesn’t do anything to really separate itself in the genre, strong performances make the film worth checking out. Beirut is a pretty solid choice for a quiet Sunday night on the sofa.

Also available this week:

Blockers: You can read my review of this fun twist on the teen sex comedy here.

7 Days in Entebbe

Borg vs. McEnroe

Finding Your Feet

Journey’s End

Ismael’s Ghosts

Another Wolf Cop

The Female Mind

The Cured

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when new content is posted.

MOVIE REVIEW: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO (2018)

When the man behind a suicide bombing at a Kansas City supermarket is revealed to have entered the country through the border between Texas and Mexico, the President of the United States is in a position to officially deem human trafficking a terrorist activity, giving them more latitude to deal with the controversial issue. With the intention of waging a battle on this new front in the war on terror, Josh Brolin’s Matt Graver and his team are given the task of firing the first shot.

“It might get dirty.”

“Dirty is why you’re here.”

Stefano Sollima’s Sicario: Day of the Soldado is the follow up to Denis Villeneuve’s outstanding Sicario that no one really knew we needed but were all, nevertheless, curious to see. Gone is Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, the young FBI agent who served as the conscience and the audience stand in in the first film. Returning are Graver and Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), as well as their unorthodox, but unarguably effective, ways of dealing with troubles at the border. Their plan is simple. They are going to kidnap the 16 year old daughter of the cartel kingpin who killed Alejandro’s family and make it look like it was another cartel. The intention is to start a turf war between cartels so that the war on trafficking will be fought against distracted opponents. But of course, nothing is simple at the border.

To tell more would be to give too much away. Sollima has managed to craft a follow-up that perfectly inhabits the world created in Sicario. Villeneuve had a way of putting his camera in places that made the audience feel like they were in the vehicle crossing the border or in the hidden tunnels used to traffic drugs. Sollima, especially in action sequences, gives us that same perspective, heightening the tension with every note of Hildur Guonadottir’s haunting score. One of the biggest obstacles to a sequel in my mind was going to be that the protagonist (I use that term loosely) of this film was going to be a guy who we saw murder women and children in the first film. Taylor Sheridan is able to more fully round out the character of Alejandro in a way that doesn’t ask the audience to root for him but also doesn’t allow him to be despised. Once again, Del Toro is electric in the role, but at this point in his career, saying that Benicio Del Toro is great is pretty redundant because he’s just fantastic in everything. Most of the tales that Hollywood tells of hitmen either glamorize or bring a sense of humor to the profession. S:DotS shows us the blunt reality of the job, but Del Toro never lets Alejandro become a monster. Speaking of redundant, Josh Brolin is also fantastic as Graver. His character isn’t fleshed out too much more (other than apparently he’s left his flip-flops behind for a comfy pair of Crocs), but being in the dark about his past is what makes his character work so well. Isabela Moner shows a deep inner strength as Isabel Reyes, the kidnapped teen, even as she’s completely terrified and in the dark as to what’s happening to her.

This film is tight, this film is tense, and this film is timely. Child separation, human trafficking, terrorism…those are all things that you can read about on the front page of your newspaper tomorrow morning. And Sicario: Day of the Soldado doesn’t presume to have any answers to these issues. While the original gave us Kate Mercer and her earnestness and her moral compass to see this world through, this film kind of just makes us sit in the filth and be disgusted (hopefully) by the machinations on both sides of this volatile scenario. There aren’t winners. There aren’t losers. It’s all just dirty.

So don’t go see Sicario: Day of the Soldado if you need a couple of hour diversion from your problems. But if you want a thoughtful, well-executed thriller, you’re not afraid to sit with a bit of ambiguity, and you enjoyed (or at least saw) the first installment, I think it’s worth your time.

Rating:

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when new content is posted.

Now Available: June 26, 2018

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

Welcome to our newest feature, Now Available, where we’ll give you a quick review of a film we didn’t cover when it was released in theaters that’s releasing for home viewing this week, along with a list of everything else and where you can see our coverage on it. 

They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and Melinda Moore-Gayle (Taraji P. Henson) is a living embodiment of that statement. After spending 18 years supporting her deadbeat inventor husband only to see him hit it big after they split, she’s out to get the life she was promised at any cost. But is her assessment of the situation coming from reality or a damaged and skewed perception? These are the questions one is left to ponder in Tyler Perry’s Acrimony.

Since this is Feelin’ Film, I’ll start with the positive. Acrimony doesn’t telegraph where it’s going. What I mean by that is that with about 20 minutes left I said aloud to myself, “Hmm, how is this going to end?” I watch 300-400 movies a year. It’s not very often that I don’t know where a film is headed. Whenever it happens, it’s always a pleasant surprise. I’ll give Perry kudos for that. Furthermore, Henson is absolutely great in the film. I’ve been a fan of hers since she was a supporting character on CBS’s great Person of Interest and I’m ecstatic that her performances in shows like Fox’s Empire and movies like Hidden Figures have resulted in her being given more prominent roles. She absolutely deserves better than this. None of the rest of the cast makes any sort of an impression at all. They might as well not even exist. On top of that, the pacing is awful, which exacerbates its bloated 2 hour run-time. It continually breaks rule number one of storytelling, repeatedly telling us how bad Melinda’s temper is when they could’ve simply spent time showing the audience the lengths of her fury.  In the end, I think that Perry has some good ideas for his Fatal Attraction-esque tale of a damaged relationship leading to betrayal and rage, but he falls well short in the execution. A movie that kept me guessing throughout with a standout lead performance really shouldn’t leave me feeling both bored and relieved that it’s over. But here we are.

Also available this week:

The Endless: Aaron was a big fan of this one when he reviewed it here back in April and FF had the chance to spend some time with the film’s creators in an interview here.

Antarctica: In The Footsteps of the Emperor (a documentary by the director of March of the Penguins).

Gemini

In Darkness

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when new content is posted.

Now Available: June 19, 2018

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

Welcome to our newest feature, Now Available, where we’ll give you a quick review of a film we didn’t cover when it was released in theaters that’s releasing for home viewing this week, along with a list of everything else and where you can see our coverage on it. 

Taking place in the year 67 a.d., Paul, Apostle of Christ follows famed author and physician Luke (Jim Caviezel) as he interviews Paul (James Faulkner), the apostle responsible for writing roughly half of the Biblical New Testament, and interacts with the persecuted church of Rome lead by Aquilla (John Lynch) and his wife Priscilla (Joanne Whalley). Will he be able to use his pen to record the last words of the church father or will his presence attract the ire of Mauritias (Oliver Martinez), the Roman jailer tasked with keeping tabs on Nero’s prized prisoner?

I tend to be one of the faith-based film genre’s biggest critics. For the most part, besides their obvious deficits in terms of production quality, I find that they generally brashly wear their message on their sleeve…and their chest and their hat and their pants with the subtlety of the advertising on a NASCAR driver. While this film doesn’t completely avoid that pitfall, I found that it largely overcomes that with grounded performances lead by the always solid Caviezel and quieter, more contemplative musings on what it means to defend your faith. Filmed in Malta, it looks great and director Andrew Hyatt does a great job from the word go of allowing the audience to sense the danger in which these early Christ followers lived. Whether you’re a person of faith or not, Paul, Apostle of Christ shows a piece of history that is both fascinating and has significance for the world we live in today. It’s not merely good for the genre, it’s just pretty good in general.

Also available this week:

Pacific Rim: Uprising: See Aaron’s original review of this sequel here and hear the guys chat about it on the podcast here (if you’re like me and want to rewatch the original first, they talked about that one here).

The Death of Stalin 

Unsane

Midnight Sun

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when new content is posted.

MOVIE REVIEW: Upgrade

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

UPGRADE (2018)

I’m really going to miss Movie Pass. I’ll understand when it goes away. It makes sense that it would fail. But I’m going to really miss going to see a movie I’d never even heard of on the spur of the moment because it’s already paid for. Without Movie Pass, I never would have seen Upgrade.

Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade takes place in the near future and tells the story of Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green in a performance that will help me finally stop confusing him for Tom Hardy), a man who has just witnessed his wife’s murder and been paralyzed and left for dead by his attackers. When he’s given the opportunity to regain the use of his arms and legs thanks to an experimental new technology called STEM, he uses his new lease on life to hunt the people responsible for his wife’s death while attempting to stay one step ahead of the cop assigned to the case (Betty Gabriel). But it’s starting to look like there’s more to this STEM technology than meets the eye.

Upgrade is a tense, violent thriller with solid action and a dark sense of humor. While it’s not scary, it’s not difficult to see that Leigh Whannell cut his teeth in the horror genre as the film slowly builds to it’s frenzied third act. It creates a fascinating future world that feels real and lived in thanks to some cinematography by Stefan Duscio. You don’t have to suspend disbelief to buy into this being the way the world looks in just a few years. When you put those two together with a solid performance from Marshall-Green, it adds up to my favorite movie of the summer thus far.

If you’re suffering from franchise fatigue and craving an original, self-contained story outside of any cinematic universes this summer, you could do a lot worse than Upgrade. Did I mention it’s only 95 minutes long? It’s great! Thanks Movie Pass!

Rating:

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when new content is posted.

MOVIE REVIEW: Deadpool 2

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

DEADPOOL 2 (2018)

I think it’s time to change our perspective. In the world of comic book movies, there are no new stories. We’ve told them all. I don’t want to read another criticism that a film in the genre failed to tread new ground because there isn’t new ground to cover. We don’t need new stories, we need fresh ones. The original Deadpool was a fresh story. There weren’t any beats that were new, but Ryan Reynolds and company were able to inject enough fresh life into the old superhero origin story to make it the surprise hit of 2016 and guaranteed that we’d see the Merc with a Mouth on the silver screen again soon. The only question that needed to be answered was whether or not a sequel could stay fresh or if it would be nothing but a retread of its successful predecessor.

David Leitch’s Deadpool 2 puts us back in the world of Wade Wilson (Reynolds) at a time in his life where he has it all. He’s quite successful at his job and his home life couldn’t be better. But as is wont to happen in films like these, this bliss is short lived as one day, while Wilson and his wife Vanessa (Morea Baccarin) cuddle up on the couch in their Old Navy khakis and pastel sweaters discussing the expansion of their little family, some unfinished business changes his world dramatically and sends our beloved Pool on another journey of self-discovery. And all of this happens before the opening credits. From there the film embarks on what is essentially a “Would you kill baby Hitler if you could go back in time” kind of plot as DP assembles a team of mutants, the X-Force, to protect a child (and apparently future monster) caught in the crosshairs of the mysterious time-traveling Cable (Josh Brolin). That’s a pretty bare bones description, but I don’t want to give anything else away because what follows is 2 hours of violence, surprise cameos and laughs with a surprising amount of heart sprinkled in.

Unsurprisingly, Reynolds is the star of this show. Wade Wilson is the part he was born to play and he slips into Deadpool’s red pants with ease once again. Josh Brolin is very good as Cable, a man who has some very compelling reasons to do a really bad thing. Zazie Beetz was the highlight of the supporting cast as Domino, a mutant whose super power is simply good luck. While that doesn’t seem like the most cinematic of powers (at one point Deadpool criticizes the power for just that reason), Leitch and his team find a way to really make it work. My only complaint about the cast is that TJ Miller’s part wasn’t re-cast in the light of the numerous allegations about his behavior towards women. In a self-aware film of this nature, one that outright references the #MeToo movement with a joke or two, his presence sticks out like a sore thumb.

But does it stay fresh? In this reviewer’s opinion, it absolutely does. By leaning into the self-referential humor made the first film so successful, upping the ante on the action and violence and making effective pauses in the action and comedy to give itself real emotional depth, Deadpool 2 continues the trend set by the original of making the old feel new. Is it perfect? No. Some of the tonal shifts are jarring, there are some lulls in the action that last a bit longer than they ought to and a few of the jokes don’t land (but with as many of them as there are flying at the screen, the amount that do is quite impressive). Everything else adds up to a worthy continuation of the franchise that might even compete with the original. In short, if you enjoyed your first ride with Deadpool, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t love this one as well.

PS. This film has the best mid-credits stinger(s) in cinematic history. Enjoy!

Rating:

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when new content is posted.

MOVIE REVIEW: Breaking In

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

BREAKING IN (2018)

With Breaking In, director James McTiegue makes an effort to give a fresh take on the well-worn home invasion sub-genre. It attempts to be fresh by flipping the script and having the protagonist infiltrating her own home where the antagonists have her children held hostage. Well, God bless him for trying, I suppose because this is an undeniably terrible movie. It’s poorly edited (I counted at least 3 instances where the dialogue was visibly dubbed over, presumably to attain a PG-13 rating), contains multiple instances of odd and out of place slow-motion, and has some of the blandest villains you’ll see in any film this year.

It’s quite a shame, because I’ll be damned if Gabrielle Union didn’t just absolutely bring it (yeah I did) in her role as Shaun, the aforementioned mother. She gives the character a measure of believability both as a loving mother and a woman who isn’t to be messed with. Another bright spot was Aijona Alexus, who plays Shaun’s daughter Jasmine. Believably making the transition from frightened to fierce, she has the talent to be a bright spot in more films for years to come.

Also of note is Richard Cabral’s role as the bad guy crew’s resident “badass.” You know the type. He’s the one in the group who takes matters into his own hands first, escalating the situation beyond peaceful resolution. He’s not noteworthy for anything good, but rather for his performance being laughably bad and his presence sucking the tension out of every one of his scenes. His character is not at all comedic in nature, but there were snickers in the crowd whenever he appeared on screen. Every facial expression, every gesture and every word that came out of his mouth was so unbelievably awful that it threatened to steal the show. While the other bad guys were completely forgettable (lead by Billy Burke, who probably ought to stick to TV), Cabral’s Duncan was just flat out bad.

Although Breaking In arrived just in time to give you and your mom a different type of movie to go see for Mother’s Day, I’d suggest looking elsewhere if you’re looking to take her to the theater this weekend.

Rating:

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when new content is posted.

MOVIE REVIEW: Blockers

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

BLOCKERS (2018)

Teen sex-comedies used to totally be my jam. When I first saw American Pie, I was brought to tears with laughter. But as I’ve gotten older and become a parent, I can’t help but spend most of my time irrationally concerned with the consequences that these teens will experience the morning after their “best night ever.” Apparently, I’m not alone as this feeling drives the plot of Kay Cannon’s Blockers.

Blockers follows Leslie Mann, John Cena and Ike Barinholtz as three estranged old friends who stumble onto their soon-to-graduate daughters’ pact to lose their virginity on prom night. It’s a fun twist on the genre that takes the focus off of the perspective of the teenagers and points it towards their parents and their mission to stop the girls before it’s too late. As you might expect, hijinks ensue.

The film is at its best when it’s following the parents. Leslie Mann is one of the most underappreciated comedic actors of her generation. She makes every movie she’s in better, and Blockers is absolutely improved by her performance and comedic timing as Lisa, a single mom worried about what her life is going to look like when her little girl leaves for college. Cena is someone I look forward to seeing in films like this. While his acting ability is limited and usually restricted to one note, I appreciate how he’s always game to play against type if the role calls for it. He plays Mitchell, a dorky dad who would be intimidating if it wasn’t for his inability to keep from crying. In my opinion, Ike Barinholtz steals almost every scene he’s in as the screw-up Hunter, who ruined his family and his relationship with his daughter several years earlier when he had an affair with the babysitter. He’s very funny and his storyline with his daughter provided the most emotional depth in the film. With the three of them together, the movie really sings. When the focus shifts to their daughters and their prom dates, it’s just mediocre to poor teen-comedy fare that bogs down the story.

It’s a pretty funny concept that’s pulled off pretty well, but like a lot of films in this vein, it runs to the well of gross-out humor a bit too often to really stand-out. It’s a shame too, because when the actors are allowed to play off of one another in their race against time, it’s quite funny. I’m not opposed to that type of humor if it’s serving the story, but that’s not what is happening here.

Despite its faults, Blockers is worth seeing simply because it’s a fun new take on a pretty tired old genre with good performances and a surprising amount of heart. But there’s no need to get out to the theater for this one, wait until you can watch it at home where the popcorn is a lot cheaper.

Rating:

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when new content is posted.

MOVIE REVIEW: Game Night

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

GAME NIGHT (2018)

Game Night

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that I was ever adequately prepared to be a grown up. And at the risk of sounding like a whiner, I’ll just come out and say it, adulting is hard. And when 5 days of work, children’s activities and other responsibilities get followed up by a Saturday full of work around the house, there’s really only one thing that can get me to put my pants back on after my Sunday afternoon nap. That thing is game night. Who doesn’t love game night? Whether it’s a group of old friends from college getting together to play Pitch and swap stories deep into the night, a cup of coffee and a game of Ticket to Ride or driving 90 miles an hour headed straight for downtown to beat a friend to the next clue in a scavenger hunt that would consume my every waking thought for weeks, I love to hear those five little words, “Game night at our place.” Game night is one of life’s little pleasures. It’s like a 2-4 hour oasis where you get to forget about what’s going on in your world and try to beat your friends into submission.

John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s film Game Night, in theaters this weekend, shows its audience a game night that is quite different than any you have likely experienced. Largely about an evening gone awry, the film is two hours of unbridled, crazy fun that left me feeling like I do during an actual game night. All of the ingredients are there: the super competitive couple that always wins (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams), the couple being a little too open and honest about a marital spat (Lamorne Harris and Kylie Bunbury), the idiot who is terrible at games but a lot of fun to have around (Billy Magnusson), the guy who is only invited because he heard about game night from someone else (Jesse Plemmons), the moments of tension broken up by intense laughter and the three bags of Tostito’s Scoops.

The plot is fairly straight forward. Max and Annie (Bateman and McAdams) are the weekly hosts of game night. But Max’s spotlight stealing older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) comes to town and promises to up the ante on game night at his place. Within an hour, he says, someone will be kidnapped. The team that finds that person first wins. The winner gets his cherry red Corvette Stingray. This is serious. When the kidnappers show up and take Brooks in a manner that’s a little too convincing, our three couples have to figure out what is real and at is just part of the game.

To say more would be a disservice to the film. It’s a movie that starts fast and keeps moving at a break-neck pace for its entire runtime. The twists and turns and special appearances along the way are surprising and fun. Daley and Goldstein, who also wrote the script, seem to revel in creating a narrative that defies audience (and the film’s characters’) expectations at every turn. At one point, about halfway through, when it seemed that the movie was turning more into an action thriller than a comedy, the film instead steers right into the absurdity in its premise and delivers another load of belly laughs.

The cast is obviously having a great time. Jason Bateman plays Jason Bateman. I’m not saying that to complain. I love every minute of it. He has great chemistry with Rachel McAdams, who has great timing and delivery in the rare straight comedic role. Kyle Chandler is another guy who you don’t get to see be funny very often. He doesn’t get a lot of time in this one, but he takes advantage of every scene he gets. He’s good enough in his comic situations that you almost forget that he possesses that Coach Taylor paternal charm when he turns it on during the more sentimental moments of the film. The comic MVP of the film is Billy Magnusson. On the surface, his character is that of the stereotypical idiot friend (think of him as a blonde Joey from Friends) but man, does he sell the hell out of it. Jesse Plemmons is freaking creepy as the next door neighbor policeman who hasn’t gotten invited to game night since his wife left him, who was the person in the couple that people liked.

Game Night is not a perfect film by any means. I’m sure if you spent some time trying to figure out exactly how everything works out the way it did, you could probably make your head hurt. So don’t do that. It’s already been a stressful week. You need a break. Put some pants on, even if it’s just your sweats, and go have a couple of hours of fun. It’s Game Night.

Rating:

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. In addition watching as many movies as he can and writing reviews for Feelin’ Film, Jeremy consumes an unhealthy amount of television and writes about it weekly in his Feelin’ TV column.   Follow him on Facebook and Twitter  to be notified when new content is posted.

Jeremy’s Top 10 Films of 2017

Posted on by Jeremy Calcara.

2017 was a great year for me as far as movies go. I was able to see more new movies than ever before, and thanks to Aaron and Patrick, I was also given the opportunity to write about them from time to time. I’m not a critic. I’m never going to talk about how the director’s use of color helped to invoke a sense of whimsy or anything like that, because I don’t know what that even means. I’m glad there are people out there who do know, because I like to listen to them talk about movies and hopefully get a little smarter while doing so. But I’m just a guy who likes movies and watches way too many of them. All in all, I was able to watch 107 movies that had release dates in the United States in 2017. The following are my ten favorite, not necessarily the ones that I thought were the best films. Enjoy!

10- Logan

This is the first of two films on this list that were released last winter but managed to hang out in my top ten all year. I’ve long been a fan of Hugh Jackman and his portrayal of Wolverine in the X-Men films, but like many others, I had hated the individual Wolverine films up until Logan. So my expectations for this film were quite low. I was completely blown away when James Mangold managed to create the perfect send-off for not one, but two characters in the X-Men universe, all the while making an emotionally satisfying film about legacy and family.

9- The Greatest Showman

If you would’ve told me 10 years ago that I’d be getting super into musicals in my late 30’s, I never would have believed you. But here we are. I really like this movie, but I completely LOVE the soundtrack. I recently got a Google Home Mini for Christmas and thus far it’s basically been a Greatest Showman soundtrack playing machine. I could be nitpicky and talk about its faults, but I kind of just want to dance in my living room to This Is Me instead.

8- Dunkirk

I’m a pretty big Christopher Nolan fan (it’s one of the requirements to be a Feelin’ Film contributor) so I was pretty excited to see this one from the moment I heard about it. Its tension really puts you in the headspace of its characters and while some saw the timing differences in the three different story threads distracting, I thought it was brilliant and served to heighten the imminent danger in the film. It’s not my favorite Nolan, but it’s still really good.

7- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

This one hit me in all of the right places. I thought the story and dialogue were both funny and heartbreaking with excellent performances by the all-star cast, with Sam Rockwell standing out. This film is a lot darker than what I am usually into. but I really enjoyed the realistic way in which it portrayed positive change in its characters, even characters as unlikable as the ones that McDonough gives us.

6- Wonder Woman

I don’t have a whole bunch of words to say about Wonder Woman, I just really loved this movie. The scene where Diana emerges from the trench at No Man’s Land is one of my two or three favorite scenes of the year. Gal Godot perfectly brings the Amazon goddess to the screen, giving her a perfect amount of naivety, beauty and compassion without sacrificing her fierceness as a warrior. It immediately became my favorite entry into the DCEU even though I’m a guy who really likes all of the films in that universe (besides Suicide Squad, but that goes without saying).

5- The Big Sick

I went to see this one afternoon this summer after hearing Feelin’ Film contributor Don Shanahan gush about it for a few days. He wasn’t using hyperbole. I loved this film. It’s funny and sweet and heartbreaking and thought-provoking, often achieving all of those things in the same moment. Holly Hunter and Ray Romano give my two favorite supporting performances of the year in this stand-out film.

4- Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

So my wife went and had a baby on the day I was to go to the 10:00 opening night show of SW, meaning we’d still be in the hospital when the second showing I had tickets to came around. The timing of the birth of my son (whom I love and with whom I hold no grudges about the time and date of his arrival) meant that I wouldn’t be able to see the film until almost a full week after its release. But I really think that this ended up being a good thing. I was somewhat careful to avoid spoilers, but I saw enough to know that the critics were loving it but that a lot of the fans were pretty upset. I think this helped my mindset going in as I started to expect the unexpected. Because of that, I came out of the theater completely in love. I think the story went places where it needed to go to move the universe beyond the family tree of the Skywalkers while also adding a satisfying chapter to Luke’s legend. The new characters continue to impress and the old ones have absolutely brought their A game to the new trilogy as well. This movie has already moved to number three in my Star Wars rankings and by this time next year, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it at the top. I can’t wait to see what Rian Johnson has in store for his new SW trilogy.

3- Lady Bird

Lady Bird is another movie that I wouldn’t have seen (at this point, anyway) if it weren’t for the relationships I’ve been able to build at Feelin’ Film. After spending a couple of hours chatting with Aaron and Patrick about Edge of Seventeen (episode 86 of the podcast), Aaron suggested to me that I’d like Lady Bird. He wasn’t wrong. Beautifully acted and casted and directed and performed, Lady Bird is one of the best coming of age stories I’ve seen on screen. What’s the opposite of a back-handed compliment? Like when you’re playfully bashing on something that you actually love? Is there a word? If there isn’t we need to invent one to accurately capture Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s funny and heartfelt love letter to her home.

2- Get Out

This movie was the number one film on my list for more time than any other movie this year. I saw it because I’m a fan of Jordan Peele from Key and Peele and I thought that if he wrote a film, it would probably be pretty fun. As an experience, it was one of the most enjoyable times I had at the theater all year. As a film, I found its themes to be something that has challenged my thinking even more on repeat viewings. It’s one hell of a directorial debut and I’m looking forward to what he’s got up his sleeve next.

1- Brigsby Bear

Sometimes a movie comes along that just hits you in the right place at the right time. Brigsby Bear did that for me. It’s a quirky comedy (described by Filmspotting’s Adam Kempenaar as Be Kind, Rewind meets Room) that can be enjoyed on its surface, but that also has a lot to say about friendship, family, moving on from tragedy, the joy of creating art and what makes us love the things we love if you want to engage with it on a deeper level. I’ve seen it three times now and each time something new stands out for me to think on for a while. Kyle Mooney is perfect as our main character man-child James and Mark Hamill gives my favorite performance of his in 2017 in a supporting role. This will be a movie that I watch often and might just end up being one of my favorites of all-time.

The films that almost made this list but just didn’t quite make the cut are:

  1. War for the Planet of the Apes
  2. Baby Driver
  3. Justice League
  4. Spiderman: Homecoming
  5. Wonder

And if you want to see my ranking of all 107 movies that I’ve seen that were released this year, check out my Letterboxd list. Notable movies I haven’t had a chance to catch up with yet are Darkest Hour, I, Tonya, The Disaster Artist, Phantom Thread, and The Post. I look forward to many more movie conversations here in the new year. I appreciate you reading and hope that 2018 holds great things in store for you and yours.

Jeremy Calcara is a contributing member of the Feelin’ Film team. In addition watching as many movies as he can and writing reviews for Feelin’ Film, Jeremy consumes an unhealthy amount of television and writes about it weekly in his Feelin’ TV column.   Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when new content is posted.