Red Dragon - Thomas Harris - 22/01/17

 

After listening to the Silence of the Lambs audiobook and enjoying it, Lizzie and I decided to listen to Red Dragon together. Of course, the covers that have come out since the mid-90s all have "THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF HANNIBAL LECTOR" splashed across the front, but it's interesting how minimal Lector's role is in this one. Of course, even in Silence of the Lambs Lector is sort of a secondary character, set apart from the main action of the plot- it's impressive the impact he has had on pop culture despite not being the central villain of his most popular works. ANYHOO I had some blurry memories of the film adaptation of this one (starring my then-hero Edward Norton), but the book still packed plenty of surprises and was a blast. Honestly I find it to be just as engaging as SotL, with an impressively creepy serial killer and plenty of thoughtful psychological-detective work at play. It's also fun to engage with characters like Jack Crawford and Frederick Chilton- so familiar from SotL. Will Graham is not quite Clarise Starling, but still plenty good. Lizzie and I have now started the Mads Mikkelson Hannibal show, so we're on a true kick! We also watched "Red Dragon" the movie which mostly held up- it's just too bad it was directed by Brett Ratner. 

The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende - 22/01/17

 

Lizzie strongly recommended this book to me and sure enough, my love for Latin American magical realism knows no bounds. It's nearly impossible for me to write about this one without comparing it to my (the?) gold standard that is One Hundred Years of Solitude. Both concern a family that starts with a single couple, sprouts outward over multiple generations centered in a single big house, before diminishing away from its height in both numbers and glory. While this book did not quite dethrone Gabo's masterpiece, it did more than enough to captivate my attention. Clara del Valle the clairvoyant is a wonderful character, and Esteban Trueba is startlingly three-dimensional, somehow reminiscent of so many conservative patriarchs capable of both horrific cruelty and tender love. The next generation of Blanca, Nicolás, and Jaime are no less interesting- nor tragic. And of course, sympathy must be reserved for little Alba and even the traumatized and traumatizing Esteban García. The side characters are no less compelling, from Barnabás the gigantic dog to the eccentric count Jean de Satigny. I wrote to Isabel Allende recently and her assistant helped facilitate a little correspondence that ended with her signing my first (English) edition copy of this novel- something to treasure!

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - 22/1/14

 

I read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go a few years ago, and while I found the prose strong and the character dynamics interesting, I was ultimately disappointed. The idea of clones being raised for organ-harvesting purposes felt weirdly over-tread (and side note: how bizarre is it that NLMG and Michael Bay's "The Island" with identical plots both came out in 2005? Discuss.). Anyhoo, it took me a long time to circle back around to the author, but I had this work (as well as Klara and the Sun) strongly recommended to me by multiple sources- and so here we are. 

The Remains of the Day concerns Stevens, a prim and proper butler working in the post-war British countryside of the 1950s. Over the course of the book he reflects on his life in a great house, especially with regards to an underling named Miss Kenton and his employer Lord Darlington. Despite belonging to the "downstairs" part of the upstairs/downstairs equation, Stevens is quite eloquent- although not always a 100% reliable narrator. His emotions need to be teased out by reading between the lines, and in this very particular story some universal themes of love, loyalty, dignity, and regret come to surface. I loved it and find myself once again setting a high bar for the year, in only the second week of January. I'm also excited to check out the movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson!

Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut - 22/1/8

 

Book 2 of the year is my fourth Vonnegut novel (joining Hemingway as one of the few authors I've read 4 books by, not-in-a-series). It's sometimes difficult when reading deeper into an author's catalogue, knowing that their most famous novels (and therefore likely the first ones read) are generally the most-famous for a reason. Having said that, most people would call Slaughterhouse Five Vonnegut's masterpiece, whereas my favorite happens to be Cat's Cradle.

Aaaaanyways, Breakfast of Champions is a difficult novel to review without giving away my favorite part, which is a literary device/gimmick introduced in the back half of the book that has no right to work as well as it does. But the whole thing is pretty good, hitting a number of Vonnegut trademarks such as the presence of his semi-autobiographical character Kilgore Trout (with all the bitesize recaps of sci-fi premises that that entails), a plethora of hilarious character names (Dwayne Hoover & Wayne Hoobler, a Pontiac salesman named LeSabre, and a doctor named Khashdrar Miasma, and so on), and a satiric writing style that alternates effortlessly between absurdly hilarious and a bleak/damning forecast about an impending manmade apocalypse. 

This book was not universally beloved upon its release, and Vonnegut himself took issue with it, but at the end of the day the writing is sharp and there are extraordinary insights to be found- and not just in regards to knowing every character's penis length and diameter. I find Vonnegut to be one of the most quotable authors I've ever read, and here are just a few from this book that I don't want to forget:

"Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity."

“Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.” or perhaps the more succinct: “in nonsense is strength”

“The whole city was dangerous—because of chemicals and the uneven distribution of wealth and so on.”

"When I get depressed, I take a little pill, and I cheer up again."

P.S. Vonnegut has such great "tombstone quotes" in his books that I tried to look up what his own tombstone said- only to find that his final resting place is a secret and there are no photos online! Perhaps to dissuade weirdos like me from visiting. That's a pretty impressive move- R.I.P. to one of the greatest, and so on.

The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells - 22/1/4

 

The first book I finished this year is the novella The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Heads up: this year I'm planning to knock out at least a couple of epic novels (War and Peace, Shogun, etc) so I wanted to balance that out with a decent number of novellas because I like variety- and to make sure I don't only read 2-3 books this year. This was a good one to start with, a classic sci-fi / horror story about a physicist named Griffin who turns himself invisible, and then (naturally) turns into a homicidal maniac. Since it's release 120+ years ago, this story has become a hallmark of the horror-scifi-thriller genre and is adapted with no small degree of frequency, most recently in 2020 with Elizabeth Moss (btw- one of the last movies I saw in theaters pre-pandemic, and pretty good!).

I enjoyed the novella quite a bit, especially the winding way in which the story unfolded. The reader is dumped into the middle of the action, and it's only in the back half that the villainous protagonist tells the story of how he became invisible in the first place. The homicidal mania feels a tiny bit unearned, but I did learn from the Wikipedia page that Wells was inspired by Plato's Republic, which contains this idea: if a man were made invisible and could act with impunity, he would "go about among men with the powers of a god." I do agree that the temptations of acting with impunity would turn most people immoral, but I'm not sure if I'm onboard with the full-blown murderous "reign of terror" that Griffin promises to unleash upon the world. Speaking of Wikipedia tidbits, I loved this bit in the "background" section: According to [academic] John Sutherland, Wells and his contemporaries such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling "essentially wrote boy's books for grown-ups." There seems to be a lot of handwringing about the infantilization of media (looking at you, superhero movies) nowadays, but it's funny to see those aforementioned titans of literature written about in the same semi-patronizing way. There's something to be said for a little bit of populism- it tends to help a story stand the test of time! 

10 Best Movies of 2017 (Pre-Awards Season)

Has it been a year already? I guess it’s time for my third (!) annual anti-Oscars retrospective, wherein I totally-objectively rank all of the movies that came out from January through August. This year had a particularly strong crop of not-artsy movies, and I’m actually going to have to go ahead and number my honorable mentions (11-20) before diving into the real top 10. I’ll try to keep the reviews brief, as 20 is a helluva big number when we’re only talking about 8 months worth of content. Could there really be, on average, about two and a half great movies per month? Read on and find out! That sounds like click-bait, sorry. But number 5 will shock you! P.S. As always, I was unfortunately not able to see every single movie despite my Herculean efforts to do so. Maybe next year with MoviePass it’ll be easier. Apologies to Beguiled, A Ghost Story, Trainspotting 2, Good Time, Detroit and anything else I’m forgetting. P.P.S. I didn't enjoy War for the Planet of the Apes as much as everyone else did. Not sure why, just didn't love it.

Lastly, before I begin, I think everybody should do the same 2017 Dane Dehaan-double-feature I did and watch A Cure for Wellness and Valerian and the City of 1000 Planets back-to-back because they are both visually spectacular and otherwise just insane trainwrecks of movies. Easy on the eyes doe. Okay onto the list:

Honorable Mentions:

20. Wind River - coming off two hits (Sicario and Hell or High Water), writer Taylor Sheridan makes the jump adequately to director for this bleak and bloody crime movie that takes place on a Native American reservation. It stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, aka two actors who are better when they’re not playing Avengers.

19. The Lego Batman Movie - The Lego Movie had no right to be hilarious and great, and this (first) spin-off movie reaaaallly had no right to be hilarious and great, and somehow they did it. While not quite as awesome as its predecessor, that’s still an impressive feat.

18. Logan Lucky - Soderbergh’s un-retirement movie is fun and slick, but Ocean’s Eleven it is not. There are quite a few plot holes if you start to think about it, which you probably shouldn’t. Enjoy Channing Tatum and Adam Driver planning and executing a heist at a Nascar track in West Virginia.

17. Baby Driver - While quite fun, Edgar Wright has set the bar so damn high for himself that this can’t really be considered him in top form (Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim get that honor). This movie was well-written and brilliantly directed, but the stakes felt weird and the wink-wink-this-is-a-movie nature of it made it difficult for me to care about the characters.

16. War Machine - I’ve heard this described as a kind of spiritual sequel to Dr. Strangelove for the modern age, and that’s a good thing. Strong performances abound in this satire that looks at what America has done wrong in the war in Afghanistan. It’s both funny and super depressing.

15. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword - Let’s get this out of the way: this movie is dumb. But it’s also insanely fun action and the score is maybe the best of the year (sorry Nick Cave). Turn your brain off and enjoy.

14. Spiderman: Homecoming - Marvel continues to amaze me by refusing to let me stop going to their movies. I’m sick and tired of the MCU and I’m really sick and tired of Spiderman reboots, but somehow they dragged me back in! And by making it a John Hughes-esque high school comedy, they actually made this feel pretty funny and fresh. Whatever Kevin Feige is feeding his cadre of writers, I want some.

13. Kong: Skull Island - Yet again, here’s a movie that is a reboot of a reboot, and it’s shoehorned in a cinematic universe to (re) boot! It should not work, it should not be good, but by putting this one in an Apocalypse Now-type Vietnam setting, it really feels exciting and different. Plus Sam Jackson hams it up with the best of them in his fight against a giant gorilla. Speaking of giant animals and hamming it up...

12. Okja - Bong Joon-ho’s movies are perfect for this list because they feel so anti-Hollywood. They’re fun and bizarre and totally bonkers. This movie (about a giant pig being rescued from a slaughterhouse) is quite good but it basically made me quit pork, which is delicious, so I knocked points off. Damn you, adorable giant pig!

11. Logan - In the era of oversaturated superhero movies, there’s really only one option: make a totally different kind of superhero movie. Deadpool kicked the door down by making a successful R-rated raunch-fest, so why not make a gritty, bloody, cuss-filled R-rated drama? And make it star Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart, two of the original X-Men who kicked off the modern superhero era almost 20 years ago? And make it thoughtful and satisfying? Why not!?

Top 10:

10. Atomic Blonde

If you’re only going to see one John Wick movie this year, make it Atomic Blonde. While John Wick 2 was pretty fun, the senseless murder got a little repetitive by the end. By keeping the kill-count lower, Atomic Blonde makes each action sequence a little more meaningful. Granted, there is still a lot of devastatingly violent carnage in this movie, and I’ve heard others complain that it got monotonous as well. But I didn’t feel that way- I thought the direction was top-notch and the hyper-stylized Cold War-era Berlin kept the neon visuals interesting. And Charlize Theron might just be a better John Wick than Keanu.

9. It Comes At Night

It Comes At Night is a phenomenal title, but it has nothing to do with this movie. Nothing ever comes at night, spoiler alert. Anyways, this one is about a mysterious and extremely contagious disease that has apparently turned the world into a grueling dystopian wasteland. I say apparently because the film barely ever leaves a little house in the woods where a family has holed up. Things get mighty tense in this little shelter, where you can never be totally sure of anything or truly trust anyone. While it’s fairly light on true horror elements (whatever that means), this one has no shortage of extremely suspenseful moments. Stretch your knuckles beforehand, they’ll be white afterwards.

8. Wonder Woman

It’s unfortunate that Wonder Woman has to be a statement rather than just a movie, but you can’t fault the movie for the circumstances of the world that produced it. Those circumstances, by the way, are this: there have only been about 4 (depending on how you count them) superheroine movies ever, and there have been no female-led superhero films since 2004’s atrocious Catwoman. The 13 years in the interim have given us no less than three dozen male-led superhero movies, including 15 in the MCU since 2008. That’s a sad state of affairs, revealing that movie executives don’t trust audiences (of either gender) to come out to support a female lead. Boy were they wrong. Wonder Woman is not a perfect movie, but it is so great and (at the risk of sounding high-falutin’) important to see an empowered female kicking some evil ass for once that the audience turned out in droves and it became one of the few real hits of the summer. People cried and cheered in my screening, myself included. It felt good. It felt right. It’s 2017 goddammit. Time for some equality in our spandex.

7. The Big Sick

Between Hello My Name Is Doris and The Big Sick, Michael Showalter is really making a play to become the rom-com director to beat. Big Sick is rarely laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it is genuinely funny and the true-story nature of it gives it some added emotional heft. I also really appreciate a falling-in-love story that doesn’t exclusively concern white people. Good job Hollywood.

6. Free Fire

Why did no one hear about this movie? Why did no one see this movie? Am I taking crazy pills? Ben Wheatley’s most-accessible movie is also his most-hilarious, although it’s not strictly a comedy. This gun-deal-gone-wrong scenario takes place almost entirely in one bullet-filled warehouse, which is a fun and interesting choice. There are generous helpings of both gore and wry & dry British wit, which go surprisingly well together. Brie Larson. Cillian Murphy. Armie Hammer. Sharlto Copley. Are you not sold yet?

5. Brigsby Bear

These lists have tended to include one genre-defying movie, and this year that spot belongs to Brigsby Bear. How/where to even begin trying to explain this? A young man emerges from an unnecessary fallout shelter and has to try to rejoin his family and society, but he misses a children’s TV show that was produced entirely for him, so he sets out to continue making the show. That… sounds pretty weird and bad, so it’s frankly astonishing that writer/star Kyle Mooney was able to turn this into both a hilarious comedy and a resonating drama. He has some help from fellow SNL alums including the Lonely Island gang (who produced), but this is not your typical SNL fare. It’s weirder, and maybe better.

4. Dunkirk

One of my chief complaints with Christopher Nolan movies is that I can never understand what the hell anybody is saying (looking at you, Bane), but the director solved that problem in this movie by almost entirely getting rid of the dialogue. It was a bold choice, especially for a film that employs a unique time-jumping narrative device, but it totally works. This movie is completely about suspense- when are the enemies going to strike next, and where? Can the soldiers make it home, and how? Can the allies from home make it to save the soldiers, and how? Dialogue isn’t really necessary to convey fear; the harrowing looks on these boys’ faces more than does that job.

3. Ingrid Goes West

This movie will likely end up being an interesting time capsule for this particular moment due to its extreme reliance on how people use Instagram today as a plot device. It might not hold up, especially if people forget about Instagram the way they’ve already started to forget about Vine and MySpace and etc. But for now, this is a masterpiece effort in satirizing the social media age. Why are we compelled to make our lives look more glamorous than they are? Why are we so offended when people don’t react to our offerings the way we expect them to? How can we be self-satisfied in an era when it’s normal to boast and show-off? These are just some of the questions my little group discussed as we left the movie. Ingrid Goes West has a couple of rough narrative issues, but it nails a lot of the hypocrisy that plagues all social media users, and especially those living in hyper-guilty Los Angeles. I had to do some soul-searching after leaving the theater, and that can never be a bad thing. P.S. O’Shea Jackson as the Batman-obsessed landlord steals every scene he’s in.

2. Get Out

When people ask me why I like horror movies, I tell them it’s not really about being scared (although I do appreciate that). It’s more because horror movies have no problems breaking down expectations and trying something radical. Characters can die, stories can veer off into strange territories, and big philosophical themes can be explored. Granted, not every horror movie manages to do all this, but the great ones strive for it. Enter Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out. This is what I’m talking about. This is what we need more of. It’s part social commentary, and it’s even part comedy, but it’s definitely a horror film. The atrocities that the characters endure are exaggerated to be sure, but the daily bullshit that black people in America have to deal with is exquisitely thrust into the spotlight as well. It begs to be looked at, aired out. Often if a movie is just a delivery mechanism for a message or a moral, the viewing experience suffers. Not so in this case. This movie rocks, and it manages to be thoughtful and inspiring too.

1. Raw

When people ask me why I like horror movies, I tell them it’s not really about being scared…. Wait, I can’t give the exact same review for my top two movies on this list? Well, a lot of what I said up there for number 2 applies to this one as well. This is definitively a horror movie, there’s no question, but it’s also a movie that uses horror to examine what it’s like to grow up and move away from home and feel pressured to try new and dangerous experiences. Some movies use romance in a similar way, this one happens to be about a vegetarian cannibal starting veterinary school. A classic tale really. All kidding aside, this movie has some of the boldest direction and breathtaking performances I’ve seen in years. It turned my stomach for sure, but it also made me think. If you can handle watching some really gross stuff, I can’t recommend this movie highly enough. Just don’t eat beforehand.

10 Best Movies of 2016 (Pre-Awards Season)

I did one of these last year and really had fun with the anti-Oscars retrospective, so I'm doing it again. It's time to look back at the funny, quirky, scary movies that populated the cinemaplexes from January to September and subjectively decide which ones are unquestionably the best. I don't think I'm voicing a contrarian opinion when I say 2016 released an unusual number of terrible movies. From the sullen and bloated Batman v. Superman to the deluge of hollow, derivative sequels (looking at you, Zoolander, X-Men, Independence Day, Jason Bourne, and more) there was plenty of trash. But tucked away amidst those clunkers were more than a few precious gems, particularly in the pulp-thriller genre. In fact, there were too many for a 10-Best list and it was tough to whittle this down. Also, yet again I have to apologize to the handful of movies I haven't yet seen (Swiss Army Man, Don't Think Twice, High-Rise, probably more). Lastly, I was surprised to find that a couple of movies from my Most Anticipated Movies of 2016 list (Hail, Caesar and Kubo and the Two Strings), while serviceably enjoyable theater experiences, did not impress me enough to make this list.

Worst of the year: Suicide Squad (side note: woof.)

Purposeful omissions: Captain America: Civil War, Hush, Finding Dory, Midnight Special

Honorable mentions: War Dogs, Deadpool, The Neon Demon, Hello My Name is Doris, Jungle Book

VIP honorable mentions that probably should have made the list: Zootopia, The Nice Guys

C'mon Joe really??! Zootopia and The Nice Guys don't make the list?? Anyways, here it is.

10. Creative Control

I can totally see why some people dislike this movie. There are parts of it that I don't like. The protagonist is a manchild (check) creative type (check) in hipster Brooklyn (check-check) who can't take responsibility (check) for his plethora of mostly first-world issues (check). So the skeleton of this movie looks like a lot of other movies that I've grown pretty tired of, but there's more going on here. The main character David is an ad executive who is given a new product (augmented reality glasses a la Google Glass) to design a campaign for. The glasses begin to cause him trouble because he can basically re-write his life to better suit his tastes, mostly by pretending his best friend's girlfriend loves him, instead of having to deal with his actual problems. A drug addiction storyline is probably unnecessary, but I absolutely loved all of the stuff involving the glasses. The real world is about to have to deal with some of these big questions that new technology will introduce, and I'm glad to see movies that are beginning to explore these near-future concepts. Plus I'm a sucker for the mostly colorless, hyper-modern design of the film. The thing looks good.

9. Everybody Wants Some!!!

Really, this entry should be a two-way tie with The Nice Guys. In both, a seasoned (white guy who mostly makes white-guy movies) director adds an entry to their already impressive list of movies that I love. In The Nice Guys, Shane Black revisits his wonderful frenemy action-comedy genre, this time using Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling to great effect. In Everybody Wants Some!!!, Richard Linklater makes a "spiritual sequel" to Dazed and Confused following a just-arrived college freshman as he moves into the baseball house. Both are pretty great, but EWS!!! gets the edge because, as usual, Linklater has made me nostalgic. The boys in this movie are idiots (and often quite sexist) but they ride by on an earnest desire to have fun, impress their friends, and get the girl(s). It probably helps that Linklater makes these movies as period pieces in the 70s and 80s; a lot of the hazing, underage drinking, and sexual advances would not be tolerated so well today, and they shouldn't be. But when I watch these movies my nostalgia gland flares up for these (nonexistent) halcyon times and I can't help but have a lot of fun. Frat hard, bros.

8. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

The Lonely Island boys are back with a new set of incredible songs presented in a perfect satire of the modern pop music scene. This movie is about dicks, literally and figuratively, and it's damned funny. While the number of cameos verges on gratuitous, the movie is heavy on jokes and most of them land. You pretty much know what you're in for by now with Andy Samberg and company: raunchy, absurd gags and ingeniously catchy songs. Often about dicks. Take it or leave it.

7. Sing Street

Hot on the heels of Popstar is another musical, Sing Street, from the guy who made Once and Begin Again (side note: all of these movies are about musicians who write music, not everyday people who randomly break out into nondiegetic show tunes in the middle of the street. For that, you'll probably have to wait until La La Land). Anyways, Sing Street is a lovely coming of age movie about a kid who starts a band to impress a girl. Heard that one before? Like so many movies on this list, this one is all about the execution and damn are these songs good. The kids in the band are riffing on their favorite 80s musicians, so the songs have an (intentionally) derivative quality, but in this context that isn't a bad thing. The songs sound familiar and by the end of the movie you can almost sing along. By the time you've listened to the soundtrack an additional 40 times like I have, you'll definitely be able to sing along. Bottom line: the movie is enjoyable enough and the songs are brilliant. P.S. There's an older brother character who knocks a monologue out of the park so keep an eye on that actor, Jack Reynor. He's got a shlubby Chris Pratt-esque likability.

6. Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Director Taika Waititi is on a blazingly hot hot streak. Fresh off last year's hilarious What We Do In The Shadows and before gearing up for next year's intergalactic buddy comedy Thor Ragnorak, Waititi managed to sneak in the quirky little Hunt for the Wilderpeople. This movie, about a troubled foster child and his reluctant adopted father as they evade authorities in New Zealand's bush, is as heartwarming as it is funny as it is bizarre. Sam Neill and his beard are at the top of their game. So is newcomer Julian Dennison playing Ricky Baker, the bad boy who needs a loving family, however nontraditional it might be. While the actual hunt goes on a tad longer than necessary, this movie is a unique, fun adventure with a solid emotional core. 

5. The Witch

The Witch aka The VVitch is the horror movie that everybody is talking about. It's 2016's version of It Follows or The Babadook. Does it live up to the hype? I'd say that depends on what you go in looking for. This movie has less jump scares than the other two I just named, but that definitely isn't a bad thing. This one is all about atmosphere: depressing, starving, sickly 16th century New England. Not Salem, mind you, but just some backwoods location where a family has decided to build a small farm and try to sustain themselves. The dialect and costumes are completely convincing and engrossing. Even without a supernatural element this would be a bleak and tense setting for a film. With that element the movie becomes haunting. I need to see it again before I say anything definitive, but this is definitely one of the better horror movies of the twenty-teens. Don't sleep on this one, or probably after seeing it.

4. Tickled

There's very little I can say about the HBO documentary Tickled without spoiling the experience. The basic premise is this: documentary filmmaker David Farrier (who specializes in eccentric subjects) finds an online video of a supposed "competitive tickling match" in which a group of athletic guys tickle one shirtless athletic guy who is tied down. The video interests Farrier who tries to reach out to the media company who produced the video. He immediately starts getting attacked by this company with litigious threats (and offensive slurs, and more) who tell him to cease and desist or face expensive legal consequences. Needless to say, this only intrigues him and his team more so they being to look into the shadowy organization bankrolling these bizarre videos. I won't say any more than that, except that if that doesn't sound like a meaty enough premise, let me assure you that it is. The rabbit hole is very deep. And evil. And obsessed with tickling. I'm shivering just thinking about it.

3. 10 Cloverfield Lane

What is this movie, and where did it come from? A sneaky, out-of-nowhere sort-of-sequel to a shakicam monster movie that came out in 2008... intended to be made by Damien Chazelle... starring John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Before you even start to talk about the crazy-awesome premise, this movie has some 'splainin to do. *Googles furiously* Okay it turns out that Damien Chazelle was working on a movie about a girl trapped with a weirdo in his survivalist bunker when he (Chazelle) got the call to go work on his dream project, Whiplash. So Bad Robot decided to turn the movie into a "spiritual sequel" (since when is that a thing?) to Cloverfield despite sharing no characters, storylines, or even filmmaking techniques. It doesn't sound like the greatest idea, but somehow it really really works. John Goodman is terrific as the 'is-he-good-or-is-he-bad' survivalist, and really sells the tagline "Monsters come in many forms." It's a tense little bottle movie that may or may not kick off a whole franchise of one-off sci-fi films in the so-called Clover-verse. This one is better than the original (which was pretty good!) so I hope they keep on churning them out, continuity be damned.

2. The Lobster

Many of the movies on this list stick to pretty tried and true formulas: boy tries to get girl, supernatural entity terrorizes family, etc. That is not the case with this movie by Yorgos Lanthimos. The Lobster takes place in a universe where single people are turned into an animal of their choosing if they aren't able to find a new mate within 45 days. Our hero David (played by the perfectly doughy Colin Farrell) is left by his wife and decides to become a lobster. This movie is described on Wikipedia as an absurdist dystopian dramedy, only so they wouldn't have to make up an entirely new genre for it. Whatever type of movie you want to categorize it as, it's great. The performances are excellent, the satire surrounding the various tropes of both single people and couples is biting, and the look and sound of the movie are both top-notch. The only complaint I have is that for such a strong concept the resolution isn't totally cathartic, but I can forgive that because I truly enjoyed the bizarro ride. Also, let Colin Farrell play more understated characters! He is perfectly pathetic here in his best work since In Bruges. Don't put him in Daredevil and True Detective, give him subtlety, give him nuance, and let him shine.

1. Green Room

Balls to the wall doesn't begin to describe this movie. In his follow-up to Blue Ruin (also terrific, by the way), director Jeremy Saulnier puts a punk band in a rural neo-Nazi bar where they accidentally witness a murder. Believe it or not, the Nazi outfit (and they are a tightly run outfit, not just a ragtag crew) doesn't take kindly to witnesses. The rest of the movie is a bloody, brutal game of cat and mouse. Everything about this movie spoke to me, from the spectacle to the tone to the pacing and of course, the casting. I'd be remiss to not mention the late Anton Yelchin in one of his last amazing character roles, and the brilliance of having Patrick Stewart play the leader of the Nazis is pretty unrivaled. The stakes are high in this one and the violence is gruesome; people are injured or killed with just about every weapon you can think of. Timid stomachs should go elsewhere to get their kicks. But for those who can take it, this is about as much fun as I've had in a theater since I saw The Raid. Call it action, call it thriller, call it what you want- it's a hell of a wild ride.