The end of the year brings grading and reflection points for both the school teacher in me and the film critic. Looking at the online Trapper Keeper portfolio called Every Movie has a Lesson, I published 126 full film reviews in 2017, topping last year’s 114 and setting a new high mark. Here’s my definitive list of the "10 Best" films of 2017. True to this website’s specialty, each film will be paired with its best life lesson. Enjoy!
Read MoreIn a new annual series, Every Movie Has a Lesson is going to look back twenty years to revisit, relearn, and reexamine a year of cinema history to share favorites, lists, and experiences from the films of that year. Twenty years ago, I graduated high school in 1997 and the movie milestones matched the personal ones for me. Here's my list of the best of 1997.
Read MoreDarkest Hour and Gary Oldman exhibit tremendous fight to match the vigor of the era. The film builds its mounting prospects of calamity and clashes of dissension with polish and gumption, avoiding many of the dull notes normally saddling most other behind-the-war-room yak-fest. The screenplay shrewdly skips laborious biographical notes and tautly fixates primarily on the two weeks of debate leading up to Operation Dynamo
Read MoreMartin McDonagh’s new film puts prickly in the pastoral glazing its country charm with absolute acid every chance it gets. Part stern crime drama and part small-town chicanery, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri displays the next level of McDonagh’s talent and potential. Always the sharp storyteller since his roots on the Irish stage, McDonagh’s writing prowess elevates a premise that would fall flat as pure farce in other hands
Read MoreMichael Glover Smith’s words of mounting depth and weight turn idle chatter into soapboxes that eventually become proverbial fortifications built around questioned principles and shattered wills. The ensemble of performers delivers on the required heavy lifting from the director to make the multitude of human flaws believable yet still approachable. Mercury in Retrograde is a hidden gem.
Read MoreThis past week, I was cordially invited and honored to join a panel on the "Kicking the Seat" podcast hosted by Ian Simmons. As always, Ian is joined by his regular wingman David Fowlie of Keeping it Reel. We left a seat warm for mutual friend Emmanuel Noisette of E-Man's Movie Reviews, but he couldn't make it. Ian, David, and I have talked comic book movies before, so it was only proper to get together for Justice League.
Read MoreI do my best to write professional grade film criticism fit for a formal audience, becoming best friends with a thesaurus and using my big boy words. By day, I'm an elementary school educator. At work this year, I've been organizing a special field trip for 5th graders to see Wonder after they've been reading the novel all fall. This second "student-friendly" movie review is for them and other younger readers. Revised, this review scales down my review down from an 11.6 Flesch Kincaid readability level to a comfy 4.4 average.
Read MoreWonder’s buoyant messages are the moving jolt of empathy this generation needs. Even better, its literal and figurative precepts carry an inspiring weight worthy to last many generations more. Directed by the good hands of Stephen Chbosky, Wonder is an instant classic, sure to become a new favorite, for its target audience and a winning (and rare) example of a film taking great care to do justice by the book it is based on.
Read MoreJustice League comes across like attempted course correction done on that Etch-a-Sketch. The artist, or artists in this case, are trying to retrace old paths and smooth over past missteps with redrawn swirls, lighter hues, and a fluffy cover-up we call comedy. That effort on the cinematic Etch-a-Sketch indeed changes the initial picture, but only after unnecessarily tedious effort and some remaining messy results.
Read MoreIn her solo feature directorial debut, Greta Gerwig has stepped in and pushed this cinematic species tremendously forward with the dramedy Lady Bird. The film destroys any notion of the “manic pixie dream girl” fakery. Lady Bird is a cornucopia woven with striking candor and filled with delightful oxymorons artfully composed to challenge taboos and stereotypes. Let’s give each oxymoron a life lesson and a paragraph or two along the way.
Read MorePaired perfectly as a double-feature follow-up to this summer’s spacefaring Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok is a raucously rad roller coaster that shoots rainbows out of every digitally-rendered pore. Blasting with energetic pace in the complete opposite direction from the dreary and grayish Game of Thrones Lite tone of Thor: The Dark World, this new chapter is a cinematic box of Crayola crayons laced with dynamite.
Read MoreSuburbicon lazily delivers a caper that lacks cleverness, smarts, and anything edgy other than the spurts of hemoglobin that stain a few starched shirts. Even if it is pitch black by design, the final ingredient of fake sentimentality glazed over the proceedings is ineffective to add any varnish to the acidic angle of white-collar crime. Nonsensical twist follows nonsensical twist for an aimless purpose.
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