It’s Panini Time!
God shave the King
The Oscars 2018 go to…
«The Shape of Water» gets 4 out of 13, including best picture. Find all the winners of this year and all the years back to 1929 on Blick.ch: https://www.blick.ch/7879779
Dunkirk
Rating: 3
Christopher Nolan is a very cool director. He makes very cool movies. That’s great for fantasy or science fiction but for a war-themed movie like «Dunkirk» his modus operandi is an unusual approach. The movie is gorgeous to look at, but if it wasn’t for Hans Zimmer’s excellent soundtrack, I wouldn’t have felt much watching it.
Depicting war as a force of nature without any real antagonist doesn’t help either. But that’s not really a problem because «Dunkirk» was not made to be a war movie.
The funny thing is that while the movie might lack emotions by identification, it is still better described as a feeling than as a movie. A thing to be experienced, not watched as a traditional hero’s journey motion picture (Terrence Malick comes to mind). And it does a very good job at it.
All in all, watching «Dunkirk» and «Darkest Hour» back-to-back was a lucky happenstance, making one damn fine double feature movie night with two sides of the same precious coin.
Darkest Hour
Rating: 3.5
What easily could have been a dry, boring history lesson turns out to be a surprisingly light-footed, perfectly paced and beautifully shot drama set around Gary Oldman’s outstanding performance. (And the Oscar for best makeup should be a done deal, too).
Lady Bird
Rating: 2.5
Bittersweet coming-of-age movie with a phenomenal cast. «Lady Bird» definitely got the Oscar vibe going on but in my humble opinion takes itself a tad too seriously. (Though we would have a completely different, probably worse movie if it was anyway else).
After all, I guess it’s been too long since my high school years as a teenage girl to really appreciate this contestant.
My personal silly highlights in the movie were those tiny little moments when Saoirse Ronan stumbles over her accent. (Full disclosure: I might have fallen in love with her voice while researching on YouTube how the hell her name is pronounced).
Get Out
Rating: 3.5
Very noicce try. Jordan Peele does a wonderful job in building an interesting world, setting up solid characters and introducing us to a fantastic concept of a story that, not accidentally, reminds us of a different movie set in a similar universe which name I won’t mention because of spoilers.
And there’s the Problem: Unlike the not to be named modern classic, «Get Out» promises a little too much for its own good. It can’t quite deliver the payoff it deserves when the movie seems to lose interest in its own story and falls flat in the last act. There might be a masterpiece in there but it just barely couldn’t get out. (Yes, I just wrote that).
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Rating: 4.5
Oh the humanity! Thank you, we got ourselves a winner here. Martin McDonagh really knows how to make the shit out of a movie! Dark, intense, human(e).
While Tarantino might be the master of dialogue, McDonagh once again penetrates the superficiality, digs deeper and creates some of the most interesting, conflicted and flawed but sympathetic characters in film, embedded in artfully crafted storytelling as he did before in «Seven Psychopaths» and «In Bruges».
Mild spoiler: Somewhat eerie to watch Sam Rockwell paying due regard to his character in «The Green Mile».