GAME NIGHT: A Fairly Funny Film For February

Opening today at a multiplex near us all:

GAME NIGHT (Dir. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, 2018)

I didn’t have very big expectations for this film, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s follow-up to their directorial debut, 2015’s VACATION reboot, as February has often been a dumping ground for lame comedies in previous years like FIST FIGHT, HALL PASS, IDENTITY THIEF, and lame comedy sequels like ZOOLANDER 2, and HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2.

But GAME NIGHT is a fairly funny farce, that puts its talented cast through the manic motions of a murder mystery party that gets out of hand, and results in a considerable amount of big laughs.

It begins with the meet cute of a young couple, Max (Jason Bateman), and Annie (Rachel McAdams) at a bar’s trivia night, and a following montage shows us how their shared hyper-competitiveness thrives in game after game over the years since.

In the present day, Max and Annie meet up with their friends Kevin (Lamorne Morris), his wife Michelle (Kylie Bunbury), Ryan (Billy Magnussen), who always brings a different dumb blonde, for game nights in the suburbs (the film was shot in Marietta, Georgia, but I don’t think they ever mention where it’s set). Max and Annie don’t invite their creepy police officer neighbor (Jesse Plemmons), who used to come to the get togethers with his wife, but their divorce has made the group hold their games in secret from him.

But then Max’s more successful businessman brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler), shows up in a 1976 Corvette Stingray, which happens to be Max’s boyhood dream car, and blows their cover. Brooks announces that he wants to host the next game night at a mansion he’s rented, and promises that it’ll take the tradition “up a notch.”

Max, Annie, Kevin, Ryan, and his date Sarah (Sharon Horgan) show up to Brooks’ to find that he’s planned an elaborate staged mystery for them to solve, and the winner gets the Stingray.

Jeffrey Wright comes in as a FBI agent distributing files full of clues to the players, but gets interrupted by two armed thugs who burst in and knock him unconscious, and have a violent brawl with Brooks, which the group of friends think is part of the game.

Brooks gets abducted, and the crew, split into their respective couples, set out to investigate the clues and find him. Max and Annie track him down to a sleazy dive bar where they think the patrons are phony criminals with fake guns. Amid real gunfire, they rescue Brooks and in a high speed car chase he tells them that he’s not really an entrepreneur; he’s a smuggler who’s being hunted down for a stolen Fabergé egg, the film’s McGuffin.

While they’re running around through all the zany, and sometimes bloody twists and turns, each couple has their own premise: Max and Annie’s is that they are trying to have a baby but Max has been stressed out by his brother; Kevin and Michelle’s is that it’s revealed that she had a fling with a celebrity before they were married and Kevin obsesses over figuring out who it was; and Ryan’s dilemma is that he usually dates air-heads, but Sarah is a lot smarter than he is.

Some of this stuff is sitcom-ish, and the film has many familiar scenes – the dive bar where Max and Annie are oblivious to being in over their heads is pretty generic feeling, and a climatic race to stop a plane from taking off is one of several overdone elements, as well as one of several fake-out endings, but the sheer amount of hilarious one-liners and gags that land doesn’t let such clichés and convolutions get in the way of the fun.

Like in one clever stand-out set-piece has the cast throwing the Fabergé egg back and forth to one another in an unbroken shot through the hallways, and balconies of a mansion belonging to a mobster (Danny Huston).

Working from a screenplay written by Mark Perez (THE COUNTRY BEARS, ACCEPTED), Daley and Goldstein keep the pace popping with laughs interchanged with genuine thrills while the narrative keeps one guessing what’s real and what’s fake.

GAME NIGHT mostly works as a take-off of the manipulations and expected tropes of many straight-laced-folks-get-caught-up-in-dangerous-underworld scenarios, like when in a brutal fight somebody is thrown and lands on top of a glass table but it doesn’t break like in every other movie (Kevin: “Glass tables are acting weird tonight!”).

On the scale of NIGHT movies, GAME NIGHT is a lot better than last summer’s ROUGH NIGHT, but around the same quality of 2010's DATE NIGHT.

The movie shows that Daley and Goldstein, who co-wrote the HORRIBLE BOSSES movies, and had their hands in the screenplay for SPIDER-MAN HOMECOMING (along with four other writers) are getting better at what they do, which is getting a terrific cast to play off each other in the service of a funny storyline. Well, funny enough for February that is.

More later...

The 2018 Oscar® Nominated Short Films: Animated

Death, fairy tales, bullying, a player’s love of his game, and frogs are the subjects of this year’s group of Oscar-nominated animated shorts which are playing at various theaters near me alongside programs of the likewise nominated Live Action and Documentary shorts.

The 90th Academy Awards® will be broadcast live on March 4th, so there’s plenty of time to catch up with these short films, and good reason too as they’re a pretty pleasing batch.

The first animated short, Glen Keane and Kobe Bryant’s DEAR BASKETBALL, is Bryant’s love letter to his sport, based on a letter he wrote to The Players’ Tribune in 2015 announcing his retirement.

Bryant is depicted in sketchy hand-drawn animation from when he was a child shooting imaginary game-winning shots with rolled-up tube socks in his bedroom, to imagery of him making his famous moves that won five NBA championships with the Lakers as an adult.

It’s a swift and fluid five minute film, but it feels like a commercial or beginning of a feature length documentary. It’s no doubt a sincere, and well-intentioned ode, but it still struck me as self-promotion and I wasn’t moved by it that like I bet somebody who’s a fan or into basketball would be.

Anyway, onto a very differently toned short, GARDEN PARTY which was written and directed by Victor Caire, Florian Babikian, Vincent Bayoux, Théophile Dufresne, Lucas Navarro and Gabriel Grapperon.

That’s right, it was made by six French 3D artists, who dub themselves Illogic Collective, during their studies at MoPA, animation school in France.

The seven minute movie concerns a group of amphibians exploring the immaculately detailed grounds and interiors of a mysteriously abandoned mansion. The frogs and toads swim in the pool, feast on rotten food, and inadvertently turn on the house’s lights, stereo system, and outside sprinklers by jumping on the buttons of a control panel. The photo realism is stunning, so much so that the visuals border on the grotesque especially when we find out what happened to the estate’s former resident.

These students’ production definitely deserves to win, but I’m thinking that because of its dark undertone it’ll probably be passed over.

Every year, Pixar has a short in competition and Dave Mullins and Dana Murray’s LOU, about a schoolyard bully being taught a lesson by the contents of a lost and found box, is their entry this time around. 

In a colorful animation style that should be well familiar to anyone who’s seen any of the Disney subsidiary’s movies, the film tells the story of a mean kid who steals his classmates belongings – such as a red hoodie, a couple of baseballs, a football, a piggy doll, a pitcher’s mitt, an orange and white scarf, a slinky, a toy truck, a jump rope, a book, a shoe, a lunch box, a hat and a tennis racket.

I listed all of those items because they come together to form an anthropomorphic character with the baseballs as its eyes. After a hilarious scuffle, the bully is punished by having to return all the things he stole, and is redeemed just as you thought he would be. LOU, which originally ran before showings of CARS 3, is a predictably pleasing six-minute piece of fast paced Pixar fun, but since they won last year with the charming PIPER, I doubt this is their year.

The following short, Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata’s NEGATIVE SPACE also concerns the assorted contents of a box, but this time it’s a suitcase and it’s about a father teaching his son how to properly pack it for a trip. 

The French film is an adaptation of a poem by Ron Koertge via a neat-looking stop motion world of models and miniatures. It’s a charmer with a touchingly witty conclusion, and, funnily enough, it’s the second short of the bunch that animates the rolling up of socks (DEAR BASKETBALL is the other). I can totally see this one winning.

At 28 minutes in length, Jakob Schuh and Jan Lachauer’s REVOLTING RHYMES is the longest of the animated shorts. It is an adaptation of a 1982 Roald Dahl book of poems satirizing six famous fairy tales that’s narrated by The Wire’s Dominic West as the big, bad Wolf.

The Wolf tells his story to a kindly woman in a café about Red Riding Hood and a blonde Snow White meeting at the funeral for Snow White’s mother. We learn that Red Riding Hood keeps her money in a bank made out of many piggy banks run by one of the three little pigs, and that Snow White’s father, the King (voiced by Rob Brydon of those TRIP movies with Steve Coogan) marries a crude woman, Miss Maclahose, who has a magic talking mirror for the “who’s the fairest” bit. The seven dwarfs appear as ex-horse race jockeys, who ask the mirror which horse to bet on as Snow White pines for her Prince, and so on.

Dahl’s dark spin on these familiar stories is illustrated by computer animation that at times resembles the work of Aardman Animations (Wallace & Gromit) despite not involving clay. The rhymes aren’t really revolting, but there are some grim fates for some of the characters. As the film feels a bit stiff, it may be my least favorite of the animated shorts, but the British-German production just may tickle enough Academy voters to get it the gold.

Since four of the five films run around five to seven minutes, there are three bonus shorts to pad out the Animated Shorts package to feature length: Kevin Hudson’s WEEDS, Daniel Agdag’s LOST PROPERTY OFFICE, and Lucas Boutrot, Élise Carret, Maoris Creantor, Pierre Hubert, Camille Lacroix, and Charlotte Perroux’s ACHOO! I ‘m not going to go into any detail about these “commended” shorts, but I will say that ACHOO! about a sneezing Chinese dragon who invents fireworks is my favorite of them.

If you haven’t already check out my reviews of the Oscar® Nominated Live Action Shorts.

More later…

The 2018 Oscar® Nominated Short Films: Live Action

The 90th Academy Awards® ceremony is in less than two weeks so it’s a good time to catch up with the nominated Short Films that are playing at various theaters near me in separate programs of the Live Action, Animated, and Documentary nominees.

The five Live Action Short Films are a fairly dark lot, with one comical exception, but even that one has a dark edge to it. The first short in the program, Reed Van Dyk’s DEKALB ELEMENTARY, concerns a school shooting so it’s impossible to not think about the Parkland, Florida school shooting last week. 

Writer/director Van Dyk, based the film on a recording of a 911 phone call from 2013 that was placed during a school shooting incident in Atlanta, Georgia.

Bo Mitchell plays the young gunman who takes a front-office administrator (Cassandra Rice) hostage in the school’s front office, but she calmly handles and diffuses the situation. The 20 minute film is full of unpleasant tension and can be hard to watch, so much so that there have been reported walk-outs at showings.

But if you can make it through, the acting by Mitchell and especially Rice is effective, and the spare scene feels chillingly real. Maybe the timing is bad for this short, but when would be a good time for this subject? I really can’t decide if its timeliness will work for or against it when it comes to Academy voters.

Onto the aforementioned comical short of the batch, Derin Seale’s THE ELEVEN O’CLOCK. This 13-minute Australian film concerns a therapy session between a psychiatrist and a patient who thinks he’s a psychiatrist. 

Josh Lawson, who wrote and produced, stars with Damon Herriman as the two men who get into a verbal then a bit violent battle over who’s the patient and who’s the doctor that echoes Monty Python (that’s because it’s based on a sketch from the heavily Python-influenced BBC series A Bit of Fry & Laurie).

It’s an amusing 13 minute trifle, but it has an ending that most people won’t be surprised by, so I really wouldn’t bet on it to win this category.

After that light diversion, we’re back into the darkness with Kevin Wilson Jr.’s MY NEPHEW EMMETT, which dramatizes the last night in the life of Emmett Till, an African-American teenager who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955. 

Director Wilson Jr., who also wrote the short, shoots the incident from the perspective of Till’s uncle, Mose Wright (L.B. Williams), who has to stand by with his wife (Jasmine Guy) in the middle of the night when two white men (Dane Rhodes and Ethan Leavertonwith guns abduct Till from their home, and take him off to be murdered.

As one of the racist abductors, Rhodes is intensely sinister as he threateningly spouts the n-word and drops f-bombs at Williams’ Mose making this another short that’s hard to watch at times, and also feels sadly timely.

The nearly 20 minute historical drama will definitely get some voters sympathy, but I doubt it’ll get the gold.

Chris Overton and Rachel Shenton’s THE SILENT CHILD doesn’t involve murder or guns, but it has a dark undertone. It concerns a deaf six-year old named Libby (Maisie Sly), who is taught sign language by Joanne, a caring social worker (Shenton). 

Libby and Joanne develop an affecting bond, but Libby’s dreadful mother (Rachel Fielding) says she’s worried about her daughter “learning this language that I don’t know and no one in her school will know,” and cancels Libby’s sessions with Joanne.

Despite it ending like a Public Service Announcement for deaf awareness, Overton and Shenton’s 20 minute short is a poignant, and heartbreakingly sad drama that makes a strong case for its subject. I’m not feeling a win for it on Oscar night, but I won’t be unsatisfied if it does.

Finally, the most cinematic of this roster of the Live Action Shorts, Katja Benrath and Tobias Rosen’s WATU WOTE (Swahili for ALL OF US), which takes place in the border region between Kenya and Somalia where, as the opening titles tell us, “the atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust between Muslims and Christians is growing.”

Based on the true story of the Mandera bus attack by Al Shabaab terrorists in December 2015, the 22-minute film * stars Adelyne Wairimu as a young woman named Jua, a Kenyan Christian who has to contend with a bus full of Muslims on a trip to visit her sick mother.

When the bus is ambushed by the terrorists, Jua and the other passengers are commanded at gunpoint by their leader (Faysal Ahmed) to point out the Christians, who they call infidels. This results in a jarring, but powerful moment, which got to me more than anything in the other competing films.

I may feel differently closer to the Oscars® (I’m posting my predictions a few days before the broadcast), but right now I’m thinking this beautifully-shot short about people of different beliefs protecting one another is the one to beat.

* All of the Live Action Shorts this year are around 20 minutes in length, except, unsurprisingly, the lone comic one, THE ELEVEN O’CLOCK.

More later…

Annette Bening’s Gloria Grahame Owns FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL

Now playing at an indie art house theater near me (and you probably):

FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL

(Dir. Paul McGuigan, 2017)

“Always played the tart - big name in black and white films, not doing so well in color though, obviously,” says a Cockney landlady about her new tenant, actress Gloria Grahame, early on in this adaptation of Peter Turner’s memoir about his relationship with the fading silver screen star.

She’s right, Grahame flourished during the golden age of cinema in such movies as IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, THE BIG HEAT, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, and even won an Oscar for THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, but the pictures got bigger and she got smaller.

That’s a spin on what the washed-up former silent movie queen, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), famously said in the Billy Wilder classic SUNSET BOULEVARD, and it shows an acute self awareness that Grahame, portrayed beautifully by Annette Bening, references that movie upon first hitting it off with Turner (Jamie Bell).

Turner, an actor 30 years younger than Grahame, falls hard for her maybe around the time that they disco dance together to Taste of Honey’s “Boogie Oogie Oogie.”

FILM STARS begins in 1981 with Turner tending to an ill bed-ridden Grahame, but swiftly flashes back to 1979 and plays on touching upon Grahame’s well received performance in “Rain” at the Watford Palace Theatre, trips the couple take to Los Angeles and New York, and various high and low points in their May-December romance.

Bening is usually right on the money in her many stellar performances, and she is again here, once you get past her character’s Marilyn Monroe-ish preciousness which comes on a bit cutesy at first but ends up feeling absolutely authentic.

Bell, best known for his child star turn in Stephen Daldry’s BILLY ELLIOT (2000), doesn’t have the most believable chemistry with Bening, but still is effective in conveying Turner’s initial smittenness, and later frustration when the relationship starts falling apart.

McGuigan, a Scotsman filmmaker (LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN, PUSH, and episodes of Scandal, Sherlock, and Smash), does his best with Matt Greenhalgh’s screenplay, but the story is fairly spare and many story beats can be felt well before they hit. It’s really a film that you see for the strong performance of Bening, its tender mood, and its overall sentiment than for its narrative. And the sentiment is captured gorgeously by Elvis Costello’s “You Shouldn't Look At Me That Way” which he wrote for the film, and which plays over the ending credits.

The supporting cast adds considerably to the slim storyline. Particularly Bell’s BILLY ELLIOT co-star Julie Walters, and Kenneth Cranham (VALKRIE), who play Turner’s well-meaning parents, and Vanessa Redgrave, who puts in a wickedly sharp cameo as Grahame’s mother, Jeanne McDougall.

But, of course, it’s Bening who owns FILM STARS with the way she embodies Grahame’s glamour and relishes her romantic visions of old Hollywood. When Grahame tells Turner a bit of advice that Humphrey Bogart once gave her, “Keep it in the shadows, Gloria. Let the camera come to you,” one can get in that moment that Bening herself has lived that line throughout her career.

More later...

The Big, Bad Ass BLACK PANTHER Is A Beaut

Opening tonight at a multiplex near everybody:

BLACK PANTHER (Dir. Ryan Coogler, 2018)

Let me get this straight - after 17 films dominated by white folks, particularly white men, we finally get a Marvel movie headed by a black superhero, with a nearly all black cast, written, directed, and shot by black artists, and released during black history month?

Well, it may have taken them until they got halfway through Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which launched with IRON MAN back in 2008, but here it is, the big, bad ass BLACK PANTHER, and it’s a beaut.

Chadwick Boseman, who’s previously played iconic baseball player Jackie Robinson, iconic soul singer James Brown, and iconic Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, takes on the iconic role of the first black superhero of mainstream American comics, whose real name is T’Challa, known to the world as the ruler of the isolationist African country Wakanda.

When he’s not attending to his country’s policies, T’Challa becomes the Black Panther, outfitted in a sleek skin-tight suit made out of Vibranium (a fictional metal that’s featured in several Marvel movies), and a fearsome feline mask, so he can more effectively fight the forces of evil.

Embedded in Wakanda is a secret technologically advanced civilization which T’Challa becomes the king of after fighting off the challenge for the throne by rival tribe leader M’Baku (Winton Duke).

T’Challa’s supporting crew includes his mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), his wise-cracking sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), his best friend W’Kabi (GET OUT’s Daniel Kaluuya), his ex-girlfriend Nakia (Lupita N’yongo), and his bodyguards Ayo (Florence Kasumba), and Okoye (The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira).

Threat to the order of Wakanda comes in the form of Michael B. Jordan as N’Jadaka/ Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, who seeks revenge for the murder of his father N’Jobu (This is Us’s Sterling K. Brown).

This second challenge for the throne is where the franchise formula becomes the most transparent in BLACK PANTHER as we know that T’Challa will lose this fight, because that’s the arc of just about every superhero movie. First act, our protagonist is triumphant, in the second they are either stripped of their powers or seemingly killed, and in the third they return to reclaim their glory.

These acts, or challenges, are filled out by zippy setpieces including a nighttime car chase through the streets of Seoul, South Korea; and an air combat sequence involving one of the film’s token white characters, CIA Operative Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) piloting a remote jet.

The rest of the kinetically colorful adventure concerns a lot of swordplay and hand-to-hand combat captured in eye-poppingly sweeping shots by cinematographer Rachel Morrison, who shot Coogler’s 2013 debut FRUITVALE STATION, and was recently nominated for an Oscar for her work on Dee Rees’ MUDBOUND. There’s also the eye candy of Ruth E. Carter’s elaborate costuming, and Hannah Beachler’s shiny production design.

Written by Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, the production soars on just about every level. Boseman brings gravitas, and a sense of personal power to his performance, and is well matched to Jordan’s scenery chewing villain. Jordan is also again a good match with writer/director Coogler, having worked with him on both of his superb previous films, FRUITVALE STATION, and CREED.

Of the other cast members, it’s the women who often steal the show, whether it’s Wright with her well-timed one-liners, Gurira with her unblinking icy delivery which will make you forget Michonne, or Nyong’o, whose Wakandan warrior spy character is refreshingly more than just the requisite love interest for our hero.

The enormously positive buzz for BLACK PANTHER has some critics calling it the best Marvel movie ever, but I wouldn’t go that far (not sure which one I’d pick though – I’ll get back to you on that). I’m just going to consider it another vastly entertaining winner for the brand, which, I’ve got to admit, has been impressively consistent in quality for an 18 and counting film franchise.

Of course, along with all the expected Marvel marks being hit - call backs to previous movies, comic cameos by Stan Lee, etc. - there are mid and post credits scenes, so be sure to stay until the very end.

More later...

Film Babble Blog's Top 10 Movies Of 2017 Part 2

And now Part 2 of Film Babble Blog’s Top 10 Movies of 2017. Included are memorable lines, or exchanges from each film. For Part 1, featuring entries 10-6 click here.

5. THE BIG SICK (Dir. Michael Showalter)

Terry (Ray Romano): “So, uh, 9/11…No I mean, I’ve always wanted to have a conversation with…about it. With…people.”

Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani): “You’ve never talked to people about 9/11?”

Terry: “No what’s your, what's your stance?”

Kumail: “What’s my stance on 9/11? Oh um, anti. It was a tragedy, I mean we lost 19 of our best guys. (awkward pause) That was a joke, obviously. 9/11 was a terrible tragedy. And it’s not funny to joke about it.” 

4. THE DISASTER ARTIST (Dir. James Franco)

Tommy Wiseau (James Franco): “I did not hit her. It’s not true. It’s bullshit. I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi Mark.”

3. DUNKIRK (Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance): “Men my age dictate this war. Why should we be allowed to send our children to fight it?”

2. THE SHAPE OF WATER (Dir. Guillermo del Toro)

Giles (Richard Jenkins): “Would I tell you about her? The princess without voice. Or perhaps I would just warn you, about the truth of these facts. And the tale of love and loss. And the monster, who tried to destroy it all.”

1. GET OUT (Dir. Jordan Peele)

Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford) confiding with his daughter's new boyfriend Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya): “By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could. Best president in my lifetime. Hands down.”

Spillover with a few more quotes (Click on the titles in boldface for my reviews):

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (Dir. Luca Guadagnino)

BABY DRIVER (Dir. Edgar Wright)

LUCKY (Dir. John Carroll Lynch) “There’s a difference between lonely and being alone.”

GOOD TIME (Dirs. Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie)

BLADE RUNNER 2049 (Dir. Denis Villeneuve)

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE (Dir. Chris McKay) “Black. All important movies start with a black screen.”

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Dir. Rian Johnson) Yoda’s review of the sacred Jedi texts: “Page turners, they are not.”

PHANTOM THREAD (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

MOLLY’S GAME (Dir. Aaron Sorkin)

HOSTILES (Dir. Scott Cooper)

Films I haven’t seen yet, but didn’t want to wait to do this list any longer before I caught up: COCO, BPM (BEATS PER MINUTE), MUDBOUND, THE SQUARE, FACES PLACES, and many, many more.

More later...

Film Babble Blog’s Top 10 Movies of 2017 Part 1

2017 was a very weird year, so it's fitting that many of its movies were pretty damn weird too. A lot of franchise films flopped (this is despite the fact that over half of the year’s top 10 at the box office were sequels), a STAR WARS movie was divisive between critics who loved it, and longtime fans of the series who hated it; and there were a number of films with strangely similar titles like LOGAN, LUCKY, and LOGAN LUCKY, and WONDER, WONDER WHEEL, WONDERSTRUCK, WONDER WOMEN, and PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN. 

Then there were WTFWT (What the F*** Was That?) movies like A GHOST STORY and MOTHER! So yeah, it was one weird year.

A lot of the movies of the last year blur together in my head. I mean, I had forgotten about such dreary titles as THE CIRCLE, THE BEGUILED, and BEATRIZ AT DINNER until looking at a list of 2017 releases just now. And there were also a few films I only liked the first halves of like DOWNSIZING, and THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, that are also fading in my memory.

But now’s the time to concentrate on the cinema I best responded to, and I thought I'd do what I did a few years back and add what quotes stuck with me as well to the list.

So here goes Part 1 of my picks, in descending order, with their key lines or exchanges, and some links back to my reviews (click on select titles):

10. THE POST (Dir. Steven Spielberg)

Kay Graham (Meryl Streep): “You know what my husband said about the news? ‘News is the first rough draft of history.’”

9. LAST FLAG FLYING (Dir. Richard Linklater)

Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston): “Every generation has their war. Men make the wars, and wars make the men. It never ends!”

Reverend Richard Mueller (Lawrence Fishburne): Maybe one day we’ll try something different.”

8. DARKEST HOUR (Dir. Joe Wright)

Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman): “Please tell the Privy Seal that I’m sealed in the privy and I can only deal with one shit at a time.”

7. LADY BIRD (Dir. Greta Gerwig)

Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf): “I want you to be the very best version of yourself that you can be.”

Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson (Saoirse Ronan): “What if this is the best version?”

6. THE FLORIDA PROJECT (Dir. Sean Baker)

Moonee (Brooklynn Prince): “I can always tell when adults are about to cry.”

So that’s 10-6 of my favorite films. See 5-1 at Part 2.

More later...