For a while, now, Pedro Almodovar has been dishing out stories which focus on the relationship between mother and child. In my mind, All About My Mother and Volver were partner movies. With Julieta, we have a complete trilogy and, while the first two were great, Julieta is a masterpiece. Almodovar has never been as good, and his storytelling has never been so heartbreakingly real. Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte play the title role, each during different phases of her life, as Julieta's story unfolds. It's a story in which she is both a daughter, and a mother, and every other part of her life is somehow affected by one of these roles, or both. If Almodovar decides to hang it up and call it a day with this movie, no one could blame him. It's perfect. Watching Julieta feels less like seeing a movie than it does like reading a diary.
Roger Mitchell's My Cousin Rachel presents Daphne du Maurier's vision as we've never seen it, before. Rachel Weisz's Rachel is uncompromising, unapologetic, and downright subversive. One doesn't usually think of du Maurier's women as empowered, or in any way feminist, but this film flips the traditional notion of her characterization of women on its ear. I find it cringeworthy that this film was promoted as a romance. It's not a romance. It's almost a protest film. If there's a love story here, it's the love story between a woman and the ownership she claims of her own body and sexuality. Don't tune in looking for neat, happy endings - you won't find any here. You also won't find a female lead who accepts without question what the men around her decide what her life should be like.
If you've heard that Logan is a great superhero movie, that's not quite true. Logan is a great movie, full stop. It's the movie that shows us just how good a movie based on characters from the world of comic books can be. It shows us that a movie with these origins can stand up next to the best movie of any kind, and more than hold its own. Forget about mutants and super powers and the X Men. This is a movie about fathers and their children. It's about taking care of our parents when they can't take care of themselves. It's about taking responsibility for those to whom we are leaving this mess of a world. It's about facing one's own mortality, wondering if one's life has even mattered, and finding ways to make one's last days count. Damn it - it's about carrying one's self with dignity and grace in a world where such concepts are no longer respected. Jackman and Stewart are miraculous. I've seen it several times. I've cried, every time.
Angela Robinson's Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is one of those movies that was hardly promoted, at all. Which means if you didn't see in a theater the weekend it opened, you didn't get to see it, at all. What little promotion it did receive focused on the fact that the characters involved worked together to create the comic book superheroine, Wonder Woman. Thing is, this movie is about those three people, but this movie is not about Wonder Woman. Not really. It's about living life on one's own terms, bucking convention, not giving in to fear and hatred, and about welcoming love, even when it comes in an unconventional package. Deeply moving, this film stayed with me for days after I saw it. Rebecca Hall, who is always good, is downright mesmerizing. She should win all the awards. She won't, but she should.
Jordan Peele's Get Out caught us all by surprise. Who the hell expected one of the most brilliant films to come along in years to 1) be a horror film and 2) be written and directed by a guy who is well known for sketch comedy? But that's not even a fair question, because this isn't a traditional horror movie, and it's not without its laughs. It's like nothing else we've seen, before. It's not just horror. It's biting social commentary. It's a tragedy. It's a thriller. It's gut-wrenching. Peele is quoted as having referred to it as a documentary. If you've seen it, chances are you know what he means. If you haven't seen it, no one should tell you; you should pay to see it, yourself. Jordan Peele is the filmmaker to watch out for. If this is how he starts out a career in writing and directing, I cannot imagine what he does for an encore.
Another from the "if you blinked, you missed it" category: Aisling Walsh's Maudie, a film based on the life of Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis. Sally Hawkins, who has been one of filmdom's quiet treasures for a good ten years, now, is just great as the title character - a woman who, despite living in constant pain, and suffering all manner of hardship, viewed the world with wonder, and captured that sense of wonder in her art. Sherry White's screenplay is uncompromising. She doesn't sugarcoat the truly ugly, disturbing details of Maud Lewis's life and marriage. Instead, she does what Maud Lewis, herself was so good at; she shows us there are beauty and wonder to be experienced in the most unlikely places, under the most unlikely circumstances. Ethan Hawke, who is not my favorite actor, is great in this. Honorable mention to Kari Matchett, who makes the most of a small, but pivotal, role. She's an actor to watch out for.
Since I'm singing the praises of Sally Hawkins, it makes for a great segue to Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water. The film borrows heavily from one of my favorite novels, Rachel Ingalls' Mrs. Caliban, (if you haven't read it, do so - you will not regret it) which worried me, at first. And then I saw it. I need not have worried. This is magical realism at its most accessible. So much more than a love story, this is a film about outsiders and those who would squash them out of fear of - and contempt for - that which is different. It's a celebration of anti-fascism. The good guys here aren't superheroes with other-worldly powers, though. In this world, The Man is, well...The Man. But the heroes? A woman who is mute. A lonely, aging homosexual. A working class black woman. A scientist who actually cares about doing the right thing. And, yes, a sea creature who, like so many people in the real world, just wants to be left alone to live his life, instead of being exploited and tortured. In a year full of great films, this one might be the most beautiful.
We waited. And waited. And waited. When this film finally arrived, there was a collective sigh of relief from so many of us. Behind that sigh: it was worth the wait. Patty Jenkins brought us the Wonder Woman of our dreams: beautiful, strong, thoughtful, decent, brave, full of heart. Gal Gadot was perfectly cast. There's not much about this film that hasn't been said, but I'm not sure many men actually get how or why this movie is so important to so many women. Men have had dozens of superhero movies. Superman, Batman, Thor, Ironman, Wolverine, Spiderman.... Women? We really haven't had this on the big screen, before. Not like this. Diana Prince kicked ass, and it was gorgeous. A triumph for girls and women everywhere. More of this, please.
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