Director Noah Baumbach gives this film a fine balance between feeling like a stage play yet also feeling like a documentary—achieved by lingering on the monologues and framing the two main actors in ways that depict their emotional distance from one another. The couple, played powerfully by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, are shown either with walls between them or as close to the opposing ends of the screen as possible to convey just how separated they feel even when they’re together. It makes for an explosive argument between the two that may just as well be one of the scariest movie scenes in history.
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The screenplay is another factor in how the ultimate theme of romantic breakups works so effectively; there’s such keen attention paid to the character arcs, which often are illustrated purely by pictures and voiceovers in the form of montages. As it shifts attention back-and-forth between the husband and the wife, the audience is assigned the role of taking sides, just like in real life when friends are forced to take sides when a couple they know breaks up. While not a pleasant watch, Marriage Story proves why divorce is not always a failure, because, in the end, there’s still a wonderful collection of memories to think back to. No movie before this has ever given such a harsh depiction of divorce, but more depictions like this in the future will be guaranteed.

R (DLSV)
Drama
2 hr. 16 min.

Watch it to THINK. 
Watch it to LEARN.
​Watch it to feel SAD and AFRAID.

Sound of Metal is the kind of low-budget movie that knows exactly how to promote self-acceptance, and it does so via the story of a man who lives a nomadic band lifestyle until he must adjust to his permanent hearing loss. Riz Ahmed plays this role to absolute perfection as he captures the frustration behind the man’s unfortunate predicament, while Paul Raci, who in real life is a child of deaf adults, plays his new mentor, and a cast of deaf actors plays the members of the Deaf community. There’s a great understanding of this community, that these sorts of people don’t despise their condition, but rather recognize the benefits that it offers.
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To further demonstrate the eye-level approach that director Darius Marder took with the Deaf community, he along with cinematographer Daniël Bouquet effectively frames the ASL communication as the sound design masterfully depicts what the world sounds like to a deaf person. It’s not like the loud concert scenes shown toward the start of the movie, the overall experience results in a careful meditation about the power of noise. It speaks directly to the minority group in focus and makes it accessible for both them and Hearing people to understand. It’s a celebration of Deaf culture while also a work of art that begs those with hearing to question, “If this happened to me, what would I do about it?”

R (DLSN​)
Drama
2 hr.

Watch it to THINK.
​Watch it to feel SAD.

The two leads, Gary (15 years old) and Alana (25 years old), share an absolutely irresistible chemistry with one another that generates a careful ebb-and-flow of tension throughout the film. Gary feels sexually drawn to this woman who’s a full decade older than himself and tries to sound older than his age while motivated by his lustful puppy love. Whereas Alana knows how to describe a water bed to make it sound sexual, making her the perfect counterpart to Gary. The witty screenplay does more than just create engaging dialogue—it comments on the gas shortage crisis, which feels uncomfortably similar to today’s issues of limited natural resources.
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With more social themes like that explored, as well as the subtle use of fashion, director Paul Thomas Anderson makes everything about Licorice Pizza just scream the 1970s. The layers of authenticity lead to the credibility of the unbelievable story, and with the pitch-perfect acting, it could almost pass as a dramatized documentary. Overall, this work is pure genius; Paul Thomas Anderson mixes together these ingredients that to a sane person sound repulsive and makes them work in a way that bursts your bubble about our economy’s health, which in fact hasn’t changed much over the past fifty years. Other directors have managed to argue why pineapple on a pizza works, but Anderson used this movie of his to prove how licorice on pizza could work.

R (DLS​)
Comedy/Drama
2 hr. 13 min.

Watch it to THINK.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY.

Made to look like a single continuous shot with no edit cuts, 1917 is a unique spectacle that builds upon the techniques used in similar films, such as Birdman. As director Sam Mendes follows these two soldiers, the sound design and natural lighting work together to sell the illusion of a continuous take. To get through these treacherous locations, which were scattered all across the United Kingdom, the camera crew had to rely on many forms of transportation from trucks to cranes to Steadicams. The camera would even be unhooked from one crane and then hooked onto another while the film’s still rolling.
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This was no easy task for the set designers either, as models for every set had to be built to plan out the blocking and figure out how to work around the filming equipment. They had to know based on the length of every scene exactly how long each set should be, which meant in total 5,200 feet of trenches were built. When it came to actually filming these ambitious scenes, there were some days when the weather would shut down production because every shot had to look consistent—even a tiny bit of sunlight could be catastrophic. While other films have utilized this gimmick, no other has done it at this scale, and it’s guaranteed that more filmmakers from here on out will pick up on Mendes’ innovative techniques.

R (LV​)
Action/Historic
1 hr. 59 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
​Watch it to feel SAD and AFRAID.

This ambitious study on the unexpected virtue of ignorance tells its story with what is made to look like one long continuous take without any edit cuts. The clever tricks utilized to pull off this illusion included time-lapses to transition to a different time of day and letting objects move across the frame to hide swipe transitions between cuts. These shots lasted anywhere between 9-16 minutes long, and 90% of the film was digitally altered in some way, such as by removing the camera crew from the mirrors the actors constantly looked into. These mirrors were essential to achieve Iñárritu’s vision because they helped crop the actors without needing to cut or change the camera position, doubling as narrative symbolism to represent the ego of whoever is looking into those mirrors.
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Besides being an endeavor for the production crew, this narrative style was also a challenge that stretched the skill of the cast. Michael Keaton and Edward Norton both act their hearts out when they’re together, while Emma Stone delivers a monologue that’s guaranteed to ignite goosebumps. Yet there’s so much more that makes this movie so great: the dialogue is brilliant, the musical drum score is awesome, and the cinematography is among the most gorgeous ever put to film. There’s just so much about Birdman that makes it everything a movie should be, while also being a needed push for the potential of art.

R (DLSV​)
Comedy/Drama
1 hr. 59 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to LEARN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY.

This is certainly the worst of all the Toy Story movies, yet Toy Story 4 still continues the series’ tradition of revolutionizing the animation industry with its technological breakthroughs. The toy characters of course all have their familiar toy-like ways of moving, with the new challenges added from the new set of characters, including Bo Peep’s elaborate stunts, the awkward Forky, the plushy Ducky and Bunny, the creepy Gabby Gabby, and her ventriloquist dummy henchmen. But the animation achievements are far more ambitious than that: The lights from the sun and the carnival all look scarily realistic, which in turn makes the textures on the toys, with all their minuscule scratches, look more lifelike than actual live-action does.

​When creating the antique store, over 10,000 items were built with varying degrees of aging; to complete the atmosphere, new software was developed to create the cobwebs. The camera further pushed for the photorealism by using filming techniques previously only used in live-action; this doesn’t just include the handheld camera system used in previous Pixar films, but also the imitated look of an anamorphic lens. These techniques mean in the near future, the line between animation and live-action could blur to the point where the two sides become indistinguishable from each other. These ambitious strides in utilizing the computer to recreate the real world prove how much more room for growth this beloved franchise has potential for still.

​G
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 43 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, and AFRAID.

It had been eleven years since the second movie, meaning the target audience of the first Toy Story, that being kids born in the early 1990s, were now ready to start college, just like Andy in this movie. Although Toy Story 3 still carries the same old issues of having no logical sense from the past two movies, there are still plenty of wonderful merits at play. For starters, the technology finally passed the point of creating realistic human characters that didn’t appear uncanny, with more controls in each character model than ever before. Yet even with this freedom of giving an impressive range of facial expressions, all the characters, particularly Spanish Buzz and Lotso the teddy bear, still presented their own unique animation challenges.

​Better still, Pixar revolutionized a new system for creating the fabric for clothes, which was important because this movie had three times as many toys as the very first movie. Even the use of lights, camera, and audio was quite ambitious for an animated film, seeing how they all stylistically harkened back to other more mature Hollywood genres, such as prison movies or film noir, while still keeping the playful, adventurous, at times dangerous tone that a Toy Story movie should have. The finished product ended up making multiple generations of people cry, because, in a way, the series had truly grown up with its original audience, and it was time to say goodbye.

G
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 40 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, and AFRAID.

While John Krasinski originally didn’t plan on a Quiet Place sequel, he still picked up on the success of his horror smash-hit by building on all that it had the potential for, including the possibility of this concept turning into a franchise. The expansion of this world devastated by an alien invasion is such a keen exercise in allowing the setting to dictate what the characters’ personalities and struggles are like, particularly in how others outside the movie’s main family were affected. The family by the way is now deprived of their familiar resources at the farm and is stretched beyond their limit, the deaf daughter, Regan, most of all. While this sequel isn’t nearly as focused on silent communication as the first movie, Regan takes on more of a protagonist role to inspire other girls, women, and the entire Deaf community.
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This form of entertainment is accessible to everyone, with large action set pieces that required a lot more hands-on work than the first movie. The open-endedness of the finale likewise proves that there’s still more room for this concept to grow into a third installment, or perhaps even a television series. But even if those don’t ever happen, A Quiet Place Part II shall solidify its legacy as an ideal blockbuster to set the standards for how to create effective popcorn entertainment while also crafting a narrative that delves into the psychology of loss and survival.

PG-13 (V)
Horror/Sci-fi
1 hr. 37 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel AFRAID.

A Quiet Place only has 2-3 minutes of dialogue, with a screenplay of only 67 pages, but it still works tremendously as a blockbuster that continues to challenge what defines popcorn entertainment. Its post-apocalyptic world is built with some frightening sound effects, dark lighting, and a slow-moving camera that are masterfully implemented to generate a sense of urgency. It’s a genius work of utilizing ambiance instead of dialogue to tell the story, and it had proven so effective that the audience in the movie theater was reportedly too afraid to eat their popcorn, thus making noise, while watching the movie.
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When John Krasinski was brought on to direct, write, and star in this groundbreaking exercise of orchestrating thrills, he pulled greatly from his own experience raising his newborn daughter. His efforts with this hefty project grew even more personal when his casting decisions relied on instinct rather than auditions, as his decision to cast his wife Emily Blunt to play his character’s wife added to the impact of the film’s major events. Also in this cast was Millicent Simmonds, a deaf actress who played the deaf daughter, and she along with a deaf coach on set ensured that all ASL communication between the family was clear and accurate. Ultimately, no movie exists quite like this one, and no movie may ever be quite like it either. Except of course, for its sequel.

PG-13 (V)
Horror/Sci-fi
1 hr. 30 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel AFRAID.

Academy Award-winner My Octopus Teacher talks about how a man’s study of a single octopus changed him over the course of a year, and in this time, he never treats the animal like a pet, refusing to even give her a name. This is the feature film debut of director/marine journalist Pippa Ehrlich, which is remarkable considering how difficult production must have gotten with all the underwater filming. With all their work in this gorgeously dense kelp forest of South Africa, the crew documents all the things an octopus wouldn’t commonly be known to do, such as express every emotion a human could express. Then after filming was over, it took them about three months to generate some form of narrative from the recorded content.

​​The finished product gives not just a scholarly analysis of octopus behavior but a strong environmental conservation message that doesn’t come off as excessively preachy; the focus instead remains on the powerful relationship between a man and an octopus. It does what very few documentaries have done in proving that the best way to study an animal isn’t in a classroom but in its natural habitat. The heavy set of emotions that this little movie offers on such a small creature is overwhelming enough to shake up the industry of documentary filmmaking, perhaps by encouraging more underwater filming or by writing more narratives structured around a year-long experience.

G
Documentary
1 hr. 25 min.

Watch it to LEARN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and SAD.