New Movies

Baby Driver

Probably the most fun you'll have all year, if we strictly limit ourselves to the realm of 2017 DVD releases borrowed from the library and watched from your couch.

Don't let its relatively underwhelming performance at the domestic box-office dissuade you, the new Blade Runner is really good. If I were to venture a guess as to why more people didn't go see it in the theater, it would hinge on two points: first, its 163 minute runtime; and second, the fact that - as a direct, if belated sequel rather than a remake - it was fairly important to have seen the original.

Brawl in Cell Block 99

S. Craig Zahler is two films into his directing career and it's already a doozy. 2015's Bone Tomahawk was a connoisseur's blend of genre tropes and gruesome violence and Brawl in Cell Block 99 is more of the same, meant in the best possible way. The genre in question has shifted from Western to Prison Thriller, and the big names have changed from Kurt Russell to Vince Vaughn (whose performance drew a general critical reaction of "oh, yeah, we forgot this guy was a pretty good actor") and Don Johnson, but it has maintained its essential S. Craig Zahlerness.

Detroit

Kathryn Bigelow's latest is "an audacious, nervy work of art, but it also commemorates history, memorializes the dead and invites reflection on the part of the living. In scale, scope and the space it offers for a long-awaited moral reckoning, it's nothing less than monumental," says the Washington Post's Ann Hornaday. The Force Awakens' John Boyega stars.

Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan's WWII epic is everything you'd expect those four words to entail.

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library

The new Frederick Wiseman is about the New York Public Library. There. You've already got two reasons to watch it.

It

It is currently the 4th-highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. Everyone in America should be crossing their fingers right now that the studios attribute this to the fact that It is far better than It needed to be. Instead It will almost certainly be counted as just another point in the all-America-wants-is-more-remakes ledger. Alf: The Movie, coming your way in 2019!

Logan Lucky

One of those well-made, terrifically enjoyable blockbusters, which does nothing particularly new or special, that makes you question why Hollywood should so rarely live up to what ought to be the absolute baseline.

Mother!

There were precious few movies in 2017 I was more excited for than Mother! Probably in part because the incredible winning streak Darren Aronofsky was on in my memory (Requiem for a Dream! The Wrestler! Black Swan!) omitted Noah and The Fountain. Even if I had remembered Noah, though, there are few prospects more appealing than a horror movie from the director of Black Swan. Thing is, despite the studio giving it a throwbacky Grindhouse-style trailer, it's not a horror movie. Or, if it is, it's a wholly unsuccessful one. It's moderately more successful as a grand allegorical think piece slathered with a thick dollop of violence. It's most successful on purely technical terms, but that's hardly enough to carry it. I've thought a lot about Mother! in the weeks since I saw it, and I still don't think I liked it, but, hey, that's something.

Paddington 2

Live-action kids' movies centered on computer generated main characters are not supposed to be this good. If Sally Hawkins had gotten a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for Paddington 2 in addition to her leading nom for The Shape of Water... well, yeah, it would have been weird, but I would have totally been into it. Seriously, it's almost Pixar good. Like good Pixar, not The Good Dinosaur Pixar. Credit, along with the tremendous cast, has to go to writer/director Paul King, whose pre-Paddington resume basically amounts to surrealist cult British comedy series The Mighty Boosh and one weird Mighty Boosh-ish indie that no one saw. Credit, also then I guess, to the studio, for trusting him with such a relatively big movie.

Roman J. Israel, Esq.

In addition to its notability by virtue of being the new Denzel Washington movie, Roman J. Israel, Esq. holds the distinction of being the most punctuated title of 2018 so far.