Unsane / **½ (R)

Bleeker Street

Sawyer Valentini: Claire Foy

Nate Hoffman: Jay Pharoah

Violet: Juno Temple

David Strine: Joshua Leonard

Angela Valentini: Amy Irving

Bleeker Street Media and Fingerprint Releasing present a film directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Jonathan Bernstein & James Greer. Running time: 97 min. Rated R (for disturbing behavior, violence, language and sex references).

When reviewing a movie like Steven Soderbergh’s latest feature, Unsane, a critic is faced with a dilemma of split purposes. On the one hand, you are reviewing a thriller that depends upon the tropes of the genre and the storytellers’ abilities to surprise and create tension for the audience. On the other hand, you’re reviewing an experiment of sorts. Soderbergh’s second feature film back from his brief “retirement” is not the first feature film to be shot on an iPhone, but the success of such films—mostly in terms of box office—has yet to reach a point where any sort of verdict has been made as to an audience’s willingness to accept such a film medium as mainstream. For the most part, Soderbergh’s experiment is a success in that it doesn’t feel like an experiment in the slightest; which raises the question, why exactly was this screenplay chosen for this experiment?

The screenplay by Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer raises questions about the mental health industry in this country. These questions are important and legitimate, focusing on the very real practices of a select few voluntary admittance facilities that take advantage of their clients’ lack of knowledge about their rights and the willingness of insurance companies to cover such admittances without question for short periods of time. Unfortunately, other aspects of the screenplay bring into question the legitimacy of the mental health industry as a whole and could be seen as exploiting the realities of mental health issues for the purposes of schlock entertainment. I’m all for schlock, but there were times while watching this film that I felt uncomfortable about how little understanding the filmmakers were displaying in order to pump up the horror entertainment value of their story.

7 Days In Entebbe / *** (R)

Focus Features

Brigitte Kuhlmann: Rosamond Pike

Wilfred Böse: Daniel Brühl

Yitzhak Rabin: Lior Ashkenazi

Shimon Perez: Eddie Marzan

??: Ben Schnetzer

Patricia Martel: Andrea Deck

Jacques le Moine: Denis Ménochet

Focus Features presents a film directed by José Padilha. Written by Gregory Burke. Running time: 106 min. Rated PG-13 (for violence, thematic material, some drug use, smoking and brief strong language).

At Midnight of May 14, 1948 the Provisional Government of Israel declared the new State of Israel and applied for United Nations membership the very next day. Since then the State of Israel has been in conflict with the Palestinian people, who were displaced by the UN when the Israelis were given land the Palestinians claimed as their own. The conflict has frequently been bloody and involved the international community at large in the form of hijackings and violent protest throughout Europe. Even in writing these sentences I am wary of my word choices for fear of offending one side or the other. I have no dog in this race, but since it has been an international political issue for the entirety of my life, I am somewhat fascinated by the subject matter.

The new film 7 Days in Entebbe examines the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight by two Palestinians and two Germans, who took the fairly inspired and unexpected tactic of landing the plane in Entebbe, Uganda for negotiations under the protection of the unpredictable leader of that country, General Idi Amin. This is the fourth cinematic telling of this particular story, but the first to come after much of the details of the incident have been declassified by the Israeli government. The screenplay by Gregory Burke, who previously wrote the screenplay for the politically charged ’71, focuses on three different storylines. His first focus is on the two German hijackers, Brigitte Kuhlmann and Wilfred Böse, portrayed by the film’s biggest names Rosamond Pike and Daniel Brühl. The second examines the decision making process by the Israeli government, in particular the opposing viewpoints between then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Minister of Defense (and future Prime Minister) Shimon Peres. A third, less fact-based storyline follows an unnamed Israeli Defense Force soldier who is part of the elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal responsible for executing the risky rescue operation cooked up by Peres’s staff.

My Favorite Music of 2017, part 2

In part two of My Favorite Music of 2017 we get to combine both of my extracurricular passions—music and movies (and a little TV). I listen to just about as much soundtrack music as I do popular music. I probably even try more soundtrack music out, but these are the ones I kept coming back to over and over again throughout the year. I divided the music into three categories—movie scores, television scores and compilation soundtracks. The compilations are new to this year’s entries. Popular music has long been an element in movies, and at about the time of the Miami Vice television series producers and studios realized that good music compilation soundtracks could be additional moneymakers. They soon became a staple. I kept this list down this year, because I really don’t listen to a whole lot of pop compilation albums. But there were a few entries that really struck me this year. Here are my favorite music soundtracks of 2017. (All release dates are 2017 unless noted).

My Favorite Music of 2017, part 1

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2017 was one of the better years for music I can remember. Well, I should probably qualify that. It is a year in which I personally have been able to immerse myself in music more fully than I have in quite some time. Every year that I come around to making this list, I always start out thinking I’d like to say something about each of my entries. There are two reasons that I don’t. The first is that I’ve chosen 20 albums and 10 shorter format entries for this list and this is only part one. These are my popular music choices, while part two will consist of movie soundtrack entries. Were I to write about all 50 entries on this list, I’d be writing for most of 2018, and it’s already the middle of March. The second reason I don’t write about the music is that after going full bent on my favorite sounds for the past couple of months, I’ve come to the conclusion that the music really speaks for itself. This is my favorite music of 2018 (all in no particular order).

Gringo / ** (R)

Amazon Studios

Harold Soyinka: David Oyelowo

Richard Rusk: Joel Edgerton

Elaine Markinson: Charlize Theron

Sunny: Amanda Seyfried

Mitch Rusk: Sharlto Copley

Bonnie Soyinka: Thandie Newton

Miles: Harry Treadaway

Angel Valverde: Yul Vazquez

Robert Vega: Hector Kostifakis

Jerry: Alan Ruck

Amazon Studios and STX Entertainment present a film directed by Nash Edgerton. Written by Anthony Tambakis and Matthew Stone. Running time: 110 min. Rated R (for language throughout, violence and sexual content).

The Edgerton’s appear to be a family of many talents. Hailing from Australia, Joel Edgerton is the better known of the brothers in the United States. He stars in his brother’s latest feature Gringo. Most would recognize him from leading roles in films like Warrior, The Great Gatsby, Exodus: Gods & Kings, Blank Mass, Loving and The Gift—which he also wrote and directed. His older brother Nash Edgerton directs Gringo. Gringo is Nash’s second feature film after the 2008 Australian thriller The Square, which took the top spot as my favorite film of that year. Gringo has some of the earmarks of that film but lacks its sharp tone and strong protagonist.

My Favorite Movies of 2017

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Just a few observations before my very late list this year. As I was compiling all the information for these films, I was struck by how many of the directors of these movies wrote their own screenplays. I believe we have entered the second age of the cinema auteur and I believe this observation supports that theory.

This would also explain why my list is so long this year. As I usually do, I originally placed these films in order from my favorite to my least favorite of… well… all the movies I gave four stars to this year, which always seemed like a strange practice because I think they’re all great. I realized this as I started to write about Get Out and noticed it had somehow fallen all the way back to number 9 on the list. I moved it back up to the top three, because somehow the top three are my top three, but really none of the films on this list are really in any particular order because they are all incredible movies. I don’t think I ever felt the movies I honored on this list each year were all on such equal ground before.

Here are my favorite films of 2017: