REVIEW: Isle of Dogs

Image: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Chris Luckett

There are three cinematic masters in today’s reigning generation of directors, who each rarely ever fail to produce masterpiece after masterpiece. Along with Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson is one of those elite few who seem to just churn out brilliance without having to even try.

When the idiosyncratic director of Rushmore tackled stop-motion animation with 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, he found his truest calling. In the wake of his Oscar-nominated Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson has now returned to the same arena of animation and it’s a masterpiece even when stacked against his best.

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REVIEW: A Quiet Place

Image: Paramount Pictures

Chris Luckett

I hate hyperbolizing in my reviews. Not only did I spend my teens paying for a childhood of calling each movie I saw “the best ever,” but words like ‘masterpiece’ and ‘classic’ can lose their power very easily with overuse.

Last year, though, I told people Dunkirk was quite probably the tensest movie I’d ever seen. I’d never outright said that about a movie I’d seen before, as no movie had impacted me like Dunkirk. Now a second movie has.

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SPECIAL: The 50 Best Superhero Movies

Image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

Many lists that are predominantly populated by modern movies feel slanted to younger writers/readers who may not have an exposure to films older than they are or a contextual understanding of their importance.

The superhero movie is a unique beast, though. A few genres and sub-genres, like sci-fi, have been greatly helped by the advance of CGI over the last quarter-century. Sci-fi was still capable of brilliance with just ideas alone, though; superhero movies lend themselves so closely to goofiness, parody, or sublime farce that the modern age of computer effects has served largely to legitimize a type of film that often wasn’t taken very seriously before the new millennium, even when they starred icons like Superman or Batman.

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10 BEST, 0 CONTEXT: Video Game Movies

Image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

Today, I try a new weekly feature on The Apple Box. Each Monday or Tuesday, I’ll have a bite-size “Best Of,” related to whatever’s coming out that week. But, unlike other in-depth rankings of mine, I will be giving no justification for the order, defence of controversial choices, or rambling description of each entry.

This list is as it is. The ten best, with zero context.

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REVIEW: Ready Player One

Image: Warner Bros.

Chris Luckett

It’s a Spielberg movie.

Truly, that should be enough. If any living filmmaker has earned the assumption that every movie of theirs will be, at the very worst, worth seeing — and at the very best, a masterpiece like E.T. or Raiders of the Lost Ark — it’s Sir Stevie. And sure enough, Ready Player One is, at the very least, worth seeing. More than that, it’s the most fun movie of 2018 so far.

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OSCARS 2018: Final Predictions

Image: Focus Features

Chris Luckett

In many categories this year, there’s an expected winner, but some of the biggest categories this year are as tight as a coin flip. (Anyone who’s confident in the Best Picture winner for 2017 hasn’t done enough research.)

So what should you expect to see win tonight? What should you go with for your Oscar pool? Grab your homemade ballots and read on…

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SPECIAL: The Best Movies of 2017

Image: Warner Bros.

Chris Luckett

Amongst my critic friends, a consensus emerged a month or two ago declaring 2017 to have been a great year for movies. I didn’t agree. I tend to judge (modern) years’ film quality by how many movies make the cut for my end-of-year article — that it, how many 4½- and 5-star movies there are. And based on that, I’d been feeling like it had been a rather weak year.

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RANKED: 2017, From Worst to Almost-Best

Image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

Tomorrow, my Best Movies of 2017 article goes online, guiding you through the 16 movies from last year to seek out for the best there was to offer at cinemas. But what about Get Out? Or Lady Bird? Or whatever god-awful sequel the Transformers series is on now?

Here’s all the rest. I didn’t see as many as in years prior, but I still made sure to catch all the big and important ones I could. If you saw it, odds are, it’s on here.

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