Review: SOLO+Denny's Solo Inspired Menu!

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY 
(ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY) 
★★1/2
Directed by Ron Howard
Screenplay by Jonathan Kasdan & Lawrence Kasdan
Based on characters created by George Lucas
Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Joonas Suatamo, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Paul Bettany, Jon Favreau (voice), Linda Hunt (voice), Ian Kenny, John Tui, Warwick Davis, Anthony Daniels
Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action/violence.
135 minutes
Unfortunately, SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY comes to the table with a bit of ill will, having been the subject of the latest and worst behind the scenes drama of the tumultuous Kathleen Kennedy era of Lucasfilm thus far when the directing team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller (having established a reputation for taking "bad idea" movies and making them good, i.e. THE LEGO MOVIE, 21 JUMP STREET and CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, although usually with a comedic bent) were fired from production with only a few weeks of principal photography left, and replaced by the painfully safe choice of Ron Howard.  As such, it's a bit messy, and it may take some time to become fully objective about it, but let's be fair, a Han Solo solo movie isn't exactly inspired in and of itself.  That said, even while it's nothing special, it's better than it could have been.  Like the first installment of the Star Wars anthology series accompanied by the "A Star Wars Story" subtitle, ROGUE ONE, SOLO is a mixed bag of thrilling moments and "who needs it" bull crap.

Written by THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK scribe Lawrence Kasdan and his son, Jonathan Kasdan, SOLO is set between REVENGE OF THE SITH and the original STAR WARS, where the teenage Han (Alden Ehrenreich) is a resourceful young "scrumrat" on the planet Corellia, with dreams of getting his own ship and traveling the galaxy as a free man with his girlfriend/partner-in-crime Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) by his side.  In their attempt to escape the clutches of the grotesque crime lord Lady Proxima (an awesome creature design voiced by Linda Hunt) however, Han and Qi'ra are split up, with Han evading capture by joining up with the Imperial Navy but promising to return.  A series of adventures unites Han with his co-pilot and best friend, Chewbacca (portrayed by 6'11'' tall Finnish basketball player Joonas Suotamo, taking over the role from its originator Peter Mayhew), and together they fall in with a band of thieves and smugglers led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson).  With Beckett's team, they plan to make a huge score, enough to by a ship, but when things go awry, Han finds himself involved with yet another crime lord in the form of the sinister Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), and back into the same sphere as Qi'ra, who now has a past of her own.

The story meanders and is at times picaresque, but not always in a way that seems intended.  There are moments that seem very much in the vein of Lord & Miller (reportedly, they filmed about 30% of the finished film but settled for credit as executive producers), particularly the civil rights-minded droid pilot L3-37 (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge), and there are idiotic revelations scattered throughout that smell like franchise-building B.S., but it's all fine.  It's not particularly clever, and when it tries to be is when it really feels dumb.  Like, yes we all know that people were upset when George Lucas modified the original STAR WARS to make Han shoot after Greedo, so there's going to be a self-aware corrective moment here where Han shoots someone before they can draw.  Whoop-de-freaking-do.  These new Star Wars movies could really do without the self-aware nods to fanboy resentment about things from the Special Editions and prequel trilogy.  On the other hand, while I'm glad they're not trying to erase the prequels from existence the way Lucas tried to do with the theatrically-released original trilogy, a lot of it comes down to name-dropping and throwing out the consequences from of those movies for the sake of familiarity or fanboy pandering.

In comparison to Harrison Ford, Ehrenreich's no slouch, although there's a disassociation between his Han and Ford's Han.  Both are good, but it's never particularly present in the mind that these are the same characters.  As Lando Calrissian, Donald Glover is a little more rough, partly because he's a more familiar personality as an actor than Ehrenreich, but more because of Glover's intermittent attempts to imitate Billy Dee Williams's distinctively smooth speech mannerisms which, coming out of the mouth of anyone other than Williams himself, sound like parody.  There are actually a lot of characters to keep track of in the movie, and a lot of them are underplayed in the mix, like Harrelson's "Long John Silver"-inspired character whose involvement is easy enough to forget whenever he's not onscreen, and there are a lot of characters and revelations that are given more weight than makes sense, unless it's a case of the studio pushing their animated Star Wars TV series, which wouldn't be too surprising.

While it's less ambitious, SOLO is an minor improvement over THE LAST JEDI, more fast paced and more in the vein of Star Wars, even without the Jedi characters, ironically.  The action is solid, including a cool Star Wars version of a train robbery and at least a few chases, all shot handsomely with crispness and scale by Bradford Young (known for his work on ARRIVAL and SELMA), and the production design is beautiful.  The creature designs and voices are both innovative and classic Star Wars, and pervade the movie in a way that makes me really want to see Guillermo del Toro''s theoretical "Jabba's Palace" movie.  There are a lot of covered faces with mechanical voices, giant, photosensitive caterpillars, a four-armed monkey space pilot, and a full-blown space kraken, all of which were excellent.
I don't know that it will stick with me for long, and God knows, it's too long, but at least the first half was pretty fun.

                                                                                                                                                                    Images via Lucasfilm

Denny's Solo: A Star Wars Story Inspired Menu

Co-Reactor Pancake Breakfast
Menu Description: Two buttermilk pancakes topped with fresh strawberries, strawberry sauce and whipped cream, plus a side of Crystal Crunch Rocks and a pitcher of warm citrus sauce to pour over your pancakes to make 'em go pop.  Served with two eggs, hash browns and your choice of two bacon strips or two sausage links.
$9.79
Basically the flagship of the Solo: A Star Wars Story Inspired Menu, the Co-Reactor Pancake Breakfast is what Denny's does best; breakfast food with just the right amount of weird innovation, in this case being Pop Rocks on your pancakes.  The "Crystal Crunch Rocks" aren't exactly the same as "Pop Rocks" though.  Like Pop Rocks, they are tiny candies infused with bubbles of pressurized carbon dioxide gas that cause them to pop and crackle as they melt, but the Crystal Crunch Rocks have a smooth texture and a buttery taste on top of the strawberry flavor.  My pancakes were served with the Crystal Crunch Rocks on the side, so I was able to sample them on their own, and it was weirdly like sucking on spray butter with a hint of fruitiness.  Mixing with the strawberry sauce on top of the pancakes, they made a satisfactorily noisy popping sound as I ate.  Mine was a to-go order, and unfortunately, I did not get the citrus sauce, however, everything else was included (the missing sauce was likely a mistake).  For about $10.00, it's an ample serving of food with pancakes, fruit, eggs, hash browns and either bacon or sausage (bacon for me).

Blaster Fire Burger
Menu Description: Chipotle Gouda cheese, bacon and spicy Ghost Pepper sauce top a hand-pressed 100% beef patty.  Served with lettuce, tomato, red onions and pickles on a brioche bun with a choice of side.
$10.39 ($10.98 with suggested side of Bacon Cheddar Tots)
In my experience, burgers are not Denny's strong suit.  In fact, they suck, and unfortunately, the Blaster Fire Burger was no exception.  The patty was nearly flavorless and dry, even worse than those dreadful Lean Mean Grilling Machines that squeeze all the flavor juices out from the comfort of your home.  Most of the flavor in the burger came from pickles (hard to miss that pickle flavor) and the basic spiciness of the Ghost Pepper sauce and Chipotle Gouda cheese.  Curiously, the burning sensation was mostly delayed, so it was perfectly tolerable to chew, but by the time I swallowed, it began to burn in my throat and proceeded to do so for several minutes.  Although they cost $0.50 more, I ordered the burger with the Bacon Cheddar Tots it was pictured with on the menu, which were better than the low bar set by the burger, but unremarkable balls of cheesy hash browns with bits of bacon.

Two Moons Skillet
Menu Description: Diced ham, fresh spinach, sautéed mushrooms and hash browns.  Topped with Gouda cheese sauce, Cheddar cheese and two eggs.
$9.39
Outside of the two eggs that come on top of it, I'm not sure what the Two Moons of the Two Moons Skillet are in reference to, because that one scene in STAR WARS is of two suns.  This one was a little bit of a hurdle when I was deciding whether or not I was going to try all four Solo: A Star Wars Story Inspired Menu items because mushrooms are disgusting, rubbery, little dirt warts, but when I finally tried it, I was pleased to discover that the Gouda cheese sauce and Cheddar cheese that smothered the skillet drowned out both the taste and texture of the ick.  I was also hesitant about the ham, but really, it mostly registered as cheese-smothered hash browns with a few spinach leaves and the rest were just accentuations, and I liked it a lot.  It was basically a just a big heap of savory breakfast mess.

Lightspeed Slam
Menu Description: Our Fit Slam includes egg whites scrambled together with fresh spinach and grape tomatoes, plus two turkey bacon strips, an English muffin and seasonal fruit.
$8.69
The Lightspeed Slam is actually a Lightspeed Sham, because it's actually the exact same thing as the Fit Slam from the traditional Denny's menu.  It's also a fair bit less food than the other slams with less of a price drop than you'd expect in proportion to the portions, but it is less than half the calories.  It's not bad, but it's about what you'd expect from a breakfast designed for someone watching their cholesterol.  The egg whites with spinach and tomatoes are okay, and I've nothing against English muffins, although my to-go order came with neither butter or jam, so it was pretty dry.  Turkey bacon doesn't exactly taste like your traditional pig bacon, but I wouldn't say it's either worse or better.  It's fine.  The fruit was good, maybe a little tart as the result of lemon juice or something to preserve its color.  It's just that there's not a lot of Han Solo-style adventure in watching your cholesterol.

Review: AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR 
(ACTION/SCI-FI) 
★★★1/2
Directed by Anthony Russo & Joe Russo
Screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
Based on Marvel Comics, characters and stories by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Jim Starlin & George Perez & Ron Lim, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby & Joe Simon and Jim Starlin
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Peter Dinklage, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Josh Brolin, Chris Pratt, Pom Klementieff, Tom Hiddleston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Terry Notary, Karen Gillan, Bradley Cooper (voice), Carrie Coon
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, language and some crude references.
149 minutes
Verdict: The climactic chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is long, exhausting, fun, emotional and delivers where it counts.


While this review contains no significant spoilers for AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, there will be no such courtesies regarding earlier installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  You have been warned.
After 10 years and 18 installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) so far, the franchise has still maintained an improbable level of quality, and yet, even as the studio has tried to branch out in some fresh directions with the zany James Gunn-styled qualities of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, the flippant coolness of THOR: RAGNAROK, and the energetic black ensemble-led BLACK PANTHER, the series hasn't been able to totally shake a feeling of fatigue, like even when there's a visible effort to be different, there's still a resolute sameness and commercial safety to it all.  It's been accused of being essentially a multi-billion dollar TV series, which isn't completely wrong.  They feel like episodes at their cores.  It's not that they're haven't still been good, but they have been same-y, even, ironically, when they're not.  AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, however, is pitched as a culmination.  MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, which now reaches the ripe old age of five years, memorably ended with a mid-credits stinger that revealed the secret orchestrator of the villainous Loki's attempted takeover of Earth to be Thanos, a character familiar to many Marvel Comics fans as an exceptionally powerful antagonist of the Avengers, but the scene puzzled the masses of uninitiated.  Since then, Thanos (who was merely a CGI effect with a brief grin in his first appearance but has since been portrayed by actor Josh Brolin via performance capture technology) has made underwhelming cameo appearances in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, and all this time, the series has been building to this, his big starring role.  Whatever else, I think INFINITY WAR does a pretty decent job of shaking that episodic feeling, or at least, making it work in a way that it hasn't for a while.  The devoted fans were always going to cream in their jeans over this, but I wouldn't be surprised if it made more than a few casual moviegoers at least a little bit angry.  I yearn for the days of the supersized 100-120 minute blockbusters, but while INFINITY WAR clocks in at an epic two-and-a-half hours, it's briskly paced.  The action scenes are frequent and lengthy, but juggled rapidly between many different storylines, occasionally to very fun effect, and occasionally to one of exhaustion.  Especially by the time that extra half hour was rolling along, I was feeling the length, and by the time all was said and done, I wondered just what it had added up to.  More specifically, it's a very big movie, and I wonder, is it big because it makes sense for this climactic chapter to be a big and is thus an obligation, or did it really need all that?  Suffice it to say, this isn't the final chapter in the Avengers saga.  There is a fair bit of exposition to be had in a movie that, ostensibly, would stand at least somewhat on its own but which is also the sequel to 18 different movies; although, the Infinity Stones buildup didn't really start until THOR: THE DARK WORLD, which was, by then, already the eight installment in the series.  On the one hand, it's fortunate that INFINITY WAR doesn't waste too much time resetting the pieces, but on the other hand, there's still some effort demanded to keeping up if you've seen and remember what happened in the previous 18 movies, so it's probable that people who haven't been keeping track of things could get clobbered by how much is going on.  If you don't have time to catch up on 18 movies before seeing this one, you might be fine as long as you've covered MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, THOR: THE DARK WORLD, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, DOCTOR STRANGE and THOR: RAGNAROK, and maybe SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING and BLACK PANTHER, too.  Not a one of them is under two hours, though.

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR picks up five years after the events of CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, in which the superhero team the Avengers were driven apart by political and personal conflict, and very shortly after the final scene of THOR: RAGNAROK.  Thanos, a bulky purple humanoid from the planet Titan, is on a quest to obtain the Infinity Stones; six immensely powerful singular elements from the beginning of the universe.  The Space Stone, previously introduced in the CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER as the Tesseract; the Mind Stone, previously introduced in MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS and further revealed in AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON as Loki's scepter before it was incorporated into the character Vision (Paul Bettany); the Reality Stone, previously introduced as the Aether in THOR: THE DARK WORLD; the Power Stone, previously introduced as the contents of a powerful orb in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY; the Time Stone, previously introduced in DOCTOR STRANGE as the Eye of Agamotto; and finally, the Soul Stone, which was briefly mentioned in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.  I had to look all of that up after the fact, because I couldn't keep track of the details on these things for the life of me.  Wielded together, the Infinity Stones make one master of the universe, a power which Thanos desires in order to bring "balance" to the cosmos by killing half the beings in the universe.  Basically, you could say he's a population control extremist.

Once again, it falls upon the Avengers, "Earth's Mightiest Heroes," to protect their planet when Thanos and his army of grotesque henchmen come knocking, but not only are the Avengers fractured between sides sympathetic to Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) after the events of CIVIL WAR, but the battle against Thanos is a battle for the entire universe, so the Guardians of the Galaxy, led by Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), and Master of the Mystic Arts Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) enlist in the fight as well.
Personally, I'm a sucker for the reintroduction of heroes in a sequel where there's been a passage of time to catch up on, and they're already in the middle of another adventure.  Fortunately, there's no shortage of such moments in INFINITY WAR, as disparate but familiar faces make their re-entries one after another; relationships have progressed, Tony Stark still has hyperactive anxiety about protecting the world and people he cares about, Cap and his allies are continuing their heroics underground, and T'Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), is opening the previously largely secret knowledge of the nation of Wakanda to the international stage.  The familiar faces in this superhero epic are an embarrassment of riches, as evidenced by not the usual one, but two rows of star billing at the top of the film's overcrowded poster.  In addition to the aforementioned, Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), James "Rhodey" Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle), Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier/White Wolf (Sebastian Stan), and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) play their parts, and those are just the characters who've been in the marketing.  I'm also a big fan of movies where they have to put together a team; one of my favorite parts of the original MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, even in the midst of all the bombastic action, was just the beginning scenes of bringing them all together.  The hows and whys of bringing characters as varied as Thor, Iron Man and Captain America finally meeting each other, the resulting friction and eventual camaraderie, and there's an abundance of those meetings in INFINITY WAR as well.  How does the irreverent group of misfits that make up the Guardians of the Galaxy react to the prince of Asgard, Thor?  What happens when you put together the similarly brilliant but inflated egos of the tech-centric Iron Man and the magical Doctor Strange in the middle of an intergalactic war?  As a kid, I had about a year or two-long phase of devoted comic book reading, mostly of the Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk series in the form of black-and-white copied collections of the characters' classic eras from the 1960s and '70s, and as weird as each character was on their own, I accepted their individual adventures as grounded within their own respective stories.  

However, they'd occasionally have crossovers with other Marvel characters, and that's when things would start to seem weird.  Sure, a teen from Queens getting bit by a radioactive spider and getting spider-themed powers was one thing, but now he's working alongside Ghost Rider, the biker demon with a flaming skull head?  That seemed weird.  INFINITY WAR is the MCU getting weird in a similar way, but I think I like that.  It mixes together a lot of different flavors, more disparate and varied than the last two Avengers movies, and things get weird, even campy at times, like an '80s fantasy film.  THOR: RAGNAROK's aesthetic seems like a bit of a primer for this style in retrospect.  Some this blending of worlds works really well, some of it seems a bit off the mark.  The design elements of the movie cater more toward the fanboy sensibilities and occasionally to the detriment of things, such as Iron Man and Spider-Man newly styled ugly suits, and I really don't know how I feel about Thanos's henchmen, most prominently represented by the evil butler-like Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and the ram-horned warrior Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon), who feel like they might be more at home in an episode of Stargate SG1.  The designs aren't exactly top-notch.

Some audiences might be more satisfied than others in respect to the amount of time devoted specific characters in the midst of so many to juggle, although I think they did a pretty well-balanced job of it overall.  Peter Quill might have deserved a little more time in regards to some events in the latter parts of the film, and after the immense success of BLACK PANTHER not even a few months ago, I'm sure there will be clamoring over whether T'Challa and his circle of close comrades received enough screen time, but I don't have any major complaints about things in that respect.  In terms of characters, the greatest responsibility of all to fall upon the film is Thanos, a character who has already made three previous appearances in the MCU and not yet has been able to project an ounce of real menace or depth, leaving the task all up to INFINITY WAR itself.  A tall and muscular, purple-skinned Titan, Thanos is about a B+ villain, maybe an A-.  The idea that has been pitched that this is Thanos's movie isn't quite true, it's still very much an ensemble film like the other Avengers movies,  but he certainly gets his moments.  He's still a little shallow in terms of his motivations, and while the backstory might be there, the movie doesn't give it sufficient prominence.  On the other hand, he's an emotional villain with some real dimensions, on a level alongside others of Marvel best villains like Loki and Killmonger.  I don't know if he'll make you feel a lot, but he'll make you feel something at least.  He's willing to make real, meaningful sacrifices for his objectives, and it leads to some potently emotional moments, however, there's still some lingering question as to what drives him to make those sacrifices.  There are also some serious issues with the power of the Infinity Stones and Thanos's power as he obtains each one.  I don't understand why they can be used to do one thing but not some other thing, and why it requires all six to achieve Thanos's specific goals, and their specific abilities and limitations are certainly not apparent.  Because other things about the movie seem to working well enough, you try not to worry about it in the midst of things, but the Infinity Stones seem to render a lot of what's going on almost entirely meaningless.  Perhaps there's still more to be said on the matter, but as it is, they seem like all kinds of uninhibited possibilities and deus ex machina.

Most importantly though, INFINITY WAR finally delivers a real feeling of emotional stakes to the MCU.  Obviously, we've been expecting some characters to finally meet their fates and stay that way with this chapter of the saga, after so much avoidance, but just dispatching a few of our favorite heroes wouldn't be enough if not done the right way.  I'm not sure how much credit to give to the directing team of brother Joe Russo and Anthony Russo, veterans of sitcom television who have taken the Avengers reins from Joss Whedon, director of the first two Avengers films.  INFINITY WAR is their third Marvel production after CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR and the quasi-Avengers movie CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, and as with those two movies, INFINITY WAR was falls on the darker end of the Marvel spectrum, although even there, Marvel really doesn't go that dark at their darkest.  Except for this time.  Even while INFINITY WAR finally feels like its own movie within the MCU rather than another TV episode (maybe you could say it feels like the special TV movie event within the TV series), it's still clearly studio picture, continuing Marvel's uniquely producer-dominated practice under the thumb of Kevin Feige, who decides how much creative leeway to allow hired gun directors.  That said, the Russos have displayed a propensity for emotionally charged action and undisciplined storytelling that has applied to all three so far.  In any case, INFINITY WAR is a massive movie in every way and the result of the efforts of many creative talents, some more successful than others.  Within all the spectacle though, I found myself caring about some of the characters more than I realized that I did, and when it finally becomes possible for them to die, there were some deaths that I was resigned to, and others that I actively hoped might be spared.  Finally, they were worth caring about again.  There's an emotional intensity at times that I'd been missing, and when the heroes charge into a massive Lord of the Rings-stye battle in the climactic action, the big signature thrills of a great summer blockbuster were there.

                                                                                                                                                                                           Marvel

Review: RAMPAGE

RAMPAGE 
(ACTION/SCI-FI) 
★★
Directed by Brad Peyton
Screenplay by Ryan Engle and Carlton Cuse & Ryan J. Condal and Adam Sztykiel
Story by Ryan Engle
Based on Rampage by Midway Games
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jake Lacy, Joe Manganiello, Marley Shelton, P.J. Byrne, Demetrius Grosse, Jack Quaid, Breanne Hill, Matt Gerald, Will Yun Lee, Urijah Faber
Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, action and destruction, brief language, and crude gestures.
107 minutes
Verdict: While delivering on the promise of bombastic brain-dead monster action, RAMPAGE is more dumb than fun.

I'm not a video game kind of person, but RAMPAGE is one of the rare video game-based movies that I can actually compare to the game, because I remember playing it on Nintendo 64 at a friend's house one day when I was 8 or 9 years old.  Basically, it was a very old-fashioned seeming game, even at the time, originally from 1986, where you played as either a giant gorilla ripoff of King Kong, a giant lizard ripoff of Godzilla, or as some random giant wolf-man, and then you try to smash buildings or other monsters or something.  For some reason, it stuck in my mind.

Frankly, the new movie directed by Brad Peyton, and somehow written by four different people, doesn't actually add much more to the story.  The monsters in the game were transformed people, according to Wikipedia, which they aren't in this, but other than that, for better or worse, it's still basically excuse to let a giant gorilla, a giant crocodile and a giant wolf wreak havoc and eat people.
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, for whom this kind of movie is now standard, is the human, non-CGI star as Davis Okoye, a primatologist with a vaguely defined background as a mercenary/special ops/poacher-killer, who works as at a wild animal park in California and is friends with a rare albino silverback gorilla named "George."  When a space station hosting illegal genetic experiments breaks apart in orbit above Earth, capsules containing experimental gas break through the atmosphere and crash down across North America, one of  them landing in George's enclosure, and it quickly mutates him to grow at a rapid rate and become unnaturally aggressive.  Elsewhere in the States, a capsule mutates a wolf into a gigantic, flying monster and another turns an American crocodile into a warped leviathan.  Meanwhile, the unscrupulous corporation behind the experiments, personified by the evil Claire Wyden (Malin Akerman) and her dumb brother Brett (Jake Lacy), is working to cover up the evidence and turn on a radar to draw the monsters to their headquarters in the city to create chaos.
Okoye is mostly interested in helping his "friend," George, so he enlists the help of Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris), a discredited genetic engineer who had been involved with the corporation's work, and gets help whenever convenient from a government agent who seems to be everywhere, all the time, Harvey Russell, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who you could say is the only member of the cast who knows what kind of movie he's in, but he's still playing it awfully high.

Fortunately, it doesn't take long at all to get into the monster mayhem, but every time the movie takes a moment to get back to human characters and make its half-assed, weirdly broad attempts to give them any sort of background, it's hopelessly dull.  Johnson is on cruise control, giving ham-handed lines to a CGI gorilla, and the villainous siblings played by Akerman and Lacy are a less fun carbon copy of the villains from SUPERMAN III.  Morgan's drawl-heavy performance is intermittently amusing, but his character makes no sense, popping up whenever it's convenient to the plot.
Really, the whole point of the movie is the monsters, and the movie doesn't withhold.  Plenty of people are devoured gruesomely, pushing boundaries with gore in the PG-13 rating to a surprising degree, especially for a movie this cartoony, and frankly, regardless of content, feels like a kids movie much of the time.  Personally, I'm not a huge fan of people being eaten onscreen; it's a fine line between fun and sickening, but weirdly enough, the messier deaths where people get torn up don't bother me as much as people being swallowed, e.g. Katie McGrath's prolonged demise in JURASSIC WORLD.  The deaths in RAMPAGE are mostly messy, so that's fine by me.  It's a little nasty, but it's alright.  The whole thing feels really slight, however, because there's so little story, and the encounters with the monsters during the first half of the movie just feel like previews whetting the appetite for the main showcase in the third act climax.

Even in the seemingly simple objective of dumb fun, RAMPAGE still isn't the "good video game" adaptation that continues to elude Hollywood, although it seems to have a better idea of how to get there than a lot of other that have tried.  It aims for the appeal of the Transformers series with epic fights that cause absurd destruction, and JURASSIC WORLD, with brainless bloody mayhem, and the Fast & Furious series with a weirdly earnest theme about friendship.  Unfortunately, it's just more dumb than it is fun.

                                                                                                                                                          Images via Warner Brothers

Review: A QUIET PLACE

A QUIET PLACE
(THRILLER/HORROR) 
★★★1/2
Directed by John Krasinski
Screenplay by Bryan Woods & Scott Beck and John Krasinski
Story by Bryan Woods & Scott Beck
Starring: John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward, Leon Russom
Rated PG-13 for terror and some bloody images.
90 minutes
Verdict: A simple, visceral and emotional thriller that builds on its promising high concept with stellar performances.

Despite becoming widely recognizable for his role as workplace prankster Jim Halpert in the U.S. version of The Office, John Krasinski's had a rough go of it breaking into movies, consistently landing in roles in lukewarm failures like 13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI and LEATHERHEADS or out and out failures like LICENSE TO WED and ALOHA.  Sometimes in movies, to get the good roles, you've got to give them to yourself (Ben Affleck knows all about that), but while John Krasinski's role in A QUIET PLACE, which he also directed, co-wrote and executive produced, is good, it's not an especially meaty role.  Nothing about A QUIET PLACE is like that.  It's simple and broad, but highly visceral and emotional.
The context of the situation is minimal.  When the film opens, a title card indicates that it's been 89 days since whatever is happening started happening.  Civilization has broken down and only a few scattered families still survive in the area where the story takes place.  Mysterious, seemingly unbeatable creatures stalk everything that still survives, and though the creatures are blind, any sound louder than a couple dozen decibels brings them running to tear apart whatever animal life is the source.  The Abbott family communicates with sign language, and the parents, Lee (John Krasinski) and Evelyn (Emily Blunt), lay down paths of flour to walk silently on barefooted wherever they go and feel the weight of responsibility as parents while they strive to prepare their children to survive.  In the film's prologue, a scavenging trip into a nearby town ends in tragedy for the Abbott family, before the story jumps forward a year.  Each member of the family is still dealing with the guilt of what happened, and Evelyn is pregnant with another child, adding to their oldest, Regan (played by deaf actress Millicent Simmonds), who deals with the added complication of being deaf with a broken Cochlear implant and feels particularly responsible, and their current youngest, Marcus (Noah Jupe).

Although I can't really explain why, A QUIET PLACE feels more like a thriller to me than a horror movie, but that line is so constantly blurred.  There are jump scares and frequent tension, as well as supernatural plot elements, but something about it feels not quite in the same realm as what I could easily identify as horror.  Watching the trailer, with images of people walking barefoot along white pathways in the woods and an unseen menace, I assumed it would be a more surreal, almost fairy tale-like story, but it's strangely more grounded than that, for the most part.  It's a slick remix of many familiar things and reminded me of movies like SIGNS, THE WITCH and 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE.  It could easily have been the next Cloverfield movie (it's a whole lot better than THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX), and maybe it wouldn't have hurt if it were, but it's great that it's not.  
It's a movie that's easy to nitpick, and if it's okay to speak next to a waterfall because the sound of the waterfall drowns them out, I'm not sure why they can't just get a bunch of noise cancelling machines like therapist offices have, but if most of the movie is working, there's no point in bringing it all crashing down over something like that.  The creature designs are fine, nothing special (I guess I connected the trails with Temple Run and was hoping they'd be more like that freaky four-armed ape thing).

Where the movie succeeds on top of its promising concept is the creation and payoff of tension and the performances, all of which are very good while, with so little dialogue, most of the acting comes through the face and body language.  Blunt (married to Krasinski in real life, so, you know, nepotism), in particular, is a standout.  The screenplay, co-written by Krasinski from a spec script by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, keeps things simple from start to finish, allowing for the bulk of substance to come from the family relationships and emotions folded into the tension-based set-pieces.  It's a movie with big emotions that work thanks to its performances, and never unnecessarily complicates things, even if it occasionally becomes a little silly.  It's produced by Michael Bay (who directed Krasinski in 13 HOURS), and while critics will blame him when TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES was bad, most of them probably won't give him any credit for A QUIET PLACE being good, but to be fair, only the last couple minutes of the movie feel anything like some Bay would do.  The visual effects are also better and more extensive than you'd expect from this kind of stripped-down horror movie (thriller, whatever), which Bay could probably be thanked for as well.
A QUIET PLACE keeps things moving efficiently throughout its refreshing 90-minute runtime, never wasting a minute as it world-builds and draws out tension ahead of each emotional climax, only to start again, in a story about family crisis in the middle of a worldwide existential crisis.

                                                                                                                                                                 Images via Paramount

My Annual Last-Minute Predictions: The 90th Academy Awards

BEST PICTURE
The Nominees

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
(ROMANCE/DRAMA) 
Produced by Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges, and Marco Morabito 
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Screenplay by James Ivory
Based on the novel by Andre Aciman
Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esthel Garrel, Victoire Du Bois, Vanda Capriolo, Antonio Rimoldi
Rated R for sexual content, nudity and some language.
132 minutes
I haven't seen this movie.

DARKEST HOUR 
(DRAMA) 
Produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce, Anthony McCarten, and Douglas Urbanski 
Directed by Joe Wright
Screenplay by Anthony McCarten
Starring: Gary Oldman, Kristen Scott Thomas, Lily James, Ben Mendelsohn, Stephen Dillane, Ronald Pickup, Nicholas Jones, Samuel West, David Schofield, Richard Lumsden
Rated PG-13 for some thematic material.
125 minutes
I haven't seen this movie.

DUNKIRK
(WAR/THRILLER) 
Produced by Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan 
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Screenplay by Christopher Nolan
Starring: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurnin Barnard, James D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy
Rated PG-13 for intense war experience and some language.
116 minutes
One of my favorite movies of last year, DUNKIRK is director Christopher Nolan's best since INCEPTION, bringing an experimental edge to a $100 million WWII film.  Essentially jumping to the third act of the story and diving into the situation of Allied soldiers cornered by German forces on the beaches of Dunkirk while civilian boats race against time to cross the English Channel and English planes overhead fight the German planes attacking the soldiers on the beach, it's an experiential thriller where dialogue is mostly inconsequential, sounds are aggressive and startling, and survival to fight another day is the victory.

GET OUT
(HORROR-THRILLER) 
Produced by Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Edward H. Hamm Jr., and Jordan Peele 
Directed by Jordan Peele
Screenplay by Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Lil Rey Howery, Erika Alexander, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel
Rated R for violence, bloody images, and language including sexual references.
104 minutes
Made on a minimalist budget, GET OUT is an uncommonly well-manicured horror-thriller that riffs on THE STEPFORD WIVES formula, swapping out gender for race, while finding its own ways to surprise and building clever twists.  The performances are all top-notch, and while I'm not sure how particularly "revolutionary" or "brilliant" it is (at least in terms of ideas, but its acclaim and $255 million box office against a $5 million budget as a racially charged horror movie could be considered revolutionary in terms of the industry), it's directed with precision.

LADY BIRD
(COMEDY-DRAMA) 
Produced by Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, and Evelyn O'Neill 
Directed by Greta Gerwig
Screenplay by Greta Gerwig
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Lois Smith, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Odeya Rush, Jorden Rodrigues, Marielle Scott
Rated R for language, sexual content, brief graphic nudity and teen partying.
94 minutes
Another one of my favorite movies from last year, a lot of movies in 2017 nobly strove to impart ideas about empathy, but most were not as successful as LADY BIRD, Greta Gerwig's humanistic comedy-drama about coming of age in the early 2000s and a caring but fraught mother-daughter relationship.  Anchored by excellent lead performances, it carefully and realistically carves out multiple major and minor characters, and their relationships, with sympathy and humor.

PHANTOM THREAD
(DRAMA) 
Produced by JoAnne Sellar, Paul Thomas Anderson, Megan Ellison, and Daniel Lupi 
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville, Camilla Rutherford, Gina McKee, Brian Gleeson, Harriet Samson Harris, Lujza Richter, Julia Davis, Nicholas Mander
Rated R for language.
130 minutes
PHANTOM THREAD is kind of fun, but it's weird that Oscar noticed it for six nominations including Best Picture and Best Director.  It's not that it's a bad thing, but it's unusual.  Looking from the outside, it seems like a pretty standard Oscar drama with a period setting, lots of beautiful costumes, sharp and witty dialogue and Daniel Day-Lewis himself in what's reportedly his final performance.  From the inside, without spoiling anything, it's more like PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE than THERE WILL BE BLOOD within Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography, about absurdly obsessive artists, how they try to dominate their environments and the people around them, the people who love artists and support them, and in particular, a very weird, bitingly funny romance.

THE POST
(DRAMA)
Produced by Amy Pascal, Steven Spielberg, and Kristie Macosko Krieger  
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Screenplay by Liz Hannah & Josh Singer
Starring: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, Zach Woods
Rated PG-13 for language and brief war violence.
116 minutes
Not too subtly pitching itself as a movie for our times and drawing from ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN but with a juicier Spielberg flavor (for better or worse), THE POST is more performance-driven than most of Steven Spielberg's films, but his seemingly effortless direction is what milks the tension and brings the weight to the decisions being made in the film.

THE SHAPE OF WATER
(FANTASY/ROMANCE) 
Produced by Guillermo del Toro and J. Miles Dale 
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor
Story by Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Doug Jones, David Hewlett, Nick Searcy, Stewart Arnott, Nigel Bennett, Lauren Lee Smith, Martin Roach, Morgan Kelly
Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language.
123 minutes
I've been a big fan of Guillermo del Toro since HELLBOY in 2004, particularly the emotionality and weirdness of his films, but before SHAPE OF WATER, his previous two films, while enjoyable, were a little sterile (CRIMSON PEAK has grown on me, but PACIFIC RIM still feels lacking).  SHAPE OF WATER is a step up from those two and is unmistakably a del Toro work of art, boldly weird, romantic, funny, shockingly violent, and visually beautiful.  It's performances, Sally Hawkins and Michael Shannon, in particular, are excellent.  In many ways, it feels closely related to del Toro's last Oscar darling, PAN'S LABYRINTH.  However, I'm not positive I would say it's one of his best films overall.  Maybe with time, its greatness will become more apparent, but right now, it feels more 'really good' than 'great.'

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
(DRAMA) 
Produced by Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, and Martin McDonagh 
Directed by Martin McDonagh
Screenplay by Martin McDonagh
Starring: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Hedges, Kerry Condon, Abbie Cornish, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Zeljko Ivanek, Clarke Peters
Rated R for violence, language throughout, and some sexual references.
115 minutes
There are a lot of things to like and admire about THREE BILLBOARDS, a multi-faceted story of anger, justified or not, and how it consumes people, how it can burn and destroy but never heal.  It's also about how that anger can be used to attack people, launching an offensive out of anger on the internet, like a billboard, perhaps for things that are true, but without the full picture of those people.  It's a lot of what I've personally been feeling over the past year, and for that, it's a movie that I would really like to like.  In the execution of that all, however, it fails, veering wildly between tones and failing to present even an internal logic to its own depiction of a small American town, where increasingly extreme acts of violence occur as chapters in a sequence without repercussions.  It's a weird, harsh, goofy film that sputters around in extreme fits and starts.

WHAT WILL WIN: 
SHAPE OF WATER
This is one of the few years without even a couple of frontrunners in the Best Picture category.  It's essentially an open game.  Many prognosticators are predicting a win for THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, largely based on its win of the Best Ensemble award from the Screen Actors Guild (the closest thing SAG has to a Best Picture, and SAG makes up the largest proportion of the Academy voters), as well as winning Best Picture at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (usually a good indicator a movie will be nominated at the Oscars for Best Picture as this already has, but not necessarily indicative of a win).  While, overall, THREE BILLBOARDS is favored by a possible majority or plurality of Oscar voters, the award for Best Picture is voted for on a preferential ballot (number one pick, number two pick, and so on, with the average highest-voted nominee wins), and that movie also has many detractors who will put it very low on the ballot, ultimately cancelling it out and giving the award to a more neutral option.  Furthermore, it's pretty rare for a movie to win Best Picture without at least having been nominated for both Best Director and Best Film Editing as well, and THREE BILLBOARDS missed the Best Director nomination (the last movie to win Best Picture without a Best Director nomination was ARGO five years ago, and prior to that, 23 years before was DRIVING MISS DAISY).  SHAPE OF WATER has managed to snatch up the Producers Guild Award and the Directors Guild Award, and has the most nominations overall by far with 13 (the next runner-up being DUNKIRK with 8), indicating a clear admiration by the Academy overall.

WHAT SHOULD WIN: 
DUNKIRK or LADY BIRD.  Neither are particularly outrageous, but they're both exceptional, regardless.  Other than THREE BILLBOARDS, however, there's really nothing that I think clearly doesn't deserve to win out of this lot.

BEST DIRECTOR 

• Christopher Nolan for DUNKIRK
• Jordan Peele for GET OUT
• Greta Gerwig for LADY BIRD
• Paul Thomas Anderson for PHANTOM THREAD
• Guillermo del Toro for THE SHAPE OF WATER

WHO WILL WIN: 
Guillermo del Toro for THE SHAPE OF WATER.  Del Toro has been a rising favorite of the film industry for years now, and THE SHAPE OF WATER is their first chance to big chance to legitimately honor him in a while.  What's more, del Toro already won the Director's Guild Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Feature Film, and the last time the DGA winner didn't win the Oscar was Ben Affleck for ARGO 5 years ago (when he wasn't nominated for the Oscar), and before that was Rob Marshall for CHICAGO ten years earlier.  It's one of the most reliable predictors of any Academy Award category.
WHO SHOULD WIN: 
I really like Greta Gerwig for her directorial debut on LADY BIRD or Christopher Nolan for DUNKIRK, but I'd be just as happy to see del Toro finally get his due, plus he's just so damn likable.

BEST ACTOR

• Timothee Chalamet for CALL ME BY YOUR NAME 
• Daniel Day-Lewis for PHANTOM THREAD 
• Daniel Kaluuya for GET OUT 
• Gary Oldman for THE DARKEST HOUR 
• Denzel Washington for ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ.

WHO WILL WIN:   
Gary Oldman for THE DARKEST HOUR.  This is another category with an already existing strong predictor in the form of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.  Last year, Denzel Washington won the SAG Award for FENCES, but Casey Affleck won the Oscar.  Before that, the last time the SAG Awards differed from the Oscars for Best Actor was for the 2003 film PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, when Johnny Depp won the award (and personally, I believe they got it right that time).  I haven't seen THE DARKEST HOUR, but rendered unrecognizable beneath makeup as a widely-recognized historical figure, it's a typical choice for the Oscars, and Oldman's got a lot of acclaimed performances under his belt that failed to garner a win.  This will be a career win as much or more than a win for a particular performance.
WHO SHOULD WIN: I've actually only seen two of the nominees in this category, Daniel Kaluuya for GET OUT and Daniel Day-Lewis for PHANTOM THREAD, and both were great.

BEST ACTRESS    

• Sally Hawkins for THE SHAPE OF WATER 
• Frances McDormand for THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI 
• Margot Robbie for I, TONYA 
• Saoirse Ronan for LADY BIRD 
• Meryl Streep for THE POST

WHO WILL WIN: 
Frances McDormand for THREE BILLBOARDS.  She's been the favorite since the movie came out last fall, and has already won both the Golden Globe and the SAG Award.  It would be her second Best Actress Oscar, having previously won for FARGO.
WHO SHOULD WIN: 
Sally Hawkins for THE SHAPE OF WATER, with whom much of that movie's heart lies and is infectiously sweet, charming and sensual, all unconventionally.  Saoirse Ronan for LADY BIRD is also be deserving.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR 

• Willem Dafoe for THE FLORIDA PROJECT
• Woody Harrelson for THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI 
• Richard Jenkins for THE SHAPE OF WATER
• Christopher Plummer for ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD
• Sam Rockwell for THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

WHO WILL WIN:
Sam Rockwell for THREE BILLBOARDS.  The Screen Actors Guild portion of the Academy loves the actors in that movie, and between Harrelson and Rockwell, Rockwell was the one they awarded a Best Supporting Actor at the SAG Awards.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
I don't really have an opinion on this one.  Richard Jenkins was good as usual in THE SHAPE OF WATER, but it's not exactly something I haven't seen him play before, and while I don't have any particular problems with the THREE BILLBOARDS performances, they're all part of the same messy movie.  I haven't seen ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD or THE FLORIDA PROJECT.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS 

• Mary J. Blige for MUDBOUND
• Allison Janney for I, TONYA 
• Lesley Manville for PHANTOM THREAD 
• Laurie Metcalf for LADY BIRD
• Octavia Spencer for THE SHAPE OF WATER

WHO WILL WIN:
Allison Janney for I, TONYA.
WHO SHOULD WIN: 
Laurie Metcalf for LADY BIRD.  I'd love to see Metcalf make the surprise win here, but Allison Janney seems like the safe bet, and if we're not playing it safe while making Oscar predictions, then what are we doing really?  Janney's performance as the title character's mom is a caricature and not all that different from characters she's played before outside of the distinctive hair and makeup, and frankly, it's my least favorite of the bunch (although I haven't seen MUDBOUND).  Metcalf's performance, also as the title character's mother in LADY BIRD, is more nuanced and thoughtful, without the gimmicks to back it up.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

• THE BIG SICK
• GET OUT
• LADY BIRD
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

WHO WILL WIN:
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI.  The screenplay categories are where weirder arthouse movies tend to get their due, which might indicate THE SHAPE OF WATER, however, I'm predicting that wins Best Picture based on the preferential ballot, but THREE BILLBOARDS will succeed in Best Screenplay.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
Again, no particularly strong feelings here.  Best Screenplay is the one category in which I feel I'm actually on board with a win for THREE BILLBOARDS, because, in spite of all it's flaws that are still in the writing, I admire its conceit.  On the other hand, LADY BIRD and THE BIG SICK, while neither are particularly outside the box, are both very fine versions of a kind of film.  THE SHAPE OF WATER exists mostly outside the page in its visual form, and GET OUT's screenplay is one of it's less remarkable aspects.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 

• CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
• THE DISASTER ARTIST
• LOGAN
• MOLLY'S GAME
• MUDBOUND

WHO WILL WIN:
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME.  Within this eclectic bunch, it's the nominee with the most Oscar love behind it overall and comes with the recognizable name of James Ivory, whose illustrious career has already included a number of acclaimed period dramas as a director.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
No opinion here.  The only one of the nominees I've even seen was LOGAN, and it's cool that it was nominated, but come on.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM 

• THE BOSS BABY
• THE BREADWINNER
• COCO
• FERDINAND
• LOVING VINCENT

WHO WILL WIN:
COCO.  The Oscars like to nominate two or three independent, usually hand-crafted-style animated foreign features each year to draw attention to them, but they almost always go with a mainstream pick, and neither THE BOSS BABY or FERDINAND seem to have a lot of support.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
COCO, I guess.  It's not on the same level as Pixar's best movies, but it's quite lower-tier Pixar either.  One point I'd like to make though is that while some publications have been calling out THE BOSS BABY as a particularly unlikely Oscar nominee, it's actually not so bad.  It's not exactly a hidden gem, but it's fine and sort of funny.  FERDINAND seems like the biggest turd of this bunch.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

• A FANTASTIC WOMAN  (Chile) 
• THE INSULT  (Lebanon) 
• LOVELESS  (Russia) 
• ON BODY AND SOUL  (Hungary) 
• THE SQUARE  (Sweden)

WHO WILL WIN:
THE SQUARE.  I know almost nothing about any of these nominees.  I'm going with THE SQUARE because it won the 2017 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which at least seems like something to go on.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

• ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL
• FACES PLACES
• ICARUS
• LAST MEN IN ALEPPO
• STRONG ISLAND

WHO WILL WIN:
FACES PLACES.  I know almost nothing about these nominess, but FACES PLACES won the Peoples Choice Award for Best Documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival and has some artistic cred behind it with directors Agnes Varda and JR.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT

• EDITH+EDDIE
• HEAVEN IS A TRAFFIC JAM ON THE 405
• HEROIN(E)
• KNIFE SKILLS
• TRAFFIC STOP

WHO WILL WIN:
HEROIN(E).  I don't know anything about these nominees except the subject matter, and odds are, their not particularly at the forefront of the Oscar voters minds either.  Usually, they go with the socially/politically relevant pick, but if possible, an upper rather than a downer.  HEAVEN IS A TRAFFIC JAM ON THE 405 and KNIFE SKILLS sound a little too light, while TRAFFIC STOP and EDITH+EDDIE may be too heavy.  HEROIN(E), dealing with the heroin epidemic is relevant but also deals with recovery, which I think might give it the leg up.

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

• DEKALB ELEMENTARY
• THE ELEVEN O'CLOCK
• MY NEPHEW EMMETT
• THE SILENT CHILD
• WATU WOTE/ALL OF US

WHO WILL WIN:
DEKALB ELEMENTARY.  I have no idea about any of these.  Apparently DEKALB ELEMENTARY has to do with a would-be school shooter encountering a "compassionate employee," which seems hyper-relevant, so I'm going to guess that.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

• DEAR BASKETBALL
• GARDEN PARTY
• LOU
• NEGATIVE SPACE
• REVOLTING RHYMES

WHO WILL WIN:
LOU.  It's the only one in the category that I've seen, and I didn't think it was anything special, but what the hell else am I going to guess?


BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

• DUNKIRK, composed by Hans Zimmer
• PHANTOM THREAD, composed by Johnny Greenwood
• THE SHAPE OF WATER, composed by Alexandre Desplat
• STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, composed by John Williams
• THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, composed by Carter Burwell

WHO WILL WIN:
THE SHAPE OF WATER.  Hans Zimmer's DUNKIRK score created a lot of talk for its integral tension-raising score and experimental instrumentation, but it's the melodically showier Alexandre Desplat for THE SHAPE OF WATER that's most likely to catch the voters' attentions.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
While I'd most often go for the more melodic score, myself, Zimmer's DUNKIRK composition is interesting enough and complimentary enough to stand out above the crowd, and THE SHAPE OF WATER score is a bit too whimsical and unemotional.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

• "Mighty River" from MUDBOUND
• "Mystery of Love" from CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
• "Remember Me" from COCO
• "Stand Up for Something" from MARSHALL
• "This Is Me" from THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

WHO WILL WIN:
"This Is Me" from THE GREATEST SHOWMAN.  THE GREATEST SHOWMAN is a painfully cheap "feel-good" manufactured family musical shamelessly purporting to be based on true story and a celebration of being different while taking a massive shit on everything to do with the true story and everything to do with being different, but my cynical side tells me its single nomination for a show-stopping, glitzy faux-"individuality" number seems to be where it could get noticed.  It's such a piece of shit.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
There's nothing that jumps out as particularly great, but "Remember Me" is an alright sentimental number from the writers of "Let It Go".  It's not amazing, but it's good.

BEST SOUND EDITING

• BABY DRIVER
• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• DUNKIRK
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

WHO WILL WIN:
BABY DRIVER.  Sound Editing, as opposed to Sound Mixing, refers to the sounds recorded outside of filming, that is, sounds designed in isolation like clapping coconuts together in a recording studio to sound like horse hooves.  BABY DRIVER is a very sound-driven movie with a large part of what makes it work being the manipulation of sound.  Then again, given that the nominees for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing are the same, it's possible the voters aren't placing a lot of difference between the categories.
WHO SHOULD WIN: 
BABY DRIVER seems as good as any.

BEST SOUND MIXING

• BABY DRIVER
• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• DUNKIRK
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

WHO WILL WIN:
DUNKIRK.  It might not make sense to split up Sound Mixing and Sound Editing, especially when the nominee lineup is the same, but assuming they're reading these categories differently, I think they'd go with DUNKIRK.  Recording over loud IMAX cameras, at the ocean with lots of loud war machinery, guns, etc. they made it work, and war movies are stalwarts of the sound categories.  Then again, the occasional inscrutability of the dialogue while I think it's cool, might be lost on some people.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
DUNKIRK.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

• BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• DARKEST HOUR
• DUNKIRK
• THE SHAPE OF WATER

WHO WILL WIN:
THE SHAPE OF WATER.  Production Design, being the overall sets, set decorations and props, tends to favor period settings and big style, and THE SHAPE OF WATER fits both those bills along with already being a Oscar favorite this year.  It would be the second del Toro film to win in this category after PAN'S LABYRINTH 11 years ago.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
Either THE SHAPE OF WATER or BLADE RUNNER 2049 would be deserving, although maybe BLADE RUNNER 2049 is the bolder of the two.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY 

• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• DARKEST HOUR
• DUNKIRK
• MUDBOUND
• THE SHAPE OF WATER

WHO WILL WIN:
BLADE RUNNER 2049.  Even the joke about how cinematographer Roger Deakins always gets nominated and never wins has gotten old (this his is 14th nomination), but there's no other apparent frontrunner this year, and BLADE RUNNER 2049 is one some of his showier work, so this could very well be his year.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
BLADE RUNNER 2049.  It's too damn long, but it's sure beautiful to look at.

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING 

• DARKEST HOUR
• VICTORIA & ABDUL
• WONDER

WHO WILL WIN:
DARKEST HOUR.  This category has been on life support for the last few years, especially with a lot of what used to be done with makeup now being done in the computer with motion-capture CGI.  Weirdly though, with a memorable makeup creation like the Amphibian Man in THE SHAPE OF WATER this year, that one failed to get nominated.  
WHO SHOULD WIN:
I don't really care.  The only one of the three nominees I saw was WONDER, and nothing about that was special.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

• BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
• DARKEST HOUR
• PHANTOM THREAD
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• VICTORIA & ABDUL

WHO WILL WIN:
PHANTOM THREAD.  It's a movie about making beautiful period fashion, so it's hard to see the Academy passing that up.  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is flashier, but it may have gilded the lily too much.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
I don't have any strong feelings here.  I wouldn't want BEAUTY AND THE BEAST to win because it takes concepts that are great in their simplicity and overdesigns everything.  As usual, the nominees are all period setting films, so BABY DRIVER wasn't nominated, but that had some pretty good, eclectic and evocative costuming.

BEST FILM EDITING

• BABY DRIVER
• DUNKIRK
• I, TONYA
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

WHO WILL WIN:
DUNKIRK.  For the last few years, this category has been going to the Best Picture category's dark horse candidate, and I'm thinking that's DUNKIRK this year, which also interweaves and times three separate threads together in a building tension that's impressive and fresh.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
BABY DRIVER's combination of sound, music and editing is a lot of fun, but I lean towards DUNKIRK as a more impressive feat.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2
• KONG: SKULL ISLAND
• STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI
• WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

WHO WILL WIN:
BLADE RUNNER 2049.  The BLADE RUNNER 2049 effects and the way they're used are tie into the stunning visual style of that movie, plus it's one category where they can easily recognize the ambitious box office failure.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
Somehow, none of the Andy Serkis-starring Planet of the Apes series have managed to get a win for Best Visual Effects (RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES didn't have the budget to render its effects to their full potential, but it was criminal for DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES to lose out to INTERSTELLAR), and WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES visual effects are a flawless example of performance-capture potential.