Logan (2017)

With the mega-success of Deadpool last year, an R-rated superhero film that was both gory and funny, and with a gross that positioned at is the 9th best-earning comic book movie of all time domestically, it was only natural that soon after we would be getting more gory, R-rated superhero offerings. And first out of the gate is Fox, once again, this time with the third and best solo-Wolverine movie, Logan.

Set in the near future, in 2029, Hugh Jackman once again returns to the role of Logan a.k.a. Wolverine, the character that catapulted him to stardom. Jackman has aged over the last 17 years, and so, naturally, the invulnerable Wolverine is also showing his scars, his self-healing powers slowing down and his body self-destructing. A limo driver in El Paso, he tends to a 90-year-old Xavier (Patrick Stewart), whose brain is aging and powers going haywire. Through a series of circumstances, Logan is called upon to shepherd a young girl, Laura (Dafne Keen) to safety in North Dakota, and so he, Charles, and Laura embark on a road trip while mercenaries looking to recover Laura pursue them.

The film earns it's R-rating; never on screen has Wolverine's claws dealt so much gruesome, brutal damage. It wouldn't be that startling for a seasoned-gore movie viewer, except that all previous iterations of Jackman's Wolverine has been toned down PG-13 violence, where the real impact of those adamantium claws isn't felt. Laura also possesses claws, and does her fair share of dismembering, but the movie balances the excessive violence with the weight of how much killing weighs on the soul. Unlike, say, Hit Girl from Kick-Ass, who glibly jokes and cusses, this littler girl kills because she must.

As far as R-rated superhero offerings go, this one is really effective and very good. With a rather long runtime (137 min.) it takes it's time to let the characters talk and express their grievances; the problem in general with the X-Men films is that they are so full of characters that you barely get any time to make them interesting beyond their defining superpowers. By honing on this smaller story, the film is probably the best the series has ever been at developing characters. It does't hurt that Jackman and Stewart wear these roles comfortably, as they have for nearly two decades.

While I don't want all my superhero films to be grounded in reality, this approaches it's realistic and dark tone in a way the DC movies have been trying to do since Christopher Nolan helmed Batman, and failing to do. The inherent problem with making the DCEU serious is that Batman is the only character who feels like he could possibly exist in our reality. Once you add Superman, Wonder Woman, and Aqua Man to the mix, things get really silly, and the tonal mesh doesn't work (it also doesn't help that Zack Snyder is a terrible storyteller).

X-Men is also a pretty silly premise; various people also possess godlike abilities (telekinesis, teleportation, and a whole host of other improbable powers). Yet Logan is able to make all the outrageous powers feel like they carry weight; or maybe it's just because the director, James Mangold (The Wolverine, 3:10 to Yuma), has a more assured hand at balancing the tone with the characters.

Logan is not without it's faults; a video documenting children in a hospital contains footage no one could ever get, and edited in such a way to elicit the most emotion (the woman who is delivering this video has some dynamite cutting skills); and there is a stopover at a farm in the middle of the movie that drags a little and leads to a fairly predictable conclusion.

But, overall, this is probably the best X-Men film. Not because it's ultra-violent, or is probably (hopefully?) the last time we see Hugh Jackman in this role; it's because it takes the time necessary to make us care about the characters. Too often that is something overlooked but major Hollywood films, and in particular superhero films. Marvel's heroes (and I mean the Disney division, as I know Wolverine is a Marvel character) are all defined mostly by smart-ass quips; while Logan also contains that edge, there is a deeper layer of hurt and humanity that comes out over the course of the film. In many ways, Logan is a character study dressed up in superheroes clothes.

The 89th Annual Academy Awards: Won vs. Predicted

I had 17 picks right for about 1 minute, before La La Land's win was taken away because of an historic upset. Craziest thing I've ever seen in the Oscars. So I got 16 right. Here are the my correct vs. incorrect predictions:

Best Picture
Won: Moonlight
Predicted: La La Land

Best Actor
Won/Predicted: Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea

Best Supporting Actor
Won/Predicted: Mahershala Ali in Moonlight

Best Actress
Won/Predicted: Emma Stone in La La Land

Best Supporting Actress
Won/Predicted: Viola Davis in Fences

Best Animated Feature Film
Won: Zootopia
Predicted: Kubo and the Two Strings

Best Cinematography
Won/Predicted: La La Land

Best Costume Design
Won: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Predicted: Jackie

Best Director
Won/Predicted: La La Land

Best Documentary
Won/Predicted: O.J.: Made in America

Best Documentary Short
Won/Predicted: The White Helmets

Best Editing
Won: Hacksaw Ridge
Predicted: La La Land

Best Foreign Film
Won: The Salesman
Predicted: A Man Called Ove

Best Makeup
Won: Suicide Squad
Predicted: Star Trek Beyond

Best Original Score
Won/Predicted: La La Land

Best Original Song:
Won/Predicted: "City of Stars" for La La Land

Best Production Design
Won/Predicted: La La Land

Best Animated Short
Won/Predicted: Piper

Best Live Action Short
Won/Predicted: Sing

Best Sound Editing
Won: Arrival
Predicted: Hacksaw Ridge

Best Sound Mixing
Won: Hacksaw Ridge
Predicted: La La Land

Best Visual Effects
Won/Predicted: The Jungle Book

Best Adapted Screenplay
Won/Predicted: Moonlight

Best Original Screenplay
Won/Predicted: Manchester by the Sea

Top 10 of 2016

A time honored tradition that everyone honors. My tradition is to usually wait until the Oscars because, being a normal human being, I can't see everything and I want to give it all a fair shake before I decide my top 10. So, without further ado, here is my personal list of the 10 best films of 2017.

10. Everybody Wants Some!!, 117 min. R

Richard Linklater's spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused (1993) and follow-up to the 12-year epic Boyhood (2014) is a simple, light, entertaining of one Freshman's (Blake Jenner) first weekend at college, before classes begins. He meets his baseball team (who all live together in one house) and together they bond, chase women, and generally have a good time. There's not too much in the way of drama in this movie, and honestly, it's very pleasant. Linklater's characters have a way of philosophizing in a way that isn't too over the top, yet feels natural and down to earth. It's a general good time spent with these folks for one brief weekend, and sometimes that's all you need from a movie.

9. 10 Cloverfield Lane, 104 min. PG-13

10 Cloverfield Lane was barely on anyone's radar 14 months ago; then, a trailer dropped with the title and all of a sudden people were excited for a follow-up to the successful 2008 monster movie, Cloverfield. Yet what audiences got was a much better, much smarter film that really has nothing to do with the first one, except for the possible presence of aliens. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays a young woman who ends up in a nasty car accident and wakes, leg fractured, in the car of John Goodman's character Howard, a bizarre, scary, but benevolent host in a bunker. According to him, the world outside has been attacked and she should be lucky he rescued her. From her point of view, he's crazy and trying to keep her in his bunker (although the presence of a third party, played by John Gallagher, Jr., supports his claim). While by no means perfect (the final 10-15 minutes get a little absurd), what you get for most of the runtime is a genuinely thrilling, that keeps the audience guessing. Goodman is fantastic, and Winstead's character does mostly smart things to herself alive, a refreshing change of pace from many movies of the same genre. I hope they continue doing movies like this, anthology films that bear the Cloverfield brand, even if their connection is tenuous. It produced a fairly terrific little thriller that surprised many people back in March.

8. Hell or High Water, 102 min. R

A western set in the modern era, Hell or High Water arrived in late August without much fanfare, flying mostly under the radar until it picked up several Oscar nominations. It's a fairly simple film, almost Coen Brothers-esque, written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by David Mackenzie. It follows two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) as they rob several banks in West Texas, and the two detectives (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham) who pursue them. The movie gets a lot of tension out of the conceal and carry laws in Texas; walking into a bank isn't a simple endeavor, as many citizens consider themselves heroes. With memorable dialogue (one distinct scene takes place at a local restaurant with a sassy waitress) and a fairly ingenious reason for the crime, Hell or High Water paints a modern portrait of Texas both stark and affectionate.

7. Hunt for the Wilderpeople, 101 min. PG-13

Director Taika Waititi is quickly making a name for himself; he directed 2014's blisteringly funny mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows and is helming Marvel's forthcoming Thor: Ragnarok. With this film, he tells a simple but elegant story of a boy, rebellious and orphaned, who is adopted by a farming couple. The mother embraces him until her passing, and the husband (Sam Neill) decides not to keep him. The boy, Ricky, escapes into the wilderness and, with Neill's character, they set off on their own, while a national manhunt ensues for them. It's a charming, simple, and lovely little film that everyone should check out. Waititi is a director to watch, and I fully look forward to Ragnarok.

6. The Fits, 72 mi. NR

This was a strange, quiet film I randomly sought out last summer; it details the story of a tomboyish girl, Toni (Royalty Hightower) who joins a dance troupe. As she struggles to fit in, random kids begin having unexplained fits, almost like seizures but not quite. Unable to diagnose the situation, the parents and teachers are perplexed, while the other girls in the troupe begin seeing the fit as a right of a passage. It all adds up to a strange, but quiet and entrancing little film, with a superb leading performance. It's a film that's hard to define or label, but was one of my favorite movie going experiences of the year.

5. Paterson, 118 min. R

I've never been enamored with Jim Jarmusch; I'm not sure if his meandering content is for me, or if I watched some of his movies at the wrong age. But I highly enjoyed Paterson, a slice of life moving starring Adam Driver as the title character, who also inhabits a New Jersey town of the same name (many characters remark on this coincidence). A quiet, reserved man, the movie follows a week of his life, of his everyday routine waking up, eating cereal, going to work and driving a bus, listening to various conversations on the bus, writing poetry, coming home to his mailbox bent, take the dog for a walk to the local pub, where he has one beer. It all sounds very mundane, yet it is fascinating for that reason. We all exist and have routines that we follow, that are wholly uninteresting. Yet Jarmusch makes this interesting, a fascination portrait of a man who's just like all of us.

4. O.J.: Made in America, 467 min. NR

2016 was the year of O.J.'s return; from a hit FX series, The People vs. O.J. Simpson, to this nearly 8-hour documentary that ran on ESPN but had an Oscar qualifying run in theaters (it's up for best doc). And boy is this documentary amazing. It details the life of O.J. Simpson, from his start in poverty, to his rise as a USC star athlete, to his time with the Bills and his career as an actor. Parallel to this is a portrait of race relations in America in the 60s, specifically in Los Angeles with Watts Riots, and leading to the L.A. Riots in 1992 in response to the verdict of Rodney King. What this documentary does so expertly is parallel these two stories and ultimately tie it together in explaining O.J.'s acquittal. Stunning interviews with some of the Jurors on the case, as well as Mark Furman and many other key players (O.J. himself is never interviewed) provide someone like myself with a very detailed, comprehensive look at the whole affair. I was only 5 when O.J. ran away in the Bronco; I was too young to know what was going on, much less to even care. But this documentary (which is on Hulu as of this writing) must be seen by anyone interested in learning about the O.J. case.

3. Arrival, 116 min. PG-13

I've gone back and forth on director Denis Villeneuve's films (Prisoners, Sicario, and Incendies); he's a talented director who effectively establishes mood, but his films don't always land. With Arrival, I feel he's made his best film, a moody sci-fi piece that meticulously details the arrival of Aliens to our world, and how we would respond. Amy Adams plays a linguist professor drafted into helping the government translate the Alien's language, a series of noises, and a circular language that is beautiful to behold. The movie embraces it's sci-fi tropes well and leads a fairly devastating revelation about certain events you've seen play out during the movie. I won't spoil it, but Arrival is surely one of the best films of the year.

2. Manchester by the Sea, 137 min. R

Kenneth Lonergan's aggressively depressing film about a loner man (Casey Affleck) who must assume custody of nephew after his older brother's sudden passing is a touching, moving film about pain and loss. Affleck is terrific in an understated role, acting more with small emotions than with grand gestures. The film doles out another tragedy in backstory about halfway through that is almost too unbearable to comprehend, and you might feel that Lonergan goes a little far. But really, this is a movie about how grief and loss can really tear someone apart to the point that they never recover. People deal with grief in different ways and death is a reality we all have to confront at some point in our lives. This is a very quiet, touching, moving, beautiful film with fantastic performances. The directing and writing is simple and not showy, and though comedy is harder to do than drama, it is also damn hard to do drama without making it melodrama.

1. Don't Think Twice, 92 min. R

I don't know if I just love lauding movies that change my emotion, but Don't Think Twice was quite the emotional gut punch. Following a New York improv troupe, all close friends, the film focuses on one member (Keegan-Michael Key) who gets his big-break on an SNL-like show, as his fellow improvers suddenly realize that in their early 30s, they are not going to make it after all. Written and directed by Mike Birbiglia, who also plays a supporting role, this movie is fantastic in that it truthfully and honestly assesses that we are not all meant to achieve great things. Some of us have to accept that we will never achieve true greatness and will have to accept other roles, but it doesn't mean we can't do what we love. And some of us who do succeed find out it's not so easy to carry our friends with us. It's a movie that effected me greatly, and made me really reflect on where I am in my aspirations and position in life. Not many movies do that.

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Death is something we are all confronted with throughout our lives; it's one of the few things that can freeze time around you, halt your ambitions and plunge you into a state of deep remorse. We see many deaths up on the screen, but the vast majority of them carry no weight, no impact. The hundreds of faceless goons who die in our action films have lives, ambitions, dreams. Sadly, fiction never takes the time to explore the nature of death because it is a somber subject, and it is not a topic too many people are eager to seek out. Cinema, after all, is escapism, and being reminded of our mortality isn't really the escapism we seek.

But Manchester by the Sea handles loss beautifully, and is a stark character study in what remorse and grief can do to a person. Opening on a boat where Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is playing with his young nephew Patrick (Ben O'Brien as a lad, Lucas Hedges as a teen), the film starts with a rather light tone. Suddenly we cut to Lee as a janitor, moving from tenant to tenant dealing with different plumbing issues and the like, we see a man who seems a shell of his former self, empty and lost, willing to throw a punch at a random guy at a bar simply for looking at him wrong.

Events are set in motion when Lee's brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler), passes away; while not an unexpected event (Joe is later revealed to have been diagnosed with a degenerative heart disease), it still halts Lee's life, forcing him to travel from a Boston suburb to Manchester, where his brother and nephew reside. There, he discovers that his brother has named him the guardian of Patrick, but Lee isn't necessarily ready to take on this responsibility. Much of the rest of the film details the process of dealing with the death, Patrick's way of coping (surrounding himself with friends and juggling two girlfriends who are unaware of each other is one way to keep your mind of your father's death), and the sadness of another tragedy that is revealed around halfway through the film.

Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, whose past credits include You Can Count on Me and Margaret, is an incredibly skilled storyteller. Flashbacks are organically woven into the story that help illustrate the characters and explain their pain. We see Lee in various flashbacks when he was happily married to Randi (Michelle Williams), as well as Patrick's alcoholic mother Elise (Gretchen Mol). Nothing is ever stated obviously, and you are always aware of what the characters are feeling or thinking.

The film's tone is another strong point; although somber, it does contain flares of comedy layered into the sadness. Little moments like exchanges between Patrick and Lee, to sadly comic moments like the formality of signing paperwork for one's deceased relative. In one of the saddest moments of the movie, a gurney is having trouble collapsing fully to put a distraught person into an ambulance. This moment is the absolute nadir of this persons' life, yet life does not stop to forgive. And yet the drama comes through strongly, never feeling melodramatic. It would be so easy to for this film to feel like a Hallmark movie, yet it feels real.

The character of Lee is a rather unlikable person; you understand him by the film's end, but that doesn't make him forgivable. Even in flashbacks where he is a more animated person, he is no more likable. And where the film really excels is it doesn't offer up any redemption for him. This may be getting into minor spoilers, but one might expect a film like this to let Lee reconcile with his nephew and redeem himself. Yet there's a soul crushing line late in the film that let's you know that some things are irreparable. Some people can never come back.

Manchester by the Sea must be seen, if at least once. It's not really a good time; in fact, it will probably devastate most audience members. But its skill as a drama, its characters, everything about this movie is fantastic. It trusts the audience to know what is happening without holding their hands. That's a rare quality for a film in this day and age.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the first in what is set to be a series of spin-off films in the ever-expanding universe that is Star Wars. Since Disney bought Lucasfilm over four years ago, we have been promised a new Star Wars feature every year. Kicking off with Episode VII last year, we now have at least two more episodes and a Han Solo spinoff to look forward too. No telling how many more of these films Disney is cooking up but rest assured, there will be no shortage of Star Wars for the foreseeable future.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Star Wars, after all, is a galaxy-wide universe, so the amount of characters and stories that inhabit it are infinite. The storytelling possibilities are limitless, unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe where everything must eventually satisfy the overall plan at hand.

Rogue One details the events that lead to the acquisition of the Death Star plans that are central to A New Hope, the first of the Star Wars series. There's Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), a rebellious young woman whose father (Mads Mikkelsen) has been recruited back into the empire after he tried to escape. As a young girl, she witnesses her mother gunned down by Imperial Troops and her father whisked away by the evil Orson Krennic (a good but underused Ben Mendelsohn). The rest of the crew includes the rebel soldier Cassian (Diego Luna), the sarcastic robot K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), an imperial pilot (Riz Ahmed), and two random characters that somehow became involved, Chirrut (Donnie Yen, awesome as ever) and Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang).

How these people all come together to steal the plans is somewhat confusing and really not worth breaking down here. What matters is that everyone turns in a fine performance in their respected roles, and while no one delivers the end-all-be-all performance, they are better than, say, the prequels and, dare I say, many members of the original trilogy.

Where the film will get real mileage from fans is the return of many familiar characters. Darth Vader (James Earl Jones again supplying the voice) returns for a brief cameo, and the actor Peter Cushing, who passed away in 1994, has been digitally resurrected to play the role of Grand Moff Tarkin, a role he played in A New Hope. It really is a feat of CGI that this character looked very convincing, and I admired how well they had recast the role until I learned after that it was all CGI.

The film itself is competently directed by Gareth Edwards, from a script by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy. It sets a dark tone that fans will probably love, and stays true to the spirit of hopelessness for the rebellion, who haven't acquired Luke Skywalker yet. While the Force does enter the proceedings, lightsabers are for the most part absent as the art of the Jedi is extinct. The film even addresses, rather brilliantly, a plot-hole from A New Hope, now tied up and given extra weight and meaning.

One thing that does irk me is the peddling in heavy nostalgia these movies employ. Say what you will about the quality of the prequels, but for the most part they tried and offered up something new. We got pod racers, the federation ships, the federation robots, the Naboo fighters, and several other fresh designs. At least George Lucas was always thinking about how he could make the universe bigger.

The nostalgia factor isn't a hindrance here; in fact it makes perfect sense, given the movie's setting. But coming off the heels of The Force Awakens, which also featured heavy callbacks, I'm starting to worry these will revel in nostalgia too much.

Another shortcoming of the film is that, despite the actor's best efforts, the characters just aren't very interesting. Sure Jyn gets a backstory, but otherwise everyone is fairly underwritten and unmemorable. In a Star Wars movie, you should know the names of all the characters after a first viewing. The Force Awakens established it's three leads well (even Poe Dameron, who doesn't do much, is more interesting than anyone in this movie). Chalk it up to the more dour tone, but in the end I had no idea who most of the characters really were beyond the main heroine and villain.

It's a decent flick, and if you're a Star Wars fan, you'll love it. Casual fans will probably enjoy it too, but they will miss the references that will tickle the more devoted. What I fear, though, is that getting one of these every year is going to dilute the impact these films have. Once every two or three years and they become something truly special, but I worry that soon enough we won't care to see them because, well, it's just another Star Wars movie.

I guess that means the pressure is on Lucasfilm to give us a reason to keep coming back. I'm all for the Star Wars universe; it's a fun, exciting place with a rich mythology with many great stories to be told. But the nostalgia factor, at some point soon, is going to have to go. I want a Star Wars movie that isn't tied to the central conflict of the Empire vs. the Rebellion, or the Skywalkers. I want something that has nothing to do with that. Eventually, nostalgia is going to have to give for some original stories.

Doctor Strange (2016)

At some point, Marvel's formula has got to give. The superhero genre is not one that seems open to much innovation, and origin stories, while essential when introducing a character such as Doctor Strange, unfamiliar to the masses and myself, are getting a little old. A roguish fiend, sometimes rich (see: Tony Stark), must learn to better himself and master a new power (the Iron Man suit, the Ant-Man suit, recovering the strength to lift a hammer), before becoming the hero he was always meant to be.

After a stunning opening in which buildings expand and unfold like fans, we move into the story of Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), an arrogant super surgeon (think an attitude a la Sherlock), who, in a horrific accident, receives excessive nerve damage to his hands. Seeking a cure where Western medicine has failed, he ventures to the Kathmandu where he is instructed by a Celtic Master (Tilda Swinton in a role originally for a Tibetan but rewritten to not offend the Chinese audience). There he masters ancient arts that allow him to summon weapons, leap from his body, and even control time.

Where the movie excels beyond every Marvel movie to date, is in its amazing visual effects that further the groundwork laid by Inception and one-ups it with even more city-defying visuals. Add to that an amazing sequence where Strange is sent through infinite multiverses, and you have some of the most beautiful and dazzling sequences of the year. I love when visual effects artists are allowed to stretch their chops, and Doctor Strange is one of the few cases where the visuals don't interfere or overpower the story.

But at this point, do we really need to see the same beats over and over again? Black Panther was refreshingly introduced in this past summer's Civil War with little explanation, and at this point we kind of accept that these people have crazy powers. But maybe Doctor Strange's world was a little too out there to just launch us into it; it's nice to learn the world along with Strange, being introduced to the rules of combat, what going astral means, and what a mirror universe is.

However, I really don't care for these arrogant rich assholes who learn to better themselves; it's hard to identify with them because they are already extraordinary to begin with, unlike me and my talentless life. The appeal of Peter Parker is that he is just like us, unsure of the world, and is gifted these powers. This is why so many of Hitchcock's films work, because an everyman is launched into extraordinary circumstances.

But it does little for my investment in a character when they have it all. Tony Stark was refreshing as he was at least the first of that brand of superhero (although he's still learning what it means to care for others 8 years into this franchise), but now that we've had Starlord and Ant-Man and Thor, the cocky, self-centered hero is just done at this point.

Quibbles aside, I rather enjoyed Doctor Strange quite a bit. Cumberbatch is fine and charismatic as Strange, Swinton is great as a mystical guru, Rachel McAdams becomes the latest female to have a thankless girlfriend role that she'll doubtful hang around for, Michael Stuhlbarg is wasted as a jealous fellow surgeon, and Mads Mikkelsen, though he can be villainous in his sleep, does not do much to help Marvel's villain problem. He leaves little impression on the story and is not given his full due.

It's a little disheartening that we've gotten 14 films into the MCU and there's not one I would hold up to Spider-Man 2 or The Dark Knight. The Avengers was revolutionary in the ambition and scope of the project, but the MCU at this point is too much of a corporate machine, a well-oiled engine designed to keep the cogs moving and establish the next film. I do enjoy these singular stories more, though, that don't really connect to the overall MCU beyond a reference or two. As far as superhero movies go, Doctor Strange is one of the better ones, especially for the eye popping visuals. Basic plotlines aside, that stuff is worth the price of admission.

Don't Breathe (2016)

2016 has been quite the year for films that put you in a state of distress to the point that you almost can't wait for the experience to be over. Green Room was one such film, released earlier this year, that turned the intensity to a boiling point that was almost unbearable. And now here's Don't Breathe, a decidedly lesser example of the above, but still nonetheless extremely effective.

Set in Detroit, Hollywood's favorite stage for a depressed, rundown city, the film follows 3 young adults (Jane Levy, Dylan Minette and Daniel Zovato) who break into people's houses, although they never take more than $10k to avoid grand larceny charges. However, faced with the opportunity to score at least six figures, they take on an old blind man (Steven Lang) who is sitting on a huge court settlement. Easy right? Well, of course the Blind Man is not what he seems.

Directed by Fede Alvarez, who helmed the Evil Dead remake a couple years ago, the film is extremely effective at laying out the confined space of the house and peril that the young characters find themselves in. The film also establishes a great moral conundrum for the audience; root for the robbers, who have noble if misguided goals (get out of their shitty situation), or the Blind Man, seemingly innocent and defenseless.

It's a great quandary, until about midway through the movie when a shift happens that I won't spoil that definitively places the Blind Man into the monster category. I suppose that's the price we must pay for such a tense film; you need to be rooting for someone, and the initial setup left who the actual heroes were too ambiguous.

Which is fine. These movies need some sort of definitive villain I guess. The movie lays out tense scenario after tense scenario, and just when you think it's over it keeps going. The Blind Man is a sometimes inconsistent monster, at one moment able to sense exactly where a character is in the room, at another oblivious to anyone's presence.

Don't Breathe is fairly schlocky, and it's the kind that goes to depraved places you will not be able to anticipate. Equal parts thriller and horror, it's an example of an effective genre film. I enjoyed the ride, but I'm not sure I'm ready to do it again anytime soon.