Widows (Steve McQueen, 2018)

Elizabeth Debicki, Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Cynthia Erivo in Widows

Cast: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Garret Dillahunt, Liam Neeson, Robert Duvall, Carrie Coon, Jacki Weaver, Lukas Haas, Jon Bernthal, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Kevin J. O'Connor. Screenplay: Gillian Flynn, Steve McQueen, based on a TV series by Lynda LaPlante. Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt. Production design: Adam Stockhausen. Film editing: Joe Walker. Music: Hans Zimmer.

A solid dark thriller with a powerhouse cast, Widows tells the story of four women married to professional thieves who are bereaved when a major heist goes wrong and the van the men are in goes up in a fiery explosion. The problem is that the loot was also incinerated and it belonged to a powerful Chicago politician and crime boss, Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), who shows up at the home of one of the women, Veronica (Viola Davis), demanding repayment. Veronica, who had no part in her husband's crimes, is desperate to raise the money, but her husband's chauffeur had the key to his safety deposit box, in which she discovers a notebook full of detailed plans for all of his heists, including one he had yet to pull off. Eventually, she concludes that the only way to raise the necessary millions is to do that heist herself, for which she enlists two of her fellow widows. The film casts fine actors like Liam Neeson, Daniel Kaluuya, Robert Duvall, Carrie Coon, Lukas Haas, and Jon Bernthal in secondary roles as the complications and surprise twists ensue. Steve McQueen's no-nonsense direction and the skill of his cast make the whole thing mostly plausible, mainly by not giving you time to question some of the plot's weaknesses. There's a subplot about the election battle between Jamal Manning and Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), the scion of an old Irish political family, which is tied to the main plot by some fairly tenuous threads, a few of which are blatant contrivances. But the focus is on Veronica and her crew, played superbly by Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, and Cynthia Erivo.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017)

Colin Farrell in The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Steven Murphy: Colin Farrell
Anna Murphy: Nicole Kidman
Martin: Barry Keoghan
Kim Murphy: Raffey Cassidy
Bob Murphy: Sunny Suljic
Matthew Williams: Bill Camp
Martin's Mother: Alicia Silverstone

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenplay: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
Cinematography: Thimios Bakatakis
Production design: Jade Healy
Film editing: Yorgos Mavropsaridis

This is only the third film by Yorgos Lanthimos that I've seen, but I'd say that he and his screenwriting partner, Efthymis Filippou, have a beef with people who play god. In Dogtooth (2009) it was the parents who attempt to create their own utopia by keeping their children ignorant of the outside world. In The Lobster (2015) it was the manager of the hotel that purports to find its residents new mates. And in The Killing of a Sacred Deer it's that archetypal god-player, the surgeon, who finds that the son of a patient he may have killed on the operating table has a mysterious power over him and his family. Behind this film lies a Greek myth about hubris, specifically the story of the punishment meted out by the gods to the house of Atreus, as reflected in the Euripedean tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis, which is referred to in the film as well as its title. But Lanthimos isn't interested in a direct transmutation of the Greek legend into modern terms. His film is a droll, underplayed, and often quite chilling tale that keeps one foot in reality while plaguing the characters with forces that come out of myths about the Fates and the Furies. It's as creepy as any horror movie you can name, but because the cast is so skilled at underplaying I found myself laughing -- a little nervously, yes -- at the absurdities in which their characters found themselves as much as I was flinching at the mental and physical pain they were undergoing. Sex in the film is a kind of torment: Anna Murphy seems to be able to get off only by first lying in an awkward position, dangling from the bed, and she is forced to give the rather unpleasant anesthesiologist (who may have been the one who really killed the patient) a hand job to gain information about their tormentor. That tormentor, Martin, seems to have an attraction to Steven Murphy that he tries to fulfill by pimping out his own mother. Much is made of the fact that Kim, the daughter, is having her first period. And so on. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is such an accumulation of odd details that it almost founders underneath them, and if you're looking for a conventional narrative payoff, go elsewhere. But there is a strange genius at work here, and I'm eager to see more from Lanthimos, including The Favourite, which is getting extraordinary attention now in awards season.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (David Yates, 2016)

Dan Fogler, Eddie Redmayne, and Katherine Waterston in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Newt Scamander: Eddie Redmayne
Tina Goldstein: Katherine Waterston
Jacob Kowalski: Dan Fogler
Queenie Goldstein: Alison Sudol
Credence Barebone: Ezra Miller
Mary Lou Barebone: Samantha Morton
Henry Shaw Sr.: Jon Voight
Seraphina Picquery: Carmen Ejogo
Gnarlack: Ron Perlman
Percival Graves: Colin Farrell

Director: David Yates
Screenplay: J.K. Rowling
Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot
Production design: Stuart Craig
Costume design: Colleen Atwood
Music: James Newton Howard

I think I enjoyed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them more than I did any of the Harry Potter movies, but mainly because I wasn't distracted by thinking about what had been left out between the novel and the film. That's because Fantastic Beasts is J.K. Rowling's first original screenplay. She has a way to go yet as a screenwriter: There are too many events and incidents to keep track of, and the story gets swamped by the special effects. But we are clearly in the same realm as the Potter books, even if this movie is set in the 1920s and in New York City, where Muggles are called Non-Majes. (Which even an explanation didn't keep me from hearing "non-Madges" and thinking, "people who don't like Madonna.") And even though there's a lot of noisy CGI work going on, Rowling and her cast have given us some engaging new characters in Newt Scamander, Tina and Queenie Goldstein, and Jacob Kowalski, all of whom seem to be set for a long run of sequels. Eddie Redmayne is terrific as usual, and Colin Farrell makes a fine villain until the ending reveals him to be Johnny Depp in disguise. It was a box office hit, of course, and most of the critics seemed to like it -- the pans seemed to be colored by a weary recognition that here was what seemed to be the launch of yet another blockbuster franchise. I agree that we could do without that, but it's better than yet another Transformers movie. And there's something agreeable about even a Potter-adjacent work.

In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008)

Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in In Bruges

Ray: Colin Farrell
Ken: Brendan Gleeson
Harry: Ralph Fiennes
Chloe: Clémence Poésy
Jimmy: Jordan Prentice
Yuri: Eric Godon
Canadian Man: Zeljko Ivanek
Eirik: Jérémie Renier
Marie: Thekla Reuten

Director: Martin McDonagh
Screenplay: Martin McDonagh
Cinematography: Eigil Bryld
Music: Carter Burwell

Martin McDonagh's In Bruges is a bloody little gem about two hitmen, Ray and Ken, who have been sent by their boss, Harry, to the picturesque Belgian city of Bruges to await further instructions. Brooding, depressed Ray thinks Bruges is a "shithole," whereas Ken is rather taken with the medieval architecture, the cobblestone streets, and the canals. Ray's deep funk stems from guilt: While carrying out a hit Harry ordered -- we never find out why -- on a priest (Ciarán Hinds in an unbilled cameo), Ray accidentally killed a small boy who was standing behind the priest, waiting his turn in the confessional. Ken drags Ray around the city, trying to raise his spirits with sightseeing, but the only thing that works is Ray's discovery of a crew making a film on location and particularly of the pretty Chloe, a production assistant who is actually a drug dealer. Ray is also enchanted that one of the actors is what he calls "a midget" named Jimmy, which allows him to investigate his theory that little people are particularly inclined to be suicidal. Wait, I'm getting lost in the filigree that In Bruges is full of. To return to the main plot, it turns out that the real reason Harry has sent Ray and Ken to Bruges is so Ray can have a good time before Ken kills him. But to understand that, you have to go back into the filigree again: Harry has his own personal gangster code, one article of which is that you must never kill a child, so Ray has to pay the price, but since one of Harry's few happy memories is of the time he spent at the age of 7 in Bruges, he naturally assumes that the trip will be so delightful for Ray that he can die happy. Writer-director McDonagh's imaginative intricacies of characterization and motive might have resulted in only a somewhat twee black comedy if it weren't for the brilliance of his performers, especially Farrell in a part that turned him from a second-string leading man to a specialist in eccentric characters in oddball independent films like Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster (2015). In Bruges is crowded with unexpectedly colorful secondary characters, including Zeljko Ivanek as a Canadian whom Ray insults in a restaurant by mistaking him for an American; Jérémie Renier as Chloe's former boyfriend, who attacks Ray but winds up getting shot in the face with his own gun, loaded with blanks; and Thekla Reuten as Marie, the proprietor of the boutique hotel where Ray and Ken are staying, who meticulously takes down a message to them from Harry, who emphasizes every word in the message by modifying it with "fucking." It's true that the film ends in a bloodbath, but somehow the tone McDonagh has established, with the help of a fine score by Carter Burwell, allows it to transcend its violent excesses.

The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)

Colin Farrell has had an odd career, never quite making it to major stardom, but continuing to work in sometimes offbeat films like the wonderful In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008). And when it comes to offbeat, there are few films that march to a more eccentric drummer than The Lobster, in which Farrell has tamped down his typically assertive persona and bloated his trim figure with an unhealthy-looking paunch. It's not quite the transformative performance that often wins Oscars for actors, though it has earned Farrell quite a few nominations from critics groups as well as one for a Golden Globe. Farrell plays David, whose recent breakup with his wife has caused him to be sent to a hotel whose residents are given 45 days to find another partner. If they fail to do so, they are turned into animals -- David tells the hotel manager (Olivia Colman) that he wants to be turned into a lobster. He is accompanied to the hotel by his brother, who has already been turned into a dog. But ... oh, there's no point in going on with a summary. It's a film of multiple turns and revelations, each of which has to be discovered by viewers with their own fresh insights into the quite unusual vision of its director, Yorgos Lanthimos, and his co-screenwriter, Efthymis Filippou. It's part dystopian fantasy, part tragicomedy, part satire, part fable. Farrell is quite good, as are Colman, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, and Ben Whishaw as the present and former residents of the hotel, some of whom have escaped into the woods to avoid being transformed and are now in a kind of guerrilla war with the residents. Comparisons to Kafka's stories have inevitably been made, and while it's not quite of that exalted original order, The Lobster is one of the few recent films that feel fresh and daring.