Top 10 Movies of 2019

I'd call 2019 a slightly below-average film year. I only gave one film my maximum rating (4 stars, 5 Yaps or an "A," depending on where you were reading it). In retrospect there are two others I would retroactively raise to that level.

What can I say, I'm a stingy critic.

After the top seven or eight movies, though, things drop off pretty sharply. I've been somewhat underwhelmed by many of the concussion picks, including "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," "Parasite" and "Little Women." None of them even made my "also ran" list that comes after the Top 10.

If there's a theme in this year's picks, it's that I went for smaller films over the higher-profile "Oscar bait" or big-budget ones. A lot of films where women or people of color are the center of the story and/or on the key creative team. I'm pleased by that, though I certainly am not one to favor films purely because of identity politics.

So here's my list of the very best, the contenders and a few disappointments.

Top 10

1. Late Night -- I seem to be virtually alone in loving this film starring and written by Mindy Kaling, with Emma Thompson giving the performance of the year as an acerbic late-night TV host. Vivid female characters and a compelling story about a particular niche industry. It sort of mislays the boyfriend character, but maybe that's not such a bad thing.

2. Harriet -- Another film that received respectful reviews and very good box office for an indie, but somehow got overlooked by nearly every critic. Cynthia Erivo is terrific as Harriet Tubman in a film by Kasi Lemmons that refuses to treat a historical figure as anything less than a complicated, flesh-and-blood person.

3. Ford v Ferrari -- A wonderful movie in the "best sports story you never heard of" mold like "Hoosiers." A charismatic American car builder and a Brit loner racer join forces to vie for the crown at Le Mans. Great action scenes, but the relationships and terrific acting from Christian Bale and Matt Damon put it over the top.

4. The Last Black Man in San Francisco -- I saw this one very late in the awards season, and if I'd been aware of it earlier I would have pushed it harder for awards. A film like no other, as two men contemplate their love/hate relationship with their home city and their families -- whether through bloodlines or the ones they made on the streets. Haunting, poetic, singular.

5. Just Mercy -- This one isn't on anyone's awards radar because of its late release -- it won't hit most theaters until mid-January -- and that's a shame. In many ways it's a conventional courtroom/legal drama about a falsely convicted murderer, but superb performances make the day. Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Rob Morgan and Tim Blake Nelson all should get Oscar noms.

6.  Portrait of a Lady on Fire -- I can't pronounce any of their names, but actresses Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel are amazing as a painter and her muse in this riveting love tale set in the 1800s. Nobody directed a film better this year than Céline Sciamma. This one stays with you.

7. Marriage Story -- It may sound like a "Kraver v. Kramer" reboot, but this layered look at divorce from Noah Baumbach features a pair of great acting turns by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, as well as very good supporting turns from Laura Dern, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta. There's a lot of lawyering but the film is less concerned with the legal stuff than the effect it has on the heart.

8. 1917 -- Yes, Sam Mendes directing this World War I drama in one long take is a gimmick, but it's a good gimmick. It serves to heighten the intensity rather than just existing for its own sake. Two no-name actors traverse a hellscape of trenches and strewn bodies to try to commit one good deed.

9. Bombshell -- Really, the first #MeToo movie. Charlize Theron should get an Oscar nomination playing Fox News star Megyn Kelly as she carefully negotiates an atmosphere of sexual harassment and depravity. Margot Robbie, Nicole Kidman and John Lithgow are top-notch, too.

10. Richard Jewell -- Despite its glaring (and easily avoidable) flaw, Clint Eastwood's latest is still a compelling look at how the media scrum of the early 24/7 new cycle age nearly destroyed an innocent man who was actually a hero. DOA at the box office, alas.

The Very Good

I always include a tally of the films that contended for my Top 10 list. Listed alphabetically.

Abominable -- One of the best animated film of the year, doomed by being the third yeti movie of 2019.
The Aftermath -- Completely overlooked post-WWII love triangle with Keira Knightley, Jason Clarke and Alexander Skarsgård.
Avengers: Endgame -- A fitting wrap-up to the first generation of Marvel movies.
Captain Marvel -- My pick for the best superhero flick this year.
Jojo Rabbit -- Brash, original, funny, occasionally quirky for quirky's sake.
Joker -- Another off-kilter powerhouse turn from Joaquin Phoenix.
Honey Boy -- Made me respect Shia LaBeouf again.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World -- I say the Dragon series is the GOAT animation franchise, especially after the lackluster and totally unnecessary "Toy Story 4."
Knives Out -- A fun twist on the whodunit genre with a wonderful ensemble cast.
One Child Nation -- The best documentary I saw this year; you think you know the issue and then find out you don't.
Pain and Glory -- Not enough love for Pedro Almodovar's latest.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker -- Many quibbles, but I have never not loved a Star Wars movie.
Sword of Trust -- Beautiful little indie comedy that should lay to rest any question about Marc Maron's acting ability.
The Two Popes -- The rarest of animals: a deep cinematic exploration of religious faith.
Us -- I thought Jordan Peele's "Get Out" tremendously overrated, but "Us" is the rare horror film that actually unnerved me.

The Underwhelmed

Some of these I actually liked, but just found they punched way below their touted weight. Others I actively loathe.

Apollo 11 -- I didn't learn one new thing I didn't already know, other than spacemen are boring on the radio.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood -- Classic good-not-great drama. *Interesting* choice to make Fred Rogers a supporting character in his own movie.
Booksmart -- All the right people love this flick, which just isn't as funny or original as it seems to think it is.
Dumbo -- Occasionally I still hear Colin Farrell's awful cowboy accent in my nightmares.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters -- All these modern makeovers seem to forget these are supposed to be cheesy movies.
It: Chapter Two -- What an epic faceplant. How Not to Sequel.
The Lion King -- Why? ... Why?
Little -- Congrats to Hollywood's youngest executive producer, which will be a good epitaph after her and this aggressively awful comedy are forgotten.
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood -- Quentin Tarantino shoots great scenes, but three decades in still doesn't know how to string stories together.
Rocketman -- Wants so desperately to be as good as "Bohemian Rhapsody." P.S. Freddie Mercury had a better voice and story.
Uncut Gems -- An exercise in annoyance. I don't see Adam Sandler's performance as breaking any new ground. The talents of the Safdie brothers continue to elude me.

Reeling Backward: "Cruising" (1980)

"Who's here? I'm here. You're here."

"Cruising" has the distinction of being the first mainstream movie to garner a major protest from the gay community.

Just a decade after Stonewall, the gay rights movement had gotten organized enough to stage street protests to try to disrupt the production in New York City. They blew whistles during the outdoor shots, forcing director William Friedkin to redub the  movie post-production, and even used reflectors from atop high rises to screw up their lighting.

It got more protests when it finally came out, though not enough -- or perhaps just the right amount -- to make it a moderate hit. Critics were fairly unimpressed, and today the film is pretty well forgotten except for the controversy.

Looking back with the perspective of 40 years, "Cruising" still isn't a very good movie but it's not a terrible one, either. Nor is it the lurid, gay-bashing piece of pulp it was labeled at the time.

Instead, it stands now as an observational piece that turns its eye on a particular place and time. In this case, it's the "leather" scene of the  1970s to early '80s typified by a fetish for leather jackets, pants, hats and other paraphernalia. Gay men would gather in  exclusionary bars to dance, flirt, have sex, do drugs, etc.

Gay hangouts had been underground for decades, and now they were becoming more public as the community founds its identity. It no doubt horrified "the straights," but that was an essential part of the movement up until fairly recently.

Interestingly,  the NYC gay club were largely operated by the Mafia, which is one reason they were relatively protected and allowed to thrive. Thanks, Guido!

Friedkin wanted Richard Gere for the lead because he had an androgynous prettiness to him, but settled for Al Pacino. There is obviously a lot of similarity to Pacino's breakout role in "Serpico," where he also played a cop going "deep undercover" into a world that was alien and frightening to him.

He plays Steve Burns, a street cop in his late 20s who is eager to get his "gold shield," aka make detective. (Pacino was actually 40.)

Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino, made up to look haggard and prematurely old), who has been assigned to solve a string of gruesome murders of gay man, many of them discovered in dismembered pieces, taps Burns because he resembles the physical type favored by the killer: small stature, slim, dark hair and eyes. The idea is to use Burns as bait to draw the slasher out.

(Never commented upon is that the majority of men Burns encounters in the leather bars look just like him.)

Until now these killings have been swept under the rug, filed as CUPPI (Circumstances Undetermined Pending Police Investigation) with the body parts literally shoved in a coroner's drawer and forgotten. But they've started to get some press and gay activists, gifted with power for the first time, are pressuring city politicians for action.

So the movie gives a nod to the gay community that was trying to prevent it from being shot. The main criticism was the suggestion of an inherent connection between violence and homosexuality. Friedkin et all dismissed that, saying they were only telling a story about one small slice of gay men.

Later he came to acknowledge the film wasn't representative of a burgeoning movement.

The film follows Burns as he gradually immerses himself into the leather scene. "Cruising" was initially given an X rating by the MPAA rating because of the depiction of sex between men in the bars. (One wonders if identical scenes with heterogeneous couples would have been similarly labeled.) A bunch of the footage was cut out to make the grade.

Voyeurism is a key part of the aesthetic of the film, though it's fairly tame by today's standards. There are a bunch of asses but no dicks; we see plenty of men making out and groping each other, some simulated blowjobs and one fairly oblique depiction of fisting.

I wonder what the experience was like for contemporary audiences, which had just learned to accept pornographic films as part of the mainstream, and now were shown obvious, if not overt, gay sex.

The film doesn't just treat these men as objects, though. We meet Ted (Don Scardino), a struggling playwright living next door in the apartment Burns takes up as part of his cover. He's a spectacularly normal guy, worrying about money and his career, as well as conflicts with his roommate, a controlling dancer named Gregory (James Remar) we meet late in the movie.

We get introduced into this world, which like any other segment of human society has its own particular sets of rules and expectations. Burns notices men with colored bandannas hanging out of their pockets and asks a store vendor (Powers Booth) what they mean, learning they're signals for sex acts desired to be performed or received.

Later, when Burns wears one in a club and is approached, the other man becomes enraged when Burns says he only likes to watch. On another night he is gobsmacked when he returns to the same place and finds everyone is dressed as police officers, one of the regular "theme nights." He's asked to leave because, ironically, the one actual cop in the place isn't dressed as one.

A key failing in the story is how Burns is supposed to pass himself off as gay if he never engages in any sex acts with other man. It's like the classic trope among drug dealers suspicious of undercover LEOs, "Take a hit to prove you're not a cop."

I would think that he would quickly gain a reputation as a suspicious interloper, a curious dilettante or a cockteaser.

The movie was based on a 1970 novel by Gerald Walker, a New York Times crimes reporter who fashioned his story out of bits 'n' pieces of actual murders from his beat. My understanding is Friedkin, who also wrote the screenplay, inserted the leather scene  based on magazine articles and his own research, including frequenting some bars himself.

So it's very much a straight perspective exploring the gay scene like a zoological expedition, which no doubt played a part in resentment toward the movie. There was a budding gay cinema back then, including the films of Andy Warhol, though these didn't penetrate mainstream Hollywood.

Friedkin has said that he very much saw the project as another one of his gritty  investigative dramas, like "The French Connection," but set against a different backdrop. Indeed, once you take away the (lite) S&M and boys macking on each other, it's pretty much a straight police procedural.

The story occasionally returns to Burns' relationship with his girlfriend, played by Karen Allen, and how he grasps at her as a touchstone to his "normal," straight life that he yearns to return to. However, there is some suggestion that Burns is genuinely piqued by his exposure to homosexuality. He puts on eye makeup and pumps iron while staring in the mirror.

This would be a more interesting area to explore that the film dallies with and then drops.

The most compelling part about "Cruising" is the ambiguous way it treats its murderer. The story ends with the case officially solved, with a gay grad student (Richard Cox) who took a class from a professor who was killed charged as "the guy." However, Ted later turns up dead and the cops blame it on a lovers' quarrel so as not to spoil their case.

What's really interesting is that Friedkin uses three different actors who swap in and out playing the killer or the victims. He's seen as a tall guy in leather cap and sunglasses who likes to do a little playful singsong routine with his victims right before he stabs them with an outsized steak knife.

So the first man killed, a muscular young actor, later plays the killer himself. Cox plays the killer in another murder in Central Park, but appears to be innocent when Burns later lures him into the park and they try to stab each other.

At one point a waiter named Skip (Jay Avocone) is fingered because he works at a steakhouse that uses similar knives and because he has a reputation for liking the rough stuff. Burns initiates a tryst that cops burst in on, arresting them both.

During the interrogation Skip is beaten to a pulp by the police before being released on no evidence. Burns complains this isn't what he signed up for, and nearly quits.

He's also not happy about, for the purpose of continuing the ruse, getting smacked around himself by a huge black cop wearing only a hat and jock strap, in what is surely the film's most completely unhinged moment. This officer is never named and speaks no dialogue, and his outfit is never explained.

There's other portions that show some dirty cops harassing the cross-dressing hustlers, arresting them without cause and forcing them to perform sex acts on them. My guess is the interrogation room cop was trying to instill that same fear.

"Cruising" had its heart in the right place, despite accusations, but its head in the wrong one.

Top 10 of the 10's

I hadn't originally intended to do a "best of the decade" list, just because it seems like everyone else is and such things are by their nature a bit arbitrary. Plus, as the eggheads like to remind us, technically the new decade doesn't start until Jan. 1, 2021.

(Frankly, they can blow it out their wazoo. By this reckoning a person who's just shy of 41 can claim they're still in their 30s.)

But it's kind of fun and I like having arguments about favorite things.

Also, the "10's" or whatever we're calling it -- weird that we reached the end of this decade without coming up with a universally accepted name -- marks a full decade of The Film Yap and my blog as standalone, independent movie outlets. So I was able to just look at my annual Top 10 lists and winnow them down.

Not surprisingly over the course of a decade some films rise and fall in my estimation. Entire years are not represented -- including 2019, a below-average cinematic year in my book, which is why this piece is actually publishing ahead of my list for this year.

Fully 40% of this list is comprised from one year, 2015, which I still contend is a once-in-a-generation year for movies, like 1994 or 1939.

You might be surprised to find that in some cases movies that ranked lower on that year's Top 10 ended up higher on the decade list, while others moved down or didn't make it at all. That represents how movies wax or wane in our eyes with the passing of years.

So here's the list:

1. Mad Max: Fury Road
2. Lady Bird
3. Blade Runner 2049
4. Life Itself
5. Spotlight
6. Hell or High Water
7. Green Book
8. The Big Short
9. Room
10. The Social Network

"Mad Max: Fury Road" has it all: reviving a cinematic icon while creating a new character who is just as compelling as he is, and surrounding them with a world that feels dense and lived-in. Much the same goes for "Blade Runner 2049," which is a completely satisfying follow-up to a film I thought defied sequelization.

"Lady Bird" is a singular movie: semi-autobiographical, specific to a time and place, with riveting performances all the way down. I was a little disappointed in "Little Women," but I'm looking forward to the next 30-40 years of Greta Gerwig films with bated breath.

More than anyone Roger Ebert determined the form of film criticism going forward: starting in newspapers, graduating to television and finding his fullest voice online. I saw no better documentary than "Life Itself" this decade.

"Spotlight" and "Hell or High Water" are the fullest expressions of very specific genres: journalism movies, for which I have an obvious affinity, and modern/revisionist Westerns.

"Green Book" and "The Big Short" are polar opposites: one seeks to comfort/uplift and the other to afflict/accuse.

Both accomplish their goals rapturously well. "Room" is still a great movie but has fallen down my list, just because seeing it for the first time is such a singular experience that subsequent viewings aren't as completely engaging. "The Silence of the Lambs" is the same way.

"The Social Network" will be studied as a terrific time capsule of our culture at the cusp of the social media/mobile device age. It's hard to describe how different our daily interactions are from where they were just 10 or 12 years ago.

I could make a tally of "almosts" as long as your arm, but I will share the other films I struggled to eliminate from this list: "Whiplash," "Her," "Prisoners" and "Pacific Rim."

Review: "LIttle Women"

I’ve never read “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott, and I think that hurts my perception of the latest cinematic adaptation of it by writer/director Greta Gerwig. (The eighth, it is believed.) I was a huge fan of Gerwig’s debut film, “Ladybird,” and although I liked this one, too, I couldn’t escape the feeling I was a tourist wandering through this story.

Alcott’s seminal semi-autobiographical tale follows the four March sisters as they progress from girls to young women, struggle with their places in 19th century society and their various romantic and familial entanglements. Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) is more or less the lead character, a headstrong proto-feminist who wants to be a writer first and a wife maybe never.

I had not realized that the book was published in two volumes, or that Alcott actually produced a pair of sequels. Gerwig’s screenplay juxtaposes the two sections, set seven years apart, using parallel storylines with the March sisters roughly occupying their teen years during the first and 20s during the second.

In addition to Ronan, who also was Gerwig’s star in “Ladybird,” the cast is uniformly superb. Emma Watson plays oldest daughter, Meg, who yearns to be an actress but embraces the push to marry and have children. Florence Pugh is Amy, the youngest and most willful child, who seethes in Jo’s shadow. Beth (Eliza Scanlen) is the wan one who loves music and has the purest heart, so we all know her fate.

Laura Dern plays their mother, aka “Marmee,” who seems impossibly upbeat and saintly but is allowed a few moments of eye-level humanity. Bob Odenkirk turns up late as their father, perennially away serving in the Civil War and not very consequential to the story even when he is around.

The Marches call themselves poor, though they have a nice, large house in Concord and a servant, and give away astonishing piles of food to the truly indigent. Their next-door neighbors are the super-wealthy Laurences, acquaintances who eventually become friends. Chris Cooper plays the patriarch, whose sternness fades after he takes a shine to Beth. Timothée Chalamet plays his layabout grandson Theodore aka “Laurie,” the object of myriad affections.

With his foppy hair, pencil-thin frame and insolent eyes -- if he were a March, he'd unquestionably be the prettiest sister -- Chalamet is the very picture of unearned privilege. He convinces Jo that he loves her, though we sense that emotionally Laurie is a renter, not a buyer. She rejects him, though later comes to regret it.

In the early scenes the March house practically hums with warmth and energy, while in the later sequences it has become drab and colorless. The family suffers setbacks and heartbreak, but carries on.

In the later section, Jo has moved to New York City to work to pursue a career as a writer, with some success. Tracy Letts plays the publisher who mercilessly cuts her pages and encourages her to write short, pulpy stories in which single women are dead or married by the end. “Either one will do.”

Meryl Streep plays their wealthy Aunt March, who could help them a lot more than she does, though she does offer some employment to the daughters and stresses the importance of marrying well. She’s distraught when Meg falls for John Brooke (James Norton), a penniless tutor. Louis Garrel enters the picture late as Friedrich, a romantic alternative for Jo.

I can see why generations of women have grown up loving “Little Women,” because it embraces them as they are and shows how crushing expectations can be, then or now. We instinctively like Jo because she rejects the wife-or-spinster dichotomy and forges her own path. We understand Amy’s impatience and admire Marmee’s innate generosity of the heart.

The movie tells women it’s OK to embrace a family life, or reject it, fall for boys or shove them away, feel strong but sometimes vulnerable, too. “Girls should go out into the world and make up their own minds about things,” Aunt March says.

If I were a woman or an Alcott reader, I’d probably love this film instead of just admiring it.

Video review: "Judy"

"What’s ‘Judy’ about?” someone asked me when the film was hitting theaters.

“It’s about Renée Zellweger making her big comeback and giving an Oscar-bait performance,” I responded.

“No, no, I mean the story. What’s the movie about?” they said.

“It’s a movie about getting Renée Zellweger her big comeback performance and maybe winning an Oscar.”

A bit flip, but true. “Judy” is one of those movies that isn’t just built around a leading performance, it is the film in its entirety. Zellweger plays Judy Garland during her last bitter years, her star faded but her voice still strong.

It’s a great role for an actress whose career hit a slump around age 40, as so many sadly do. Hollywood loves the ingénue and seems to have little room for women in their middle years. It happened to Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep, too.

They managed to turn it around and cruise into their “grand dame” years, and that’s what Zellweger’s turn here is trying to do.

I liked the film without really falling in love. I often find that biopics containing a single overpowering performance – “Ray,” “Capote,” etc. – tend to have an innate ceiling below greatness. Stories and secondary characters are shunted aside in the bid to keep the spotlight burning bright on the star.

Set in the late 1960s, the story follows Garland when she was booked to play an extended engagement at a London theater. She was long sick of showbiz, but with bills to pay and an ongoing custody battle for kids, Garland didn’t have much choice.

Jessie Buckley plays Rosalyn, the handler assigned to watch over Garland and make sure she shows up for her performances and not get too drunk. Some flashback scenes feature Darci Shaw as a teen Garland first getting a harsh introduction to Hollywood via a creepy Louis B. Mayer.

“Judy” is a solid biopic, but once you get past Zellweger’s snappy performance as a self-loathing faded star, there’s not much fairy dust to speak of.

Bonus features are fairly skimpy. There’s just an image gallery from the set and a documentary, “From the Heart: The Making of Judy.”

Movie:

Extras:

Spoiler-ish thoughts on "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"

Spoiler-ish thoughts on TROS ahead, so avert your eyes now if you don't want even a hint of foreknowledge.

I liked it; the first half is wildly uneven but they pull it together for the second.

Didn't care for all the callbacks, most of which just felt like fan-service curtain calls instead of moving the story along. Did a certain smuggler get an eye job?

It was obvious how they had to shoot/edit around Carrie Fisher's limited existing footage. Stand-ins used for over-the-shoulder shots. My guess is they didn't want to just CGI her in, with the result that one of the saga's most enduring characters exits essentially invisibly.

Had no idea what Chewie's "gift" at the end was, so I asked somebody who seemed to. Apparently righting a 42-year-old wrong, but I'm not sure how many will get that. Plus, why is Maz the person who a) has that item in her possession and b) has the agency to bestow it? It feels like a homeless vet taking off one of his ribbons and handing it to some random passerby.

The new characters treat the Millennium Falcon like a cum rag on a pornographic movie set. It's been trashed so many times in these three movies I lost count. And there's never even a moment to acknowledge that or express regret. It has actually become a running joke.

Han and Chewie treated that ship like an aged but adored lover, and I don't like seeing it get milked for comedic effect.

I did not guess the truth of Rey's lineage, other than it was obvious her parents were not "nobodies." So Kylo lied, but in a  Ben Kenobi "certain point of view" kinda way.

My biggest beef is the use of the Force. It has become like magic in the Harry Potter movies: what are its limits? What are the rules? What are people capable of and what feats are clearly impossible? The answer is, "Whatever the writers want to happen to service the plot."

So Anakin Skywalker, the most powerful Jedi ever, was limited to telekinesis, choking people out and deflecting blaster bolts. Now they're just frickin' Dungeons & Dragons clerics. "Anybody need a rez?"

People will grouse about reusing a villain, but the sequel trilogy has recycled practically everything else, so why not?

Still, plenty of power and majesty here. I remember nearly 40 years ago when other kids first shared the speculation that there were going to be nine of these movies. I don't think child me would be disappointed in the culmination, though the adult one has no reservations about pointing out its many flaws.

Review: "Cats"

Welcome to the 15-minute review exercise! That's how much time I have to write this on my lunch break, so you can feel free to compare it to my more studied musings.

First of all, I am a "Cats" virgin. Which is to say I had no experience or knowledge of the stage musical going in. I knew it had people dressed as cats, there was that one ubiquitous "Memory" song, and... that was it.

My understanding is the film version diverges in ways large and small from the Andrew Lloyd Webber stage version. Victoria, who is more or less a sideshow dancer live, is the main or at least the central character here, playing a castaway kitten who is our eyes and ears into the story.

Played by ballet star Francesca Hayward, a film newcomer, Victoria doesn't have a strong character of her own but spends most of the time mouth agape with awestruck eyes reacting to the stuff around her. Her dancing is unsurprisingly magnificent, as if she is not bound to the earth like the rest of us. She also has a great singing voice, like the peal of a clear, pure bell.

Frankly, I much preferred hearing her than Taylor Swift, who is being played up as the star of the movie. She actually has only one scene, a musical number that's one of the weaker in the movie. She isn't even talking about her own character, but acting as an emcee introducing Macavity, the villain of the piece played by Idris Elba.

Indeed, most of the musical numbers are a showcase for one particular cat to talk about their life and experiences. For example, Ian McKellen plays Gus (short for Asparagus), a decrepit old "theater cat" whose soliloquy is basically him relating past greatness. Like a few other non-singers who were cast, McKellen does the "talk-singing" thing that Jimmy Cagney first made famous.

I suppose I need to talk about the cat outfits. They're good... and weird. The film uses a combination of costumes and makeup with CGI for the ears and tails. They don't look anything like cats, just humans playing as cats. Some are better than others. Elba looks way too big and muscle-y for the get-up.

Weirdly, some of the cats wear shoes while others are barefoot, and they look like human feet rather than cat's paws. Some wear people clothing, hats and jewelry, while some like Victoria are essentially nude, which makes the PG rating from the MPAA seem a little incongruous.

Some actors you will recognize, like Rebel Wilson and James Corden, McKellen and Judi Dench. Others are dancers or musicians you may or may not have heard of, like Jason Derulo as Rum Tum Tugger, a capricious show-off.

The story is... straight bonkers. I couldn't make sense of it while the movie was going, and then when I read a summary of it for research afterwards I thought I had stumbled onto the secret Scientology texts or something.

Set in London we follow the tribe of "Jellicle" street cats who are in the annual process of deciding which of them will be picked to make the journey to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn into a new life. It's unclear if this marks their progression between the nine proverbial cat lives, or the end of them.

Each candidate cat performs their story and the Jellicle leader, Old Deuteronomy (a male on stage but played here by Dench), picks the "winner."

Some cats are in the front of the story, while others come and go. There's a tap-dancing "railway cat" who shows up and then leaves. Some cats get zapped by Macavity and imprisoned on a barge on the Thames, and no one notices them missing. There's twin troublemaker cats and a snobbish besuited cat and... well, you get the idea.

The last big part is Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella, a former "glamor cat" who is shunned by the others for reasons that are never hinted it. She gets to sing the iconic "Memory" song in several reprises, which is a lovely tune but when you listen to the lyrics in the context of the story are totally baffling.

Apparently Grizabella was once beloved and now is lonely and she yearns to be touched. (Sounds like my teen years.) Otherwise she'll have to wander among the lamplights and wait for a new day to begin with more ostracism, and singing.

I'm also just going to throw this out there: Am I the only one who was bothered by the copious snot trails coming out of Hudson's nostrils and streaming into her mouth while she sang? I'm sort of gobsmacked that no makeup person or PA on the set handed her a tissue between takes. Or while they were CGIing in the tails they don't wipe that out.

I like emotion in movies but draw the line at people consuming their own bodily secretions on camera.

The parts of "Cats" that work well work really well. I quite liked Laurie Davidson as Mr. Mistoffelees, a magician cat whose tricks usually don't come off very well and thus he has some pretty crushing self-esteem issues. He gets his own big musical number that, other than "Memory," is probably the best in the flick.

The parts that don't work are embarrassing or just boring. Several of the comedic numbers just aren't very funny; Wilson's is a case in point. A lot of the time I struggled to make out the words the cats were singing, other than they all seem to come down to "Hey I'm a cat so I'm doing cat stuff."

The film ends with a musical number that is so incredibly flat and purposeless that I can't believe in nearly 40 years of "Cats" no one has ever shouted at the curtain call, "Cut that last song, it's terrible."

But again, this is all new territory for me. "Cats" is still kinda magical in a goofy sort of way. No disbelief is suspended but it at least gets set aside for awhile.