We have had a big start to the year with movies. This year had some great blockbuster movies such as Black Panther. Black Panther had great cultural impact, sent a strong message about African culture, and also touched on how those who are oppressed are more likely to lash out and try to make things fair. The other purpose of Black Panther was to set up Infinity War.

Infinity War was another great Marvel movie. Marvel had been building up to Infinity War for ten years, and they managed to make it all pay off. Infinity War was great, but it does end on a cliffhanger. That cliffhanger will pay off in May 2019.

Now, we should look forward to the rest of 2018. In summer, the big blockbuster movies will be Ant-Man and the Wasp, Mission: Impossible Fallout, and Deadpool 2.

Deadpool 2 did come out in May, but I will count it as a summer blockbuster. Deadpool 2 was great and very funny. It also sets up the next X-Force movie.

The new Ant-Man movie will serve as one of the two lead ups to Avengers 4 (the other being Captain Marvel which releases in 2019). Ant-Man will probably end up as another perfectly adequate Marvel movie. It will probably be a predictably, funny movie that pleasantly kills a couple hours of your life.

Mission: Impossible 6 should be another movie similar to Ant-Man. I would not be surprising if there is some kind of twist in this next movie, but ultimately it will be another good addition to the Mission: Impossible series. Tom Cruise got injured on another stunt, and the movie will probably be another adequate movie, with some amazing stunts.

We should be ready for another great year of movies. I don’t know where the movie industry will go next, but we should just enjoy this era of comic book movies and spy thrillers. Movies will continue to evolve and it will be interesting to see where they go.

How to Hang a Witch is a fantasy book that is also connected to the real life history of the Salem witch trials. The main character, Samantha Mather, or Sam as she likes to be called, moves to Salem with her stepmother Vivian. Her father is in the hospital, in a coma, but no one knows what caused him to be in a coma.

Sam is descended from Cotton Mather who started the Salem witch trials, and is surprised when she meets “The Descendants” who are also connected to the trials, since their ancestors were of the accused witches. The Descendants are named Alice, Mary, and Susannah and they don’t like her at all, they even glare at her when they are in class.

In the book, Samantha deals with a curse that has killed members of both the witches families and her own family. In order to stop, and break the curse, she needs to figure out how it all started.

When she is looking around, she meets a classically  handsome looking boy who turns out to be the ghost of a boy who recently inhabited the house. Sam finds out that the ghost’s name is Elijah, and that he has a big connection to the curse that afflicts her and The Descendants.

The troubles start when it’s Sam’s first week in school, and she decides to offer pastries to her classmates to try and make new friends, just like her stepmother wanted. The class ends up getting sick and they blame her and her pastries, causing both the class and The Descendants to dislike her. This then leads the others to put Sam on the lists of suspects for all of the deaths going on. Sam later learns secrets about her past and even about close friends and family of hers that relate to her fate and the fate of  her father’s coma.

The author, Adriana Mather, is a real descendant of Cotton Mather who, like in the book, started the witch trials. She also descends from people who boarded and survived the Titanic. Adriana Mather usually uses her familie’s history in her writing; letting other people see through the eyes of her family to get a glimpse of their lives. Adriana Mather also has a second book, much like How To Hang A Witch. This second book of hers, has the same characters but has the plot of Sam being connected to the Titanic.

Many people loved the beginning aspect of Infinity War; how it instantly introduces the antagonist of the entire movie at the start. This movie was so exciting that many people all over the world started to pre-order tickets almost a month before its actual release. Surprisingly, the directors of Avengers: Infinity War, Joe and Anthony Russo, had moved the release date from May 27th, to April 27th. This influenced many people that were already planning to go watch it, get the chance to watch it early.

The main antagonist is known as, Thanos (played/voiced by Josh Brolin), and he drives the main plot in the movie. This movie introduces an enemy to the Avengers that they have never faced before, and they are going to face hardships. Many characters in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) have grown accustomed to their role in the movies and are fan favorites.

Avengers: Infinity War, the third installment of Marvel’s Avengers series, and has been a blockbuster hit! After only a day of its release, Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War had made over $10 million. Surprisingly enough, Infinity War had become the number one movie in the world, making, in total, over $600 million world-wide.

The total cost of making Infinity War was said to be around $300 – 400 million, which is said to make it the most expensive movie in the world. Because Marvel is now owned by Disney, Disney’s creative influence has been increased since they own both the Star Wars franchise and Marvel Studios. According to a box office website, Marvel stock had been down 2.8%, but after Infinity War it was raised to 3.2%. This demonstrates the amount of influence these movies have, in the way people all over the world show interest in movies that portray their childhood, or something they wished to see.

Personally, I loved the movie. I had watched the first movie, created by Marvel back in 2008, which was Iron Man. I loved the comics of Marvel and DC; they influenced my childhood, and to see people bring those characters, those ideas into a cinematic portal I personally love it.

The beginning of the movie was just shocking; to just see Thanos and the Black Order, overthrowing Thor and the Asgardians, that scene is forever engraved in my mind. The emotions put into that scene affected many fans, seeing important characters being killed off so easily and readily throughout the story amazed me.

The entirety of Thanos just made chills run down my spine, they made him as cool as he could be, the way John Brolin portrayed Thanos made me think of his voice when I would read the comics.

Even in the end of the movie, I personally didn’t think that the Russo brothers would make Thanos collect all six Infinity Stones in the first movie.

Overall, I’d give this movie a 9/10 rating. I wanted there to be more of an explanation to certain scenes, like the Red Skull, or the Soul Stone, all these pieces have little explaination behind them. I wanted more, but honestly this movie makes me think who is the bad guys, and who are the good guys, and makes me think of what the next Avengers movie will be.

Wes Anderson’s wonderful new stop-motion animated film is called Isle of Dogs. It’s set in the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki, where a recent outbreak of dog flu and snout fever has pushed Mayor Kobayashi to deport all canines to Trash Island. The mayor’s 12-year-old ward, Atari, pilots a tiny plane to the island, where he is taken in by a motley crew led by the stray Chief (Bryan Cranston), in order to rescue his own dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber). Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Courtney B. Vance, Fisher Stevens, Harvey Keitel, Bob Balaban, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Frank Wood, Kunichi Nomura and Yoko Ono also give vocal performances in the film. Like Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, the film straddles the line between child and adult entertainment, but has more than enough comedy, charm, and beauty to satisfy both audiences.

The story is cute and very funny, but not as interesting as Fantastic Mr. Fox or any of Anderson’s recent great live-action films, such as Moonrise Kingdom or The Grand Budapest Hotel. There are two romantic plot lines (one human, one canine) which don’t completely land. In general, I felt that the entire film was a bit too fast-paced. There are a few tender moments between Atari and Chief; they could have been longer and there could have been a few more. So too with the scenes of Spots and his cannibal dog-pack. I wanted more time to enjoy being in Wes Anderson’s world. The director’s preoccupation with sex, alcohol and death is present, and especially humorous as it contrasts with the film’s less-adult themes. Still, Isle of Dogs is a film that will be remembered not for its plot, but for its gorgeous visuals.

On the surface, the film is a stop-motion animated Western pastiche of Japanese aesthetics, but neither the animation nor the pastiche are conventional. The animators use so many different materials (fabric dog-fur, cotton ball clouds, squirming octopus tentacles, scrap metal, colored glass, neon lights, intricately detailed murals) to create a world that is tactile and enchanting. Anderson’s signature symmetrical compositions, knolling, snap-zooms, flat camera movement, and chapter headings contribute to the creation of his fantasy world. These styles are combined in one scene which focuses on the composition of a knolled bento box; what should be boring is unpredictably fascinating. When the dogs brawl, we see a dust-cloud with randomly protruding limbs, as in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Anderson appropriates both traditional Japanese and Neo Tokyo aesthetics for his syncretic style. It transcends mere pastiche because it is unique and self-aware. There are two scenes which feature comical haikus, the second of which is, “What has happened / To man’s best friend / Cherry blossoms fall.” It is clear that Isle of Dogs is not exploitation.

The soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat, who has now done the soundtrack for Anderson’s four most recent films, as well as last year’s The Shape of Water, follows the same pattern. It includes Taiko drumming, themes from Kurosawa movies (Seven Samurai, Drunken Angel), a few pieces of classical music and some psychedelic music from the 1960’s.

Some have accused Wes Anderson of racism for his appropriation of Japanese aesthetics and his apparently stereotypical portrayal of the Japanese people in the film, which is alleged to include a (sincere) “white savior” narrative. The first claim is groundless; Isle of Dogs is transformative and its aesthetic is totally it’s own. There is more merit to the second claim, however, and while I was watching the film I agreed. The Japanese accent is mockingly exaggerated and the most of the Japanese characters are totally flat besides their irrational and virulent hatred for man’s best friend. In this situation, Tracy Walker, a naively confident foreign exchange student, appears to be mutts’ only hope. However, when she and her classmates march on stage to protest dog-deportation during one of Mayor Kobayashi’s Hitler-esque speeches, her visa is publicly revoked and she is hilariously humiliated. In the end, it is in fact Atari who saves the day. Rather than perpetrate a “white savior” narrative, as Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times claims, Tracy’s storyline is in fact a critical parody of those narratives.

On another level, Isle of Dogs is a film made specifically for the Japanese people. As Moeko Fuji explains in her article for The New Yorker, “What ‘Isle of Dogs’ Gets Right About Japan,” the mostly-untranslated Japanese dialogue features many jokes and references that would only make sense to natives. Also, the amount of Japanese people involved in the production of the film is unprecedented. When critics like Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest calls it “racist” and “infuriatingly bad,” he fails to see how Isle of Dogs intentionally pokes fun at white people like him who think they know how a realistic portrayal of Japanese culture should be.

On the other hand, a few critics have overrated the film’s political impact. CJ Johnson of ABC Radio wrote that, “Anderson’s looking at war, retribution, notions of nationality and nationalism, isolationism, culture and individualism.” I don’t think it’s that deep; maybe I’m missing something.

★★★☆