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“Popcorn, soda and some Junior mints came to $85?”

Room at the top

If you love all kinds of movies, and you haven’t seen The Room, your life has been incomplete.

Written, directed by and starring the legendary Tommy Wiseau, it’s the greatest bad movie ever made. This is how great its badness is: The Rifftrax (the movie-bashing bastard stepchild of Mystery Science Theater 3000) for the movie, where people yell insults at the screen as it plays, is actually annoying. You just want Mike Nelson and friends to shut up and let the pure experience of The Room wash over you. No riff is funnier than what is happening in the actual movie.

James Franco does Tommy Wiseau a cinematic honor with The Disaster Artist in much the same way Tim Burton glorified shlockmeister Ed Wood over 20 years ago. Franco directs and stars as Tommy, complete with the awesome long vampire black hair and chipmunk cheeks that comprise “the Wiseau.” He also nails the Wiseau mystery accent. (While his IMDB profile says he was born in 1955 and comes from Poland, nobody seems to really know Wiseau’s true background).

For the first time in a movie, Franco costars with brother Dave, who gets one of his best roles yet as the also legendarily bad Greg Sestero, friend to Tommy and costar in The Room. The film starts in San Francisco, with Greg struggling to remember lines in a savagely bad acting class attempt at Waiting for Godot. Strange classmate Tommy lumbers onto the stage to butcher a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire, and a friendship is born. The two agree to work on scenes together, bond in their lousiness and, thanks to Wiseau’s strange and unexplained apparent wealth, move to Los Angeles to fulfill their dreams to become actors.

After a stretch of unsuccessful auditions, the pair decide to make their own movie, and this is where the film really takes off. Fans of The Room will rejoice in hilarious recreations of such iconic moments as “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!” and “Oh, hi Mark!” The supporting cast includes Franco pal Seth Rogen as cranky script supervisor Sandy, Zac Efron as the actor who portrayed the oddly named Chris R in The Room, and Ari Graynor as the actress who brought the majestic Lisa, Tommy’s onscreen sweetheart, to life. Josh Hutcherson plays the actor who would be Denny, perhaps the most unintentionally frightening character in Wiseau’s movie. Sharon Stone, Hannibal Buress, Melanie Griffith and Randall Park also appear.

The Disaster Artist—which is actually based on the book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made co-written by Sestero—is heartwarming for multiple reasons. It’s fun to see a misfit make it, even though it’s in a roundabout sort of way, and it’s fun to see that accomplishment depicted by the Franco brothers. It’s about time these guys did something together. May it be the first of many future collaborations.

When Franco’s Wiseau watches the final cut of The Room with a rambunctious crowd that loves/ hates his movie, James Franco delivers some of the best acting of his career on multiple levels. Onscreen, he’s doing a spot-on impersonation of Wiseau—odd accent, bizarre facial expressions, and horrific writhing naked ass during an exquisitely bad sex scene.

In the audience, Wiseau sheds tears as everybody around him mocks his movie. Franco succeeds in making us feel terrible for the guy.

That sadness disappears quickly, replaced by euphoria as the crowd cheers his trash masterpiece, and Wiseau embraces the notoriety. By the time the film wraps, it hits you that Franco has somehow made one of the better feel-good movies of the year.

Make sure to stay for the credits, where Franco plays his recreations of scenes from The Room next to Wiseau’s originals. The scenes sync up almost perfectly, and are so good I often found myself confused as to which was which. Wiseau himself shows up after the credits for what turns out to be the movie’s best cameo. Ω

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1Justice League Justice League is a full-blown, expensive mess where our favorite superheroes battle an apocalyptic force while two seriously different directors, Zack Snyder and Joss Weldon, battle with their filmmaking styles. It’s no big secret that Zack Snyder (who created two execrable duds with Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) had to leave late in production. Joss Whedon (The Avengers) stepped in for post-production and major reshoots. The result is a catastrophe. The action picks up after the death of Superman (Henry Cavill), with Batman (Ben Affleck) still brooding while observing Gotham being invaded by bug-like alien creatures. It turns out they’re the envoys of Steppenwolf, the worst special effects/CGI bad guy you will see ever in a blockbuster. To do battle with the otherworldly forces, Batman calls upon the likes of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and a resurrected Superman. Gadot still rocks as Wonder Woman in her every moment on screen, and Miller makes for a fun Flash. Affleck seems a bit tired of the Batman role. Momoa is just a wisecracker Aquaman, and Fisher is dreary as Cyborg. Cavill’s Superman is marred by some bad digital work involving the removal of a mustache he had during filming. His face is all messed up. It’s time to scrap everything but Gadot and Miller, and start the whole thing over.

5Lady Bird Greta Gerwig makes her solo directorial debut with a semi-autobiographical look at her life growing up in Sacramento, California and she immediately establishes herself as a directing force to be reckoned with. Saoirise Ronan, who should’ve won an Oscar for Brooklyn, will likely get another chance for her turn as Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, a Sacramento youth with an artistic yearning for the East Coast and some distance between her and her domineering mom (Laurie Metcalf). This is a coming-of-age story like no other thanks to the insightful writing and brisk directorial style of Gerwig, who makes Lady Bird’s story a consistently surprising one. Ronan’s Lady Bird is a rebel with a good heart, a theater geek who stinks at math, and an emotional rollercoaster. She also gets a lot of laughs, especially in her showdowns with Metcalf, who has never been better. Lucas Hedges, on a roll after Manchester By the Sea and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is funny and sad as one of Lady Bird’s young love interests, while Odeya Rush is golden as Lady Bird’s best friend, Jenna. Tracy Letts is perfect as the nice dad dealing with warring factions in the household, while Timothy Chalamet (currently racking up awards for Call Me By Your Name) gets perhaps the biggest laughs as aloof other love interest, Kyle. This one is a triumph for Ronan and Gerwig, and, while it would never happen, I’d love to see a sequel about Lady Bird’s college years.

3The Man Who Invented Christmas In 1843, when Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, folks were just getting into that thing we call the holidays, with stuff like Christmas trees and gift giving. Dickens’s novel about a miserable miser named Ebenezer Scrooge, who transforms from an evil, greedy monster to a kind philanthropist throughout its five chapters, helped take the celebration of Christmas to a new level of tradition. The boldly titled The Man Who Invented Christmas spins an entertaining and clever take on how and why Dickens got the idea for the story that would change the world. Coming off a couple of flops after the success of his Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) is doing clumsy book tours to pay the bills. Desperate for a “hit,” he gets an idea for a Christmas book, one in which a greedy man is haunted by ghosts of the past, present and future. The story is meant to be a cautionary yarn about the evils of selfishness, and perhaps less about the joys of Christmas and redemption. As Dickens gets further into his book—and his own psyche—the theme changes to one of hope, and his classic is born. Director Bharat Nalluri, working from a screenplay by Susan Coyne, based on the book by Les Standiford, gets the unique opportunity to tell the making of A Christmas Carol while, in some ways, making yet another version of the famed story itself. The film features Dickens conferring with the fictional characters in his story as he creates them, so we get an Ebenezer Scrooge, this time played by the great Christopher Plummer. Of course, he winds up being perfect for the role.

5Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri This marks the third film—and the third masterpiece—for writer-director Martin McDonagh. It also marks another astonishing film achievement for Frances McDormand, who will bore into your chest cavity and do all kinds of crazy shit to your heart as Mildred, a justifiably pissed off mother who has a few issues with the cops in her town. It’s been five years since Mildred’s young daughter was raped and killed by unknown murderers, who finished their awful deed by burning her body. Mildred, who isn’t even close to getting over the tragedy, spies some old, dilapidated billboards on the way home and gets an idea. One meeting with a sloppy advertising agent (Caleb Landry Jones) later, and some guys are commissioned to put some alarmingly provocative signs up on those billboards. Woody Harrelson is first rate as the man being called out in those billboards for not finding the killers. Harrelson’s 2017 has been astoundingly good. Sam Rockwell gets the high-profile acting showcase he deserves as racist deputy Dixon. Rockwell’s Dixon, the town drunk and racist homophobe who has a thing for throwing people out of windows, undergoes a transformation that is a kind of movie miracle. McDonagh knows how to write a script that keeps you in it for every line. While the film is somewhat a murder mystery, the solving of the crime takes a back seat to watching these folks play off each other. There are scenes in this movie that will knock you on the floor. The whole cast is incredible; McDormand and Rockwell will both destroy you.

4Thor: Ragnarok Somebody was smoking some laced wild shit and licking frogs when they put together Thor: Ragnarok, a film so nutty it easily surpasses the Guardians of the Galaxy films as the screwiest offering in the Marvel universe. When you hand the keys to the Thor franchise over to a director like Taika Waititi, you know you are going to get something bizarre. Waititi is the New Zealand comic actor/director responsible for the hilarious vampire faux documentary What We Do in the Shadows and the funny family drama Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Borrowing from a host of Marvel comics, including the famed “Planet Hulk” storyline, the hallucinogenic plot drops Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on a crazy garbage planet bent on roundthe-clock, violent entertainment and led by Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum, finally getting a high-profile role worthy of him outside of a Wes Anderson film). The Grandmaster cuts Thor’s hair, dresses him in gladiator gear, and throws him into the ring for a weaponized bout with his prized competitor. That prized competitor is the Hulk, held captive on the planet for the past couple of years. He’s been nothing but the Hulk the whole time, with Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) trapped inside him. Thor and Hulk have a battle royale for the ages, followed by some great scenes where the Hulk actually speaks. There’s a whole other apocalyptic subplot going on, where Thor’s long-lost sister Hela (a striking and devilish Cate Blanchett decked out in black) is causing major havoc on his home planet of Asgard. Blanchett immediately sets herself high in the ranking of Marvel movie villains. She’s played a baddie before, but never this entertainingly.