Honey babe.

Drive-Away Dolls — 1.5/5

I don't think I realized how sad it was to see the Coen Bros. break up until I saw this. What a pale imitation! What a lacking! And yet, there are times when you can see what one brother clearly brought to the team, if only to then off-set that with something uninteresting. There's a very short car crash sequence that's about as fun-with-cameras as you've see with them, but that's mixed with some of the worst editorial decisions you've ever seen from them. Margaret Qualley is out here trying to have a good time, as good as anything in their lighter comedies—but she's paired with a poor man's Ayo Adebiri who cannot go tit nor tat with her energy, and leaves you constantly questioning why these two people would even be friends, much less romantic partners. It feels like someone watched a Coen Brothers movie and said 'yeah yeah, I get it, some quirky characters with competing traits, some off-color jokes taken seriously.' Bleh. It makes you realize that half of one thing isn't still worth half, it's just a broken thing, worth almost next to nothing.

Yeah, I had a great past, I'm fine.

Thunderbolts* — 3/5

It's two movies: a darker movie about depression and anxiety and mental illness through the guise of a superhero movie... and then a light buddy team-up comedy! One of these works! And works well enough that I walk away disappointed that the other side didn't work as well (or even needed to be there at all?). The comedy is technically there, the action scenes are technically there, but it lacks an energy. (Frankly, it's the same lacking I felt in 'Beef'? The end-credits scene directed by the Russo's has a back-and-forth liveliness that the rest of the movie never really captured.) It's trying to be a big tent-pole blockbuster but the smaller parts of the movie befit it better. Florence Pugh is great, and is the most defined characters and motivations of these post-Endgame superheroes. She just wants to matter! But she's also small, in relation to the larger Marvel Universe. But at least that's understood. She's the core of the movie, and only some of the people she's paired with fit her mold. Red Guardian, USAgent, Sentry all fit inside her world, and the movie would have been fine to just focus on them. But it needs to be bigger, so it adds Ghost, who's barely there (that's a pun!!), and Winter Soldier, who I love but who's lost all character motivation, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is fine but doesn't add to the larger theme of the movie. And the too-many-people just don't gel which, sure, is the joke at the center of the movie, but I don't really like that joke. But, as with the best of these things, there was enough in here to like, and these are characters I'd like to see again.

The Math

That Moves Like A Man.

It doesn't go anywhere. You see the same things over and over. So you might as well get off.

Babylon — 2/5

Yeah yeah, you like making movies about the pros and cons of being an artist. Listen, I love that as a theme!!! I think it's great!! But where La La Land and Whiplash (which has grown in my eyes since my so-so review) manage to capture the greatness underlined with unhappiness, the trade-off that has to occur, the deal at the crossroads with the relative devils to live fulfilled but still unsatisfied lives... here it's just trainwreck. There's no sense of the highness that comes with the low, the low that are capable of highs, the majesty at the swamp. The first thirty minutes, arguably, can speak to that, but it's all just hedonistic excess, the party you want to be invited to, blown pupils from staring directly into the light, but it doesn't feel like the world I want to be a part of, so despite my enjoyment of the energy, it doesn't hook me and then when the rest of the movie tears the hook out of the fish's mouth, I in turn don't feel the pain that I think he wants me to feel. Maybe it's just a problem for me. I think your enjoyment of the movie comes down to whether you'd want to be at the party at the beginning of the movie. It's not for me. And so it's that album the artist makes after they're rich and famous and all they talk about is how much money they have and how hard it is to be famous. True, for them, and for some, but they've crossed into the void of unrelatability. In the end, it's just a bigger and lesser version of 'Hail, Caesar!'; it's final scene a poor approximation of 'Cinema Paradiso.' It's the Cary Grant quote about the trolley. It's a collage of all the worst things about the things you love.

Also, I feel bad for Margot Robbie. I feel like she's a genuinely great actress, and she does a good job in everything she's in, but the worlds around her rarely match up to what she's bringing to it, and this one doesn't fit her at all. She's outside of time and space.

Chaos

which through randomness offers beauty and clarity, and therefore isn't random at all.

Artists create the world.

Critics shape it.

We can be the good guys, or we can be the guys who save the world.

Invincible S3 — 3.5/5

There's an adage in comics that Peter Parker can't win for losing. "With great power must also come great responsibility" drives his character, but 60 years of stories are driven by the simple story trick of "every time something goes right, something goes wrong." I love it. And I don't think Spider-Man owns that trick; as seen on this show!! The one we're talking about right now!! Mark Grayson is Spider-Man vis-a-vis Superman, a normal guy with immense power who just needs to pay his rent and go out with girls, all while the world falls down around him. It's a great premise, and I could watch it play out for 60+ years.

The world is coming.

Court of Gold — 3.5/5

This is a small thing, and a mostly foregone conclusion, but the show is just a nice hagiography on people who love their country, and the game of basketball. I don't know if I loved the series as much as I just like everyone in it more than I did going in. Hard-ass shit-talker Kevin Durant crying about how much basketball means to him reshapes him entirely in my mind. But it's that "mostly foregone conclusion" that makes for interesting television. The series serves as a signal that the world's caught up; this feels like a final hurrah not just for aging basketball players, but for America on this particular stage. It gets harder from here.

We all have ADHD, and anything else would be boring as hell.

The Pitt — 4/5

Jesus Christ, I love this fucking show. It feels like addiction. You understand why these people have trouble coming into work, and then leaving, because everything is important all of the time, everyone needs you; everywhere demands your attention. It's those moments at work where I'm addicted to the little red circle on Slack or Outlook that demand my immediate response. Breaking away only means having to catch up later, so you just sit there, responding, responding, responding; better to be in the motions of it than having to re-find the groove. Better to skip a meal, better to hold in your piss, better to not have a life beyond this. Only, unlike my pissant job, someone could actually die! The show is a natural place for drama, most of it feels unforced, and even in those times when it feels like it's adding drama for drama's sake, the energy of the show just makes you forget it. It's life or death! What better way to find out who these people are?

Nah, I'll do it, but... get it together.

Catastrophe S1 — 3.5/5

I have such a raging hard-on for likeable people being likeable together. It's high stakes treated like low stakes, and a tone that I can only describe as affability. I like these people, and like having them in my life. And the final minutes of the final episode are a wonderful rug pull. It was the thing we choose not to see in others because they just seem so good together.

If you don't know where to go, go where you're needed.

Shoresy S4 — 3.5/5

With the loss of Jacob Tierney behind the camera, the first few episodes started to feel like a lesser version of itself. The cinematic language was part of the success of the show, and in the course of finding its footing, it stumbles. It threatens for a bit to be the worst of Letterkenny, just catchphrase-spouting hooligans, riding on what worked before, but as with every season thus far, it surprises you with how deep it's willing to go. By the end of the season, my criticism of those earlier episodes fell away, and Shoresy, as it always does, finds purpose in something larger than itself / himself.

There is no such thing as a friendly ghost!

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 — 2/5

The previous two movies have floated atop 'this is better than it should be'; low expectations being its main driver of success, along with a surprisingly game Jim Carrey doing evil Ace Ventura. Those low expectations have unfortunately now just become expectations, and the movie doesn't meet them. (That's the mathematical formula, sorry.) Everyone's just here, saying stuff, hoping funny voices make for a funny movie. It wants to float on personality but doesn't have much character to back it up.

I am just happy to be at the table.

White Lotus S3 — 3/5

As with before, the show's little cheat is that not every story needs to be worthwhile in order for it to be overall worth watching. It just needs to release a bunch of balloons into the air and hopefully one or two pop. But this time, it became harder to disconnect the stories from each other—for both good and ill. Characters walked in and out and among the other contestants, as though they might actually influence each others lives. But the closer together they were tied made it seem like they would all thematically align into a tidy little bouquet. Is it about money? Spirituality? Are you your form? Maybe? Sure? Sometimes? But no, it's just a few different stories that take place at the same place and same time. I think, unfortunately, the only thing that connected them was the game of "who's going to die?," death casting its long shadow over the show. It made the show fun! But it made the show worse, I think. So, to bring it back down to the individual stories, this season doesn't hit the highs of season 2. A nice beginning here, a nice ending there, but also a lot of interesting actors doing interesting things to kill the time. I will crown the winner as The Ratliff family, who were a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Who's gonna step up when it happens to us?

Severance S2 — 4.5/5

This continues to be compelling television!! I often long for the feeling of watching 'Lost' in its weekly airings—not only must you be there for the water-cooler conversations, but there's a compelling need to be there when it happens. A great thing only happens once: as it's happening. This entire show is Tom Waits' "What's he BUILDING in there?" played on loop. But, despite it only being two weeks since the finale, I've lost the individual threads of what I've enjoyed, which is just a function of my memory. So I can't really add anything useful to any sort of discussion of what I enjoyed. So then I'll probably revisit this when I rewatch it in preparation for season 3. Which is itself perhaps the highest compliment.

Fallen out

of meaning.