What kind of American are you?

Civil War — 4/5

Cailee Spaeny being 25 years old is the most unrealistic thing about this. No way is that girl a day over 16. smdh. I, an Alex Garland fan, really enjoyed this. I even enjoyed 'Men'! I think the guy doesn't shy away from difficult set-ups and doesn't allow for easy ways out. I think the movie is about how journalists don't sit at the middle; they sit at both poles simultaneously. They are doing both something, and nothing. They're on the extreme of nothing by being closest to a place to help, but choosing not to, and they're on the extreme of something by putting their lives on the line so that information may travel from one place to another. They dangle themselves perilously close to either edge. "We record so other people ask" is the easy way out, and belies the trauma they go through due to the action and inaction. As the world is ripped in two, they tear themselves apart. "The end of our rope is a noose."

May you always be poor,

even when you're rich.

I would've been friends with Stalin if he had a Ping-Pong table.

Seinfeld S1 — 4/5

Look at me, I'm reviewing a 30-year old sitcom. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I never particularly thought it was funny way back when, but I also never really had friends to banter with. Now, I think, I just want friendships like this. A bunch of people to make mountains out of molehills. Everything is important and nothing is. I think watching Curb has helped me understand the show more. Larry David always has a smile on his face. So does Jerry Seinfeld; I always thought it was just bad acting, but it's really just a signal that everything's a joke, even the serious stuff. 

Wagwan.

Top Boy: Summerhouse S2 — 2.5/5

Feels boring in relation to the highs of last season. I think that primarily falls on never really figuring out who the main character is and what the main story was. Last season, it was clearly Ra'Nell. He's still around here, but almost out of obligation more than need or desire. (Also, the lack of 'Fuck Buttons' as musical cues hurts this something drastic, doesn't it?) Still curious to watch, but not with the momentum I had coming out of last season. 

The blessing

of the burden.

We go around saving lives, while ruining them at the same time.

Invincible S2 — 4/5

I think what works best for me in this series, which is pretty faithful to a comic that I'm a pretty big fan of, is that you can tell Mark Grayson is a genuinely good person. It makes good of its TV format to show him wandering around for 15 minutes absolutely destroyed by having lost control, or lingering on a break-up that neither person really wants. We've got time to see him deal with the hard reality of being powerful, and others dealing with the hard reality of being small in a world of powerful people. The seeming lightness of the show and its style and its voice actors is undercut by yes, the extreme violence, but also this current of sadness. People are hurt, lives are lost, and people carry the weight of it. The best thing you can do in comics or sci-fi or fantasy is to create a world, and here it is; a world where you want everyone to be happy, and understand why they can't be. 

Hearts and flowers.

This is Me... Now & The Greatest Love Story Never Told — 2/5

Look, this thing is more boring than it is bad. The music videos could easily find a home in 2002, and there's fun in that. The documentary paints her as vulnerable... and she is! As all great art accomplishes, it reveals her. It's just that what it reveals is someone who can't read the room. She's genuine, and I'm trying to figure out if I should attach "phony" at the end of that. I don't think so. I think she's a cringe-monster. If style is what you do with what you don't have, then J Lo is what happens when you have everything but taste. I'm going to break with Sontag, and define camp as something that is only achieved through lack of intention. Camp is effort without taste, that comes back around to being good because of its blatant inability combined with its over-reach forming something new and interesting. It's the other side of punk rock. If punk rock is feeling without ability, then camp is force without ability. (Force without feeling?) It's trying hard; to say something, but having nothing to say. This is camp. Boring camp, but camp.

I think sometimes they're just evil.

Do Revenge — 1/5

All aesthetics, no style. Slow-ass, Netflix-ass 'built for second screen'-ass shit. Everyone here is an asshole and they all get away with it. We are in the Age of Assholes. 

Safe, fam.

Top Boy: Summerhouse S1 — 4/5

Across four episodes, this thing made me sick to my stomach exactly twice. It's not necessarily that I had fallen in love with any characters, but the notion that someone decent was going to get hurt filled me with dread, if not outright made me kind of rageful? I don't like mafia/gangster stuff because I think it turns awful people into heroes, but at least with the first season, it's the right balance of 'yes, these people are awful, and good people get hurt in the pursuit of selfish gains.' The show builds its anxiety not with that Safdie brothers shit, chaos through chaos, but through simpler means, and specifically through music, which I think the Safdies took cues from—the drone-y electronic music of 'Fuck Buttons' draws a clear line through to Oneothrix Point Never, and it's a great well to have pulled from.

Come and get me if it rains.

Broker — 3/5

An interesting premise and all-around solid cast that is constantly interrupted by the most maudlin musical cues. The sounds cheapen it. It's not overly emotional, but the soundtrack wants you to think it is. The tones clash. That, and a needlessly complex ending that doesn't really come together with what came before. It's a simple movie. It would have been better to keep it that way. 

Wine comes in at the mouth

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

—William Butler Yeats, A Drinking Song

I am a massive deal.

Mean Girls: The Musical — 1/5

I didn't like the original. I didn't like the Broadway play. And because I'm insane, I try again. Nickelodeon-ass aesthetic. Netflix-ass director. Children's music-ass songs. "It's not as good as the original," I say. This movie makes me an apologist for a movie I don't even like. 

You shit, you split.

Dave (Season 3) — 3/5

This season, it just became tiring. It was still fun, but in spurts. If my memory serves—and it doesn't, really—I think S1 and S2 ended up as great because there was a secondary story about Ally or GaTa, which helped to sideline Dave necessarily. He's a bit much!! We need a break from him. This season, we get Robyn, but she's just not as interesting, so there's nothing to share the weight with Dave. The last episode got to an interesting place—what's the line between ambitious and crazy—and that could've been dragged out all season. But it didn't! They could have built a stronger line there. Dave doesn't love another, he doesn't love himself—he loves ambition. His god is higher and higher. 

God loves you.

But not that much.

Who could ever leave me, darling? But who could stay?

Taylor Swift: Eras Tour 2013, Pittsburgh PA — 3/5

I think what's interesting about Taylor Swift is that here is a person who is seemingly so baring in her music, yet every time we see her, we wish there was more to who she was. Like meeting any artist, I guess, and thinking they have so much more to say than what they've put down on the page, if you could just ask the right probing question. I think that's the struggle with being an artist, perhaps? You are looking to connect, but it can only ever be a one-sided conversation, which you've already had with yourself and laid out across a movie, or a book, or a three-hour concert. The artist on the album is different from the artist you meet. That artist is practiced; cultivated; performed. It has become an act. Despite her putting every inch of her life on tape, I keep searching for who she actually is.