Ohhh, boy!

Long Shot — 4/5 (rewatch)

This mostly-forgotten movie is a banger. I know the field of presidential comedies is thin, but this is the second best movie in the genre. (#1 being 'Dave', obvs (and Dave is also a top 50 movie of all time.)) It's got a low-key, relaxing charm throughout, and very clear chemistry between Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron. Their coupling isn't forced on us, it just happens naturally. She particularly is a revelation—I wouldn't say she's a great comedienne, but I think she understands comedy and timing well, and the movie knows well enough to not play her as outright funny. She's got Signourney Weaver in 'Dave' vibes—the class, the elegance, the stature—but even more comedic. Seth Rogen, in some sense, is the most annoying version of his character, loud, anxious, but the match-up works wonders to offset the other; he makes her more interesting, and she calms down his on-edges. A TBS New Classic, infinitely rewatchable, "a movie they don't make no more" (they do, people just don't watch it, and culture has lost the love-by-attrition that comes with playing a movie repeatedly on cable television. 'Dave' would have been just as passed over had it came out today.)

If we don't get no tolls, then we don't eat no rolls.

Robin Hood: Men In Tights — 5/5 (rewatch)

Why do I love the things I love? I do not know. So here is me trying to figure it out. There is so much about this movie that is stupid. Just bonkers-ass shit. Needless Home Alone parodies, awful puns, a guy named "Achoo" (bless you), Tracey Ullman. And yet, and yet, the whole thing just tickles the living shit out of me. This movie is another in a long line of movies that work in spite of everything on paper saying it shouldn't work. It's a miracle of movie-making. Is it casting? Everyone here is perfect. Why wasn't Cary Elwes a bigger star? He does drama, he does romance, he does comedy (both big and small). I love him. I'm in love with him? (Oh god.) I think, honestly, he carries a lot of the weight of the movie. He sets the tone, and he makes everything around him just work. But to pin it all on him is to discredit others—specifically Roger Rees and Megan Cavanaugh and Eric Allan Kramer. The movie features one of those four in every scene, so if I'm to take any lesson from this, I think it's not necessarily every person in the cast (though every person is wonderful), it's that you need to make sure there's a linchpin in every scene who is as perfect as possible. You've got to create the corners of your room, tracing an outline that you can work within.

A top 50 movie of all time.

Who is it obvious to?

Normal People — 3.5/5

I was invested in these idiots up until the last episode throws it all out the window. Paul Mescal has the best version I've seen of Guy Who Looks At Things, Unable To Speak His Heart's Desire. He reeks of anxiety and discomfort. In many ways, I see an older version of myself in the character! Unable to articulate; an inability to be normal. (But at least not ordinary, ho ho ho.) The only difference between he and I is intense beauty. I think that's core to the show's trick—it's a show for the ineffective intellectual, except these two are exceedingly handsome so it's both easier for everyone to watch and harder to understand why they can't be normal, given how well they seem to fit into the "wanted by others" mold. Throughout the show, they drive you crazy with how teenager they are, how they overthink and underthink, but their connection is real. They are at their best when they're together, and they both know it. So for the show to end with her pushing him to chase an ambition (which is never really explored (because he's so internal)), and for her to stay in a life she claims to enjoy (which is never really explored (because she's so internal)) feels like it wants to break your heart more than it wants to make sense. To a degree, I can see it; shy idiots, of which I once was and still retain a measure, don't have the confidence to know what's right for them, as they proved again and again throughout the series. But I don't think that fixes the ending, as it's not played that way. It plays them at the end as healthy. But healthy is embracing the thing that can fix you, not continuing to chase discomfort.

Preferably, I see this as a prequel to "Aftersun." That movie gives a better ending to Connell's character. Lost, adrift, still wanting an undefinable, with no way to piece it together, though it might be as simple as what's right in front of him.

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."

4/22/24, more—journalism, photojournalism, is what we choose to approach, what we choose to show. The president seems bad. But that final image, of them standing over his corpse, smiling? It seems wrong. With what you choose to show, you are always choosing a side. Images need context.

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.