Monday, March 18, 2024

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. 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

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. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

God loves you.

But not that much.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

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. 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Trying to do better.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (rewatch) — 3.5/5

On the other side of the spectrum is this one, where I was fucking on the edge of my seat while watching it the first time, but it can't maintain the high in the rewatch. As opposed to 'Endgame,' which was a firm hand bringing together all the threads of the last 10 years, this feels like flailing blindly for anything to make it feel important. Exciting at the time!! But the seams show. Dr. Strange is the new Iron Man in how reckless he is. Aunt May dies, but at the hands of someone who doesn't have the same relevance for this version of Peter Parker. When Tobey and Andrew show up, it's a ton of fun, but also doesn't make a ton of sense. With all the fun from the past, less time is devoted to the world and characters that have been created in the past two movies. To some degree—fuck it! It's fan service and I'm a fan. Andrew saving MJ is great, and Tobey stopping Tom from making a huge mistake is so lovely. At the core of this movie is a Peter Parker who wants to be better—who wants to be good; who wants to save everyone. The ending of this movie is the most Peter Parker-ass thing I've ever seen and I love it. We want desperately for him to be happy, but the weight of power, and responsibility, is that that can never be guaranteed. He's gonna have to carry that weight. 

Monday, March 4, 2024

What's up, dickwad?

Spider-Man: Far From Home – 4/5 (rewatch)

I think each new Marvel movies became to be viewed in light of the picture of the future it was painting. But now that all the big stuff has kinda happened, there's a chance to view these things as to whether or not they're just fun to keep rewatching. I think at the time, I could imagine that this movie was thought of as a return to normalcy after the events of 'Endgame.' At the time, it only felt small in comparison. The Marvel movies had just gotten bigger and bigger until biggest, and so this felt like a step backwards from the pure excitement of it all. But with a rewatch, this movie just cements Tom Holland as my preferred take on Spider-Man. The guilt that haunts him is countered by just wanting one good thing to go his way—but the Parker luck keeps showing up, and so Spider-Man has to keep showing up. But also—these movies show that being Spider-Man is fun. Tom Holland zipping Zendaya through the sky is the best feeling of what it's like to swing from webs—his costume gets in the way of showing the pure fear and pure thrill of it all, so we get to see it through MJ's eyes. Tom Holland is funny. Everyone around him is funny. The movie as a whole is bigger than I remembered, and more interconnected than I remember, but also it's the superhero equivalent of a teen road trip movie. Despite all the links to everything else, as with the Spider-Man comics, it's created an entire universe within a universe. 

People in other countries speak easily of being early, late.

Some will live to be eighty.

Some who never saw it

will not forget your face.

— Naomi Shihab Nye, For the 500th Dead Palestinian, Ibtisam Bozieh

Sunday, March 3, 2024

I hate catchy choruses, and I'm a hypocrite.

Bo Burnham: Words Words Words — 2.5/5

I'm glad I get to work my way backwards through his career rather than forwards. If I had watched this without having already liked him, I might have felt more aversion to him. Here, in his youngest form, he goes for easy jokes and message board humor, of which I am familiar. It's the same sense I get from the first half of Shane Gillis' special, which is the only amount of that that I cared to watch. But, liking him, I can laugh only occasionally but also use this instead to see the arc of his personality. He lays his thesis right out at the front: "What is funny?" His cries for attention are still forming into cries for help. He's clearly smart, he's clearly clever, he just doesn't know how to hold the audience in the palm of his hand yet. Caught between himself and an audience. His later shows became even more one man show, almost ignoring the audience entirely until they were gone completely. 

Friday, March 1, 2024

If there weren't, what are all the songs about?

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs — 3.5/5

I revisited this because a friend loves it, and thinks everything in it is a unique take on death. But despite going in with that lens, I had a different view of each episode. Likely because of my love for 'Hail, Caesar!'—which is about the disconnect between the pain of creation and the joy of the creation—I couldn't help but to see each segment as a view on the creative process. The titular ballad is about making a name for yourself and standing out, only to be outdone by the next thing that comes along (fitting that this is their first movie for Netflix... spending a career understanding the world they're in until sudddenly—they don't.). No matter how good you get, you'll build a reputation that is misunderstood and misrepresented and ultimately shortlived, as eventually always a new creative power comes along that seems even more natural, even more powerful."Near Algodones" is about criticism ("Pan shot!"), and how each failure feels like a public hanging, while each successive hanging feels less and less important—"First time?" And often creatives are hanged for the wrong crime—say, their last movie was unduly loved, so their next movie has to suffer accordingly. "Meal Ticket" is about being thrown away once your creativity is used up. You are loved because you are new, but newness never lasts. "All Gold Canyon" is about working hard to find your own unique creative "pocket," only for someone else to come and rip it off without the effort of finding it. It's the ego wound of the creative soul. "The Gal Who Got Rattled" is about the creative process being much like crossing the desert. You have to trust people, you have to bargain with people. It's hard and you don't exactly know what you'll find when you get there. And not everyone is built for it nor can survive it. "Uncertainty. That is appropriate for matters of this world." And "The Mortal Remains" is obviously about death, and all of these movies are about death, yes, to the point of the re-watching, but also this short makes me feel less crazy for thinking everything is about creativity. The man asks — "Did they succeed? How would I know. I'm only watching." You can't know if a director has successfully told the story they want to tell because you can only see it through your eyes. And the storyteller will never know how the story will be perceived. You can't play poker with someone else's hand reminds me of the "you can't wake up if you're not asleep" line from "Asteroid City," which is to me another movie about the creative process. The characters in the ferry tell tedious stories, self-righteous stories, entertaining stories, and moral stories, and that's reflected throughout the movie. Is the story boring because it's boring—or was it told boring? Or was it received as boring? "They connect the stories to themselves, I suppose, and we all love hearing about ourselves, so long as the people in the stories are us, but not us." The movie is all about what stories we tell, how we tell them, and how they reflect us, or don't, and how we'll talk about them when we walk out of the theater. All art is a mirror, reflecting you back onto yourself. Hard then for a director to tell you a story that reflects them.

Maybe fitting that this, "Hail, Caesar!," and "Inside Llewyn Davis" were their last three movies together. The brothers keep talking about the discontent of the creative process. Is creating joy worth the pain of creation? Maybe fitting that the brother dies in "The Gal Who Got Rattled" and she, too, dies in a similarly abrupt way. Maybe they're saying goodbye to each other, while also being afraid of what this world is like without each other. But whatever it takes to create that sense of new adventure. Anyway. I'm a Coen Brothers conspiracy theorist. Forgive me.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

And now he's on his own, and he's not the only one.

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Who's the monster?

Echo — 2.5/5

The first episode was compelling! I was in for the ride! It was a chance to see my friends from 'Reservation Dogs' again, and it at times touched on the tone from that series. And it was a show where not only is the lead a deaf Native woman with one leg, but a show where she can't read lips, so 80% of the show has to be communicated through sign language. It's a great choice!! And an invisible shield Marvel gets to wrap around them that says "look, we are diverse." But ultimately the whole series felt like a longer show that was forced to conclusion. Things just wrap up, and Maya is forced into a superhero context where she did not need to belong. Interesting characters appear and disappear and come back for no reason, and the bulk of the show of course falls on the lead actress, who can do anger and resentment, but not much else. The show leans into that but then, at the end, a smile crosses her face, seemingly for the first time in her life, and she does not belong there either. She can play the villain, but I just don't buy her as the hero.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

A new language for normal.

Great Photo, Lovely Life — 3.5/5

It's a brave thing to put your family on blast. Not just the devil at the center, but the lesser demons who don't even realize they're demons. The movie quickly paints the grandfather in poor light, but it continues to shine that light on his surroundings, and the people who, through inaction or willful blindness, allowed his reign of terror. It's a certain amount of brave to blast the easy evil. It's a bravery beyond that to point fingers at your own mom. She's a nice lady. But all involved are complicit. And that I think is Amanda's only failing—not being able to spot her own blind spot. Yes, she is making sure everyone knows who her grandpa is. But she still calls him grandpa. She still says 'I love you.' If she can do that, then it's just a short leap to what her mother did. It becomes easier to rationalize or explain away. Love distorts. It's like looking through flames. But if you're committed to exposing the truth of the larger world, that also means exposing the truth of your immediate world; that also means exposing yourself. The tapestry of that larger world and all its horrors starts at home. 

Monday, February 26, 2024

Someone has a great fire in his soul…

and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.

— Van Gogh

You look totally different, but it's still you.

All Of Us Strangers — 3/5

There's something new here. In its conceit, it's found an easy way to tug on heart strings. To view your parents at your age, as the age they were? Adult conversations between mother and father and child without the constant 20, 30, 40-year difference; finally equals, and with an understanding that they don't belong here, so no need to guard the conversations. It's an idea that could easily fit into a Christian movie network but here, placed out of that context, it can be taken seriously. Unfortunately, that newness and easy emotional connection is dragged down by Andrew Scott's sad potato sack. He's Joaquin Phoenix in 'Her,' and that early 2000s bullshit of shy guys who don't know how to connect so they just look at things. Fortunately, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell and Paul Mescal inject the movie with life every time they appear, working double-shift to fill the hole on the other side. And so the movie does connect, sometimes in spite of itself. But then it goes beyond what it is, to make something even more new, though I can't for the life of me figure out how intentional it is. I think this movie goes from a beautiful ghost story to a full-on horror movie. There is no easy segue between real life and fantasy. It all just exists at once. At first we can wave it away as a writer exploring a thought, but then it becomes full-fledged psychological horror; a crazy person going about their life, seemingly finding closure before coming home at the end to fully embrace that craziness. The end of the movie—their two bodies intertwined as they become a star in a constellation—seems like it wants to be hope, but it just feels like descent. I'm sure there's a read on this movie that can get me to change my mind, but it seems to me a movie about the security of insanity, delivered as a good thing, and I can't go all the way with that.