How broken I am.

Dear Evan Hansen – 1/5

The criticism gets piled on how the main actor looks when I think the pointing fingers should follow the line all the way down the spine of this thing. I'd love to stop at the notch called 'Stephen Chbosky' because boy oh boy is he a bad filmmaker who makes bad choices: Ben Platt's hair, Ben Platt's hunched shoulders, Ben Platt's moist upper lip, the anxiety-induced breathlessness in Ben Platt's songs that at least doesn't seem to be there in the original cast soundtrack; the complete lack of artistry apparent in everything he's ever done. But I think the finger has to keep going further back and through to the source material: cloying, optimistic, believe-in-yourself songs placed in the mouths of awful people who are doing awful things. There is dissonance here, and I can not bring the two things together in my mind.

To commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant.

A Chorus Line – 2/5

If I squint, I can see why this might have been powerful on stage. Unfortunately, the music. 

I hated it, but I wasn't interested in it enough to listen to it again to find out why.

Yesterday – 1.5/5

I watched this because I tend to be surprised by Danny Boyle as a director. He tries new things. All the new things he tries here are bad. The movie posits that a world without the Beatles is a world that's infinitely worse and no, it's a world that's very much the same actually. What it instead puts forward is a newfound appreciation of the Beatles if only in knowing that everything they made could have been exactly what was, but worse. Musicians with talent enough to be good, but not great. If history was made by a bad cover version. Beyond that—Himesh Patel carries constantly a look of confusion and constrainment that gives me anxiety, and his love interest is someone who asks a man who has devoted his life to music to instead choose her at his moment of ascension. Pffbt. 

Do not forget who put the crown on your childish head.

300: Rise of an Empire - .5/5

Did you know this movie cost over $100,000,000 to make? That's hilarious. 

I watched this movie by accident when the Greek tour guide, showing us the Thermopylae pass, wanted to expose us also to the historical and emotional context of the battle of 300 Spartans using the power of cinema; only he bought the wrong movie and so showed a brutally violent and explicitly sexual movie to a group of aging church-goers. ¯\ _(ツ)_/¯ An even worse imitation of a rotting fruit; Zack Snyder's grunt-rock aesthetic gets even uglier, even stupider, and—the anecdote at top notwithstanding—somehow even cheaper. 

We don't get a lot of things to really care about.

Pig – 3/5

I feel like the impetus of this was 'can we start from a premise as stupid as John Wick, and be as well-made?' And it is, and it is. Blood and bullets become herbs and spices. An assassin hotel becomes an underground chef fighting ring. It's a Microsoft Word find-and-replace script. I remember every bullet meal I ever shot cooked. I remember every person I ever killed served. And friends, long-time readers, movie fans—I truly have nothing against this method of moviemaking. Idiocy, taken seriously, is my chef's kiss 😘. It's just that it's taken so seriously. So seriously. There is a balance that was lost. John Wick 2 and 3 showed what a miracle John Wick 1 was. And so here, too, lies another in its shadow.

You can't be ugly except to people who don't understand.

Beginners – 2.5/5

Ah, the 20th Century Women cinematic universe. That movie made me want to be a Mike Mills fan, but in the thinly-autobiographical this (and the equally uninteresting C'mon C'mon), the only thing I find I'm a fan of is his mother. Whether as Annette Bening, as Mary Page Keller, or as Gaby Hoffman, the mothers are the only ones who have any spark, any mystery, anything worth knowing. Christopher Plummer is just Old Gay Man. Ewan McGregor is just Sad Man In Love. Mélanie Laurent is just a French Object. In 20th Century, there was a whole life.

That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore.

 In The Mood For Love – 3/5

Listen, friends, I will appreciate the artistry on display—the pretty pictures, a lack of lingering when someone else most certainly would have lingered, in love with their own work; the ability to paint a portrait with broader strokes than most—but this was not meant for me. I cannot abide a romance with no humor; a romantic- with no -comedy. What's fucking without the fun? You may disagree! And that sets us apart. 

And leaves the world to darkness

and to me.

— Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray

The purpose of growing is to get bigger,

not smaller.

Where do you go

to find yourself again.

A place

that calls us back.