I hate you.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie — 2/5

It's crushing the amount of talent that goes into a movie as mediocre as this. It's a Funko Pop model of a movie. It's a highlight reel of 'that thing that you're vaguely aware of from having been exposed to Mario games for the past umpteen years'. Blocks and mushrooms and stars and pipes and toads. But it's most fun when it touches on things we haven't seen in Mario before: an extended family! A plumbing business in peril! Big brothers looking after little brothers! A Bowser in love! Mushroom Kingdom invading New York City! Listing them out here I'm like okay, that's a decent amount of fun to be had. But it's too busy hitting all the bullet points to linger anywhere new. Whenever a joke lands (I particularly enjoy Seth Rogen's Donkey Kong's context-less 'I hate you'), it just makes me wish everything around it could pick up that same energy. It made almost as much money as Barbie, and is the exact opposite. "Give them what they want: nothing to complain about." Mario is simple. Barbie is complex. Here are your two paths, children—both hold equal weight. Please make the right choie. 

Kick off your Sunday shoes.

Blue Beetle — 3.5/5

Music and typography and blue and pink stylistic choices give it a superficial air of the 80s, but—also—there's something inherently 80s inside of it. 'The 80s', in movie terms, is I think not so much a decade as it is a style. Not rooted in nostalgia but pointing towards the types of choices that were made in that decade. 'The Cutting Edge', 1992, is an 80s movie. 'Thor: Ragnarok', 2017, is an 80s movie. This movie is an 80s movie. A return to an optimism that was replaced by the 90s' cynicism and irony and subjugating expectations in the pursuit of clever. It's not lightness in the face of heaviness (Joss Whedon, 'The 90s'), but lightness that sells the heaviness when it comes. It's a surprising amount of emotional weight over plot weight. Early Marvel movies carried that well. Though I decried the lack of a good villain at the time, those early Marvel movies (Iron Man 1, Captain America 1—both 80s movies) still work because it's all about the weight our heroes carry, and the choices they may or may not make. They created a world that you want to return to, but also you never needed to return to: what you already have here is fine. The larger world was assumed. The superhero had a cool costume. The characters were likeable. I had fun in a movie theater. 

—

Sidenote: Die Hard was the first 90s movie. In these next two pages, I will—

We're looking for someone

to take the blame.

Can you be Good

 and be Happy at the same time?

Ladies and gentlemen,

the horrifying creepers.

"We create beautiful and lasting things, build vast civilizations."

"Gorgeous evasions," he said. "Great escapes."

— Don DeLillo, White Noise

Do you wanna go somewhere else?

No Hard Feelings – 2.5/5

In three months time, I will question if I ever actually watched this generically-titled anonymous movie starring Jennifer Lawrence. Did I just watch the trailer? Did I see the poster somewhere? Am I thinking of some other movie altogether? I only just watched it and it has already mostly disappeared. I will watch it again out of pure forgetfulness. I need a name for these types of movies. Things you keep turning on because you forgot you ever turned it on. There's value in them; they grow dear because of how many times you accidentally rewatch them for the first time. All of those movies star Jennifer Aniston. Anyways. Jennifer Lawrence is a good comedic actress. Andrew Barth Feldman is a good comedic actor. There is good chemistry there. Unfortunately, the director has no sense of timing nor how to surround them with interesting actors or how to make the most of any given moment. (Come to think of it, he committed the same crimes in 'Good Boys.') The two leads force the movie into likeability by pure strength of character and willingness to engage.  

l look like the lady that pulls kids out of class when their parents get into car accidents.

You Are So Not Invited To My Bar Mitzvah — 3/5

This was cute. It also looks cheaply made. But it fits the charm of the movie; light and fun and inconsequential. Adam Sandler's daughters are already defined characters. For all their exaggeration, they feel like genuine teenagers. As Bill Cosby and Tom Hanks fade from view as America's Dad, I think Adam Sandler now has an honest shot at the top. A more realistic view of the father figure. Loud and angry and sweet and lovable. Not so much moralistic, but having strong morals. He doesn't necessarily tell you where he stands, but you know where he stands. He just wants an easy life. 

And thank you for bringing us back from the other side! Having seen things we can't unsee. And knowing things we can't unknow.

Renfield — 4/5

I wish I'd reviewed this closer to when I watched this because boy, did this tickle me, and boy have I largely forgotten exactly why. All I can remember is that there's this one moment where the joke is just played in how Awkwafina turns and her shoes squeak, and boy, that got me. It's full of little moments like that. Tiny jokes. As I've forgotten everything else, I'll instead leave you with 1, Nicholas Hoult is low-key becoming one of my favorite actors and 2, the more Nicolas Cage is in on the joke, the less fun it is. No additional context will be given for either points. 

The ugly, untalented gays.

Bottoms — 4/5

Something in this feels new. I can't put my finger on it exactly. It's absurd but doesn't really look or feel or play itself as purely absurdist, like say a Not Another Teen Movie. The first 15 minutes of the movie, I had trouble catching its rhythm because it plays like a relatively straightforward teen comedy, but it kept slipping in things that felt out of place. A character that was too caricatured, say. It feels normal until its suddenly very much not normal. And back and forth, and back and forth. And I really love it for that? Specifically—how much it forgoes logic for a good joke. "Does this make sense?" "Fuck it, it's funny." It builds emotional connection and then fucks it all to hell. It's the love child of She's All That and Blazing Saddles. I feel like the unwritten rules say you have to pick a path, and I love this movie for at any given moment choosing to be whatever the fuck it wanted to be.

Men will no longer commute. They will communicate.

Blackberry — 2.5/5

I enjoyed it until I read that a lot of was fictionalized for the sake of an interesting story. Truth was sacrificed to be interesting–ish. If it was a better lie, I wouldn't have minded as much, but it's just a typical tale of hubris and gains and losing your way as you walk down the long path paved towards more money. Entertainingly told, but I dunno. The truth of it bugs me. 

Why does she feel like she has to choose?

Magic Mike's Last Dance — 1.5/5

The first ten minutes and I'm like yes, fuck yes, it's back, this stupid wonderful thing that I somehow love. And then it squanders every bit of goodwill that first ten minutes builds. For as much as these movies have been built for (and I can only guess here) the female gaze—sexy guys with sexy abs having sex via the feminine quality of dancing—the movies' most attractive parts have always been the friendships. Magic Mike's magical magnetic quality was always his ability not to make women fall in love with him, but to attract a group of likeminded people into his world—specifically, bringing men into his world. My friends—it's always been about da boyz. And here, da boyz have been stripped back to pure dance machines, names barely registered, no personality to speak of—not even dance styles altogether distinct from one another. They are, finally, just pieces of meat; a parody of the world that's been built in the past two movies. Instead, it's all built around the male-female relationship, which have always been part of the Magic Mike universe, but never the center. Just the asteroids coming in and out of his life. Here, it's built up like it's the sun, all passion, all fire—but the heat never reaches you. The two never really connect except in that first scene. Everything else that happens just looks distant and cold from all the way out here. 

Oh my god, we're a team.

The Marvels — 3/5

It's low-stakes high-stakes. Big cosmic stage, light comedy. Planets in peril and we're making JOKES?? Yes!! And all the better for it. As she showed in Ms. Marvel, Iman Vellani (and her family) is a fucking delight (and I hope she takes advantage of the next ten years to star in every high-school comedy about an international girl in love with the popular white guy). She carries comedy and drama well—which I can't say as much about with her co-stars. The emotional connection between Teyonah Parris and Brie Larson never connects, and we never really feel the weight that Captain Marvel carries for her past mis-deeds, nor quite the extent of the glorious purpose of her villain. And I am in full 'forgive that' mode because someone cut twenty to forty minutes out of that storyline to make a breezy, fun, 105-minute movie that drops you in the action and just says 'fuck it' from then on out. Planets where everyone sings! Cats that eat people in order to save them! Stealing our sun! It's a superhero movie. It's having fun, and the people inside seem to be having fun. Quelle tragédie. I think this will get looked back on years from now as low-key one of the best Marvel movies in terms of pure rewatchability. 

Aesthetic

criminals.

Glorious purpose

Loki Season 2 — 4/5

The current Marvel discourse has been interesting to watch. "A few relative failures and the whole thing's doomed." My friends, it has always had bad parts. There have always been mediocre parts. My preferred Marvel Universe ethos was laid out at the entrance, at the end of the first Iron Man. "Hey, what if we introduce the Avengers?"—ie, let's say something aloud and see if someone can make something out of it later. It was throwing out threads. Here's a character, here's a line, here's a motivation. Let's see what happens. And the beauty of these movies has been when all of those threads seem to so intentionally collide in moments like Captain America finally saying "Avengers Assemble" in Endgame. And bros? My dudes? My ride-or-dies? Number one movie-going experience I've ever been a part of. There's a type of storytelling experience that is only achievable through longform storytelling. It's the feeling of things coming together; threads crossing over and under and through the years to lead to moments that feel like magic. It's the feeling of being rewarded. In exchange—sometimes those moments go nowhere. Sometimes it's just a loose thread, a false story to follow. I think the lie of the Marvel Universe is how much of it is planned versus how much they've just flown by the seat of their pants and hoped someone could make sense of it. And of course the more they get it "wrong," the more pressure there is to step in and make that plan more solid—less random, less chaotic; less open. Fortunately, Loki was finished before that conversation stepped up it's PR campaign because wow, what a fucking ending to a character. Loki gets his throne he no longer wanted; only through understanding the burden of the crown can one wear it. Loki ascends from the God of Lies to the God of Stories, not weaving them like Anansi but holding each creation up as worthy of being told. Each tangent, each breach, each variation leaves room for being worthwhile. He is Atlas of the libary, carrying our stories on his shoulders, cataloguing all of the books on the shelves without passing judgement on their contents. He is the firmament that all can stand on, free to move. From villain to anti-hero to Marvel's greatest hero—the series' final episode is the end result of all these tangents, these random lines and images, coming together to make something that we never saw coming, that all fits with what we've seen; the throne he thought he deserved; the only person he could love enough to become a hero for ended up being himself (in a way). As Marvel is busy learning another lesson about best-laid plans, here is the antithesis to that: as Sylvia and Loki both understand, the more calculated the Sacred Timeline—the more calculated the Marvel Universe becomes—the less we want it. The show had a decent amount of flaws in getting here, particularly in not making things clear when they could have been more easily explained, but the emotional resonance it earns in that final episode, the threads it weaved and tied together—again, there is a type of storytelling experience that is only achievable through longform storytelling, and here it is again. As long as the possibility of that exists, I'll keep signing on for more.

I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder.

How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm … in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs—at all costs—our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost—because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

— Father Daniel Berrigan, “No Bars to Manhood”

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance:

how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

— W. H. Auden in Musee des Beaux Arts

For us, there is only the trying.

The rest is not our business.

— T.S. Eliot

Are you poor now?

Our Flag Means Death S2 — 4/5

The first half of this was great, it was acting like a show with nothing to lose, and it didn't care if a S3 order came in. They're in love, and isn't it great, and isn't that the end. But it doesn't end there! And then it's just them coming together and leaving and coming together and leaving. But while that gets tiresome, the surrounding characters find ways to remain interesting—almost each of them in love in different ways, all presented without judgement or comment. It's easy to be in love when no one around you particularly gives a shit. No outside weight added on it, so it can just float, light as a balloon. Stede and Ed carry the burden of 'reputation,' and so are overly concerned with what everyone thinks. But Stede to others, and from all around him, they have that same non-judgemental sweetness that Reservation Dogs has—so given his participation in both, this might just be the quality which Taika Waititi brings to a project. No one is weird when you've found each other. Special mark to Izzy Hands who was just a remarkable actor, and the subtle main character throughout this season. And special mark for, with every new character added, another departs. Keep it tight, boyos.