Problemista — 2.5/5
Based on one episode of Fantasmas, I like Julio Torres and want him to succeed. He feels like a hole that's been punched into comedy, tumblr absurdity finally with its chance to go mainstream. This movie, though, makes me feel like I would hate working with him. He's a millennial employee, in love with their own ideas; a work ethic that knows its good and therefore can be lazy about it.
Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces 2024 — 3/5
Ugh, I waited to long to talk about this. It wisely splits its documentary into two parts, because Steve Martin are two different men, one silly, one obnoxiously serious. I think by the documentary's end, I can understand them individually, but I still can't quite understand how one became the other. As such, Steve Martin will continue to mystify me. Or maybe to the question "Why do they do it?", I'm reluctant to accept an answer as simple as "Anxiety."
Joker: Folie à Deux — 2.5/5
Fucking hated the first one, but there are redeeming qualities here! Namely, it's the first time I've ever seen in all of her cartoons and comics and movies Harley Quinn as a potent villain. The manipulative narcissist girlfriend! Pushing and pulling gentle and large, in geocentric orbit around a larger star, molding it into her vision. She doesn't pull the trigger, but she certainly puts the gun in the hand and says go bang. "It would make me happy, baby." The movie is at its best when she's in the center, furthering the creation of the idea of the Joker. It's a great view of toxic relationships—of course you stay with her! She likes you! And you like the story she tells about you better than the one the others tell about you. But then the movie sort of discards whatever I thought the story might have been and then beyond that is just generally indulgent with its idea of a musical. I believe with the whole of my being that Todd Phillips only has disdain for the people who give him money. He doesn't give a shit about you. I kind of think the same thing about Joaquin Phoenix. They're evil artists.
Rebel Ridge — 3/5
At around the 35-minute mark, I was fucking PUMPED. That excitement kept me holding on for the next hour and a half, edge of my seat, but it also never meets the magic of that minute mark. I thought I was in for some Jean-Claude shit. But nah, it's one of those 2010s action movies that would rather be an intellectual thriller than a face-puncher. The movie gets bogged down in its true-to-life legalese, and when we finally get back to the action, it's not exactly the action we were promised an hour and a half earlier. Even so, I will respect the movie on a very specific boundary: no killing. I always admired the first 3/4s of 'The Rundown" because here was an action figure who disliked guns, only to have him go on a bullet-fueled rampage in the final quarter. Here, the character stays consistent to his code.
Midnight Run — 3/5
I finally got around to this. Yay! It's 'Planes, Trains, and Automobiles' with a bounty hunter, and I think I generally prefer it to that movie. But I also don't know what totally to make of it. Charles Grodin's got a sweet, annoying charm that the movie wisely shows only in small doses. De Niro is... pretty generic? Aside from peppering sentences with cuss words, he could have been anyone. The soundtrack to the movie says we're in for an adventure, and it manages to confuse the tone of the movie. Sometimes drama, sometimes comedy, only so-so at either of them—but always the same fucking soundtrack. But, even so, a light charm runs through the whole thing, held together by a soundtrack that says we're in for an adventure, and all the familiar character actors that form the outline of the movie.
Smile 2 – 4/5
I can't wholly say it's quite as good as its forebear, but boy oh boy does it have fun with the world that's been created. Naomi Scott is an absolute revelation in the role, from wearing the role of pop star authentically (arguably one of the harder acting roles anyone can ever do?) to the ability to say 'fuck!' in every variation of the word. From what I can remember from 1, I saw it to be about how trauma never leaves you, no matter how hard you try, and here the same but more focused on how no one quite believes what you're going through. It's a disease that isolates you. We all experience it, but totally alone. They don't recognize you—and you don't recognize yourself from the person you were just yesterday. So keep moving forward, keep smiling through the pain. "It gets better." (Maybe.) Beyond that, Parker Finn takes the premise to a bigger place by simply having fun. The gore is scarier, the monster is more ridiculous, the trauma is a dance routine!!!, the final death in front of all those people. Chef's kiss.
Conclave — 4/5
I never knew how much I wanted to see how the conclave process worked! It's all petty politics with the most virtuous people on earth!! Entertaining to enter this world of rituals, and there is a light humor that runs through this thing which almost makes me think it could have gone full Armando Iannucci. I feel reluctant to mention the twist, but also of course it's hard to discuss the movie without talking about it. So proceed cautiously. I think, in essence, the movie is the best pro-trans movie to exist. Not hitting you over the head with the message, but just laying it casually at your feet, within the language of the movie. God's designs, God's rules. If you believe It infallible, how can you call Its creation flawed?
but we were always looking at the same thing.
—Faulkner, on his line editor Saxe Commins
for not being able to entertain the possibility of stranger and more wonderful things on earth.
—Imogen West-Knights, Three days with the true believers who won’t let Bigfoot die
Get Him To The Greek — 3.5/5 (rewatch)
I fondly remembered this movie, and upon revisiting it, I maybe can still see it but it's harder to make out. Russell Brand then was something new, and Jonah Hill not yet something more clearly defined, anxiety bouncing against chaos. It's a mixture of fun and pathos; that little bit of sadness that infused all those Judd Apatow movies at the time. It's still funny, just no longer compelling. I think all the anxiety bothered me this time around.
Agatha All Along — 1.5/5
It started off with what seemed like a playful idea—as WandaVision
explored old sitcom aesthetic, this show might explore genre television.
But that didn't happen! And whatever did happen was fucking dumb. Agatha's inconsistency can be mistaken for intentional (chaos being) but I think it's just an excuse. Aubrey Plaza's Rio is fun until it stopped making sense. This set of people set together never settle into place. There was one episode which was genuinely good? People seem to like the other episodes as well? The fuck is wrong with you all? I throw my hands up. I don't think it's worth trying to understand the divide. It's just people making up their own mythos to fill in the gaping holes. Which I guess is how mythology works in the first place? New song's good, though.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold — 4/5 (rewatch)
I fucking love this movie. Isabel Merced comes across as so genuinely sincere throughout the entire movie. The movie is in many ways a giant wink, playing with whatever Dora is known for in ways I'd have no real clue about, but she never once blinks, and the movie works around her as everyone plays the audience surrogate and squints their eyes at her to wonder if she's real. She is! And they couple her with some 'Easy A'-sized parents!! I fucking love great movie parents. It's my Superman syndrome. "Kindly couple," not "last son of Krypton," being the true origin of Superman's beatitude. And so, too, Dora's.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin — 3/5
Tearjerker (derogatory). Why is it derogatory??? I don't know, man. This thing made me cry and then that crying made me feel like it wasn't deserving. What was missing? Shit, I dunno. It reminds me of my own time growing up online, and the people there who helped me grow beyond what I thought I was capable of. But I don't know why that would disconnect me from the story. It's sad that his body fell apart? It's great that he was able to find a world where that didn't matter? I suppose I was waiting for those two worlds to come together. But, you know—death.
Somebody Somewhere S1 — 4/5
The series comes out with a banger of a first episode, and then somewhat struggles to maintain that high. But within that struggle, it remains incredibly watchable due to the incredible pair at the center. Bridget Everett sometimes strains within either who her character is, or the ability to bring it to life, but there's something about her worth paying attention to as the series' highs rest on her shoulders. Meanwhile, Jeff Hiller is a star, fully formed. He could easily have been a Jack McBrayer caricature (non-derogatory), but he feels like a true-to-life weirdo, happiness and sadness (or happiness through sadness) encompassing his being. They're at the center, and that center is shaped with an incredible sense of joy. The joy of friendship, of people who enjoy being around each other, and are enhanced by being around each other and are blessed to have found each other. That joy then spreading around to others who they invite into their congregation. The last episode manages to return to the high of that first episode and cements what I believe the show to be about—"This is church." A place for the unwashed masses to gather, without judgement. Finding a place within the no-place of existence, if just for an hour here or there. A place to worship each other. It's church, it's a bar, it's a park, it's your best friend's apartment on Friday nights.
Twisters — 3/5
Man, first 15m is banger. People who get along, getting sucked up into a twister. And THEN, the next hour or so is a banger. People who don't get along, trying to get their ass sucked into a ternader. Daisy Edgar-Jones vacillates easily from happy girl to sad girl to sassy girl, and they all seem to form a 3-dimensional view of the character—and she's got genuine chemistry with Glen Powell. Glen Powell—I get him! His whole meta-narrative is tied up in "this guy wants to be a movie star" and the characters he plays best fit within that meta-narrative, if you were to define "movie star" as "fully-formed persona." Clark Gable is who he is. Cary Grant is who he is. Glen Powell is who he is. Less concerned with growth, and more about grown into who they want to be, and are comfortable with the cracks that show. The sexlessness of Tom Cruise tied up in the Yankee-acceptable redneck cowboy persona of Burt Reynolds (though less likely to verbally or physically abuse his partners). More in the realm of pop-country. He works best in this, and Everybody Wants Some! and Top Gun: Maverick for all those reasons, and worse off in movies like Hit Man, which is him trying to be a fucking actor. Complexity doesn't suit him. And, unfortunately for him, that pop-country persona starts to seep in to the movie. As soon as he shows up at Daisy's hotel door, the movie turns sour, trying to form a Jacob-Edward-Bella three-way race for affection, trying to create sexual tension out of thin air, making enemies out of the wrong people. It gets all turned around and can't straighten itself out again. Sucks, cuz it's a banger of an action movie up until then.
Hooper - 3.5/5
To the point of 'newness,' and the failure of 'The Fall Guy' to become something bigger than it was, 'Hooper' illustrates something that movie didn't have: a culture of stunt-people. A world inside our own that we had not known before. Though TFG existed within that society, it built its world on a mystery-to-be-solved and a romance-to-be-resolved, while Hooper is down in the mud with the people. It builds a world of not necessarily Southern people, but a Southern mentality which was embodied in Burt Reynolds. Get in trouble, have fun, hurt yourself, help your friends. They're assholes to everyone outside their ring, and to everyone inside their corner; the only difference that they've become your asshole, and you've earned your place beside them. It's a world, I think, that hasn't existed for thirty-some years, since Burt Reynolds fell off the scene. The moonshiners, the honky-tonkers, the people on the sidelines, no greater purpose to their lives than just having a beer and a laugh. The movie upends this towards the end, trying to build to drama, but it wasn't built to handle it well. At least it knows it? The wink at the end says it all: "You had fun, didn't you?" I did. As it is, it's movie-as-window into another world, one I'd happily visit again.
Can't Hardly Wait — 4/5 (rewatch)
At this point, feels like I'm just rewatching these things to create better context for why I love 'Not Another Teen Movie.' And I think it comes down to NATM not making fun of bad things, but making fun of good things—just the sillier parts of them. 'Can't Hardly Wait' is a banger, the last of a breed of movies about last nights matched with good music and distinct characters wholly identifiable from a yearbook photo alone. (And I think it's got a film-making trick that NATM caught onto which is to bridge transition scenes with off-screen chatter, creating energy where there isn't, which is a trick I think other movies could lean on.) But the cardinal sin lying in the center of it, which NATM pokes at with a knife, is its sincerity. Which it wears well! Ethan Embry embodies a type of guy, in love with the high school beauty, despite the awful things they did to her hair. But the sincerity is something to point at and say "that's stupid" (because it's sincere). I think when people say "they don't make movies like this anymore," I think they are referring to the fact that a movie can be both fun and sincere. CHW came out in 1998 and NATM came out in 2001 and somewhere around here, sincere became the most awful thing you could be. That cynical sentiment was bubbling up in the '90s and so it feels like it's associated with that decade, but actually may have only been cemented until the Y2Ks. The '80s had it in spades, the '90s had their fair share, but the teen comedy boom rusted over during the 2000s and 2010s, yeah? Something was missing in the water. Things like 'Easy A' came along and proved that they could still exist but they felt more like a fluke rather than a sign that the dam was leaking, preparing to burst back open. Ugh anyway, what's my point? I don't have one. This review really went off the fucking rails. "Artists who are hurting, who take knife to skin: it is okay to bleed sincerity onto the screen. It will ruin you. It will make you immortal."
Trap — 1/5
Trash. I was prepared to come out of this with a "wow, M. Night has really made a niche for himself these past many years" and then this movie slapped those feelings out of my head. This feels like a first-time director who has no sense of pacing, acting, or how a camera should move. Awful dialogue, delivered awfully. I'll never under-estimate him again? I'm also not confident I'll never give his next movies a shot either. Maybe that's his appeal: you have absolutely no idea what movie you might be walking into. That's the trap!!!
The Legend of the Stardust Brothers — 2.5/5
It's a music video movie, a loose plot laid across a collection of songs, all used as an excuse for fun visuals. There are many fun visuals! And the songs, collectively, are fun, that same pop world of Richard O'Brien's 'Shock Treatment'—both thin and big. It doesn't ever become anything substantial, and that's fine; it's a movie that can be easily divided into snippets you enjoy on YouTube, which is essentially what I did.
Speed — 4/5
I've grown to believe that when a movie hits, it's less because of the specific ins-and-outs of 'hey, it's a solid movie' and more that it feels like something new. I love 'The Fall Guy' but I'd now argue that it's relative failure belongs to it being just a solid movie. It was charming, and fun, in ways I'd seen before, but rearranged. That's not enough. But I can clearly see in my mind movie audiences looking at "Speed" and seeing something they haven't quite seen before, and I can see movie executives looking at it and saying "I see a new template." And I am not knowledgeable enough nor do I have a good enough memory to say if this template really existed before then—arguably in bits and pieces in other movies, and I'm sure in cult movies, but perhaps never put in front of the world as a big action film with bona fide movie stars in the blockbuster era. I think some of those people watching the movie, scrambling for exactly what it is that is new about this, might look at it and say the template is "entire movie built around silly action set-piece," and therefore you got movies in its wake built around silly action set-pieces... but that's just the executional details. That's just the excuse for enabling the big shift as I see it which is momentum. It's a chase movie without the chase. It's a countdown movie. You're just constantly moving, the big enemy a giant ticking clock on the wall. Keep moving, moving, no time to settle down, and the movie nips and tucks character development within the 'ramp up excitement every ten minutes' template. And for that in order to work, you need control of the fundamentals. For these movies to be what they are, they can't just be a new template—they have to have an ounce of that traditional mode of movie-making: actors with chemistry. Sandra Bullock is great in this!! She, too, feels like something new, and I need to watch a few more of her early movies to figure out exactly what that is. She seems proto-manic pixie dream girl, minus the indie twee (so just "college girl with equal mixture spark and anxiety" is the best I've got so far). Keanu, as he does, carries a movie with full belief in confronting a confusing situation. The movie's only fault really is not really knowing how to end. I wonder if it could have just ended with Keanu and Sandra escaping the bus. The movie feels the need to keep pushing bigger and bigger instead of accepting it's already big. But fuck it, the subway's got some iconic moments, so whatever, I'll get over it. But overall—this felt like something new, and still feels like something that I haven't quite seen replicated to the same degree. I think a movie's success can be half defined by how many pale imitators are birthed in its wake who are both worse than it and more successful than it, and you can see a direct line between this movie and every single thing that Michael Bay has done. Though he only understood the template without ever once getting the fundamentals right.
Scary Movie – 1.5/5
I will probably never be able to define the differences between why 'Not Another Teen Movie' is a successful movie to me, and this one is not. There's an energy that connects the jokes? The little jokes between the jokes? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯At the very least, I'm glad that NATM isn't filled with rape jokes. I did like all the gay jokes, though. Hey, there's something for everyone.
Mr. McMahon — 3.5/5
This often feels like a speed-run of wrestling history, and I
motherfucking love a speed-run of wrestling history. Hoo-ha, let's go.
But it's built a centerpiece around perhaps the most compelling figure
in the whole business. Vince McMahon, the unreality machine. He'll lie and tell you he's lying without specifying which of the things he's said is the lie that he's told. And through a live, televised wrestling program, he's able to make wavy the lines. The more he goes out there and says "this isn't me, it's my character," the more obvious there's a line drawn straight down the center of the both of them, while it becomes harder and harder to point at the lie. Two realities exist on top of him at once. Both things are true, and not true. And you don't have a choice in what you accept, because he controls the whole enterprise; you either believe his version, or you're out. The world's biggest and strongest men and women held captive by the whims of one man. The power!
Shogun — 3/5
There is a breed of content that is highly acclaimed, and so when you watch it, you have high expectations, and you watch it and you think it's fine, but there's something about it that makes you want to give it a higher rating. As if the problem is you, you think. I will push against this feeling. I think in the center, there is a streamlined show half in size, half in characters. In a society bound by rules, proper exercise of the rules will break it. "Their grip on power pried apart by just one frail human being. No weapon, no war machine." Love it, wonderful idea. "A Japanese period piece whose central climax revolves around a poetry contest." Yes, give me more. But around this wonderful idea, people we need not know, people we need not be exposed to. They make you think you're watching a larger thing, expansive, many seasons long; which in turn makes the wonderful idea at the center feel smaller. I think I might just be upset that this is a TV show instead of a movie?
Will & Harper — 4/5
There's a smallness to the movie that serves it well. Despite starring Will Ferrell, it never becomes as outsized as he makes himself out to be. He's still a buffoon, but quieter, reserved; sad. The movie felt like a true road trip: long stretches of not much happening, the threat of danger in an unknown place, and great conversations that can only be sparked on day 7 of an 8-day trip. Only by creating the familiarity of sitting next to someone for long stretches of hours can you then create the true conditions of saying goodbye, and the need to say what needs to be said before then. I don't think I got through the movie truly understanding the connection
between Will and Harper in terms of conversation or similar comedic
sensibilities, but you felt the love. A man loves his friend and wants
to help her in the only way a famous actor knows how: by turning it into
a movie. We can only use the tools we have.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice — 2/5
Tim Burton has returned to form, and has forgotten what shape that was. Michael Keaton still has a spark, but he's buried beneath a messy little movie made of too many severed parts. First draft-ass movie. Lazy.
Adam Sandler: Love You — 2.5/5
The Safdie Brother, whichever one, has infused this with a sense of falseness. I haven't been able to finish watching the last season of How To With John Wilson ever since I read that the stories aren't as true as they feel. I know comedy is a lie. I know that comedians lie. But I need the illusion. There's nothing Sandler says here that plays with truth or lies to then warrant the way the Brother handles it. Sandler may fit into his world, but the opposite does not serve as true.
Welcome to Wrexham, S3 — 3/5
I think in its latest season, it's become what it's always threatened to be: fine. Previous seasons have been able to avoid this by having one to two stellar episodes that seemed to bring all the stories together, highlighting the emotional underpinning of the whole endeavor. No such luck this time.
The Boys S4 — 3/5
This show is best when it’s a cartoon. Homelander and Billy Butcher might be the truest representations of comic book bigness put into a small square. With their combination of personality and powers, there can be no claim to them existing in the real world (while traipsing around in real world analogues). It’s real life, imagined anew, and what fun it is to see imagination run amok. They also might be the truest live-action representation of Garth Ennis as a writer. In the “perpetual second act” of serialized comic book stories that will never end, he is one of the most capable people I’ve read in the form who realize that comics aren’t about the endings, but about the moments. You’re not building up to a conclusion; you’re building up to a character moment. A person saying or doing something that feels true to the character, either exposing them or destroying what we think of them. It feels small when written out but trust me when I say that these are the things I live for. I probably love more single panels than I do any single issue. Combine that with his dislike of superheroes and his desire to push you away with his crudeness, and you have this show. It feels like him. If you can get over the disgusting little bits, it gives you a reward. I think season 3 ended with a great build-up and reward, and the problems with season 4 amount to having to start all over again back at ground level. I spent most of the season waiting for the build-up, and then I got excited all over again for the next season. There are few better moments on TV than the glint of inspiration in Billy’s eyes, or the sudden shift of Homelander’s quickly fading facade. The characters meet the moments. And I can’t wait to see those two big cartoons fight. On the other hand, the show is at its worst with everyone else, scrambling to find purpose when we only really care about the two people who will inevitably meet in the final issue to finish it off.
The Faculty — 2.5/5
I watched this because I read an article about how cool Josh Hartnett was. I agree. He was very cool. He's very much in control of his body. He knows how he looks onscreen. The movie is whatever. It had potential to tell some clever, multi-layered story, but it's only just aliens taking over a high school. Fine at that.
Confess, Fletch — 2.5/5
I don't even remember watching the original 'Fletch,' but I remember not loving it. Even so, every time Jon Hamm spoke, I imagined it coming better from Chevy Chase. There's an arrogance to these clever sorts of detectives and, imagining Chevy Chase, it's a particular type of arrogance that he provides. He knows everything and, if he knows it, it's below him. It's a punchable characteristic, and who doesn't want to punch Chevy Chase? Jon Hamm, I don't want to punch him so much. He's lovable. I really like the guy and I think he's a stellar natural comedian, but he hasn't figured out how to be most himself on screen. He's forcing himself into Fletch and it's not his skin. But, even so, there's a light breeze running through this thing that makes it easily watchable, even as it can't keep up with its mystery. It's the small charm you would have hoped for with something like 'Hit Man.'
Shoresy S3 — 4/5
The show continues its pace and I think I'm at a point where I retroactively like the previous seasons more than I graded them at the time. I think the closest comparison is James Gun's work in 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' There's a shit-ass with a big heart in the middle. Casual characters burdened with glorious purpose, which separates Shoresy from his Letterkenny roots. Like Letterkenny, it's a world outside my own that I am being invited
into (as unwelcoming as it seems). Unlike Letterkenny, it doesn't seem to have a problem with
progressing beyond even that. I'm excited to see where it goes.
Deadpool & Wolverine — 3.5/5
I think Ryan Reynolds' greatest weakness is an unlimited supply of money. Money means you don't need to draw straight lines. Money means you can explore every idea in your head, with no need to dot a linear path between them. I enjoyed this movie, but I can't deny that it is filled with excess. Every idea in here feels like he did it because he could get away with it. As such, it starts to feel like Fan Service: The Movie. And listen, I'm a fucking fan, so some of this shit was a cupid's arrow into my heart. But a lot of it feels like an easy cheer for an easy audience. Why is he dancing to N'Sync's 'Bye Bye Bye' within a fight scene aside from the fact that he could afford it? And it's unfortunate, because there's so much fun to be had here! Cassandra Nova is a genuinely great villain!! The performance surprising enough to make me an Emma Corrin fan for life. She carries psycho with a smile (similar to but different from Antony Starr as Homelander in 'The Boys'). A few rewrites and they could have made her the focus rather than the 40m of excess deviations that led us to her. TVA is narrative bloat, English Tom Wambsgans never really takes off, the Avengers interview is just... off. I appreciate Ryan Reynolds infusing each of these Deadpool movies with an emotional core, but this one felt wasteful, thrown aside, disconnected. It had to rely on Laura because Vanessa didn't really have a purpose here. I think Ryan Reynolds always comes across with an air of desperation to
everything he does ("please like me!!"), and I think that desperation is actually his greatest strength. In Deadpool 1, there was a desperation to succeed within guidelines of a limited supply of money and support, and he blew it out of the water. He earned the right to not have a master telling him what to do. But, I think for these movies to continue to succeed, he needs to figure out how to give himself a boss.
Dicks: The Musical — 3.5/5
There's a strong whiff of 'The State' that surrounds this. I've missed that smell!! There's an offhanded vibe to the whole thing; seemingly lazy but more in the spirit of "that take made us laugh so we'll use it." It's not belabored. It was cobbled together with trust in its own vision. It's good old-fashioned nonsense.
but it's the best of what we've got.
— a mishearing of Chris Stamey's 'The Summer Sun'
Fallout S1 — 3/5
Another tricky one, insofar as I enjoyed it (quelle horreur), but I just keep wanting to poke at the things I don't like about it. It looks cheap. Characters do stupid things. It can't seem to keep a hold on its tone. And the thing that seems to supersede all of those things is genuinely interesting mysteries within a world that feels new. It's a retro Revelations! A Funko Pop apocalypse. 1950s but modern; the glory days of television and advertising and mid-century architecture meet the inevitable end goal of twenty-first century shareholder capitalism. We'll sell you your own destruction, and you'll gladly buy in—at a steal! Fun world, fun designs, and satisfying answers to its many questions. The show succeeds because it captures that feeling of 'Lost.' A new world within our old world, and mysteries around every corner. And so far, there seem to be satisfying answers to those mysteries, which puts it leagues ahead of 'Lost.' But also, the main characters, Lucy and certain Vault-dwellers aside, don't have the chemistry of basically anyone from the cast of 'Lost.' So, in other ways, not yet setting the world on fire.
I Am: Celine Dion — 3/5
This is an interesting one. It's a great documentary subject because Celine Dion has no problem being incredibly vulnerable. She is herself, she is surrounded by a beautiful life and says things that are surprisingly sad, and we see an uncomfortable amount of her in the throes of her illness. But it also feels like it's missing some meat to build around her. And that meat may be "joy." It's not really about her life or her relations... which I mostly don't mind! Fuck a Wikipedia documentary! The documentary assumes we already know her, so it doesn't feel the need to explain her. But, I mean, I'd like a little bit more of the forces that created her, if only to get a sense of the joy it brought her life. I don't get the sense that her early life was filled with struggle, and maybe that creates the illusion that it's not interesting. But we need the build. She clearly loves who she is, but the movie's focus is on what she's losing: her voice, her bigness. It's less "I Am Celine Dion" and more "I Am No Longer Celine Dion." It's not a movie that builds up to an apex, and descends; it's all descent. And I think that fits the criticisms about her music. It's all bigness, but bigness isn't wholeness. We need the small things to build up to the bigness. And that's the thing about her—she can still sing, just not the degree that she could. I think as she gets older, as she separates what she is now capable of with the idea that people have in their head of her, I think she can still thrive. I don't think she yet realizes that you don't have to sing big to sing beautiful.
The Bear S3 — 4/5
Well doesn't everyone just seem to dislike this wonderful season of television. It has no plot, they plead. It goes nowhere, they decry. I'm sorry, I must disagree with you. I think 'The Bear' is a perfect complement to 'Ted Lasso.' Both shows are essentially 'what does it take to be a good manager?' Carmy carries the trauma of his past and repeats it on those below him. Ted pushes against his trauma (to the point of not dealing with it) and tries to make everyone better. Carmy pushes and pulls. Ted lifts. And beyond being a good manager, it's to the core of what that role is supposed to do—is the goal to win, or is the goal to create an environment where everyone can succeed? What does it take to be great? I bring this up because I think The Bear's missteps in Season 2 were that it was threatening to become 'Ted Lasso.' Despite a few standout episodes, that whole season felt very 'rah rah, we can all do it... together!!!' which did not really fit the vibe of a culture that communicates through yelling, and a culture that wants to win a Michelin star. Everyone has a place; all are valued; no one gets fired. It was all very heartwarming—and out of place. And I think this season forgives that season by creating a terrific comedown from that high. These ten episodes are the fallout of one bad night (and a less-than-spectacular life). There was a vision, and this is how it falls apart. The team is scattered, with different goals. Syd wants to see her fingerprints in the work. Marcus wants to disappear in his work. Tina wants a job that can feed her family. Richie wants a family. Carmy has no idea what he wants. Or he does, but he keeps forgetting. That is the weight of trauma. You're always drowning. Everything around you is inky, black water, and you can't hold onto anything long enough to pull yourself out. And the answer, of course, is each other! Rah, rah, we can all do it... together!! But, despite everyone continuing to shout 'hands!', they have such difficulty figuring out how to offer it to each other. That's the beauty of death, or birth. It brings people together. It brings people back. These two cosmic acts help us to forgive all transgressions, and reminds us that "every second counts" applies to everything outside of the food as well. And it's all wasted until we can learn how to articulate our problems, and apologize properly.
"No plot." "Nothing happened." My friend, all of that stuff happened this season. Everything fell apart.
The Fandom: A Furry Documentary — 3/5
Thanks to an excess of archival footage, an excellent history of how it all began. I think it less succeeds in explaining what it's become. It wants to paint a heartwarming picture of awkward people who've found themselves and found each other—and it does! Successfully! But it hints at troubles, which are the things I want to google after the whole thing's over. This whole world looks like a Disney amusement park, but one filled with a sizable amount of sex and sexuality and erotica! The documentary openly talks about pushing that to the side, but in doing so, it just makes that feel like a curtain I want to peek behind. It mostly explores a family-friendly side of the fandom but, man—what's behind that door?
Top Boy S5 — 1.5/5
Out with a whimper. As with last season, the show decided to focus on its top two boys despite both of them being the least interesting thing about the show. And now they face made up drama after made up drama, adding layers all around them, none of which add anything to the final, thankful end. Overall—I'm glad it wasn't a Scorsese 'people get punished in the end but boy isn't being a criminal fun!!!' Throughout, drug dealing seems like an awful trade full of awful people. Were I ever to run an anti-drug campaign, I'd just speak to the economics of it all. High-risk, low yield, except for the people at top who constantly have a target on their back. Like the show at its worst—it's no fun.
The Fall Guy — 4/5
Man, I just don't understand this world. This was charming as shit. I could watch Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling talk to each other on the phone for hours. It's that Nick and Nora shit. That Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn shit. The magic of two people who were born to be together. Chemistry. Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling are the last of that Old Hollywood feeling. Light on their feet. Tap dancing through their difficulties. A wink and a smile and all is forgiven. I guess it's not a feeling people are much interested in anymore? shrug
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension — 1.5/5
I can't quite imagine people actually liking this movie so much as seeing something in it worth liking. I can see the appeal of it, for sure. It's stupid—but genuinely cool. That is a rare thing. Buckaroo and his gang have names, they have style. They react to drama like a breeze just flew through. They're an 80s music video as action heroes, a movie-sized version of "Take on Me." The movie most succeeds when it most realizes this. I actually don't think there's anything more interesting in the movie than the final credits sequence, where a bunch of cool people walk across a cool canvas while a cool song plays. They're heading from somewhere, to somewhere, and I want to know the story before and after that. At its best, it's an attempt at a pastiche movie, putting all the cool things in one place. But the movie enforces movie-sized linearity on what could have been the world's longest music video, building atop an increasingly uninteresting plot which gets in the way of growing any attachment to the Hong Kong Cavaliers. They're a rough sketch brought to life, but remain nothing more than rough sketches. They're a picture in a magazine. "I'd like to be them," without ever getting to know them. The images in this movie are so interesting, and the movie itself is so forgettable. I was forty minutes in before realizing I'd already seen it before.
Beckham — 3.5/5
It's the best kind of Wikipedia documentary, buffered on all sides by the incredible ease and charm of its subjects. Victoria and David Beckham are who they are, which is seemingly who they've always been. They popped into the world fully formed. In its "...and this happened, and then this happened..." style, it gives me great context for this man and this couple who I completely missed out on, and gives me a great deal more respect for him as a great player. He was very good!! They are very endearing!! But as the final episode comes around, it's clear that this is hagiography and only good things will be said here. And so with that realization, the realization that we never really learn anything deeper about them. We don't really understand the drive, or the love between them. It's just there, like it always has been. It could be it's just that simple!! But, you know me—I demand more.
Elemental — 3/5
It feels like the perfect mixture of low-art Pixar (Cars) and high-art Pixar (the other things). It's got substance, it's got layers; it's got so much fucking wordplay. It's that 'Cars' feeling of 'every word that has meaning to you in one context now has uber-meaning to them because it's their entire world.' It's entertaining, with a tiresome quality. There's an over-"isn't that cute?' to it, an over-"look at me, aren't I clever?" to it. The feelings feel like nothing more than double entendres. The metaphors feel like puns. And then it just layers too many things on top of it. Xenophobia, foreigners who feel out of place, the sacrifice required to build a better life, a star-crossed love story, lower-class/upper-class dynamics, a citywide disaster, and a dream to do something other than what her father wants from her. (The last of which kind of breaks me, honestly, because the first half of the movie is her insisting that she wants it. It does not feel like she is being untrue to herself until love forces some idea of special-ness on her.) It's not confident enough in itself to be a smaller movie. But it's fun! It's shallow, but fun. It's simplistic, but fun. It's cute; it just doesn't know how to dial down the cuteness. It does not choose its words wisely.
Anatomy of a Fall — 3.5/5
I think Godzilla Minus One has re-wired my brain a bit. I think every year, I'm searching for what's great, what's beautiful, what's eternal, to the extent that the search becomes a little desperate. And what Godzilla has done for me is remind me that when shit hits, it hits hard. I wanted to call up everyone and tell them about that movie. When something's great, you don't have to rationalize it, you don't have to make allowances for it; you know it's great. 'Anatomy of a Fall' is a movie I very much enjoyed... but not to that extent. So, had I reviewed this a month earlier as I should have, I may have given it a better score. Sorry!! For me, the movie feels like 'Doubt' or 'Gone Girl,' other movies I very much enjoyed, as both revolve around a subject I very much enjoy—once you introduce an idea, it's difficult to remove it from the table. It's litigating a single unknown moment of our lives through the lens of things we do know. "I heard them fighting." "Well, they did lie about that one thing. What else are they hiding?" Relationships between two people are hard enough, and suddenly you invite everyone else in. If two people can't understand each other, what demon will group-think summon? Throughout, the movie does a great job of placing Sandra on a teeter-totter—needing to stay perfectly composed lest one side of their body place too much weight and send her tumbling.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — 2.5/5
On my Dick Van Dyke shit, so I have rewatched this, though I only actually have memories of the final scene, so perhaps this is the first time I'm actually seeing it. Here, Dick plays a harder character (snicker). It feels like he took the Mary Poppins accent criticism to heart and refused to even try a British accent, which I think hurts the character. He'd just feel lighter with a little cheerio. But even so, warmth shines through his at times gruff exterior. The kids bring it out in him, and they're great, they feel real, and you sense love between them. (Not with Truly Scrumptious though, horribly miscast in this role.) The movie's first half is actually really good; it's a real world with touches of living in the clouds, but the movie loses me completely when it loses any sense of reality. It goes full cloud, with no proper preparation. It, like Poppins, is "An Excuse For Stuff To Happen" movie, precariously throwing out reasons to dance and act silly, but without any grounding or any illusions of real plot or character growth. This and Mary Poppins are both flights of fancy but Mary Poppins always floats back down to Earth. This movie left and never came back. Which is unfortunate, because it was heading somewhere before getting completely sidetracked. I think there's the possibility of a good remake here, just bring more to the fore the idea of a man who has trouble holding onto reality. Make it a little more 'Life Is Beautiful.'
Godzilla Minus One — 4.5/5
Godzilla as a symbol of shame?
Mary Poppins (rewatch) — 3.5/5
I'm conflicted on this movie because when Poppins is poppin,' man, what a movie. Extreme highs. And then there are long stretches where I'm just ready for it to move along to the next scene. It's a type of movie that's just an excuse for things to happen. It mostly doesn't care about using scenes and lyrics to further plot or progress character. It just wants to be a good time. What about a dance on the rooftops with chimbley sweeps? What if everyone laughed so much they floated? A dance with penguins? Sure, why not, let's explore that. There's fun in that, for sure, but it leaves me feeling like it's a great album with some songs you definitely skip; almost closer to 'Fantasia' than most other Disney movies. I'm also watching this again because of a sudden fascination with Dick Van Dyke, his immediate likeability (and subsequent lack of a strong resume). He's all slapstick and stretchy face—and he can dance! He's Buster Keaton and Fred Astaire, in a combination that both feels dated, and doesn't. Mary Poppins is likeable, but unknowable. Bert—every much the equal to her in terms of screen time—is welcoming. She is Mystery Incarnate, and everything he is is written on his face. He's the linchpin to this world, connecting the lower parts to the upper parts, the base with the lofty. Mary Poppins uses magic to float above the others; he uses magic to enjoy life down on the ground. She's magic; he's a believer. And the hatred for his accent is a sin I'll put on par with Audrey Hepburn being shit on for My Fair Lady. He's a living cartoon. He's not real. He lives in our heads, and that's how y'all fuckers sound up there.
Top Boy S4 — 2/5
Season 4 is its second season 2 and boy oh boy, does this show have a problem with season 2s. It does a great job of building (and re-building) worlds, but it doesn't seem to know where to go from there. It builds unnecessary branching pathways for side characters who don't need to be more interesting than they are. Shelley's got a mysterious past; useless. Jaq's sister Lauryn is having trouble with her baby's father; who gives a shit. There's problems in Spain, Morocco; uh okay. And the two at the center are just fish flapping on the shore. Sully's in, he's out, he's in, he's out. But at least he's got complexity compared to Dushane, who is single-minded and who the fuck knows to what purpose. He has no interiority. He serves one god, Ambition. At the end of the final episode, Shelley says she understands Dushane: he just wants to protect his family. And the happy montage of life-as-usual that follows tells me that it's not delivered ironically. It's such utter horseshit that goes against every decision he's made throughout this show. This whole world is built on people who do for themselves and think they're doing for others. Jamie's family stands apart from that; they seem to genuinely care for each other. The show, at its best, has built its heart around young characters on the verge of entering this life, and Stef, though older, though diminished by what he's been through, is a character I want to follow—and by extension his brothers. There's one season left, and the only reason I'm excited for is to see what happens to him because, right now, I couldn't care less what happens to anyone else. You can't just build a show around assholes.
Hit Man — 2.5/5
Man, what a weird movie. Netflix-ass aesthetic aside, it's based on a genuinely fun true story, and builds on top of that an excuse to talk about identity and who we want to be, and how we may have to fake that until we become that. And then you add genuine chemistry between the two leads and hey, ho, let's go. These are the things great movies are made of. It's got ideas. It's got charm. And then it just goes completely off the fucking rails. It's a dark comedy that forgets to layer in the darkness as we go. We like her, until suddenly she's a bad person. We like him (in spite of his lie), until suddenly he's an unforgivable person. And we're just supposed to be cool with it! Okay, sure—but you've got to convince us of that. You can't just assume we'll accept it.
Mortal Kombat (rewatch) — 4/5
This movie was made by a boy. I'm honestly not sure if any other movie so effectively captured the 14 year old id. It's like Paul W. S. Anderson graduated from junior high and said 'I'm going to be a film director' and, with no additional training, no practice, kicked the football through the field goal and won the state championship. It's the product of a singular mind! Every decision is made because it looks cool, it sounds cool. It isn't, but it believes it. It's the ineffable tone that I bring up in every other movie review. It's poorly made, but it all fits together. It's a child's papier-mâché construction that randomly, miraculously, when looked at at the right angle, looks like something. I fucking love this shit.
Zone of Interest – 2.5/5
I think the whole movie is in the premise. "A family lives peacefully next to a concentration camp." I'm not sure how much it adds on top of that. To be fair, it's a powerful premise. I do see myself reflected in that, in this. I do see America. It's not even the banality of evil; it's too intentional, too obvious. It's allowing things to be taken from others for the sake of not losing what you have. Something has to be sacrificed; just not us. This is why we need college kids to rise up; they are our in-betweeners. They don't yet have a nice job, with a nice salary, in a nice home. (Who do you know that is willing to give up their life of comfort?) Or they're not weighted yet by the debt they don't realize they're accumulating, which forces you to only ever work to live, and that focus on survival leaving no room to focus on others. They don't know the cost of their opinions. The rest of us, we have accumulated. We have nice things. We have debt. The mass protest can only go so long because we have a job to report to on Monday morning. There's a lie that we can only see history in retrospect. It's not true. We see it, and we choose to ignore it, because we are not willing to pay the cost. "The life we enjoy is very much worth the sacrifice."
"I knew right away that America's noisy worshiping of success, it's mania for ratings and rankings, the compulsive celebration of perfection in everything served only as a facade. Behind the optimistic veneer there lies an extraordinary fear of failure: the horror of going down and going under, of losing face and respectability, of exclusion and marginalization. It's not success but failure—the savage fear of it—that lies at the heart of the American Dream." — Costica Bradatan
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga — 3.5/5
So you're telling me I just wrote a whole-ass blogger.com post about how the joy of these movies are the loose application of continuity, and so then you build a movie entirely out of connected parts? Who am I even speaking to? Do I not control the tides and waves with my words? Am I not gravity? Sigh. I thought these reviews might reach someone in power; alas. Even so, I enjoyed it!! In many ways, I like it more than Fury Road; namely, I am an unfortunate traditionalist and like a nice character backstory and an A to B to C plot. Furiosa is a set character, in opposition to Mad Max who, despite his backstory, is now become just Mythological Man. Furiosa meanwhile feels positioned in a final world state for George Miller to explore. No more leaps in time and look and feel; this is the final resting place for these doomed people (and these doomed movies?). And then, in many ways, it is worse. Worse, or less interesting. I, perhaps unfairly, hold these movies to some standard of realism, and this movie is largely a CGI-fest. All movies use CGI, I understand, but in this one, it is used poorly. It stands out; it stands apart. And then its final commitment to rushing to a pre-existing conclusion; ending exactly where the previous one begins feels like an unnecessary Lego block clicking into place. It closes a newly opened door. There are certainly twenty years of eternal history and non-history that could have happened between this one and that one. It also, unfortunately, retreads through imagery. Here, again, are War Boys. Here, again, are Bullet Town and Gas Town. Here, again, is Immortan Joe, in look alone, completely divorced from the absolute power, the absolute wildness of Hugh Keays-Byrne. Here, introduced, very intentionally, is Scrotus, who has no ultimate use and is weirdly missing between this one and that one. But also, within that—the flying motorcycle octopus man, and the chariot of bikes, and Dementus is familiar but new enough (though short of iconic). A wild idiot. Worse than the existing world in his way. Proof that there's nothing you could have that someone else doesn't want to make worse. He's the only one of them who seems to be clearly having fun, which is a nice break from the only-ever-serious Furiosa (fantastic as a child and a mute adult, but who loses something powerful when she speaks). Though serious, she carries a knowledge that there is a better world, which Mad Max does not carry. He is the hope without hope. She is simply hope. Which I, again, am an unfortunate sucker for. I feel as though I am only mostly saying negative things but, despite the things I don't like, despite my reluctance to accept this world as the final world—it is still a wonderful world, one that I'm glad to keep revisiting. It is an excuse for characters and visuals and words and names and bombast. And my boy and yours, George Miller, knows how to film an action sequence, hoo-ha. I'm sorry that we may lose more in the near-term, but I hope we get that even newer world twenty years from now.
American Fiction — 4/5
So much of this is small delights. Generally hilarious in the tiny little moments between people. I worried about a comedy starring Jeffrey Wright, as he is an act-or, but the role is built around what he's capable of. He is the intellectual elite and ineffective. He is out of place. Not struggling to fit in, because he has no interest in fitting in. His struggle is how easily he could fit in if he stopped being himself. It's sharply written; it cuts small and it cuts big and it cuts easily. (My cultural bedrock is Gawker, and I celebrate every former writer's current success, so I get excited whenever I see Cord Jefferson's name attached to things.) And then it just kind of disassembles at the end? Intentionally not having an ending isn't my preferred ending. I think at the end, it got caught up in itself being a big idea movie, when really it's a movie about the small thing of being human—not about who we are, but who we allow ourselves to be, and how that impression reverberates to encompass all of your kind, allowing for no diversity. Sintara nails it with "Potential is what people see when they think what's in front of them isn't good enough." That was the ending for Monk to contend with; not how to end the movie, but how to grow. If I were to rationalize the ending—and I want to, because I really enjoyed the easy charm of this movie!!!—I think the multiple endings act as a litmus test for your own tastes. What are you interested in? The ambiguity? The romance? The sensationalist comedy? Ultimately, you make art for what's interesting to you, and you hope that someone, ultimately, receives it as intended; interested in your art, and then you, as they are both the same.
Taste of Cherry — 2.5/5
I didn't know the dialogue was improvised! That makes me like it more. But, without that knowledge, I didn't really care for this. So what is true? I have often struggled with the Criterion side of things. I love movies!! They are the greatest art!!! But movies like this, and Jeanne Dielman, always feel like a job, and only sometimes is that work rewarded. Jeanne Dielman is great, I love it (though still a chore). This, is fine. When Netflix delivered DVDs, these were the movies that sat on my table for a month before I built up the willpower to watch them. I think this is something for me to contend with—do I like these movies? Are they worth the effort? I am afraid I will miss out on something by not trying. That is most likely my answer. I must experience it all. We are in the Library of Babel, and one of these movies contains the secrets of the universe.
Talk To Me — 3.5/5
Who knew The Monkey's Paw would be due such a delightful modern day re-telling? The first half of this movie is a banger. It drops you knee-deep into the absurdity of kids doing stupid shit for laughs, and makes every ounce of it believable. Of course they would commune with the dead! It makes for great content!! It's a metaphor for drugs!!! Whether or not you have a good experience or a bad experience, something in you has changed. You now know something you did not know before, and you do not know if it's true or not. It's fun for the group!; potentially damaging for the individual. I think unfortunately the second half can't keep up with the first half; it becomes a movie about an individual vs the first half being a movie about the group. That group had chemistry, there was charm, there was peer pressure. The individual just had trauma. I think that notion of the seemingly innocuous fun of peer pressure could have extended through to the end. Don't get me wrong, the second half's still fun to watch and, through that metaphor-of-drugs lens, there's something interesting at play with how crazy you feel afterwards. But it splits the movie in half.
A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence — 1.5/5
I read that the director was a famous advertising director. Makes sense. The movie is full of images to loot for other directors' treatments. Look at all these fun images, presented like a slideshow of 'look how smart and interesting I am.' It's a movie to steal from, not a movie to gain from. Everything is expertly composed; inhuman. It's too bad—I love fun things!! I hate when they feel like a chore.
Radioland Murders — 1.5/5
There's a world where this is good. This is not that world. Like Pirates of Penzance, it feels like a movie removed from its proper era. It is, at best, a 1930's Howard Hawks production. But in the 50 years since, the new kids forgot all the lessons the old ones knew by heart and so had to figure it all out again. I appreciate the attempt to capture what was lost, but the director and cast just can't keep up with the past. It's easy to understand that this is a "from the mind of George Lucas" joint. He's got a history of recreating what was, but updating it for a new audience. Here, unfortunately it's just a re-creation, with no new ideas built on top. It's hard to create that sense of what was, exactly as it was. Things are too far different. You can only ever make new things.
A Walk To Remember — 2/5
Mandy Moore is believably innocent. Shane West believably looks like an asshole. It's a Christian movie and, if you can get over that, and you can buy into that, you can see the reason people like that Hallmark Channel / Nicholas Sparks bullshit. It's a comfortable nothing.
The Pirates of Penzance — 3.5/5
Had it been made in the 1930s, it would still have been 50 years out of date. What a ridiculous idea to create a movie out of a 100-year old musical (and me now a further 40 years removed from that). The songs are not the songs we sing. The jokes are all explained. Sets and songs go on for way too long. The whole thing is a curiosity; an oddity. It succeeds precisely where it fails, its sensibilities so far removed from our times. It feels like a telescope into the past. And through that, you can see the start of things. You see the origins of Looney Tunes and Animaniacs and 'Who's on first?' and Our Flag Means Death. Big in scale with a total, absolute disregard for consequence. It's pure, untainted by time. But so, so stupid. "This is a world without cynicism. There's no one in it we would not like to have to dinner."
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome — 3.5/5
I understand the bad feelings about this movie. Mad Max, going by the first, second, and fourth entries, are serious movies. They're epic worlds; a reverence to an old moral code within the new alien planet which is here on Earth. All solemnity; 'fun' as a fortunate byproduct. Odd, because George Miller has a comic book artists' mind, full of fun words and new images. Mad Max. Thunderdome. Aunty Entity. MasterBlaster. Big words, beautiful images—but often stupid. There's an inherent silliness at the foundation. And so here, in this one, we see Max as the last serious man in a deeply unserious world. I think where this movie series most succeeds is with a light look at continuity, letting each successive entry fade further from reality. Max enter the realm of mythological creature, appearing every twenty years or so to see how the world has changed. His separateness from everyone else puts him as a god coming down to mingle with a humanity that he can no longer understand. In this, it becomes almost a comedy. A light adventure with incredible weight, a smidge of Spielberg, more at home with 'Hook' than the previous two entries. And, for me, it works. Not by being great, by being the right amount of good. It's easier for me to put this on, or Fury Road (of which this movie almost feels like a practice run), than Road Warrior or Mad Max. Those movies, both great, have too much gravity. These last two float. And while Fury Road takes the silliness completely seriously, this one plays the serious at odds with the silly. So, tonally, a little weird, I admit. But fuck it, it works for me. Sometimes things are better when they're only good.
Madame Web — 1/5
I can't hate Dakota Johnson. She's a character actress who everyone else is trying to make into a movie star. At her best, she's millennial Winona Ryder; not angsty, just perpetually annoyed. But she has no range to go beyond that, and where we can blame her for her part in all of this is thinking that she is capable of more. There is a five minute span in the middle of this movie where you think, oh wow, this is how to use Dakota Johnson—annoyed millennial mom to annoying Gen Z cohabitants. She doesn't want to be there; she doesn't care. But the movie only works if she cares. Nothing about this movie works. The opening action scene is filmed like an episode of 'The Office.' An uninteresting villain. The Spider-Girls are barely painted. The unnecessary links to an unborn Peter Benjamin Parker. There's an aspect of comics, and comic movies, where it's fun when things connect, but there's also a tendency at times to connect everything. It's the worst instinct of bad writers. Some people can just be random fucking people who come into your life and want you dead. The origins of the scar on Indiana Jones' chin can just be a random bike accident when they were twelve years old.
Wonka — 2.5/5
Paul King has created his own genre, which I will call Sallie Hawkins. Smiles so big that it looks painful. Cheery, but oppressed. Everything's colorful, but brown. Like Paddington 2, it's better than it has any right to be. But then it's good enough to then want it to be better. If you squint, you could see Gene Wilder making the most of some of these line deliveries; it's all just how much insanity you put behind the eyes. But Chalamet's Wonka is full musical theater kid, insane in all the insufferable ways. But still, likeable enough. The movie plays Wonka more like Mary Poppins than mischievous trickster god, coming in to sweep away the dust of unused lives. Unfortunately, that larger cast is largely lifeless. Only a small handful of people are singing the same song. Had I been there to stop them, I'd suggest they not make it a musical at all. But they've yet to give me meaningful power so I'll just offer on the back-end that the songs, for one, weren't necessary, and two, sucked ass. Still, I could see this being an easy re-watch. Decent enough that I don't mind not having to pay attention.
Death Becomes Her — 3.5/5
A good set-up that would rather be fun than truly lean into the satirical possibilities. It's weird—it's a girl's movie with a boy's movie sensibilities, and can't bring those two audiences together. Tabloid headlines! Fun visual effects! Beauty standards! Body horror! Pay no mind to the social commentary behind the curtain. It's a date movie for men and women who have nothing in common. It has potential to say a lot, but would rather settle for just doing a lot. For what it is, it's fun. It's only that it could be more. Somebody remake this.
Top Boy Season 3 — 4/5
It's back from a long hiatus, and I'm glad it's back and I thank god for the hiatus. Season 2 had lost any momentum from Season 1, having fallen in love with characters no longer relevant, and so we arrive back with everything in disarray and new, compelling characters to compete with our aging horde who've lost their luster, both in-show and in my caring about them. I think the show's biggest strength, going back to season 1, is an exceptional cast of new talent. To compare it to The Wire: that show had a handful of excellent actors, surrounded by people who looked and felt the part but weren't themselves people we'd consider a good actor. Here, everyone is a star, from top boys down to the youngers. It knows how to use what the actors inherently bring to a role. With the excitement of the new characters, there was a big hope for me this season that we'd see a larger regime change. It didn't quite work out that way, but it also didn't quite not work out that way. Looking back on it, the show fit a lot into ten episodes, but the main shift is that DuShane is now Sully—willing to do whatever—and Sully is now DuShane—some version of a moral code now imprinted on his body. Something in both of them has broken, and they're willing to scar the landscape to match their image. The shades of sympathy have shifted, and whatever comes—they deserve it.
Seinfeld S2 — 4/5
I have a running theory that this show eventually turns from "we're having a lark" to "I think these people are genuinely angry about the small inconsistencies in the world around them," lawyering up in their minds. I think you can start to see the shift in George, irritation rising, but that's balanced by this season bringing Elaine more into the fold, and I've never really noticed how genuine Julia Louis-Dreyfuss' smile is. She can turn on a dime, but she's mostly there to have fun. But anyway, I'm not gonna watch this show anymore, Jerry Seinfeld is a zionist pig and there's plenty of other shows I could be watching instead.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom — 1.5/5
Jason Momoa's Bro-Man is a compelling character! Guy just wants to chase chicks and throw back cold ones and do little circles in his motorbike. And so they saddle him with a wife, a crown, and a supporting cast that does not fit with him in the slightest. He's a big dumb thing in a big, undersea world. Surely, they could have found something interesting down there for him to play with. Momoa tries his best. as noted by his desperate search for a new two-syllable catchphrase, but it's obvious from the opening narration that the movie is chasing a reason to exist, a reason to be bigger and better. Might I offer: kill off all the things that are dragging him down.
Stuart: A Life Backwards — 4/5
This is mostly a showcase for Tom Hardy having fun playing a violent drunk and an addict and a disabled man, and what a show. You can see in this character all the characters he played after. There's a direct line from Stuart to Eddie Brock, and you can see the stops along the way. Playing everything like he's tried heroin at least once and it might have messed him up a bit but not making him altogether useless. You can see all of Benedict Cumberbatch as well—a WASP, even when he's playing with the poors. Within the fun showcase, a loose but tight little story of the hammers that chisel away at the best of us until we become the worst of us.
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.
— Daniel Berrigan, No Bars to Manhood
Mad Max: Fury Road — 3.5/5 (rewatch)
I think this is a movie I keep watching because it is both entertaining and because I keep wanting to like it more than I do. It's certainly fun. It's one of those movies that sustains because it's got a lot of great images. Max tied to the front of the car. Furiosa's grease-stained forehead. The dry lips of the War Boys. Immortan Joe. It's got all these great sketches come to life. But I'm not sure they ever stop being a sketch. The wheels of the movie are moving so fast that you don't notice that they're these faint outlines of characters, as seen through dust. The actors breathe life into those outlines, as much as they can. There is the hint of a larger world inside them. There is certainly a director's eye at play throughout; a world-builder. But I don't know that it makes me feel anymore more than excitement. As if that's such a bad thing.
Party Girl — 3/5
I see the lasting appeal. It's not quite indie, not quite a romantic comedy, not quite a coming-of-age tale. The flexing across genres keeps it interesting even if the pieces don't altogether fit. It's loose, barely held together by a thin glue of just-amateurish-enough, with Parker Posey holding on to the edges as they start to fall away. Posey's Mary is a proto-Lena Dunham girl; post-college and lost and kind of an asshole. She's got the confidence of a rich kid without being a rich kid. The whole movie is 'Clueless' for a different sort.
The Mole Agent — 4.5/5
Do all great movies have a touch of ridiculous to them? If something is too normal, if it makes too much sense, is it then less likely to touch God? The premise of this movie isn't entirely absurd—I buy into a detective hiring an elderly man to infiltrate an old folks home to find signs of abuse—but the display of it feels too organized. There are too many cameras, too many microphones. But from there, then, that beginning, chaos and love and beauty and heartbreak and despair. What a wonderful movie. It does not dive too deeply into anyone's life, but the way it brushes its hand over those lives, you get a sense of not who they were but how they are. And as with 'Jury Duty,' it all works because they chose the right person to be our center. Even if not all is true, it's true through them. Sergio Chamy is an infiltrator and a gentleman; being a hero through virtue of simply being there, telling someone it's okay to cry.
Anything But You — 1/5
This movie looks like it was made with clips from Getty Images. The success of this movie tells me that the new age is a return to the old age. We missed our 'How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days' and we wished to see it born anew. Hallmark channel kept the lack of chemistry burning, but we missed the movie star good looks and mean-spiritedness. And gross displays of wealth? We may wish to derail algorithmic thinking in terms of what attracts viewers, but the thing we choose not to acknowledge is how many people fucking love that shit.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
