Ohhh, boy!

Long Shot — 4/5 (rewatch)

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

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

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

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

A top 50 movie of all time.

Who is it obvious to?

Normal People — 3.5/5

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

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

What kind of American are you?

Civil War — 4/5

Cailee Spaeny being 25 years old is the most unrealistic thing about this. No way is that girl a day over 16. smdh. I, an Alex Garland fan, really enjoyed this. I even enjoyed 'Men'! I think the guy doesn't shy away from difficult set-ups and doesn't allow for easy ways out. I think the movie is about how journalists don't sit at the middle; they sit at both poles simultaneously. They are doing both something, and nothing. They're on the extreme of nothing by being closest to a place to help, but choosing not to, and they're on the extreme of something by putting their lives on the line so that information may travel from one place to another. They dangle themselves perilously close to either edge. "We record so other people ask" is the easy way out, and belies the trauma they go through due to the action and inaction. As the world is ripped in two, they tear themselves apart. "The end of our rope is a noose."

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

May you always be poor,

even when you're rich.

I would've been friends with Stalin if he had a Ping-Pong table.

Seinfeld S1 — 4/5

Look at me, I'm reviewing a 30-year old sitcom. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I never particularly thought it was funny way back when, but I also never really had friends to banter with. Now, I think, I just want friendships like this. A bunch of people to make mountains out of molehills. Everything is important and nothing is. I think watching Curb has helped me understand the show more. Larry David always has a smile on his face. So does Jerry Seinfeld; I always thought it was just bad acting, but it's really just a signal that everything's a joke, even the serious stuff. 

Wagwan.

Top Boy: Summerhouse S2 — 2.5/5

Feels boring in relation to the highs of last season. I think that primarily falls on never really figuring out who the main character is and what the main story was. Last season, it was clearly Ra'Nell. He's still around here, but almost out of obligation more than need or desire. (Also, the lack of 'Fuck Buttons' as musical cues hurts this something drastic, doesn't it?) Still curious to watch, but not with the momentum I had coming out of last season. 

The blessing

of the burden.

We go around saving lives, while ruining them at the same time.

Invincible S2 — 4/5

I think what works best for me in this series, which is pretty faithful to a comic that I'm a pretty big fan of, is that you can tell Mark Grayson is a genuinely good person. It makes good of its TV format to show him wandering around for 15 minutes absolutely destroyed by having lost control, or lingering on a break-up that neither person really wants. We've got time to see him deal with the hard reality of being powerful, and others dealing with the hard reality of being small in a world of powerful people. The seeming lightness of the show and its style and its voice actors is undercut by yes, the extreme violence, but also this current of sadness. People are hurt, lives are lost, and people carry the weight of it. The best thing you can do in comics or sci-fi or fantasy is to create a world, and here it is; a world where you want everyone to be happy, and understand why they can't be. 

Hearts and flowers.

This is Me... Now & The Greatest Love Story Never Told — 2/5

Look, this thing is more boring than it is bad. The music videos could easily find a home in 2002, and there's fun in that. The documentary paints her as vulnerable... and she is! As all great art accomplishes, it reveals her. It's just that what it reveals is someone who can't read the room. She's genuine, and I'm trying to figure out if I should attach "phony" at the end of that. I don't think so. I think she's a cringe-monster. If style is what you do with what you don't have, then J Lo is what happens when you have everything but taste. I'm going to break with Sontag, and define camp as something that is only achieved through lack of intention. Camp is effort without taste, that comes back around to being good because of its blatant inability combined with its over-reach forming something new and interesting. It's the other side of punk rock. If punk rock is feeling without ability, then camp is force without ability. (Force without feeling?) It's trying hard; to say something, but having nothing to say. This is camp. Boring camp, but camp.

I think sometimes they're just evil.

Do Revenge — 1/5

All aesthetics, no style. Slow-ass, Netflix-ass 'built for second screen'-ass shit. Everyone here is an asshole and they all get away with it. We are in the Age of Assholes. 

Safe, fam.

Top Boy: Summerhouse S1 — 4/5

Across four episodes, this thing made me sick to my stomach exactly twice. It's not necessarily that I had fallen in love with any characters, but the notion that someone decent was going to get hurt filled me with dread, if not outright made me kind of rageful? I don't like mafia/gangster stuff because I think it turns awful people into heroes, but at least with the first season, it's the right balance of 'yes, these people are awful, and good people get hurt in the pursuit of selfish gains.' The show builds its anxiety not with that Safdie brothers shit, chaos through chaos, but through simpler means, and specifically through music, which I think the Safdies took cues from—the drone-y electronic music of 'Fuck Buttons' draws a clear line through to Oneothrix Point Never, and it's a great well to have pulled from.

Come and get me if it rains.

Broker — 3/5

An interesting premise and all-around solid cast that is constantly interrupted by the most maudlin musical cues. The sounds cheapen it. It's not overly emotional, but the soundtrack wants you to think it is. The tones clash. That, and a needlessly complex ending that doesn't really come together with what came before. It's a simple movie. It would have been better to keep it that way. 

Wine comes in at the mouth

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

—William Butler Yeats, A Drinking Song

I am a massive deal.

Mean Girls: The Musical — 1/5

I didn't like the original. I didn't like the Broadway play. And because I'm insane, I try again. Nickelodeon-ass aesthetic. Netflix-ass director. Children's music-ass songs. "It's not as good as the original," I say. This movie makes me an apologist for a movie I don't even like. 

You shit, you split.

Dave (Season 3) — 3/5

This season, it just became tiring. It was still fun, but in spurts. If my memory serves—and it doesn't, really—I think S1 and S2 ended up as great because there was a secondary story about Ally or GaTa, which helped to sideline Dave necessarily. He's a bit much!! We need a break from him. This season, we get Robyn, but she's just not as interesting, so there's nothing to share the weight with Dave. The last episode got to an interesting place—what's the line between ambitious and crazy—and that could've been dragged out all season. But it didn't! They could have built a stronger line there. Dave doesn't love another, he doesn't love himself—he loves ambition. His god is higher and higher. 

God loves you.

But not that much.

Who could ever leave me, darling? But who could stay?

Taylor Swift: Eras Tour 2013, Pittsburgh PA — 3/5

I think what's interesting about Taylor Swift is that here is a person who is seemingly so baring in her music, yet every time we see her, we wish there was more to who she was. Like meeting any artist, I guess, and thinking they have so much more to say than what they've put down on the page, if you could just ask the right probing question. I think that's the struggle with being an artist, perhaps? You are looking to connect, but it can only ever be a one-sided conversation, which you've already had with yourself and laid out across a movie, or a book, or a three-hour concert. The artist on the album is different from the artist you meet. That artist is practiced; cultivated; performed. It has become an act. Despite her putting every inch of her life on tape, I keep searching for who she actually is. 

Trying to do better.

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

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

What's up, dickwad?

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

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

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

Some will live to be eighty.

Some who never saw it

will not forget your face.

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

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

Bo Burnham: Words Words Words — 2.5/5

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

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

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs — 3.5/5

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

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

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

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Who's the monster?

Echo — 2.5/5

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

A new language for normal.

Great Photo, Lovely Life — 3.5/5

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

Someone has a great fire in his soul…

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

— Van Gogh

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

All Of Us Strangers — 3/5

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

What makes us interesting

is what we do to destroy ourselves.

To know

is to recognize you're powerless against the knowledge.

Oh my god, the expectation.

Welcome to Wrexham S2 — 3.5/5

It continues to be a great show to half-pay attention to. It's a leisurely tour through a small town, with bursts of excitement. And under both, the anxiety of can they pull this off? It's a great underpinning. Kudos to the editors (or whomever is guiding them) for knowing when to go high or low, and how to piece together the individual threads of a larger tapestry. It's a show that's full of the other side of anxiety: hope. In all, I'm not sure that it reaches the highs of last season—perhaps because the end of their season felt like a foregone conclusion. But still, their tears made me cry.

Are you gonna be her or not?

Priscilla — 3.5/5

It's a princess story. It's the dream of every child who ever loved a star. "The voice on radio is singing just for me." Plucked from the shadows to stand next to a sun; nothing particularly special about them other than that they, for some reason, were chosen. Priscilla is Bella from 'Twilight'. And not just the girl with no real personality or personhood outside of a relationship with a dangerous man. If the Colonel truly wanted to keep the relationship quiet because of what it would have done to Elvis' fandom, Priscilla ends up being the story that props up all the other fan stories we make up in our head: if it happened to her, then it could happen to me, too. No matter whatever real love was between them, the most damning thing the movie could have done is what it did: make Priscilla look as young as she was. Jacob Elordi plays Elvis as a shiny vampire, and he shines bright, that guy. He doesn't embody Elvis like Austin Butler—or does he really seem to try that hard to—but he's perfectly cast as the mercury that can bring the party high or low at any moment. Casual power, violence, and easy to forgive for it all. In every thing I've seen him in, he seems to be eternally the best and worst boyfriend you could ever have. Austin Butler became Elvis, but all Jacob Elordi needed to be was the Elvis that isn't really there. Even before he was gone, he was always leaving. The movie as a whole is a great complement to Baz Luhrman's iconical take—that's a movie designed to make you fall in love with his talent, to bring you into his world. This movie always keeps you at the doorstep to that larger world. So in that, it does a great job of creating the world Priscilla lives in. This is what being rescued looks like: a princess stuck in a different castle. 

The movie makes me think maybe all of Sofia Coppola's movies are princess stories? I'd like to re-look at some of her other movies to check against it. She herself is a princess within a mythical movie kingdom. Look at these dolls and these nice outfits and fancy places and see how uncomfortable I am and how cold it all is.

See you soon.

Past Lives — 4/5

It threatens to cross the line into that shit I hate about modern love stories like 'Lost in Translation' or 'Her' where to be in love is to stare at things, unable to say aloud what's boiling inside you. It threatens to cross that line, but Greta Lee has character to her, she's interesting and you can see why someone would be interested in her, and Teo Yoo, perhaps too stoic, is also willing and eager to say what's in his heart. It sets up a great love triangle and gives no easy way out. Decisions have been made and we must stick with them. It breaks your heart. It breaks everyone's heart. But within that, the hope that maybe the next life will be the life they finally can be together? That breaks your heart in a totally different way. 

My empathy is bumming me out.

Bo Burnham: What. — 3.5/5

It doesn't reach the highs (and lows) of 'Make Happy' or 'Inside,' but you can still see the underpinnings of the man inside those two things: wanting to be sincere and needing to be funny. Deciding between pleasing everyone and pleasing yourself. Deconstruction of the form leading to deconstruction of self. It's placing the like poles of two magnets together, and being caught in the middle of that force that is trying to come together, but can't. 

Love is fire.

Daisy Jones & The Six (book) — 1.5/5

The worst part of the show was the interviews, and here is the whole book. Not being able to go visit the scenes and see them play out is a commitment to the novelty of the book, but denies us the feeling of being in the moment and seeing it play out from our eyes rather than everyone else's eyes. To its credit, I can see what someone saw in the book to warrant making it a show—two, maybe three times, the passion that came through in every inch of the show manages to show up on the page. And perhaps better than the show is the positioning of Camila as this background uber-goddess who means everything and is everything except we never see any of it. Here, we see a little more—but still not enough. 

Fight him and he will fight you.

The Motive and the Cue (play, West End) — 3.5/5

Uhhh I barely remember this, but I thought the actors did a bang-up job and I was particularly impressed with the stage design. Wow! It's the most cinematic I've ever seen a play. Color and shapes came together to make the play smaller, but bigger somehow. More like a three-dimensional screen. It worked like a magnifying glass. Appropriate for the play, which is about finding the character. It gives me appreciation for approaching art like a cover song that each time has a chance to become the best version. It gave me an appreciation for retreading Shakespeare over and over again.

A little bit askew.

Kimberly Akimbo (Broadway)— 3/5

I watched this because it was voted by a jury of its peers as 'Best New Musical' and that made it an easy choice when deciding what to watch on my last night in New York City but watching it leads me to believe that it is very hard to be great on Broadway, and so good becomes rewarded. This was fine. The first half helped me get over the sticker shock of what it costs to see people perform live on Broadway, it has echoes of the humor of 'Raising Hope' which is a show I watched a few times and enjoyed because of its lower class humor, but the second half made me feel like this is kind of weird and makes me think the typical Broadway class does not actually like the lower class. It sets them up for a redemption that simply does not come. (Pair that with similar thoughts about the Matilda musical which also fucking hates it lower class participants.) 

Some of the songs were good.

Can you find the wolves in this picture?

Killers of the Flower Moon – 2/5

This is a bad movie. You know everyone and their motivations in the first ten minutes, and then it repeats itself for the following two hours. Lily Gladstone is barely a character. All the natives come off as idiots, ignorant, no interiority, no will. Things just happen to them, and they know not where to look. Ernest Burkhart has no moral qualms, as though that's supposed to make him interesting. It's beyond the banality of evil; it's evil without the existence of the word to define it. The FBI appearing gives the movie some juice, but too little, too late. And then Martin Scorsese appears at the end to make the point which he had failed to make through movie-making. What came after—or the impotence of the punishment that came after: a life sentence for the mastermind, paroled after 18 years—is more interesting than watching people die over and over again. There should be rage at that, but the movie delivers it with such inadequacy. All that said, I want to throw out an appreciation for Martin Scorses not as 'guy who tells stories well' but as 'guy who likes to play with the language of movie-making.' He has fun with his camera, he likes to sneak in something new. There is a scene in the middle that I find to be beautiful; eternal. Mollie's mother, who barely exists in the movie, dies, face pallid, and opens her eyes to see her ancestors, her Gods, the green grass of eternity, red returned to her skin. No words pass between them. It is a scene of pure, calm understanding. It's beautiful because it rings familiar; as though we've been there before and will go there again, and none of what passes between those two points matters all that much. It's great. It's also a weird interlude to a movie about things that are meant to matter much. 

Okay. Well, I lied.

Reality – 4/5

Masterclass in acting by the three main leads in a great one-room play that is also perhaps the best procedural drama I've ever seen. You know where it's going throughout and, without anyone raising their voice or creating undue tension, everything comes together and/or falls apart depending on your particular outlook. It's just a few questions and a fading confidence. Throughout, and particularly at the end, the filmmakers try to make more out of what's happening through clever tricks and it only speaks to a lack of confidence in what the actors left in the room. As with the lack of escalation, nothing more was needed. 

Everyone will get to see who you really are.

The Curse — 3.5/5

Nathan Fielder is possibly my favorite artist, as annoying as that makes both him and me sound. And so, I give him the benefit of the doubt. There are large portions of The Curse's first nine episodes that I both enjoyed and also zoned out and played on my phone throughout. Ah, yes, it's awkward, I get it, call me when the next scene comes. Get to the conclusion, I wished. And boy, that conclusion, huh. At least as far as that first nine episodes goes—and this being Fielder's first scripted show—I think they revealed something about his overall artistic thesis statement. It's not about him being awkward, it's not about the people he interacts with being cringey, it's about the things we will do or say once we are made uncomfortable. Discomfort reveals us. We're losers, we're idiots, we're unfunny, we're the worst parts of ourselves because we are unsettled. Throughout, Whitney and Asher are revealed to be shitty people—far past the point of us getting the joke. But then that last episode. I don't know that I've got it figured out, but I can say that for those 60 minutes, I was enraptured. For all that we knew and learned about those characters over the preceding 9 episodes, the episode made me care about them. Beyond just a 'what the fuck is going on,' which surely underpinned it, I wanted them to be close again. Stripped of everything that made sense, you saw love between them. That is also what discomfort reveals. 

The bomb didn't end wars.

It just created a marker—we can go this far, no further.

Always carve with compassion.

Poor Things – 3.5/5

I enjoyed it but what lingers with me is mostly how little I have to say about it. It feels like another side of 'Barbie,' a movie about expectations placed on women, and then what happens when a girl gets to grow up in an adult body, loosed from those expectations. She is free to pursue, and to learn everything on her own terms, and to be whole resultingly. I think men get to forget that they are men, and women are always reminded that they are women. Women are meant to feel bad, and Bella doesn't. This is a good message, and well-done, and unique in its look and approach, and I can't quite touch the thing inside me that made the whole of the thing not register for me. 

An impossible amount of good-looking girls in Sudbury.

Shoresy, S2 — 3.5/5

I really enjoyed those early seasons of Letterkenny, but if my memory isn't completely shot, I think I enjoyed it mostly for the unique, never-seen-before world it built for itself, moreso than any larger emotional arc. Shoresy seems to take the best of Letterkenny's world-building and create that larger emotional connection. It's given you a team that's easy to root for, and a guy to root for, shit-ass that he is. It surprises you in how big it can feel. 

An explanation of the present.

The Holdovers – 3/5

Dominic Sessa has a face like a painting. Frustration and sadness and an inner life in just a still image. He looks like a shit-ass kid, and he carries himself like a shit-ass kid. Paul Giamatti feels like Paul Giamatti, which I have no complaint about, I like Paul Giamatti. The movie feels nice, it's acted well, it's a movie of familiar beats and hits them all, except one. One day, this grump wakes up and decides to be different. He is asked, repeatedly, to change, but nothing seems to get through, nothing seems to register and then, one day—he just changes. There's a key transition scene missing, a dawning realization, a look in the mirror, that makes it hard for me to follow the movie all the way to the end. If I try, I can fill in the gap: he had no one to support him in his own bout of trouble, and here is a chance for him to support someone—to his detriment. But that doesn't even work for me, because throughout the movie, he rails against the privileged class and what they get away with, and here he is letting one of them get away with it. I'm definitely putting more weight on this movie because of its Oscars buzz, but all it really amounts to is a light slice of life in a 1970s school. It's fine at that; nothing more. 

The whole brevity thing.

The Big Lebowski — 2/5

I've disliked 'The Big Lebowski' from since I first watched it, and my dislike grew to hate through the then-rising public perception of the movie—and that of course is dumb and stupid, and so with time and distance and an increased appreciation for the layers in Coen Brothers movies, I thought I'd give it another go to see if I could see something in it. Mostly no? I still find these people to be obnoxious. But also maybe there's something interesting there? The Dude became celebrated as this prototype of the laid back slacker who just wants to enjoy his life... but he's absolutely not that guy. He's got anger and resentment and impatience and he's not just sitting around abiding his time; he's an active agent—he wrote the first draft of the Port Huron statement, and now he wants his rug back. He's only 'The Dude' when it suits him, when it gives him an easy out. And that's true of everyone here. They've all got self-espoused values, things they stand for, things that they claim to define them, which they quickly discard when it becomes inconvenient. Or, rather, it gets pushed aside when there's money to be made. The artists, the nihilists, the war hawks, the capitalists. Money makes an individualist of us all. Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism—but at least it was an ethos. I dunno. I might just be forcing it. All I know for certain is that I still don't enjoy watching it.

I used to be a brother.

The Iron Claw — 2.5/5

There are two scenes at the end of the movie that work tremendously well—so well that I wish more of the movie was built around them. The first, Jeremy Allen White's final journey down the river—though it doesn't work as well as it could have, because his role felt tucked in the background. For all the heat he's gotten these past two years, you'd expect his role to be bigger—and it should be, because he's probably the most interesting brother, the one most attuned to the family curse. Olympics hopes dashed, brothers lost, oppressive father, foot taken, playing through it, going unappreciated by a larger wrestling world, and eventual suicide. The other scene, the final scene, is Zac Efron saying he misses his brothers. It's beautifully done, and Zac Efron—as he has throughout the movie—carried the weight of his brothers. But it can't just be all sad. There has to be joy to create a pillow for sadness.  Everything that works in this movie is built on those brothers, who seem to genuinely like and care for each other. When they're together, there's a spark. There's a joy to wrestling and a joy to being together. But so much of the movie separates them, focusing on Zac's story. The other brothers' stories are more tragic, but Zac's performance wants to claim the sadness trophy. As in the story they tell on screen, he wants to be the star—but he's not as interesting as they are. There's a great movie in here; I just think they chose the wrong brother to focus on. 

Also, Maura Tierney's weird lips perfectly match Zac Efron's weird lips, perfect casting as mother-son, A+.

Huh?

Shoresy S1 — 3.5/5

Jared Keeso and Jacob Tierney have figured out a formula that I really enjoy—at least at the outset. They fill the parts with essentially one note characters, but what really elevates it is this very simple, very beautiful cinematic language that knows how to make the most out of stiff actors and small plotlines. So many episodes are filled with slow pans and zooms while a banger plays in the background, giving everything an emotional weight that makes the one notes echo and—fuck it, man, it works. At least at the outset. I loved the first season or two of Letterkenny before those one notes really wore out their welcome, through repetition becoming t-shirt catchphrase machines. 

We don't have that in the fridge.

The Creator — 2/5

It's hard to call something lazy when clearly so much work has been put into it. It's beautifully rendered. It's amazing what they pulled off for the budget, truly, and in that way, it might be a landmark movie that shows us how to do VFX better. So much work has been put into every aspect of this—except the script. This movie did not meet an idea it did not want to explicitly spell out. It's a generic, cliched, dead girlfriend montage of a movie, graduate of the Zack Snyder "To Be Cinematic Is To Be Serious" school of thought. It touches on humor—successfully!—a couple of times, but nobody seeing that saw it as a nice way to build interest in characters. It would rather be an important movie, it wants desperately to feel like an important movie, but it thinks importance is in how you tell the story, Radiohead playing over air raids, not what the story is. A great movie can be made in the how, I don't mean to denigrate that aspect—but an important movie has to actually say something worthwhile. 

To be a moral human being is to pay,

be obliged to pay, certain kinds of attention.

— Susan Sontag

Jackie Chan, you're a jerk!

Drunken Master — 3.5/5

I have a deep love for Drunken Master II, and here I am realizing that I've never seen the first one. It's interesting to see Jackie Chan make a name for himself as an asshole version of the self we later knew. We Americans mostly only saw the smiling face against the impossible circumstances, the nice guy, and here he is being largely responsible for his own troubles. He's a stinker. It's fun to see him at the start, but I do think I prefer the later character he grew into, when he used primarily his innocence as his offensive weapon.

It's all a great mystery.

The Little Prince (book) — 3.5/5

I have had this in the back of my head forever to read because "you are responsible for the things you have tamed" has been in my head since college, delivered by an unknown source and cemented there without me fulling knowing its meaning. It's a great thought. I don't know if the book ladders up to that thought so much as just presents it to you, another in a series of thoughts presented throughout the book. Here's a thought, and here's another thought. They're good thoughts. It's a book on philosophy not for children, but for adults to remind them how to be children, and our inevitable entanglements that cause us to grow up. 

Some wild magic.

Wolfwalkers — 4/5

Genuinely exciting. There were sequences where I truly wasn't sure how things would go, which puts this children's movie up there with the best action movies in terms of tension. Not showy, like Spider-Verse, but it camouflages some really beautiful graphic design and really clever artistic ideas (namely in regards to perspective) that feels like a step forward for animation, almost hidden behind a simple animation style. 

Everyone failed.

Mommy Dead and Dearest — 1/5

Watching me reminds me I hate this true crime crap. The story is absolutely compelling, but the victim cannot have a say, and the criminals and everyone around them get cast in suspicion beyond the facts of the case. This shit is made for people on Facebook to say "the father should have done something" or "she's got the sociopathic tendencies of her mother." It's a genre that exists for you to debate the merits of people, to cast suspicion on everyone that touches the story. The cops, the doctors, the neighbors. Watching 'May December' recently reinforces my thoughts here—it's all just other people we get to talk about. It's socially acceptable gossip. 

This guy does not want to talk to us.

Telemarketers — 4/5

Early on, Patrick J Pespas is introduced and captioned as "Telemarketing legend" and talk about calling your shot. Fuck yeah, Patrick J Pespas. The documentary is this Vice-ass documentary style, reveling in showing people snorting heroine and fuck-ups fucking up (and could easily have been reduced to a movie vs three episodes) but—as with Jury Duty—the person at the center elevates everything around the joke.  Patrick may be an addict, but maybe you need the spirit of a fuck-up to be willing to fuck shit up. And despite some of the arrangements and framings, it's not just done for fun; honestly there's a sense of love in there beside. There's a scene in the last episode which makes my heart grow three sizes because it's such a simple display of two people loving each other. I've heard it said that the only way out of addiction is finding something greater to believe in and so, for a time, Patrick found a bigger purpose. He earned his caption. 

I prefer kicking people.

Shaolin Soccer (Dubbed) — 3.5/5

It's silly!

We keep inventing hope.

White Noise (book) + White Noise (movie) — 3/5

I think I could convince myself that the book was great. Not the movie. The movie wasn't great. But the book, maybe if I had better reading comprehension ability, better attention span, or maybe if the book was better, it might be great. I think it's the thing we all go through, the thing we're all heading towards. The dawning realizations. Whether or not this world is ending, your world is ending, and that's such a big idea. It's a notion you cannot prevail against. It's unwinnable. It defeats you. You make sense of all the white noise, trying to rise above the numbing joys, seeing patterns in the fuzz onscreen, only to recede back into its numbing comfort because—what other choice is there? It's that or suicide. Maybe because I'm reading it as I turn 40, it feels like 'ah, this is just the cycle that everyone goes through': surrounded on all sides by serious events, all the ceaseless chattering and nattering. In the book, it's just chatter; in the movie, it's sub-Robert Altman noise. I understand the intention ("white noise" lol): distracting ourselves from the thought of death, between now and then talking in circles, hoping we'll accident into doing something important. I think I can convince myself this was great. It's 1984 except Big Brother is just a feeling in the air of impending doom, and the final act of loving Big Brother becomes the latest in the series of lies we tell to comfort ourselves. We are powerless against the impending... whatever. The end just keeps coming, in different eras, in different forms. And you've got no choice but to let it pass over and through you. It's not just submission, but no choice but to submit. The idea is too powerful, the events too great, everything beyond your ability to comprehend it. It's the inevitability that comes with middle age, of knowing there's really no way to fight the world's innate desire to destroy itself, but to give in is to then destroy yourself—but you've got no other choice than to give in. So you are destroyed, yet you keep going, a walking dead man running laps in a cul de sac. 'White Noise' isn't a 1984-esque vision of the future, it's the encapsulation of an ever-present now. Big Brother isn't outside of us, it's the thing we created to comfort us. He's a smiling, anthromorphic tiger staring back at us from the ceral box as we stuff down the stuff we know will kill us, and returning a smile right back at him. "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

As for the movie, it's stilted and artificial and Adam Driver plays into it well but most no one else does. The final scene in the grocery store is nice and I think finally hits the right mix of playful artifice that the movie had been aiming for throughout but only just then got it. 

But say it like you mean it

with your fists for once.

— Ethel Cain, American Teenager