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.