Not being able to relate to people isn't a badge of honor.

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.

No mother can do as much for her children as God does for His creatures.

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.

I let you in.

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.

I'm happy to hear you're doing fine.

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.

Dead air.

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.

Don't worry, it's not a bible.

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.

He dared to impress upon our credulous simplicity.

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."

Time counts and keeps countin'.

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. 

Let's try that again.

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.

Legally, I can't touch them. But illegally, I'm happy to do whatever you guys want.

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.

Wrinkle, wrinkle, little star.

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. 

What else are we gonna be?

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. 

He's a wonderful guy, but I hate his guts.

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.

Basically unemployed.

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.

How much is one thing?

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.

But what of the price of peace?

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

With enough courage,

you can do without a reputation.

— Rhett Butler, Gone with the Wind

It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!

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.

He-he-hello!

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.