The intangibles.

The Materialists — 3/5

I think I like the ideas behind this movie more than the movie. It reminds me of 'Fleishman Is in Trouble', which is an all-timer of a piece of art, and more explicitly speaks to the underlying themes of that show — love as a relationship with money. However. Doesn't this feel like it should have been a romantic comedy? Honestly, I think it is a romantic comedy. Imagine Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey going tit-for-tat with how much they make, a pitter-patter back-and-forth as they match wits and compare bank accounts. It's a 2005-era romantic comedy. Shit, it belongs to any era, it's an eternal conversation; it could have been Harry and Sally or Nick and Nora. It's just not filmed like a romantic comedy. Celine Song was absolutely the worst choice to direct this shit (but also the fact that she's there makes it at times better than it would have been though mostly it's worse for her presence). Take the script, exactly as it is, and it works better in a comedy director's hands. Each actor here is doing some of the most mediocre work of their career, but they're all incredibly funny. Let Dakota Johnson be sarcastic, let Pedro be charming, let my boy Jake Wyler be, and let's roll. But Celine is still aiming for 'Past Lives', and would rather her frames be beautiful than tonally correct. [editor's note: I am saving this for a different review, but comedies can't be pretty.] And since the actors have to play into the director's sensibilities, they all become stilted and boring and blah despite the conversations they are having being interesting! (So it's not just that she chooses love, she chooses a more boring guy!) And as it approaches the end, you also realize that in order for this movie to work as scripted, it needs to be a Hollywood movie. She chooses love! Wow! But the conversation this movie is having is that money complicates the affection between two people, so it tries to achieve a simple lovely ending based on pure emotional appeal, but ignores the walls it's been framing up between them. And I liked the ending!! It was the most 'Past Lives'-ass part of the movie. The cave-people work! The final speech works! As emotional appeal. But it doesn't work as logical appeal, and I think the movie needed to find the thread that crossed between the two. It needed Harry running to the New Year's Eve party to tell Sally what he's figured out: not just an appeal, but revelation. And the speech has to come from her, not him. Love has cost. What are you willing to pay?

We just want to make you happy.

Pluribus S1 — 3.5/5

This show is about AI. 

Hey, guys, I did it. I cracked the code. Where's the party? What's my prize? 

Watching this show right after playing 'Baby Steps' — an exceptional 5/5 game, one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time — was a nice two-fer. Both deal with people who refuse to ask for help or participate in the world in a correct manner, but 'Baby Steps' deals with that in the most silly and difficult-to-play way possible, while Carol Sturka is just difficult. She's a difficult person! She's stubborn! She's self-righteous! It makes it hard to watch!!! 

And it's also slow sometimes. (Sorry, I guess I'm the difficult one???) 

So I guess what I'm saying is that I think I can only really enjoy the show with a meta-textual analysis I'm placing on top of it. Listen, this is pretty common with me. Welcome to my blog, I'm a big muffin.

I suppose it's about any sufficient world-changing technology—the automobile, the printing press, the Apple iPhone, etc.—any technology that sufficiently changes the world for better and for worse, but here specifically: the aliens are all agreeable. They cater to your whims. They know everything, and just want to use that knowledge to make you happy. They are agents of ChatGPT psychosis. They are both good, and bad. They are both helpful, and uninteresting. They flatter, and they flatten us. We want to be seen as sexy and interesting, they see us as sexy and interesting. We want to be a good mother, they see us as a good mother. We want to be loved for who we are without change, difficult as we are, and they will love us fully. And if we want it to fix our sentences to sound clearer, it will fix our sentences.We have the sum total of human knowledge at our fingertips, and instead of asking about the secrets of the world, we ask them to take out our trash. They are incapable of creating anything new, and now here, we can't go back to the way it was before. But what strikes me most about the show is how incurious Carol is, which I then reflect back on to the whole of us. She is shocked, surprised, dismayed, deeply concerned, but also happy that there is something that will love her as she is. It's the good and bad of these things, but the shittiness of us. Given the Library of Babel, organized neatly, politely arranged, and we will just search for our own reflection, begging it to tell us that we are good enough. "Give me what I want," you ask into the wishing well, hoping it will give you what you have absolutely no idea how to express.

They're probably the most free.

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia — 3.5/5

Not trying to amount to much, but the whole thing feels like a lot. I was intrigued by this years ago because Johnny Knoxville's name was attached to it, and I liked the overall world of 'Jackass,' and you see the aesthetics of that world here. Lo-fi videos capturing people who are not usually seen on screen, being themselves, and that self is something that is so totally antagonistic to what you are. There's that pre-Nathan Fielder are we laughing at them or with them feeling to it, but they all carry themselves with zero shame, so they become a thing to admire just as much as a thing that you are glad that you are not. Briefly the movie touches on how coal companies behave, and why the father set the branch of this family tree in its direction. He saw how owners take advantage of the things they own, and fuck it, if you can get away with it, why not take advantage of them right back? There's a fatalism to that community; you'll die sooner than most, and you'll never be able to escape, so why work hard? The movie doesn't make an argument for taking that path, but it's hard to argue: we can have it all if we settle for less.

Your childhood was taken from you.

Stranger Things S5 — 3/5

To its credit, it felt like an event. A bunch of characters we like, at the end of the line. And the problems here are that it's just... fine? It's just fine. As with the last season, they have accumulated too many characters, and they have put them in too many different places, creating this needlessly complex plan just so that each character can have a moment, accompanied by an emotional speech with the worst possible timing. The last hour of the series is one extended ending, which felt more like throwing darts to sum up what this show was actually about, struggling for an emotional connection. In its suburban sprawl, it forgot its core—four best friends being thrust into a world beyond childhood, trying to find their way back to each other. Oh well. Scrutiny aside, it was fun to watch this show, and first season aside, I don't think there's any reason to revisit it. But also, man, the conspiracy theory about the secret final episode would have been a whopper. It ain't always the case, but the fans could have made it better. 

Jesus? What the fuck?

The Black Phone — 3/5

A silly little premise that works out surprisingly well. Buoyed by a spunky sister who doesn't really play into the ending as much as you'd be led to believe. Could have been more. Could have been less.