We are a thought

being explored.

Now you're just making it sad.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 — 4/5

Rewatches of Vol. 2 have slow-burned these characters into being some of my favorite in this universe. And friend, once I love something, I am loyal to it; I see past all flaws. And this is the most flawed of the three. GotG in general has been a miracle in group dynamics, but its expansions and losses have stressed those edges. Though Rocket is the core of the movie, he's missing entirely from the group dynamics, and his absence is notable. Kraglin, Cosmo, Warlock, they are lesser additions that distract from a more focused movie. The franchise can no longer just pair one action figure with any another and it magically works. But, friends, when it works, fireworks. Star-Lord has clear purpose. Mantis' anger, and her surprisingly becoming a linchpin for the team. A new, more interesting version of Gamora, and a nice send-off to it as well. An emotional Rocket backstory. That sense of flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants fun and chaos that has been present throughout the trilogy. And then they break up! The movie doesn't really lead you towards that, it just kinda happens. The ending acts like it's tying up loose ends when it's just "more stuff that happens." It's less driven by plot mechanics and more driven by those stressed edges of the group dynamics starting to tear, on-camera and off. Real life has imposed its will on a fictional universe. I'd happily keep watching these people, and I hope I do in whatever form it comes next. Maybe in that, GotG has been the thing that mostly captured why people keep reading the same fucking Spider-Man stories once a month across 60 years? If we like something, we just want them to do that thing we like doing. The same story; infinite variations. 

Would just be easier and quicker, I think.

Compliance — 2.5/5

I've had a low simmering fascination with the content of this movie since it was released, given the ridiculous premise made more ridiculous by it having happened for real. And so I finally watched it!! And, honestly, I'm still a little fascinated by it though I can't say I enjoyed it. I think it's a movie not really made for enjoyment. It's psychological torture porn, and it keeps descending further and further, that same one note getting louder and louder. Without really trying, the movie helps you understand why people would allow this to happen. We're too afraid to say no to a person in perceived power. They push on the little swords that dangle over each person's heads that are always so close to being cut. They push on our little shames. It's not our "badness" that haunts us, it's our cowardice to face those shames. The movie's better knowing that everything in here pretty much happened as is. Knowing that pushes it from torture porn into the everyday surrealism of reality. But I wonder if the movie would have been more compelling if it played it more clever. More of the befores, more of the afters, mixed in with the then-present. These are normal people. "We were just following orders." It's more than the banality of evil, it's this humiliation that works beneath that, this fucking lemming behavior that allows us to hurt one rather than be seen as apart from the behemoth of the social collective. You'd rather keep your eyes down rather than raising your hand and having all eyes look on you.

All I'm saying is I'm not ready for any person, place, or thing to try and pull the reins in on me.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice — 2/5

I am intrigued by Linda Ronstadt because I generally love her music (and think 'Different Drum' is a top 50 all-time banger) but have no idea who she is or her place in the pantheon. And so, as one might, I think a documentary might help me. And it does, and it does, to some degree. I know what she was, I know her place in things; in the fairly linear and-then-this-happened Wikipedia article of a movie, I understand that she was big time big time, but it brings me no closer to understanding the her beneath that. The movie shows me that she had multiple gifts. Her voice, of course, but greater than that is her taste in things; knowing what good songs are and how to make them great, how to identify talent and bring them together. (She brought the Eagles together; she sang others' songs but they became her songs. She's essentially a Great American Songbook singer for a later age.) Her gift was variety, of being bored of being singular. ("Different Drum" in that way not only birthed her but defined her.) Her gift is that she is something we can prop up on a stage without the politics of a person getting in the way of enjoyment of a person. (Her voice is for everyone. Her opinions are for no one.) Her gift is control of her image, which the documentary gladly cedes to her. (So: great singer, boring subject.)

The problem with finding yourself

is that you've still got another 30 or 40 years to go.

Can't you see what I could be? A possibility.

The Get Down – 2.5/5

It took me 7 years to finish this. The first half had the dazzle of Baz Luhrmann mixed with Hip Hop Family Tree, which is... a fun idea? The birth of a hip hop nation with the spiritual energy of 'Elvis.' It accelerates quickly, it catches fire, but then it just... gets smothered by its length. It sags like a heavy load, and you want it to explode. 

Someday,

a call will come.

It keeps getting better.

It keeps getting worse.

What do we want from each other after we have told our stories?

Do we want to be healed?

— Audre Lorde, There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women

I want to change, but I'm not particularly open to making those changes.

Shrinking, S1 – 3/5

It takes a minute to catch its footing, and then suddenly, miraculously, everyone gels. There was a Hitman comic by Garth Ennis that started from this premise of demons and telepathy and a superheroic world and gradually it just forgot about those things and focused on a guy who kills bad people and hangs out with his friends. This show, also, starts from this premise of 'therapist trying to shake people out with aggressive therapy' and then it just becomes about people you enjoy hanging out and going through their own shit. It was a good move (though it hasn't completely forgotten its premise, just deprioritized it). The show, though, has the stink of Bill Lawrence. You can hear his playlist, it's a certain sound of sad white men trying desperately to put their sadness aside with a chipper smile and cheery expression. I generally enjoy his work! But, left to run rampant, that playlist quickly starts to sound the same, and the feel-good schmaltz overwhelms. It's a tight wire to walk and, like the latest season of Ted Lasso is proving, he's prone to stumble. 

Just have fun out there.

John Wick 4 – 3/5

Trim out an hour and a half of excess plot and unnecessary side characters, and you've got the core of John Wick 1 – plotless and purposeful. Arc de Triomphe, Top-Down View, and the Stairway is one long "survive the night" in order to get to the final boss (and somehow try to retrofit the Killa sequence in there because it's so much fun). That's all we need. Every new sequel wants to add something, new layers of mythology. We don't want more gods and demons, we want to see people get shot in the face from new angles. The John Wick series has been an exercise in execution. How best to give us what we want in increasingly new ways? The problem is that it fell in love with its world, with its characters. It wants to build skyward, when I prefer it to hint at a larger world to the left and right while John Wick barrels his way through the middle. 

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

— Maggie Smith, Good Bones

Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times.

Find the beginning.

– Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey

And then one day, one magic day, he passed my way.

Moulin Rouge, the Broadway musical — 3.5/5

What spectacle! Stage design and art direction that I've personally never seen before on Broadway. It succeeds in taking what Baz Luhrmann does on camera – everything is ever-shifting, plot moving forward at lightning speed with sound as its jet engine propulsion – and applies it to the stage. It's here, it's there, it's everywhere. Where it succeeds is its bigness. Larger than life, Barnum & Bailey's three ring circus. The songs are too often distractions, relying on familiarity and an easy cleverness, but when the music hits, its because it rises to that bigness, taking these modern day love songs and letting them loose to be these elaborate operatic constructions, free from the reins of radio, allowed to be as big as they are. It's fun. It's exhausting. I only wish the show had the courage to slow down and let us catch our breath. The plot, as thin as it is, could have used a moment to center itself before rushing us on to the next spectacle.

Also, I saw Jojo live, wheeee, you couldn't have fucking snuck a little "Too Little Too Late" in here?? I don't think you even tried.

How often the pillars of our wisdom have crumbled into dust!

Chariot of the Gods? (book) – 3.5/5

You realize how people fall into its ancient aliens rabbit hole. It's fun to fall in, there's a rush, air pulsing past you as you freefall, gravity and speed pulling your skin upwards and away from your body. How else could this be possible but this? How do we not know why it exists? Doesn't this look like that? It's not fun to just have had someone in history make something; people being people, artists being artists. It had to be made for a reason beyond us, a message from the past to the future to the past. Imagination, on its own, isn't enough, it has to be an offering to something greater than us. If not God, then some other unknowable thing. And the fun is in that never-knowing; it'll never be proven concretely yes or no. The past is lost to us, and the fun is puzzle-piecing our way through it, forming a foggy outline that, when you squint, seems to make a shape. It's an oasis in the desert. And only we are smart enough, brave enough, fortunate enough to see it. And what gives them faith is that everything that's been built thus far, the sum collective knowledge, all that has been seen before has changed, been modified, has crumbled to dust. So why not build something more interesting?