Mini-Reviews for March 21 - 27, 2016

Reviews, reviews, reviews! Happy Easter, y'all! (Only movies this time—ah, the allure of the silver screen)

Movies

Mountains May Depart (山河故人) (2015)
The thing is, it's kind of hard to discuss this movie without talking about the movie's final third, and that movie's final third is best experienced cold. Whether or not that ending works is another conversation altogether, and I'm of two minds right now, and neither is entirely enthusiastic. Neither is entirely negative, either. I will say this: throughout its runtime, Mountains May Depart shows an sharp eye for imagery and genre-blending (it handily vacillates between light comedy, domestic melodrama, and sweeping saga) that makes it a thoroughly interesting experience. What's even better is that it's one of those rare movies that, regardless of the technical success of its "interesting" elements, is consistently engaging on an emotional level. And that covers a multitude of possible structural sins. Grade: B+

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Nausicaä is, without a doubt, one of the most visually stunning of Hayao Miyazaki's career, which is no small feat. It's also full of some of the most inventive creature and character designs in animation history, period—the opening minutes are absolutely jaw-dropping in their warped, mystical grandeur. It also runs into the same problem that I've always had with Princess Mononoke (a movie that shares no small portion of Nausicaä's DNA), which is that for all its epic scope, it's kind of cold. I enjoy watching these characters, but I don't care a thing about them, and I'm not convinced the movie does either. Ultimately, that's not a huge problem--it's much more focused on imagery and action, and on that rubric, it's a resounding success. Grade: A-

The Comedy (2012)
The point is good: irony and sarcasm are ultimately empty ways of interpreting the world if it's the only way you look at things. The problem is that the point is made clearly in the first five minutes and reinforced ad nauseum over the next 90 minutes of generally bland indie-aesthetic cinematography and mumbling dialogue. It's tedious to the extreme. Grade: C-

Nostalghia (1983)
Another Tarkovsky, another masterpiece. At this point, I'm prepared to call the man the greatest visualist in cinematic history: it takes about thirty minutes for the truly arresting images to come in this movie (it's no coincidence that those first minutes are the least interesting of the whole film), but once they come, they are constant and gorgeous. I was riveted, and I'm convinced that you could take any frame and mount it as gorgeous photography. Get me a poster of the final shot, STAT. It's not all just eye candy, though. Thematically, this movie's a little more straightforward than earlier, more cryptic Tarkovsky like The Mirror, but it's no worse for that. Like Stalker before it, Nostalghia is a film about religion's role in how we think about the past and present, and it's super compelling. So, gold stars all around. Grade: A

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
The original Cloverfield showed the traditional monster-movie scenario from the perspective of basically mere extras—those who just run and scream the whole time, a bleak portrait of how little agency most non-Schwartzenegger people have in a disaster. Enter 10 Cloverfield Lane, one of the tightest, smartest sci-fi thrillers of the 2010s, and you have a similar conceit of telling a micro story in the context of what turns out to be a much larger one. 10 starts at the smallest possible point, focusing on tiny objects on a dresser, and meticulously pulls back its lens over the next 100 minutes until the ending gives our protagonist her first moment of true agency: the choice to be either a movie extra or a movie hero. Like the rest of the film, it's simultaneously horrifying and thrilling. Grade: A-

Mini-Reviews for March 14 - 20, 2016

It's been Spring Break, y'all. I watched a crap-ton of stuff.

Movies

The Limits of Control (2009)
More like the limits of my attention span. The cinematography is beautiful, and there are some wonderful moments where the superb soundtrack collides with imagery in an arresting way. But those are purely sensual pleasures, and anyway, they're spread out among some long, long stretches of film without much happening of note except parades of characters repeating lines of dialogue said just a few scenes earlier (we get it—he doesn't understand Spanish) and Tilda Swinton talking about movies where people don't talk. Yes, it's one of those kinds of movies, where the characters talk all about the director's favorite movies. It's slightly interesting on a philosophical level but not at all on an engaging emotional one, and on the whole, I was left cold and bored. Grade: C+

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
I think it's only fair to note that a lot of what's compelling about this movie comes right from Nikos Kazantzakis's superb book: the semi-heretical characterization of Jesus, the ending, the idea that the only way to truly change the world is with an act of radical compassion. It's also worth noting that the movie does itself a serious disservice by reducing the role of Mary Magdalene (in many ways, the novel's emotional core). But compellingly borrowing from source material is compelling nonetheless, and the Scorcese/Schrader team is doing a lot more than filming static shots of pages from the novel. On the strength of the craft alone, I'd even rank the movie's final 20 minutes as some of the best minutes in Scorsese's career. Plus, Willem Dafoe is hands-down the best onscreen Jesus I've seen. Grade: A-

The Big Short (2015)
The scene-to-scene movement is a bit too meandering for it to truly work as the zippy dramedy the movie seems to envision itself as, and after Margot Robbie shows up, the recurring device of attractive celebrities explaining esoteric Wall Street jargon has diminishing returns. There's also a sour, condescending tone to the movie that, I dunno, maybe is justified—after all, the banks couldn't have sold all those horrid loans without the American populous buying—but can be kind of a turn-off at times. Still, it's a heck of a lot more fun than any movie about mortgage lending deserves to be. And its righteous anger (oh man, is this movie furious) is contagious; if you aren't ready to go all pitchforks and torches on some big banks after seeing this movie, you and I may have divergent life priorities. Grade: B+

Babette's Feast (Babettes gæstebud) (1987)
This graceful little gem manages to do that rare, wonderful thing that's pretty much guaranteed to win me over: depict religious belief in a way that's insightful without being esoteric or condescending. The trick, I think, is in making its central Puritan community legitimately poor, which turns their austere beliefs and practices into more of an accepted necessity than a finger-wagging indictment. This isn't one of those broad, snobbish movies that positions unfettered freedom as inherently superior to principled convictions—it's more about the place of art of all kinds (musical and culinary in this film's case) in a religious setting, which is something that's been much less driven into the ground than the belief/freedom dichotomy. It's nice. Grade: B+

The Intern (2015)
The opening act, full of stale jokes about millennial buzzwords like Instagram and "what's a handkerchief?", is bumpy. The good news is that it's a feint—The Intern is, mercifully, not about an aging man struggling to come to grips with the 2015 tech world. Once the movie has all the place-setting out of the way, it settles into the warm rhythms of an ever-so-slightly melancholy dramedy focused not on technology but friendship and the intangibility of happiness. It's very sweet and (gravy) anchored by an entirely winning platonic chemistry between De Niro and Hathaway. Grade: B



Books

Gillian Flynn - Sharp Objects (2006)
The debut novel from the author who eventually brought us Gone Girl, which I have not read. But like at least the Gone Girl movie (whose screenplay Flynn helped to write, so I'm not completely out to lunch here), Sharp Objects brings a heaping portion of not-entirely-helpful misanthropy to a very literary version of mental illness, where symptoms are lurid and thematically relevant. It's unpleasant, if occasionally gripping, and overall, I might be a little less cool on it if the novel didn't rush to an ending like it had an appointment to keep. I give it the shrug of letter grades. Grade: B-




Television

Better Call Saul, Season 1 (2015)
Breaking Bad was a Shakespearean tragedy, down to its five-act/season structure; now we have its prequel, whose tragedy looks to be not Shakespearean but Greek. Unlike Walter White, whose flaws are a sneaky byproduct of his sudden discovery that he wields inordinate control over the universe, Saul Goodman finds that no matter how hard he tries, he is living in a universe that insists on wrenching away agency. He's Sisyphus, and watching that boulder roll back down the mountain time and time again is heartbreaking. Already, BCS's first season is better than at least two of Breaking Bad's; it's funnier, sadder, more patient, and does away with almost all of the overly clever plotting and dialogue stings that afflicted BB's lesser moments. We may just have the superior series on our hands now. Grade: A

Music

Esperanza Spalding - Emily's D+Evolution (2016)
Spalding has a reputation as NPR jazz—music that's not especially interesting but that people listen to so they can feel sophisticated. I haven't listened to her back catalogue, so I can't say how warranted that reputation was. But let's hope this album blows apart that conception of her here on out, 'cause it's bizarre, inventive, and awesome. Imagine Court-and-Spark-era Joni Mitchell thrown into a blender with Gabriel-era Genesis, Yoko Ono, and Janelle Monáe, then sprinkled with a garnish of Robert Glasper. If any of those influences interest you at all, give it a listen, especially the astral, 9-minute version of "Unconditional Love" that closes out most editions of the record. Grade: A-

Whatcha Doing? Mini-Reviews for March 7 - 13, 2016

Here are the reviews for this week! Apparently I watched a lot of movies this week, which I didn't realize until I started tallying everything up. Oh well. Let me know what y'all think of the movies and stuff!

Movies

Brazil (1985)
Okay, now I get the cult of Terry Gilliam. I mean, don't get me wrong: I like 12 Monkeys and Time Bandits and Baron Muchausen and the animations in Monty Python and all the rest. But Brazil is where all the charms of those other things merge into a truly compelling whole for me. It's what's transformed Gilliam from an interesting filmmaker into a great one in my eyes. Maybe I should have started with this one. It's a moving, desperate, funny, visually stunning, and utterly bonkers experience that totally justifies the "what if we adapted 1984, but with, like, carnival-inspired imagery" premise. Grade: A

Day of the Dead (1985)
The third of George A. Romero's Living Dead trilogy turns out to be the second best, but only by a hair—nothing's touching the absolute masterwork of the original Night of the Living Dead. The thematic complexity of Dawn has been scaled back a bit, but in exchange, we've got far and away the most stomach-churning gore effects in the series (perversely, I've got to count this a plus—it's a triumph of practical effects, y'all, and come on: who doesn't want to see the villain meet his end in that way?). Also, as much trouble as it's caused the zombie genre over time, I appreciate how much this movie spends dealing with the science of zombies. That scene with all the dismembered zombies is awesome, and it's not just the practical wowee-zowee of the animate body parts. Grade: A-

Room (2015)
Some of the sharpest, most emotionally harrowing thriller filmmaking in recent memory gives way to something looser, more ambitious, and frankly less interesting in the film's second half. That's not to say it's bad; the movie is just cut in two, and the transition between both sides is jarring in a way that must have been intended to echo the characters' own feelings regarding what happens to them. I'm being slightly vague because the wrenching tension that ends the first half is just too indelible to spoil. Just know that the movie's linchpin event shakes everything out of place so joltingly that they never quite get back to working as smoothly again. Oh, and is it common knowledge by now that Brie Larson is amazing? 'Cause she is. Grade: B+

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015)
Having only a barely working knowledge of the Black Panther party, I found this documentary fascinating. Director/writer/producer Stanley Nelson Jr. has assembled some stunning interview footage, and the absolute best parts are when you can see the subjects still struggling with what they've experienced: retired police remembering collaborating with the FBI manipulation, party members recounting the pulling apart of the Panthers at the seams. But I could see the argument that it's a largely surface-level work. I wonder if there's a longer director's cut floating out there somewhere: it's definitely the kind of movie that would benefit from an hour or two extra, which, yes, I realize is crazy coming from "all movies should be 90 minutes" me. Even at 115 minutes, though, the whole thing feels a bit rushed. Grade: B+

For the Bible Tells Me So (2007)
The most egregious artifacts of 2000s "indie" cinema are not, as many have said, quirky dramedies but rather the leftist issue documentary: the children of Michael Moore. For the Bible Tells Me So has a lot of the hallmarks of the genre: manipulative musical cues, clear "bad guys," a snide animated sequence. But it's worth noting that the movie does dodge some of the pitfalls: it's decidedly good-natured and interested in pointing out just how many different ways that Christians respond to homosexuality. It doesn't hurt that I'm also on the doc's side regarding acceptance of homosexuality. Even so, we're still dealing with an issue doc, which means that it's cinematically boring and often tips toward ideologically smugness. Which I guess begs the question of why I keep watching these things. Grade: C 

Television

The X-Files, Season 10 (2016)
When Fox announced that The X-Files would return, I suppose it would have been reasonable to assume that it would return at the same level of quality that it left us—which was, unfortunately, the show's ninth (and worst) season (or, even worse, the go-nowhere theatrical flop, I Want to Believe). But... I dunno. I had hope. Maybe I was too much of a super-fan to do anything but hope. After all, Darin Morgan was going to be writing an episode! James Wong and Glen Morgan were coming back for multiple episodes! And yet, in the end, what we got was exactly where Season 9 left us: with one true classic (the delightful Darin Morgan-penned third episode), a handful of mediocre monsters of the week, and some truly abysmal mythology arcs. At least we had Mulder this time. Grade: C+

You're the Worst, Season 2 (2015)
When I snarkily reduced the first season to "terrible people struggle to cope with their flaws until they become sad enough to be sorta sympathetic," I'm not sure that I thought the show's solution to that reduction would be to make its characters slightly less terrible and a whole lot more sad. But that's what they've done, and it's worked reasonably well. Not that You're the Worst has lost its whip-smart comedic edge (there's a lot of mileage gotten out of the "I didn't know it was a school" joke), the show has found its firmest footing in drama, especially the small, crushing drama that comes from picking the scab at supposed domestic content—best evidenced by the stunning mid-season downer, "LCD Soundsystem." It's still a bit sloppier and familiar than I wish it were, but it's definitely not the worst. Grade: B+

Music

King Crimson - THRAK (1995)
Aging musicians putting out late-career excellence is something I never get tired of. Unfortunately, you don't get much of that in prog, since most of the early flagship bands either crumpled at the end of the '70s or morphed into something that paved the way for the Phil Collins solo career. All of this means that I am delighted to find out that my old prog favorites King Crimson have put out some great material as the group slid into old age. Exhibit A: THRAK, every bit the heavy, intricate record you hope those prog grandfathers still have in them. It's maybe not quite up to the lofty standards of the band's '70s work, but whatever. It's still good stuff. Grade: B+

Whatcha Doing? Mini-Reviews for Feb. 29 - March 6, 2016

Another week, another post of mini-reviews. It's pretty movie-heavy this week, but oh well. Let me know y'all's opinions, too!

Movies

The Witch (2016)
The thing that impressed me most about this movie wasn't the thick atmosphere, the uniformly solid acting, or the fact that it profoundly freaked me out in its final fifteen minutes. No, what I liked best here was the commitment to the period-appropriate Puritan language in the dialogue. Seriously, the whole thing sounds like William Bradford's journal. Which I find awesome. Make of that what you will. Grade: B+

An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Tons and tons of fun. The wolf-transition setpieces are justifiably legendary in their use of practical effects, and the rest is just gravy: the soundtrack and the wise-cracking corpses make sure we don't take things too seriously, and the legitimately moving and sincere characterizations keep things just serious enough. Also, is it just me, or is our intrepid lycanthropic hero struggling to come to grips with his homosexuality? It's a nice twist on the usual wolf-as-virile-heterosexuality metaphor. Grade: A-

After Hours (1985)
So nobody told me that this is like a top-five Scorsese film, huh? Maybe top three. Seriously, it's, what, Goodfellas, King of Comedy, and then this gem of existential hilarity. It's one of those deceptively straightforward movies that you usually get from, say, mid-career Stanley Kubrick or the Coens, where what goes by is so breezy and immensely enjoyable that its dense depths only on you slowly—I'm a particular fan of how the apparent SoHo artistic obsession with horrifying papier-mâché eventually becomes a kind of visualization of our poor protagonist's state of mind. Scorsese's been on a grand, serious streak lately, so how nice would it be if he returned to this sort of lithe, smirking filmmaking? Grade: A

Bridge of Spies (2015)
It's a late-period Spielberg film, which means that you can expect a gorgeously shot, meticulously crafted gem; it's also a current-period Coen Brothers screenplay, which means that you can expect tight, nervously funny repartee. Bridge of Spies isn't quite the miraculous surprise that Lincoln was (nothing's going to beat seeing America's favorite president telling dirty jokes), but it's every bit the earlier film's companion piece, both movies centering on men struggling to perform simple acts of human decency in political climates that require asinine acrobatics to get anything done. If that makes it sound kind of leaden, please hear me when I say that it is emphatically not. Funny, tense, moving: see it. Grade: A-


Books (Plays? I read it in a book, but it's technically a play)

Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (1903)
Man and Superman is a weird one in that it has a huge, glaring bit of experimentation (an unconnected and lengthy third act featuring Don Juan in hell) that honestly kind of drags the whole thing down and yet also contains the weight of this play's urgency. I like the frothy romantic comedy that makes up the rest of the play, but it's too lightweight to stand on its own. It's in that long, tedious conversation among Don Juan and Satan where the play actually gets some conceptual drive. Too bad that part's a bore. You know what's not as interesting as philosophy? Taking a break from your real play to have heretofore unintroduced characters discuss philosophy. Oh well. The rest is fun enough that it's not a total wash. Grade: B-