Movies
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+
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-
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
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 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-
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