Movies
This movie is the sort of glorious pulp where all the bad guys speak in thick German accents and the good guys all speak in genteel British dialects, to hell with the fact that two of them are Czech. So it's ultimately disappointing that the film turns out to be tedious, talky, and stagey in all the wrong ways for long stretches. But man, once they get on the train (about 30 minutes from the end), it's gold. Which leaves us with a bitter gulp but a delicious aftertaste. Aftertastes are nice. Grade: B-
The whole "best Rocky movie since Rocky" hype is slightly overblown in that it's only barely the best Rocky movie since Rocky—people forget about just how good Rocky Balboa is, and a large part of the elegiac, crumbling tone that makes this movie so affecting when it's centered on the aging Rocky himself borrows from and builds on that earlier movie's foundation. Still, what tips this movie toward the better is just how well it mixes that old blood with the new: Michael B. Jordan is always Grade A, but he's especially great here, with his mix of brash, bruised, and naive that comes from being the abandoned son of Apollo Creed. Rocky Balboa was a downer; Creed is only half downer, and the cheerful parts are cheer-worthy indeed. Grade: A-
This really gives some context that homoerotic Channing Tatum dance sequence in Hail, Caesar! I suppose it's only appropriate that a film about barely masked sexual desire (both homo and hetero) would be chock full of barely masked sexual vocabulary, but it's still kind of a shock to hear the likes of "cooch dancer" and "prehistoric dick" (this woman loves cavemen—I'm not even joking) come from the mouths of 1949 Hollywood stars. Lots of fun. Some of the usual classic musical sins rear their heads: extended lyric-less dance sequences, cornball characterizations, a few bum numbers. But overall, this one's a winner. Grade: A-
When I watched Mountains May Depart a couple weeks ago, I wouldn't have guessed that the segmented, multiple-stories-in-one-movie structure would be part of writer/director Jia Zhangke's house style. But here we have his previous movie, and it's basically an anthology film. Which is cool; anthology films are cool. This one's a little heavy-handed (the final line, repeated like five times, is "Do you know your sin?"—yes, we do), but whatever. Some of the greatest works of art are heavy-handed. This isn't the greatest, but it's very nearly garden-variety great. The final two segments fumble a bit, but otherwise, it's a riveting collection of moral fables and, to boot, a fascinating cross-section of contemporary Chinese society. Grade: A-
Music
A wholly charming mixtape debut. The themes are familiar: money, sex, success—honestly, the lyrics aren't bad, but they are the least interesting part. The best thing here is Kamaiyah herself, who delivers those lyrics with a warmth and charisma that most musicians would kill for, giving her stories the feel of personal narrative, of emotional investment, rather than boilerplate hip-hop. Grade: B
In their best album since 2008's career highlight, Rook, Shearwater eschew the post-punk pop-rock of their last release (Animal Joy, a solid record which, for me at least, has had diminishing returns since 2012) and give us something more electric and angular, evoking krautrock as much as U2 and Joy Division. This is a jammy release, full of quick, repetitious drums and weird, possibly sampled sounds, and I dig it. If these guys aren't going to return to the spacey, post-rock atmospherics that made their work last decade so good, this is the next-best place to be. Grade: A-
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