Movies
The title leads you to believe that this is a Looney Tunes movie, and it's certainly anarchic and self-referential enough to earn that moniker. But what this movie really is is a salute to Warner Bros. history in general, which makes it way more fun than a Chuck-Jones-less Looney Tunes movie was ever going to be. It's sometimes trying too hard, and not all the jokes land. But it's got an Animaniacs-esque love of movie history, and it's hard to begrudge that. Grade: B+
It's one of the funniest American movies of the past few decades. It's also got that irritating, show-stopping meta-commentary by Robert Downey Jr.'s character, which doesn't stop it from being one of the funniest American movies of recent years. But it is something extra that just kind of drives me up the wall—we get it, movies are artificial. The core of this movie is just aces, though; bonus points to Michelle Monaghan for breathing life into her wafer-thin girl friday. Grade: A-
Why aren't more horror movies set in caves? Caves are terrifying! Especially when, as is the subtext in this movie, the cave leads to Hell itself. It's a spooky, unsettling undercurrent that's made all the more spooky and unsettling by the masterful control of lighting. The lighting really is the MVP here; if I had to guess, I'd say that a full 25 percent of the film is entirely dark, while a not inconsiderable fraction of the movie's remainder is composed of shots with only a corner of the frame lit. It's wonderfully effective and creates the neat effect of making the audience as blind as the unfortunate cavers who star in the film, but what sets the lighting into truly incredible territory is the scenes lit by the cavers' various flares and glowsticks, casting the cave walls in fire-red and sickly green monochrome. It's without question one of the best-directed horror movies of the new millennium, and were it not for the relatively forgettable cast of characters (my one strike against the movie), we'd be dealing with an all-time classic here. Grade: A-
This movie thinks it's a lot more entertaining than it is, obsessed with its own presumed cleverness and ironic juxtaposition of tones. There are actually two really fantastic performances in here, one from Jesse Eisenberg and the other from Kristen Stewart, and the ending credits are, improbably, cool. All of which makes it even more of a shame that the movie surrounding those bright spots is such a bore. Grade: C
The cracker-jack Sorkin dialogue and inventive, stage-like structure (each of the three "acts" center around a long scene that focuses on a single product launch in Jobs' career) make this one of the best biopics in years—probably since Spielberg's Lincoln. That is, until it completely and catastrophically flubs the landing on one of the most astoundingly ill-conceived endings I've ever seen in a movie. There's a moment (I won't spoil it, but you'll know it once the final ten minutes slap you in the face) when the movie jumps from being a razor-sharp study of the compromises of genius to a weirdly beatific, tender mushfest, and it's awful. That said, 95 percent of the best biopic in years is still 95 percent of the best biopic in years. Cut your losses, I suppose. Grade: B
This will likely be the funniest movie of 2016—funny enough that it pretty much doesn't matter that the trailer revealed most of the best jokes. Of course, if you've been paying attention to the career of Shane Black, this should come as no surprise; unfortunately for me, I haven't been paying attention to Shane Black until just earlier this week when I saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, so I'm in the kind of dopey-eyed position of being surprised that The Nice Guys is every bit as funny—nay, funnier—than its trailer promised. I can't overstate how much the winning cast plays a hand in this success: Ryan Gosling in particular displays a proficiency with timing and physical comedy that makes this probably my favorite performance of his career. There's a lot of Robert Downey Jr.'s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang performance in him here, which is good. In fact, there's a lot of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in general here, which is mostly good but also comes with its own baggage: as in the earlier film, there's a troubling glibness surrounding the mistreatment of women, and the plot and writing in general hews closely enough to Black's wheelhouse that there's a definitely been-there-done-thatness to the whole movie that makes it just a tad less fresh than it might be in a vacuum. But still. This is great fun. Grade: A-
Television
It's a slight step down from the first season, if only because the debut's sickening feeling of discovery made the tragedy of Jimmy's world all the deeper, but a slight step down from one of the best seasons of television in recent years still makes for very, very good television. This season is all about teasing out more complex varieties of the same basic conflicts from the first season, though in more heightened situations—as Jimmy works his way up the legal-world ladder, he faces again and again those same questions: the tension between what's right and what's right for his career, the gulf between what people deserve and what people get, all of which culminates in a riveting, tense showdown between Jimmy and his brother that reveals, yet again, that the great tragedy of the show is Jimmy's love for his brother. Also (and slightly unrelated): Kim Wexler is probably my favorite character on TV right now. Grade: A-
Books
I liked Reality Boy, the other A. S. King I've read, alright, but Please Ignore Vera Dietz is head and shoulders above that novel. It's got the same stellar command of voice and humor that gave Reality Boy its readability, but the dysfunction is dialed down just a bit, which makes room for a bit more tender (though still not exactly cuddly) character interplay, especially between Vera and her father. There are also the surreal touches, like the from-the-grave narration of "the dead kid," which serve alternatingly as flashback devices and little tone poems, and it adds tons of texture to the story. A broken heart lives at the center of this book—torn apart by lost friendships and death—and it's genuinely moving to see it pieced back together. Grade: A-
It's not absolutely top-notch Stephen King, but it does present King in a very readable mode. The '90s were a decade of experimentation for King, where he starts moving toward new storytelling structures and types, and while Tom Gordon isn't as experimental as something like Hearts in Atlantis, the wilderness survival genre is relatively fresh ground for King, and he tills it well, serving up something not unlike Hatchet crossed with Lovecraft. Not everything works: I'm not sure the narrative voice is sufficiently different from the average King protagonist to justify it being that of an 8-year-old. But as a whole package, it's good. Grade: B
Music
I'd heard this album already, but it wasn't until I bought it that I really listened to it in-depth. The Man Who Sold the World finds Bowie at this fascinating crossroads in his career, stuck between his space-oddity progginess and his fun-house-mirror pop star sensibilities. There's at least one alternate universe where Bowie went on become the fifth member of Van der Graaf Generator, and arguably, the reason why Hunky Dory is so important is that it established that Bowie wouldn't do that. This is fantastic stuff, both as this sort of fascinating "what if" and also, with classics like "All the Madmen" and the title track, as the beginning of Bowie's golden years. Grade: A-
I bought this album because I like Iyer (his 2015 record was one of my favorite of last year), but this is much more Wadada Smith's show. Iyer's piano lays down minimalist soundscapes for Wadada's trumpet to swoop and shriek over, and the results are spacious and thoughtful. A few songs are a little skeletal, which sometimes works for atmospherics but elsewhere just feels kind of underbaked. But on the whole, Cosmic Rhythm is an immersive, moody jazz record, the kind best played late at night. Grade: B+
No comments:
Post a Comment