Movies
This movie is funny—at times, very funny. Jon Hamm's louse of a friend-with-benefits is hysterical; Rose Byrne's shade-throwing villainy is pitch-perfect; Kristen Wiig's gentler, tragicomic turn is the best she's ever been, before or since this movie. But damn it all, this movie falls for that same post-Apatow horror of being over two hours long, and that just really topples the whole thing. There is nothing about this movie that justifies its runtime, and in fact, there are several moments that actively argue against its long cut: I'm thinking specifically of the rehearsal dinner toast scene, which pivots distressingly quickly from funny to "why haven't they cut to the next scene yet?" Funny is funny; it's true. But given the option between one slice of cake and ten, it's generally better to play it safe. Grade: B
The New World, Terrence Malick's second post-hiatus movie after The Thin Red Line, has several things going for it over its immediate predecessor: First, it's uncommonly beautiful, visually speaking, even by the already high Malick metric. It's hard to call this a career best from a cinematographer as legendary as Emmanuel Lubezki, so I won't, but his fantastic work in The New World is definitely up there. Second, (and this gets a huge "Praise the Lord" from me), Malick's trademark interior monologues/voiceovers are grounded in the concrete events that the characters experience, a merciful change from the meandering, half-poetic philosophizing that bloats lesser Malick like The Thin Red Line and the later To the Wonder. The result is that The New World is Malick's plottiest film since probably Days of Heaven, which gives these characters an immediacy that even superior Malick features have lacked. Plot isn't a necessary feature of any movie, of course, but nonnarrative film can be a tough beast to tackle, so it's a nice surprise to go in expecting a bull and to get a delicious dairy cow instead (don't read too much into that analogy). That said, this movie still meanders, and even as artfully done as it is here, did we really need another John Smith/Pocahontas story onscreen? Mileage may vary, naturally (and it has, with the critics being mostly split between lukewarm and ecstatic reviews back in '05), but my mileage runs pretty low on this kind of story these days. Grade: B
Speaking strictly of the animation, this is one of the smartest, funniest, most creative animated movies of all time: the way the action plays around with the geometry of the backgrounds and forced perspectives, creating spaces where there seems to only be generic patterns, is wonderful in a way that's difficult to describe without just linking to clips of the movie itself, and the fact that this was all hand-drawn is seriously, seriously impressive. Speaking of everything else besides the animation, though, this movie is a train wreck. Cobbled (ha) together from over twenty years' worth of fragments, the movie is clearly unfinished, and in an attempt to stitch everything together into something that vaguely (and ultimately unsuccessfully) resembles a completed whole, we're subjected to awful narration and heinous celebrity voice acting that litters the story with irritating, sub-Dreamworks anachronism and pop cultural references. Never has the chasm between technical craft and narrative execution been so wide or so disastrous. But man, that animation is something to behold. Grade: A-
It's as great as its sterling reputation suggests—a nightmarish thriller about the nature of reality and filmmaking with just enough metaphysics thrown in to make that sort of investigation more interesting than the Vertigo/Persona pastiche that the plot synopsis suggests. I do wonder if maybe all the discussion about it being incomprehensibly mysterious is a tiny bit overblown, though. Surely there are opaque edges here and there, as there are with most of David Lynch's work, but the central plot seems straightforward enough: the first 2/3 are a dream that the main character wakes up from in the last 1/3. Although maybe my confidence in that interpretation is misplaced, and I just haven't got far enough down the rabbit hole... erm, blue box. Grade: A
Probably worth watching for the animation alone, which ranks among the most technically impressive and thematically resonant uses of stop-motion ever. If it weren't for that (and maybe even still), Anomalisa isn't quite the heavyweight that Synecdoche, New York was, nor is it the brain-bender of Being John Malkovich nor the well of pathos of Eternal Sunshine—what I'm saying is that among the major works of screenwriter (and co-director here) Charlie Kaufman, this ranks as relatively slight, although that doesn't keep it from being both tender and terrifying by turns in that typically Kaufman-type way. Probably the single most enduring touch to the movie (besides having Tom Noonan voice nearly every character) is the way the stop-motion models have seams left deliberately visible, which has the tremendous effect of making these character all seem as brittle as their psyches. This is not a happy movie—in fact, it shares quite a lot with late-period Mad Men, where Don Draper was at his most both narcissistic and fearfully aware of the catastrophic effects of that narcissism. But it's a striking, intimate, even frightening one that's not bound to leave your mind soon. Grade: B+
Oh, it's exquisitely made, for sure. The "we're only going to shoot with natural light, and oh yeah, in the actual wilderness, maaan" actually pays off with a nearly nonstop parade of gorgeous imagery that almost justifies the conceit of a ra-ra, fist-pumping, pulp remake of The New World. Almost. It would help if the whole thing weren't so criminally boring or if every scene between the admittedly impressive action set pieces weren't another redundant iteration of either DiCaprio doing hardcore wilderness survival stuff or Hardy making his way back to civilization looking villainous. Grade: C
The structure is lumpy, perhaps even broken: there's nothing inherently wrong with focusing on the human drama in a Godzilla story, but there is something wrong with focusing on drama that's so inert and tepid. But once you get to the creature-feature back half of the movie, all that doesn't matter. The design, direction, and mood surrounding the monster battles are so captivating that you're likely to forget all about the boring character drama (and maybe even who the characters are to begin with). I can't think of another recent blockbuster that's managed to achieve a sense of just how titanic its monsters are and just how insignificant its humans are in comparison. Godzilla is the most artfully directed, atmospherically immersive blockbuster of its size in years, so lumps and all, it's worth your time. Grade: B+
Television
If you aren't watching Bob's Burgers yet, well, why not? You're missing out on some of the most potent combination of silly, sweet, and gleeful anarchy to hit Fox's animated programming since the heydays of Futurama and The Simpsons, although the best point of comparison is probably the gentle realism of King of the Hill (given that Bob's Burgers has a far longer absurdist streak than Hank's adventures ever did). If you're already watching it, well, congratulations! We got another great season! I suppose if you're keeping count, the hit-to-miss ratio is just slightly smaller than in the past, which might be either a statistical blip or a sign of the show's age. But whatever minuscule dip in quality we've seen is only noticeable if you're looking hard. This show is still a weekly delight for me. Grade: A-
I've seen it before; you've probably seen it before, too, if you're anywhere near my age. Just in case you had any doubts: yes, it holds up. Gloriously. A big part of what's so incredible here is how much it takes advantage of the fact that children have few fully formed ideas about what constitutes "weird" and "normal." A sponge lives in a pineapple at the bottom of the Bikini Atoll? Well, okay! It's occasionally narrated by an anonymous French-accented voiceover? Sure! The show plumbs some sublimely surreal depths, sometimes to hilarious effect, sometimes to nightmarish effect, often to both, as in the series-best contender, "Rock Bottom." Beautiful stuff. Grade: A
Books
In the ranks of Virginia Woolf novels, it's slightly Mrs Dalloway's inferior, largely due to the lengthy opening section, "The Window," which occupies nearly half of the novel and is saddled with the unglamorous task of setting the table for the final two sections, both of which are sublime. "Time Passes," the second section, is a particularly moving passage that delivers just what its title implies, reversing the languorous pace of "The Window" by fast-forwarding through the lives of each of its characters until gut-punching consequence after gut-punching consequence hits the reader in succession as the characters hurtle toward the end of time. "The Window" is almost surely too long and too lyrical, but I'll forgive it since it allows for that wonderful, heartbreaking middle. Grade: A-
Almost any contemporary YA novel owes at least a little to Catcher in the Rye, but Sherman Alexie's breakout novel is one of the few that I've come across that seems to understand just how important the relative aimless and episodic plotting was to the oblique pathos and wounded voice in Salinger's work. Modern YA is plotty, which sometimes has the effect of turning its world into mechanical structures with "trauma" on the front end and "self-actualization" on the back. There are few mechanics in The Absolutely True Diary, at least not ones as angular and squeaky as those in, say, a John Green novel. Thankfully, Alexie allows his protagonist lyrical moments; he lets the characterization breathe. It's wonderful. The last few moments of the book are some of the best YA pages I've read in ages. Grade: A
Music
Chance the Rapper has long been modern hip-hop's resident cornball, which is both an asset when he's releasing work like last year's exquisite "Sunday Candy" or this tape's "Finish Line" and a liability when it leads him to incongruously silly lines promising to "give Satan a swirly" (actual quote from Coloring Book). Coloring Book is a tad more consistent than previous Chance the Rapper releases—it lacks the immediacy of a clear masterwork in the vein of "Sunday Candy" or "Pusha Man," but it also doesn't get nearly as silly as some of his least successful work from last year's Donnie Trumpet collaboration, Surf—although those looking for a fulfillment of Acid Rap's scrappy promise are probably going to be disappointed. It's a slick, gorgeously produced mixtape that focuses way more intently on Chance's Christianity than his drug-related neuroses (unlike with Kanye, that Kirk Franklin collaboration actually means something here—Coloring Book is the first secularly released album I've heard that trades in on CCM influences [seriously, there's a very prominent Chris Tomlin allusion], which is kind of cool, but it's also CCM, which... urg). The music is idiosyncratic, personal, and sincere, and even if it's not always successful, there's a lot of value in those qualities. Grade: B
I really haven't much listened to Grimes before this, so I have no stake in the battle of whether or not this is her sellout record. What I do think is that it's this lovely, trash-can-punch mix of '90s Euro-dance, noise, and K-pop that's every bit as infectious and strange a confection as I could want from 2010s pop music. The album has a few duds (I love Janelle Monáe passionately, but her guest track, "Venus Fly" is pretty thin), but on the whole, this is probably the best possible product of poptimism. Grade: A-
Love Yes fills a very St. Vincent-shaped hole in my heart. I haven't heard any of the band's other albums, but man, if TEEN is going to tread the St. Vincent territory, they might as well do it in this much style. I do miss Annie's guitar theatrics, though, which makes TEEN a slightly less interesting inhabitant of the St. Vincent world. Grade: B
If Oasis were the Beatles of the Britpop era, then Suede was the David Bowie, albeit a considerably narrower version of Bowie than Bowie himself ever allowed, and without the sense of humor to boot. Comparisons aside, though, these are stupendously crafted songs, and if there was one thing that mattered about Britpop, it wasn't all the allusions to British Invasion rockers; it was each band's proficiency with razor-sharp songwriting precision. Suede's got that in spades (suedes?). Grade: B+
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