Movies
Zootopia has energy to spare. This is both a good and bad thing: good when it lends itself to the incredible biosphere designs and the dense, silly animal wordplay; bad when it makes the movie merely busy when it's trying to be clever. The result of the latter is that the characters are just a bit thinner than they perhaps should be, and the villain reveal doesn't quite make as much sense as it should. But for everything wrong with pacing or plotting, I can name three things the film does extraordinarily well, and taken as an average, the movie's quite successful indeed. And all of it in the service of an aggressively progressive take on privilege and oppression, one that's eyebrow-raising by the (admittedly low) standards of a mainstream American film and downright revolutionary by the standards of Disney animation. One plot point in particular suggests a particularly radical and even seditious take on the role higher-ups in the government have played perpetrating institutional oppression, and for a moment, it sends the movie sailing left of even Spike Lee territory, which is something I'm positive I never thought I'd say about a Disney feature. Grade: B+
Imagine Raiders of the Lost Ark taking place within the physics of a Chuck Jones Looney Tunes, and you'll have a pretty good idea of the specific kind of fun Tintin is. My only knowledge of the original comics is the intensity with which a middle-school acquaintance of mine wanted me to read them, but I can't imagine half of the kinetic wit could have come from the page. Spielberg's having a lot of fun here, and so am I. Grade: B+
It's a lot funnier than I'm used to this sort of movie being ("this sort" referring to "popular Hollywood comedies from my high school years"), and it manages that rare trick of having the free-flowing absurdity of a heavily improvised movie without actually feeling heavily improvised. The jokes do peter out toward the end; the film does this weird thing where for 2/3 of its run time it asks us to regard Ricky Bobby's career with ridicule, only to turn around and ask us to genuinely root for him in the final act, a turn that's not nearly successful enough to justify leaving behind the far funnier buffoonery of the early goings. But overall, it's still funny. I suppose that's what counts. Grade: B+
For a movie that begins with the most disgusting kissing tutorial I've ever seen, it's actually a sweet, almost tender coming-of-age-type film. It feints toward the kind of into-the-abyss perversity of other recent Greek films (Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos makes a rather prominent cameo), but it's really more grounded in realism and recognizable human emotions than the other ones I've seen. Grade: B+
I hadn't seen this in at least ten years, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much it held up to my memories. For a 3+ hour movie, especially one that's relatively episodic and plotless, it's remarkably fleet, something I can only attribute to the sharp editing and delightful cast. I'm not entirely convinced that Chuck Yeager needs to be in the movie as much as he is (although I recognize the importance of his arc to the structure of the film itself), but overall, I thought it was quite good. One thing that's interesting is that you can see the transition away from the more formally engaged '70s style of filmmaking toward the '80s/'90s prestige drama formula. The editing and lyrical moments Kaufman indulges in are totally '70s, but the pacing, slightly cute characterization of historical figures, and alternately comic and serious tones are totally anticipating the '80s Oscar-bait playbook. It's not a bad thing; the movie works great. But you can see where this is going. Grade: B+
Handsomely filmed and acted, but I couldn't get over just how outlandish the whole premise seemed to be. With the possibly deal-breaking caveats that I'm neither Japanese nor a father, it just seems so bizarre that, if your baby was switched out with someone else's in the hospital and you didn't find out until six years later, you wouldn't just keep the kid you already had rather than obsessing over your actual "blood" son. What our (fatherly) protagonist does in this movie is quite the opposite, and to me, that's not recognizably human behavior. Upset? Sure. But ready to abandon your own kid, whom (the movie is diligent to point out) you have already groomed as an expert pianist and achieving student? I don't see it. Grade: C+
Television
Without a doubt, the strangest, most idiosyncratic series yet released by Netflix, a company that has never shied away from releasing strange, idiosyncratic series in the past. It's also perhaps the least accessible, and I'll admit that it took me a couple episodes to get on the show's manic (literally: Maria Bamford's autobiographical protagonist is frank about her struggles with bipolar II disorder) wavelength, which ricochets between screeching silliness to senseless absurdity to poignant character notes. The most obvious comparisons are to Louie, Master of None, and the myriad other comedians-play-themselves sitcoms that have sprung up in recent years, but what this show reminds me of most is Arrested Development, with its intricate plotting, clueless characters, and silly/satirical real-world analogies. But whereas AD relied on uncompromising objectivity for its humor, exposing the Bluths' foolishness through relentless refusal to play into any of the characters delusions, Lady Dynamite is notable for just how subjective everything is. Everything is definitively from Bamford's highly unreliable point of view, and that's where a lot of the humor (and pathos) comes from: the ways her world of talking pugs and quirky personal mentors end up flying right past the boundaries of reality. It's not going to be for everyone; Bamford's screeching, hyperactive persona is just this close to being grating, and, while funny, the early meta stuff the show tries (at times in the first few episodes, the action pulls back to reveal the studio setting and has the characters discuss the filming of the show itself) doesn't serve much of a purpose in the context of the season as a whole. But it's wholly unique and very funny, all the while finding a strange sort of sadness in its back half, and that counts for a lot. Grade: B+
By now, the show's success-undercut-by-failure-undercut-by-success formula is pretty obvious and predictable, but no matter: some of the greatest TV comedies of all time have thrived on predictability ("NORM!"). And while Silicon Valley isn't quite GOAT yet, it's still firing on all cylinders as one of the sharpest and funniest shows on TV right now, especially with season MVP T. J. Miller imbuing entrepreneur Erlich Bachman's sublime buffoonery with an unexpected level of emotional weight this year. The whole cast, though, is fantastic, the best comedy ensemble currently on TV (give or take a Brooklyn Nine-Nine), and showrunner Mike Judge's alternating sweet and acerbic sensibilities have never felt better suited to a setting than they have here in the tech capital of the country. Grade: A-
Books
Meandering and overlong (my Bible has more pages, but barely), It is the kind of novel that would eventually bring Stephen King out of his '70s/'80s hot streak into the relative valley of his mid-'90s output. But this isn't the '90s; it's the '80s, and King's still at the top of his game. It's bloated, yes, but it's also, in stretches, some of the very best work King has ever done. The novel is legitimately creepy, for one, and not just for the iconic Pennywise the Clown; the book is full of twisted, nightmarish imagery that draws on a host of phobias, including a climactic monster that, to this fragile mind, is even scarier than a clown. On a different note, his ability to spin pop cultural ephemera into something otherworldly and even mythical remains unparalleled—the novel's gradual transition from coming-of-age into cosmic horror is seamless and beautiful to behold—and his melancholic, even painful depiction of adolescence and growing up is so well-observed that it tugged some of my own experiences from the depths of my memory with a clarity so startling that it broke me down to tears. In the face of that, I'm more than willing to forgive some of the slack passages. Grade: A-
I always love reading this blog, man!
ReplyDelete-Justin
Thanks, dude! Glad to have a dedicated reader!
DeleteAnd as we've mentioned already, Silicon Valley really is just the best.