Movies
The action—particularly the Mexico City sequence involving Day-of-the-Dead imagery, an epic tracking shot, and a fistfight in a helicopter doing barrel rolls (yes, every bit as amazing as that sounds)—is some of the best the Bond series has ever formed, which, I mean, thank goodness, because the rest of the movie sure doesn't have much to offer. Spectre is overlong, convoluted, illogical, and hampered by, of all things, relentless series continuity (something that should be at the absolute bottom of any checklist of Bond essentials). And I don't believe for one minute that Léa Seydoux's Dr. Swann is somehow Bond's soulmate, especially, especially in a movie that so tirelessly reminds us that a woman named Vesper Lynd once existed. That action is so good, though. Let's stay positive here. Grade: B-
I wasn't prepared for the extent to which this movie is basically E.T. except with a psychic boy whose eyes glow in place of a psychic alien whose finger glows. Of course, being written and directed by Jeff Nichols and not Steven Spielberg (and Melissa Mathison), the film is a bit more elliptical and oblique than E.T. ever was, which is both to its benefit—there's an otherworldliness to Midnight Special that's entrancing—and its detriment—the specific and painful emotional beats that make E.T. on of the great American pictures are largely gone in favor of indie-esque stammers and withheld confessions. That said, the movie is still one of the sharper sci-fi pieces you're likely to see this year, and well-worth your time, great American film or not. Grade: B+
Very funny and also very good at achieving something pretty rare in American comedy, which is the ability to have its characters experience growth without having to stop the laughs to do so. Look, I like comedies that turn suddenly and unrepentantly sentimental, and that goes for everything from The Apartment to Superbad. And I like movies that don't really care about characterization at all, at least not to the extent that they're willing to take them seriously enough to develop them beyond joke delivery machines: I'm talking our Dr. Strangloves and Airplane!s. But there's something entirely satisfying and impressive about Flirting with Disaster, which sends multiple characters through complete and compelling arcs without actually halting the funny. Grade: A-
A blistering critique of the 1930s French upper class that posits, to amusing effect, that the rich are only interested three things: killing animals, sleeping with others' significant others, and killing those who sleep with their own significant others. That this critique is anything more than a gentle "silly rich people" slap on the wrist isn't clear for most of the film's duration, but when it finally does pull the rug out on the silliness to reveal the utter moral decay beneath, it's startling. I might feel a bit more invested in this movie if I were at all connected to '30s French society and privy to its social nuances (a lot of this satire rings only in theory for me), and I'll be honest that I'm not quite sure what all the "greatest movie of all time" hubbub is about with this one. Still, it's fun and vicious in equal measure and definitely not time I regret spending. Grade: A-
Television
Prior to seeing the third (and final) season, I'd been mulling over the idea that Deadwood is the only of HBO's trio of great early-2000s drama series (alongside The Sopranos and The Wire) that could be reasonably said to have optimism programmed into its DNA. This is, after all, a show about how a group of criminals, cheaters, and liars managed to slowly but surely purge their baser instincts and form a functional society out of the wilderness and lawlessness of the American West. But alas, that optimism doesn't carry over into Season 3. The difference is, tellingly, the arrival of Big Business (in the form of cutthroat mogul and real-life evil dude George Hearst), which compromises the idealism that informed even the rougher of this show's characters, up to an unintentionally final episode that presents a thoroughly depressing future for the integrity of Deadwood's (and America's, because this is that kind of show) principles. There's an argument to be made that this is altogether too heavy-handed and blunt, and I'd be open to that if the show weren't still so consistently well-written: as always, it's the florid, winding dialogue that shines brightest here. Plus, it's kind of hard to call this too heavy-handed, when the speech is so arcane that it's often a challenge just to keep up with the plot, much less ruminate on its implications. Grade: A-
Books
I'm only familiar with Klosterman's writing through the handful of pieces I've read of his on the internet, so who's to say if this is a potential critique of most of his work, but here: the biggest strength of Klosterman's speculative nonfiction book is also its biggest liability, that Klosterman seems way more interested in making his book "interesting" than with actual, sound methodology for crafting his ideas. Part of this is baked into the premise: imagining contemporary culture's legacy on the distant future, specifically through thinking through what assumptions we as a culture hold today that will seem ludicrous hundreds of years from now in the same way that Aristotle's theory of gravity (the rock "wants" to be closer to the earth) seems preposterous now. Of course, as Klosterman stressed throughout, the very nature of these sorts of assumptions is that it's nearly impossible for any culture to recognize from the inside, and the progression of human thought has not always moved forward according to the logic of previous ages. This idea that what seems logical now might not be what's logical in the long term frees up Klosterman to make some truly out-there speculation. At its best, it makes for some fascinating discussion that ignores pat, consensus answers, such as when his lengthy chapter on what rock musician/group will come to represent the genre in a thousand years ignores the low-hanging, obvious answer of "The Beatles" until the very end, instead musing on the potential role of Journey and Bob Dylan as avatars of rock to the thirtieth century. At its worst, Klosterman's thoughts come off as dilettante-ish and baseless, as is the case in his chapter on the progress of science that basically finds several dozen pages worth of ways to say that nobody knows if we're reaching the limits of human knowledge. The result in total is that But What If We're Wrong is endlessly readable, provocative, and consistently fascinating without actually meaning all that much in the end. It's the equivalent of listening to a very smart person ramble on a hodge-podge of subjects: Klosterman's a world-class rambler, but it's hard to shake the feeling that he's just kind of making this up as he goes along. Grade: B
Music
When I tell people that I don't like radio country, this is the alternative that I'm looking for: witty, colloquial, personal, heartbroken. The album makes the mistake of leading with its best song by a mile, the world-weary and small-time tragic "Hands of Time," but that's not to say that Price and her endearing mix of cynicism and melancholy sweetness don't consistently deliver great work throughout the album. The only real dud is "Tennessee Song," a bluesy stomper that, despite the home-state pride I deeply appreciate, is the sole moment that verges into the generic. The rest is good stuff, full of personality and sincerity that's likely to win over even country skeptics. Grade: B+
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