Movies
Boldly melodramatic, stylistically adventurous, emotionally perceptive, Louder Than Bombs is trying very hard to break your heart. I mean, it's about a family dealing with the untimely death of its matriarch; you don't plot that unless you're trying to craft a tale about searing grief. But unlike a lot of "family tragedy" indies, Louder Than Bombs succeeds mightily. There's not any one thing to credit for its success—this is more of a case of having all its immaculate ducks in a row. The story is quiet but multifaceted, unapologetically literary, its performances (Devin Druid in particular—this guy's going places) are fantastic without being particularly showy, its cinematic style is recognizably "serious indie" while still being weird and risk-taking enough to avoid the anonymity and boredom that plagues so many films with that aesthetic (and the best shot of the movie [and maybe the year] consists of nothing more than a character staring directly at the camera). This is master-class filmmaking with none of the tossed-off ease that a lot of master-classics ooze. This one lets you know that people worked hard to make it, and boy, did it pay off. Grade: A
There isn't so much anything wrong with the How to Train Your Dragon movies outside of the solidly mediocre voice cast (my general dislike of Jay Baruchel includes his voice, it seems) and some typically ugly DreamWorks character design (the model for Hiccup's mother is completely dysfunctional for conveying emotion). Those are relatively minor issues. These movies are fine. But whatever the case, I've just never gotten very excited about anything in this franchise, and that goes doubly for this second entry, which trades the endearing boy-and-his-dog story for more epic, less-resonant battle-centric territory. I like the sweetness embedded in the movie's relationships, be it Hiccup with his mother, his dragon, or his friends (and the brief but poignant scenes with his parents together are highlights of both films); I like the landscapes, which are cool-looking. But it's just not adding up to much for me. Maybe I need a pet or something for this all to come together like it has for everyone else. Grade: B-
It's a structural mess, and the acting could stand to be several magnitudes better. But the extent to which it identifies with legitimate social outcasts is rare and rather special, subverting its own premise of body horror by positing extreme body modification as freedom from restrictive biology—the trans parallels are undeniable, as is the commentary about violent, oppressive social norms. The titular Mary's journey from initial disgust to eventual full-on embrace of grotesque cosmetic surgery is a fantastic arc, even if its done a bit too much in fits and starts to be entirely convincing. Grade: B
Beautiful, frightening, and profound in equal measure, and—dare I say it—better than at least two-thirds of the Three Colours trilogy, Krzysztof Kieślowski's film is an art-film version of a Ripley's Believe It Or Not. As always, what shines is Kieślowski's use of light: some of movie history's most arresting images come out of darkness, but Kieślowski and his cinematographer here, Sławomir Idziak, never fail to remind us that the basic component of movie-making (and our world at large) is lightness. Grade: A
This is probably the best possible way to break me into Indian cinema: a movie with big emotional beats, familiar themes (hey there, gender roles!), and a handsome but not overly busy style. This is a work of social realism that's got plenty to say about society and gives a vibrant and sharply observed cross-section of the mid-century Calcutta middle class but also doesn't skimp on the heart, right down to the surprisingly sweet final minutes. The Apu Trilogy is the heavyweight in director Satyajit Ray's career, and having not seen that, I obviously can't say how it compares. But The Big City is plenty good in its own right and quite the bar for Apu to clear. Grade: A-
The plotting is maybe a bit too meandering and diffuse to be truly riveting in the traditional sense, and the middle sections of this movie verge on the barely interesting. But the cast is so winning, the screenplay so sharp in moment-to-moment dialogue flourishes, and its heart both so big and so bristled that it's hard not to love at least something here. Slow at times, yes, but also at times one of the most purely enjoyable of its era: the ending in particular is the sort of effortlessly tossed-off pathos and perfectly pitched final dialogue and acting flourishes that old Hollywood was master of and nostalgic directors like Woody Allen and Peter Bodganovich have been trying to replicate since. Grade: A-
Television
I'm one of these obnoxious people who thinks that Seinfeld loses its way a tad after Larry David left. The show becomes a little less controlled and a lot more zany, and not always in a funnier way—I'll go to bat for the crazy Mr. Peterman subplots and the Bizarro Jerry stuff, but Elaine getting on a plane that's hijacked by political extremists (try doing that one nowadays, guys) seems a bridge too far for this show's template. There's also this thing where we start getting a ton of episodes where the central comedic hook involves one or more of the cast acting like something they're not: Jerry and Kramer act like a testy married couple, Elaine acts like George, Jerry acts like a werewolf (?). These are all funny concepts, but I'm not kidding that at least one third of the episodes involve something like this. That said, the show is still very funny, even if it lacks the structural discipline of the Larry David years. These are, without a doubt, some of the show's best-known episodes, and often with good reason. "The Muffin Tops," "The Yada Yada," "The Abstinence"—these are all top-tier Seinfeld that gave birth to justifiably iconic memes and catchphrases. And even at the show's goofiest (maybe even because it gets so goofy), the show is pushing hard at the boundaries of the sitcom form: the camera swoops and dodges in more cinematic (albeit in intentionally amateur-looking) ways, and the locations and plots are increasingly more exotic, moving the form even further from its stage roots. By the late '90s, Seinfeld was at the height of its popularity, and it's always great to see a blockbuster show use its clout to be legitimately innovative. Grade: B+
Books
Chaim Potok's third novel and first book not related to his debut, high school required reading staple The Chosen (his second novel, The Promise, is a sequel to The Chosen), is ambitious and rife with potential pitfalls, plotting the childhood of Asher Lev, a fictitious painter whose life somewhat resembles Potok's (who was himself a painter). Luckily, Potok avoids these pitfalls gracefully, and the novel is much less a semi-autobiographical vanity project than it is a restrained, quietly heartbreaking rumination on the costs of become very good at a craft. As in The Chosen, Potok's affection for Hasidic Judaism and frustration with its limitations are highlights, and this time, the collision of Hasism with the modern art world makes for harrowing conflicts among the characters, culminating in a powerful and melancholy ending that I never thought this book would land. At times, Potok's prose is maybe a little too restrained, leaning a bit too hard into the spare formality that defines these characters' lives in a way that makes sections of the novel, especially in the early goings, a bit dry. But once the novel picks up speed in its latter pages, there's no stopping it. Grade: B+
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