Mini-Reviews for January 23 - 29, 2017

Jesus is an immigrant.

Movies

Silence (2016)

Martin Scorsese's long-gestating adaptation of Shusaku Endo's novel isn't just one of Scorsese's best—right up there with After Hours, King of Comedy, if not quite to the level of Goodfellas—but also one of the best films about faith of all time. It's slow cinema for Scorsese, evoking more Bergman than any of his more kinetic influences that made works like the similarly lengthy The Wolf of Wall Street so propulsive. But what Scorsese gives up in movement he gains in fervor and rich, rich intellectual and emotional depths. The film's central question of ideological integrity vs. pragmatic compassion—in the film's thorniest ethical knot, Andrew Garfield's priest must choose between renouncing his faith or watching dozens of Japanese Christians tortured and killed—is one that's clearly deeply personal for Scorsese: what is it that defines a Christian? What does the atonement for sins really mean? Can you ever truly excise sincere faith from your identity? These are issues that ring deeply personal for me as well. I can't say how those who aren't Christian will react, but for this believer, Silence was as searing and profound a movie experience as I've had in years. Grade: A

Split (2017)

My theory is that forty, thirty, maybe even just twenty years from now, it's the depiction of mental illness that's going to date our art, politically. People will look back at our bevvy of movie-villain psychopaths and schizoids and feel the same way about that that we feel about, I dunno, blackface in '30s movies or callous, misogynist nudity in '70s films. That said, Split's world is set in such an obviously fanciful version of reality in general and DID specifically (probably a mistake to identify a real-world disorder, Shyamalan) that I don't have too many misgivings about James McAvoy's split-personalitied antagonist. Plus, it's clear that McAvoy is having an utter ball with the hammy grandiosity of his performance here—something that goes for the rest of the film, too. Split isn't as relentlessly clever as Shyamalan's most memorable work, which is both a blessing and a curse: it's good because it hinges the film's success not on some mind-blowing twist or subversion and instead on Shyamalan's film craft, which is always where his greatest strengths have lied anyway; on the downside, it does feel like just a B-movie thriller. But, I mean, to be simply a well-made thriller is hardly the worst thing to happen to your movie, and, in fact, Split feels quite at home in that distinction. I had fun. Grade: B

American Honey (2016)

Meandering and virtually plotless outside of the barest sketches of a scenario, American Honey is probably best experienced as a kind of meditative experience that uses its heady blend of sights and sounds—I can't stress enough just how fantastic the movie's soundtrack is, which deploys a vulgar mix of indie and contemporary pop/rap to evoke a more convincing evocation of youth culture than I've seen in ages—as a wedge into its pet themes of class and gender. It's a road trip movie that makes of point of putting boots on the ground not in picturesque road-trippy destinations but at the motels, fast-food joints, and gas stations that make up the majority of America; our characters greet the skyline of Kansas City, for example, with whoops and wonder, but after that moment, most of what we see of the city are green suburbs and greasy motel rooms. It's a romanticization of the mundane by characters who fall below even the broadest conception of the American middle class, and the various and picaresque explorations of the characters' intersections with the middle and upper classes, from evangelical Christians to workers on an oil field, are never less than fascinating. Like I said, this is more of a meditation than anything propulsive. Those going into this looking to enjoy the character relationships, for instance, are bound to be disappointing. But as an experience to let wash over you, you'll come out gasping on the other side. Grade: A-

Pete's Dragon (2016)

A lovely little film content to be nothing more than a lovely little film, which is cool. The stakes are refreshingly small for a movie with a dragon in it. There's nothing breaking convention here (the "fantastic creature brings joy to a child's life" genre remains intact, from the wistful small-town vibes to the eagerness of adults to hunt/study/profit from said fantastic creature—the movie is nothing if not formulaic), but as a gently crafted execution of the formula, it's nice. Grade: B

Enter the Void (2009)

Wow, I haven't hated a movie this strongly in quite some time. Where to start? The way it infantilizes its one female character? The way it feels the need to take five whole minutes of its already bloated 161-minute runtime to explain The Tibetan Book of the Dead, just to make sure we get it when it actually visualizes The Tibetan Book of the Dead? The puerility with which it approaches sexuality? The head-smacking idiocy of its oedipal implications? The shallow individualism of its own stoner logic? The use of legitimately interesting experimental camera techniques to depict a solipsistic, mundane, and utterly tedious version of the afterlife completely devoid of mystery or transcendence, which might be an interesting decision if the whole movie weren't so gobsmacked at what it assumes is its profundity? Ugh. I hate it. I hate how a movie so nominally interested in the afterlife is so terrestrial. I hate how its final ten minutes are basically just an orgy—but, like, a profound orgy, maaaan. I hate the waste of what I can tell is legitimate talent somewhere behind the camera. I hate it so much. Grade: D

The Kite Runner (2007)

The question of interiority is always the challenge of adapting a novel for the screen--written literature has, naturally, way more tools at its disposal for evoking the interior lives of its characters than film or television ever will have, and The Kite Runner suffers greatly for that. The movie runs aground in its mostly literal adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's fantastic novel by never really finding a good way to dramatize the rich emotional landscape of its protagonist. We're left with a tepid and often blank character, and with that, the story begins to fall apart, losing much of the Dickensian sweep and emotional complexity from the novel in the process. Grade: C+

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

The most inconvenient thing about this movie is that it's not very good. It's a matter of genre, really, not truth—climate change is a super true and super important issue, of course, but An Inconvenient Truth is essentially a feature-length TED talk, which would be fine if it were presented as such. As a movie, though (not to mention an Academy Award-winning documentary (for real, what's up with the 2000s and their documentary Oscars?), this one's a bore. Grade: C-

Books

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1998)

One of the founding works of modern YA fiction turns out also to be one of the best. While it's not an absolute requirement for YA to be vigorously realistic, it sure helps when the protagonist's voice sounds exactly like something one of my students might write. YA lit is usually tied to hyper-witty Caulfield-esque precociousness, which makes it pleasantly disarming to have a narrator like Charlie here who actually feels like a real teenager. Even better is how Charlie's experiences ring so true to my own high school memories: rarely have the emotional beats of finding one's place within alternative culture been rendered with more compassion and understanding: the crafting of identity through music, the aimless hanging out, the minor intra-group personal tragedy, the confused lines between friendship and romance, the joy of discovering that other people think similarly to you and that you are not doomed to be alone. The book does edge a little close to romanticizing these feelings at times—e.g. the famous/infamous "We are infinite" moment—but in a book filled with such acute and precise pain, the feeling is more one of catharsis than empty nostalgia. Grade: A

Everything Is Teeth by Evie Wyld (2016)

I'm starting to realize that I really dig these graphic novel memoirs. In this one, Australian author Evie Wyld remembers her childhood obsession with sharks and shark attacks. It's a morbidly funny, tender, and at times tense coming-of-age plot, warmly illustrated by Joe Summer in cartoonish but emotive strokes, and even if it doesn't find something entirely mind-blowing to say, it at least says it with a memorable hook and frequent shark-gore fantasies. Grade: B+

Music

Bon Iver - 22, A Million (2016)

I've never been the biggest Bon Iver fan, so take this with the appropriate dosage of salt. But 22, A Million is far and away the best of Bon Iver's three albums. Working in samples and electronic beats that recall Vernon's work with Kanye West and largely (thankfully) eschew the weepy, beardy folk that defined the early Bon Iver sound, the album represents something of a cliché move for indie/post-indie artists these days, who stay relevant by adopting electronic and hip-hop textures, but it's an effective one, effectively emoting Vernon's wounded lyrics without feeling nearly so anemic as his earlier work. For the first time, Bon Iver sounds full and muscular, and I like it. Grade: B+

Mini-Reviews for January 16 - 22, 2017

Reviews for a rough week.

Movies

The Love Witch (2016)

Watch this movie. The Love Witch is beautiful to look at—populated with gorgeous people, eye-popping costumes, and a wonderfully tactile film grain, the movie never ceases to be visually stunning. A pastiche of '60s Technicolor thrillers in which all the lively sets and costumes have been designed by its mad genius director, Anna Biller, The Love Witch is a work of tremendous passion, only appropriate for a plot whose protagonist, played with hilarious deadpan by Samantha Robinson, is a witch in search of true love. There's clearly some social commentary going on here, but the film's delivery—a confident but sometimes disorienting blend of satire, parody, and straight-up exploitation—defies a clear interpretation along the lines of the gendered themes it engages in. Don't fear, though: even without any sort of "message" (and who wants that in their killer witch movies?), this movie is whip-smart and great fun. Grade: A-

The BFG (2016)

Spielberg's penchant for earnest sentiment makes a surprisingly effective companion to Roald Dahl's sardonic absurdity, and although I haven't read the book this movie is based on, the film is a nice reminder of just how odd Dahl stories can be (let's not forget that Charlie and a band of space aliens meet the POTUS himself in the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). It's all quite effective in its own narrow way, playing toward specific beats of family film and children's fantasy that might not be everyone's favorite and I'm not entirely sure is mine. That the film's effects are big and colorful and look great helps tremendously. Grade: B+

Little Men (2016)

As a commentary on gentrification, which this movie seems to nominally want to be, Little Men has little practical impact, being way too committed to the "both sides are equally wrong" argument to even consider that most of the historical factors driving gentrification have little to do with the events of this film, which involves a family inheriting a building. But as a gently tragic character drama, Little Men works quite well, if not quite as well as director Ira Sachs's previous stunner, Love Is Strange. Still, like that movie, it's infused with a fantastic sense of melancholy and an insightful eye for character details. Grade: B

Cameraperson (2016)

Long-time documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson gives a thoughtful overview of her career by assembling this collage of footage she's shot in everything from doc blockbusters like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Citizenfour to indies that you (or certainly I) have never heard of. The effect is something like the abstracting of the TV clip show format, and the results are frequently cool and occasionally haunting—one late-film montage is nothing but still shots of locations where human rights atrocities have occurred, and it's probably the film's best moment. As with any compilation of this nature, there's an inherent frustration in the format when the individual clips are too good and simply leave you wanting to see the original rather than the montage-ready version. But on the whole, it's an arresting parade of images and words. Grade: B

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991)

The enormous pretension of a filmmaker thinking that their movie set was anything close to a war zone is egregious, and this documentary has the good sense to point out the sheer pomposity of Francis Ford Coppola surrounding the production of Apocalypse Now is consistently both the movie's best punchline and horror. My favorite part comes when Coppola convinces his collaborator from the studio that Apocalypse Now will be the first film to win a Nobel Prize, but that's just one of a host of highlights, not to mention the sense of near catastrophe that informs most of what happens on set. Coppola's film didn't win the Nobel Prize, obviously, but it's a small miracle that we got even a good movie out of the disaster, much less one of the all-time greats. Grade: A-

Arachnophobia (1990)
This movie is sort of perfect. A monster movie whose creatures (killer spiders from Venezuela) push the boundaries of believability just enough—it's to this film's immense credit that not one of the spiders onscreen is bigger than spiders would be in real life—and whose characters, even minor ones, are painted with bright and bold colors, there's not a moment of Arachnophobia that doesn't entertain. It's the sort of movie we don't see a lot of these days: the warm, funny, scary, irony-free embrace of genre tropes executed masterfully. I don't have much else to say but that I had a fantastic time with it. Great, great fun. Grade: A



Television

Horace and Pete (2016)
Louis C.K.'s idiosyncratic, heartbreaking, and auteurist miniseries (which, for the record, he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in) is not going to be for everyone: it's far too brutal, too bleak, too vulgar, too haphazard, too meandering, too C.K. to ever reach a broad audience. But if you can get into it, there are immense riches waiting. Never—and I mean truly never, like, in the history of the medium so far as I've experienced it—has a scripted television series felt so politically vital; were you to condense 2016 into drama, this would be it. But even if you're uninterested in that, it's still among the boldest experiments in even an era in which television prides itself on bold experiments. With episodes ranging from nearly and hour to a mere thirty minutes in length, the show makes hay with the flexibility of its web format, making room for episodes comprised entirely of a single scene and for epic-length compilations of otherwise unrelated scenes that circle around the characters' loopy, offensive, impassioned discussions of everything from current events to philosophy to personal struggles. The structure is loose and slow and occasionally baffling, and it's great. Enabling this even further is the aesthetic. Filmed essentially like a stage drama, with minimal editing and mostly single-location settings, it's at once a revival of the old 1950s trend of live TV plays and an evocation of the half-dead multi-camera sitcom, particularly Cheers. And appropriately, the bar (i.e. Horace and Pete's) is filled with barflies and one-off guests that give the location a lived-in, colorful feel. It's a veritable murderer's row of performers, too, with everyone from the co-starring Steve Buscemi to the semi-regular Alan Alda and Jessica Lange (both of whom, in a just universe, deserve Emmys for their roles here) to guest stars like Amy Sedaris and Laurie Metcalf (who probably deserves an award, too). But this is no sitcom. C.K. has accurately described the series as a tragedy, and it should be engaged as nothing but. This works in a few ways, but most notably, as a social tragedy in how it shows the absolutely dysfunctional ways that the diverse members of American society react to one another, and, more bitingly, as a personal tragedy focusing on the trajectories of Buscemi's Pete and C.K.'s Horace. I really don't want to spoil it; a blind watch is probably best. If what I've said here appeals to you, go for it. I think it might be one of the great television achievements of this decade. Grade: A

The Good Place, Season 1 (2016-2017)
High-concept TV shows rarely have legs—they too often lean on its central conceit to the detriment of important things like characters and writing. This is compounded with comedies. But here comes The Good Place to stand proudly alongside Fox's The Last Man on Earth as a high-concept show that actually works. Really well, in fact. Focused on Eleanor (a hilarious Kristen Bell), who finds herself dead and in "The Good Place," despite her having been, at best, a "medium person" in her previous life, the show prods ethics, metaphysics, left-turn plot twists, and fun fantasy hijinks while, most importantly, being really, really funny. It's sweet, it's breezy, it's mysterious, and it's got the best Ted Danson performance in ages, to say nothing of the rest of the entirely great cast. The ratings for this first season have been low. Please watch it. The world needs a Good Place, Season 2. Grade: B+

Mini-Reviews for January 10 - 15, 2017

Finally getting around to seeing some of those 2016 films I didn't get around to in 2016. Hurray!

Movies

La La Land (2016)
The criticisms come easily: it's style over substance, it's referencing better movies, it's full of mostly unmemorable music. But what style! And what delirious evocation of those classics! And you know what other great musical doesn't really have great music? The Umbrellas of Freakin' Cherborg, that's what! Because please, La La Land cares so little about standing up to any sort of intellectual criticism; no, this is all about the exuberant, unrestrained love of classic movie musicals, only with the cheeseball factor turned down just a notch and the melancholy heightened. And La La Land is masterfully devoted to this end, from its sumptuous use of color to its meticulous and often unedited choreography (the music may be unmemorable [okay, except for "City of Stars" and "The Fools Who Dream," both of which are quite good], but the way that music moves these actors is never less than stunning) right down to the traipse through intentionally fake-looking sets in its jaw-dropping final dance number—it's to this film's tremendous credit that it ends on its highest note. Look, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an instant sell on film musicals, even when it comes to the classic era that La La Land recalls with stars in its eyes. But when the result is so winsome, so sincere, so enthusiastic, so beautiful—there's never a moment here that doesn't look crafted for the max possible visual enjoyment—it's hard not to find this whole endeavor thrilling. Grade: A-

In a Valley of Violence (2016)
Ti West's latest—a sort of departure for him, as he leaves horror for the western—had me cackling at the gleeful exuberance with which the film frolics through its pulpy genre fun. We've had a resurgence of serious-minded revisionist westerns for some time now, but In a Valley of Violence is the first I've seen that taps into the western's considerable heritage of plain ol' fun. And oh boy, is it fun. Typical of West's other output, Valley would be at risk of being an exercise in pastiche if it weren't so fantastically crafted. Not to be missed. Grade: A-

Francofonia (2015)
A fascinating and beguiling little rumination on art, empire, and specifically the Louvre. It's a film that's maybe a bit more "video essay" than traditional documentary, and its affectations—the relentless historical re-enactment and displacement (none other than Napoléon Bonaparte himself appears as a character wandering through the Louvre, commenting, of course, on pictures of himself)—might strike someone as either cutely or irritatingly clever, depending on his/her mood. But it caught me in a good mood. Grade: B+

Sisters (1973)
Imagine you have one train, and it's somehow a train that is Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. Now imagine you have another train, only this one's Psycho. Now let's imagine that you set both of these  trains headed in opposite directions down the same track as fast as they'll go, and they collide at the track's center in a brilliant fireball of twisted metal and gore. The resulting carnage is pretty much Sisters in a nutshell, give or take some casual nudity and split-screen takes. It's trash, through and through, but gloriously fun-to-the-point-of-near-transcendence trash. Grade: B+




Books

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge (2015)
Imagine a tree that, when told a lie, produces a fruit that will bestow anyone who eats it with secret knowledge. The Lie Tree does, and the biblical connections are not lost on Frances Hardinge, who expertly crafts this plot around a litany of both explicitly and sneakily subversive devices that in no small way feel like commentary on that famous Eden story, or at least the ways that people have used the Garden of Eden to inform their views on gender. Faith, our protagonist, is a girl with growing scientific ambitions during Victorian times, and, predictably, the pushback against her intellect is considerable. It's not a subtle story, ultimately focusing on the intersection of gender, science, and religion in a way that's not all that surprising from that premise, but it's fantastically smart about its purpose and told with elegance by Hardinge, whose prose is a gorgeous and intricate house for this tale. That's not even mentioning the loving detail with which Hardinge describes the world of Victorian science—icing on an already delicious cake, for sure. Grade: A-

Music

David Bowie - No Plan EP (2017)
If you liked Blackstar (which I did), this is going to be right up your alley: a trio of spacey, nervous, death-obsessed songs that once again reinforce just how much of a tragedy it was that we lost Bowie at the onset of what seems to have been a late-career renaissance. Even if you didn't like Blackstar, this still might have something for you. The songs are considerably less jazz-inflected and abstract than that album's—the first, "No Plan," is the most Blackstar-like, but the other two, "Killing a Little Time" and "When I Met You," are propulsive rockers reminiscent of Bowie's mid-'90s work or maybe even the rock halves of his Berlin records. Fear not: the last Bowie songs we have are good ones. Grade: B+

Mini-Reviews for December 26, 2016 - January 9, 2017

Happy 2017! So, it's been a long time, I know. With all the end-of-year happiness (including my lists for music and movies—check 'em out!), I didn't have a chance to keep up with reviews. But here are some now! Without further ado, I present the first reviews post of 2017, mega edition.

Movies

Rogue One (2016)
As many, many people have pointed out before me, the beginning of this movie is rough. Really rough. As I watched the action scoot among five different planets and Lord knows how many different characters within five minutes, I had the sinking feeling that I was not going to like this scattered, confusing mess of a film. And indeed, up through the end of the section involving Forest Whitaker's Saw Gerrera (I didn't time, but reportedly 45-60 min. into the movie), I was getting that numb feeling I got by the end of The Force Awakens, that the film was mistaking quips for wit, emotive acting for clear character motivation, and action sequences for stakes. But then. Oh but then. The rest of the movie happened, and ladies and gentlemen, the hour-plus of movie remaining after that shaky beginning is the best Star Wars cinema we've gotten since the legendary tri-part climax of Return of the Jedi. Honestly, comparisons between Jedi and Rogue One are instructive, as both movies putter around on a desert planet with grizzled bottom-feeders before kicking into high, high gear with an epic battle that occupies a vegetated ground level, a tech-y fortress level, and a dogfight-esque space level simultaneously. In both cases, the results are breathtaking, exhilarating action spectacles. For as much flak as The Force Awakens caught for cribbing A New Hope's style and structure, Rogue One adopts much of the same in relation to Episode VI. The difference is that where Force Awakens uses those structural parallels to try to borrow the mythic vibes from its predecessor, Rogue One, with the exception of Donnie Yen's Guardian of the Whills (which, if I'm not mistaken, is an allusion to an early draft of Lucas's original Star Wars storyline—surely the most surprising and obscure of the film's many, many original trilogy easter eggs), largely jettisons the heavy mythology that informs Jedi's plot in favor of a boots-on-the-ground militaristic approach. People online have been batting around the idea that Rogue One is the movie to finally put the "War" in Star Wars, and that's obviously false to anyone who has watched any of the original trilogy or the Clone Wars TV series. But I will go to bat for the idea that this is the Star Wars movie that spends the most energy presenting the intergalactic violence as the endeavors of large military entities rather than the shuffling about of the same cast of half-dozen distantly related characters. Whatever the case, the emphasis on military action and maneuvers means that it doesn't matter if the characters never quite recover from the film's crumbling first section (and, honestly, they don't—these characters are either painted in such broad strokes or presented so opaquely that none of them ever really land) because this isn't a movie about characters so much as big action setpieces involving large numbers of combatants and vehicles, and as that, it's great. Rogue One has some of the best action of 21st century blockbuster history, and it has the good sense to put the very best stuff as close to the end as possible. I started the movie a bit frustrated; I ended it elated and feeling, for the first time since I don't even know when that I was excited for the future of the Star Wars universe. Grade: A-

Don't Breathe (2016)
A mean, nasty little horror thriller that smartly reverses the home-invasion formula so that we follow the band of invaders rather than the invadee. Good thing, too, because the more we learn about the blind man who lives in the house our teen protagonists break into, the nastier and less effective the film becomes. Apparently the best way to make us care about burglars is to make the guy they are robbing from even worse than a bunch of kids willing to rob a blind man. Don't Breathe is at its best when it sticks to the tactile terror of the robbers having to avoid detection in the house, grounded by fantastic lighting and sound design. Grade: B+

Blair Witch (2016)
The original Blair Witch Project movie is one of THE great American horror films and, with its often incomprehensible camerawork and half-improvised scripting, probably the nearest mainstream horror has ever gotten to the pure avant-garde, if only (as is likely) accidentally so. It's made only greater by the delicious ambiguity that imbues every frame up until the terrifying heights of ambiguity in its ending. Blair Witch, the second sequel to the '99 feature, tries to capture this ambiguity as well, but either due to a lack of commitment or the fact that this movie seems so much more self-consciously constructed compared to the meticulously evoked haphazardness of the original, its open-endedness ends up feeling so much smaller. Giving the kids multiple cameras was a mistake, as was having characters give bits of explanation in the protracted (and somewhat familiar) finale. What we're left with feels a lot closer to a conventional teen horror flick, where we wait with equal parts fear and bloodlust for these vaguely irritating youngsters are picked off one by one. It's a decent iteration of that kind of movie, and the climax does some neat things with camera perspective and the series mythology. But I can't help wanting something a bit more special. Grade: B

Pet (2016)
It's grisly, grimly funny, and has a lot of pulp fun with subverting the bondage/prisoner tropes within its premise (local, stalker-ish lonely dude imprisons the girl he's been obsessing over). But it's also tremendously nasty in temperament and not all that exciting, filmmaking-wise. Plus, once it tips its hand mid-movie to the kind of game its playing, there's not all that many places the film can go that don't feel predictable. As a B-movie thriller (and a chance to see Dominic Monaghan finally get more work [and try on an American accent, no less!]), it's fine, if unremarkable. Grade: B-

Krisha (2015)
On the rubric of "unfun movies about the effects of substance abuse on familial relationships," Krisha gets good marks—it's fantastically acted and stylishly shot. But it's still an unfun movie about the effects of substance abuse on familial relationships, which also makes it kind of a miserable watch. Miserable because it's craft is impeccable, not because the movie is any sort of failure. But miserable all the same, and while I'll acknowledge its power, I'll not rush to see it again. Grade: B

The Hunt (Jagten) (2012)
Considering that its premise—a man falsely accused of sexual assault at the kindergarten where he works—is a personal nightmare of mine, it should be no surprise that I found this movie white-knuckle terrifying. It's probably for the best, though, that the movie is less concerned with the central injustice/misunderstanding than it is with larger ramifications within the small Danish community in which it occurs. This is a movie about mass hysteria and the ways that misinformation spreads and won't let go. In the end, that's the ultimate horror here: the frailty of the truth. Grade: B+

Contact (1997)
The movie's opening shot—a breathtaking, intergalactic zoom out from Earth—is awesome. But it's all downhill from there. Look, I'm a sucker for first-contact movie; you had me in the bag here by your premise alone, Contact! The thing is that it's not just a first-contact movie—it's a science-vs.-religion movie, it's a father-daughter movie, it's a Matthew-McConaughey-is-charmingly-sexy movie, and all of those things are varying degrees of tiresome in execution here, made all the worse by a typical Robert Zemeckis bloated runtime. In fact, for very long stretches of this already very long 2.5 hours, Contact is way more interested in being all those tiresome things than it is at being a first-contact movie. There are good things here beyond the opening shot, but the whole package is just kind of bleh. Not to mention the ending, which is the most jerked around I've felt by a movie in a long while. Grade: C+

Genocide (1982)
I suppose what one gets out of this movie depends on one's knowledge of the Holocaust, since informing seems to be the main purpose here. But given I took a couple high school history courses, there's nothing here that's all that informative to me—in fact, with its short runtime, colorful and dynamic imagery, urgent tone, and breakneck pace, this documentary seems tailor-made for the high school classroom alongside units about Anne Frank and WWII. And there's value in that; the film is solidly (if bluntly) put together, and I'd imagine it would be a good primer on one of the defining events of the 20th century, were someone to need one. But I didn't. So this one isn't for me. Grade: C

The Long Way Home (1997)
A comparison between this movie and 1982's Genocide is instructive—both assume that its audience is in need of being informed of major, world-shaping 20th-century events surrounding the Holocaust, but The Long Way Home, dealing with the post-WWII struggles faced by Europeans Jews leading to the formation of Israel, is the only one of the two that's actually right in that assumption. At least, for me. As I said in my Genocide review, the need to be informed about something will obviously differ wildly from viewer to viewer, and that's no less true here. Either way, we're still dealing with an info-doc, one that I found often fascinating but one that's still chock full of talking heads, archival footage, and other dusty Ken Burns-lite tropes. There's nothing about this form of the movie that's going to wow you. But if you're as ignorant as I am, the content might. Grade: B+

Mother (1996)
Its premise is maybe a little toward the wrong side of sitcommy, and its ending is perhaps a bit too neat and epiphanic. But in between, there is a wealth of well-observed moments, including what is likely the single most accurate depiction of how elderly mothers react to their children being vegetarian (my wife has stories... so many stories). The ability to see yourself or people you know in a movie is not and should not be the ultimate goal of cinema at large. But golly, when this sort of comedic observationalism lands, it's as savory as they come. Grade: B+

Modern Romance (1981)
It's bit too meandery to have the lithe efficiency that characterizes the best comedies (a subplot involving the editing of a sci-fi film feels like an excuse to pad the runtime out to a clean 90 minutes). But Modern Romance has it where it really counts. The film realizes that many of the tropes that govern the romantic comedy are, if looked at from the right angle, less sweeping displays of deep love and more evidence of a pathological way of viewing yourself in relation to others. In fact, Modern Romance revels in turning the rom-com to just such an angle, giving us a hysterical yet often excruciating series of events in which Albert Brooks goes through all the typical rom-com romantic gestures of love and grief, only with the awareness that in reality, these actions are painfully wrong-headed. The modern cringe-comedy ethic has many roots, and I'm sure Albert Brooks is nowhere near the main of that lineage. But the final scene stings with such an agonizing display of human beings stumbling into wrong decision after wrong decision that it's hard not to feel the precedent for something akin to the UK version of The Office. An acerbic, cynical delight, if such words can be strung together like that. Grade: A-

Design for Living (1933)
A spirited and hilarious first half gives way to a much more pedestrian second half. In the annals of screwball comedy (and even more specifically Ernst Lubitsch-directed screwball comedy), this one's no great shakes, but it's intermittently delightful and never really dull. Miriam Hopkins is beyond charming as well, and the fact that this movie has a genuine affection for leftist bohemians (as opposed to the often feigned affection that movies like to adopt) makes this one a pretty good time. Grade: B+

Television

Black Mirror, Series 3 (2016)

What people sometimes forget about The Twilight Zone, surely the gold standard for the sci-fi anthology show, is that every third or fourth episode was pretty forgettable, if not downright terrible. We remember "Time Enough at Last" and "Eye of the Beholder," but there was also that one about the murderous slot machine. My point is that Black Mirror, a frequently great sci-fi anthology show that's nonetheless inferior to TZ, comes pretty close to putting all its eggs in one basket by having seasons as brief as it does. Season 3 does a little better by actually doubling the show's episode count with its 6-episode season, and that pays off—weaker episodes like the premier Bryce Dallas Howard-starring "Nosedive" feel less like a waste than, say, "The Waldo Moment" from S2, and "Playtest," "Shut Up and Dance," and especially "San Junipero" all three rank among the show's best. Not bad. Grade: B

Orange Is the New Black, Season 1 (2013)

At this early stage in the series, Orange Is the New Black's biggest issue is that its main characters are its least interesting. I care little about Piper and even less about her enemy-cum-lover Alex (who is, let's be honest, little more than a plot catalyst in this season, poignant flashback notwithstanding), and whenever the show focuses on these two, I'm checking out. The rest of the cast is varying levels of poignantly charming, though—at least, those that the show gives any attention (for a show with such a strong reputation for being "woke," it's odd that the series's second-biggest problem is its frequent trafficking in racial stereotypes, something that affects the Hispanic members of the cast most, who rarely rise above their tropes). Really, the sprawling cast is a blessing and a curse here, giving it a rich scope while also occasionally feeling a mile wide and an inch deep. It's a messy, imprecise season but one with considerable strengths, both comedic and dramatic and always toward interesting social commentary. Grade: B+

Books

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1965)
I'm no Pynchon scholar, having only read Inherent Vice prior to this one (and been appropriately bewildered by it), but even on an intellectual level, it's a relief to know that this, his shortest novel, is a mere 150 pages of dense postmodern narrative relative to his normal 500-800. Even better is that the plot is actually coherent and, best of all, super punny. You've got to appreciate a satire of 1960s California culture that makes room for the silly wordplay of characters named Mucho Maas and Dr. Hilarius, not to mention the many parodic depictions of mid-'60s rock and roll—"I Want to Kiss Your Feet," by Sick Dik and the Volkswagens, maybe be the best of the lot, but there's much more. All of which is to say: yes, this is postmodern literature at its most postmodern, but this one has the good sense that most of the best postmodern works do, which is to at least have fun with the existential terror. Grade: B+

I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid (2016)
A really effective, semi-surreal page-turner kind of falls apart into tiresome solipsism in its final few pages, which is a huge disappointment. Somehow, Reid manages to find the most boring solution to each of the novel's many mysteries. But oh well. It's quite a ride getting there. Grade: B-








Music

Solange - A Seat at the Table (2016)
The first of many 2016 albums I've been wanting to catch up with since my Best of 2016 music post. And it's good! Especially in its slow-burn-to-soaring anthems "Cranes in the Sky" and "Don't Touch My Hair," Solange shows a fantastic interplay between controlled, contemporary R&B atmospherics and pure pop bliss. It's a subdued and meditative record that knows just the right moments to burst free into unrestrained melody, and that's great. The interlude tracks/skits are less interesting, focusing on well-trodden talking points in modern-day race dynamics, but taken as a whole with the actual songs, A Seat at the Table is an immensely beguiling celebration of black identity. Grade: B+

Favorite Movies of 2016

I'm running a little behind this year, thanks to a combination of factors that most prominently features my own laziness. So apologies for that. Otherwise, I don't have a lot to say here. Here they are, my favorite movies of 2016, per usual beholden to my usual caveats that 1. "2016" means movies I saw during the calendar year that saw an American theatrical release during the calendar year, and 2. the reliably ludicrous and outdated roll-out model for major releases like La La Land has prevented me from seeing movies I definitely would have otherwise (like La La Land—I'm a little pissed that Knoxville didn't get La La Land soon enough to make this list; can you tell?).

Also, as always, this list was hard to trim down to a neat 10, but either because of an unusual glut of fantastic film in 2016 or just an unusual preciseness in my own watching habits, this year was particularly hard. I could have easily made a top 20 and still dismayed at leaving some on the cutting room floor. But such is the artificially inflicted pain of list-making.

Okay, I'll get on with the list now. Don't forget to tell me your own favorite movies, since this is nowhere near a comprehensive list of good 2016 cinema.

[As with my best 2016 music list, I'm linking to my original reviews for the films, provided I reviewed them. Unlike the music list, I'm writing short blurbs, too. It looked too bare without them.]

Favorite Movies

1. Green Room

It's not like a vicious conflict between urban leftists and rural fascists is in anyway relevant to this year. Nope. Can't see a connection there. Let's say there were a connection, though. This movie might be pretty brilliant, and not just for political posturing; it's the tightest thriller I've seen in years and a phenomenal piece of character drama, to boot. Every death is a blow.

[Read the original review here]

2. The Edge of Seventeen

I can't hype this movie enough. Steinfeld is Oscar-worthy. The characters are miles more human than those in most ostensibly adult-oriented movies. The depiction of adolescent obnoxiousness as an off-shoot of personal tragedy is spot-on. The stakes are perfect. I originally said I should wait for the theatrical high to wear off. Well, it has, and I'll say it still: this is one of the best coming-of-age movies of all time.

[Read original review here]

3. The Nice Guys

Nothing complicated going on here. This movie just makes me laugh very, very hard. Crowe and Gosling make a wonderful odd couple, and Gosling in particular shows a great capacity for physical comedy. It's so funny.

[Read original review here]

4. Kubo and the Two Strings

In a cultural moment that many have come to declare "post-facts," Kubo's message of the ability for story to override reality for both good and evil feels even more incendiary than it would have already. Even better, the animation is breathtaking.

[Read original review here]

5. Lemonade

Yes, I'm counting it as a movie. An awesome movie.

[Read original review here]

6. Moonlight

It's a structural experiment, sure, and a treatise on identity. But in practice, neither of those rather lofty aims end up feeling any loftier than the sand under these characters' feet. The drama of this movie's three vignettes is both profound and grittily tangible.

[Read original review here]

7. Hell or High Water

This movie hits its climax and then just keeps going. Normally, I'd reckon that as a fatal flaw; with a film as whip-smart as this one, though, it's what ends up making it great.

[Read original review here]

8. Eye in the Sky

The only way you'll have a tenser time in a movie this year is if you watch my #1. It's not a "fun" movie, not with its pained ambivalence on drone warfare, but it's a riveting one nonetheless.

[Read original review here]

9. Moana

Moana has a deeper bench of songs than any Disney movie in 20 years, and that's just one of its many pleasures. Really, the whole package is just so sweet.

[Read original review here]

10. Hush

Its "home invasion, but what if she was deaf?" premise should be gimmicky. But the execution is borderline brilliant. My review said that this would be fighting The Witch for the best horror movie of 2016, and, well, look who made the list.

[Read original review]

Appendix: Miscellaneous Movies Also Worth Noting

Other Best Horror Movie: The Witch—But seriously, The Witch is great, and I give it major kudos for committing to the Puritan language and nutso creepy ending.

Best Additional Evidence That This Was Just a Fantastic Year for Horror: Lights Out, Don't Breathe, et al—There were so many good horror movies this year, y'all.

Is It a Movie or a Miniseries? I Don't Know or Care Because It's Incredible: O.J.: Made in America—If I were more confident that this searing dissection of American celebrity and racial politics is a proper movie, it would rest easily at the #1 spot on the list. Instead, here it sits, with nothing to show for its excellence except my full-throated recommendation, regardless of the medium it belongs with.

Best Evolution from Old Fuddy-Duddy: Knight of Cups—Terrence Malick isn't exactly in dire need of update, but after the waifish To the Wonder, this high-concept urban-spiritual tale feels fresh and vital.

Best Same Old, Same Old from Old Fuddy Duddy: Café Society—Look, by this point, you know what you're in for with a Woody Allen movie and whether or not you're going to be into that territory. Me, I'm still loving all the incisive iterations of his stable of pet themes when he's able to craft movies as aching and gorgeous as this one.

Best Portrayal of People I Would Never Be Inclined to Give the Time of Day to in Real Life: Everybody Wants Some!!—Spending two hours with a group of athletes jumping from college party to college party as they try to impress ladies with their cleverness in an attempt to get laid sounds like "Michael O'Malley Repellent: The Movie." But lo and behold, we're instead graced with a funny and compassionate two hours that paints some of the most enjoyably idiosyncratic characters of the year. Willoughby for life!

Best Worst Cringe: Weiner—The most compelling tragedy of this riveting, excruciating documentary is not any of the many scandals that Anthony Weiner invites the camera to record but rather the knowledge that all us 2016 viewers bring to the table, which is that even these scandals aren't the last of the Weiner shenanigans!

Best Poignancy via Farting Corpse: Swiss Army Man—It really is poignant. And it really does feature a farting corpse (not even the most ridiculous this corpse does [cue Jurassic Park theme]).

Best Religious Work: Hail, Caesar!—By this time, I hope the characterization of the Coen brothers as nihilistic snarksters has been long put to rest, and if it hasn't, here comes Hail, Caesar! to try to tuck it in once more. A silly, sardonic movie, to be sure, but once that, like Inside Llewyn Davis and A Serious Man and No Country for Old Men and several more before it, is imbued with a sincere and even desperate quest for meaning within the universe.

Second-Best Religious Work: The Innocents—The Innocents is, honestly, a better movie overall than Hail, Caesar! But it's not better at being religious, settling on more humanist pursuits than the more sublimely focused Coens are. But it's still very good, compelling stuff.

Most in Need of Political Clarity: Captain America: Civil War—In theory, this is a movie about ideologies. But it does so little to flesh out the battling ideas of Captain America and Iron Man that it remains a movie about fists. We do get that kickin' airport fight scene, though, so it's not all a loss.

Best Eyeball: The Neon Demon—You'll know it when you see it.

Best Eyeball, Runner Up: The Lobster—You'll know it when you don't see it.

The "I Can't Believe I Haven't Talked About This Movie in This Post Yet" Award: Arrival—So very good. So very exploitative of linguistic theory. And here it is at the bottom of this post.

Best Non-2016 Movie I Saw For the First Time in 2016: Malcolm X—My original review gets at it best, but I haven't been so profoundly shaken by a movie since... well, I guess since I saw Make Way for Tomorrow last year.

Gotta stop sometime, so I might as well stop here. But I do so reluctantly! 10 Cloverfield Lane, Louder Than Bombs, Rogue One, Finding Dory, both Werner Herzog docs, Imperium, The Shallows, Love & Friendship, and like a bazillion other good-to-great movies from 2016 are still left unacknowledged. 2016 was a super solid cinematic year, and I'm sure all y'all out there have your own favorites that lie similarly neglected. So chime in! I'd love to hear from everyone.

Until next time!