Movies
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Credit where credit is due: the set design and costuming in Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast is gorgeous and fascinatingly inflected with the aesthetics of multiple periods of French cultural history, and the movie is never not awesome to look at. But credit where credit is due again: director Bill Condon and cinematographer Tobias Schliessler nearly ruin it with muddy, indistinct compositions and a wandering camera that does a giant disservice to the beautiful design of pretty much every physical object onscreen. The task of remaking in live action one of the most perfect animated movies in the Disney canon and one of the unequivocal high points of animation over the past three decades was never going to be an easy one, and certainly there are many strains on this movie that speak to that difficulty: a script that seems pulled between the classicism of the original and the winking, jokey style of the modern family filmmaking, awkwardly inserted storylines that seem to have been chopped to dysfunction during rewrites (there's a subplot involving Belle's mother that is the single biggest missed opportunity in the film), the strange dissonance of having the movie gesture toward shot-by-shot remake in its iconic scenes while making them also just different enough to feel askew. But there's also quite a lot to like about the movie, too, from the admirable voice acting of the animate furniture (Ian McKellan's Cogsworth is a highlight) to an inspired Gaston performance from Luke Evans. If the movie had been able to pull off the visual wonder promised by its aesthetic, then I might have been willing to call this a flawed success. But when the basic blocks of filmmaking break down like they do here, it's hard to call it anything but just flawed. Grade: C+
Alien 3 (1992)
This movie has a reputation as a bit of a disaster, and while it's certainly not capital-G Great like Alien or balls-to-the-wall fun like Aliens, it's still not too shabby. Essentially splitting the difference between the slow-burn horror of the original and the action pyrotechnics of the James Cameron sequel, Alien 3 (like, for real, screw that superscript 3) does have a bit of an identity issue, right down to the attempt to wipe the slate clean with the coldest of cold moves of killing off every surviving non-Ripley character from Aliens in the opening sequence. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed to see the horror textures of the early movie give way to decidedly less interesting action a bit disappointing. Still, there's no denying the fact that I was captivated the entire film, and in the end, that's kind of what matters when it comes to pop sci-fi. I had a good time. Grade: B
Books
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X with Alex Haley (1965)
I'll be honest here: long sections of this book, upon a first read, feel sluggish and meandering, particularly when depicting Malcolm's criminal days. But as the book goes on and it becomes clear the clever conceit that this book has in approaching its subject—mainly, that it was written progressively over a few of the most transformative years of Malcolm X's life, during which, most significantly, he had his falling out with the Nation of Islam and took his trip to Mecca—those early sections take on a retrospective vitality. In these pages, you see Malcolm X change and grow in front of your very eyes, the early sections written at the height of his Black Muslim fervor and the later sections written during the period of intense reflection and re-evaluation that led him to embrace multi-racial unity and spiritual community in the months before his eventual assassination. Biographies usually approach their subject from an ossified position, an unmoving point of view from some future and unmoving time. But having this book's point of view move through time along with its narrative yields fantastic results. The way that both X and Haley leave intact Malcolm's earlier ideas, even when they contradict later beliefs expressed, makes for an organic evocation of "warts and all" biography, and when Malcolm changes his mind about something, it has weight because it never felt predestined or telegraphed in the way that sometimes happens in more conventional biographies. It's an intimate and profound exploration of the ways that convictions are shaped and revised, the role of faith in racial healing, and the relentless drive that propels people to greatness. A moving and essential read if there ever was one. Grade: A
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