Movies
I'm as surprised as anyone that the first superhero movie to get this close to greatness since Guardians of the Galaxy is one from Fox's X-Men franchise, a series that, despite its admirable ludicrousness, I've always been tepid toward outside of the few-and-far-between highlights (i.e. X2 and sorta First Class). It probably helps that Logan wants basically nothing to do with its X-Men peers, having set its story a decade into the future and, in what is likely as much out of spite for its franchise as dystopian despair, killed off pretty much every single recognizable mutant outside of its title character and a doddering, senile Charles Xavier (who, in one of the movie's more sadistic touches, is strongly implied to have accidentally caused a good portion of those X-Men deaths). It also helps that this is the first X-Men film where the central metaphor works; whereas the "X-Men as [insert marginalized group]" subtexts in past films have felt flimsy at best, Logan's positioning of mutants (really, children of mutants, since, you know, the original ones are all dead) as immigrants feels absolutely inspired. Scratch that: not just inspired; it's downright subversive, inverting the traditional American immigration narrative by having mutants fleeing north to Canada in response to the hostility of the American social climate of 2029. This is, I think, the first American film that feels post-2016 in the way that movies in the early 2000s felt post-9/11 and in the mid-'70s felt post-Watergate—there's a militarized border wall between Mexico and the USA; water is contaminated; eminent domain is resisted; social infrastructure is fragmented beyond repair; there's the unshakable feeling that the good guys, well-intentioned as they may have been, played a role in making the world this way. It's heavy and grim and ponderous and everything I hope superheroes don't overwhelmingly become. But as a deconstructive one-off, Logan feels vital. Grade: A-
It's understandably a difficult task to embody anyone in the way that acting asks an actor to, but Kate Plays Christine shows a decidedly more difficult task still. This documentary follows actress Kate Lyn Sheil as she prepares for the central role in a film adaptation of the life of Christine Chubbuck, a news reporter who committed suicide on live television in 1974 (something that—and the documentary backs me up here—seems to have been a vital influence on the film Network). An intriguing subject for a doc, for sure, and if the way it goes about documenting it—a disorienting mix of traditional fly-on-the-wall documentary film, talking heads, excerpts from the finished film (a cheapie, from the looks of it), and what seem to be dramatic and somewhat hyperreal reenactments of Sheil's experiences playing Christine—is a bit too mannered to be as compelling as the movie wants it to be, it's still an interesting look into the mechanics and ethics of acting. Grade: B
This fairly dense, comprehensive documentary of the Britpop titans Oasis during their golden '90s years, stretching from the band's inception through the release of their megasuccess sophomore album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, has plenty of great footage from concerts and behind the scenes, making it a rewarding document of, as is pointed out in the film, one of the last pre-internet, pre-cultural diaspora rock and roll monoliths. That relial on you-are-there footage also does a fantastic job of both capturing what made this group the towering force of rock and roll songwriting and performance that it was and also showing the exact factors (namely, sibling rivalry, inconceivable ego, and an unholy amount of drugs) that inevitably led to their collapse years down the line. And it does all this without so much mentioning traditional whipping boy Be Here Now, which is sort of a feat unto itself. Plus, if nothing else, this doc features plenty of interview footage of the incomparable Liam Gallagher, the most consistently entertaining musician in interview for nearly thirty years running. Grade: B+
Writer/director Taika Waititi has quite a résumé as pretty much the sole non-Wes-Anderson master currently working in the quirk dramedy idiom, a genre I'd be quick to call dead (or at least hibernating) if it weren't for those two. Boy is far and away his best, too, which is not to say anything negative about the immense fun of What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople but rather just to stress just how freaking GREAT Boy is. That it sports Waititi's tremendous facility with gentle mockery and hilariously failed precociousness is no surprise; what's a bit more unexpected is just how emotionally raw the film is willing to get—a precipitous dip toward deep domestic pain in the film's third quarter feels as well-observed and human as any of the comedy here, and what's better is that the film still manages a happy ending without undoing or cheapening any of that pain. A lovely coming-of-age film not to be missed. Grade: A
I've softened on the Star Wars prequels over time; there's something to be said for the purity of Lucas's artistic vision on display, and for every "I don't like sand," there's an arresting image or fantastic creature design or inventive piece of worldbuilding. But this hot garbage—the quickie 2008 animated disaster that somehow made it to a wide theatrical release—I can't imagine ever warming to. Devoid of all but the barest thread of characterization and plot and completely lacking in any wonder or artistry, The Clone Wars is a gigantic bore, giving scarcely more than a cursory glance at any of the litany of interesting threads to pick up in Lucas's universe (look, I know people complain about the focus on the politics in the prequels, but this is what those prequels would be without the political angle, and let me tell you: it's dire). The cruel joke, too, is that although the monotone dialogue and mechanical, overly smooth animation gives the impression of watching a film at 1.25 speed, there's still 100 minutes of the thing here. Reportedly, the television series that spun off this movie is pretty good (and given the richness of the Old Republic world depicted in the prequels, I can believe it), and preparing to watch the show was my initial reason for watching this. But now I'm rethinking everything. Grade: D
Typical of at least half of director David Fincher's output (but even more so here), The Game is an immaculate, meticulously designed, beautifully constructed rendering of an altogether ridiculous and absurd premise. In brief: a rich dude pays lots of money to play a game that might not be a game, and thus gives him a heck of a head trip and thrusts him out the other side a marginally better person. I'm a big fan of Fincher's more serious-minded work (namely Zodiac and The Social Network), but works of gonzo pulp like this and the more recent Gone Girl suggest that Fincher's direction is more at ease in this weird, Hitchcockian element, hoisted into the space between smut and art by sheer force of formal elegance. Grade: B
Roman Polanski, it seems, is one of those lucky magicians who arrives to this world with a full bag of tricks—his directorial debut, the tense Knife in the Water, is every bit the kind of film we'd come to expect from the acclaimed (and infamous) director down the line: tight compositions, patient and foreboding cinematography, paranoia, etc. The film all these flourishes are in service of isn't really much to write home about, a Bergman-esque chamber drama on a boat that's just a bit too familiar to be anything great, but it's solid and engrossing enough. Grade: B+
Books
Every day, the protagonist wakes up inhabiting a different body. For much of the novel, the rules of this inhabitation are left vague, and that's fine, the book being more interested in telling a sort of high-concept fantasy romance than being any treatise on identity or body autonomy ethics (just what exactly is it okay to do when you're inhabiting another person's body for a day?), although both subjects are touched on. It's only after a late-book twist wants to make the mechanics and ethics of body inhabitation a major plot point—and in fact rushes the book toward an underexplained ending—that that vagueness becomes a liability and overtakes what is otherwise a fine romance between the protagonist and the girl whom s/he must, of course, confront as a different person each day. There are apparently sequels/companions to this book. Perhaps they could make this ending more satisfying. But as it is on its own, Every Day is a breezy but flawed read. Grade: B-
Music
This being me, of course I find Bruce Springsteen's most despairing album also one of his most accomplished. Rarely have the Boss's narratives felt more alive or more tragic, and rarely have his protagonists been more down on their luck. It all culminates in the closer "Reason to Believe," one of Bruce's most deliciously ambivalent tracks, where it's unclear whether or not it's foolish to hope—perfect in its ambiguity. Because even among the most hopeful of us all, who really knows? Grade: A
No comments:
Post a Comment