Movies
The buzz surrounding this movie was that it's "hilarious," "absolutely nuts," and "wildly inventive" (actual pull quotes from the movie's poster), and while I won't deny that this movie is entertaining—especially for a nearly 3-hour(!) German film—but come on: Toni Erdmann is only "absolutely nuts" in the context of the soundtrackless, handheld-camera'd austerity of contemporary European neo-realism, of which Toni Erdmann totally is one for most of its lengthy runtime. The glaring exception here is a climactic scene that's too wonderful to spoil except to say that it's probably the best use of cinematic nudity in at least a decade. That moment is made all the better by the far more conventional but uncommonly moving scene that immediately follows it and provides the image for the film's poster, a perfect culmination of the father-daughter relationship that animates the best ninety percent of the film. So yes, this is a good movie, and please don't take this review otherwise—I just feel like the buzz needs to be reigned in a bit. Grade: B+
At the movie's beginning, Saroo is a five-year-old living in India; he's soon separated from his family, and inadvertently takes a train hundreds of miles from his home, where he dodges various adult predators until finally being taken into government custody and put in an orphanage. This section of the movie is great, and it lasts over 40 minutes. The problem is that this movie still has another 80 minutes to go, and those 80 minutes take place in Saroo's adulthood as he searches for his hometown and his family. It's not an inherently bad idea, and given that it's based on a true story, there probably isn't much the film could have done differently, plot-wise. But Saroo is using Google Earth to locate his village, and this is a very bad thing—not for Saroo, who (spoilers? it's basically the entire reason this was made into a movie) finds his town—but the movie itself, which essentially becomes a very dramatic version of watching a guy click around on a laptop, with just a touch of Rooney Mara thrown in for flair. It's a film impeccably crafted throughout, both visually and aurally (the score is magnificent), which is why I'm rating it as highly as I am, and what the movie is dramatizing is a truly wonderful inspirational story. But as any spouse of a grad student (you're looking at one) can tell you, computer research just isn't interesting to watch if you aren't participating. Thank goodness for the rest of the movie. Grade: B
This Persian-American vampire movie is very stylish and cool, as all vampire movies should be. There isn't a lot of substance to it—the characters are sketched so broadly that it's occasionally difficult to tell them apart, and the themes of gender (the vampire is female and kills some greasy dudes, so, you know, feminism) are at least as broad—but that's by design. This isn't a movie that wants to be grand or big; it's a movie content with the little things, like moody b&w cinematography and chilling to cool music. I can respect that. Grade: B
In a franchise noted for icky body horror, it's worth noting that Alien: Resurrection is the series' grossest entry by a large margin. The other films have chest-bursting and blood/guts, sure, but do they have a guy's head being bitten in half? A room of demon-spawn fail experiment grotesqueries preserved in transparent vats of urine-like liquid? A creature sucked through a tiny hole in the ship that slowly strips it of flesh and skin as it pulls the poor thing into space all spaghetti-like? I think not. There are quibbles to make with the script and characters (though as always, the reveal of who is and isn't a robot is great), and apparently Joss Whedon was upset at the implementation of his screenplay. But when it's a movie as wall-to-wall disgustingly entertaining as this, who cares? Grade: B+
Books
A brisk short story collection about Southern women: lots of screen doors, Ma's cooking, ice tea, furtive sexual encounters—you know the drill. It's very MFA-feeling, which can be both good and bad, and there are some pretty good stories in here (my favorites are the folk-tale-esque "On Tuesdays" and the religiously tragic "Hail, Mary"). But there are also a lot of stories that either don't have a lot of heft or mine such already thoroughly mined themes (housewifery is oppressive, etc.) that there's really not much left for Barton to carry away. Grade: C+
Music
A lot of people (myself included) have assumed Josh Tillman's Father John Misty moniker to be a joke persona steeped in irony and affectation, and no doubt that has been true at various times in the past few years. But between 2015's I Love You, Honeybear and this year's sprawling, definitely overlong Pure Comedy, the FJM identity also seems like a device for trenchant self-reflection and self-critique. Take "Ballad of the Dying Man," one of the album's best and sharpest tracks, in which the eponymous dying man spends his last moments in self-important narcissism online—interesting, coming from a singer-songwriter with a habit of dropping in on the comments sections of his own Stereogum reviews (with a username, no less, of "Dying Man," created when he forgot the password for his old "J Tillman" account [yes, I might spend too much time reading the comments on Stereogum]). "Leaving LA," the album's meandering 13-minute centerpiece, is more directly critical, calling Misty/Tillman "another white guy in 2017 who takes himself so goddamn seriously." And yes, for all the jokes and quips on the album (and there are quite a few, many of them excellent), he absolutely takes himself seriously. Much as Tillman sneaks in some introspective barbs, this is very much one of those albums: about politics, about the state of the world, about God, etc. "Total Entertainment Forever," another of the album's best and brightest, describes an Infinite-Jest-ish world in which humans consume entertainment so voraciously that they cease to consume anything else and simply die; "When the God of Love Returns There'll Be Hell to Pay" is venom-filled critique of God Himself and the way that He structured the world. Your tolerance for this probably depends on how much you enjoy John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and the work of Randy Newman (two obvious thematic and musical influences on the record) and how much you'll allow the frankly gorgeous guitar/piano arrangements to offset the bitterness of Misty's deeply cynical lyrics. There's an undeniable "Josh discovers Christopher Hitchens for the first time" vibe to a lot of the album's discussion of politics and religion, and on the whole, the perspective displayed here is one of trendy nihilism with commentary that's more blunt than insightful. But I dunno—there's something really cathartic in this sort of blunt contempt, and in a political season when I feel myself angrier and more frustrated by the day, I savor that catharsis, even when it comes by way of analysis with which I have strong reservations or even just I flat-out disagree. Plus, there's always the beautiful instrumentation and Tillman's unparalleled ability to turn a phrase, even if I tap out of the actual content. Not bad. Grade: B+
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