Movies
When movies go to depict the tensions between generations, they typically approach it loudly, often through the device of ultra-conservative parents who hate their progressive children's freedom. So it is just one of 20th Century Women's multitude of lovely touches that it couches the changing mores of generations through the gentler (but no less piercing) dynamic of a son and his already open-minded mother who, for all her open-mindedness, still feels left behind. It's beautiful and nuanced and textured with arresting moments of self-reflection. What is ostensibly (and, I suppose, is still) a coming-of-age tale set in the late '70s becomes, under this relationship and the myriad other equally gentle, equally textured human bonds (among whom are perfectly cast Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning [who, between this and The Neon Demon, had quite the 2016]), becomes this lived-in collage of what it means to find community from within the larger noise of the culture of a given historical moment. And speaking of culture: a mix of post-rock-ish ambient motifs and period-specific punk and post-punk tunes (Talking Heads feature prominently, as does Black Flag), the film's soundtrack is absolute catnip for me. So of course that affects the grade here (as if this weren't A-grade to begin with). Grade: A
If, after the film's open thirty minutes, you're left wondering about the proprietary of having a movie about a rape survivor then reveal said survivor to be a raging sociopath, that's exactly the trap that director Paul Verhoeven, legendary confounder of good taste, means for us bourgeois simpletons to fall into. It's not so much that the movie is outrightly trash; it's that the movie plays its cards so close to its chest regarding what exactly it's trying to say about sexual assault that it's tough to tell if Elle is some smart satire or just an exercise in lurid shock. The film gestures toward both readings without committing strongly enough to either to make its endgame clear even after seeing the entire film once (who knows what repeat viewings will offer). Verhoeven's film's tend to make a lot more sense with a little distance from their specific cultural moment (e.g. Starship Troopers), so maybe it'll take a few years for this one to sink in. As for now... ? Grade: B
Very much coasting on the vibes of your average PBS TV doc, it's nevertheless a good—if a bit hagiographic (understandably; the man was barely cold in the grave when the film was made)—source of info on one of cinema's greats. There's some cool footage here (child Kubrick is adorable, btw), and the talking heads—a diverse cross-section of his collaborators and admirers--have smart things to say. None of it is particularly groundbreaking, particularly if you're at all familiar with the critical discourse surrounding Kubrick's work, but it's a solid watch with an infectious enthusiasm for the work of a filmmaker whose work I'm already pretty enthusiastic about. Grade: B
Three businessmen contemplate life and death in the lead-up and aftermath of a pivotal social mixer. This is the kind of movie where you don't need to look at the production credits to know that it's based on a play (Hospitality Suite, Roger Reuff [the film's screenwriter, in fact])—single-location setting, dialogue that takes the most winding path to get to its destination and loves repeating itself ("Are you mad?" "Am I mad?"), cinematography that mostly sticks to the point-and-shoot variety. As play adaptations go, it's a particularly play-like one, and were it not for a few sequences of ambient interludes, we'd be in the territory of Richard Linklater's Tape. Luckily for The Big Kahuna, though, is that its play is much, much better than Tape's, and its depiction of white male ennui (evoked marvelously by Danny Devito with probably the best performance I've seen from him) has, if not something new to say about that well-trod subject, a uniquely dark and complicated pathos in communicating it. Grade: B+
A meandering, aimless movie about how its characters are meandering and aimless has a hard time justifying its meandering aimlessness beyond the straightforward thematic concerns. There are perks to the ride, though: the acting is generally excellent, both for those playing type (Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey) and those playing very against it (Gary Shandling and a frankly shocking Meg Ryan), and the cinematography does a good job of transcending the film's stage roots (based on a 1984 play of the same title). There are, too, a few moving moments within the mostly tropey treatment of hedonistic aimlessness, notably a tortured Chazz Palminteri navigating a life that is clearly crumbling into some kind of abyss. Nothing spectacular, but nothing altogether awful either. Grade: B-
A Soviet film about a woman whose fiance must leave to fight in WWII while she stays behind and deals with the crushing destruction of her home through the German blitzkrieg. So of course it's an exercise in heartbreak. More surprising, though, is the way that director Mikhail Kalatozov is able to sneak some startling abstract imagery into what initially seems to be a straightforwardly naturalistic style—during action scenes, the camera moves with a rapidity that smears out each frame into a kind of Impressionism that's as gorgeous as it is unsettling in its transformation of the warm, domestic landscapes. Did I mention this is super sad, though? Because really, it's going to break your heart. Grade: A-
Books
I sometimes find Neil Gaiman's approach to fantasy to run a bit abstract. This cuts both ways: it can make his stories feel at times frustratingly oblique and sometimes hard to follow, but at its best, it can also lend his work a fantastic sense of the sublime that's virtually unparalleled among authors playing the same game. The Ocean at the End of the Lane has a bit of the former, occasionally exhibiting that frustrating immateriality that makes the story and characters hard to grasp on a tangible level. But at its best—and it is, more often than not—Ocean is wonderfully otherworldly and inventive. Like Coraline (my favorite Gaiman novel and one that Ocean parallels in quite a few ways, right down to its fixation on ominous/demonic female caregivers), the more abstract pieces of Gaiman's prose latch onto tangible details in the story's world in a way that grounds the supernatural in a way that is both frightening and fantastic, obliterating the usual dichotomy between magic and mundane. Grade: B+
Music
People like to critique this album on the basis that it's derivative and straightforward, which is unfair on two counts: 1) Radiohead is always derivative, only now it's modern classical and Aphex Twin, not the Pixies and the Smiths (their ability to synthesize is, in fact, a crucial part of their genius), and 2) of course it's straightforward—clearly these guys were, at this point, more interested in making an alternative rock album than a work of murky dance grooves and pristine art rock. I don't want to overstate this; Pablo Honey is only barely not mediocre, and there are quite a few tracks that are undercooked—"Vegetable," "I Can't," and a couple others. But people pile on this record in a way that ignores that "Creep" is a classic of its angsty kind, "You" is an opener every bit as good as "Planet Telex," and "Blow Out" is the birth of the Jonny Greenwood, guitar experimenter extraordinaire, that we all know and love today. Grade: B-
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