Movies
My Life as a Zucchini (Ma vie de Courgette) (2016)
Everything about this movie works, but none of it works greatly—the Playdough-looking visuals, the warm characterizations, the lightly optimistic upturn to what should otherwise be a crushingly sad plot. In fact, this last one is the film's most impressive achievement, given that it deals with an orphan who has accidentally killed his mother, a mean and alcoholic woman whom he remembers with a revisionist kindness. This movie should, by rights, feel oppressively cruel, but instead, it simply feels rather melancholy; the way I've worded it makes it sound like it doesn't take its tragedy seriously, but that's not what I mean: it's just that the world of the movie is one where kindness exists alongside its unspeakable meanness, such that it's much less a wallow than it might be. Another example: Simon, another orphan in the orphanage who seems, based on his picking on our protagonist, to be set up to be a bully is given a wonderful humanity, too, that transforms him into something far richer than his presumed archetype. Simon is, by far, the best thing here outside the protagonist, and a big part of the movie never being more than "pretty good" is that none of the other characters or situations transcend their archetypes: we have the kindly cop, the inspirational teacher, etc. Perhaps if the movie were a bit longer (it's barely an hour now), the additional time with these characters would have granted them more life. But as it is, there are merely flashes of inspiration that make this any better than a run-of-the-mill inspirational picture. Grade: B
Li'l Quinquin (P'tit Quinquin) (2014)
Something of a murder mystery crossed with a philosophical treatise crossed with a very off-beat comedy, Li'l Quinquin is a strange duck. Probably the closest analogue here is Twin Peaks, for the way that it explores the dual absurdity and darkness hiding within small-town life through the eyes of an unconventional-but-wise detective. But even that doesn't really capture the bizarre, mesmerizing energy of the film—we are, after all, dealing with a mystery involving corpses found inside the digestive tracks of cows, not beautiful dead girls wrapped in plastic. It's utterly confounding, but there's a magnetic power to it as well, one that feels like it's tapping into something both goofy and elemental. Grade: B+
Billy Elliot (2000)
A very sweet coming of age film that strikes me in the same way that I think last year's Sing Street struck a lot of people (not me) last year, only with dance instead of song. The T. Rex-filled soundtrack makes it even sweeter, and the backdrop of working-class strife and a coal miner strike to all the ballet makes for some interesting social textures. There are some potentially worthwhile ideas left to wither on the vine—virtually every side character gets short shrift, but the worst is Billy's gay friend, Michael, who gets about two scenes of any weight; his other friend, Debbie (who gets what is probably the best image in the entire film as she drags her stick across a fence that then turns into police riot shields), receives even less screen time. But everything with Billy and his family is great, particularly the time spent between Billy and his father. Seeing the father's sympathies slowly turn toward Billy and his ballet ambitions is beautiful to behold and is the best this film has to offer. Grade: B+
Fire in the Sky (1993)
There are two very interesting premises embedded in Fire in the Sky. The first is a crime mystery involving a group of men who cite a flying saucer as the explanation for the disappearance of their friend and a highly dubious town and law enforcement cohort. This is a story about truth and the limitations of eye-witness reports, and it's fascinating. The second is a horror movie involving a man's abduction by aliens and the psychological fallout from that abduction as he attempts to reintegrate back into his former life after his return. This is a story about trauma and body autonomy and the terrifying smallness of humanity within the larger context of an uncaring universe, and it's also fascinating. But taking both of these stories and mashing them both into a 109-minute film does a disservice to both, and we're left with a muddled, confused movie that's never quite sure how to fit all its various lumps into its '90s middlebrow box. Grade: B-
Wild at Heart (1990)
David Lynch's follow-up to his indie smash Blue Velvet is, like Lost Highway, a transitional work between two career monuments: this time, between Blue Velvet's off-kilter crime thriller and the full-on affectation and absurdity of Twin Peaks. And it's nuts. It's a movie with Wizard of Oz obsessions (often to an absurd degree, mimicking specific iconic shots from the classic) and Nicolas Cage playing a character who has all the style and mannerisms of an alternate-universe Elvis who was born and raised in L.A., and those two things don't even begin to describe the frantic energy that animates every single shot—this is, without a doubt, Lynch's more frenetic film. It's goofy and grotesque in equal measure (I'm astonished that the film only had to alter one shot to avoid the X rating), but it's beautifully realized and, for all its proclivities for idiosyncratic parody and irony, also ends up being a sincere treatise on love and commitment that's quite moving. Laura Dern's character's wounded infatuation with Cage's aloof Elvis-impersonating makes for a truly great screen romance that only gets sweeter as the movie progresses. The film isn't perfect—a late-film subplot with Willem Dafoe is a misstep, for sure—but for any flaws, it hits eloquently the immaculate emotional range that only David Lynch can deliver. Grade: A-
Books
Still Life with Tornado by A. S. King (2016)
Last year's release from the prolific and frequently excellent A. S. King may be her best. To say that this novel is a painfully sharp depiction of domestic abuse makes it sound like a miserable experience that it absolutely is not (though its depiction of its subject matter is very sharp), so I'll instead frame it this way: given how crushing being a teenager can actually be, YA lit is a genre that is almost laughably in love with self-actualization for brooding, existentially adrift adolescents, but Still Life with Tornado is one of the few that actually manages to build its protagonist's self-actualization with weight and meaning. Yes, she's an artsy teen wandering through urban landscapes (Philadelphia, in this case), but way she finds her way out of that headspace is earned and real. This is a book in which victories are not a foregone conclusion but an actual extension of who these characters are. I dig it. Grade: A-
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