Movies
There's no surer formula for earning my love than a movie devoted to rendering traditional b-picture sensibilities to classical-Hollywood formal rigor. It's not really news to call a Sofia Coppola film beautiful, but good golly, The Beguiled is her most gorgeous-looking movie yet—Philippe Le Sourd's cinematography makes use of natural lighting in a way that frames these Civil-War-era characters in painterly tableau, and the brilliant, Gothic set makes the plantation home setting look like nothing less than a mausoleum that reflects the Confederate society these women struggle to preserve. But don't mistake that stately technical virtuosity for stasis; this movie moves. It's a thriller above all else, and as such, it's the meanest and leanest you're likely to see this year. Grade: A-
As writer/director Ben Wheatley creeps closer and closer to mainstream filmmaking, it's becoming clear that he's much better at the experimentalish genre features that defined the early years of his career (e.g. Kill List) than he is at the language of traditional narrative. Last year's High-Rise was a nice hybrid of formal experiments and narrative, but with Free Fire, the result is technically confused and narratively slack. The idea is solid enough: a Reservoir-Dogs-esque crime comedy with a heavy dose of nihilism as the gunfire becomes so confused that all the characters (and audience members, too) lose track of who's on whose side. So in a sense, it's thematically relevant to have the camera blocking, editing, and action choreography make it difficult to spatially follow what's going on. But there's a line between thematic relevance and technical improficiency, and while I couldn't tell you exactly where that line is, Free Fire definitely crosses it. It's not terrible, but it's hard not to imagine just how much more enjoyable it could have been in the hands of someone with a more precise control of the language of traditional action narratives. Grade: C+
It's a stupid horror comedy that's neither scary nor funny. Worse still, it even misses its ostensibly subversive target. The movie tries to satirize the objectification of women but doesn't seem to be sufficiently self-aware about that to avoid framing the female cast in a very male-gazy way with the camera. I suppose this is the risk of having two dudes make a feminist horror subversion. Grade: C
Roger Ebert reportedly walked out of this movie (one of the few movies of which he's ever done so, apparently), and frankly, I don't get it. It's no masterpiece or anything, but Mediterraneo is a pleasant-enough film with a POV you really don't see too often: that of a group of Axis soldiers. A bunch of Italian soldiers during WWII are stationed at a Greek island and essentially forgotten about by their army at large, so they spend years on this island, eventually growing to make the island their home among the Greek natives. This is all played as gentle comedy, and while there's nothing to write home about, it's funny and sweet enough that you won't regret its 90 minutes. Grade: B
This film has a reputation of being a bit of a disaster, and while I can't quite say it's not, there's an extreme negativity to that word that doesn't really convey the soft pleasures of the movie. Written by, directed by, and starring all four Beatles, this is clearly the product of people who don't know what they're doing, from the nonsensical plotting to the uncertain camerawork. And the stretches between the songs are, for the most part, dull. But even in those stretches, we have some fun, from the occasionally inspired surrealist comedy (I like the gibberish-talking cops) to the actually pretty cool editing (done by Roy Benson, not the Fab Four). And let's not forget the songs themselves, whose whimsical proto-music-video visuals continue to mesmerize, not to mention that these are songs from some of pop music's foremost geniuses at the heights of their artistic powers. The whole package isn't good, no, but let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. Grade: C+
Television
The second (and final) season of this short-lived sitcom is significantly nicer than its first (very few people die or get pushed in front of cars!), and a lot of this season is a tonal and stylistic experiment. The series never quite figured out just what it was supposed to be—though it's fair to say that a broadcast-network sitcom was not it—but it's never not funny and the cast is never not great, especially Ritter and Van Der Beek. It's a shame the show wasn't given a third year to figure it out more. Grade: B
Books
Much like its movie adaptation, A Monster Calls is a bona fide weepy. In the vein of Bridge to Terabithia and Where the Red Fern Grows, this novel exists in large part to help children to realize and cope with the fact that life can be a miserable place full of suffering, but lordy, it's beautiful at doing so. The spare, precise prose evokes exactly as much of its story as it needs to, and the monster device powerfully teeters right on the edge of being too precious without ever actually becoming so. This is all marvelously complemented by Jim Kay's grungy, ink-blotted illustrations, which sketch out the novel's more emotive passages with just the right amount of texture. Worthy of the legacy of the aforementioned classic novels, to be sure. Grade: A-
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