Mini-Reviews for August 14 - 20, 2017

Maybe it's just the impending eclipse, but it sure seems like I watched more mediocre/bad movies than I usually do this week—not to mention that long-coveted F review.

Movies

God's Not Dead (2014)

From a distance, God's Not Dead is great fun—my wife and I enjoyed immensely our time heckling this movie's relentless strawmanning and sanctimony, not to mention its laughable grasp of philosophy and opportunistic celebrity cameos (Duck Dynasty's Willie Robertson makes a particularly shameless cameo, while there's enough buildup to the baffling Newsboys concert climax that it wouldn't be far off-base to call the film a gigantic advertisement for everyone's favorite trend-chasing Aussie CCM-ers). But that fun dies the precise moment you remember just how sincerely the Evangelical Christian world regards this movie's worldview, how this is the most lucrative ($62.6 million at the box office??) iteration yet of the memefied misinformation campaign that's plagued Evangelicals for decades, and how this is a particularly vengeful—even hateful—iteration at that. The sheer sadism through which the movie doles out its inevitable conversion scenes (one via a fatal hit-and-run, the other via cancer [because we wouldn't want to be too tasteful]) is condescending and vile to the max, betraying a startling, ugly antipathy toward every character who is not Christian and showing that, at least for the Christian filmmakers behind this movie, the core of the modern American Christian is that winning an argument trumps any semblance of compassion for other human beings. There's something to be said for viewing this movie as a The-Room-esque pile-up of the sheer surreality of every possible mistake being made on the craft and screenwriting level, but unlike the mind of Tommy Wiseau, the world of God's Not Dead is too firmly rooted in a toxic social reality that I, as a fellow Christian, loath to retain any of that so-bad-it's-good charm. Grade: F

Casting JonBenet (2017)

This documentary's clever concept—having actors audition for roles in a film adaptation of the notorious JonBenét Ramsey murder speculate on the truth behind the real-life players in that mystery—is blessed to have an equally clever follow-through. This is a movie that's ostensibly about the sensational death of a young girl, but by the end, it's become a meditation on how the public at large responds to such tragedies, with its cast of aspiring actors forming a chorus of the mortified solipsism with which we approach them. So it's all very clever and interesting, but it's perhaps a little too conceptual to be anything but that. Grade: B+

Get Me Roger Stone (2017)

At its best, this documentary recalls Errol Morris's political duology of The Fog of War and The Unknown Known, wherein powerful political players are essentially allowed to monologue on their strategies and thus reveal far more about the political process and their own character than a more traditional doc would have been able to. Get Me Roger Stone does something similar, and the most engaging parts of the movie by far are the ones in which the titular political strategist and bona fide sleazeball just talks, betraying the rotten core of everything he's ever touched. Unfortunately, those talky segments are nested within the structure of a far less interesting documentary that feels something like a TV special about Roger Stone's history, regurgitating familiar soundbites from famous campaigns in the past and leaning far too heavily on the 2016 Trump campaign. But those Roger Stone talking heads are to die for. Grade: B

The Girl with all the Gifts (2016)

An intriguing twist on zombie tropes, The Girl with All the Gifts is the first zombie movie I can think of that's really embraced the post-human implications of most zombie stories—it's not just that the zombies here are destroying human society; they are creating things to replace human society, culminating in a ballsy finale that rivals The Night of the Living Dead in its despairing grandeur. In this world, a second generation of zombies has been born that is fully sentient, which ends up being a cool exploration of the question of what to do with deadly flesh-eaters when they are able to develop their own moral compass, feel pain, etc. The craft of the movie isn't quite up to making this a great movie, and the child-actor lead is unfortunately way out of her league here (thankfully offset by a fantastic Glenn Close villain). But there are enough interesting ideas at play here that it's worth a watch regardless. Grade: B+

Colossal (2016)

There are a couple of metaphors going on in the situation Anne Hathaway encounters (i.e. realizing that returning to the confines of her childhood playground triggers the appearance of a monster in Seoul that mirrors her every move, wreaking havoc on poor South Korea). The first is one of childhood memory and the cycles of childhood trauma; the second is the idea of the actions of clueless Westerners destroying Asia. Neither one is particularly interesting, but I'll at least give Colossal credit for trying to make them so—it's just such a bizarre concept for a movie that it's hard not to admire it in concept, if not in practice. There really isn't a lot going on here, though, so... oh well. The best-laid plans, etc. Grade: B-

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)

The movie's vision of a world facing certain and imminent destruction is observant enough and funny enough that the movie's never not pleasant (at least, as pleasant as the end of the world can be). But I'm not buying the central relationship one iota; both Carell's and Knightley's characters are well-formed enough, but the film manages to do that almost entirely irrespective of anything that might connect these two in an actual meaningful bond. I mean, I get it: it's the end of the world, people are desperate for human companionship, etc. But this is triggering my major pet peeve against the depiction of new romances as somehow world-conquering and transcendent-to-the-end-of-time. Grade: B-

Snowtown (2011)

This movie is pornographic—not in a sexual sense (although there is a rape) but in the sense that it seems to be about nothing but the sensual experience of witnessing serial killers do their serial killing. Based on the true story (of course) of a group of guys who decided to torture and kill first pedophiles and then homosexuals, this film points its camera directly at the actions of these men and rarely looks away. What I'm supposed to be getting out of this, I'm not sure, except now I know what it looks like to see a toenail pulled off a big toe. Grade: C-

Television

Adventure Time, Season 7 (2015-16)

After the increasingly serialized and high-minded fourth, fifth, and sixth seasons of Adventure Time, Season 7 feels like a stripped-down, back-to-basics sort of outing, resulting in what's probably the show's least-exciting season since its first. That's not exactly a criticism, as there are some delightful one-offs and silly-for-silliness's-sake episodes like "Cherry Cream Soda" and "The Hall of Egress," not to mention the strangely compelling horror experiment, "Blank-Eyed Girl," all of which make great use of the deep roster of minor and major characters developed over the series's run. The season also gives us at least a few new explorations of the series lore, one of which, "Stakes," is a whole eight-part miniseries devoted to Marceline, and I'll never complain about giving her more screen time. So it's not as if this season is joyless or bad; in fact, it's probably a necessary step for the series, re-establishing its fundamentals after pushing its boundaries to the max. But I'd also be lying if I said that there wasn't something missing here, the way a balloon feels all floppy and wrinkled when you deflate it. There's good stuff here, for sure, but it kind of feel like Adventure Time is no longer aiming for greatness, which is a little bit of a letdown. Grade: B

Music

Grimes - Visions (2012)

I'm sort of backing my way into Grimes's discography, starting first with Art Angels and now going to her next-to-last, 2012's Visions, and doing so, it's fascinating to see all the pieces of Art Angels's greatness intact, just slightly submerged, as if Grimes is slowly excavating them. On Visions, it's the ambient electronica textures that take the foreground, slightly swallowing the '90s-pop/Euro-club melodies that would come roaring to life on the next record. As a result, Visions is, despite it's crazy-awesome cover art, a somewhat more ethereal presence than Grimes's subsequent work, and as such, it's frequently a work of delicate beauty—never more so than on the late-night-driving all-timer, "Oblivion," which ranks as not just Grimes's best-ever composition but one of the finest pop music creations of recent years. I'm looking forward to seeing what she did before this. Grade: A-

Public Enemy - Nothing Is Quick in the Desert (2017)

Thirty years into their career, Public Enemy's music is throwing punches with as much force as ever, although its targets are maybe a bit more questionable. There are the typical rabble-rousing, truth-to-power shout-alongs—"sPEak," "Beat Them All," "Toxic"—and it's here that the album's at its best. However, other sections of the album also betray the ages of the band members, and it's not uncommon for Chuck and Flav's lyrics to come off as the musical equivalent of that Grandpa Simpson "Old Man Yells at Cloud" moment; this hits its nadir in "Yesterday Man," which rants at all sorts of petty and distasteful grievances with modern culture, including Kanye West/Kim Kardashian and Caitlyn Jenner (whom they insist on calling "Bruce"). I guess it wouldn't be a Public Enemy album without a little bit of regressive sexual politics. It's not that there isn't good stuff here; you'll just have to sift through the bad and the tedious to get to it. Grade: C+