Movies
In the same way that Magic Mike was basically an indie movie with stripper scenes, the film Logan Lucky ends up being is a lot more subdued than the raucous film promised by the advertising. It's as sweet and naturalistic a heist film as Soderbergh has ever done, electing for quietly observed character bits over slapstick laughs or crazy heist hijinks (although the third act does get pretty twisty). That's not to say that there aren't laughs or that these actors aren't trying their hardest to make these characters entertaining (Daniel Craig in particular is tremendous, as I'm sure numerous reviews have told y'all already). But Logan Lucky is just such an unassuming, easing-going, lived-in kind of film that it makes what it's doing seem easy and almost lazy, in the best way possible. It's a hangout movie, essentially, one with a heist in the center, and a tremendously fun one at that. Grade: B+
Critics have painted this as a movie that detrimentally sands off the edges of a harrowing true story in the interest of delivering a feel-good weepy. But sometimes critics are wrong. Granted, I haven't read the book this movie is based on, but any criticisms that this movie is shooting for empty sentiment over hard truths is ignoring the fact this this film is in dialogue with itself over the central two characters of Jeannette and her abusive, charismatic father, Rex—it's a feature-length exploration of the conflicting ways with which we are forced to relate to people close to us who have hurt us tremendously, buffeted between love and hatred, joy and pain, and the soft, warm moments come as lurching juxtapositions with the movie's numerous scenes of domestic horror. The movie isn't perfect by any means (Naomi Watts as the mother figure is sorely underused, and the score—a barrage of treacly inspirational movie cliches—is terrible), but there's something vital and complex going on here, and the effect is nowhere near as easy as some seem to think. Grade: A-
Not being the owner of a smartphone, I'll admit that there's an aspect of from-the-outside-looking-in to my enjoyment of Ingrid Goes West's wicked social media satire. Then again, I'm on Facebook every day, so the movie's depiction of the ways that interpersonal interactions are warped and even defined by the online currency of likes and followers isn't lost on me. Even if it was, there'd still be plenty to like here, not the least of which is a game cast, helmed by a deliriously unglamorous Aubrey Plaza performance (which, coupled with her work on Legion, positions her as one of the most watchably off-kilter performers in Hollywood, a sort of modern Shelley Duvall with fewer camp sensibilities). Even with the acting, not all of the characters really work here, but that's okay—the real character is the monstrous hydra of trendy ephemera that is the social media world itself. Ingrid's tongue-in-cheek riffing on this digital universe is the most well-observed depiction of social media I've yet seen in a movie, and its jabs at the characters' various vanities and online habits are informed such by a deep and current knowledge of the meter of the social-media discourse of the moment that in even a few months' time, this will likely be a fascinating and slightly alien capsule of what 2017 online interaction looked like. The ideas presented through this pitch-perfect depiction are maybe a bit too obvious to make Ingrid anything close to great, but you could do a lot worse with your psychological thriller-comedies. Grade: B+
Skull Island does so many things right—the special effects are great, the cast is solid, the creature designs are cool, and the visual style is distinctive—that it's a real shame that the total package is kind of a bore. This is, I think, a complete failure on the screenwriting level. None of the characters come alive but for the grace of their talented actors' performances, and even then, what we see are paper-thin meat sacks waiting to be destroyed by the film's vicious bestiary. There's not anything inherently wrong about that body-count approach to an action film, and many a great movie have basically revolved around the same concept. But without any life in these characters to begin with, it's not really all that fun to see them die. Grade: C+
The sort of polite, stiff-upper-lipped historical drama that serious cinephiles tend to hate and I tend to just find kind of okay, Their Finest is just kind of okay. The premise is hooky enough, and I'm willing to give this movie a pass just for that—during WWII, a female screenwriter struggles to find her place in the man's world of British film, and she finds work as a writer of British war propaganda, and honestly, that's great, because we need more movies about 1) female screenwriters, and 2) the making of war propaganda. And as long as the movie sticks with that, it's engaging. Unfortunately, the film decides to fill a good part of its runtime with thin romantic drama, which is not only not great but also frankly kind of tedious. Pair this with the relatively pedestrian film style, and you've got a movie that nearly squanders its good ideas. Grade: B-
A completely superfluous piece of coming-of-age fluff. Not that there's anything specifically wrong with that, I guess, but, outside of a mildly interesting visual sensibility, there's not anything specifically right about it either. Grade: C
There are a lot of things that are kind of dumb about The Book of Eli, most notably its third-act twist that doesn't seem to accomplish anything for the movie beyond stretch the credulity of its protagonist's actions throughout the first 3/4 of the film. But the action is well-staged and exciting, executed with a subtle, smirking sense of humor that's welcome in the dour post-apocalyptic landscape that envelops the rest of the story, and while it's a bit ham-fisted, the movie's ideas about the role of religious texts in a society on the fringe is still kind of interesting. Put on top of this the fact that the movie is essentially a post-apocalyptic western (why aren't there more of these??) with a visual style that's way cooler than we have any right to expect from what's essentially a mid-budget B movie at the height of the high-contrast, digitally color-corrected wash-out era, and you've got a fun couple of hours. Grade: B
Television
As always, Wet Hot American Summer is inconsistent—perhaps more so here in Ten Years Later than ever. First Day of Camp, the Netflix years-after-the-fact prequel miniseries to the cult comedy film, was something of a minor miracle, justifying its existence by being way better than the original, doubling—nay, tripling—down on the film's penchant for absurdity by making the plot a borderline epic cornucopia of sci-fi, conspiracy thriller, coming-of-age tropes, lampooned to near-perfect comedic heights. Ten Years Later can't really compete with that, partially because the sheer shock of Netflix actually pulling this off has worn off, but also because it's just not nearly so successful. Ten Years Later makes an extended joke about how lame its ending is, and while that's kind of funny, it never really assuages the fact that the series really doesn't know how to build all its varying threads into a satisfying whole. Whole plots are basically dropped midway through the series (Paul Rudd in particularly is woefully underused this outing), and there are parts where WHAS's reliable it's-funny-how-sincerely-and-unskillfully-we're-playing-this-hacky-trope tone shows major cracks, especially in the various love triangles the series builds. Still, on a moment-to-moment basis, Ten Years Later can also approach the comedic sublime—everything involving Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush is hysterical, as is a plot involving a nanny-for-hire. And I will never not giggle uncontrollably at H. Jon Benjamin as a sentient can of vegetables. Grade: B
Music
In the gradual weirdening of Joni Mitchell, one of the most rewarding and underappreciated artistic progressions of the 1970s, The Hissing of Summer Lawns is a vital moment. Proving that the jazz inflection of Court and Spark was no fleeting lark, the relentlessly experimental and exploratory Summer Lawns is the point of metamorphosis, when Joni Mitchell transitioned from the confessional hippy of Blue into the artist who would make Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus. It's an unapologetically out-of-fashion album, embracing jazz at the precise moment when music culture was moving away from the genre, and as such, it was panned mercilessly upon release (though let's be real: '70s rock critics only ever begrudgingly accepted Mitchell's genius to begin with). But no matter; The Hissing of Summer Lawns is a masterpiece. Joni's lyrics have rarely been better here, shaping twisting, oblique character portraits wreathed in mystery and piercing social insight, and the music itself is gorgeous, not to mention influential—it's not hard to hear the genesis of both Joanna Newsom and Animal Collective in the album's discursive melodies, and the entire freak folk scene of the mid-2000s practically owes "The Jungle Line" a lifetime of royalties. Grade: A
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