Mini-Reviews for September 4 - 10, 2017

Several great movies and several movies I didn't like very much at all. This might be the most polarized set of scores I've had in a while.

Movies

It (2017)
This first entry in the duology adapting Stephen King's doorstop opus of coming-of-age horror has a lot of the same problems that recent adaptations of beloved literary properties have tended to have—namely, that it squanders pacing and characterization in favor of being slavishly devoted to visualizing every bit of the source material. This isn't always a bad impulse, and as a fan of King's work (and this novel in particular), I won't deny the thrill of certain iconic setpieces being recreated here; the mid-story fight with the monster in the decaying Victorian manor remains a highlight in both the movie and the book, as do the various surreal and horrifying impositions of IT into the children's day-to-day lives. However, what the faithfulness to the novel ends up meaning throughout most of this film is a heightened awareness of all the myriad ways the movie falls short of the novel's ambition, and it's not hard to begin imagining what a movie that took this story on its own terms would have been like. It almost certainly should have cut the number of kids down, for starters. The acting is uniformly excellent, but as with last year's It-indebted Stranger Things, the screenplay just isn't nimble enough to juggle the development of all seven characters in the Losers' Club. Most of them, in fact, are extremely shoddy personality types who give interesting quips from time to time but almost never show any life outside of that. This is most apparent with a barely there Mike, which is disheartening not just because he's the only black actor in the film's main cast but also because of his centrality to some of the historical atrocities of the town of Derry in the book, to which the movie only gives a passing nod (And it's also worth noting that the closer the movie sticks to the book, the harder it is to resist nitpicking the ways that it actually does change the book—case in point, Mike, whose role is probably disserviced most by the shifting of the action from the 1950s to the 1980s, burying the racial subtext to a lot of what happens to him—and in general, I'm not sure if the It story really works without the context of the urban decay that happened in that specific twenty-seven year period between the late '50s to the early '80s, although I guess we'll have to see how Chapter Two deals with this). Just as big of an issue is the way that, in a frantic need to hit every memorable part of the novel, the movie practically sprints through its plot. There's a fundamental lack of patience in the film that's bad for the character development and worse for the actual horror sequences, which flicker by with trigger-happy editing and lack the sort of intricate buildup that informs the best movie scare techniques. That said, as negative as I've been for the majority of this review, I want to stress that I had a good time with this movie. The acting, as I've said, is across-the-board great, a minor miracle when it comes to a cast as young as this one, and the kids are so good that they carry their characters a good deal farther than the thin screenplay has any right to earn; kudos also goes to Bill Skarsgård, who plays Pennywise/IT pitch-perfectly through all the effects. And the scares consistently deliver arresting imagery, if not the patient construction of mood and pace required for truly great horror—this is a tremendously shot movie, which makes it all the bigger shame that it's not edited better. There's also no discounting the sheer fun of seeing, as I did, a crowd-pleasing horror movie like this one in a packed theater with a responsive audience—which is to say, if you're interested in seeing this, go see it now rather than on home media. So yes, It offers a lot to enjoy; it's just all too easy to see how much better it could have been. Grade: B

Before I Fall (2017)

Most Groundhog Day-premised movies revolve around the central character's journey to become a better person through the sheer monotony of a day repeated ad infinitum—which is part of what makes Before I Fall's high school setting so promising, as high school for both students and teachers can often feel like an endless loop of indistinguishable days. And in the early going, Before I Fall fulfills this promise, with a litany of nice observations about the general mundanities and cruelties suffered and caused by high schoolers toward one another. But the deeper the film gets into the journey of its main character (a girl heavily ensconced in the "in" crowd of popular kids who like to bully each other and especially those outside their group), the more it becomes apparent that the film has confused its protagonist becoming a better person with its protagonist feeling like a better person. This is a movie in which half measures of decency are considered apt atonement to right the wrongs of years of torment—the central plot soon revolves around the twin foci of preventing the victim of long-term bullying and slander (in which our protagonist has eagerly taken part) from committing suicide and learning to make sure it's the nice guys who get sex. Both of these plots reveal a film with no real interest in fighting the actual social structures that makes the cruelty of teenagers so acute to begin with, and through the focus on the self-actualization of the main character—instead of, I dunno, the actual pain she's caused (and, like, actual pain, not how that pain relates to her)—turns the movie into an appeasing of conscience, not a meaningful statement on teenaged interactions. Grade: C

The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (2016)

Errol Morris is the best living documentary filmmaker, full stop, and The B-Side is quietly one of his very best. It's ostensibly a career retrospective of the renowned Polaroid portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman, and the film works perfectly well on that, chronically Dorfman's memories of photography all the way back to her childhood and all the way up to her 2016 retirement via Morris's typical "just let 'em talk" approach to his documentary subjects. But as Dorfman's observations accumulate, the movie deepens progressively until, in its final minutes, we're presented with a treatise on the ramifications of modern business infrastructure, the impact of the loss of physical media, and even mortality itself. It's that typical Morris trick, using oral recollection to imbue a seemingly straightforward premise with profound philosophical depth, and it's as effective as ever here. Grade: A

A Single Man (2009)

You can gussy up a mannequin with all the pretty clothes you want, but in the end, it'll still be plastic. A lifeless movie that I was so bored with that I couldn't even muster up the outrage to care about the utterly ridiculous ending. Grade: C-

RockNRolla (2008)

Douchebags, The Movie. The credits promise the cast's return in a sequel, but who cares? I certainly wouldn't want to spend another minute with these characters and their casual homophobia and glamorous disregard for pretty much every single good thing in the world. I suppose after Snatch, two Sherlock Holmes movies, and this, it's time for me to admit that I just don't like Guy Ritchie movies. Grade: D+

Come and See (Иди и смотри) (1985)

I've often said that part of the genius of Full Metal Jacket was the way it twisted war movie tropes into full-on horror movie tropes, but here comes this Russian masterpiece and doubles down on the whole enterprise two years prior to the Kubrick film. Come and See teeters on the razor's edge between hyperrealism and full-blown experimentalism, as its horrifically unblinking stare at the surreal atrocities of the Nazi occupation of Russia is scored by a shrieking cacophony of war machine noises, Mozart compositions, and actual human screams. It's an effect that, after 2.5 hours, might feel numbing if it weren't so morally impassioned. "This is war; nobody is to blame," a Nazi says near the film's end, and the movie is so crystal-clear in rebuking that claim that it's almost cathartic. Of course someone is to blame. But as a famous sequence very near the film's end asserts breathtakingly, there's no real catharsis in recognizing the face of evil; there is only terror. Grade: A

Music

White Stag - Emergence (2017)
The most interesting band in Knoxville's progressive rock scene continues to push the boundaries of its sound. Incorporating flute and saxophone along with the typical death metal, drone, and avant-garde textures, Emergence recalls, more than any of White Stag's previous releases, the canonized sounds of progressive rock's early-'70s golden age, specifically evoking Jethro Tull and King Crimson. That's not to say this is a nostalgic or throwback record in the neo-prog vein—in fact, this, their first full-length album, is as "out there" as the band has ever been. It's not all great; for as exploratory as they all are, a sameness creeps up on the album in its latter tracks, and the songwriting clearly takes a backseat to the atmospherics. Still, White Stag shows tremendous ingenuity, too, and with a debut this strong, I look forward to the ways the band will expand and innovate in the future. Grade: B+