Movies
Western (2015)
Did you know that building a wall along the Mexican-United-States border harms residents of both Mexico and the United States? That's a point that I suspect is meant to be the focal point of this documentary, as it depicts the destruction of a trans-border cattle trade as a wall is built. And that's a compelling focus. But honestly, it gets a little crowded out by the film's laconic and kind of mesmerizing depiction of the details of the day-to-day life in the Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras community—it's a community bursting with vivacity and idiosyncrasy. The doc is scattered and a little aimless, but it also includes footage of a cow being disemboweling that I can only describe as adorable, which is really something. Grade: B
In the Loop (2009)
The less snide, more humanist younger sibling to Burn After Reading, In the Loop is at once a hilarious send-up of the essentially meaningless, decontextualized noise of large human systems and a heartbroken cry that such important mechanisms become so nihilistic to begin with. It's very much a thinly veiled satire of the incitement of the Iraq War, and lest I sound too sanctimonious, I'll just admit that in 2003, I wasn't paying enough attention to politics to have much of an opinion on the impending war, and if you'd asked me directly about it, I'd likely have tacitly supported it because that was the message that had trickled down to me from the media. In short, I was part of the problem. But that said, the Iraq War was/is, I'm sure it's not too controversial to say, one of the most significant and horrific exhibitions of the meaningless grind of Western inertia in recent memory, and this movie makes comedic hay out of it all. But make no mistake: this is a tragedy. Unlike Burn After Reading, which at the end smirks at the audience out of the dust of its chaos and chides, "Well, what else did you expect of human beings?", In the Loop presents a raw and crushed desire for things to get better. Out of all the biting wordplay, the exquisite profanity, and the hysterical comedy of errors, the moment that cuts deepest is near the end, as the gears of war gather unstoppable momentum, when Tom Hollander's character wails, "This is the exact opposite reason I got into government." That particular sentiment expressed at that particular moment—that feeling of having become the enemy you sought to destroy—is bracing in its despair, one that is likely to be familiar to any public servant. The laughs are belly ones, but the anguish is lethal. Grade: A
Kagemusha (影武者) (1980)
Another step on my quest to find a Kurosawa movie that I think is legit great instead of just "good." No luck here, although on the positive side, I have seen another good movie—my first Kurosawa in color, no less, and the movie takes full advantage of that, with lush, deep hues in the backgrounds and bright, detailed costumes. The film looks great, and I like the story as well, a kind of rags-to-riches redemption arc for a common thief whose execution is stopped when it is realized that he looks exactly like the daimyō of the Takeda clan and can therefore serve as his body double. I just... don't feel anything here, and my admiration for the film is all very cool and distant. So mad props to Kurosawa for putting together a movie so clearly considered as this one. Sorry I couldn't be more actively engaged. Grade: B
Out 1 (1971)
Cut from the same cloth as the fiction of Thomas Pynchon (and the scraps of which David Foster Wallace would later craft into Infinite Jest), Jacques Rivette's sprawling, paranoid Out 1 is probably best described in relation to those two authors and not film, per se (although Wikipedia informs me that Balzac's fiction is a pretty big influence as well [there is, in fact, a subplot involving something of a Balzac cult, so I'll buy the influence, though I've never read any of his work]). Preoccupied, over its 12+ hours, with the ways that the byzantine and conspiratory structures of post-war society make meaningful human connections fleeting and even illusory, the film is, at times, devastating. It is also, like the aforementioned Pynchon and DFW, prone to testing audience patience as well, via both rewarding and rather confounding methods. I'll not be high-minded here: watching forty straight minutes of wordless rehearsal of avant-garde theatre isn't my idea of fun, and Rivette plays this particularly provocatively by front-loading Out 1 with the movie's most challenging material. This is offset, eventually, by the fact that Rivette and his co-writer Suzanne Schiffman also stock the film with some of the most endearing characters in the French New Wave. For all the movie's idiosyncrasies, it is, ultimately, a story about fundamentally likable human beings, vibrant with insecurities and personal missions and interior life, they are a fantastic cast that ultimately makes the weird, circuitous 12 hours of this movie enjoyable and solidify the sharp tragedy of the ending. You want to root for these people, even as you watch the world around them treat them with cold indifference. So if you can buy into the first few hours, there are riches waiting on the other side, though I'd be lying if I said that the film entirely justified some of that early going. Grade: B+
Laura (1944)
Not, I think, one of the great noirs, but a really good one nonetheless. It has the interesting feature of having its ostensibly protagonist detective be almost completely unnecessary to its plot, which heightens the usual noir feeling of a reality indifferent to human aspirations to agency to nigh despairing levels until its conclusion wraps it all up with a bit too much of a bow. The ride to that bow is a frequently wild one, particularly in its second half, which upends a central part of the film's premise. Also, the Vincent Price performance is delicious, as if you needed me to tell you that. Grade: A-
Music
The National - Sleep Well Beast (2017)
I honestly don't think I've listened to Trouble Will Find Me since I named it one of my favorite albums of 2013, and that's probably the best encapsulation of the way that I've grown indifferent to The National (and a lot of that stately, polite indie rock in general) in the years since. It's not that I dislike it or anything—I just don't feel compelled to seek it out (of course, I've also recently reviewed the new Arcade Fire album, The War on Drugs, Fleet Foxes, and others, so maybe I'm just making up this narrative—let me know if I'm full of crap here, y'all). Anyway, that's a roundabout way of saying that Sleep Well Beast is a far more interesting record than I was expecting from The National. Grounded by probably their best songwriting since 2007's Boxer and their sharpest production since... well, Boxer (it's a high water mark, okay?), Sleep Well Beast is full of fascinating and surprising textures, from the screeching guitars of "Turtleneck" to the lengthy, electronic-tinged instrumental outro of "I'll Still Destroy You," there's a lot of energy here (particularly in relation to the sleepy Trouble Will Find Me) and a commendable willingness to whip songs into unexpected directions. I don't know if this will convert The National agnostics, but it's certainly enough to get backsliding National fans like myself back in the pew seats. Grade: B+
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