Movies
The Florida Project (2017)
As far as finding humanist beauty in the intersection of modern kitsch and poverty exploitation goes, The Florida Project is doing nothing nearly as interesting or affecting as last year's American Honey. And as far as Sean Baker movies go, this is no Tangerine. It's rambling and loose in every way that Tangerine's chaos was tight and thrilling. But as with Tangerine, even this comparatively weaker material is absolutely elevated by the sheer strength of performance—not just Willem Dafoe (though he's excellent) but especially the six-year-old Brooklyn Kimberly Prince, who delivers (though copious improvisation and a very good eye in the editing room) one of the best onscreen child performances I've ever seen, capturing as movies rarely do the shambolic sense of play that animates children's interactions with the world. She's amazing, and the film has the good sense to place her directly at the film's center as she flits through a fantastically realized extended-stay motel—the setting is the film's second star, for sure, though of course fans of Tangerine shouldn't be surprised that Baker is able to capture the alternatingly warm and desperate character of an off-beat, real-world setting. It's a movie with enough successes that I'm relatively forgiving of its more egregious missteps: the slack middle third of the film, the somewhat obvious way with which the plot thuds toward its conclusion, and particularly the flabbergastingly bad and cheap-looking fantasy sequence that makes up the film's final seconds. But those performances, man... Grade: B+
Person to Person (2017)
Well, this is a throwback. The 16mm film, the jazz and soul soundtrack, the (parodic) emphasis on hard-boiled print journalism, even the costuming suggests something of a sanitized '60s/'70s NYC. The easy-going character quirk, the low-stakes ensemble plotting, that specifically mannered humor that comes from characters acting recognizably emotive but not exactly human says 2000s American indie. It's sort of a cross between Robert Altman and a less surreal version of Me and You and Everyone We Know, and it's absolutely the lightest-weight version of that combination I can imagine. But it's so warm and fun that I have a hard time imagining someone not feeling good about having seen the movie either. Grade: B
The Ornithologist (O Ornitólogo) (2016)
The movie is supposedly a metaphor for the life of Saint Anthony of Padua. Being Protestant, I of course know jack squat about saints, so a lot of the explicit parallels sailed right over my head (and continued to fly even after the movie, when I looked up the patron saint of lost things [see, I learn things!] on Wikipedia and still had troubling finding the parallels). Not that it really matters, since regardless of the specific connections to Anthony, this is still very obviously the story of a man becoming a saint, and what's most interesting about it is the way that sainthood seems thrust upon him without his consent—for example, early in the film, our protagonist is tied up and made into something of an unwilling icon for two young tourists, who use him to feel secure against possible pagan forces, which, to my Protestant, not-canon-oriented brain, has all sorts of interesting things to say about the practice of canonization and the way that the legacies of individuals are exploited by future generations of believers. I suppose this is a little sacrilegious, but it's subtly and smartly so, something that can't be said for some of the movie's more explicitly sacrilegious (and even blasphemous) ideas, e.g. a character named Jesus who never doesn't feel like a clumsy attempt at transgression whenever he's onscreen. It's all fascinating and beautifully shot, but not always in the most successful way. If that makes sense. Grade: B
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Look, there's no arguing that "Johnny Guitar" is a baller title for a movie. But you know it; I know it; the poster even knows it: this movie belongs to the magnificent Joan Crawford as Vienna, not the titular guitarist (who, despite some romantic subplots, is almost a secondary character). Crawford's is a powerful performance, deep with subtext and nuance, and thematically, her character is a striking icon to the ways that women must grasp and claw their way forward if they are to make any progress against the hoards of angry men who scream at any change to their society. The movie softballs the gender dynamic, I'd say, by having a woman lead this band of villains (as if our heroine couldn't have faced off against just men), but only a little—Emma, our chief villain, is a truly nasty creation who serves as a very watchable (and detestable) foil to Vienna, regardless of the way that she serves perhaps as too much of a feminine counterpoint to Vienna. Grade: A-
Television
You're the Worst, Season 4 (2017)
This season of You're the Worst does the impossible in that it makes Lindsay a believably redeemable character, a television miracle of sorts after the stabbings and, uh, cuckolding of last season. By largely jettisoning Paul (though he does make a couple of hilarious cameos), the show is able to ground Lindsay in an emotional reality that feels absolutely true to the character and unexpectedly makes her plot the more affecting of the season. The same goes for Vernon, weirdly, and the show manages to wring a surreal tragedy out of him. The same cannot, alas, be said for the remainder of the cast. They each have their moments, but Jimmy and Gretchen's will-they-won't-they is entirely dull, considering how unlikely it is that the show will end without these crazy kids together, and Edgar's storyline with his new writer friend (admittedly played perfectly by Johnny Pemberton) is pedestrian when it isn't a total afterthought. The show's as funny as ever, and per usual, it manages to deliver at least one episode that completely knocks my socks off ("Not a Great Bet," in which Gretchen returns to her hometown—for all my gripes with this season, it's one of the best TV episodes of the year). But the unevenness with which the series approaches its characters' forward movement has become bumpy to the point of discomfort. Grade: B-
Music
St. Vincent - Masseduction (2017)
Masseduction is St. Vincent's weakest since Actor (still my least-fav, don't hurt me), but instead of that album's angular, off-beat guitar passages, Masseduction finds Annie Clark melodically and instrumentally forthright in a way that recalls her St. Vincent debut, Marry Me. This cuts both ways; lyrically, Clark is more personal than she's been in years, despite the persona-heavy ad campaign, again recalling Marry Me's introspection and emotional transparency, but musically, the Jack Antonoff production, while clean and immediate, lacks a lot of the layered complexity that's made previous St. Vincent releases to rewarding to revisit, and even after only a few weeks of listening, I'm starting to find moments on the album worryingly thin. It's still St. Vincent, and there are still tremendous moments. But the whole is having a difficult time coming together as a complete work of ownage. Grade: B
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