Movies
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)
There's that old Howard Hawks aphorism about a good movie being "three good scenes and no bad ones," and I'd say this applies almost to the letter, though it's frustratingly without any great scenes. It's the sort of well-observed, literate film that Noah Baumbach could make in his sleep (probably while dreaming about The Squid and the Whale, whose plot Meyerowitz uncannily resembles), and as such, it plays perfectly to Baumbach's strengths without reaching for any of the fresh air that's made his recent Greta Gerwig collaborations so exciting. Even without his partner in the credits, though, the cast here is exquisite, likely saving the movie from being even more fractured and scene-based than it already is. I'm sure Sandler's going to get all the praise (and he deserves it), but really, there's not a bum note in the bunch. Grade: B+
The Little Hours (2017)
I haven't read The Decameron, the 14th-century source for this bawdy, bizarre comedy. But I've read The Canterbury Tales along with a few other works of literature of the era, and if it takes a murderer's row of modern alt-comedy actors and a metric ton of profane anachronisms to remind us of the valuable truth that human beings have always been as filthy-minded and irreverent as they are in our present age, then I welcome this experiment with open arms. Grade: B+
The Lure (Córki dancingu) (2015)
I guess between this and Raw, I'm now 2/2 for being ambivalent on non-English-language, off-format genre experiments in 2017. A sort of horror-musical take on "The Little Mermaid," The Lure has the winning premise out of those two, and unlike Raw, it actually goes for broke in executing that premise, full of all sorts of gore and appealingly weird mermaid tale kink. But the narrative is so lopsided that the movie nearly topples—the whole inciting incident of a love-struck mermaid gaining legs in trade for her voice appears 2/3 of the way through the movie, making that first hour almost tedious in the way it repetitiously establishes and re-establishes the world of the film and the last half hour an underdeveloped rush. Also, music-wise, this is no great shakes, though I'm willing to chalk that up to the fact that it's just no fun reading musical lyrics in subtitle. Grade: B-
Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)
I went into this having misread the title as Einstein in Guantanamo, so this movie held at least two surprises, to say nothing of the rather intense sex scene in the movie's middle (though given The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, maybe that last bit shouldn't have shocked). But for all its narrative and stylistic energy, Peter Greenaway's retelling of Soviet cinema legend Sergei Eisenstein's time in Mexico is a film at odds with itself, its intensely playful editing and cinematographic manipulation weirdly cancelling out the centerpiece romance that informs the film's emotional heft, resulting in a film that's chilly and distantly admirable instead of actually engaging. Grade: C+
Snow on tha Bluff (2011)
I watched this unaware of whether it was a documentary or a fictional drama. It turns out it's mostly the latter, something that becomes kind of evident through a few too pat dialogue scenes, but as a found-footage drama, particularly one that lives in that disorienting haze of between reality and movie, this is electric and frightening in the manner of Greek tragedy or cosmic horror. The lightly fictionalized life of actual Atlanta dealer Curtis Snow is one beset by ancient forces; agency is something only wildly grasped at beneath the towers of the ruling elite of the Atlanta skyline, whose apathetic spires are glimpsed from a distance, gods under whose heel any gesture toward legal, middle-class functionality seems like nonsense. The execution is sometimes bumpy, most so in the one-on-one scenes with Snow's ex-girlfriend (which most strain the credulity of the home-movie premise), but the conceit is perfect. Grade: B+
5 Centimeters per Second (秒速5センチメートル) (2007)
A triptych of stories plays a long-distance romance in fast forward over the film's spry hour-long runtime. Being a Makoto Shinkai movie, it's of course gorgeously animated, each detail of each frame a marvel of specificity and vibrancy; also being a Makoto Shinkai movie, the beautiful animation provides the backdrop for a teen romance played to nearly operatic intensity, and as always, this is the part of the film that occasionally warbles. But even so, each of the three chapters have moments of such stunning beauty that any quibbles with tone become sort of secondary to the ability of Shinkai to instill even relatively terrestrial human interactions with a sense of the sublime. My favorite comes at the end of the second chapter, which is told through the eyes of a character outside the central romance looking in; even the bittersweet final minutes of the movie don't begin to approximate the deep pathos of the precise second when the rocket launches. You'll know it when you see it. Grade: B+
Television
The Show About the Show, Season 1 (2015-17)
A bonkers, meta, hilarious, and altogether genius web series made by Caveh Zahedi (whose work I am unfamiliar with but will likely seek out after this)—each episode is about the making of the previous episode, which subjects the normal human tensions inherent in collaborative creation to a kind of geometric growth. An episode is divided into two different formats: the first being Zahedi's rambling, Woody-Allen-esque to-the-camera monologues recounting his memories of the previous episode's creation, with the second being the recreated scenes to illustrate Zahedi's memories. This interplay between Zahedi's monologue and the collaborative recreation leads to increasingly tense and nutty escalations of relatively mundane conflicts. For example, during the pitching of the show, Zahedi's wife expressed some ambivalent feelings about the project, which in turn leads Zahedi to recount that in his monologue during the pilot, which then forces him to have his wife recreate the moment in which she's unsure of his vision, a prospect that his wife is unenthusiastic about, which then leads to Zahedi mentioning her reluctance in his monologue in Episode 2 (about the creation of the pilot), which means that he has to convince his wife to act out their previous interaction, which makes her a bit more disgruntled, and so on. Given how central recreations are to the premise, it's unclear just how much of this is "real," and that's both the point and beside the point, as you can take this as either trenchant commentary on media representation or as just an excuse for crazy hijinks. It's a wild, uproarious feedback loop that gets more hectic as it goes until the final two episodes culminate in some truly horrifying, UK-The-Office-style comic tragedy that's as bracing as it is laugh-out-loud funny. This is not going to be everyone's ballgame, and I'm sure most are going to find it to be an eye-rolling postmodern wank-fest (especially given Zahedi's hubris, although like the aforementioned Woody Allen, I'd say this apparent dickishness is intentional at least as often as it isn't). But it's absolutely my ballgame, one of the most engaging TV experiments I've seen recently. (P.S. It's all on YouTube, and you can watch it here. It's only about 90 minutes, so why not?) Grade: A
Books
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (2009)
YA novels often have a problem with voice, where the opening chapters are usually intoxicating and distinctive before giving way to more pedestrian prose (lest I sound too high and mighty, this one of many fears I have with my own novel, but you don't want to hear about that). The Disreputable History is one of the more disappointing iterations of that trend, given just how strongly the first few chapters promise a witty, erudite deconstruction of the East-Coast private school patriarchy. And it's not that the book isn't that; it's just maybe a bit more sedate and traditional an execution of that than the beginning of the novel suggests, grounded (appropriately, I suppose) as much in the world of teen hookups and relationship drama as it is in the tearing down of systematic ideas. Regardless of what I want the book to be, though, it's still a great deal of fun, and our protagonist, Frankie, is an engaging and winsome guide. So no matter what we hoped for—let's celebrate what we got. Grade: B+
Music
SZA - Ctrl (2017)
This will likely end up as my favorite musical debut of 2017. Solána Rowe, alias SZA, croons her smooth R&B melodies with grace and abundant personality, reminiscent of last year's Solange and Noname releases in its warm, empowered sound. If there's any justice in contemporary pop music (and the gigantic success of "Love Galore," the album's second single, seems to indicate that there is), she's going to be the next big thing. It's not flawless, but it's a way better pop debut than the world deserves this year. Grade: B+
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