Movies
Wonder Woman is, as its thesis on humanity itself says, flawed. This is most notable in its depiction of World War I as a war with "good guys" and "bad guys," a claim the movie tries to undercut later on with discussions about the genocide of indigenous peoples and speeches about how the war is "all of our faults," but there's a lot of clumsiness in that walking back—it says all humans have the capacity for evil and violence and that war is a divine conspiracy for the suicide of the species (good theme, esp. for WWI), but it only actually depicts evil done by the Germans, and by golly, when it comes to film, especially one as visually driven as this, actions speak way louder than words. But what speaks even louder than its mismatched history and uneasy imperialism is Wonder Woman herself, cast and played perfectly by Gal Gadot and, prior to this year's Black Panther, given the most precise and uncluttered character arc any superhero has had since Star Lord in the original Guardians of the Galaxy; after the Jenga-stacked accumulation of the Marvel movies, this sort of clarity is a drink of cool water. And then there's director Patty Jenkins, who does tremendous work turning the Zack Snyder aesthetic into something genuinely iconic and exciting. The Marvel movies have a better grasp of how to create a successfully entertaining movie, but I find the DC project of playing up the otherworldliness and deity of their superheroes to be a much more thematically interesting approach to this material, and it has the potential to pay off richly. As much as the movie has some issues with the execution of its latter half (complaints that it devolves into yet another CG superhero climax are warranted), it's also one of the great blockbuster moments of last year to see this god-like woman look down on humanity and determine that, despite their capacity for evil, human beings are worthy of love and protection. This dialogue about humanity by people who are, by the movie's logic, definitely not human makes this movie's larger themes work on a mythological, even philosophical level, one where the Marvel movies, for all their structural integrity, usually crumble. Wonder Woman's thesis is hard-won and honest humanism in a narrative that acknowledges both the absurdity and necessity of humanism. As much as we can nitpick the specifics of the movie, that's powerful. Grade: B+
It's an immense frustration to me that the most aesthetically engaging Woody Allen movie in a very long time (I would argue since Shadows and Fog, though there are a few other pit stops since that I'd contentedly settle upon) has the weakest Allen screenplay since Whatever Works, along with at least one bad performance (Justin Timberlake) and at least one iffy one (Kate Winslet). Such is the experience of watching a modern Woody Allen film, where there are frequently very good things among the frequently very bad things. The aesthetic I'll credit to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who uses the carnival lighting of the film's intentionally artificial—even music-box-like—Coney Island setting to make everything on screen positively glow with constantly shifting colors (to say nothing of the multiple long takes, all staged perfectly). The screenplay and the performances I've got to credit to Allen, though, since all their hoary tropes (a woman having an affair, you say? My oh my) and structural problems and stiltedness are as much of Allen mainstays as swing jazz. Also, I don't always find biological readings of movies to be compelling or helpful, but come on, there's no way that Allen isn't baiting us here with his story of a guy who is in a relationship with both a woman and her step-daughter. All that said, the movie looks soooo good that I'm tipping this over to a very slight net positive. Grade: C+
Unlike a lot of rising acclaimed directors, Ava DuVernay isn't much of a visual stylist, and her writing is, in its grand gestures, never a highlight either. Where her movies excel is at the micro level, the way a small edit creates tension between scenes, the way body language accumulates over a scene to build to great moments of intimacy and humanity. With this skill set, she can get amazing performances out of her actors, and here, Emayatzy Corinealdi and David Oyelowo shine. Also, Corinealdi's character rides the bus a lot and falls in love with a bus driver, so you know this has my number. Grade: B
Nicole Kidman's dazzling performance is the mirror image of Mia Farrow's in Rosemary's Baby, each raw and empathetic responses to a trauma that the world around them denies them the catharsis of processing. In Birth, Kidman's character has lost her husband suddenly, and ten years later, a ten-year-old boy comes and tells her that he is her husband, reborn; nobody (including possibly the film's audience) believes the boy but Kidman, who must relive their relationship's life and death through this boy—as depictions of grief and love and the unearthly madness of those emotions go, Birth's is both alien and breathtakingly human. If Kidman evokes Rosemary's Baby, then the film's otherworldly tone is Picnic at Hanging Rock, as we (along with Kidman's character) slip from drama to dream without ever releasing the tether of conscious reality. It's all rather stunning and makes me want to revisit my (lukewarm) feelings on director Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, which mines a lot of that same otherworldliness. Plus, if we aren't talking about Alexandre Desplat's score as one of the best of this century, then what are we even doing? Grade: A
There are two things that work in 8 Mile: 1. the on-location footage of urban/suburban Detroit, and 2. the lengthy rap battle that closes the film. And both of these things do more than work—they practically save the movie. The setting, full of its crumbling homes and cavernous, abandoned urban architecture, evokes a version of Detroit (and I emphasize "version," since I'm sure Detroit—as is the case with my home town of Memphis—doesn't always appreciate its public perception as Exhibit A in The Death of the Mid-Century American City) as something of a poetic squalor that absolutely makes the movie's action more interesting as it clambers over the brick and asphalt of this landscape. And the rap battle, the movie's climax and the only time we see Eminem do much rapping, hums with more live-wire energy than the rest of the movie combined. The rest of the movie, well... it's a pileup of underdog cliches, problematic archetypes (esp. the female characters), and boring drama—to say nothing of the uncomfortable racial component of having Eminem, a white dude, crashing into hip-hop against black antagonists. This is, to an extent, the story of Marshall Mathers himself, so I won't begrudge the movie too much for cribbing the autobiographical details. But given how popular and financially successful Eminem proved (and already had proven) to be relative to even some of the most successful black rappers, there's still something iffy about this guy's main opposition being black rappers. I don't quite know how to do this story without that dynamic, but I'm also not sure we needed much of this movie outside of silent shots of Detroit and that rap battle at the end, so. Grade: B-
This scratches the same itch as Juno and the better parts of Superbad for me, wherein we watch funny teens on the brink of adulthood using snark to mask the terror and loneliness of coming to grips with the parallel facts that 1. They are about to enter the adult world, and 2. The adult world sucks. Thora Birch, as Enid, plays perfectly that late-teen feeling of being being perpetually irritated by everything (a feeling I relate to deeply), as well as that similarly late-teen vulnerability in recognizing that identity—especially that identity you've cultivated as a high schooler—is both excitingly and scarily fluid (another feeling I relate to deeply). Hers is one of two wonderful performances this movie absolutely wouldn't work without, the other being Steve Buscemi's Seymour, a character that can be argued is just a nice version of a gross archetype (the older dude who falls for a teen, the older dude who thinks the modern world is terrible, the older dude who feels resentful that the women around him are shallow—take your pick; Juno drives this character type right into its dark subtext, to that movie's benefit, I think), but Buscemi's take on the guy is so perfectly pitched toward sadness and self-loathing that it works without him feeling like a sugarcoated MRA or something. Other parts of this movie feel either ill-considered (the weirdly broad convenience store hijinks) or underdeveloped (Scarlett Johansson's Rebecca—Johansson is totally not pulling her weight here, which is disappointing). But together, Birch and Buscemi make this movie a poignant exploration of friendship and loneliness that I fell in love with. Grade: A-
Television
Although I enjoyed Atlanta's first season, I wasn't quite as enthusiastic as some of the show's more vocal supporters. Well, count me among the show's more vocal supporters now. Season 2 (or Robbin' Season, as it subtitles itself) is likely the best television we're going to get in 2018. Largely eschewing Season One's surrealism (though we do get a reference to the invisible car) for a more situational strangeness that's rooted in the Theatre of the Absurd, Robbin' Season proves to be a much more flexible and profound beast than it's older counterpart, wrenching hilarity out of terrifying existential labyrinths and horror out of piercing mundanity. In "Barbershop," Alfred (i.e. Paper Boi) is stuck in an episode-long haircut limbo as his barber drags him along for his shaggy-dog to-do list, and it's the funniest TV episode of 2018 to date; in "FUBU," a flashback to Earn's teens is one of the most painful and accurate depictions of high school I've ever seen on TV, and it's the most painful TV episode of 2018 to date; and in "Teddy Perkins," an episode best-approached with as little knowledge of it as possible, Atlanta looks the racism and abuse in show business and even evil itself squarely in the eye, and it's the best TV episode of 2018, period. Watching Robbin' Season recalls the excitement I felt watching Lost's fourth season or Mad Men's fifth, where I had no clue what to expect from week to week except the unfiltered pleasure of a show drunk on its own creativity and sure enough in its hand to pull off every idea it has masterfully. TV like this doesn't come around often, folks. Grade: A
I mean, what can you say about Bob's Burgers anymore? It isn't really a show that innovates on itself, aside from the fun season premiere, "Brunchsquatch," which is animated in the style of some of the series's fan art. In general, though, it's a chronically unambitious show, content to tell small stories of the same variety it's always told, imbued with the same warmth for outsiders and weirdos as it's always had. Nowadays, we tend to value television that's dynamic, television that changes—Breaking Bad is beloved for, among other things, its relentless evolution of its own premise. But let's not forget that for the majority of TV's existence, formula and stasis have been the medium's default, and when a show has as much mastery of its formula as Bob's Burgers does, the dividends can be wonderful. Grade: B+
I continue to be gently entertained—rather than completely smitten—by this show, and it's increasingly reliant on the occasional Very Special Episode to address the various societal implications of the series, which I find kind of irritating. But the show's cast is still one of the best in the business, and on a week-to-week basis, it works as basic workplace sitcom comfort food well enough. Plus, the finale ends on a corker of a cliffhanger, which makes me glad that NBC rescued it from cancellation (sad face that the same can't be said of fellow Fox casualty, Last Man on Earth). Grade: B
Books
I read this not just because I've wanted to for years (which is true—and truth be told, I tried and failed to read it in high school) but also because I loved Isabel Allende's very García-Márquez-inspired The House of the Spirits so much that I wanted to follow-up. I dunno if this loses me literary cred or whatever, but I preferred House of the Spirits more—it's more emotionally accessible than García Márquez's distanced, often alien fable of Colombian history. Macondo, García Márquez's Colombia in miniature, is a town viewed under a microscope, not lived in, by his readers, and maybe I'm only feeling this way because I'm not Colombian, but also, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that we're not supposed to feel for these characters in the same way that we are Allende's. That's not to say this novel isn't also capable of fantastic heights, because it is, taken as a whole, great and at times tremendously powerful, often because of García Márquez's elevated, distancing approach. On the cover of my edition, there's a pull quote from William Kennedy of the New York Times that I've often rolled my eyes at, in which Kennedy compares the novel to the book of Genesis, but now, having read the novel, that's exactly the right comparison. The experience of the novel is very much like reading those early books of the Bible, where the supernatural piles on top of family genealogy which piles on top of history. We're left with a book that feels very much like it was written from the perspective of heaven looking down at Earth, and when the novel's apocalyptic ending—down to its soul-rending final sentence—splays across the last page, it lands like the fist of God itself. Grade: A-
Music
Monáe pulls something of a St. Vincent by making this, her newest album, significantly more pop-centric and lyrically straightforward than her previous outings. There's a part of me that's disappointed in that, as one of the chief things I've loved in the past was her Bowie-like playing around with sci-fi personas and her record-crate-dive approach to genre. On Dirty Computer, the songs are most definitely about Janelle herself, and the music (while somewhat rooted in music history via its Prince inspirations [Prince himself was something of a mentor for Monáe before his passing]) sticks mostly to modern production and contemporary genres. Some of this works extremely well. Monáe gets to rap quite a bit, which is an enormous treat after her all-too-brief bars on her previous two albums, and several of the most modern-sounding tracks on the album—"Pynk," which sounds a lot like Charli XCX's work with PC Music, "Django Jane," which is basically a trap song, and "I Like That," which could have fit comfortably on Lemonade—are among the album's best. But then you've got songs like "Screwed" and "Crazy, Classic, Life," which focus on shout-along choruses, sloganeering, and Katy-Perry-sounding pop production in a way that sounds pretty thin to me. Monáe is clearly feeling liberated and happy at having shrugged off her android persona and come out as pansexual, and I think it's wonderful that she feels that way. The album's thematic through-line re: racial and sexual identity is a strong one, and I wouldn't want her to closet herself again in the interest of bringing back the weirdo sci-fi personas and stuff. But at the same time... I can't help but feel that her music was stronger (or at least more consistent) when it was committed more to being weird. I'd love to see her find a way to rediscover that part of her music without losing the personal touch and openness of the best songs here. Grade: B
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