Movies
Summer 1993 (Estiu 1993) (2017)
Reminded me very much of Ponette, that French film in whose primary draw is the incredibly compelling and sad performance by then-4-year-old child actor Victoire Thivisol. Summer 1993 mines a lot of this same territory, as a child (played incredibly compellingly and sadly by Laia Artigas) comes to terms with her parents' death of AIDS and what this means for her life. There's a lot here about how Frida's status as an orphan makes other adults uncomfortable and inconvenienced when they aren't consciously making themselves feel sorry for her, which is interesting, though I think this movie could (as with a lot of European arthouse these days) do with a tighter script. But maybe that's an impossibility when you're working with actors this young. Either way, as with Ponette, my biggest takeaway from the film is the naturalism of the child actors—and even then, Artigas is nowhere near what Thivisol was—and the rest of the movie kind of falls away when I try to think about anything besides the acting. Grade: B-
Iris (2014)
I don't really know or like high fashion that much, so I'm probably barking up the wrong tree with this movie. That said, Iris Apfel seems like a completely fascinating person and a breath of fresh air compared to the usual classist and taking-itself-too-seriously fashion standards—too bad she's so under-served by this oddly flaccid documentary. This is Albert Maysles making this movie. The dude did Grey Gardens; eccentrics are his home turf. What happened here? Why is this so bad at capturing Apfel's eccentricities? Grade: C
Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren) (2010)
I'm still not sure how I feel about found-footage movies that aren't firmly planted in horror. The technique's exploitation of seemingly lo-fi cinematic style and digital artifacts highlights the fragility of modern digital technology in the face of the supernatural and the ancient is something that I don't think has much footing outside the horror, where it works great for accentuating the terror, esp. of the cosmic variety. In a movie like Troll Hunter, though (or, to a lesser extent, Cloverfield, though I'd say that's the superior film), which is less a "horror" movie qua horror than it is a sort of creature-feature action film, I can't think of a compelling reason for the found-footage technique save that it kind of highlights the (admirably goofy) "science" of the film. That said, I did dig supremely just how devoted to its own wonky troll mythology this movie is—its own kind of deadpan; maybe I'm viewing this through the wrong lens and it's more mockumentary than proper found-footage, in which case I probably don't have a dry enough sense of humor. There are some nice setpieces, though, especially the one set inside the troll cave. Grade: C+
Coming to America (1988)
Surely it's no accident that this is virtually the inverse of the also-Landis-directed Trading Spaces right? This time, Eddie Murphy isn't a poor guy pretending to be rich; he's a rich guy pretending to be poor! And he's also from Africa! And he's also a sensitive(ish) romantic lead, not a wise-cracking firebrand! I dunno, it's a weird one, y'all. The opening half hour or so seem to set up a broad and often absurd parody of American (and often specifically African-American) culture, circa 1988, constructing this cock-eyed version of our world that feels a little like a softball version of what Sorry to Bother You or even RoboCop does with advertising as an expository device about the mechanics of this kaleidoscope iteration of our reality—there's a fine but definite line connecting the "Soul Glo" commercial we see early on in this movie and "I'd buy that for a dollar!" And this is all great fun, if much less interested in politics than the other films I've cited (and if a bit over-reliant on a strange motif of Eddie Murphy's character getting unsolicited hand jobs from strange women). But then, abruptly, the movie turns into a much more straightforward romantic comedy, and this stage of the story is not only less interesting and entertaining than the movie's setup; it also doesn't ever really make sense—especially in the climax, which cuts directly from a firmly downer note of rejection to a "happily ever after" epilogue without ever explaining how we got to the happily ever after. So, an uneven film overall: one that has enough charms that I can see how it's become a nostalgic favorite, but a mess nonetheless. Grade: B-
Shivers (1975)
There's a lot of rape in this movie, and it's of the schlocky, '70s-exploitation variety, which means that I look at the device askance. And the movie's plot is far too episodic to have the sense of mounting widescreen terror that it's aiming for. Still, there's something weirdly endearing about how go-for-broke this movie is in making everything about sex seem disgusting to the point of numb horror, bodies becoming abstracted sacks of meat slapping together, The joint fascination with eroticism and the critical distance from it feels so very Cronenbergian—impressive to evoke this early in the man's career. It's philosophically and executionally suspect, but it has the decency to be interestingly so. Grade: B-
Books
When We Wake by Karen Healey (2013)
As speculative fiction, When We Wake is alternatingly fascinating and frustrating. There are a couple of really strong ideas, but they're surrounded by a sea of half-baked world-building. The novel (centering on a girl who has been, via some amazing new tech, resurrected 100 years after her death) explores well the idea of scientific resurrection and the ways that the publicizing of that technology would ripple out into society (a society that, as this book shows, is facing increasing resource scarcity due to climate change and a refugee crisis exacerbated by isolationist policies—to say that this book has a finger to the pulse of current events would be an understatement, though I wonder if Karen Healey has, in the five years since this book's publication, reconsidered her stance that in 100 years, Islamophobia will be a relic of the past). Other elements of this future society don't seem nearly so considered, though; for example, in the novel's future, journalism has become a mere network of podcasts, presumably due to the crumbling of the fourth estate to new, personalized media, but it essentially treats these podcasts as news broadcasts in our own contemporary sense without exploring the way that the fracturing of media into increasingly tiny audiences has polarized information into ways that greatly undermine the communicative power of "mass" media. Also, I'll eat my hat if in 100 years, there are teens who are obsessed enough with The Beatles to bother hunting out Ringo Starr's solo discography—where are all my ragtime-loving teens in the year 2018, huh? Anyway, these gripes are all kind of window dressing to my bigger issues with the book, which involve the plot structure (which is meandering) and the characters (who are generic and bland—and also sort of defined in reductive ways, so much so that our protagonist falls in love with one black character, only to then fall in love with the only other black character in the book when she's resurrected 100 years later, mostly just because there is not much defining these characters outside their blackness and handsomeness, which makes the transfer of affection easy, which... yikes). I'm also getting tired of the stock YA narratorial voice—I know teenagers are snarky, but they are not all snarky in the same sub-Holden-Caulfield way! I'm rambling, and this certainly isn't a better-written review than When We Wake is as a novel, so far be it from me to judge too harshly. I think I just OD'd on YA dystopia a long time ago, and this didn't do much to help that. Grade: C+
Music
Sleep - The Sciences (2018)
If The Sciences, the first album in 15 years from the doom/stoner metal icons Sleep, lacks the totemic power of Dopesmoker, the last Sleep album, that's only because there isn't an hour-long song comprising the entirety of the record. But despite that, The Sciences is every bit worthy of the Sleep legacy, a tremendous collection of songs that are both hard-hitting, deeply primal metal songs anchored by positively prehistoric riffs and full of the typically playful stoner-metal mythology (the second song is called "The Marijuanaut's Theme," in case you had any hesitation of how seriously these folks are). It's lots of fun and one of my favorite albums of the year. Grade: A-
No comments:
Post a Comment