Movies
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
I am profoundly ambivalent on the fact that 2018's "romcom revival" seems intent on reviving the romcom as defined by the mid-2000s, my least-favorite era of the genre's history. Could we not have revived the screwball romcom? Or the walking-and-talking, When Harry Met Sally-style romcom? Anyway, Crazy Rich Asians is a strikingly faithful evocation of the mid-2000s romcom wave, not just in its plotting tropes (though lordy, they're all there, from the gay friend to the kooky best friend to the third-act breakup to the air-travel-related climactic proposal to even the music cues, which consist of Mandarin covers of the usual suspects of 2000s pop music, right down to Coldplay's "Yellow") but also in its half-hearted, underwritten execution. I understand why people are excited about the way this movie transposes the whole genre into a heritage heretofore unrepresented within the genre. Heck, I was stoked just by how this year's crypto-PureFlix Little Women depicted some of the nuances of the homeschool experience so well, so I can only imagine how gratifying it must be for Asians and Asian-Americans to see a mainstream Hollywood film evoke their experiences with this much specificity (though I myself don't have the heritage to recognize most of the details of that specificity). But still—I was never too jazzed about this type of movie to begin with, and representational milestones are only so compelling when the results are basically Monster-in-Law. I will say this, though: the sets and costuming in this movie are AMAZING, and the one considerable difference that Crazy Rich Asians has from most 2000s romcoms (besides culture) is that it is consistently, jaw-droppingly spectacular on the mise-en-scène front in a way that's usually reserved for lush period dramas and effects-heavy action extravaganzas. The movie's characters are as crazy-rich as advertised, and the film makes the absolute most it can out of that fact, filling every single frame with some of the most dazzling lifestyle porn I have ever seen in a movie. Down with the oligarchical rich, etc., sure, but y'all, this is the magic of cinema. If this film doesn't win the Production Design and Costume Design Oscars, it will be a heinous crime against self-evident excellence. Grade: C+
Cam (2018)
This thriller begins a bit more conventionally than I would like, puttering around just a little too long on the screen-watching end of the "cam girl" world that it lives in. But once this gets going, it gets into some seriously weird doppelganger stuff—if not full-on Persona-level reality-breaking (though several sublime moments get close in the most deliciously drawn out pieces of disorientating tension I've seen all year—you'll know it: "GET OUT OF MY ROOM"), then definitely akin to what's going on in Altman's 3 Women. The film's climax is nearly transcendent in its doubling down on mirrored imagery. Very much My Thing. Grade: B+
War on Everyone (2016)
Well, this was terrible. A satirical take on police corruption and brutality that forgets to be a satire, which leaves us with nothing more than a "haha, isn't it hilarious how terrible these cops are?" thing. The answer, of course, is NO, it's not even mildly amusing. I take that back: Michael Peña is mildly amusing by virtue of being Michael Peña and therefore gifted with great comic timing and line delivery. But the rest of the movie is awful and intentionally offensive in that dreadful manner that's not so much punk rock or insightful as it is indicative of a lazy white dude sitting on the couch thinking he's clever by virtue of just hurting people's feelings in elaborate and profane ways. Also, the plot makes no sense and feels rushed in delivery: a real "the food is terrible—and such small portions!" situation here. Grade: D+
Happy Valley (2014)
This movie's larger point—that the intersecting cultures of football fandom and male hero worship create an atmosphere that reinforces dominant culture to the detriment of those hurt by the dominant culture—is a familiar one. But there's something uniquely powerful about this film's documentary footage of Penn State football fans ranting about how of course they care about those sexually abused by Jerry Sandusky, blah blah blah, but WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE FOOTBALL PROGRAM?!? Like I said, a familiar point, but it's not every day you get to see a mob of angry football fans basically start a riot over the punishment of those complicit in child abuse. Talk about making your subtext text. Grade: B+
Secret Beyond the Door (1947)
A film-noir adaptation of the "Bluebeard" fairy tale incorporating a heavily Freudian lens on the story and directed by Fritz Lang—and somehow it's boring?? The math just doesn't add up, but that's the score, folks. The film's biggest gaffe is turning the relatively straightforward Bluebeard story archetypes into a convoluted family melodrama in the style of Rebecca, only unlike Hitch's very good earlier film, Secret Beyond the Door's script is nowhere near nimble enough to juggle all the various pieces, and consequently, important pieces of information zip by in the blink of an eye while inessential scenes linger well past ripening (especially during the movie's extremely protracted beginning—why does it take so long for the titular door to show up?). It's Fritz Lang, so it all looks really good (if never nearly as stunning as the director's best), and the Freudian stuff is a pretty interesting take on the material, once we get there—though grounded in some deeply regressive ideas about gender, because... well, Freud. But none of that makes the movie's long stretches of tedium any more fun, nor does it explain how such a waterproof concept let all the water leak out. Grade: C
Television
GLOW, Season 1 (2017)
Netflix's half-hour dramedy about the world of '80s women's wrestling shares a couple of producers with one of the foundational "Netflix Original Series" experiments, Orange Is the New Black (one of whom is Jenji Leslie Kohan, that earlier show's creator), and it's not hard to see the shared DNA: a sprawling, diverse cast of mostly women, the juxtaposition of quirky sitcom humor with serious dramatic stakes, a fascination with society's margins, an interest in peeling back the layers of (often male) power that affect the female experience, an exploration of the intersections of gender, class, and race. It's a lot less ambitious and a lot more outwardly comedic in its premise (professional wrestling vs. mass incarceration... you get it) than its spiritual predecessor, and as such, it falls down on its face a lot less frequently than OItNB; it's also a lot more comfortable to just let its character interactions be an end to themselves, and GLOW is mostly free of the thematic mouthpieces that are frustratingly a cornerstone of most OItNB episodes. Basically, it's the irreverent middle child to Orange's valedictorian, eager-to-please oldest child. That GLOW has a lot less to prove (and therefore can take a more lackadaisical route to its end) than its predecessor is a testament to just how much terrain OItNB cleared in its first few years; it's also a great example of how a lot of the creative energy of American independent film has recently found a home on television rather than in cinemas. I cannot imagine anything resembling GLOW appearing on televisions even just ten years ago, but it feels very much akin to what was happening 15-20 years ago in independent cinema, and honestly, there's not a lot—neither thematically nor stylistically—separating GLOW from, say, this year's Support the Girls (written/directed by American indie veteran Andrew Bujalski). All of which is to say that GLOW's first season is a lot of fun, bolstered by an absolutely killer ensemble and directed with a non-intrusive but sharp style. Moreover, it understands the theater of wrestling better than most media I've seen, and the way it interweaves character dynamics with the piece-by-piece construction of an aesthetic of wrestling pays off marvelously in the genuinely rousing season finale, in which the women tape their first episode, an elaborate exhibition of solidarity among these disparate characters. It takes a bit to get there, and honestly, the first third of the season is not great (not coincidentally, when the women's stories exist mostly in isolation of one another), but the back half of the season is a marvel. Grade: B+
Music
Ariana Grande - Sweetener (2018)
It's not as if Ariana Grande needs to prove that she's one of the best pop stars of our current moment, and honestly, "thank u, next" has deservedly overshadowed this album. But let's think back to mid-August, those halcyon days of summer before all the nasty winter weather, and remember that one of our best pop stars released an album this good without even including her best song of the year on it. It's a record that's by turns tender and confident, sometimes in the same song ("Sweetener," "No Tears Left to Cry"), walking that well-trod path of empowerment pop and heartbreak soundtrack in a way that feels all her own. It's a pop album, so there's going to be some filler and awkwardly placed singles (I'm not a huge of "The Light Is Coming" nor its sequencing within the album), but those instances are relatively few and far between for this genre. Anyways, "God Is a Woman" covers a multitude of structural sins. Grade: B+
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