Movies
A weirdly structureless movie that never really figures out what it wants to be so instead just floats around a lot of different plot points without ever finding any momentum forward. Is it how Adonis wrestles with balancing family with his newfound fame? Is it a tale of revenge and redemption for the events of Rocky IV (never mind that Rocky IV is itself a tale of revenge and redemption for the events of Rocky IV)? Is it about the self-destructive ramifications of athletes' drive to be The Best? Is it just a straight-up inspiration Rocky picture? What it is, I'll tell ya, is intermittently dull and a huge step down from the original Creed. The Rocky sequels spiraled out, quality-wise, pretty quickly, too, but at least they all had the decency to aspire to a kind of glorious kitsch. Creed II still has all the serious-minded, "realistic" sensibilities of its predecessor, while still being, like Rocky IV a movie about punching a Russian. At least I would have hoped to have gotten whatever the 2018 equivalent of "Living in America" is—but no dice. Grade: C+
A few hours before I watched this movie, I listened to a Latina activist talk about the experiences of Latinx undocumented immigrants in the state of Tennessee, and it was unnerving how much of that talk was reflected in Transit: the limbo of assuming a new identity in a foreign country, the unknowability of the whereabouts/health of family and friends, the malaise of confusion and ambiguity that hangs over all daily public interactions and creates opportunities for exploitation, the creeping anti-immigrant brutality of law enforcement largely unrecognized (or tolerated) by the mainstream public, etc. Transit is essentially a WWII story (its source novel is from 1942) set in the present day, a Casablanca without the distancing fireworks (nor the uplift) of a classic Hollywood screenplay/era, and while of course I'm not saying it's impossible to make a period film with contemporary resonance (and fair, my Americentrism is definitely showing with what I'm calling "resonant"), making the period "now" sure does the trick. Grade: A-
Having 200 people remake Shrek shot-for-shot (give or take) is a neat little microcosm of what's happened to the original film once subjected to Web 2.0—a veritable army of humans across the internet re-sculpting the DreamWorks Animation smash in their own image (some of the most notable of which [e.g. Neil Cicierega] appear here among the 200 creators). By now, I know Shrek better as a meme than as a film, having only seen the movie twice (I think?) in its entirety but having listened to Mouth Sounds dozens, nay HUNDREDS of times, and I spent a good portion of my time with Shrek Retold trying to remember which bits were dadaist internet jokes and which bits actually were part of the old film. Whether or not my low view count is accurate of everyone, I suspect that at least the meme-before-film part is true of most of us who reside at all within the "online" spaces of the internet, and it's kind of fascinating to see that collective awareness of a memetic Shrek work itself out in feature film form by varying degrees of sincerity/irony and craftsmanship. The original movie was very much a sort of postmodern blender of late-'90s mainstream kitsch, and I honestly can't think of a more appropriate way to remake that particular work than with this particular work: a deranged Frankenstein's monster birthed as much from the looming succubi of YouTube and Netflix and image macros as the original sprang from the ascendency of butt rock and Disney over the cultural imagination. The quality of the product fluctuates wildly from creator to creator, but hey, what's more internet than that? Grade: B
Honestly, it's kind of thinly made. The acting is stiff (the performances that aren't, you know, supposed to be stiff), the screenplay is blundering, the cinematography is overlit and dull in this very TV-movie type of way—which is maybe sort of the point, I guess, but call me two-faced for not wanting my critique of cardboard delivered on a cardboard plate. But man, does virtually everything in the movie's final twenty-ish minutes work like gangbusters, and "because we can" is such an ice-cold chill of a moment that even knowing it was coming, I was shook. It's not hard to understand why this became such an iconic film, though it's also not hard to see how it also became one of those movies whose premise has more staying power than the actual film attached to it. Grade: B
Music
We all know that the song "thank u, next," released late last year by surprise, is one of the best pop songs of recent memory. What I don't think we all know, based on the conversation I've seen, is that its attendant album is one of the best pop albums in recent memory. The songs of thank u, next are less colorful than those of Ariana's last release, Sweetener, but in exchange, Ariana made this vibrant, personal statement of a record, a release in which not only are the songs all very good but also cohere together into a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. It's all about the sequencing: for example, "thank u, next," the song, is great on its own, but sandwiched between "7 rings" and "break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored," it takes on a whole new life—no longer just an anthem of self-actualizing romance but a piece in a larger narrative about the cycles of self-destruction, self-loathing, and self-love that tragedy and broken hearts wring an individual through. That's just one example, and the album is full of meaningful suites like that, adding up to a complex and nuanced portrait of a person both on top of the world and at a crippling crossroads. So few pop albums pay attention to track sequencing and the significance of juxtaposing one song with another, and the fact that thank u, next does so is a small miracle and a richly rewarding aural experience. Maybe this says more about how many (read: how few) new albums I've listened to this year, but right now, thank u, next is my favorite album of 2019. Grade: A-
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