The two times I met her at speaking engagements, she was a radiant, kind soul willing to extent grace to all, even (in one case) to a pretty disruptive conservative guy trying to "stump" her on a theological question. I can't even begin to estimate how much she's shaped my beliefs, and I'm just some dude; go on Twitter, and you'll see a tremendous outpouring of love for this woman and the ways in which she has empowered and encouraged countless people, many of whom are women and/or part of the LGBTQ+ community. Her death is a heartbreaking loss, but the good she did in her time on earth for others and the Kingdom of God is incalculable.
Movies
A good practice with these musician biopics is to pause and ask: "Would I rather just be listening to the music?" With Bohemian Rhapsody, the wretchedly dull Freddie Mercury biopic, the answer is a resounding "YES" for me. Collectively, Queen's Greatest Hits I & II are about as long as this movie, and I guarantee that I would have had a better time just listening to the real McCoy than I did yawning through this haphazardly edited, unimaginatively filmed, broadly one-dimensional traipse through the most obvious Queen signposts that, yes, does include some Queen music but music that is almost always broken to pieces by some trifling, cardboard drama centering on an SNL-level impersonation of Freddie Mercury. And my heavens, the tropes. Large sections of this movie feel like someone took Walk Hard and did a ctrl + f replace of "Dewey" with "Freddie," including a pretty egregious sequence that's basically the "THIS IS A DARK PERIOD!" bit from Walk Hard, only with Freddie going to gay clubs and (presumably) getting AIDS—set, of course, to "Another One Bites the Dust." Bleh. I've not seen Vice yet, but of the Best Picture nominations from last year that I've seen, this is comfortably the worst. Grade: D+
Pretty much the definition of a hangout movie. The plot is pretty paint-by-numbers (woman is moving, going through a breakup, wants "one last night" out on the town) and lacks any sort of real comedic voice, and I didn't really buy any of the growth these characters go through in the film's final act. But there's enough charm to watching these people bounce off one another that the movie can skate by on sheer effervescent energy alone. Gina Rodriguez in particular is great, because of course she is. Her greatness does pose a problem for the film, though, in that it exposes just how mis-matched she is with Lakeith Stanfield, the supposed romantic interest. Part of this might just be the writing and the fact that Stanfield is more of an abstract symbol than a real character, but as Rodriguez's character's ex (and, in flashbacks, current) boyfriend, he's such a weird, energy-less void when juxtaposed with Rodriguez's charisma. I've enjoyed Stanfield in Atlanta and Sorry to Bother You, so maybe it's just that he's more equipped to play the glassy-eyed outsider than he is the smoldering sensitive type he's playing here. I dunno, it was weird how obviously out-of-his-league he is in this movie. Luckily, he takes up a relatively small amount of the runtime, the rest being occupied with the live-wire chemistry of the three principal leads, who are, I'll stress again, tons of fun to watch. Grade: B
It feels like the French arthouse version of HGTV. Agnès Varda and JR palling around the French countryside scoping out the logistics of new art projects may as well be the Property Brothers—I say this both to indicate the lightness of the style and tone here and also to stress just how effortlessly charming this whole endeavor is. Plus, you get some really nifty imagery from their completed projects, as well as a rich dose of melancholy by the end. Gotta love how much of a prick Godard comes off as, too. Grade: B+
This is a solidly constructed film about a just-past-middle-aged woman finding herself in a moment of transition and luxuriating in it. It's a breathtakingly open film that reveals itself to have more and more possibilities the further into it you get, much like the woman's at-first frighteningly freed-up life itself. There's a lot to like here, though I must confess that even in the few days since I've seen it, the movie is crumbling like a sandcastle in my mind, and I don't know if I could tell you much of what happened beyond the broad thematic gestures I just wrote. Whether this is a fault of the film itself, being so pointedly devoid of big moments, or just the fault of my addled, new-father brain, I guess I'll never know. Grade: B
The movie's structure—an episode-by-episode account of a homeless woman, Mona, wandering about the countryside and meeting folks—feels a bit too schematic for my tastes, and while a gritty little fable about transiency and compassion doesn't need compelling visuals, there's not a ton to look at regardless. On the other hand, there's a bone-rattling sobriety to the basic story and the idea that our passing interactions with strangers are nonetheless life-and-death affairs is unshakable. How many Monas have I met? Grade: B
It's easy enough to get swept up in the bold, beautiful colors of Le Bonheur. Fades to black are too bourgeois for Agnès Varda—try fades to red, yellow, and blue! It's one of the most beautiful color films of the era, right there alongside The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Lawrence of Arabia. It's easy to ignore the plot at first, too, not just because the visuals are so distractingly gorgeous but also because it initially feels like a pretty stock French New Wave exploration of the breakdown of monogamy and marriage. But then the movie's last five minutes transform into some bracing, Stepford Wives business, and the rest of the film's plot snaps into its tragically ironic focus—truly rattling. Whether or not it justifies the mostly staid and fill-in-the-blank first hour is something I'll have to mull over. But that ending. And those colors. Grade: A-
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