Movies
The plot never quite decides what it wants to be—is it a dystopian sci-fi? is it an action movie? a journey of self-discovery? a conspiracy thriller? is it a roller derby movie??? And even if it did decide, I'm not sure if that would actually make the screenplay any good. But this movie has so many ideas that I'm willing to forgive the structural issues just for the pure pleasure of basking in a modern Hollywood movie that is actually curious and risk-taking as opposed to merely committed to the refinement of an already kind of mediocre idea. It's not, like, amazing or anything, but it does feel fresh and fun. I'm also kind of shocked that the Alita big-eye CG tech doesn't veer into uncanniness more than it does. I don't think the technology is quite there yet, but it's close, which is better than I thought given the posters and trailers. Grade: B
This movie's grainy, ostentatiously shot-on-film look is tremendous, and the emotional resonance of the ending is raw and real. But I dunno, the rest of this is just a tad too "MFA Fiction Workshop"-esque for my tastes. Grade: B-
A very staid movie about a very staid subject: in an Icelandic village, two brothers who haven't spoken to each other in forty years are now forced to interact on account of a disease among their sheep which threatens to infect all the sheep in the village. Like this movie's aesthetic itself, I have no strong feelings either way about the movie, and part of me really enjoys just how committed to being gray and underplayed this whole thing is. Then there are the out-of-nowhere comedic flourishes, like when one character delivers another character to the hospital in the shovel of a backhoe, and while I'm not really sure what to make of that, but it's fun. But on the other hand, the movie is mostly kind of boring. Grade: C+
Miyazaki's first Ghibli film (in fact, the first Ghibli film, period) is far from his best, but it sets a great template for his work in the studio—if not one quite matched by Nausicaä just a couple years prior. The plot feels needlessly convoluted, but the animation is stunning, and the basic environmental themes are still deeply resonant, even if they're buried somewhat in a plot mythology that has the feel of compressing a whole manga into a feature film. Plus, the actual time spent on Laputa, the titular castle in the sky, is legitimately great, the kind of grand geometries that you know the early Final Fantasy games wanted us to imagine in their blocky sprites but couldn't actually render themselves. And if there's an image more representative of the Miyazaki ethos than of that robot handing Sheeta and Pazu a flower, I can't think of it. Grade: B+
Basically the ur-Vine: a collection of short and often absurd sketches based around a faux-home movie aesthetic. I spend a lot of time watching those Vine compilations on YouTube (e.g. "vines that toast my buns"), so there's no reason why I shouldn't enjoy watching Robert Downey, Sr., invent the form. Grade: B
Music
The critical conversation around this album is that it's his best solo work since The Eraser, which to me seems like a slap in the face to Tomorrow's Modern Boxes and the Suspira score. But ANIMA is definitely good—his most melodic and poppy since The Eraser, to be sure (maybe the source of that critical consensus), and less reliant on the kind of minimalist IDM that Yorke seems to enjoy more than most. And in fact, the back half of the album, from "I Am a Very Rude Person" to the incredible closer, "Runwayaway," is one of his strongest sequences of songs in his solo discography. Whether or not this makes it actually better than his recent output, ANIMA is still pretty mesmerizing, and I dig it. Grade: A-
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