Movies
A documentary that asks the descendants of those involved in the Bisbee Deportation to participate in a recreation of that event on its centennial. If I hadn't seen The Act of Killing, I would say this is probably the most innovative use of reenactment in a documentary since Errol Morris's Thin Blue Line, but given the existence of The Act of Killing, it becomes kind of clear that this is the exact intersection between The Act of Killing and Errol Morris, which is fine but also feels a little thinner than it should in comparison to those heavyweights; specifically, I would have liked to see more of the movie dedicated to showing the aftermath of the reenactment itself, since that's where the movie's thesis—that of what it means for a community to confront its collective memory (or collective amnesia, in this case) of an atrocity. But oh boy, is this an atrocity, and there's an inherent power in the documentary wrestling with it at all. I had zero knowledge of the Bisbee Deportation before watching this movie, and apparently a good portion of contemporary Bisbee residents didn't either, which might be one of the starker and more effective points this movie makes about the barriers to even getting a community (much less an entire country) to reckon with its own relatively recent horrors. There's this one part where one of the Bisbee residents rants about how nobody teaches labor history in schools, which is a point that I 100% felt as someone living in a modern Appalachia that has all but erased its considerable history in the labor movement. It is a damning indictment of the way we Americans are taught history that I learned more about the lives of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford—hell, about medieval England—than I did the entire labor movement, a movement that reached its height during a generation that has not yet completely died out, a movement whose outcomes shaped contemporary life as much as either of the World Wars. The movie strains to connect the Bisbee Deportation with the Trump-era immigration crisis, but there's a subtler point being made here, that much as Bisbee itself can't reckon with an injustice it refuses to acknowledge, a nation without a past is doomed to live in the unsustainable fantasies that historical amnesia grants. Grade: B+
Despite teaching it every semester to my students, I really don't have any special affection for Romeo and Juliet, which I would put easily in the bottom half of Shakespeare's output. So it's not so much that this defiles a sacred masterpiece as it is that this movie just sucks. Points for pissing on the piety toward Shakespeare's genius, further points for playing up how horny the Nurse (who is a thicc frog here, natch) is for Paris; but negative points for all the dumb pop culture references and especially negative points for that American Beauty homage. Also really not sure what to do with the "When She Loved Me"-esque flashback involving the flamingo (who is Friar Laurence... I think?). Near the end of the original Shakespeare version, the Prince declares, "Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished." I don't know if I'm feeling quite so magnanimous. Punish all those involved, I say—especially you, Sir Elton John, Executive Producer. Grade: C-
I really wanted to love this creative re-telling of the Ramayana. There is some really inspired stuff here—the animation is very good (particularly the couple of wordless psychedelic musical sequences, which go hard), and the device of having some Adventures of Prince Achmed-style shadow puppets give a stammering, off-the-cuff narration the story, each narrator remembering the story a little differently and occasionally disagreeing on the subtext, is very clever and yields some very good bits. I would have actually loved if the movie were just that. But then you've got the director's autobiographical sections, which, in addition to my misgivings about the cultural dimensions of this (a Western, white woman revising an important text from an Eastern culture in order to reflect over her own life—ehhh), is far and away the weakest material in the movie. And about Sita singing those blues: having Sita sing Annette Hanshaw songs is pretty fun, but by the end of the movie, it's clearly become a way to pad out the movie's already svelte runtime, and it definitely got thin. But I really do like the animation, so I'm letting that coast this movie into a vaguely positive rating. Grade: B-
A pitch-perfect pastiche/parody of an early '60s romantic comedy—only with the added benefit of actually being funner, more clever, and more visually engaging than any '60s comedy of this ilk I've ever seen. Clever screenplay, relentlessly clever visuals (the split-screen "sex" scene is maybe the hardest I've laughed in a movie in a year—ditto for the sublime visual gag of Paulson and Zellweger taking off their coats to reveal cocktail dresses matching each other's jackets). I have literally no idea why this isn't as well regarded as, say, The Man Who Wasn't There, to name another Classical Hollywood pastiche from the early 2000s, except that I guess rom-coms aren't as lionized a genre as noir. I would be interested in how this movie would be received if it were released now, in a post-The Artist, post-La La Land world, where people seem to be more willing both to engage with pastiche as art and also with supposedly "dated" Hollywood formats. Grade: A
One of the very best American action films of an era that produced an uncanny number of great American action films. Also a really great example of collective urbanism: a whole city coming together to make sure that a bus can go as fast as it can. In fact, once he gets on the bus, I don't think Keanu uses a private vehicle for the rest of the movie, which, by a certain metric, makes this the greatest movie of all time. He cheats a little by having the ambulance take him to the metro stop, but hey, this is America—a land where it is seemingly too much to ask for bus routes to actually connect to metro stops. Grade: A
Just a li'l old movie about a girl and her animatronic dinosaur boyfriend. You know, one of those. Tammy and the T-Rex probably prefigures the post-MST3K "intentionally so bad it's good" wave of the 2000s wherein a knowingly ridiculous premise is exploited for ironic yucks, e.g. Sharknado—only critically, this movie remembers that without some kind of sui generis innocent vision a la The Room or Plan 9 from Outer Space, "so bad it's good" still needs to be, ya know, good on some level. And oh boy, is this good. The gore effects are both ludicrous and enthusiastic, the plotting is brisk and surprising, and the acting is across-the-board excellent at bringing a professional sheen to a camp tone reminiscent of a goofy community theater troupe, particularly Denise Richards, who maybe gives the performance of her career here. Also, this is by the director of Mac and Me... does this mean I should listen to Paul Rudd and watch Mac and Me after all? Grade: A-
The most overtly goofy and sloppy of the Michael Myers Halloween movies I've seen so far (we'll just let that third one be its own thing). Scene by scene, this movie's tone slips wildly from something that's just kind of fluffy (the teen relationship drama) to some astoundingly mean character moments (the bullies laughing at Laurie's kid because she's an orphan... I mean, golly) to some almost over-the-top gore (someone gets stabbed... with a shotgun barrel). There's also the completely unremarked-upon scene with the alcoholic doomsday preacher that gives Loomis a ride into town, which is itself a sort of masterclass in wtf-ery as well as one-and-done character work. And also, there's a redneck militia in Hadonfield now? But it's all kind of fun in a way that the other direct sequel I've seen, Halloween II, was not, and the final twenty minutes or so do an admirable job of jettisoning all the goofy stuff to make room for a seriously bleak and lean finale—probably the best sustained Michael action the series has seen since the first movie. It's a largely dysfunctional movie, but I had a good time. Grade: B
Music
Finds Talking Heads basically in full pop mode, which isn't necessarily a bad thing (I'm a big fan of Little Creatures), but this is a pretty mediocre effort at that sound. "Puzzlin' Evidence" is a good Stop Making Sense-style rocker, and "Wild Wild Life" is probably the best pop Talking Heads on the album. The rest of the record is fine but forgettable, though, and the last three tracks in particular are just snoozers. Thin lyrics, thin sound. Nothing's terrible, but very little is great. Grade: B-
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