Movies
I lost interest in this pretty quickly when it became clear that the movie was going to do absolutely nothing with the rather exquisite set. Just watch The Innocents if you want to see a great film adaptation of Turn of the Screw. But then oh boy, did the last five minutes pull in my attention again: I don't think I've ever seen a mainstream film released by a major studio have such a flabbergastingly fumbled ending. Either the movie thinks that it can evoke the rich ambiguity of James's novel by throwing in a bunch of incomprehensible, out-of-context plot twists and edits, or else the production team just got tired of the whole project and just arbitrarily rolled the credits after splicing in all the remaining footage they had. Either way, it's incredibly, fascinatingly dumb, and I want to know the backstory. Grade: C-
I feel extreme skepticism about a movie like this—a documentary by a Western filmmaker about political turmoil under an aging Marxist state in a post-colonial country. Having literally no knowledge of Zimbabwe's history or politics, I really don't know exactly how much of that skepticism is valid with regards to this movie's stance on the contentious creation of Zimbabwe's new constitution following its 2008 election, though there are a few things raising major red flags for me (esp. the uncritical way to which it gestures toward "international intervention" in Zimbabwe's politics from the West). So who knows how useful this documentary is at actually documenting the broader political realities of Zimbabwe. All that being said, as a generalized take on a very specific kind of political activity (in this case, the drafting of a national constitution), this movie is stupendous, almost entirely on the virtues of the access granted to its film team. I'm not sure if we've ever gotten this intimate of a cinematic document on the shaping of a nation's central laws: the camera crew of this documentary were somehow allowed to sit in the room as representatives from the ruling political party and the opposition party edit and collaborate and shout at each other over specific pieces of the constitutional drafts, along the way showing the push and pull between democratic/populist energy and the inertia of a political establishment. It's fascinating stuff, and I gladly would have watched a 4-hour Wiseman-style documentary with just the camera stuck in those negotiation rooms rather than the rather brisk 90 minutes that this movie is. Grade: B
I was not a huge fan of the setup—Indian cult? fake terminal illness?—but man oh man does this movie cook when it's just Harvey Keitel and Kate Winslet locking horns in a psychosexual battle of wills. As in her similarly dismissed In the Cut, Jane Campion takes this movie to some really fearless places that are deeply uncomfortable, and the results are some fascinating interrogations of power and human desire. But unlike In the Cut (and virtually every other Campion feature), this movie is actually very funny on top of all that. So as it turns out, this whole narrative of how Campion lost her way at the turn of the millennium and then found it again with Bright Star is just a bunch of noise, and honestly, Bright Star is maybe my second-least-favorite Campion feature after Portrait of a Lady. I wanna see more of this, Jane! Grade: B+
Maybe this is less true now that Radiohead have become de-facto elder statesmen of rock and their whole ethos has more or less stabilized since the OK Computer-->Kid A-->Amnesiac cycle, but I definitely remember a long period of time when the music press, as much as they praised their albums, somewhat dismissed the individuals in the group as a bunch of antisocial grumps. Perhaps they are antisocial and grumpy, but golly, I'd be too if I had to endure interviewer after interviewer lob the most inane questions and comments at me. Questions like, I kid you not, "Is OK Computer rock music?", and comments like, "This seems like music for wrist-cutters." I've heard people say that Meeting People Is Easy isn't really a very good tour documentary, and it's true that its lo-fi, impressionistic, at-times inscrutably garbled style is at odds with giving us good concert footage (though fans will still be treated to more or less straightforward concert gems like early renditions of "Nude" and "Life in a Glasshouse"). But when it comes to rendering the subjective experience of the hell that is doing a world tour and a million interviews with skeptical, ham-fisted journalists, this movie rocks. The fatigue and disorientation Meeting People Is Easy evokes is compelling, and to give us the catharsis of seeing the cool spectacle of Radiohead bringing down the house with "Paranoid Android" or something would probably have been antithetical to that subjective effect. Grade: B
I was kind of thinking that the "fascist-lite" allegations against this movie were overblown, given that it was unfolding like a more-or-less conventional and honestly kind of dull "loose cannon"/urban apocalypse cop movie—yes, I realize this was basically the first, but just because you're the first to promote problematic mythology doesn't absolve you of the problematic mythology, especially if you're not going to be interesting about it. But then we get to the scene when Harry tells the DA of San Francisco that the 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution are "wrong," and I was like, "Ohhhh... I see what people are talking about..." Anyway, this movie picks up as it gets more outlandish near the end: e.g. Harry intentionally crashes a school bus full of kids in order to catch the Zodiac Killer. Don't worry; all the kids are okay. I would be interested in seeing a horror/dark-comedy remake in which all the ridiculously risky gambits Harry makes in this movie actually don't pay off, and Harry is just some deranged cop with stern-dad vibes who violated people's rights, shot a hostage, and killed a school bus's worth of children, because this is nuts. "Loose cannon" indeed. Grade: C
Nobody told me that the opening 15 minutes are virtually identical to the opening of Get Out, though I'd been plenty warned that this movie is the epitome of "I would have voted for Obama a third time" cinema. It's also stagey and largely boring, full of impossible people (Spencer Tracy's character owns a major newspaper? Sidney Poitier's character is the assistant director of the World Health Organization??) walking through shallow, well-intentioned sanctimony. Most of what makes the parts that aren't boring interesting is a kind of cultural artifact perspective: for example, the movie's... interesting understanding of what late '60s rock and roll is. But the acting in this movie is also stellar and makes the film way more watchable than it would have been otherwise. No surprise given the presence of Poitier (who, per usual, does God's work of breathing real life into respectability politics' wet dream) and Tracy/Hepburn—but golly, Tracy and Hepburn are magnificent together here, and the best parts of the movie by far are the ones they share together, particularly the mid-movie drive where they get ice cream (a real shame Tracy wasn't alive for On Golden Pond, because their relationship here has a lot of the same energy and might have been able to save that movie from its own saccharine). The same, I'm afraid, can't be said for Hepburn's niece, Katharine Houghton, who is, both as written and acted, one of the most vapid screen presences I've seen in a while. Grade: C
Somewhat difficult for me to swallow the lionizing of the U.S. Cavalry and General Custer specifically (Michael Bluth looks in bag labeled *Old Hollywood Western*: "I don't know what I expected"), even more difficult considering that the whole plotting with the cavalry mission against the Indians is right up there with the love triangle as the most tedious part of the movie. But Lord have mercy, this movie is probably the best use of Technicolor of the 1940s, and John Wayne gives a legitimately great performance and absolutely rocks that mustache. Some really great character acting from the guy who plays Sgt. Quincannon (Victor McLaglen), too. I kinda wish this whole movie was just a wistful hangout dramedy with Wayne and McLaglen's characters just futzing around the fort as they contemplate their upcoming retirement. The parts of the movie that are that are top-tier. Grade: B
I talked about this movie with some smart folks on the Cinematary podcast—if you're interested, you can listen here!
Television
With Jimmy McGill having fully transformed into Saul Goodman (thus completing the show's prequel arc), Better Call Saul could have easily just called it a day, giving itself over completely to place-setting for Breaking Bad. But that's not what Better Call Saul does, blessedly. Instead, as we watch Jimmy tumble into the craven abyss of his alter ego, we see him grasping frantically at those around him, and what Season 5 becomes is something of a battle for the soul of Kim Wexler. It has, in short, pivoted from the Greek tragedy of its first season to full-on Shakespearean tragedy now. In doing so, the show finds some of its most conventionally exciting plotting in a couple seasons, bolstered by some incredibly tense setpieces as well as some legitimately stomach-turning character work. Alongside a newfound purpose for Nacho (he gets his best arc in seasons) as well as a renewed relevance of Mike (who is much more organically integrated into the story than last season), Season 5 is Better Call Saul at the top of its game. Really great stuff. Grade: A
Books
Basically a book-length indulgence in A Series of Unfortunate Events's postmodern affectations. Some of it is hilariously bewildering, most notably the introduction, in which there are four nested narrations and circular definitions; other parts are puzzles, where you have to piece together underlined words to get codes and morsels of information relevant to unraveling the intentionally opaque mysteries of the main series; other parts are just kind of inscrutable and odd, like the series of photos near the end with incomplete captions. There's not a lot of actual substance here once you get past the literary and linguistic games, and there's nothing as inspired as the best moments of the main series. But it is still pretty funny on a moment-by-moment basis, and I remain impressed and somewhat gobsmacked that Snicket/Handler was able to publish the equivalent of a Danielewski or Nabokov novel for kids. Madness. Grade: B
One of the weaker novels from Stephen King's golden era, if you ask me. It's overlong, misanthropic (and often specifically misogynist), and doesn't find a real emotional core in its characters until near the end. Plus, it does this irritating thing (that admittedly is also true of The Shining) where it's crystal clear exactly where this is going at least a hundred pages from the end, making the lead-up to the climax frustratingly slow rather than simmeringly intense. It's not without its charms, though: there's a great sense of geography here—it's the rare King book not set in Maine, but its Pennsylvania small-town setting is vividly evoked. Also, King's use of rock and roll car lyrics works really well to highlight the dually liberating and sinister undercurrents of that mythology, and as an avowed ally of public transit and a sworn enemy of personal vehicle ownership, I do get a kick out of the idea that car ownership is basically a Faustian deal with a demon. Still, that's not enough to buoy this book completely for me. Grade: C+
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