Movies
I was really into this for the first ten minutes, when I thought it was going to be some kooky meta-pulp thing with stuff like Edgar Rice Burroughs appearing as a character. I was still into it, if lessly so, when it becomes a less kooky but still fun pulp western thing—Stanton feels at his most playful here, and there are some great laugh-out-loud moments built from the editing. Unfortunately, the stage of this movie I was least into, and the one that takes up the bulk of the runtime, is the actual premise of the movie, i.e. when John Carter actually goes to Mars, as the movie quickly devolves into some really tedious Martian sociopolitical action epic. The effects and world/creature design are excellent, which is a saving grace, but the movie loses almost all of its sense of fun. Which is too bad, because if the Mars material had had some Valerian-like invention, I would be proclaiming this an unjustly maligned gem. Instead, I'm stuck with a movie that I only like in pieces, and small pieces at that. Grade: B-
On the one hand, the aesthetic of this movie is a snooze, basically the driest kind of cinematic realism you can imagine. On that same hand, this movie doesn't do a ton with its characters who aren't the protagonist—the Romanian love interest is basically just a magically perfect immigrant, and the rest of the cast is even less filled in than that. On the other hand, this movie does an affecting (if a little broad) job of rendering the cage of traditional masculinity, and the final scene is great. So I dunno, I guess I sort of liked the movie as a whole. Grade: B-
A thoroughly mixed bag with the usual noxious mix of homophobia and misogyny that was the default garnish to the mainstream American comedy in the 2000s. But I also laughed really hard at the "battle shits" part and at Kumar's daydream where he marries a bag of marijuana, and the scene in the police station is top-to-bottom great, so... what can you do, you know? Grade: B-
There's a lot to process here. Which do I process first? The cannibalistic sex acts? The (needlessly?) opaque plotting? The fact that I kept confusing the housekeeper with the other female characters in the film? Anyway, I'm on the record as saying that I like Claire Denis when she's at her most brutal and miserable, and I remain on that record now, so I guess I reap what I sow. This feels like every bit the thematic antecedent to High Life in the sense of treating sex in its juicy, bodily materiality and suffering as a sort of embodied existentialism. Kind of wish this movie were set in space, too, though I guess I can't have everything. Grade: B
This movie's relative chronological proximity to Forrest Gump doesn't do it any favors, as it highlights that Billy Bob Thorton's protagonist really isn't any less of a hollow symbol than that other emblem of spiritual purity by way of mental disability. Which is too bad, because otherwise, Sling Blade is a haunting, even chilling evocation of existentialism via the American South. I'm particularly impressed with (and surprised by) Thorton's direction here, which is as patient as I've seen in an American mainstream release: shots just linger in a way that reminds me of some intersection between Bergman and Ozu—I wouldn't say that Thorton has a remarkable eye for imagery, but he has a tremendous sense of tone and pace, which renders this philosophical fable with striking clarity. I wish it worked better on the character level, but otherwise, there are some real aces up this movie's sleeve. Grade: B
I'm not super familiar with the Troma world (outside Surf Nazis Must Die, which I saw years ago and hated), but this was as much a delight as an abomination. It's supremely gross, and the incest angle and occasional transphobic flavors (including a very unfunny [what other kind is there?] Ace Ventura riff) are transgressive bridges too far for me. The softcore veneer over everything is also kind of a buzzkill for me, though I think that people who are saying that it's some wild innovation on Shakespeare are forgetting just how sexually lurid the original text of Romeo and Juliet is. But I adore the general ethos of this thing; I've been waiting my whole adult life for a Romeo and Juliet adaptation that treats the Bard's worst major play with the contempt that it deserves, and Tromeo and Juliet gets closest to that ideal. The movie has the bones of a very good farce, and for as much as a lot of the moment-by-moment jokes don't land, a lot of them do land, provided you're willing to go to the juvenile, continuously extra place the film's tone demands—there's just something so funny to me about arbitrarily renaming the character Paris "London" here; sue me. I also appreciate that the juvenile and extra elements are grounded in, like, an actual literacy of the original play—anyone can make a face cheek / butt cheek pun, but only someone who is reasonably familiar with the play can craft a joke as terrific and terrifically dumb as the moment when Romeo swoons, "See how she leans her cheek upon her hand," and the movie cuts to a shot of Juliet's hand resting on her bare posterior. Grade: B
The best thing here is the gorgeously dusky cinematography. The movie's depiction of the 1920 coal miner strike in the town of the same name is otherwise told excitingly enough, and it ticks its ideological boxes: an intersectional coalition of workers united against some truly nasty coal barons. There are some basic foundational things that are pretty shaky, though; the cast is uniformly excellent (including a lil baby Will Oldham!), but the screenplay is pretty indecisive on how to employ them. The striking miners themselves are mostly anonymous outside their respective big scenes, none of the female characters are given much to do, and James Earl Jones comes swaggering in as just about the coolest part of the movie for the first half hour before more or less disappearing for the rest of the film. None of this stops the movie from being a rousing depiction of labor solidarity, but it could have been a lot more effective for me if the character work came together better. Grade: B
Television
This is a pretty messy season, and it loses a lot of the considered, Shakespearean arc of its first year. This isn't all bad: the freedom from that structure allows for some interesting arcs for, for example, Sally, who struggles with the intersection (or lack of intersection) of emotional honesty with acting success. At other times, though, the season is tonally all over the place, and while that was also true of the first season, this season struggles to tie it all together in the way that the first season did. I enjoy NoHo Hank as a screen presence, but his sort of cheery self-help-obsessed mob guy feels like forced shtick this time around, as disconnected from the main plots as he becomes. And with this season's ending, it's glaring how much the show is contorting itself to preserve its central cast, even when the plotting would seem to demand, for example, the death of Fuches. I'm complaining a lot because this is such a step down from the first season, but there are still a lot of engaging elements being juggled here: Henry Winkler's performance, the light satire of the aspiring acting community, a completely bonkers fifth episode that's nothing like anything the show has done before. But that juggling is a lot less elegant this time around. Grade: B
It's fine, just like every other season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The show is walking through the motions of an aging sitcom (characters getting pregnant!), but the remarkable thing about this show is that it seems incapable of showing age, and its quality has remained absolutely constant throughout its run. It began as a mildly funny workplace sitcom with a great cast and an iffy premise, and it remains precisely that—no more, no less. Grade: B
The show dips its toe a little less frequently into issues commentary this time around, which is good, because that still feels as awkward a gesture as ever (and I'm not always sure whether it's a joke or serious—e.g. the episode "Love Hurts... and So Does Art," which resolves with Hank bringing in a sheriff to an art exhibit to enforce Texas's [fictional?] law against modern art). But on the whole, this season feels like a total maturation into King of the Hill as I remembered it, the sweet show about the light absurdities of its characters' small-town Texas psychologies, and even some things I didn't remember: there are full multi-episode arcs here, which are often very sweet (the best being Hank and Peggy's ongoing struggle with infertility, which culminates in a poignant finale). More so than most animated shows of its era, this season has a sense of continuity to it that caught me by surprise. The structure of this season is unexpectedly complex for the kind of series that it is, and everything and everyone just feels so much richer this time around, fully realizing the promise of those first two seasons. But it achieves this without ever losing touch with its core episodic structure, which you know I love. Very funny, very sweet television. Yup. Grade: A-
Music
If Fiona Apple is going to only release albums once a decade, they might as well keep being among the best of the decade. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is dazzling, a percussive, bewildering torrent of acid poetry. It's whimsical in the best ways (several dogs are credited as performers on the album) while also being a brutally serious engagement with the very texture of existence and what that existence means when overlapping with other people's existences. And the lyrics. Fetch the Bolt Cutters lacks the surrealism of The Idler Wheel's tumultuous words, but Fiona's no less considered of a wordsmith here; in fact, she's better than she ever has been in that regard. Simultaneously blunt and so razor-edged that they'll cut your fingers clean off without you even feeling the pressure of the blade if you aren't careful—I love these lyrics; I want to put them in a book; I want to put them on posters and paper my house walls with them. I would quote some of the standout lyrics, but every single word sung is its own universe. Anyway, this album is great. Believe the hype. Grade: A
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