Movies
Mostly pretty disappointed with this. The first Shaun the Sheep Movie is just this perfectly realized gem, one of the best animated movies of the past decade, but this is merely fine. While it's still basically charming by virtue of it being Aardman Animations doing their Aardman thing, Farmageddon strays from the clockwork slapstick of its predecessor and makes a gigantic crutch out of allusions to other alien sci-fi movies, most heavily E.T., whose beats Farmageddon follows shockingly closely, including a final scene that is nearly a shot-for-shot remake of E.T.'s final scene. There are some fun sequences here, and I love the recurring "flying disc cuts through things and lands in the dog's mouth" motif. But this feels pretty empty for the most part. Plus, the UFO subject matter kind of let Aardman fudge their animation by including visible computer effects alongside the stop-motion, which makes this a lot less warm-looking and homespun than their past work. I was pretty lukewarm on Early Man, too, so I hope this isn't me losing touch with Aardman, which has been my lodestone in animation fandom since I was in like kindergarten. Grade: B-
Starts as with an intriguing premise (a suburban housing development has no exit!) with great satirical or sci-fi possibilities. Ends up going down the satirical and sci-fi routes simultaneously, yet somehow without yielding anything but a few kind of cool images and a few moments of creeping dread. I've never read a J. G. Ballard novel, but this feels like a failed attempt at a J. G. Ballard tribute. Grade: C
It's been a while since I did my old "I don't know why this is on my Netflix queue, but it's expiring soon, so I guess I should watch it" thing, so here we are. I basically knew nothing about this movie besides what the title told me (it's not inaccurate!), but within a minute of the movie's beginning, both a hockey stick and a hockey jersey had made an appearance, and I was like, "Wait a minute...", and sure enough, there it was: Written and Directed (and Edited??) by Kevin Smith. So it's not like I had particularly high expectations. This is mostly pretty bad, but incredibly, Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks have mad-great onscreen chemistry, which caught me completely off-guard and saved this movie from an even lower score. It's too bad that both of them have drifted into the autopilot mediocre-movie career phase that they're in now, because there's a legit spark of star power on display here (and honestly in a lot of their early-ish work), and it sort of feels like we lost whatever alternate universe could have been if they'd actually gone on to do stuff that lives up to the promise of their work in turd-level movies like this one. Grade: C-
I know basically nothing about Glenn Gould outside of his "Goldberg Variations" recordings, and maybe that's key for approaching a biopic of somebody? Being entirely outside of the sphere of references that a biopic would pander to, so you're able to process the movie as a movie? It also helps if the movie is a structural tour-de-force. The short-film anthology format just keeps giving and giving here, making room for animated excursions, fragmentary interviews, mini-symphony scenes like when Gould walks into the diner and orders, little poignant asides like Gould asking the stage manager about his retirement plans. It feels like a movie that has cut out everything but the absolute best parts and has laid them out side-by-side without the usual impediment of narrative cohesion. I could see myself easily becoming even more positive on this movie in repeat viewings. Grade: A-
A collection of parable-like vignettes about Saint Francis of Assisi and his immediate followers. Maybe the most sincere movie about Christian belief and practice that I've ever seen—almost maybe the funniest, too. Somehow, a 5-minute scene consisting of nothing but a leper walking by and Saint Francis just breaking down in anguished tears coexists with a 5-minute sequence of pure slapstick involving a Franciscan being harassed by a feudal tyrant and his goons (and somehow, said tyrant is trapped in a suit of armor suspended just a few inches off the ground). The whole project is so seemingly simple, but it just gets wilder and wilder the more I think about it, and in the end, there's something achingly tactile and real about the way this film frames the faith on display here—a true embodiment of the idea that a lot of modern Christians seem to have lost sight of: that at the end of the Bible, heaven is manifested on earth rather than the other way around. A really weird and really moving film. Grade: A-
Music
Two hours and three song suites about radical environmental mysticism as told by music that sounds like On the Corner era Miles Davis collaborating with Sunn O))). This is either very your thing or very, very not your thing. It is definitely my thing. Hands-down one of my favorite records of the year. Grade: A
Dude, thanks for the recommendation on Neptunian Maximalism. I wouldn't have caught anything about it being "environmental mysticism," so I suppose I should do some research. But just listening to it has been an epically chaotic experience. In a good way. Loved it.
ReplyDeleteHaha, the only reason I know what the intent is is that there's a manifesto written in the CD insert. I would have had no idea otherwise. Glad you liked it.
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