I don't usually put re-watches on here, so I'll just mention up here that I was on the Cinematary podcast to talk about Son of the White Mare, i.e. one of the great animated films of the last half-decade. Here's the link, if you're interested.
Movies
Of Michael Almereyda's biopics, I've only seen this and Experimenter, and both rely heavily on these anachronistic, distancing devices like intentional facade and characters being seemingly self-aware of their futures in order to transform the traditional historical biopic into something more unpredictable and artful. Of the two, I'd say Tesla feels less essential than Experimenter. Though both focus on a problematic innovator pushing the boundaries of social mores and ethics as he experiments with the vanguard of his field (Nikola Tesla in this one, Stanley Milgram in the other), Tesla has a considerably more difficult time convincing me that the film's stylistic games are thematically necessary; like, it's cool that J.P. Morgan's daughter can talk to the camera about her father's relationship with Tesla, but... to what end? This all culminates in a scene near the end of the film in which Tesla sings karaoke, and it's maybe the biggest cinematic swing-and-a-miss I've seen in the past five years. All that said, though, I did enjoy this movie a lot. If Ethan Hawke as Tesla is good casting, Kyle MacLachlan as Thomas Edison is positively bespoke casting, and while the film doesn't make a great case for all of its tricks, it does build a pretty interesting dialogue about what it means to be a "pioneer" in a field that requires as much capital as electrical engineering does. Grade: B
Typical of Justin Simien's work, there's a lot of interesting material here, and also typical of Simien's work, Simien isn't quite enough of a stylist or screenwriter to make it all work—though untypical of Simien's work, there's not enough here that does work to make the whole project tip over into "I liked it, despite its flaws" territory. Which is a shame, because there's a lot of potential in the idea of a woman getting a (literally!) killer weave and how this intersects the colonization of black voices and representation. There are some good laugh lines, and the hair effects are pretty cool, I guess, but overall, this feels too ungainly and inelegant to land. Also, I'm obviously not a black woman (neither is Justin Simien, it bears mentioning), so I don't feel qualified to weigh in on the politics of their hair—but that said, this review has some misgivings about the way the themes are handled in this movie that seem pretty valid to me. So take that for what it's worth. Grade: C
This has a reputation for being one of those "horror movies for kids" things that we get every once in a while (shout out to Cinematary for the recent series on the phenomenon). But on balance, I'd say this is more gross than scary—though it is very gross, in a way that feels about right for the intersection of Roald Dahl, Jim Henson, and Nicolas Roeg(?!?). Props for the fearlessness of truly going for it with the body manipulation and fluids and icky textures. It only works intermittently for me, though. Anjelica Huston is great, but the rest of the cast seems to be hanging onto this movie's vibe by barely a thread, and the plotting is all over the place. But it's certainly something, and I'm glad it exists in the world. Grade: B-
Went in thinking this would be a "we found a mysterious alien artifact / made contact!" sci-fi thriller in the vein of Sphere or Contact or something. Was not prepared for it to actually be a movie about aliens helping the senior citizens in a retirement community regain their youthful vitality so they could have sex and go cruising in sports cars again. The comedic elements of this movie (a good 60% of the film) kind of overwhelm the larger project that this movie is halfway committed to, which is a rumination on aging and how relationships are affected by the way the body and mind change in someone's twilight years, though I'm not sure if I would have preferred this movie going full bore into the serious subtext or just fully committing to being a wacky comedy. I would have liked to see it commit to something. Grade: C+
Possibly the horniest movie I've seen, which I was not prepared for. Other things I was not prepared for:
-Those lips in the intro? Is it weird to call them "haunting"? Because they are.
-This movie rhymes "heavy petting" with "seat wetting"?
-This is Tim Curry's first movie?? What an entrance. I know he'd been a stage actor already, including playing this very role in the Rocky Horror stage musical, but still, it's not nothing to transfer this kind of energy to film.
-Susan Sarandon is GREAT in this??? She's the best non-Tim-Curry part of this movie, and this is probably my favorite performance of hers ever.
-This movie is about space aliens???? I would have watched it sooner if someone had told me that.
-Meatloaf is in this????? I would have definitely watched it sooner if someone had told me that.
-The stretch from "Dammit Janet" to "Hot Patootie" is, like, the most deliriously good stretch of pure musical filmmaking of the second half of the 20th century?????? This is a little bit of a hot take, but not that hot.
Anyway, I have dodgy experiences watching cult-favorite movies by myself at home in the middle of the day; usually these kinds of movies don't translate too well outside of their midnight-movie contexts. But the unstoppable energy and verve of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is undeniable, and I'm fully prepared to name this among the best movies of the '70s over many, many other canonical classics of that era. It's also a nice affirmation that glam rock was the absolute best thing happening in mainstream rock music in the first half of the '70s, because the music here just doesn't quit. Grade: A
Television
I'm not always a huge fan of edgy humor for the sake of itself, and Harley Quinn definitely traffics in that—I remember the first trailer for this, and that was basically the selling point ("wow, superheroes use the f-word!"). Thankfully, there's more here besides that. The series is genuinely funny (and not just edgy-funny), thanks in large part to the fun cast of b-list Batman villains (Clayface is my fav), and addition to that, the show is also grounded by a legitimately solid relationship: not Harley/Joker (I'm clearly not invested enough in the comics to completely feel that relationship here, which leans a lot into prior knowledge that I only know second-hand) but rather the dynamic between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. The arc that Harley and Ivy go through here is a pretty nuanced, engaging analog for what friendship means in your early twenties, when longer-term romantic relationships and career ambitions begin to put tension on the regular ebbs and flows of friendship. I wish the show had had more time to build its climax out a little more, which feels rushed over the last couple episodes and doesn't quite land the Harley/Ivy plots as solidly as it could. But overall, this is a pretty solid season of television. Grade: B
Books
A pretty fascinating memoir in which Wiener details her journey from New York copy editor to Silicon Valley tech insider. There has been a lot of writing done on the structural problems of the startup tech culture, but Wiener's take feels fresh because it focuses not so much on the systemic way in which tech has benefited from (and even rigged) our exploitative capitalist world (though there's a little of that here), but rather on an analysis of the psychology of the individuals who drive tech startups. Being from NYC and having an arts degree makes Wiener somewhat of an outsider in San Fransisco, a status she uses in the book to explore her own process of assimilation as well as the alien-to-her behavior she observes in her (almost exclusively male) higher-ups. I knew some of the stuff in this book already, but there are times when the people she describes seem literally like they are from another planet to me—I truly can't imagine being in proximity to the wild, ego-centric libertarian excess that Wiener talks about, and it made me realize, nauseatedly, that the HBO comedy Silicon Valley was far less fictionalized and goofy in its treatment of the industry than I'd imagined when I was watching it. These are some of the most powerful people in the world. God help us. Grade: A-
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