Sorry I missed last week's post! It was just a busy weekend, and I hadn't had a chance to review that much anyway. Hope this slightly longer-than-usually post makes up for it!
Movies
I watched this because I heard the animation was incredible, which it is! I also heard that everything else about the movie was trash, which it is! Mostly, at least. Every moment of humor (i.e. 90% of the movie) is an awfully strained attempt at post-LEGO Movie frenetic internet humor, which I don't love, but I do think the screenplay has good bones re: character arcs and emotional stakes—not a given for all (or even most) animated movies nowadays. But that animation! I know it's cool to be cynical about CG and the direction of American animation in general, but I think it's time that we admitted that for at least the last five years, American animation has actually been making some incredible aesthetic breakthroughs with CG, resulting in probably the most diverse and interesting field of mainstream animation studios in the country's history. I guess you could attribute some of this to Disney's creatively troubled (and in the case of Raya and the Last Dragon, financially troubled) last few features—it seems clear to me that we're entering one of those weird, dark-age Disney eras akin to the early 2000s or the '70s, which historically has meant that we're going to get some new growth in non-Disney animation. But I dunno, it feels deeper than that—like, there are truly some stunning technical/artistic advancements happening from some of the most unlikely places, which to me tells me that something bigger is going on than the usual "disgruntled ex-Disney people are doing new stuff." The Mitchells vs. The Machines is from Sony Pictures Animation, which yeah, yeah, did Into the Spider-Verse but other than that has done stuff like... [checks notes] Angry Birds 2 and The Emoji Movie, and that's kind of how this whole thing is going: some go-nowhere studio has this bizarre, incredible flash of inspiration that pushes CG animation in some completely fresh, even transgressive new direction—it feels dumb to say about a movie that otherwise is as silly as The Mitchells vs. The Machines, but this kind of feels visionary in terms of how it uses texture and character design/movement within intentionally unreal digital environments, and I feel like I keep running into movies that feel similarly ambitious, never from the same studio: there was that wild DreamWorks run a few years ago with Trolls and Captain Underpants, Netflix's The Willoughbys last year, The Peanuts Movie from Blue Sky Studios, etc. Not all (not even most!) of these movies are very good, but the sheer number of wild technical experiments that have generated successful, expressive CG templates is dazzling when taken as a whole. And this is all happening while the King Daddy CG animators in the room, Pixar and Disney, are also consistently making groundbreaking milestones in their own CG animation—Raya and the Last Dragon is probably the best-looking Disney CG feature ever, and Soul is close to the best-looking Pixar film, both pinnacles of their respective studios' house styles while also gesturing toward new, more experimental ground. I mean, don't get me wrong: I'd love it if the current landscape made room for traditional cel animation, too, which it doesn't (aside: TV animation, also a wellspring of innovation right now, is a whole different conversation, one that does include cel animation). But if we aren't going to get that, then at least what we have instead is this. In fact, if we could actually get some good screenplays into the industry, we'd be looking at something of a golden age for American animation, because the sheer level of great animators working inside the industry right now is ridiculously high. Until then, I guess I'm going to keep writing these "the animation is incredible but the screenplay is bleh" reviews. Grade: B
A tremendously well-observed story of a friendship slowly drifting apart over the course of maybe a decade. This movie definitely shows its microbudget in the decidedly modest visuals, but the writing (essentially sketching out a series of vignettes between these two characters) paired with the exceptional lead performances (Tallie Medel and Norma Kuhling) make this movie come alive in ways that I wasn't expecting. The film should probably come with some sort of content warning, though, considering just how grim it gets; the early scenes of the movie suggest a light dramedy in the vein of, say, Joe Swanberg, but as the movie goes on, it becomes clearer and clearer just how serious the implications of the early scenes are, culminating in tragedy that I found extremely moving but also incredibly bleak. A very good movie, but only for those prepared for something of a tough watch by the end. Grade: A-
I cannot stress how much I love the texture of Peter Strickland movies—I guess his giallo-by-way-of-niche-analog-hobbies thing is a little bit of a schtick, but it's a great schtick and way more interesting than what's been done by a lot of this recent wave of horror directors looking to ape '70s/'80s media. So I wish I liked this better. It's a pair of stories connected by the same device: a killer dress. And neither story is bad in isolation—they both (but especially the second one) have a kind of EC Comics sensibility that warps the horror into wry comedy. But these stories don't work all that well in concert with each other, and their hour-a-piece runtimes are both way too long for an anthology format, which makes the movie just drag by the end. Too bad. But still keep making movies, Peter Strickland! I like your vibe! Grade: B-
This was obviously never going to be as good as the book—not just one of Stephen King's best but also the exceptionally rare King novel with none of that dude's worst impulses (I love you, Stephen, but still). But the fact is that adapting to the screen a book that is a 300-page monologue was always going to be a tall order, and this screenplay is not up to that task, thinning out the richness of the title character and her relationship with her employer Vera and introducing a somewhat strained mother-daughter redemption frame narrative broken up with some hammy transitions between the frame and the flashbacks. But all that said, this is still extremely watchable. The cast is top-to-bottom great, chewing through the hamminess of this whole project with visible relish, and while some of the transitions don't work for me, the actual cinematography itself looks very good—kinda Douglas Sirk meets Hitchcock vibes, at least as far as the texture of the imagery goes. And much as I ragged on the screenplay earlier, I do have to tip my hat for the way that it (along with the very game cast, it must also be said) preserves the Stephen-King-iness of the dialogue while somehow avoiding the cringe that usually comes with transposing his dialect ticks into living actors' mouths. On those strengths, I'm a little surprised this movie isn't talked about more. Then again, almost nobody talks about the source novel either, which is a far stronger overall package, so I guess it's fitting. Grade: B
Technically a rewatch, but I haven't seen it in more than 20 years, so oh well. This one really should have stayed in the memories. Just a dreadful, tedious movie with bad acting, a bad message (I mean, I guess the official message is "Read," but it's also "Quit being a dope who worries about reasonable things like biking accidents and head injuries!"), and animation that is way lousier than I remembered. This movie and its concept (there's a magical land where all the things in novels are real; also, books talk and you get to become a cartoon—this is Michael Heaven) were so intoxicating to me as a young reader, and I totally understand why this movie appealed to me enough that I checked this out of Hollywood Video countless times and wore out the novelization and wrote baby Pagemaster fanfic. But wow, does this movie look lifeless to my adult eyes. Grade: D+
I went on this disappointing nostalgia quest because it was part of Episode 350 of the Cinematary podcast, which I was on and you can listen to here if you are interested in hearing me trash this movie (or other people talk about other nostalgic rewatches, not all of which were so unpleasant).
A fun and funny zombie movie, though I was caught off-guard by how bleak it is, given its otherwise flippant tone. The idea that zombies are in excruciating pain because they are conscious of their own decay is... *shudder*, and the film's understanding of the U.S. military as an institution indifferent to (and even willing to purposefully cause) suffering is maybe basic but pointedly rendered here. Also, as an aside, I'm in the exact same boat as critic Mike D'Angelo in having been always a little perplexed where the whole "BRAAAAINS" thing for zombies came from—it's apparently from this movie! Grade: B+
Television
I probably should have just stopped at the first series, which ended with a sense of closure and left me feeling good (if only marginally so) about my time spent with this show. This second series isn't terrible, but it doesn't really add anything to the show either. Basically, it's about the various characters having PTSD from their experiences in Series 1 while also having to deal with the consequences of their actions in that first series. Which isn't an inherently bad idea, but I dunno, I guess what ultimately hooked me about the first series was the slow-dawning sense of pathos beneath the posture of teen apathy. With that already played out, there's not anywhere for these characters to go that's all that interesting for me. Grade: C+
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