I didn't mean to watch multiple movies starring Richard Gere, but I guess sometimes the stars align to be over-exposed to a sexy-but-mediocre actor.
Movies
I saw a review that called this "the empty man of 2002," and that's not wrong: it's got the same cosmic unease arising from the way one man's procedural quest leads him to peel back a corner of the fabric of the universe and glimpse something otherworldly in the beyond. The Mothman Prophecies lacks the savoir faire that makes The Empty Man feel so big, but this is good enough that it doesn't feel like it deserves its semi-forgotten status. Grade: B
Except for the impeccably evoked neon environments and Giorgio Moroder score (and wow, are they impeccable!), there's not really a ton going for this movie when we have several decades of Schrader tweaking (and usually improving on) its "God's lonely man" format. Also, this definitely says more about me than about the movie, but for a film so full of now bygone-era lifestyle porn, the most appealing to me is the three-story record store that Gere walks through. Grade: B-
A bunch of online chuckleheads like to call this one of the worst movies of all time, and that's just madness. For one, the premise given in the title (which the movie plays very straight) is just too much intrinsic fun to ever make this movie even close to the "worst" anything, and for two, this movie is super stylish. It's riding that ambiguous line between cheapness as a virtue and cheapness as a liability, and definitely some of the decisions here are kind of laughable: the narrator imprisoned behind a painting, for one, or the preponderance of dubbed dialogue. But some of the other techniques in the movie, whether intentional artistic flourishes or cost-saving necessities with incidental effects, make this movie strikingly surreal and feel pretty fresh, even 40+ years after its release. People like to bring up that the director himself doesn't even have strong memories of making the film, such was the haphazard, quickie B-film atmosphere of its creation, but authorial intent is overrated, imo—who cares if the filmmakers made this interesting and cool on purpose? It's still interesting and cool. Grade: B+
A screwball comedy that reminds me a lot of the moment-by-moment speed and chaos of His Girl Friday but without the relentless momentum of that masterpiece, nor the ability to make me care even a little bit about what is going on with the characters. It's fun to see the toxic power dynamics see-saw back and forth between a controlling director and a prima donna actress, but in the end, I just kind of felt like I was impassively watching these characters behind glass. Grade: C+
Television
Bless Adult Swim for rescuing this show from cancellation (and a pox upon Netflix for cancelling it in the first place). Those who watched the first season (there are dozens of us! dozens!) will know what to expect: millennials living in a city, but it's an animal city brimming with playful and also just downright surreal world-building, which also extends to a wildly elastic animation style that often manifests emotions and symbols into physical objects the characters can interact with. This season is maybe just a tad less surreal and weird, and the stories get just a tad bigger: climate change and gentrification are now key concerns alongside the usual "thirtysomethings navigating life in the city." But at its core, it's still basically the same show, despite the switch in networks, and if you dug the first season (which I did), you'll dig this one. Grade: B+
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