Did you guys know that when Justin Timberlake sings, "It's gonna be me," the "me" sounds like "may" and you can make a meme about that every time it's May 1?
Movies
I thought this was a great deal of fun: a small-town crime thriller with great textures, in this case Main fishing village with sea shanties as a kind of Greek chorus between acts. Not really breaking the mold of this particularly well-trodden genre, but it's a really solid iteration of those familiar rhythms. I dug it a lot. Grade: A-
As long as this is a "hey, what if we put the entire spectrum of black male politics on a cross-country bus ride?" pressure cooker, it's super good. A top-to-bottom great cast animates what might have otherwise felt like overly abstract political discourse into something that feels human and raw, and the Million Man March as context is a kind of perfect storm for the ideological and dramatic tensions that simmer along. As soon as this has to put its plot into gear, though, this kinda stumbles, and the characters never quite land the transition from "human beings in impassioned dialogue with each other" to "human beings who must make decisions about important things together." It makes sense that this remains semi-forgotten in the context of Spike Lee's career, considering the towering titans of films he made elsewhere in the '90s and that definitely overshadow Get on the Bus. But it's one of those movies that feels particularly interesting for being so direct and small-scale in the context of a career that has rarely been so. Glad to have caught this one. Grade: B
I found this movie fine, enjoyable, and otherwise unremarkable, but the performances and costume design are next-level. The "pious man devoted to his principles unto death" plot is an archetype I've had diminishing returns with as I've gotten older, but Paul Scofield sells it pretty hard here. It's very funny to me that thirty years later he'd basically play the exact opposite of this role when he was Danforth in The Crucible. Grade: B
Television
Lots of fun with its self-referential, winking treatment of the soap/telenovela format, but also able to spin this into some exceptionally sweet and well-observed characters, too. Case in point is the entire premise of the show, wherein a woman who has never had sex get accidentally artificially inseminated—a knowingly goofy contrivance that somehow manages to spin that goofiness into a pretty sophisticated story about family, identity, and religious faith. There are half a dozen things about the show that follow a similar trajectory, taking silly concepts and weaving them into something with serious, thoughtful emotional stakes. Some of the more arch things I'm asked to take serious emotional stake in, especially the love triangle that develops between Jane and her accidental sperm donor and her fiancé, I found a little tedious at times and wished so much of the dramatic energy of the show weren't so driven by them. But as long as the show focuses on Jane's multi-generational household that she shares with her mother and grandmother, the show is consistently engaging and often very warm. The more outlandish telenovela elements are fun, too, such as the travails of prima donna show-within-the-show lead Rogelio (who eventually gets tied up into the emotional stakes of her primary family, of course) or the ongoing investigation of a drug lord named Sin Rostro, and the show finds a pretty good balance in each episode between more sincere beats and the off-the-wall camp elements. I'm enjoying the show so far, and I've been told that subsequent seasons make the love triangle more interesting, so I'm looking forward to what comes next. Grade: B+
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