Still (slowly) working on that 2022 music post. It will come out eventually, mark my words!
Movies
This was a lot of fun, and it seems like everyone making this movie had a lot of fun, too, including (especially!) Mia Goth, who basically crams every single impulse of her career into her character's arc here. She's having a five-course meal. It's also a much funnier movie than I was expecting. I suppose there's a way to make a satirical story about rich people behaving badly on a poor island nation into something scary, and the movie tepidly gestures toward that, but it's mostly just outrageous in an Old Testament kind of way that mixes its oddly archetypal premise (you can create clones to accept the capital punishment you deserve) with the extreme debasement that Alexander Skarsgård undergoes in response to his initial hubris of being enamored at finding a beautiful young fan of his writing. Watching Mia Goth just humiliate this dude over and over again is hilarious. Certainly not for everyone, but it is for me, for sure. Grade: B+
I went in expecting something weird and messy, and it is to a degree, but it's not manic in the slightest, which was really what I was geared up for. Instead, it's this thoroughly melancholy and pensive piece of theater about the passage of time and the ways that we use story to create meaning out of that passage. Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton have unexpectedly great screen chemistry, and the storybook framing of the movie is not nearly as twee as it should have been. I was really moved by the end. That last scene in the park with Idris and Tilda walking into the horizon is perfect. Grade: A-
I watched this for this week's episode of Cinematary (listen to it here!), thinking it was a good, early Michelle Yeoh showcase. And it's about 30% that! The other 70% is a fairly unengaging film about some bumbling low-level thieves getting up to Three-Stooges-esque shenanigans. This was probably a victim of my expectations, and it may have been more engaging if I had approached the movie understanding what it would be like, but I came here for Michelle Yeoh, dangit! Anyway, Michelle Yeoh is very good in the scenes she's in. Grade: B-
It's more of a pseudo-silent movie in the vein of Modern Times or a Tati film (has Mel Brooks watched Tati??) than a true silent film, and it's a bit too reliant on title cards for my tastes. But there are some good gags here, impressive considering that visual gags aren't usually Brooks's strong suit. My favorite is the scene with Burt Reynolds showering and slowly acquiring more hands (you'll know it when you see it). That said, this runs out of gas majorly by the end, and also, there's a running "joke" where the punchline is simply a character yelling the f-slur (plus a quick transphobic aside in another case), and while I know it's no fun to make the very innovative observation that an old Hollywood movie is queer-phobic, those bits definitely put a damper on this movie's charm for me, which is a problem when this movie coasts so heavily on the quaint charm of its concept. Grade: B-
When I approach movies that are typically considered among the greatest of all time, they usually inspire one of two responses: 1) I am as enthusiastic about it as its reputation warrants, or 2) I like the movie fine but don't get why it's considered one of the greats. L'Atalante is definitely in the latter camp, and I'm not sure why people think this is so amazing, especially when Murnau's Sunrise beat this movie to its punch several years earlier. That said, this movie is often very lovely, and I'm glad I watched it. I like the ship's crew, who are fun to watch. Also, the underwater sequence is really good. Anyway, good movie. Not sure why it's so canonized. Grade: B+
Books
About as dull as its title suggests, though once the titular pigeon goes to WWI, the book gets strangely high-minded and philosophical about the nature of conflict. Still, most of this is about a young Indian boy training a pigeon, without a lot of development of either the boy or the pigeon. Beautiful illustrations by Boris Artzybasheff, though. Stay tuned for a Newbery Chronicles podcast in the next couple weeks. Grade: C+
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