Black Panther

Ryan Coogler’s film represents a watershed moment for Marvel, for blockbusters and for black cinema.

Black Panther PosterMarvel movies have been disposable. They’ve been designed to be the same. And even the best ones have only shown glimmers of the personality behind the camera. All that changes with “Black Panther.” In fact, so much has changed with this film. It signals not just a new step forward for Marvel, but a shift in the modern blockbuster’s ability to be political and current, and it’s an absolute leap forward in what we should demand from black cinema.

That’s in part because this very clearly is a Ryan Coogler film. “Black Panther” starts and ends in Oakland in the early ‘90s, as personal a setting as you could get from Coogler. And though Black Panther’s native African nation of Wakanda may not be real, the story Coogler is telling is certainly rooted in reality. Continue reading “Black Panther”

The Disaster Artist

James Franco’s “The Disaster Artist” doesn’t have the personality and vision of Greg Sestero’s book or Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room.”

The Disaster Artist Poster
A24

“You can be called Mark, like that guy from that movie, Mark Damon.” That’s Tommy Wiseau telling his friend Greg Sestero his vision for the best/worst movie ever made, “The Room.”

In Sestero’s book “The Disaster Artist,” which tells the story of how Greg met Tommy and came to make “The Room,” there’s a wonderful chapter in which Greg takes Tommy to see “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” The movie is about an enchanting fraud, a mysterious guy who poses as one identity and seduces his way into becoming a close friend to the protagonist, only for things to turn violent and deadly when he’s exposed as a phony and a shell of a real person. Tommy sees the movie and is inspired, and he goes on to write “The Room.” But Greg sees it and thinks, Ripley IS Tommy.

Tommy Wiseau is an elusive, strange figure. His inscrutable Eastern European accent and broken English, his unruly jet black hair and his bizarre fashion sense of vests, jangly keys and studded black belts just scratch the surface of his mystique. He made the worst movie ever made and has become a cult sensation for it, but is he a genius or a lunatic?

Sestero’s “The Disaster Artist” plays into Tommy’s mystique and never gives you all the answers about him. It jumps around from before and after they started making “The Room,” and as a result, you see the disaster unfolding before you. Continue reading “The Disaster Artist”

Songwriting Blog #1

When I graduated college, a family member asked me: now that you’re a writer, will you write songs for musicians like Taylor Swift?

To be clear, I graduated with a degree in journalism.

Perhaps the more hilarious thing is that I could simply get a job writing anything for Taylor Swift now that I had a degree, but it was astonishing to me that anyone would think writing stupid little blog posts like this one is at all the same as composing a melody and lyrics for a pop song.

I told my relative I don’t have the poetry in me. Certainly there are some lyricists who have had success with poetry and prose. But it still doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what songwriting is like.

I’ve played guitar for a little over four years now, and in that time I’ve come up with at least a dozen miniature song snippets, noodling around until I find a riff or a chord progression I think sounds neat. Occasionally I’ve been able to hum or whistle out a melody and then attempted to figure out what the hell those notes are and why they work, if at all.

The hard part is finishing and following through on any of those promises of a song. That’s where these blog posts come in. Continue reading “Songwriting Blog #1”

Passengers

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt can’t save “Passengers” from being a mightily dumb romance with an unfortunate action movie tacked on.

Passengers PosterWhat’s 90 years destined to die alone when you have a space yacht, virtual reality dance battles, a sage British robot bartender and cosmic bungee jumping all to yourself?

The mightily dumb “Passengers” was touted as a sexy slick star vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt as two literally star-crossed lovers awoken from hypersleep who form a romance while saving their vessel from peril. So it’s not as if we should’ve expected some thoughtful, existential story, but we’re left with the idea that eternity isn’t so bad when you have some pretty views, good food and a buddy to share it with. Continue reading “Passengers”

The Best Movies of 2017

Brian reflects on the year in film, with a year end list of the Best Movies of 2017 that includes “Baby Driver,” “Dunkirk,” “Detroit,” and more.

I have no interest in making a year end list that speaks to life under Donald Trump or that reflects the cultural consciousness of 2017.

These are among the more tiring of critical, shorthand cliches for summing up the year in movies. And bold-faced political films like “Get Out” and Americana rich dramas like “Three Billboards” and “The Florida Project” all perform very well in that context. But I don’t want to read the analysis for what “The Shape of Water” has to say about healthcare any more than I want to pretend as though that’s how I shaped my list.

The other cliche is the critic who wants to recommend as much as possible. News flash: there are a lot of good movies readily available at your fingertips, but you know as well as I do that there are only so many hours in the day. Critics often bemoan these lists as pointless and would rather devote their column inches to movies that won’t appear elsewhere. But if I can be the umpteenth person to say you should really see “Lady Bird,” hey, maybe you should really see “Lady Bird.”

So here’s what I’ve come up with instead: the movies on my Best of the Year List are ranked based on what I’d most want to watch again right now. And in my book, there are about 18 truly great movies I saw in 2017 that stand above the rest. These are the ones I’ve most wanted to tell people to see, the ones that have lingered in my mind for weeks and months and have made me want to revisit them. Isn’t that enough? Continue reading “The Best Movies of 2017”

The Best Albums of 2017

First, a few words about Arcade Fire.

I never thought the day would come that I would be ashamed to like this band. 2017 in music proved that possibly only Beyoncé is sacred. Anything that you liked yesterday could just as well be fodder for infinite Internet memes today and tomorrow. If you’re not saying or doing something important right now, do you even still matter? Just ask Taylor Swift.

With their fifth album “Everything Now,” Arcade Fire sought to satirize and critique that Internet culture. And where Father John Misty succeeded and generated the right kind of controversy, Arcade Fire’s album rollout was hindered by a marketing campaign in which the band issued phony reviews and literal fake news. At one point they halted the sale of “Everything Now” fidget spinners because they had their own fidget spinners to sell. And every Internet gimmick that in one artist’s hand would be genius in another would be U2 dumping “Songs of Innocence” on your iPhone.

Arcade Fire may have been good once, but they’re now in the same cultural doghouse as U2, Coldplay and even Nickelback, undisputed fair game for whatever labels and jokes you want to assign. I don’t know whether Arcade Fire was ever “cool.” Hipsters certainly do not like them anymore. But “Everything Now” was an excuse for all the haters to come out of the woodwork. “This band has been bad since “The Suburbs!” And they’ve always been overrated!”

The problem is that the music itself didn’t rise above the online reaction and marketing rollout. “Everything Now” is their worst album, and on the whole, it’s not especially good. The lethargic reggae beat of “Chemistry,” the arrhythmia that is “Peter Pan,” the generic punk and country of both “Infinite Content” tracks: this is the worst stretch this band has ever recorded. And yet as I’ve sat with this album more, it’s grown on me. Songs like “Put Your Money On Me” and “We Don’t Deserve Love” are dreamy earworms that linger in your mind, but they’re not the soaring rock anthems that have traditionally served as Arcade Fire album finales. The title track and “Creature Comfort” are two of the best singles of the year, the first an upbeat indie dance jingle with melancholy lyrics about media saturation, and the second a violent track with a club beat and a message about suicide.

So it pains me when I have to pretend as though I’m wrong to call Arcade Fire my favorite band, as though they belong to some other cultural entity that isn’t woke to what’s actually good. Arcade Fire were great before, and they can be great again, but it doesn’t mean they’re worth ignoring now.

As for what I most enjoyed in music this year, I’m not a good enough judge of what’s fashionable to know whether any or all of these artists are actually cool or important, but I refuse to be ashamed about any of them. These are the Best Albums of 2017.  Continue reading “The Best Albums of 2017”

Marshall

Chadwick Boseman just can’t find a solid prestige picture

Marshall PosterPoor Chadwick Boseman. First he played Jackie Robinson. Then he portrayed James Brown. Now he’s NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall. This is the third prominent figure of 20th Century African American history he’s gotten the chance to play. And yet in each case, the movie he’s stuck in is a bland, insipid and worst of all whitewashed prestige picture.

Apparently Thurgood Marshall’s crowning achievement worthy of a biopic isn’t a story of how he became a lawyer or the racism he faced in his career. Reginald Hudlin’s “Marshall” cluelessly focuses on the one story in which Marshall is forced to be silent and cede his courtroom victory were it not for the one white man who stood up to save the day. Continue reading “Marshall”

The Trip to Spain

Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan are still hilarious three movies later, the most consistent comedy franchise ever

The Trip to Spain PosterIf you’ve seen one of “The Trip” movies, you know what you’re in for: celebrity impressions, driving through the gorgeous European countryside, a bit of carpool karaoke, and lots of food porn. With “The Trip to Spain,” Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom have refined that formula even further. You have to wonder, what could possibly stop this franchise?

Well, they found it, in a hilarious gag to close out “The Trip to Spain” that might be about the only plausible capper to this delightful series. Because there’s nothing new to report about “The Trip to Spain,” it’s just more of what works.

They do Mick Jagger talking about public schools, Marlon Brando doing Monty Python’s “Spanish Inquisition,” and do Roger Moore for just about forever. The difference is that these routines have some narrative built into them. Brydon does his Roger Moore impression long after it has become annoying to his co-stars, and you can feel the awkward tension just adding to the humor. Or when they revert back to their James Bond play acting, you genuinely want to see how this make believe exchange ends, with Brydon’s fork quivering as it comes up to his mouth as though he’s about to be poisoned to death.

Part of the charm of “The Trip” movies is that Coogan and Brydon are somewhat insufferable. In the first film it was clear they did not like each other, and that’s gone away. And “The Trip to Italy” might still have the most emotional heft. But it’s been replaced with playful one-upsmanship of Coogan constantly reminding he has two Oscar nominations for “Philomena.” “The Trip” movies in many ways are about masculinity, with their impressions and sarcastic one-liners a means of asserting themselves.

So it’s wrong to think these are just trivial comedies. Three movies in, it’s hard to find another comedy trilogy that has been so consistent, funny and even thoughtful. I have a feeling Winterbottom could still yet revive “The Trip” for a fourth film, and whatever joke they have to bridge the gap between movies will be hysterical. But if this really is the end, I’ll miss hearing how Michael Caine’s voice has gotten even more broken up. “She was only 15 years old!”

3 ½ stars

Cries From Syria

The HBO Documentary puts America’s own political climate in 2017 into an important context

Cries From Syria PosterIt almost goes without saying that the Syrian refugee crisis and Civil War is Bad with a capital B. Evgeny Afineevsky’s HBO documentary “Cries From Syria” is broken up into four chapters. It starts with the birth of the revolution in the Arab Spring, then the start of the Syrian Civil War, the rescue efforts as the situation worsens, and finally the ongoing escape efforts from the regime. It’s a film about how revolution spreads and what it’s like to live under constant turmoil and oppression.

And the imagery Afineevsky cobbles together from raw, handheld footage from many civilians and freedom fighters on the ground are grim and horrifying. “Cries from Syria” opens with a toddler lying dead face down on a beach, the waves washing over his body. A 6-year-old has a hole in his face where a sniper bullet has pierced through his cheek. The aftermath of a chemical weapon attack in 2013 resembles Holocaust imagery. Former prisoners recount how everyone among them was raped, beaten and tortured. And in their testimonials, Syrian civilians remember how wrong they were when they thought things couldn’t get any worse.

But it’s that last bit that stuck with me most of all. “We thought that was the worst that could happen.” Continue reading “Cries From Syria”

mother!

No explainer article can fully capture how truly crazy and demented Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!” is to just watch.

MotherPosterIt’s a creation myth! It’s about how men gaslight women! It’s about climate change! It’s a bizarre human comedy! It’s a crazed mix of Luis Bunuel, Rosemary’s Baby, Black Swan and a dash of La La Land! Whatever mother! is, don’t forget those exclamation points.

I’ve already read way too much about Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, and if you’ve seen the film, you know I’m right. It’s best to go in relatively cold. Because every explainer and analysis that tries to paint it as a divine Biblical allegory isn’t wrong, but it never fully captures how flat out, bat shit crazy this movie is. Continue reading “mother!”