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Mr. Rogers consoles the country in Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
It’s a sad state of affairs when a documentary about one of the most simply good people to have ever lived must dedicate screentime to Trump, Brexit, and Fox News, but such is the world that conservatives have made. Even if no mention had been made of current affairs, Won’t You Be My Neighbor would…
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Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!” earns its exclamation point
Darren Aronofsky’s mother! is an allegory so undisguised that it barely qualifies as one. It’s more like a cinematic smoothie: blend one (1) King James Bible, the Big Bang / Big Crunch Wikipedia article, a heavy splash of Lars Von Trier-esque literal-as-metaphorical torture of a beautiful woman, season to taste with climate change science, and…
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Winnie-the-Pooh is a labor reformer in Disney’s Christopher Robin
Given its sluggish pace, depressive tone, and dramatization of the origin of Paid Time Off for postwar UK laborers, whom exactly was the intended audience for Christopher Robin? Kids with premature midlife crises and uncommonly long attention spans? Adults with low vocabularies and an acceptance of brain-bending metaphysics? Think about it too hard, and it’s…
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Why can’t Star Trek always be as good as The Undiscovered Country?
“Please let me know if there’s another way we can screw up tonight.” Not only is Nicholas Meyer’s The Undiscovered Country my personal favorite Star Trek movie, I may go far as to argue that it is the best. It truly ticks every box of what makes Star Trek Star Trek, and comes the closest…
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Love is having someone to embrace at the end, on Miracle Mile
The buzz is true; the under-the-radar cult gem Miracle Mile is surprisingly great. Harry (Anthony Edwards) and Julie’s (Mare Winningham) hellacious night on Los Angeles’ titular Miracle Mile suggests Before Sunrise crossed with Children of Men crossed with After Hours, but without the reprieve of a hopeful ending. Unless you consider life on a geologic…
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The treasures of FilmStruck include the Trainspotting commentary track
Trainspotting is a lifelong personal favorite film. Essential. FilmStruck subscribers should be sure to catch it one more time before before WarnerMedia and AT&T cruelly shut it down on November 29. FilmStruck is full of more invaluable treasures than anyone could watch in two weeks, but I must single out Trainspotting as a particular treat,…
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Trading Places: The prince’s nurture vs. the pauper’s nature
John Landis’ Trading Places is remarkably unafraid to take a cold hard look at racism, privilege, and inequality. It still retains the power to incite gasps and raise eyebrows, decades after release. With two major caveats, Trading Places is one of my personal favorite comedies. Caveat one: for a movie with guts enough to deal…
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Songs That Broke My Heart: U2’s Running to Stand Still
The classic U2 song decries the political violence and drug epidemic afflicting their hometown Dublin.
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The Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsberg champions intelligence and equality in the documentary ‘RBG’
One of the greatest living Americans. If anyone deserves to be lionized in a feature-length hagiography, it’s The Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsberg. In these dark times, it’s heartening to see this unapologetic celebration of one woman’s lifelong championship of American values like fairness, justice, and equality. Glimpses of her personal life prove she also lived…
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Teenagers shall inherit the world in Wes Ball’s Maze Runner: The Death Cure
While definitely not in the target audience, and without expressly setting out to do so, I’ve still somehow managed to see all three Maze Runner movies. Their easy availability on streaming services is just too tempting for my chronic addiction to escapist sci-fi. It’s interesting to see how young adult fiction contrives such scenarios where…
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Massive Attack to reissue Mezzanine as DNA-infused spray paint, and Banksy is certainly not in the band why would you even ask
Our dystopian Black Mirror future is here, too soon. Should we be concerned that, not only is it now possible to encode digital files in DNA, but that it is also already so trivial that it can be commodified by the music industry as a deluxe collectible tchotchke? I’m calling this 2021 Pitchfork headline now:…
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Monty Python throws a farewell party for themselves in “Live (Mostly): One Down, Four to Go”
Like many misfit American kids of my generation, my brain was permanently rewired when I discovered the BBC series Monty Python’s Flying Circus on PBS in the 1980s. Monty Python, Doctor Who, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy formed a triumvirate of British pop culture that gave dorky anglophiles like us a pool of…