Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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Under the Silver Lake

Andrew Garfield plays a paranoid trashbag hipster Redditor Philip Marlowe trying to solve a surreal Lynchian Lite shaggy dog mystery in a neo noir LA populated primarily by beautiful aspiring starlets and a handful of the kinds of men who could be played by bearded Topher Grace (one even is), and I just don’t know where I come down on this one! It’s a mix for me, my friends. And it’s not even as simple as “I liked these parts, I didn’t like these parts”, because there are fundamental elements to this movie’s, I don’t know, thesis? ethos? irony? that I feel like I flip on continuously, like closing one eye and then the other and watching something in your field of vision jump back and forth.

Full review on Watch Log

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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Toy Story 4

Toy Story 4 is this summer’s equal but opposite movie to Dark Phoenix, it too arriving seemingly unannounced and unasked for, a belated fourth installment of what we kinda thought was a trilogy, but with the difference being that Toy Story 4 absolutely makes a case for its existence, and is good. Like most Pixar features, it is ostensibly a kids movie, but a pretty convincing argument could be made that it was crafted in some part for the people who were kids back when the first Toy Story came out in 1995. For an audience now aged about 28-36, prime age for having kids themselves, there is something very comforting about watching a movie populated with the warm characters you grew up with, modeling the pains and joys of parenting as they always have, but this time also presenting a life path that doesn’t involve having a kid of your own, and assuring you that that is fine. That life too can be a beautiful and rewarding adventure, a choice as valid as any.

And this is also a movie in which Tony Hale voices a plastic spork gripped in existential terror at being brought suddenly and unbidden to life, and spends all of act one trying to fling himself into garbage bins, warbling “Traaaash!”, which is certainly, as the now-30-year-old kids say, a whole ass mood.

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[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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The Last Black Man in San Francisco

If you take the concept “surreal black fable about gentrification in the Bay Area,” then go as far away from Sorry to Bother You as you can get on foot in an afternoon, always keeping If Beale Street Could Talk in your line of sight, you might land in the neighborhood of The Last Black Man in San Francisco. I liked this movie quite a bit. It was strange in ways I enjoyed, and strange in others that felt more like the growing pangs of a directorial debut. The first was in some of the details, and the second in the story structure, which I would have pushed them on. The pacing gets too airy in the back half, the focus widening in a way that was intended to bring more into the frame but I felt just made everything a bit fuzzier, and would have made a case that they stay more narrowly focused in favor of stronger clarity. Just stay tight on that house, it’s such an anchor; the set and the stakes and framing all wrapped up in one big old Victorian in the Mission.

But god, is this ever a visually gorgeous film.

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[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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The Love Witch

I’m writing this at my table while a summer thunderstorm rolls in over the evening and shakes the trees outside my window, because when ELSE am I going to write about The Love Witch, the astonishingly period-perfect 1960s B-movie pulp pastiche in which, essentially, Lana Del Rey is a psychotic lovesick California witch who, [sighs prettily], just wants a man but they just keep dying on her.

Full review on Watch Log

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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Cléo from 5 to 7

You can tell that young Agnès Varda, in only her second film (my girl!), knew every second that she was making a Movie, capital M, and was so enamored with all the possibilities. Zero pretension or posturing in her artistry, either, all for the joy and expression and vibrant feeling of it. The movie is technically an hour and a half memento mori, as a young woman waits until 6:30pm when she can call her doctor for the results of a cancer biopsy, and yet it is, beautifully, one of the most alive movies I’ve ever watched. The way Varda depicts the city, its movement and its people, is so present you can almost feel it tingling on your skin. It is like a time capsule of a midcentury summer solstice in Paris, scooped up on film and cut into a gem that will sparkle forever. (The Hollywood Theatre screened it on June 20th—you love to see it.)

Full review on Watch Log

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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Dark Phoenix

The thing about Dark Phoenix is that it’s not egregiously incompetent, the execution isn’t really any worse than the worst of any superhero franchise, it’s just so…mystifyingly pointless. It is nothing. It is movie that had no reason to be made, and now that it’s here, has brought nothing to explain itself. I am reminded of that Amber Ruffin bit where she asks, searchingly, “Why did you do this, and what exactly is what you did? What is it for? Fun, nothing, what? Who gets something from it, and, why do they get what they get? And, what is what they get?”

Let’s attempt to answer some of these questions. Why? Fun. Nothing. What else are we doing.

Full review on Watch Log

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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Columbus

I was tired and just wanted to watch a nice, quiet movie where people spend most of their time slowly walking among leafy green deciduous trees looking at modern architecture.

Full review on Watch Log

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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Rocketman

Hey so, hey, listen, this isn’t exactly good, but it’s MAGNIFICENT. The Elton John movie, as you might expect—nay, desire—is just wall-to-wall cheese, aaallll for the snacking. Rocketman is dazzlingly stupid and so stupidly charming. It’s big and bright and gay and sappy and really, so very dumb, I cannot emphasize enough how dumb this movie is, but at the same time, they made really smart choices? Or scratch that, no: they made the ~*Galaxy Brain*~ choices. For starters, they didn’t make a musician biopic, they made a musical about a musician. That’s immediately so much better!! I’m not sure the cast sings any more than one (1) song at the actual chronological point in which it was written, but I am pretty sure that Taron Egerton is wearing a different pair of glasses in Every. Single. Scene. And these are the kind of choices I want from my Elton John musical.

> Well the longest review I’ve written yet this year is for Rocketman

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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Booksmart

Booksmart is a one wild night, end-of-high-school party caper, only this time our endearing failboat heroes are two girls in a story written and directed by sharp, fun-loving female filmmakers, the hookup quest belongs to the cute dorky lesbian, and there are no real villains besides arranging transportation. It’s rowdy and raucous and hilarious and heartfelt, feels like a big, rocking hug from millennial women to our shining Gen Z little sisters, and you should go see it in the most crowded theater you can find with as many of your friends as you can muster, for the literal lols—this movie was designed for those infectious peals of laughter that would take over the gang at a slumber party.

Full review on Watch Log

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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Volver

Apparently Penélope Cruz has one of those faces with a one-to-one relationship to my emotions. Penélope Cruz: [tears fill her eyes] / Me, sobbing: “She’s so beautiful and strong!” And tears fill her eyes a LOT in Volver (‘The Return’), the second Pedro Almodóvar film I’ve seen in a month, and hey I love him. 

Full review on Watch Log