A Grand Quiet

I’ve been real slack on keeping this one up. I’m sorry. I have my excuses, plenty of them, but in reality I’ve just been choosing to live a more unhealthy life for about the past month or so. I get like this sometimes and I’m never sure how to pull myself out of it. I’m working a bunch of early shifts next week, I’m hoping that that will be a start.

For the meantime, let’s be relieved in the fact that the cinemas are starting to get good again, even if two of the joints I reviewed this week have been netflix ones. It’s been getting warm here again too and those big cold rooms start to feel real inviting.

Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is a totally sick joint. Sure this one has Ansel Elgort as the lead, which don’t feel much after he launched Simon Pegg, but this is his first proper star vehicle. Seeing people like Foxx, Spacey, Hamm appearing in something this distinctive is great.

I’ve started the Baby Driver soundtrack, spotify says it’s one hour 45 minutes long. The film clocks in at a tight one hour 43, including credits. I’ll allow you to feel however you’d like about that.

Bong Joon-ho’s Okja probably belongs on netflix, it like one of those films that’ll open small, flop at the box office, then six months later the film nerds would start streaming it and say, ‘Why did we never catch this in theatres?’ It’s too weird to ever grab that initial traction. I’m all in on Bong though, love him.

He’s been making message movies for a while, so given his disregard for tone and traditional notions of dramatic resolution they usually end up in weird places. Check how many out there hating on the end of Snowpiercer.

The Circle actually got a proper release in America, no luck here though. It not that great. For a film about tech culture it is far too in love with the aesthetic. Its camera is this extremely propagandistic tool. I’ve become increasingly distrustful of the crane shot as a filmmaking device, the glide, the arc it creates, its representation of reality don’t feel honest to me. The Circle uses it all the time, I ain’t feeling it.

I don’t think Dave Eggers ever heard of Justin.tv. Or, maybe he had and then decided to base his psycho-intrigue tech-thriller on a world where people would latch onto that idea. Course, we know in reality people don’t want to watch a 24/7 livestream of a real person’s boring life, they want to watch them playing videogames real time and throw money at them.

Despite the embarrassment of riches Ceyda Torun’s Kedi is my favourite film of the week. Cos I’m at heart a contrarian hipster poser. Also Kedi is so so good. Maybe as a cat person I’m biased, I’ll cop to that, but oh my god, a chill film about the lives of these chill kitties. I’m always in.

Film knows what you coming to it for. The cameras ain’t too invested in framing the humans of the story, we see them sure, enough to put a face to their words but then we go straight back to that cat action.

Jon Watts Spider-Man: Homecoming is pretty great. It’s limiting but I’m of the opinion that these Marvel joints work the best when they’re concentrating on being joyful. Is being a superhero hard, I’m sure, but at the same time it looks like so much fucking fun. Now there a whole ton of bumps and roughness through the running time but if the cast able to do anything it’s sell us the joy. Now please give the girls something to do (and behind the camera too).

I liked this film. It’s rough here and then, and slight unbearable when Iron Man butts his head in. It’s Tom Holland’s performance tho’. See, I think we’d have both been 14 when Iron Man came out. If kid were actually 15, he’d have been six. And that fucking scans. I buy him, and I buy that and I’m happy and I’m jealous.

On the television front we about half way through the run of Twin Peaks: The Return, and that episode eight. Wow. Look, I’m enjoying it, I like Lynch’s aesthetic, I like his approach to filmmaking. I even enjoyed Inland Empire that one time I saw it. Do I hope it’ll all tie together into some wonderful fulfilling Twin Peaks classic conclusion, sure. Imma try not to throw any expectations onto it though, when it’s finished and I have a handle on the shape of the thing I might congeal into some sorta opinion but for the moment I’m content to be dragged along for this wild ride.

GLOW came out on netflix recently too and I shoved that down my eyes in a single day. It’s good. I think hamstrung a little by the thirty minutes per episode running time. It’s a real fun cast of characters but that time restraint just don’t afford them enough time to satisfactorily develop. If, like kinda sister show Orange is the New Black, you gotta include the boring staid husband guy who’s just going to try slow everything down when he on screen, GLOW makes the right call in casting Rich Sommer. Maybe I ain’t got no right to love that dude as much as I do but at least he can engage so easily when onscreen. Also I’m gonna say it’s right call on making this basically the origin story of GLOW. Like, you can imagine a less formally interesting show where it starts with the league up and running and all this stuff comes in through flashback. The season is like a perfect self contained story and there’s so few hooks dropped for any future stories I dunno what to expect, I’ve still a season and a half of Orange left unwatched. Glow just made me wanting more of that dynamic, Orange just gets pretty hardcore sometimes.

Finally after about six months worth of popularity the internet has finally killed the word wholesome. I might write something longer about this backed up with evidence and all that shit but in essence recently someone put out a tweet with a nice, girl-next-door looking white girl posing with the Donald Trump Hollywood star, next to an ‘alternative looking non white girl flipping it off. Guess which one was labelled wholesome? This’d be so much easier with an image. It was the white girl. Basically because the internet as a whole has no way to process subtlety the concept of wholesomeness, which sprung up as a way to counter a perceived negativity in online discourse, now is only recognisable as this patina of good. The image must become the thing itself, so wholesomeness becomes a signifier of acceptable discourse rather than a genuine understanding of societal good. And I’m the person demanding more nuance from our memes.

It was the local city’s Pride yesterday and I was working. I thought I’d be okay with it, I been the past two years after all. Turns out it’s something I need to do at least once a year, just for me. Hopefully I’ll find a parade somewhere else this month.

Anyhow, that all I got this week. Imma try get myself better, I’ve banked up enough films over the weekend for five reviews next week I’ll keep ya in suspense as to which films though.

As always, if you’ve enjoyed any of my writing this week, any at all please follow me on facebook or twitter, instagram maybe or tumblr. Like my posts. Comment with your opinions too, I wanna know what you all been watching.

Love y’all

E

Music this week is the Baby Driver soundtrack. There some bangers on that thing.