"Bethlehem" (2014)

Bethlehem is about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it treats its subject in an unexpected manner. The conflict here has been stripped of the religious and political factors that have made it so complicated and inextricable. What remains is the personal, human core driving the struggle between Palestinian resistance fighters and Israeli police. 

Yuval Adler’s direction and Adler and Ali Wakad’s script tell the film with a level of docu-realism that makes the story harrowing and bleak at times. But Bethlehem isn’t entirely consumed by its sense of indignation and close observance of detail; indeed, the film is largely a taut, deftly plotted thriller that culminates in a devastating, intense final sequence. 

Sanfur (Shadi Mar’i) is a young man whose older brother Ibrahim (Hisham Suliman) is the leader of a Palestinian resistance movement known as Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Sanfur has become an undercover asset for the Israeli officer Razi (Tsahi Halevi). Sanfur has father figures in his life, including his own constantly disappointed real father, but he’s been neglected and overlooked and that’s easily drawn him into the influence of Razi. But Razi also holds real affection and concern for the boy and worries about his well-being and future even as events mount to tear apart their tender relationship. 

Bethlehem doesn’t lack for exciting action, but it’s often at its best when providing a glimpse into a world largely unfamiliar and rarely seen for many of us here in the states. Adler has a high level of empathy for his characters especially his two central figures, and one of the film’s strongest feats involves showing how little any political views factors into day-to-day decisions on both sides. The personal as political, as it were, is what stands out. These political actors are so far removed from what initiated the violence playing itself out that their motivations often feel more grounded in traditional gangster and cop, cat-and-mouse fighting than the complicated realities of the disputed territory. 

At times, it feels incredible that a film like Bethlehem was ever made. The film was shot on location in Israel and Palestine in the disputed territories of interest. The film feels startling true and honest about the real world tragedies it is informed by and fictionalizing, and this only serves to makes its own narrative all the more poignant and tragic. I keep thinking of the title; the film opens on a city sign denoting we’re in Bethlehem. It’s being shot at and is riddled with bullet holes. It’s hard to imagine this as the same land, of rebirth and salvation, mentioned in the Bible. Yet it is. 

Grade: A-

"Godzilla" (2014)

Something increasingly lost in the sequels and general feeling towards Godzilla as a character since the 1954 original film is how terrifying and awe-inspiring his initial appearance was. That was likely inevitable but it’s tainted the character as an adaptable property making him silly and goofy, the butt of a joke befitting his rubber-suited stomping. It’s also exactly the reason the most recent, 1994 Roland Emmerich-helmed adaptation was a dud; Godzilla may be a bit unbelievable but he’s also, ya know, a giant fucking lizard racking up property damage. This 2014 version plays the story straight and sincere, and it’s tremendously successful for it.

A fair amount of criticism has been laid upon Godzilla for the sketchy nature of it characters. It’s true that the destruction brought about by the giant beasties is the film’s primary interest and it provides that in spades. But I’d counter that the film provides a surprising amount of humanity and warmth amongst the rubble and wreckage at hand. It’s limited by the necessities of blockbusters, and especially a giant monster film, but the film is smart to always contextualize the action on display so it has a recognizable and identifiable human face at stake.  

This begins with Bryan Cranston as a scientist who loses his wife (a murderously underused Juliette Binoche) at a nuclear power plant and becomes suspicious of a cover up that proves to be related to kaiju-business; this extends to Cranston's son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and their son (Carson Bolde). But Max Borenstein’s script writes in other scientists, soldiers and concerned individuals to fill out the edges, and while rarely ever given much to do, the film has some largely superb casting with actors adding so much to rote roles (One of director Gareth Edwards’ favorite shots is a medium close up shot of people looking off into the distance; it eventually becomes overplayed but it emphasizes people’s awe and fear in the face of such overwhelming circumstances – and it simply feels very raw and real). 

Edwards also has a very strong visual sensibility. He shoots action so it almost always has the greatest sense of wonder. In this regard, Edwards has an extensive amount in common with Steven Spielberg; making big blockbusters feel humanly grounded and yet still allowing for visual splendor. 

Godzilla will likely get compared to last summer’s Pacific Rim, another throwback to giant monsters brawling at the expense of human life and large cityscapes. It’s not entirely unwarranted; both are incredibly earnest about their storytelling, almost archetypical in their visions and affectionate towards the genres they inhabit. But Godzilla, to an extent, has smaller ambitions. The scale is less global and it has a more consistent interest in the humans on the margins of its spectacle. In in its final twenty minutes, my argument will seem like it’s grasping for evidence, but the fact is that the film wisely pushes back so much of its mayhem until then (and there’s a good thirty or so minutes before any monsters are revealed whatsoever); more importantly: it’s the undeniable raison d’etre. 

Grade: B+

"Neighbors" (2014)

This recent Age of Apatow has featured comedies built on an interesting tension between protagonists (almost entirely male) refusing to grow up while discovering it necessary and even prudent to grow up. Everything even remotely associated with Judd Apatow, whether it’s Knocked Up or the television series Girls, is marked by individuals primarily in their late twenties or early thirties facing up to the fact that their youthful partying days are fading and that they are, or ought to be, responsible adults. This realization though always comes with some difficulty and therein lies the majority of the humor of Neighbors.

Apatow regular Seth Rogen stars alongside Rose Byrne as a thirty-something couple with a baby girl and newly purchased house. They have the outward trappings of individuals who have left behind their college years, but both feel stifled and bored by 9 to 5 work and changing diapers. In moves a fraternity house next door led by Zach Efron and Dave Franco. Rogen and Byrne want to seem cool around their younger neighbors while simultaneously keeping the noise levels down. They give off mixed signals, showing up at the first party of the semester. Later when they remember that for responsibility-free frats bros the party never has to end, they call the cops. This leads to escalating tit for tat revenge schemes from both sides.

There is a predictable throughline here. The couple tries to get the fraternity kicked off campus and the frat retaliates, and life lessons are learned amongst the raunch. But the emotional material here doesn’t feel shoehorned in but rather feels of a piece of the silliness. Nicholas Stoller’s direction and Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien’s script invest it with more. The partying and the prank war lead to shenanigans but there’s an unmistakable sadness to all of this. Franco and, especially and surprisingly (and quite pleasantly), Efron make their characters more than just laughable douches; there’s a real consciousness about the limitations of the lifestyle and a dawning, aching realization that eventually college ends. It’s that awareness, that reflection that each pair provides the other one, that gives the film its emotional center from which to spring off silly, highly amusing jokes and sight gags. 

A lot has been said about how Byrne is given ample and equal opportunity to get as down and dirty as her co-stars. Typically we see female characters as nags or scolds but here Rogen and Byrne are made partners in crime. Byrne is given a number of the most hilarious moments and she is the creator of some of the most unrestrained chaos at hand. It’s a delight to witness. I defer to Christy’s Lemire’s eloquent description: “Her character also orchestrates the film’s finest sequence: a fluidly staged and edited series of manipulations involving shots and stolen kisses that’s downright Shakespearean.”

Grade: B

"Stranger by the Lake" (2014)

The secluded summer beach is used by gay men for cruising. There is an unspoken understanding that this is its purpose. No women are present and only one straight man Henri (Patrick d'Assumçao), given furtive side glances, goes to the beach, sitting off sadly by himself. 

Though at first this sounds like a welcome opportunity for uncertain, lonely gay men like Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), Stranger by the Lake digs into the underlying isolation and sadness underneath. 

Director Alain Guiraudie (who also scripted) shoots the entire film for maximum frankness; the sex scenes don’t hide any of the untidiness of the sexual arrangements or the sex itself (full male genitalia is on display often throughout the film). 

There is a certain messiness to what takes place. In an early sexual encounter, Franck sneaks away with a lover into the woods and the best spot they can find is one where trash and used condoms must be brushed aside. 

Franck is young and hopelessly romantic but even his idealizing can’t help cover the apparent seediness to this location and the sexual encounters. This is a place and time for gay men to find sex and to temporarily feel less dissatisfied with their lives and their sexual orientations. 

The events of the film take place over a few days during a summer. Franck claims he comes here most summers (a statement that becomes sadder the more you consider it). Franck befriends Henri and they bond; they seem to make a connection due to mutual loneliness and disaffection. Henri has recently broken up with his girlfriend and though he claims to have had sex with men and be okay with it, we sense that nothing will happen between these two. They’re simply both outsiders trying to feel less unmoored. 

Franck has some sexual encounters but truly wishes to be with the older, unavailable Michel (Christophe Paou). Michel starts off involved with another man, but he eventually shifts his interest to Franck who is ecstatic and hopes it will turn into something more serious. Michel refuses to make their relationship be anything more then sex.

Late in the film Michel’s former lover disappears (after Franck witnesses Michel murdering him, raising interesting questions of who is this person?) and shows up days later drowned. Suddenly, Stranger by the Lake becomes a tense thriller that it was hard to imagine it previously had in it. A police detective begins asking questions and Franck’s life feels increasingly like it’s in danger as he strangely pursues Michel in spite of his knowledge. It’s the ultimate statement of the risk individuals take by putting themselves in these situations; connection is a possibility but there are unfortunate dangers attached to certain human desires.

Grade: B+

"Joe" (2014)

Joe Ransom (Nicholas Cage) is not a good role model. He’s not even a particularly good person. But everyone else in the world of Joe is so awful and irredeemable that Joe feels like a paragon by comparison. 

Joe is a drunk, a stunted man with a temper problem who once went to prison for assaulting a police officer. And yet, due to a terrific performance by Cage (so very much at odds with what we expect from him), Joe feels like a strangely moral center for this universe. 

The goodness of this highly broken man is brought into sharp relief when Joe meets Gary (Tye Sheridan, fresh off another unusual mentor-mentee relationship in Mud), a boy, all of 15, from a broken home. Gary’s father Wade (Gary Poulter) is a drunk who will do anything to get his hands on booze and who has all but abandoned his family to poverty. Gary lives out of a condemned house with his mother and sister, both of whom almost never speak.

Gary seeks work with Joe, who runs an operation poisoning pines that have unusable lumber. They’ve been hired out by a lumber company that wants to clear the land but can’t legally until the trees are dead. 

Gary is eager and willing to do any work to make cash for his family. He even gets his father on board for a time but he’s so lazy and unmotivated and intoxicated that Joe refuses to hire him again.  

Joe, like last year’s Prince Avalanche, represents a return to form for director David Gordon Green. Green’s recent films have been Apatow-ian comedies. By contrast, Green’s debut film George Washington was a small lyrical, Malickian film concerned with people suffering and learning against a background of beautiful natural scenery and decaying urban locales in Georgia. Joe has a lot of the same low-key, lush observance of the environments that surround people, and Green shoots numerous scenes with an almost improvisatory quality that suggests he let the camera roll to capture the rhythms of everyday speech and interaction.  

Joe’s relationship with Gary is placed in contrast to the violence Joe somehow always seems to bring with him. Joe falls into conflict with Gary’s father as he becomes protective of and paternal towards the boy. But he also brings the low-lives he’s had run-ins with at the bars he frequents. There’s the quiet grace of the land and Joe and Gary’s relationship, and the violence and destruction at odds with it that Joe is both a purveyor of and savior from. Joe and Gary’s story feels small against this backdrop but it matters; a small instance of connection in a world that seems intent on resigned declination. 

Grade: A-

"The Double" (2014)

In recent years extrovert and introvert as representative buzzwords of the general duality to personalities has come in vogue. The Double plays off this divide in personality traits in quite literal terms. Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is a quiet, lonely person whose life is shaken up with the sudden appearance of uncanny doppelganger James Simon (Eisenberg) who is exactly like Simon except for an abundance of charisma, confidence and charm. 

James is the id to Simon’s superego. He is an outward manifestation of everything Simon wishes he was, a return of the repressed.

The film, as directed by Richard Ayoade and written by Ayoade and Avi Korine based on a Fyodor Dostoyevsky novella, has the eerie, detached vibe of a dystopia. Ayoade plays this for dark comical effect but there’s still something highly sinister and unsettling underneath the humor. The film resembles the style of fellow Brit Terry Gilliam, particularly the bureaucratic nightmare of Brazil. But Ayoade also brings a signature flare; like his debut Submarine, Ayoade loves precise, eye-catching images. 

Also like Submarine, Ayoade’s male protagonist obsessively fixates on a female, in this case Simon’s isolated neighbor Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), projecting rather than owning up to his own flaws. Simon is hopeless when it comes to sociability, and he’s creepy, though weirdly earnest, in his pursuit of Hannah. He stares at her through a telescope at night from their adjacent apartment buildings, and he collects and reassembles her sketches she is too down on herself to see the value of. Hannah works in Simon’s office building, where non-descript, mind-numbing business is carried out. 

When Simon initially meet James, it seems oddly helpful and hopeful. James attempts to help set Simon up with Hannah. But James is selfish and egotistical, and he begins forcing Simon out of every corner of his tiny world. James starts dating Hannah while using Simon’s apartment to carry out affairs, and James steals credit for all of the hard work Simon does. 

Simon is such a non-showy and closed-off person that he’s practically invisible. He’s worked at his job for seven years and his boss Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn) still doesn’t know who he is. 

As James steals more and more of Simon’s life, Simon realizes that he needs to start taking action in his own life. Things don’t just come to you because they ought to. Hannah is a kindred spirit but staring from a distance isn’t the same as making a real connection. The only thing standing in Simon’s way, like all of us, is himself.

Grade: B

"X-Men: Days of Future Past" (2014)

X-Men: Days of Future Past takes a chapter right out of the Marvel Studio book by re-writing the narrative of all the X-Men films to date so that they all fits neatly into one coherent box. Days of Future Past is littered with callbacks that stretch back to the first of the X-Men films, now over a decade old. Not all of this works and in a few too many instances the web of byzantine mythology is likely hard to parse out or remember for even the most devout comic fans. But it also plays to what gave X-Men: First Class, in part, its strength. By leaning on our memory of and affection for the old trilogy (perhaps minus Last Stand), the film can use that foreknowledge to more greatly create a potential impact. 

Days of Future Past starts in the distant future where a government scientific program gone awry has led to the destruction of not just most mutants but humanity more generally. The ragtag survivors come up with a plan to send Wolverine’s (Hugh Jackman) consciousness back into his body in 1973 prior to the events that caused this apocalyptic nightmare. Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart in the future and James McAvvoy in the past) pinpoints the moment things went wrong to the time where his estranged adoptive sister Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) assassinated the creator (Peter Dinklage) of the Sentinels, giant robots that hunt down mutants. Before Wolverine can prevent this event, though, he has to save Professor X and Magneto (Ian McKellen in the future and Michael Fassbender in the past) from a metaphorical and literal prison, respectively, and get them to overcome significant differences and views on the future for their kind. 

It’s every bit as unwieldy as it sounds and the film is far less deft than its predecessor at keeping up with blockbuster demands while telling an increasingly (and unnecessarily) complicated story. Days of Future Past also gets far less opportunities to rely on soaking up the charm of being a breezy period piece, partly because 1973 was a far more troubled time than First Class’s 1962 and partly because there’s too many flaming hoops of plot contortions to leap through. The film finds its greatest strength when it relies on interesting, sharp character dynamics and a deep bench of talented performers who help manage to ground it all. But it still too often feels like Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn's script has bitten off more than it can chew. 

Having Wolverine as the character sent back makes a fair amount of sense; considering the amount of films he’s starred in, the character has essentially become the very embodiment of the franchise. Jackman’s presence, like Stewart and McKellen’s, brings weight in places that might not necessarily have enough pathos or the intended, overreaching, gravitas. Much of this should have come a few years earlier when the older films were still fresh in the public’s mind; the remove only serves to harm the film and the meanings it hopes to create. 

Still, much like First Class, Days of Future Past has a lot of solid popcorn entertainment, and its story, based on one of the most famous story arcs in the history of the comic book series, is a nifty bit of sci-fi playfulness. 

Grade: B-

"A Field in England" (2013)

The field appears to stretch on forever, like a cartoon background endlessly on loop. It seems to have no beginning and no end; it feels more like a metaphor than a location the characters of A Field in England pass through. It could be any field and yet it is also an ideal. A place between what has come before us and what lies ahead. 

The film is set during the English Civil War. The characters dress in ragged, dirty period-appropriate 17^th century garb and their hair is loose and in need of washing. Their appearances make them feel like they’ve been situated outside of time itself when they wander through the field. We never see the five main characters interact with anyone else; it’s like they’re part of a droll, avant-garde short play. 

Most of them have deserted the army after a nasty skirmish. One claims there’s a nearby alehouse, though it never appears; it’s a mirage or a desperate hope for relief that will never come. Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) is an apprentice of an alchemist. He seeks out O’Neill (Michael Smiley), a man who has robbed his master; this task has been made difficult by the death of Trower (Julian Barratt), a mercenary hired to help take in O’Neill. 

Whitehead keeps pontificating in florid language about God and faith, and his digressions suggest that the situation the men find themselves in is one foisted upon them by God. Much of the situation feels like an existential nightmare made real. Director Ben Wheatley and director of photography Laurie Rose shoot the film in lush black and white that serve to accentuate the dry, philosophical quality of the film (hints of Jim Jarmusch).  

This contemplative side is not A Field in England’s only mode though. Amy Jump’s pithy script is filled with hilarious, witty lines as it observes characters from a distance, pointing to their obliviously overlooked flaws and shortcomings. Whitehead wants to see himself as better than his lowly, uneducated traveling companions, but he proves himself just as incompetent and uncertain. 

The film is also often just interested in experience. The journey itself is about inevitability and watching to see the details of human shortsightedness unfold. But Wheatley also takes time out for bizarre, overwhelming experimental sequences, notably a late film sequence where hallucinogenic drugs are consumed. 

That final sequence suggests that there’s a stoner-based cult audience just waiting to embrace A Field in England, much like, say, El Topo. The point of watching it isn’t necessarily to understand what it all means but rather to tune in, drop out, and embrace the strange, fascinating ride. 

Grade: B-

"Blue Ruin" (2014)

Movies that deal with vengeance have a complicated relationship with their audience. Most try incredibly hard to justify the destructive retribution by crafting moral high grounds for protagonists to mete justice down from. The scripts, and when lucky the direction as well, are self-conscious of the fact that really none of the call-and-response violence is truly warranted except in so far as it satiates our desires in thrilling fashion. 

Blue Ruin has no interest in creating the typical first part of the vengeance equation. The terrible things that drive Dwight (Macon Blair) to kill the Cleland family are mentioned but we never get to see them. The film is thus all rotten tension and violence with almost no release. While director Jeremy Saulnier shoots the action sequences so they ache with an unrelenting intensity, the film is less of a thriller than a morality play. Saulnier (who also wrote the script) is more interested in the nature of vengeance, what drives people towards it and how the obsession with it ultimately eats away at them. 

There is a restraint to much of what Saulnier does here. Large stretches of the film are devoid of dialogue and Saulnier conveys a tremendous amount through small visual tells. 

We first see Dwight living out of a broken down blue Chevy, a beat-up hunk of metal in as equally bad shape as Dwight. He’s grown ragged, unkempt; he sports a massive tangle of a beard and he sneaks to a nearby boardwalk to steal small bits of food and cash. The car is a symbol (admittedly not a very subtle one) for Dwight, an outward manifestation of his eroded inner self. One of the most telling signs of his unstable inner life involves Dwight’s speech patterns. He talks in clipped statements because he has rarely spoken to anyone in the intervening years of his hermitage. 

The film’s action picks up when Dwight learns that Wade Cleland, Jr., the man sent away for murdering his parents, is about the be released from prison. Dwight makes it his mission to end Wade’s life. Then the equally bloody fallout arrives. Wade’s family pursues Dwight, putting his estranged sister and her children at risk. 

Saulnier’s script is filled with little bits of cosmic, black irony. For instance, Dwight forgets his car keys at the scene of the crime and has to drive off in a limo that he moments earlier stabbed out. 

This violence and masculine rage are treated so that they are as ugly and hard to bear as possible. Dwight could be an anti-hero in the vein of Walter White; he’s doughy and a little pathetic and his quest never feels like it’s as fully earned in practice as in theory. The blood keeps staining, literally and figuratively, the supposed nobility of the acts at hand. 

Saulnier sets the majority of the story in the most insular parts of Virginia. Like the rural community of Winter’s Bone or Justified, it’s a place where family and bloodlines define everything. When Dwight has lunch with his sister Sam (Amy Hargreaves) to tell her about his actions, she doesn’t get sickened or upset. Rather, she’s a little pleased. The Clelands are a backwoods family that has gained power through localized criminal activity far removed from the eyes of government or law.

Saulnier also acted as his own cinematographer. He forms some wonderful compositions. Much of the film is set in and around untamed wilderness and Saulnier shoots it to maximize its beauty; this seems to be all too lovely to be despoiled. Saulnier switches between moments of stark darkness and serene contemplation. It often feels as though these characters have fall into a world without humans, beyond civilization; Dwight moves closer and closer to his primordial id against a backdrop of untamed wilderness, a frequent signifier of man’s inner, savage self. 

Blue Ruin asks: is it worth ruining others who've wronged you if it will ultimately ruin yourself?

Grade: B+

"Shampoo" (1975)

Something rarely commented upon is how old movies act as cultural artifacts of the time they were made in. But seldom are films actually intended as cultural artifacts as Shampoo is. The film is a cultural artifact about another cultural artifact. Made in 1975 but set in 1968 in the days leading up to and after Richard Nixon’s election, the film is attuned to the jaded, frustrated American zeitgeist of the post-Watergate years, where everyone was deeply disillusioned by their government. 

The film tries to use that foreknowledge of what was to come against its characters, who are blithely oblivious to the devil hiding in plain sight. It is a nice little conceit that Shampoo doesn’t really take full advantage of. The election is background noise for the exceedingly self-involved drama of the characters. But the film’s real flaw is that the deep, dark strand of bitterness doesn’t read as fully as it ought; Shampoo is a silly, loose, farcical comedy, and the darkness just doesn't bleed through that warm, swinging appearances like it ought to. It's all so very miscalculated.

Warren Beatty plays male hair dresser George Roundy, who has chosen his profession to pick up chicks. He is currently in the middle of a byzantine web of affairs, and he is leading on all of them. The naïve, doe-eyed Jill (Goldie Hawn) is his live-in partner but George is disconnected and distant from her. Then there’s Jackie Shawn (Julie Christie) Jill’s close friend who is possibly the person George should be with but he can’t bother to commit. Finally, there is Felicia Karpf (Lee Grant), a wealthy socialite. She convinces her husband Lester (Jack Warden) to pay for George’s new salon business. And as if that weren’t enough wrinkles in the story, Lester is having an affair with Jackie. 

If that feels unnecessarily complicated, well, that’s because it is. Most of this intricate plot is almost an afterthought. Besides George, Jackie is the only character given enough screen-time to feel meaningfully developed. This is a film where (the guise of) sex positivism is filtered through a male point of view and it feels clumsy at times. All of the characters matter only in so far as they relate to George and his growing deceit catching up to him. George, in some ways, stands in for the American government and Nixon’s infidelities. But the pathos of George’s existential, Don Draper-like burden over the hole he is filling never completely registers. The script, written by Beatty and Robert Towne, doesn’t earn the moment and it isn’t tight or savvy enough to take advantage of the underlying cultural and political meanings at work. Shampoo may have been timely in its own time but that has prevented it from being timeless.

Grade: C

Mad Men: "The Strategy"

Spoilers Follow:

Mad Men is the kind of show you contemplate deeply over a glass of scotch and a tome of Nietzsche. It’s chilly and detached and asks you to consider and analyze it seriously and critically.

And yet, it is also a series that is better than just about any other series at creating images and moments that are striking and remarkable and seem to speak for themselves. “The Strategy” features these moments in spades. Don and Peggy dancing. Pete sticking his beer in Trudy’s cake. Don, Peggy and Pete creating an ad-hoc family at Burger Chef. 

These are images that sneak up on you and get stuck in your craw. They cut through the existential chill and burst with intensity of feeling and emotion. 

A lot of this season has felt like it was building to the moment where Don and Peggy reconcile, and it just makes you have all the feels. These are two very fucked up, self-loathing people who forged new identities, and they only find an ease to living life when connecting one-on-one. They find satisfaction in their work and knowing that the other sees them for who they are and still loves and respects them.  And yet they find contentment in almost nothing else and that ruins them time and again; they love the work and they understand one another’s love for the job and their reasons for it. But it somehow is never enough. 

This final season has been plot-heavy, or as plot heavy as such a restrained show as Mad Men can be. Sally discovered Don’s job status in the second episode, Don returned to the agency in the third episode, and now by the sixth, and second-to-last for this first batch of episodes, Don and Peggy seem to have patched things up. 

These were all things that could have played out endlessly on loop but they’ve led to some of Mad Men’s best episodes this season and in some instances the whole run of the series (as I would contend with the excellent “A Day’s Work”). 

Mad Men more than just about any other show has characters who feel all too much like real human beings. Its pace, its tone, how it’s shot, and the way it’s written suggest a verisimilitude or realism. As Matt Zoller Seitz described it: “psychologically well-rounded characters moving through life”. The moments where the show and its characters open up feel so tremendous and potent because they have that quality of those rare instances of connection one experiences in life. 

Back in season two’s “For Those Who Think Young”, Don offered his aspiring protégée Peggy a piece of advice: “You are the product. You feeling something. That's what sells. Not them. Not sex. They can't do what we do and they hate us for it.” Don was referring to the way that the best ads and ad campaigns work, by playing off core, fundamental emotions; the best way to sell this is by having the copy writer place a piece of themselves into the ads. It’s this reason Don’s carousel speech back in “The Wheel” remains so very potent, and why Peggy’s pitch for Burger Chef here is solid but also feels like it’s missing something. The ad becomes superior when Peggy shifts it so it relates to her current experience as a now thirty year old working women who abandoned the potential life of a housewife. 

Back in season four's “The Summer Man” Don wrote into a journal: “We're flawed, because we want so much more. We're ruined, because we get these things, and wish for what we had.” Peggy is regretting the path she has gone down, or as Frank Sinatra croons the “way” she took. Don similarly regrets his actions and here sets right the ship by starting to fix the one relationship, outside of Sally, that truly matters. Don is staring back on the many lives he has lived, literally with his tendency to swap identities. Don states his bone-deep unhappiness to Peggy, “That I never did anything, and that I don't have anyone.”

At its core, Mad Men is a show about connection. Moreover, it’s about how people desperately desire to make connections with others but either often look for it in the wrong places or find themselves unhappy when they get those connections (It's in this way that I personally find that previous Don quote is literal: we the audience are the product and the show represents these very fundamental and hard to accept "truths" of human nature). Another Summer Man journal gem: “People tell you who they are, but we ignore it - because we want them to be who we want them to be.” The sad thing about that series of journal entries back in season four was that it was one of the last instances where Don attempted to be honest with himself and those around him, up until, of course, now. Don would quickly play hobo and marry Megan. That marriage has since crumbled into all but dust. (Another striking image: Megan and Pete’s former beau Bonnie in a plane about to take off towards California and away from shambling relationships). 

Consider how Bob miscalculates what he and Joan both want. Bob is a closeted gay hoping to form an arrangement that will help cover up things for him. With Chevy ditching SC&P, he’s now receiving a job with Buick, but to be a company man will necessarily be helped along with the American ideal of a family; Joan in the process would get a father for her son. Joan denies the offer because she'd rather be unmoored than settle for less than what makes her happy (a very Mad Men thing to yearn for).

Bob’s desire to forge a family, a fake one albeit, ties in with the Burger Chef campaign. The initial ad looked to sell people on a very outdated model of what it meant to have a family, the old, Eisenhower nuclear family. But the sixties have increasingly broken down that ideal standing in as what it means to have a family; the sexual revolution is in swing, the Summer of Love has occurred, divorce rates are on the rise, and feminism has helped break down the way men and women relate. Despite how this family ideal is a lie, (and remember that Don realizing it was a lie back in season four wrecked him, only for him to try and fail to recreate that ideal with Megan), Pete can’t accept Trudy dating other people and wanting to have nothing to do with him, nor his daughter for that matter; that family he once strove for is dead. So is the one Peggy could have had if she kept her child she had with Pete. But she chose a different family.

Now a family can be whoever sits with you at a burger joint. It may be, as Pete notes, more nebulous, but it feels right, and few shows can create moments that feel oh-so-right, so perfect and hauntingly beautiful in their design, like Mad Men; “The Strategy” has countless. 

Game of Thrones: "Mockingbird"

 Spoilers Follow:

I don’t have time to do a full review tonight, but I wanted to put out some preliminary thoughts on the episode “Mockingbird”.

While not nearly as satisfying or fully realized as “First of His Name” or “The Laws of God and Men”, “Mockingbird” moved forward a number of storylines in necessary and meaningful ways. 

The main point of interest involved Tyrion trying to find someone to champion him, and failing to get the two people who still hold any interest in him, Bronn and Jaimie. Eventually Oberyn responds in hopes of killing the Mountain, who he holds partly responsible for the death of his sister and her sons. 

Tyrion is contending, like many people in this episode, with being part of a family that’s more than a little screwed up. Game of Thrones can be multiple things in any given week, a chamber drama, a comedy of manners, an action epic, and this week fell back on that fundamental center of family drama. 

Tyrion has been left out in the cold by his family, seemingly in the twisted name of his family. Tywin has crafted a situation that will supposedly better the Lannister name by placing Jaimie as heir to Tywin. 

Oberyn is obsessed with avenging his family, much like Arya is fixated on vengeance for hers (And it's both frightening and heartwarming to see the Hound and Arya bond over adding and then immediately crossing off a name on her death list). Brienne’s storyline tied in nicely here as she is also seeking justice for the Stark family (And we get a very warm, entertaining return of Hot Pie providing information on Arya’s whereabouts). 

In another branch of the Stark family, the Arryns, up in the Eyrie, Sansa is dealing with her crazed aunt and nephew, as well as the advances of Littlefinger, who has never gotten over his love for Catelynn. In the episode’s shocking conclusion Littlefinger uses Chekhov’s moon door and sends Lyssa plummeting below. 

Even poor Sandor Clegane, aka the Hound, opens up to Arya, in a great monologue for Rory McCann, about old wounds (some quite literal). The Hound has some of his own family baggage (which is a polite way of describing your sibling burning half your face off), which ties into the connection of Cersei using the Hound’s brother Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane as the champion against Tyrion in trial by combat. 

And what is Selyse Baratheon accepting Melisandre as her husband’s mistress amount to? A very misguided, deluded hope for the betterment of her family and family name’s future.  

To paraphrase Jaimie: the things we do for family.

Grade: B+

"Band of Outsiders" (1964)

There is an interesting tension in Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders. Godard intends it to be both hyper-real, true to life, and self-consciously unreal, self-aware it’s a film. At times these two intents overlap nicely; the film’s brilliant central conceit: what if one of those gangster heists films took place in real life with everything drolly ripped from everyday occurrence and concerned with all the mundane details. The gangster cool is stripped back, and what we get are two bumbling best friends who have seen more crimes committed in the movies than they have actually committed themselves. In its own way that ends up becoming its own sort of cool.

The would-be gangsters Franz (Sami Frey)and Arthur (Claude Brasseur) fall for the same girl Odile (Anna Karina, Godard's then-wife, who his obsessively frames and shoots) at an English class taught to French-speaking individuals. Both are also looking to make a big score and assume it will be as easy as in the movies. In an attempt to impress the older men doting on her, Odile offers up her home, stocked with a safe full of her father’s illegally earned cash. 

If the film has a problem, it isn't its commitment to the mundane; indeed, that's often charming. What is the film’s problem, rather, is due to Godard’s predilections: it is a film that, on some level, knows it’s a film, and its characters sort of know they’re fictional characters. Sometimes it feels like Godard has his head up his ass and is circling the rabbit-hole of his obsessions. Godard hadn’t quite hit critical capacity (in a few years’ time he would get firebrand political with his films and they’re often hard to watch). The "film as film" is intellectualized and politicized here, but Godard still lets it go down easy with a tonic of silly coquetry. There’s a deftly whimsical, low-key, screwy infectiousness to the film.

Band of Outsiders plays out in vignettes, and Godard takes time out to riff on expectations and to go on little digressions of fun non-sequiturs. There’s a robbery and a love triangle, but they’re just catalysts for improvisatory flights of fancy. Indeed, when nothing appears to be happening (even literally nothing during a humorous, literally silent minute of film where the characters test their willpower to not speak) that’s when the film is at its most delightful. 

Some of this hasn’t especially aged well. The films Outsiders is in conversation with are referenced with an unapologetic specificity, and the film is so very much of its own time, enamored with how clever it is being by breaking all the rules and getting away with it.

Yet the film’s central charm comes from having characters who wish their lives were more grandiose and epic, and a little less mundane. To say they know they’re film characters is imprecise; rather, they wish they were film characters. They play their part as if being swept along by the plot-that-be, because they imagine that’s they’re role. When things go wrong, it’s ironic, yes, but also tragic and a little pathetic. And yet it remains exceptionally funny because they’re in over their heads and refuse to admit it.

Grade: B+

My Film Review of "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"

Last week my college's newspaper published my final review and piece for them with this review of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which was not a very amazing movie. If anyone thought my Divergent review got harsh, well, then here is an even less kind take-down. Good movies hopefully will be forthcoming and I plan to review some here, so please stick with me.

Game of Thrones: "The Laws of Gods and Men"

** Spoilers Below: **

Following the death of Joffrey, Vulture published an article entitled "So Who on Game of Thrones Am I Supposed to Hate?" Yes, it was intended somewhat jokingly, but it also pointed to an interesting piece of audience identification and reception that had us so heavily despising that character. 

Game of Thrones, in part due to the unique storytelling structure of the books, likes playing around with perspective and who we identify with. The really interesting thing though is how there is essentially no major character who the series chooses to have us not sympathize or identify with. It’s a tact taking place on The Americans as well where the shifting point of view has us rooting for the Soviets one moment and the Americans the next, and ultimately no one is really the villain so much as the system. 

The interesting thing is that this leads to a constant moral fluidity that makes us have few bearings to ground us. The show crafted a moral center in Ned before decapitating it and then suggested a new one in Robb before pulling out the rug once again. Now, who the fuck do we place our chips with when the cards are down?

One of the major driving narrative questions of the show, one that has become increasingly obsolete as the show has progressed, is who will end up on the throne when all is said and done. The show keeps defaulting to this sense that there’s always someone vying for the throne, but it also is simultaneously flippant about it. It matters but it’s really just a convenient engine to churn out conflict after conflict. There will always be someone who hopes to steal the throne away. It’s precisely this reason that Tywin is constantly scrambling to settle one problem after another (But more on that later).

The first two-thirds of “The Laws of Gods and Men” concerns itself with the major figures who could throw a kink in Lannister hegemony. We start with Stannis and Davos asking the Iron Bank in Braavos for money to fuel their war efforts. Stannis is the big current threat. He has a pretty good claim to the throne and with Lannister control faltering enemies are just waiting to come out of the woodwork to throw out there support behind someone else. 

Stannis gets put through the motions by the board of directors (played here by Mark Gatiss, best known for his work on Doctor Who), and we see Stannis, no matter how powerful he may believe himself to be, forced to bow before power that exists in more than just name alone. It’s a funny moment when Stannis sits down frustrated and impatient. “Power is where you stand,” Davos insightfully notes; he makes a passionate case for a Stannis victory being more than simply a pipe dream. Who has the power: the man who would be king, the man who bankrolls him, the sell-sword, such as Salladhor Saan, who fights the battle, or perhaps a man like Davos who can coordinate all of them?

Dany is also finding herself powerless as she searches for greater control, but in her case it’s by her own choice. Dany’s slave uprising was exciting but it was also just a little too full of itself. A few episodes ago Tywin noted there was a difference between gaining power and ruling, and Dany is learning that the hard way. She is incapable of controlling her dragons and she discovers that the symbolic act of crucifying Mereen’s slave-owners was not the simple black and white act she assumed it to be. The Masters, as these officials are called in Mereen, were not a monolithic evil but were a complex group with their pluses and minuses.  

Yara also makes a bid for Iron Island power by trying to save her brother Theon. But she learns that Theon is too forgone to be saved. Theon is no more; in his place is the weak and servile Reek who obeys the commands of no one but Ramsay Snow. Theon, to me, is one of the most interesting cases of shifting audience reception and identification. Theon has always been pitiable, but his actions against the Starks, his adoptive family, turned him into a slightly despicable character. Theon’s torture seems intended as a plot device to recalibrate our empathy towards the character. It begins as a punishment for his actions but goes past the point where it feels like justice is being served and plays against our desire to see retribution (Perhaps you disagree, I’ve already heard countering arguments and I’d love to hear more). 

The Boltons also represent a threat to the crown; as their ambitions continue to grow, how can we be certain their desires will be satiated? Anyone who you make an ally could very easily turn into your biggest threat eventually. The Tyrells and Martells are precariously perched in such a position for the Lannisters, and the Starks are already preexisting proof of this. 

Interestingly enough we don’t get any scenes with Littlefinger who seems to be a another strong example of this. But we do get his doppleganger better half Varys. In a great scene, Varys makes clear his intentions to Oberyn that his ultimate desires lie with the thrown. Bryan Cogman’s script wisely leaves the implications of the gesture ambiguous but it’s just enough of a hint to remind us that Varys is a bigger power play than he is often given credit. Director Alik Sakharov creates one of the best shots of the episode, placing the throne suggestively in the background between Varys and Oberyn. The throne is what stands in between not just these two but really everyone.

The buildup of the episode leads to the long sequence of Tyrion’s trial. Yet again the show benefits enormously from letting this final sequence have a little extra screentime, and it uses it to draw out both how much of a kangaroo court this is and how thoroughly, tragically Tyrion is being dragged through the mud. The episode ends with this storyline because its set at King’s Landing. While the rest of the episode details how contenders for the throne are faring, this sequence reminds us once more that Lannister power is really waning. 

Consider for a moment that Tywin essentially manipulates this whole situation to his own benefit. He allows the trial to be an awful, transparent sham because it will force out Tyrion as his heir. In turn, this will necessitate Jaimie stepping down from the Kingsguard, where he’s technically supposed to be celibate, so that he can become Tywin’s heir, the one he thinks he deserves. It’s some fuck-up politicking, ruthless and cold. But it also has the faintest whiff of desperation. 

Indeed, every person who comes to testify against Tyrion has clearly been paid off or holds a grudge against him. The judges are rigged as well. Mace Tyrell is a non-entity, and Oberyn is the only one who appears to have the remotest (and it feels very remote at that) interest in some worthwhile inquiry. 

And then there’s the real kicker: Shae is brought in as a witness against Tyrion. Why? Perhaps due to resentment towards Tyrion for how he treated her, sending her away. Perhaps she was threatened with death, or, worse, paid off. The why and how of it matter far less here than the effect it produces. It’s a devastating moment. In the show, Tyrion and Shae, in their own weird way, were one of the healthiest, strongest couples, and to have her betray him like this pushes Tyrion over the edge. 

Jaimie had maneuvered (or, at least, he believes he did, when really Tywin had intended this all along) to have Tyrion sent to the Wall rather than be sent to death. But Tyrion is tired of what’s really on trial here, the fact that he’s a dwarf. He righteously lashes out, a powerful moment for how it cuts through all of the false modesty and bullshit of the courtly politics. 

Tyrion calls for trial by combat. Let the gods decide he says; their laws have to be better than the ones men have made. Inside King’s Landing those laws created this ludicrous charade and outside they allow for the people of the kingdoms to starve and suffer while war wages, for sadistic people like Ramsay to ruin them and naïve ones like Dany to add to their ache further. 

In a place where being responsible for saving the lives of thousands is still met with the enthusiastic desire for summary execution, how can we want any of these people to gain power? Game of Thrones tempts us time and again with people who could be a good rulers, putting them into a position to wield power before taking it away from them or undermining it. But, again, don’t get mad at the people; the medieval world of Westeros has created a socio-political system that is designed so that no one who probably should have power ever gets it. That’s why the shifting perspective matters. It not only muddies up the morality, but it turns everyone into a victim, even often when they’re being the victimizer.

Stray Thoughts:

-Apparently, Tywin is 67 years old, which is also as it turns out Charles Dance’s age in real life. He’s in pretty good shape despite what Davos says about his virility. 

-Yara’s soldiers marching on the Dreadfort is intercut with shots of Ramsay getting it on. The intended meaning, I think, relates to Theon’s manhood being sent as gift to Yara. You do the rest of the math as far as intent there.

-“My brother is dead.” Gemma Whelan is excellent in that moment, and it makes me wish we got to spend more time with Yara. A really interesting, underutilized character.

-Mace Tyrell as a total idiot is an easy joke but the show hasn’t leaned on it all that much so I still find it very entertaining. Watching him bumble in his efforts to please Tywin at the small council meeting was delightful. 

-Pycelle is also another reliably amusing character, and he hasn’t been called upon for a while now. He seemed like he would be a much bigger deal back in season one but little has come of it.

-I really liked the moment where the small council acknowledges and discusses the growing threat of Dany. It makes these characters seem less oblivious and dumb (as they would need to avoid being to maintain control of the crown), and it also makes the world of the show feel lived-in. 

-Another important point regarding perspective: everything recounted about Tyrion actually happened but is placed completely out of context. Perspective is crucial on this show.

Grade: A-

"The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw" (1958)

Jayne Mansfield made a career out of playing up the fact she was a knock-out platinum blonde. Like her contemporary Marilyn Monroe she was essentially always playing herself, or at least a highly fictionalized version of herself. Mansfield was playing to and against what we expected, never merely a “dumb blonde”, but certainly always a type.

Mansfield’s roles all essentially involved her playing what amounts to a cartoon character. But that’s entirely part of what makes them entertaining. In The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, Mansfield is a feisty, savvy saloon owner who represents the warm-hearted vulgarity of the United States at its most raw and wonderful. 

Mansfield’s blunt Americanism is set against Kenneth Moore’s prim-and-proper English gentleman Jonathan Tibbs, and the film’s pleasures derive from putting Tibbs deep into one fish-out-of-water situation after another. 

Jonathan is a stuck-in-the-clouds employee of his family’s firm, which sells professional firearms. When business subsides on the opposite side of the Atlantic, Jonathan begins looking across the ocean to make a bold business venture. The Wild American West is full of lawless gun fighting and thus, Jonathan believes, is a perfect market to get in on.

When he arrives stateside, Jonathan is beyond being out of his depth, but he is so good-natured and sincere that he constantly unwittingly solves problems with a Mr. Magoo-like zen-beauty. Indians attack his caravan and he simply steps out to negotiate peace with them, and succeeds – on accident and without any awareness it was on accident. Jonathan is thoroughly optimistic and chipper and every American is so bone-deep cynical that his hopefulness can’t help but win out by the laws of Hollywood film logic. His earnest bumbling indvertedly leads to him being made the sheriff of the town, a fact completely, ironically at odds with how little Jonathan knows about using the guns he is out to sell. 

The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw is a slight, slightly under-baked film. Howard Dimsdale's script often time doesn’t seem to have enough material to warrant a feature film length. Anytime the plot moves forward the film creaks under the minor herculean effort it takes to be anything more than a highly charming trifle. The film also falls into groaning, groan-inducing territory when it turns Native Americans into some of the supporting live-action cartoon characters on its roster (though they’re admirable ones; so there’s that!). It’s a weird representational issue where it’s not exactly offensive (it’s even oddly progressive in its way), but it reads really weird (It’s trying to be smarter than it actually is, but it just comes off politically incorrect).

The film looks to skewer Western film conventions in an almost similar, but far, far tamer and less successful, manner to Blazing Saddles. When it finds time for the elasticity of a cartoon world there are some laughs to be found. Like a Saturday morning animated feature, there is a nice, silly, inviting space created by The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw that is warm and friendly if a little fleeting and forgettable.  

Grade: B- 

My Film Review of "Divergent"

I recently wrote a review of the film Divergent for my college's newspaper. While it may seem like I may have harsh on the film (which I think as long as you are civil you can never be), I feel like I hit upon the fact that it was not devoid of bright spots, including another fine turn from Shailene Woodley.

Game of Thrones: "First of His Name"

 Spoilers Below:

 “Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls.” - Cersei

“First of His Name” begins on the crowning ceremony of Tommen Baratheon, the titular first of his name getting officially made king. But the episode quickly shifts focus; the opening scene isn’t about a new male taking power, but rather it’s about the woman behind the man, the true source of power here, Margaery.

It’s a moment that emphasizes what “First of His Name” will really be about: the place of women in society. And the episode keeps reiterating through different variations what life is like for women in Westeros (and Essos as well) and the continual answer is that it’s pretty terrible. 

The theme of the episode is admittedly a little more nuanced then that though. Director Michelle MacLaren keeps pushing the camera out, showing characters as specks on the horizon. It places them as small and helpless, and a little daunted. But MacLaren does something else; she keeps framing people in doorways and arches, suggesting they’re trapped and boxed in. It’s an image that’s highly fitting for the women of this world. No matter how great they are as part of the system, at playing it to their advantage, they’re still limited by their gender. 

The central throughline of the episode is the two characters and stories we keep coming back to, Cersei and Sansa's. These characters are very different individuals and they’re in rather different circumstances, but both find themselves hitting a wall. 

After claiming power for so long, Cersei is forced to concede power and authority to other people in hopes that she can gain leverage later. We see Cersei go to Margaery and for once act if not kindly, at least diplomatically. Cersei realizes that with the precarious position the Lannisters are in that she needs to sacrifice what she wants a little bit to create some stability. So she offers Margaery the marriage to Tommen and the position of queen. Cersei also gives into the demands of her father to marry Loras, after long refusing to. Both acts secure the power of her family but at the cost of her own power. 

Sansa has even less options than Cersei. Sansa arrives at the Eyrie with Littlefinger pretending to be his niece. In short order her aunt Lysa has married Littlefinger, who is so clearly manipulating her for his own gain and none of the happiness she assumes. Lysa has lost a few marbles. Not only does she admit to poisoning her former husband John Arynn at Littlefinger’s request, but she also jealously accuses Sansa of sleeping with Littlefinger. Lysa has been worked over by a man taking advantage of his male privilege.

Outside of these storylines the episode stops in briefly on a number of other female characters. What we end up seeing is a spectrum of women, powerful and powerless. 

Dany takes power in Mereen but discovers there’s consequences to upsetting the power structure in Slaver’s Bay. Against the advice of her male counselors to head to Westeros and take the throne, she, instead, decides to stay in Mereen and prove she’s capable as a ruler. 

Brienne takes having Poderick as her squire as an insult, a gesture suggesting she’s incapable of handling being a knight. Poderick slowly grows on her as he tells her of the time he saved Tyrion’s life at the Battle of Blackwater. Brienne is hesitant to accept Poderick because she has experienced too many men judging her for her choice to be a warrior and this will hang over Brienne always; she’s a woman doing something people believe is suitable only for a man. 

Ditto Arya, who the Hound catches practicing her "water dancing", something not very lady-like masquerading as something that is. When the Hound knocks down Arya it stands in for him beating down all the aspirations of females in this world.

And that’s why so much of what happens in that last sequence of the episode greatly matters. 

First we get a dark, painful scene where the mutineers threaten to rape Meera. It’s the situation of women of this world in a nutshell. All women are seen as good for is satisfying the desires and whims of men. They’ve deprived Meera of agency and a right to herself and her body. Jojen, Hodor and Bran look on aghast not just because terrible things are about to happen to their friend but because they also are unable to assert their masculine dominance. Being tied captive has deprived them of what they believe is their male duty, that chivalric calling, to defend the lady, when in fact we know if Meera weren’t tied up she would be plenty capable of defending herself. 

That’s why we ultimately get a female beating the Big Bad and not Jon Snow. It’s a moment of female agency being asserted in an episode structured so that we get countless moments of females being denied agency until this instance. After being abused and mistreated for so long by Craster and other men, Craster’s wives (note the language I even have to use to describe them) stand up for themselves. Given the opportunity to go with Jon and the other Watch members they decline. “Burn it down,” one of them says in regards to Craster’s Keep (What’s the expression: a man’s home is his castle). They’ve burnt down the symbol of patriarchy they’ve been trapped in for so long. And damn it feels righteous.

Stray Thoughts:

-A moment of dark comic beauty: Sansa lying in her bed hearing her aunt scream loudly while having sex.

-Another very funny moment: the Hound complaining about Arya reciting her death list before bedtime. Followed by her adding him as the last name to the list.

-Sansa doesn't ever catch a break; she's being forced to wed her dweeby younger nephew Robin.

-Tywin again provides us with more murmurs of the power of the Iron Bank which the kingdom is apparently in serious debt to. Take note of this for later I suppose. Also, the Lannister's stopped mining gold about three years ago. All their talks of always paying their debts is apparently for show.

-In a weird moment of sort-of-kindess, Tywin admits he sympathizes with Cersei's lack of feelings for Loras ... but he still will see her marry him.

-We also get that kind of clarity from Cersei who confesses that Joffrey was a monster to Margaery.

-There's a bumbly, adorable charm to Poderick. He may not be Jaimie but give him a chance Brienne!

Grade: A

"Saturday Night Fever" (1977)

Watching Saturday Night Fever I was reminded of how much Italian American youth culture has changed (some would say declined) and yet how much of it remains the same. Specifically I was regarding it in terms of something that likely, and thankfully, doesn’t spring immediately to mind: The Jersey Shore.

On the face Saturday Night Fever is more evenhanded and the cultural niche it represents isn’t nearly as much a sad caricature. The film also gives a greater sense of classiness. There isn’t grinding here; this is disco and it is a dance form and mating ritual that requires skill and knowledge. The courtship patterns revolve around your ability to prove your dancing capability. 

But this is still of the same working class milieu as that oft denigrated series, and there’s an almost anthropological quality to the film. The film is a wonderful slice of Italian American culture: The heavy Catholic conservatism, the devotion to traditional gender roles, the working class sense of pride and machismo. 

Casual racism and sexism are tacitly accepted. Latin Americans are frequently disparaged and racial slurs are muttered under the breath constantly (The great irony of Italians being assimilated into American culture is their adoption of the behavior once aimed towards them). Tony and his friends are good old boys out skirt chasing. “What did you say your name was?” one guy asks after a hook-up, and it establishes this group’s feelings towards the opposite sex. Tony and his friends are dismissive of women if they’re not fulfilling their desires or acting as trophies.  

Tony (John Travolta) is the protagonist here and what sets him apart is a constant awareness of how lousy this life he is living is. He is not content like his friends; he recognizes how confining being stuck in Brooklyn is, and he desperately wishes to escape to Manhattan. He has a job at a paint store where he has security and he is well-liked even when he is a bit flakey. Tony’s only escape from reality is dancing and it matters more to him than anything else. “You make it with one of these chicks and they think you’ve got to dance with them,” he says.  

Tony’s awareness of how trapped he is doesn’t make his behavior forgivable but a through-line of the plot, and what enriches it, is how Tony comes to realize how wrong-headed his beliefs are, especially towards women. Tony and his boys see women as objects, but when Tony falls for Stephanie (Karen Gorney), a woman who isn’t immediately head-over-heels for him, he has to change his tact, and when his smooth operating fails in a pathetic act of desperation he half-heartedly tries to rape her (a plot-line that the film sadly doesn't resolve as fully as it probably should and that dovetails with another later, highly uncomfortable sex scene that borders on rape).

Most people forget these darker elements lurking in the film. What sticks in the mind are the dance numbers set to the best of the Bee Gees. The dances are electrifying and director John Badham shoots them so that we feel the raw passion and satisfaction of the performers; this is the only time they feel truly alive. The camerawork often has the swagger of Tony, subjectively taking on his perspective and turning his love for this lifestyle into our love for it. But when his regrets arrive, they become our regrets as well (and we start to realize them far in advance of him).

Saturday Night Fever’s pleasure derives, in part, from luxuriating in the environment of Italian American culture but what remains remarkable is its willingness to show all the nitty-gritty, awful and (as an Italian American myself I can admit) largely true details.   

Grade: B+

"The Pantom of the Opera" (1925)

I’ve always found that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s interpretation of The Phantom of the Opera presents the story all wrong. Webber romanticizes what is an inherently horrific story. Webber’s music provides the opera aspect of the title but it overlooks the ugliness of the story. The Phantom isn’t a tragic figure; he’s a pathetic one. 

Take the casting for the 2004 film adaption which horribly miscasts the part with Gerard Butler, a romantic leading man (with a hilariously misplaced Scottish brogue). He’s swooning and to die for, but it misunderstands what makes the character so fascinating. He is uncomfortably obsessed with and darkly possessive of Christine, the second-string opera singer he becomes fixated on. 

The original silent adaption understood far better the disturbing nature of the narrative and it aims for creepy, unsettling horror. The film has no shortage of melodrama but it also wishes to fuck with your head far more than your heart (The non-horror bits are almost perfunctory). Lon Chaney, “the man of a thousand faces,” easily slips into the role and the film doesn’t try to hide the sinisterness of the figure and his actions. The make-up and costume design of the Phantom are excellent, aimed for maximum ghoulishness. 

And that’s what the Phantom is: a ghoul, a ghost, an individual who is haunting and haunted (heck, it’s right there in his self-appropriated title).  For the first third of the film the Phantom is spoken of in cautious whisper; his presence a suggestion and his shadowy demeanor emphasized by sets and lighting of an exquisite Gothic design. The film imbibes lessons learned from the art design of German Expressionism, especially in the underground lairs and chambers underneath the Paris Opera House.  

The modern horror of shock value and excessive blood may leave us numb and potentially incapable of being frightened by The Phantom of the Opera. Its horror is psychological, of slowly building dread and gloomy, potent imagery. The Phantom’s relationship with Christine is one of psychodrama. When he lures her, hypnotizing her to come to the decaying underground world, she chillingly calls him “Master”. The Phantom believes he can convince her to love him like he loves her (though what he feels is not love, but a manic fixation).

On a smaller but crucial note: There’s something slightly sexist in what takes place. Christine is not a fully realized character, and she is torn between a mad man and a boring chivalric hero coming to her rescue. Both men claim their goals from a place of male privilege; they’re figures of patriarchy at its most self-serving and self-righteous. That might sound like me picking too hard at the threads of something marked by its era, but it matters:  the Phantom does what he does because he feels it is what society owes to him. 

Webber’s version may have, in some ways, become the standard version of the film, but so much of what Webber visually takes comes from the silent original: the falling chandelier, the winding hidden corridors (In deed, almost everything underground), the eerie mask (though later versions reduce the facial area covered), etc. It might seem ironic that a film about opera can’t actually make us hear any opera music. But that music might just be distracting. What carries over is all the heightened emotion of opera, the grandeur of sentiments offered. Operas are larger than life and The Phantom of the Opera paints on a similarly large canvas as well, turning intimate terrors into grandiose nightmares. 

Grade: A-