Searching Directed by Aneesh Chaganty

A Surprisingly Fresh Take on Mystery Twists

I was pleasantly surprised with this movie. Aneesh manages to lead moviegoers down well-trodden paths long enough to elicit groans of “I have seen this before.” That’s purposeful. He wants our inner-elitist to come out. He wants our elbow-patched professor persona (complete with tweed jacket and film analysis degree) to make his appearance. Once the pretentious professor persona appears, that’s when Aneesh hits us with more misdirection.

It’s almost as if the biggest plot twist of all is that it doesn’t follow the typical trajectory of a thriller/mystery film. I caught myself shaking my head at points, like, “there it is, there’s the disappointing and nonsensical action that drives the plot, but pulls the spectator out of believing and therefore truly investing in the story.”

Keep the Moviegoer Engaged and You’ll Have a Greater Chance of Surprising Them

Speaking for myself here, I wasn’t exactly guessing key plot points, nor did I want to. I was engaged enough to experience the ‘now’ of every scene. This made it much harder to desire to know what was really going on (in the grand scheme). I was more than happy to watch the social media hacking, the procedural shots of the father gathering digital evidence (about 40% of the movie), and the important points on how we fracture our identity and cast different fragments over various social media channels.

Sure, I wondered about the mystery of it all, but only one scene at a time. I was just along for the ride. And that’s where a lot of movies go wrong for me. If a movie isn’t done well enough, viewers get bored and their attention starts to wander elsewhere. Instead of actually experiencing the movie, it is merely reduced to a game of “who done it?”

Overall Grade A-

The movie was great, but I am afraid the positive grade might be the product of my low expectations. I have been burned so many times before that anything contrary to that end result immediately means an Oscar from yours truly.

I know it’s not that good, but definitely worth checking out. Please do so.

Phoebe Bridgers: Stranger in the Alps

 This a 4 on Sputnik Music

I am supposed to like this album. People voted and gave this a fucking 4 on Sputnik music. And plus, one of my favorite bands of recent experience, Spanish Love Songs, just did a kick-ass cover of her song funeral. Another band I discovered through Sputnik because they had a 4.

But once again, as it often happens with Rotten Tomatoes as well, seeing a number or percentage attached to an album immediately detracts from the overall work itself. I am much too distracted by what everyone else thinks to actually pay complete attention to the work.

I should like this. I like Julien Baker. Perhaps a little too much, but I like Julien Baker. She’s got a few really good songs and some pretty good songs. Nothing great, but how many musicians actually ever do achieve any level of greatness? Not many.

Yet with Phoebe, I really want to like her. The album starts off so solidly. It took me a day to get past the first song. Seriously; I didn’t want to explore the rest of the album. I felt content just sitting there. And funeral, that’s a great song as well. But there are so many instances in the album where I swayed my head back and forth a few times, yet nothing really stuck out to me. And perhaps that’s the whole point of the album? The whole, unstickoutedness of it.

It might just be a foray into the quiet, 4 AM moments of life: guitar strumming, hushed melodies, TV infomercials bleeding in the background, the dread of waking up at 2 PM in the afternoon again, the tiredness that is so pronounced it is almost energizing, the brain fog and clarity that comes in waves, and the early-morning drive-backs from god-knows-where LA.

Whatever the intent, I feel like I understand enough to pick up what she communicating. But because Julien Baker’s lyrics are much more relatable, I suppose she will always win out.

I’ll stick with Julien Baker.

 

Jane Doe by Converge

What Am I Missing Here?

I have now given this 4 tries, all at different times in my life. I was probably 12 when I first pretended to like Converge, posting a song on my Myspace profile playlist to seem cool. There were Poison the Well, Misery Signals, and August Burns Red to contend with; and their more melodic, less-chaotic, easily-digestible music won out over what I figured to be overrated noise. I also really liked Ska growing up, so my tastes were very melody-driven.

Once my musical taste starting to mature a bit, and my brain started to make sense of more complex bands, I gave Jane Doe another shot. Nothing resonated. I could listen to The Dillinger Escape Plan and get down to about 45% of what I heard. And as I practiced listening–it took active listening, trust me–my love for Dillinger’s music climbed up to the 95% range. But Jane Doe, that classic, groundbreaking album, still sounded like sheet metal sent through an industrial sized cheese grater. Not good.

Something started changing though; I began to appreciate the screeching, harpy-like vocals of certain singers. I already loved The Black Dahlia Murder’s sometime comedic range of guttural grunts and glass-breaking highs, so expanding my taste wasn’t all that difficult.

About 2013 (ish) I listened to Sunbather by Deafheaven. Ignoring the collective of Black Metal purists who called all Deafheaven listeners pretentious posers, the album was great to me. Sure, it took multiple efforts, but it eventually came around. And so, once again, remembering another album that I have given multiple attempts to, and figuring myself ready, I tried Jane Doe. 

And to my surprise: Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Fourth Time’s The Charm?

This is the fourth occasion I have tried. Not really that many times if you think about it given the wide range of years I have been trying, but probably fair enough to warrant a fair critique, right? Because for so long I thought it was a grossly overrated album like Brand New’s The Devil and God, I almost did write it off. These are my thoughts, fourteen or so years after the first listen.

The Musicality of the Album

What does ‘musicality’ even mean to me? I don’t have formal training in music. I play musical instruments, but I am not a musician. I love music, but so does everyone else in the world. The only thing I can adequately judge is by comparing my subjective experience and by using common sense.

It seems apparent to me that Jane Doe is an intense album that doesn’t hold back its aggressive and emotional components. That definitely pushes my assessment in a positive direction, It is raw and honest and that’s what art is supposed to be at the very least, right? But something is still holding me back from truly enjoying it.

It might be a lost cause at this point. Like I have been predisposed to not like the album just because it hasn’t worked out over multiple attempts. I do, after all, have a chronic phobia of missing out. The FOMO is real. And despite the brutal aspects of the album that I enjoy, and last two tracks, overall, something is still missing for me.

The acoustics, the sound, the feel, the atmosphere, the practice space ambiance, everything, checks off the boxes of the thrashy, punkish, metallic blend of my experience. They aren’t going for a “mathy” sound like Dillinger, but they achieve the same sort of segments that show up in Dillinger songs. So, what is my final score, after my fourth and possibly final attempt?

My Final Score

The head-bobbing score is definitely higher than it was five years ago. And there are definitely moments where I am enjoying the music. Hype aside, the album isn’t bad. I am afraid that in the past I was too distracted with being ‘blown away’ to actually analyze the music. I also didn’t really ‘analyze’ all too much in the past. Would just go off of first impression and half-assed listens. Definitely didn’t do my due diligence.

I also feel that context has a lot to do with the quality of the music. There was a quote from someone in Pearl Jam or some other grunge-type band of the time about the aura that surrounded the Seattle scene in the 90’s. How the zeitgeist amplified the quality of the music in a relative way. So, as a cultural artifact, Jane Doe should be rated high objectively. Subjectively though, I still don’t understand it.

I am just going to assume that I am too ignorant in the ways of music to really understand the implications of the album. I am sure there are people out there who also don’t like or understand Calculating Infinity.

Overall, I don’t really have a problem with the sound and style; I just don’t find anything that memorable in the album. For some, this album was a gateway into the world of metal. For others, they tattooed the album art on their arm and walked around preaching the Gospel of Jane Doe. For me, I’ll just stick to my beloved Dillinger Escape Plan.

p.b.s. (post blog script) I know that Dillinger and Converge are two different bands, but they are the two most comparable according to my familiarity with the genre.

 

 

Netflix Notables: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

An Impressive Sextet of Western Vignettes

This collection of films is a welcome return to form for the Coen Brothers. And by ‘return to form,’ I mean that the last time I had a positive reaction to a Coen Brothers’ project was Inside Llewyn Davis back in 2013. I LOVED that movie. And forgiving them the Hollywood indulgences of Hail Caesar, I really can’t say that I have been all that intrigued by their cinematic brand for the last five years.

Some of my favorite movies are from these guys, and Buster Scruggs is quintessentially Coenesque in all the right places for me. Sure, the Tom Waits gold-prospector story was the weakest link in the six-story chain, but for the most part, I believe that I have witnessed some of the best cinematic shorts I have ever seen.

Now this is just a knee-jerk reaction. The true test will be measuring the Buster Scruggs rewatch value. Just like some of the best video games have excellent replay value, so too the best movies are profound enough to offer new clues and subtle details that are hard enough to fully absorb on first watch. I am afraid that I might have indulged in one too many Imperial Stouts to accurately assess the quality of the shorts, but regardless, I had a lot of fun.

The Central Theme and My Favorite Short

The central theme is the brutal Western Frontier as a canopy for the indifference of the Cosmos. That’s the best (perhaps most pretentious) way I can think to describe the common elements that thread these interwoven narratives. And yes, death is a very pronounced, perhaps overused, element of these stories. The James Franco story uses it so well though. And if I could recommend just watching one of these stories, it would be the second tale where James Franco plays a bank robber. That’s all that needs to be said. It is beautiful in its unassuming bleakness. Definitely the strongest written vignette of the bunch, if only for its ability to say so much in so little words. And yes, James…that was a pretty girl.

Trademark Coen Brothers

The dialogue, verbose and rich in vocabulary, is almost a prominent character in of itself. There is something hilarious about the unusual juxtaposition of bumpkins with deep southern accents belting out the type of vocabulary usually reserved for those of high society or high-scale dramas. And with every tweak in pronunciation, profound sentences take on a comical air because of just one wrongly-stressed syllable. Think True Grit and O Brother where stretches of the movie are carried along by the strength of the words spoken. Where the journey, the in-between moments– is and are far greater than the destination

Therein lies the genius of the Coen Brothers: the dialogue and setting driven by a bleak but equally comical plot. Most of it is a carefully-calculated shit show of Kafkaesque proportions; but at the same time they never really lose themselves in absurdity. Their movies never stray irreparably from realism to warrant eye rolls. But their films also never follows the boring path of realistic films to warrant any glazing of eyes.

Overall, watch them all and form your own opinions. I for one will be rewatching these all again soon. And I am usually a one-and-done type of moviegoer. Bravo.

 

Terrible Movie of the Week: Overlord by Julius Avery

You Had Me…And Then Lost Me…At Nazi Zombies

Before you write this off as a case of mistaken identity, I will ease your mind by saying that I walked into the movie theater fully expecting a movie that puts action and violence at the forefront of the viewing experience. I expected some forgettable dialogue, uninspired acting, and an overall campy movie. I just didn’t expect the actions scenes to be so lazy, and dare I say, constipated? 

Constipated Creative Direction

What I mean by this is that it could have been an insane movie. Like recommend-to-friends-because-of just-how-over-the-top-it-is, insane. Objectively it is still bad; but hey, at least it was fucking worth watching and recommending because they decided to have some balls and actually try something different. Sadly, this was not the case.

The violence could have been over-the-top. The fucking action scenes could have been jam-packed with those mutant-zombie hybrids. That poly-lingual heroine could have walked through the Nazi church and torched a few dozen baddies as revenge for turning her village into a giant science experiment. All in all, there were absolutely no cathartic moments in the movie. It’s as if everything was blocked up–a muzzle was placed over the entire project from the start. Unsure of how to transcend its imitation action-movie destiny, the movie stuck way too close to its mediocre counterparts of the canon.

A Gigantic Waste of Time

Reviews said it is equal parts Saving Private Ryan and a B-Movie zombie flick. And yes, the first scene was absolutely intense and amazing, but sadly, the rest of the movie fizzles out very quickly. And yes, I know the budgets are very different between the two films, but they appeared to exhaust their creative and financial resources all in the first five minutes. That’s like writing a very killer introduction to a novel, one that gets readers to commit their precious time, only to stuff the rest of it with the most derivative fluff imaginable.

And the most infuriating part about the movie was that it chose to spend time on scenes that every action movie spends its time on. WHY? Just WHY? Seriously, I don’t want to see a guy get punched and interrogated over and over again for answers. This has happened in every single fucking action movie for years now. The acting and dialogue is bad enough, and the writing was clearly glossed-over, so why (from a director’s perspective) would you want to subject audience members to the weakest facets of your film.

Because an action film has to have these obligatory scenes and exchanges.

Says who?

If it was due to financial limitations then I understand; impressive action films take money to do right; but come on now…have some balls and do something different. Spectators want badass action with this type of movie. We don’t want a half-hour of four american soldiers hiding in an attic to surreptitiously tiptoe and hold a Nazi at gunpoint until the very predictable happens thirty minutes later and he gets away.

I want my price of admission back. About to blow an O-ring if I don’t stop typing…

Until next time.

Ask The Dust: John Fante

Charles Bukowski = Knut Hamsun + John Fante

This is some good shit. Imagine Bukowski without his distracted and shameless sexual excursions. Imagine more Knut Hamsun than anything: the starving artist’s survival, the simultaneous self-aggrandizement and belittling self-hate, the very, very clear introspection which is brutally honest from all angles. A feverish, I-am-going-to-regret-writing-this-later quality haunts every punctuation mark. All sentiment is unabashed until it’s too late. The misogynistic habituation which betrays just how much women terrify Arturo Bandini is repeated over and over again. It is shamelessly expressive; a great read if you can forgive the Holden Caulfield mindset of the protagonist.

Why You Should Read It

If you are a female and perhaps still puzzled at the macho-absurdity of the male psyche, this book grants a glimpse into many universal themes of a man trying to prove his potency. Also, having been an ex-control freak myself (aren’t we all in some way?), the ending is so much more satisfying to me. There’s something in letting go that welcomes misery and sadness, but is ultimately always the right move. You are just fooling yourself and abusing others if you think you are actually in control of anything other than yourself…anyways.

Death is another reason why you should read this book; it’s as if Fante can both inject life and personality into figures that are so lifelessly living out their days. You have Bandini’s neighbor who steals milk, livestock, and is constantly taking out liquor loans, and who has long since given up on advancing in life. He has stagnated.

This is juxtaposed with Bandini who at times considers himself to have life by the horns–and yet, once confronted with any mild setback, he exists on the same plain as his steak-stealing neighbor.  He writhes and wriggles himself free of the discomfort of waiting for his manuscripts to be approved and for money to be sent his way. My recent career in freelancing has introduced me to the sensation, and it’s not fun.

But in addition to all of this, Fante manages to say so much in so little words. A ton happens in the very slim novel.

With Bukowski, the only things that happen in his books are sex and physical abuse.

With Knut Hamsen, there is less urgency. A large portion of Hunger is devoted to finding food.

With Fante, readers are introduced to one of the most enigmatic, wild-and-restless duos of recent memory. And there is so much urgency and fight in Bandini, right up until the point that the dust wins. And the Los Angeles wind, the desert, the earth, the shaking quake of the tectonic plates beneath him, threatens to steal the inertia of his ambitious typewriter fingers. But there’s peace in that. Eventually. Bandini will find peace in the chaos.

Podcast Picks: The Habitat by Gimlet Media

Podcast Picks

Because of a recent road trip, I had a plethora of time to devote to catching up on a couple of podcasts. One of them was Dear Franklin Jones, which almost made me fall asleep at the wheel, but The Habitat was quite alright.

The premise is interesting enough: a NASA mission–HI-SEAS–of six volunteers was organized in a hyper-realistic space pod atop the Mars-like atmosphere of Hawaii. These volunteers were then forced to share very limited space with the other volunteers for a year. Drama and romance ensues. Cliques are formed, and the claustrophobic nature of the dynamic is reported on exhaustively. It does get a little tedious, but keeping in step with the nature of the mission, the podcast has to be a little tedious to be an accurate portrayal of HI-SEAS.

The strongest part of the entire series was the beginning and the end. Near the middle, I found myself smoking some extra roadtrip cigarettes to make up for the lull; but, regardless, the series was immersive enough to warrant my attention for 70% of the entire show. That’s pretty good. And because I am a copywriter for podcasts sometimes, through freelance gigs and the like, I can really appreciate good quality content in the podcast realm.

In review: listen to the Habitat; skip Dear Franklin Jones.

Up next: Slow Burn seasons 1 & 2.

PS Vita Gems: Hotline Miami

Why Play the PlayStation Vita?

There are a few quality games to play on the almost extinct handheld. And because I recently came into possession of the console, I figured I had better take advantage of some of the titles. Also, a 1000 + mile drive from Phoenix to Saint Louis has made the handheld a necessity for me–especially with some long Illinois drives on the horizon for Thanksgiving.

The game in question is Hotline Miami. And relatively shortly, I questioned my gaming abilities. I died so many times, I figured the game to be a 2-d Dark Souls with guns.

But after many, many respawns and the very addictive, “just one more try,” mentality that the developers have masterfully infused, I quickly found my rhythm and beat the game a few hours later.

Yes, it is short. And yes, there isn’t much more to the game than bloodily wiping the floor with the corpses of the Miami Mob; but, there is just something inexplicably satisfying about beating a chapter or clearing a stage. The difficulty really does give you a feeling of accomplishment. And because the game doesn’t punish you for dying, but rather is built around the phenomenon, you won’t be rage quitting. Because, after all, you only had one guy left that time. And although it was frustrating as fucking fuck to get blasted so close to sweet victory, you now know the shotgun-wielder’s location near the elevator and you will be ready the next attempt. Just focus on one guy at a time.

Why is it so Damn Addicting?

I rarely feel this way about games. Is it the convenience factor? The handheld is compact, light, and easily inserted into any boring situation with aplomb; that might be most of the answer. But the game is just so flashy and bloody and at the same time drenched in minimalism that it seems clear the writers certainly wanted to advertise how little they gave a fuck about crafting a traditional video game narrative. I liked it. I wasn’t engaged with the story, but I don’t even think the writers were either. It is what it was. Nothing more than a hallucinogenic nightmare covered in a bomber jacket soaked with pixelated blood. And because they choose to focus more on the gameplay than the story, I think the game was stronger because of it. I have played it non-stop for 3 days and I am about to end this post to go play again.

4.5 out of 5.

Terrible Movie of the Week: Slender Man Directed by Sylvain White

 My Derived Enjoyment from Terrible Horror Movies

Terrible movies still hold a special place in my heart. And for the most part, the genre that commits the most cinematic sins is of course, the horror genre. Many a night have been made by laughing at horribly crafted horror movies. Even the most serious attempts by seasoned horror filmmakers rarely survive a harsh barrage of comments, chuckles, and eye rolls. It is just something I have learned to count on: there will always be terribly derivative attempts at the craft; and rarely will an attempt actually unsettle and take the wind from my sails.

Friends, siblings, and I have made it our mission to scope out the worst-acted, funniest movies. We are so used to laughing any attempt to scare us that we often draw the ire from all theater-goers who are unlucky enough to watch the latest horror movie at the same time. We have gotten some seriously concerned looks while we cackle like demons at the ‘most terrifying’ parts of these movies. In a backwards ways, some of the funniest movies I have ever seen have come from director’s very candid attempts at seriousness.

And sadly, Slender Man is just bad. It doesn’t offer enough directorial power to make it past the point where any seriousness can be attained. The dialogue is too slow, the acting just a stepping-stone gig for actors who were already focused on the next audition by the time they were called to act. Hell, at one point, one of the actresses looks like she is legitimately daydreaming–not at all looking like she is about to confront one of those nightmarish noodle mans you seen at used-car dealerships.

So, the movie was disappointing on two levels: one, it was just plain bad. We knew this before we rented it at our local Family Video. We knew that the subject matter had potential, but that it would ultimately be a poor attempt at establishing any atmospheric creepiness; instead, it would just be a reiteration of a thousand-seen movies before. The second level of disappointment is this: the movie wasn’t even entertaining in its badness. Yes, we could scour youtube for terribly acted home videos–we have made our fair share of those–but our engagement wouldn’t be there. And without engagement at the very least, apart from poor execution which is what usually makes us laugh, you have a movie that isn’t even worth watching for comedic purposes.

Slender Man = Not good.

Netflix Notables: The Night Comes For Us

Netflix Notables

If it has an 85% or above on Rotten Tomatoes, I will probably give a half-assed review of it. You have been forewarned: I often rely far too heavily on the tomato-meter for determining my next movie binge. And The Night Comes For Us is no exception.

It has almost become a Friday night ritual. I check new arrivals on Netflix and then I browse the ratings, log in, add a couple films to my list, and cease social interactions for the umpteenth consecutive week. It is a great life that I live.

A Lesser Raid Redemption

I loved The Raid: Redemption. I first rented it from a Redbox close to five years ago. A buddy and I needed something to watch while we attempted to break our Jack In The Box taco record. We both ate ten. And although I fought off the very real urge to up-chuck during my late night binge-eating session, I still had enough presence of mind to appreciate the martial arts greatness that was dingily lit before us.

With the volume turned down far too low to pick up the nuanced Indonesian dubs, we sat enthralled in disbelief as the body count kept climbing at the hands of master choreographers. We were veterans of other martial arts films–Ong Bak, Ong Bak 2, Ong Bak 3, Ip man, Ip man 2, and the list goes on–so this quickly became another addition to our greatest hits list.

But I think the movie left a far stronger impression on me, as I kept rewatching and sharing it many months later. When I asked my buddy if he wanted to watch it again, a  couple of years later, he scratched his head as if any semblance of recollection had long since escaped.

Rabbit trails aside, this movie has Iko Uwais. And every time I see him, I know that decent fight sequences are in the books. But sadly, the fighting wasn’t as impressive. It was gory and crazy and ambitious and a labor of love, no doubt about that. But, it just didn’t force me to make bizarre, reflexive exhalations like The Raid did. Yet the movie achieved something far deeper for me.

A Cogent Commentary on Death

During The Night Comes for Us, there are so many on-screen deaths, in as many possible ways, that the viewer can’t help but scoff at the mortal tensions between the brothers of the Six Seas. What I mean by this is that after seeing these guys physically fuck up so many people, their own survival seems superficial and laughable in the grand scheme. And then my ‘expert analysis and critique’ begin to look silly as well because I paused my running Netflix tab before a beer-prompted piss and caught a second glimpse of the title of the film.

The. Night. Comes. For. Us. 

The night in question being death, no doubt. And the whole plot revolves around seasoned killers bending over backwards to save a little girl: the even more obvious symbol for youth and immortality juxtaposed with the constant death and tenuous mortality that follows the Indonesian Six Seas.

The expendability of human life in the netherworld of underground crime is one talking point. Others are the circle of life, the push for survival, and the always-pressing desire to survive even though death eventually comes. Make no mistake, the movie is a commentary on death–in cinema and real life. And this film in particular has made me start to re-examine some of the seemingly heavy-handed aspects of martial arts films; to instead take them as a far subtler commentary on deeper aspects of existence; and especially, to re-examine the absence of existence: death.

Definitely worth a watch if you can stomach the violence. You probably won’t be blown away, but you might just find yourself questioning the entire purpose of the genre and what it can do to convey certain messages.