Flashing Palely in the Margins
Media Diet: September and October
A quick look at the movies, television shows, and books that have captured my attention over the past two months.
Deadpool & Wolverine
Listen: this movie isn’t going to get critical accolades or anything like that, but it made me laugh and all the cameos and guest stars made me giddy, so what I’m saying is that I enjoyed it and am glad we made it to theater to check it out. Sure, it’s (a lot) more gory than I like my movies to be, but I expected that from a Deadpool movie, so I wasn’t surprised. The music is totally fun and appealed to the elder millennial in me, and the set pieces, while gory (I really don’t enjoy gore much), were impressive. Will I remember this movie in a few months? Probably not. But it was just the right way to spend an evening out, and for that I am grateful.
Beetlejuice
The last time I watched this movie was almost thirty years ago, so I wasn’t sure how it would hold up. And yes, some parts are cringey (all the groping!) but overall, Beetlejuice is just as good and entertaining and delightful as I remember it. Catherine O’Hara especially is a standout, but what really struck me all these years later was just how impressive the costume design, set design, and visual effects (puppetry!) were and still are. Burton really established a unique visual style in this movie—one that he reflected in his later work, too—and the world he created was wonderfully immersive. If he’s able to even replicate some of this world-building, visual aesthetic, and humor into the sequel, I’ll be overjoyed.
Chain Gang All Stars
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah has written a novel that is unflinchingly violent and almost gruesome, but incredibly poignant and pointed at the same time. A world where convicts are forced to fight to the death for sport—and for the enjoyment of spectators who have no qualms about what they are watching—feels dystopian, but hews closely to our current abhorrent criminal incarceration system—something Adjei-Brenyah reminds us with no subtlety through footnotes and overt metaphor. It’s a book that forces its messages on you, which can feel heavy-handed but still manages to be captivating because of the richness of the narrative and the well-written characters. It’s not a book for everyone, but if you can stomach the violence and internalize the moralizing, it’s a tour de force of storytelling.
Zone of Interest
There’s a moment in Zone of Interest where the sounds of people being tortured and killed cover the other side of the wall juxtapose on the sounds of children playing in the pool on this side of the wall, and you realize that there is a mundanity to evil that is often unexplored and overlooked. And this isn’t the first time the movie forces you to notice this: through an incredible and unsettling use of sound, each part of “everyday life” is underscored by the atrocities happening just over the wall. The film never shows you the atrocities themselves, but you hear them, constantly, providing a disturbing score to the movie that reminds you that horrible things happened, and while they happened, life went on for others, unperturbed with the horrifying actions that underscore their existence. This movie is excellent, almost perfect. It lingers and remains, particularly its aural landscape, and forces you to
consider what you are ignoring around you for the sake of keeping up your good life. It reminds you that you shouldn’t, and can’t, just plug your ears and go on.
Fall Guy
I can’t tell if this is a rom-com or an action-hijinx movie, but in either case it’s perfectly middling. Sure, there are some jokes that land quite nicely, and some of the action set pieces are quite impressive, but this film suffered from not quite committing to either of them. Kept me entertained, and Gosling is extremely charming, so it’s still worth a watch, but don’t expect too much from it.
Heavy
Kiese Laymon’s memoir is about more than physical weight, but also of the heaviness of the things we carry inside us. A stark portrayal of growing up Black in the South, Heavy is often startling, often jarring, often difficult to read. The rawness and honesty, particularly when Layton outlines his struggles with gambling and eating disorder, makes this a heavy read; the discussion of family and how they shape you is weighty. This is not a memoir to be taken lightly, but it is one to read knowing you will learn, and feel, a lot.
Bad Monkey
I’m not always in on Vince Vaughn and his somewhat brash persona, but in Bad Monkey, it works, and works extremely well. Vaughn’s Andrew Yancy is impetuous and makes bad decisions, but he is inherently likable, making the whole series a hoot. The side characters are great too, especially Jodie Turner-Smith’s Dragon Queen and Meredith Hagner’s Eve Stripling, and the story is compelling and unpredictable enough that you’re invested in what comes next. The show does pack in a few too many narrative arcs and could have been a few episodes shorter to make it more punchy and compact, but overall this is a very satisfying season of television and I’m excited to see what the next season has to bring.
His Three Daughters
There is something about being part of the sandwich generation, one where we are caring for aging parents and young children at the same time, that is discomfiting, because it comes with an uncomfortable truth: that someday our parents will die, and we will be wholly unprepared for that life-changing event. This movie is ostensibly about the relationship between three sisters (and the performances, wow, I’m floored) but really it is about the coming to terms with death and finality—the tension is not about what is happening between the sisters, but with how they are dealing with the death of their father in such different ways. The performances are, as I’ve already said, superlative, but there are parts of the narrative that feel disjointed and the directing doesn’t feel as assured as I would have hoped from a film with such gravitas, but at its core, this film makes you think about how grief and uncertainty
affects your relationships with others, and for that it is beautiful.
Babes
Babes made me laugh, but mostly reminded me of just how hard parenting is—with a four year old in our house, I feel the chaos palpably—and how much we rely on the loved ones around us to get through the toughest parts of it. The Dawn storyline was much more engaging than the Eden one, and I would have loved to spend much more time with Dawn and her family other than always being pulled back to Eden’s sometimes-grating life. Babes is a fun diversion, but will be much more entertaining to someone that has young kids.
Wolfs
An entertaining movie that relies heavily on the charisma and connection between its two leads. And those leads are excellent, but the real star is Austin Abrams, who plays the kid with humor and wide-eyed wonder so well I’d readily watch another caper that involves him. The film’s narrative arc is ho-hum and there never really seems to be any stakes to the action, but Pitt and Clooney have good chemistry and that makes this a pretty fun romp.
RuPaul’s Drag Race, Global All-Stars
I am sad to report that this was perhaps the worst season of Drag Race I have ever watched. The judging was suspect, the production was overwrought, the queens were excessively unkind, and there was too much focus on the Ru-girls and not enough spotlight on the global participants. It may be, perhaps, the season that turns me away from this franchise. A huge miss, and I’m quite sad that it was because it had so much promise.
Nobody Wants This
Let’s put this out there: this series does a disservice to Jewish women, and portrays podcasting in a trivial light. It’s not the most enlightened of shows—how does a 30-something woman living in LA not know what Shalom means or know that prosciutto is pork?—but the thing it does have going for it is incredible chemistry between Kristin Bell and Adam Brody. Honestly, those kids are steamy together. Also a highlight is the portrayal of the siblings: Justine Lupe and Timothy Simons are stars and I’d watch a show that was just about the two of them. It may not be the best show on television, but it surely entertaining, and it is definitely sizzling.
A few albums I’ve really been enjoying recently:
- Eisa Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda, Warriors: This concept album inspired by the 1979 film The Warriors is infectious. I haven’t watched the movie, and couldn’t completely follow the story through the album, but the music—a cross between musical theatre, hip hop, dancehall, and others—is completely engaging. Would love to see this produced on stage.
- Common and Pete Rock, The Auditorium Vol. 1: Common sounds like he hasn’t aged a day — his rhymes and cadence are still smooth as butter — and Pete Rock’s production is rich and luxurious. This album takes the best of each artist and weaves it into a tapestry of songs that are about love, struggle, and solidarity—all songs that remind you of why you fell in love with hip hop in the first place.