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crowdvscritic · 11 months

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round up // MAY 23

Hot off the presses: You can now catch me on the airwaves!

Thanks to an invite from critic Joshua Ray, I am now semi-regularly reviewing films on Friday evenings on KMOV 4 in St. Louis. Joshua and I tag-teamed my first visit to the studio reviewing The Little Mermaid. Check out our takes on KMOV’s website, including what updates were made from the original and what we think of the underwater photography.

And because more people have asked me about my thoughts on The Little Mermaid than any other movie in awhile, I joined Max Foizey (aka Max on Movies) on KTRS for a discussion of how the movie compares to other recent Disney remakes. Listen to it on Soundcloud.

But don’t worry—the bright lights of TV and the broad reach of radio haven’t changed me! You can still find my top Crowd and Critic picks in the order I experienced them in this month’s Round Up. Though I also stopped by KMOV to do an opposites-attract double review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and You Hurt My Feelings, those reviews aren’t available on their website yet. I’ll share it as soon as it’s posted on their website, but keep scrolling for why I think those films are both worth checking out.

May Crowd-Pleasers

1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

How many writer-directors love their characters as much as James Gunn? His affection makes them a wonderful bunch of weirdos who may be able to fight off their greatest foe yet: audience malaise. Vol. 3 features many classic MCU problems, but unlike almost everything since Endgame, the Guardians keep them in check. Read my full review at ZekeFilm, see where it ranks in the MCU for me, and read more about actor Chukwudi Iwujj’s process for creating the villain. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 8/10

2. Irreconcilable Differences (1984)

Now I have watched every Nancy Meyers movie! (And you can see all of them ranked on Letterboxd.) Though it wasn’t without a little effort. Why is this rom-com so hard to find? Irreconcilable Differences is imperfect, but it's a hidden gem no one should be embarrassed by. Funny and romantic (with a pinch of bitters) all at once, it’s an excellent and hilarious spoof of Hollywood that confirms Drew Barrymore has always had it.

If that doesn’t sell you, consider it feels like a practice run for future hits like Baby Boom, The Parent Trap, It's Complicated and The Intern:

A woman revamps her life with a new career after her family life is upended

A kid tries to get her parents back together

After learning of her husband’s infidelity, a woman must figure out how/if she wants to single parent her daughter

The conniving woman who swipes away her rich father is named Blake (a lá Meredith Blake)

Perhaps it will be telling of the things to come in Paris Paramount? The plot of that work-in-progress is reportedly about two Hollywood types who break up and reunite for a film, and this story is about two Hollywood types working together until they can't make their marriage work. Plus, they make references to Ernst Lubitsch, who inspired the upcoming title. All this to say, I can't wait for whatever that film is whenever some studio isn't silly enough to let this project get away from them. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 7/10

3. The Album by the Jonas Brothers (2023)

The Jo Bros are back with their boppy pop-timism! This album feels like 4th of July weekend, and not just the track called “Americana.” Every second sounds like summer, and not just “Summer in the Hamptons” and “Summer Baby.” With mentions of baseball, July heat, and at least nine U.S. states (plus a shout-out to our Missouri icon Nelly), it’s meant to be played at a picnic or poolside. The best track, “Waffle House,” taps into one of their most reliable wells: autobiography. In that same vein, does their daughter-doting track “Little Bird” mean they have entered their Dad Rock phase? Somehow it looks good on them.

4. Fast X (2023)

If this is not the silliest movie I’ve ever seen, I can’t remember what beats it. But is it also my favorite Fast and Furious flick aside from the very-differently-vibed Hobbs & Shaw? Kudos to Jason Mamoa for creating the exact over-the-top villain a dumb movie like this needs. Eleven titles in, this franchise follows no rules, and neither does he. Crowd: X/X // Critic: 5/X

5. Missing (2023)

A thriller that takes place entirely within screens may be a gimmick, but it’s a surprisingly engaging one thanks to the clever ways technology is used and thanks to actors like Joaquim de Almeida bringing those screens to life. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 8/10

6. Falling Down (1993)

The chaos of the world literally drives Michael Douglas to violence! Imagine every terrible thing you’ve wanted to do when someone cuts you off in traffic or you can’t order from the breakfast menu at 10:31, and you’ll get a pretty good idea of how bananas and unpredictable this action thriller is. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7.5/10

7. Double Feature: Female-Directed Rom-Coms: The Wedding Date (2005) + Rosaline (2022)

The full description of this double feature should be, “Female-directed rom-coms about women who work with a forced love interest to win back an ex while a relative gets married, but then it turns out she’s in love with the forced love interest after all.” In The Wedding Date (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 6.5/10), Debra Messing hires escort Dermot Mulroney as her date for sister Amy Adams’ wedding because the Best Man is an ex she still loves. In Rosaline (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7.5/10), Romeo’s one-time lover (Kaitlyn Dever) attempts to break up his new romance with her cousin Juliet all while hiding her plotting from her dad (Bradley Whitford) and nurse (Minnie Driver). Unfortunately, I have no clue how you can watch Rosaline anymore thanks to Disney’s not-user-friendly decision to remove select content (with no clear rationale) from Disney+ and Hulu, which also includes my beloved The World According to Jeff Goldblum.

8. Kandahar (2023)

As you might expect from this paint-by-numbers action-war-thriller, I can’t explain back to you the real world political implications of Kandahar, but its race across the desert plot engine is more than thrilling enough to sustain it. Read my full review for ZekeFilm. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 7/10

9. Higher Than Heaven by Ellie Goulding (2023)

Ellie Goulding’s breathy sopranos are back for melancholy synth electro-pop about the dream state that is falling in love and the disorientation of heartbreak. Cue up “Cure for Love” or “Easy Lover” for a dance party and “Tastes Like You” for angsty swooning.

May Critic Picks

1. The Coronation

You know I love some pomp and circumstance! More than anything, I’m fascinated by a significant historical moment, which means I have no qualms about any mixed (or less-than-positive feelings) about the monarchy. I have found myself digging into the symbolism of the objects and rituals as well as what the decisions about the ceremony might mean for Charles's reign. A few pieces that got me thinking:

"Why King Charles III Will Be Worth the Wait,” Time.com (2023)

“Ateh Jewel on the Monarchy: ‘For Better or For Worse,’” SoManyThoughts.stubstack.com (2023)

“Elizabeth Angell on the Moment ‘the Royal Family Presents Itself Officially to Us,’ SoManyThoughts.stubstack.com (2023)

“Tariro Mzezewa on Why She Won’t Be Watching the Coronation,” SoManyThoughts.stubstack.com (2023)

2. The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Now I have watched every Sofia Coppola movie! (And you can see all of them ranked on Letterboxd.) Like Bonnie and Clyde, it so blew me away with its dreamy visuals and complex writing I needed to know what Roger Ebert and other critics thought before I could fall asleep. Crowd: 7/10 // Critic: 10/10

3. Jesus Christ Superstar National Tour

I’ve rarely (if ever) made connections between Jesus and heavy metal music, but Jesus Christ Superstar made it work better than I anticipated. This Andrew Lloyd Weber musical is also more poignant than I expected. Though not 100% Biblically consistent, making you sit and watch Jesus be lashed 39 times and then hang in near-silence on the cross challenges you to reckon with His suffering in a way I hadn’t before. It also forced me to consider about Judas’s point of view in new ways. Because of the scream-o musical style that made it difficult to understand all of the lyrics, I’m not sure I’ll be rushing to this show again, but I’m glad I made the time for this innovative and moving production.

4. Alfred Hitchcock Marathon: The 39 Steps (1935), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), Rope (1948), I Confess (1953)

For no particular reason, I went on a “Hitch-kick” this month. My favorites:

The 39 Steps: A fun practice run for North by Northwest!

Foreign Correspondent: An exciting war journalism thriller! I’ve added it to my Letterboxd list of my favorite journalism films.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Because Hitchcock could apparently direct anything, a romantic comedy that makes a great double feature with You Hurt My Feelings!

Rope: The perfect murder gone wrong thanks to the sleuthing of Jimmy Stewart!

I Confess: A priest (Montgomery Clift) must figure out what to do when a parishioner confesses to murder!

5. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006-07)

Justice for Studio 60! I’ve always gotten the vibe this behind-the-scenes dramedy about an SNL-style show is the underwhelming, ignored stepchild for Aaron Sorkin fans. Now that I’ve watched its single season, I’m thinking that must be because A) it followed the nearly-flawless hit that is The West Wing, and B) it had the unfortunate timing to premiere within a month of the similarly-named and premised (and intentionally much funnier) 30 Rock on the same network. Whatever the reason, it’s not that Matthew Perry wasn’t firing on all cylinders, that anyone is better lovelorn than Bradley Whitford, or that its interrogation of the intersection of comedy and politics isn’t relevant today. Though Sorkin and Co. got enough notice to craft a satisfying finale, I wish we lived in a world where this was just the beginning of seven seasons with Matt, Danny, Jordan, Simon, Harriet, Tom, Cal, and Jack.

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6. Good Reads (and One Good Watch)

Thoughts on the Hollywood writers’ strike:

"Anonymous Strike Diary: The Well-Known Creator,” HollywoodReporter.com (2023)

“Anonymous Strike Diary: The Disillusioned EP,” HollywoodReporter.com (2023)

“Hollywood Thinks It Can Divide and Conquer the Writers’ Strike. It Won’t Work,” TheGuardian.com (2023)

Memorable moments in the world of music:

“Ed Sheeran’s Court Victory Reveals the Paradox of Putting Creativity on Trial,” TheGuardian.com (2023)

“‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Breaks Down His Most Iconic Tracks,” GQ on YouTube (2023)

“The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History,” RollingStone.com (2022)

Figuring out how to be an adult:

“Wading Through Quicksand,” CharlotteSometimesGoesToTheMovies.com (2023)

“What’s the Deal With Adulthood? 25 Years Later, Seinfeld Feels Revelatory,” NYTimes.com (2023)

"I Am Eight Years Old and Would Like a Batman Movie Aimed at Me, Please,” McSweeneys.net (2022) - Pardon some French, but this captures my feelings about how there are too many Batmen

7. You Hurt My Feelings (2023)

What if you got caught in one of your little white lies? When author Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) overhears her husband Don (Tobias Menzies) admit he hates her new book after years of singing its praises to her face, she spirals. It’s a comedy of manners, and it’s refreshingly grown-up, honest, and light on its feet. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

8. Rashomon (1950)

Before The Last Duel, there was Rashomon. When a samurai dies in mysterious circumstances, a tribunal hears everyone’s side of the story. The twist: No two people’s stories are exactly alike, so it’s less about the facts and more about the truth behind everyone’s reasons for how they tell their stories. Crowd: 7.5/10 // Critic: 10/10

9. Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller (2014)

I was almost finished with Keller’s book about finding meaning in our work when he passed on May 19. His book has been an encouragement to me in a challenging time, as have several other books and articles in his career. His obituaries in The Washington Post and The New Yorker capture why he meant a lot to many people.

Also in May…

You thought we were done with The Little Mermaid, didn’t you? In addition to my TV and radio reviews, I wrote a review for ZekeFilm that digs into more details than I could cover on the airwaves. You didn’t think there was that much talk about, did you?

Until my June Round Up, you can see what I’m watching in real-time on Letterboxd, Twitter, and ZekeFilm.

Photo credits: Jonas Brothers, Ellie Goulding, Coronation, Jesus Christ Superstar, Tim Keller. All others IMDb.com.

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 4 years

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“How can we best promote world peace? As always, Thomas Friedman has a stunningly original answer: by building more McDonald’s. Here’s Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” from his new book The Lexus and the Olive Tree:

…[A]s I Quarter-Poundered my way around the world in recent years, I began to notice something intriguing. I don’t know when the insight struck me. It was a bolt out of the blue…. And it was this:

No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s.

That’s what passes for an insight, in what passes for the mind of Thomas Friedman. Please note that this man is the possessor of what he himself calls “the best job in the world”: Foreign Correspondent for the New York Times. He is paid a huge salary to Quarter-Pound his way around the world producing “insights” like this. That’s the most interesting aspect of the whole Friedman phenomenon: not that Friedman is a bear of very little brain (because after all, there are a lot of Poohs in the woods) but that this Pooh is a leading writer for America’s newspaper of record.

Why would a hegemonic world power hire an outright halfwit as spokesman?

The very stupidity of Friedman’s analyses must somehow serve the Empire’s purposes. Once you admit this possibility, you can see that it fits an historical pattern. Again and again, the truly powerful Empires hire mediocrities; it’s the marginal empires which generate the great sloganeers – Mao, for example. Whatever else may be said about him, Mao came up with some great lines, from “paper tiger” to “Let a hundred flowers bloom.” When those five-million-strong crowds chanted in Tienanmen, they were quoting some first-rate poetry. That little red book they waved enclosed some of the best lines of the century.

Friedman, slogan kommissar of a much stronger Empire, couldn’t get drunken Manchester United fans chanting. Consider his use of numbers. This was one of Mao’s favorite mnemonic devices; “Smash the four olds!” “Destroy the Seventh Snake!” All Friedman has to offer is “The Three Democratizations” – but Friedman’s three D’s are so uninspiring that two days after finishing his book, I can only name two of them. If this guy was working for the Chinese Propaganda Ministry, he’d soon find himself collecting glowing camel-dung in the most radioactive districts of Sinkiang.

But the US, like nineteenth-century Britain, is so strong that it doesn’t want talented poets working for it. Think of the intentionally flat slogans of the British Empire:

“England expects every man to do his duty.” “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”

Dull lines – meant to be dull. The British, in their glory days, revelled in their dullness, associating real poetry with women, the French, and other lesser species. There was an element of gloating in the very dullness of their slogans: let the conquered know that they are ruled by mediocrities.

The slogans Friedman develops in this book have the same triumphant dullness. Their purpose is not to inspire Americans, but to convince everyone else that there’s no way to stop “Globalization-Americanization” (his term). Take his favorite oxymoron, “The Golden Straitjacket,” his name for the state-model created by Thatcher and Reagan. It’s “Golden” because if you implement it, your country will supposedly get rich. It’s a “Straitjacket” because, as Friedman says over and over again, it takes away all your freedom. He compares this straitjacket to the Mao suit, evoking those grey-clad crowds in the great Tienanmin Square rallies:

‘The Golden Straitjacket is the defining garment of this globalization era. The Cold War had the Mao suit, the Nehru jacket, the Russian fur [sic]. Globalization has only the Golden Straitjacket. If your country has not been fitted for one, it will be soon.”

Friedman comes up with dozens of glib, sloppy metaphors implying that there is no way out of “globalization-Americanization,” and that anyone who tries to resist will be stampeded. He refers to the wired-up leaders of the movement as “the Electronic herd,” which tramples anything in its way. He takes the cattle-herd metaphor further, dividing the wired American elite into “long-horn” and “short-horn” cattle, and adds that the herd is served by the “bloodhounds” of financial-rating services like Moody’s.

Friedman doesn’t seem to know that cattle herds aren’t usually guided by bloodhounds. But the clumsiness of his metaphors is part of his job. He’s here to threaten those who seem reluctant to join the herd. Who wants subtlety from a leg-breaker? The cruder the metaphor, the more frightening. Good poets don’t make good goons. And Friedman is pure goon, brass-knuckled platitudes all the way. Like a Naked Gun voiceover, he lets his violent metaphors stampede where they will. One of the most ham-handed metaphorical panics is what happens to this “electronic herd.” Within pages of its introduction, the “herd” is transformed from cattle to wildebeest, grazing the Savannah. Ah, but that’s only the beginning. You have to read it to believe it, so take a deep breath and follow Mr. Friedman into the Serengeti of international finance:

Think of the Electronic Herd as being like a herd of wildebeests grazing over a wide area of Africa. When a wildebeest on the edge of the herd sees something move in the tall, thick brush next to where it’s feeding, that wildebeest doesn’t say to the wildebeest next to it, “Gosh, I wonder if there’s a lion moving around there in the brush.” No way. That wildebeest just starts a stampede, and these wildebeests don’t stampede for a mere hundred yards. They stampede to the next country and crush everything in their path. So how do you protect your country from this? Answer: You cut the grass, and clear away the brush, so that the next time the wildebeest sees something rustle in the grass it thinks, “No problem, I see what it is. It’s just a bunny rabbit.” […] What transparency does is get more information to the wildebeests faster, so whatever they want to do to save their skins they can do in an orderly manner. In the world of finance this can mean the difference between having your market take a little dip and having it nosedive into sustained losses that take months or years to recover from.

Is he TRYING to be ridiculous here? I don’t think so. Friedman is a perfect spokes-beest for the entire herd. His endless Mister-Ed monologues comfort the other ruminants, reminding them of their hegemony.

But that doesn’t make for great Imperial poetry. In fact, by the end of that paragraph, with its African bunny rabbits, transparent wildebeest and brush-clearance program, poor old Mao is banging his head against the coffin-lid. Mao’s corpse is praying to Marx, Stalin, and Kwan-Yin for one day back on Earth, just time enough to liquidate this Friedman, whose hack-work shames ideological poets everywhere. In fact, seismologists detect widespread vibrations as Imperial poets from Virgil to Kipling batter their coffin-lids, screaming in agony, as Friedman drones on.

But there are horses for courses, and this garrulous Mister Ed is perfect as mouthpiece of the gloating, swaggering American Empire in its moment of triumph. Because Friedman’s not just dumb; he’s mean, too. He just loves to tell those about to undergo “Globalization-Americanization” that the process is going to hurt:

Unfortunately, the Golden Straitjacket is pretty much ‘one size fits all.’ So it pinches certain groups, squeezes others….It is not always pretty or gentle or comfortable. But it’s here and it’s the only model on the rack this historical season.

But of course he has to offer something which passes for evidence. So, to fill the time between “insights,” he recounts inspirational anecdotes gleaned from lickspittles and Uncle Toms the world over. Friedman meets the son of a leading PLO general, and is gratified that the boy is now working as a software salesman with no hard feelings over the fact that his father took a hundred bullets from an Israeli hit team. He is told by Anatoly Chubais, that herd bull of the Russian Young Wildebeest herd, that it’s Russia’s own fault entirely that the country is in ruins.

Russia, in fact, is the villain of this book. Friedman hates Russia – truly hates it, with a mealy-mouthed venom which does not make pleasant reading. His book begins with a quote from an American businessman whining that it’s “aggravating” that the Russian crash actually affects his profits. When he needs a bad example, it’s always Russian. He tells the hoary anecdote (an “insight” in this case, naturally) about the Russian elevator with misnumbered floors, and the equally venerable anecdote about the Russian who drives his tank to town because he doesn’t have a car. Oh, those funny, funny Russians, with their aggravating habit of starving to death just when we want to celebrate. Like many of the Empire’s leg-breakers, Friedman hates Russia for all sorts of reasons: as a child of cold-war America; as an Israel-can-do-no-wrong Middle-East correspondent; and above all as a popularizer of the get-with-the-program hegemony of the Golden Straitjacket. Russia doesn’t fit into the Golden Straitjacket very well. In fact, the Straitjacket made Russia so uncomfortable that by 1998, its screams were audible even in the offices of the New York Times. Friedman and his masters will never forgive Russia for ruining the gloat-fest with that discordant scream.”

- John Dolan, “THOMAS FRIEDMAN: THE EMPIRE’S USEFUL IDIOT: AN EXILE CLASSIC.” The eXiled. June 8, 2000. Issue 92.

#john dolan #thomas friedman #the lexus and the olive tree #american empire #ideology of empire #foreign correspondent #new york times #pundit class

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