Billboard Hot Rock Songs – Week of March 3, 2018

February 28, 2018

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot Rock Songs, Music , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart, and then I rearrange the top 25 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 25, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Imagine Dragons – “Thunder”
2. Portugal. The Man – “Feel It Still”
3. Imagine Dragons – “Believer”
4. Imagine Dragons – “Whatever It Takes”
5. Walk the Moon – “One Foot”
6. Alice Merton – “No Roots”
7. Foster the People – “Sit Next to Me”
8. 30 Seconds to Mars – “Walk on Water”
9. Theory of a Deadman – “Rx (Medicate)”
10. Muse – “Thought Contagion”
11. Bad Wolves – “Zombie”
12. Portugal. The Man – “Live in the Moment”
13. Five Finger Death Punch – “Gone Away”
14. Fall Out Boy – “Hold Me Tight or Don’t”
15. Coldplay – “Paradise”
16. lovelytheband – “Lovely”
17. Beck – “Up All Night”
18. Coldplay – “Fix You”
19. James Bay – “Wild Love”
20. Breaking Benjamin – “Red Cold River”
21. The Killers – “Run for Cover”
22. Papa Roach – “Born for Greatness”
23. Three Days Grace – “The Mountain”
24. Pop Evil – “Waking Lions”
25. The Killers – “All These Things That I’ve Done”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. No Roots
2. Up All Night
3. Feel It Still
4. All These Things That I’ve Done
5. Wild Love
6. Paradise
7. Fix You
8. Live in the Moment
9. Run for Cover
10. Thought Contagion

Billboard Hot 20 – Week of March 3, 2018

February 28, 2018

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot 100, Music , , , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot 100, and then I rearrange the top 20 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 20, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Drake – “God’s Plan”
2. Ed Sheeran – “Perfect”
3. Bruno Mars and Cardi B – “Finesse”
4. Camila Camello ft. Young Thug – “Havana”
5. BlocBoy JB ft. Drake – “Look Alive”
6. Post Malone ft. 21 Savage – “Rockstar”
7. Kendrick Lamar and SZA – “All the Stars”
8. Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line – “Meant to Be”
9. The Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar – “Pray for Me”
10. Migos – “Stir Fry”
11. Dua Lipa – “New Rules”
12. NF – “Let You Down”
13. Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey – “The Middle”
14. G-Eazy and Halsey – “Him & I”
15. Kendrick Lamar ft. Zacari – “Love.”
16. Imagine Dragons – “Thunder”
17. Halsey – “Bad at Love”
18. Bazzi – “Mine”
19. Post Malone – “I Fall Apart”
20. MAX ft. gnash – “Lights Down Low”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. New Rules
2. Pray for Me
3. All the Stars
4. Havana
5. Love.

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Foxtrot’ Takes the Book of Job to Modern-Day Israel

February 28, 2018

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CREDIT: Sony Pictures Classics

This review was originally posted on News Cult in February 2018.

Starring: Lior Ashkenazi, Yonaton Shiray, Sarah Adler, Shira Haas

Director: Samuel Maoz

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: R for Shocking, Sudden Violence and Exaggerated Comic Book Nudity

Release Date: March 2, 2018 (Limited)

All life is suffering, at least according to the Judeo-Christian view. There’s a particular strain on the Judeo side of things that goes at least as far back as the Old Testament, specifically the Book of Job, in which humans are pawns in a system of dramatic irony at the hands of a confounding god. The Coen brothers took a deep dive into this mythology with A Serious Man, and now Samuel Maoz’s Israeli film Foxtrot takes it to particularly tragic ends. The result is a striking look at the toll borne by individuals living constantly on the edge of conflict.

Foxtrot begins with Tel Aviv couple Michael (Lior Ashkenazi) and Dafna Feldmann (Sarah Adler) informed that their soldier son Jonathan (Yonaton Shiray) has fallen in the line of duty. At first it looks like the film’s focus will be an examination of the effects of shock. Dafna immediately faints and remains unconscious for the first thirty minutes or so. Michael is able to remain awake, but he must rely on an alarm clock to remind him to drink water at regular intervals so as to keep his anxiety in check. It is an awfully clinical approach to take towards any film, and in this case it would seem to be promising a profound slog. But Foxtrot goes more mammoth and less straightforward. It is an emotional rollercoaster, with a force from beyond controlling the dips and the turns. When the focus shifts to what Jonathan is up to, the truth is brought into fuller, clearer focus. The irony comes to the fore, serving up the twin lessons that tragedy is both not as bad as it originally appears and also that it is just as bad as it originally appears.

An affluent middle-class couple dealing with loss is an unfortunately too frequent story present throughout the world. Jonathan’s portion of the story, meanwhile, is particularly resonant in its Israeli setting, but its existential milieu is also a significant aspect of the general human experience. He is assigned to a crossing outpost, and his days are mostly filled with waiting. Occasionally he lifts a crossing gate to let a camel walk through. But that boring setup belies the constant potential for explosiveness.

Foxtrot makes itself felt by interspersing a mostly steady, even-keeled narrative with occasional bursts of tragedy and character revelation. The latter is felt most strongly in an animated section in the form of a comic book drawn by Jonathan that tells his father’s story. The Feldmanns are not a particularly voluble family, which is why this subtextual understanding between father and son (also demonstrated by their shared love of the titular dance) is so appreciated. For a Job-like existence to be bearable, there needs to be love.

Foxtrot is Recommended If You Like: The Book of Job, A Serious Man, Finding bits of humor in the most tragic situations

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Camels

Best TV Episodes of 2017

February 27, 2018

jmunney Best of 2017, Best of TV 2017, Television , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME

These episodes of television all originally aired in North America between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017. I watched them, and I enjoyed doing so. I bet you will feel the same while watching them … if you haven’t already.

1. Twin Peaks: The Return – “Part 8”
2. Nathan for You – “The Anecdote”
3. Halt and Catch Fire – “Who Needs a Guy”
4. Nathan for You – “Finding Frances”
5. Rick and Morty – “Morty’s Mind Blowers”
6. Better Call Saul – “Chicanery”
7. Halt and Catch Fire – “Ten of Swords”
8. Black Mirror – “Hang the DJ”
9. Twin Peaks: The Return – “Part 17”
10. Halt and Catch Fire – “Goodwill”
11. Twin Peaks: The Return – “Part 18”
12. Mr. Robot – “eps3.4_runtime-error.r00”
13. Review – “Cryogenics; Lightning; Last Review”
14. The Good Place – “Dance Dance Resolution”
15. Great News – “Honeypot!”
16. Big Mouth – “Requiem for a Wet Dream”
17. Rick and Morty – “The Ricklantis Mixup”
18. Mr. Robot – “eps3.7_dont-delete-me.ko”
19. BoJack Horseman – “Time’s Arrow”
20. Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories – “Angel Man”

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Annihilation’ is a Beautiful Hybrid

February 22, 2018

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

CREDIT: Paramount Pictures/Skydance

This post was originally published on News Cult in February 2018.

Starring: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac, Benedict Wong, David Gyasi

Director: Alex Garland

Running Time: 115 Minutes

Rating: R for Gator-Shark Attacks, Giant Bear Attacks, Swirling Intestines, and a Little Bit of Nookie

Release Date: February 23, 2018

Annihilation needs you to trust that sometimes disorientation can be good. Or at least, that it can be exciting. I will admit that disorientation does not necessarily work out so well for this film’s characters. The relative safety afforded the audience in vicariously experiencing this vexing and dangerous journey makes secondhand disorientation easier to defend. But still, I think the message here is the same for both participants and observers: venturing into the confusion is how to make the spectacle happen.

Biology professor Lena (Natalie Portman) has been mourning the disappearance of her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) ever since he took off for a highly classified military expedition a year ago, when suddenly he just reappears in their house one day. But Kane has essentially no memory of what happened, and it is clear soon enough that there is so much of his mission left to complete. So Lena is recruited by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to join her and her team of scientists (Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny) to trek into Area X, the coastal location that Kane and many others have gotten lost in, and figure out what the hell is going on there.

I do not recall Annihilation specifying the exact geographical location of Area X. It is possible it did and I just missed it, which can happen when a film mentions a significant detail only briefly. But in this case it is appropriate that I would miss such a detail, whether or not it was actually omitted. Area X is surrounded by a liquidy substance, or perhaps “presence” is a better word, referred to as “a shimmer,” which disorients anyone who approaches or moves through it. When Ventress and her crew first awake in the area, they seem to have immediately lost days, maybe even weeks. If we as an audience feel like we are missing just as many details as they are, then writer/director Alex Garland is probably pulling off what he set out to do. What awaits all of us is a world of wonders that can be explained by science, even though science says they should be impossible.

Flowers of clearly different species are growing on the same branches. The team is attacked by a gator with shark teeth. Plants in the shape of walking humans have sprung up. Eventually these ladies recognize their own blood and DNA swirling and transforming. These combinations are supposed to be fundamentally incompatible according to life as we know it. Lena’s on-the-fly theorizing of this continuous mutation works as a sort of explanation of how mythical hybrid creatures or the monstrosities from genre films could come to exist if they were to exist in reality.

The crew confronts Area X and its inhabitants with a mix of paranoia, wonder, fatalism, and determination. Considering the constant transformation inherent to this setting, it could be argued that all or none or some indefinable combination of these approaches is the right plan of action. Appropriately, it is all rendered by a design and effects team inspiring awe on a thoroughly devastating scale. The lush greenery is both beautiful and explosive. The music, courtesy of Ben Salisbury and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, is unnerving and entrancing, including a set of reverberating notes that the trailer has already made famous. This intoxicating mix also offers up a series of killer set pieces, including a riff on The Thing’s notorious blood test scene, but featuring the main animal from a creature feature imbued with the Freddy Krueger-style power to maintain the dying cries of its victims.

Annihilation hits that sci-fi sweet spot of a confusing, complicated premise that ultimately explains itself, but not in a way that betrays its intricacies or ambitions, or makes matters particularly comforting. This is visionary cinema, flourishing and fully realizing itself from glorious setup to perfect ending.

Annihilation is Recommended If You Like: The Thing, 2001, Fringe, Cronenbergian body horror, The design elements of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Mulholland Drive

Grade: 5 out of 5 Shimmers

Billboard Hot Rock Songs – Week of February 24, 2018

February 21, 2018

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot Rock Songs, Music , , , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart, and then I rearrange the top 25 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 25, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Imagine Dragons – “Thunder”
2. Portugal. The Man – “Feel It Still”
3. Imagine Dragons -“Believer”
4. Imagine Dragons – “Whatever It Takes”
5. Walk the Moon – “One Foot”
6. Disturbed – “The Sound of Silence”
7. Alice Merton – “No Roots”
8. Foster the People – “Sit Next to Me”
9. 30 Seconds to Mars – “Walk on Water”
10. Theory of a Deadman – “Rx (Medicate)”
11. James Bay – “Wild Love”
12. Portugal. The Man – “Live in the Moment”
13. Fall Out Boy – “Hold Me Tight or Don’t
14. Five Finger Death Punch – “Gone Away”
15. Bad Wolves – “Zombie”
16. Beck – “Up All Night”
17. Coldplay – “Paradise”
18. Bishop Briggs – “Never Tear Us Apart”
19. lovelytheband – “Broken”
20. Coldplay – “Fix You”
21. Coldplay – “O”
22. Papa Roach – “Born for Greatness”
23. John Lennon – “Imagine”
24. Breaking Benjamin – “Red Cold River”
25. The Killers – “All These Things That I’ve Done”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. No Roots
2. Up All Night
3. Imagine
4. Feel It Still
5. All These Things That I’ve Done
6. Wild Love
7. Never Tear Us Apart
8. Paradise
9. Fix You
10. Live in the Moment

Billboard Hot 20 – Week of February 24, 2018

February 21, 2018

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot 100, Music , , , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot 100, and then I rearrange the top 20 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 20, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Drake – “God’s Plan”
2. Ed Sheeran – “Perfect”
3. Bruno Mars and Cardi B – “Finesse”
4. Camila Cabello ft. Young Thug – “Havana”
5. Post Malone ft. 21 Savage – “Rockstar”
6. BlocBoy ft. Drake – “Look Alive”
7. Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line – “Meant to Be”
8. Dua Lipa – “New Rules”
9. Kendrick Lamar and SZA – “All the Stars”
10. Migos – “Stir Fry”
11. The Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar – “Pray for Me”
12. NF – “Let You Down”
13. Kendrick Lamar ft. Zacari – “Love.”
14. G-Eazy and Halsey – “Him & I”
15. Imagine Dragons – “Thunder”
16. Halsey – “Bad at Love”
17. Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey – “The Middle”
18. Migos, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B – “MotorSport”
19. Post Malone – “I Fall Apart”
20. G-Eazy ft. A$AP Rocky and Cardi B – “No Limit”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. New Rules
2. Pray for Me
3. All the Stars
4. Havana
5. Love.

This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Young Karl Marx’ Gives Communism Its Very Own Cookie-Cutter Biopic

February 21, 2018

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: The Orchard

This review was originally posted on News Cult in February 2018.

Starring: August Diehl, Stefan Konarske, Vicky Krieps, Olivier Gourmet, Hannah Steele

Director: Raoul Peck

Running Time: 118 Minutes

Rating: Unrated, But It Would Probably Be PG-13 for Philosophically Fueled Arguments

Release Date: February 23, 2018 (Limited Theatrically)/March 6, 2018 (Digital and On Demand)

Among history’s most influential philosophers, Karl Marx deserves a lot of credit for clearly keeping in mind that his ideas exist for people. It is not particularly useful to get bogged down in theory when you could actually improve the way people live. The human element is baked right into his writing, especially his most famous quote: “Workers of the world, unite!” That spirit is clearly present in The Young Karl Marx, which is less about how the socialist pioneer wrote The Communist Manifesto and changed the course of history and more about how he had a wife and kids and friends and acquaintances. This focus offers an appropriately fraternal approach, but it also makes for a rather run-of-the-mill biopic.

The Young Karl Marx has a notably multicultural background, as it features two German actors (August Diehl and Stefan Konarske, respectively) as Marx and Friedrich Engels, a Luxembourgian (Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps) as Marx’s wife Jenny, and a supporting cast of Belgians, French, and Brits. Plus, its director is the Haitian Raoul Peck (probably best known for the James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro), and its dialogue weaves seamlessly between German, French, and English. This diversity may have some thematic connection to worldwide proletariat unity, but in practice it feels haphazard. Besides, it is simply a fact that Marx and Engels were multilingual. The polyglot nature feels meaningful and important, but it never goes much beyond the surface.

And that total straightforwardness is really the trouble with The Young Karl Marx. This is a major case of “this happened, then this happened, then this happened, the end.” Marx and Engels meet uneasily at first, and then they become great friends. They have disagreements with other philosophers who are too theory-centric, but then they all more or less come to an understanding with each other. Workers are suspicious of Engels’ motives, as he comes from a more privileged background, but then he proves his bona fides. Marx and Jenny struggle to get by on his writing income, and then they continue their lives together. It is all more or less acted with spirit, vigor, and dignity, and then The Communist Manifesto goes on to be one of the most influential texts of all time. If you’ve ever been exposed to Marxim, The Young Karl Marx won’t tell you anything new. It’s only worth seeking out if you’re a completist when it comes to historical figures’ domesticity.

The Young Karl Marx is Recommended If You Like: The home lives of philosophers, Debates about materialism and Hegelianism

Grade: 2 out of 5 Bourgeois Notions

This Is a Movie Review: Jennifer Lawrence Goes Deep in the Graphic Spy Thriller ‘Red Sparrow’

February 16, 2018

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CREDIT: Murray Close/Twentieth Century Fox

This review was originally posted on News Cult in February 2018.

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons, Ciaran Hinds, Bill Camp, Joely Richardson, Sakina Jaffrey, Mary-Louise Parker

Director: Francis Lawrence

Running Time: 139 Minutes

Rating: R for Nudity as Power, Pleasure, and Disgrace; Spycraft Violence; and Slice-and-Dice, Pounding Torture

Release Date: March 2, 2018

Red Sparrow is the latest spy story that hinges on a final act revelation of a mole. the logic (or lack thereof) of such a twist is something I often can’t make heads or tails out of. The narrative-consuming part of my brain just is not that wired that way. But as far as I can tell, this particular mole’s exposure does pass the plausibility test, though it is not especially impactful. But Red Sparrow’s intrigue thankfully goes beyond any straightforward conception of traitors and double agents. In fact, it questions and pokes at (without quite fully deconstructing) the entire concept of double agency when it involves someone who seems to be an ideal fit for the job but does not want anything to do with professional deception.

Jennifer Lawrence stars as Dominika Egorova, a Bolshoi ballerina who suffers a career-ending injury and then faces the crisis of how she will be able to continue to take care of her widowed mother. So her uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts) recruits her to become a spy at the Red Sparrow School, which essentially requires its trainees to sacrifice their entire identities to the Russian government. Meanwhile, CIA agent Nathaniel Nash (Joel Edgerton) gets mixed up with Dominika as he hunts down high-level Russian spies. (He is temporarily suspended after making a huge mistake out in the field, but that does not affect matters as it much as it seems like it is supposed to.) Nash and Dominika’s motivations appear to match up, but of course there is that age-old question: can opposing sides truly trust each other when working together? In this case, the answer actually does appear to be yes, and a more pressing question is: is it possible for individuals to get what they want when insidious bureaucratic forces are pulling the strings everywhere?

Fundamentally driving Red Sparrow and several of its characters is the idea that the Cold War never really ended (it just broke into many pieces, as one of them puts it). That may sound a little over-the-top for a film aiming for some degree of verisimilitude, but then you see what former KGB agent Vladimir Putin is up to, and all the alleged Russian hacking in foreign elections, and on second thought, maybe this does not sound so farfetched at all. Even if it did, it would be perfectly legitimate to put something insanely conspiratorial on film. The problem is that we have seen this sort of cinematic Russian subterfuge plenty of times before.

That familiarity is overcome a decent amount by Charlotte Rampling, whose performance sets the tone for the state of modern Russian spycraft. She is the headmistress of the Sparrow School, and she insists that you call her “Matron.” We have seen this sort of officious, beat-you-down-and-re-mold-you character in plenty of other iterations, but Rampling brings a level of camp and matter-of-factness hitherto unseen. Not only, in her parlance, is every person “a puzzle of need,” but also so many people today are “drunk on shopping and social media,” which would normally sound irritatingly reductive but comes off as venomously delicious when she says it.

Red Sparrow’s most lasting impact is derived less from espionage and more from its examination of human behavior and interpersonal power dynamics. There are several scenes featuring graphic torture and nudity (including rape and attempted rape), and they do not come off as simply exploitative, because they are there to elucidate the effects they have on individuals. It is heavily implied that Sparrows are really groomed from birth to give themselves over entirely to the government. They are indoctrinated that their bodies are not their own, that they must give themselves up to give their marks exactly what they want in service of a greater power. Dominika, while in many ways an ideal recruit, never fully gives in. She decides that she is willing to make her body available, but she maintains a level of resistance. When naked, she asserts her power, which is resonant in the Me Too era (and eternally so) and metatextually, it works as a statement from Lawrence, herself a victim of a nude photo hack, that she will work this intimately only on her own terms. Thanks to her steely performance, Red Sparrow works as a defense of the dignity of every individual human being.

Red Sparrow is Recommended If You Like: The Americans, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Oppressed women taking control, Oppressed citizens taking control, Frightening headmistresses, Torture scenes with a purpose

Grade: 3 out of 5 Floppy Disks

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Nostalgia’ Makes Some Obvious, Occasionally Affecting Points About Nostalgia

February 15, 2018

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CREDIT: Bleecker Street

This review was originally posted on News Cult in February 2018.

Starring: Jon Hamm, Catherine Keener, John Ortiz, Ellen Burstyn, Bruce Dern, James LeGros, Nick Offerman, Amber Tamblyn, Patton Oswalt, Annalise Basso, Mikey Madison

Director: Mark Pellington

Running Time: 114 Minutes

Rating: R for Language Apparently, But It Should Otherwise Be Rated PG

Release Date: February 16, 2018 (Limited)

Nostalgia, the 2018 film directed by Mark Pellington, would like you to know that nostalgia, the sentimality for the past, is a feeling that exists and that people experience. It does not treat this as some big revelation, as this is a common human emotion and the film does not pretend otherwise. But it is so simplistic and obvious, but also matter-of-factly profound, in its explication of the definition that there is this weird mix of pretension and lack of ambition. Mostly, Nostalgia glides along in a quiet, unfussy groove that is occasionally enlivened by tragedy and committed performances.

This is one of those anthology-style, “we’re all connected” movies with multiple discrete-but-actually-closely-connected(-at-least-thematically) storylines. Instead of cross-cutting between each vignette and having them dance around each other, they take their turns and then hand the ball (one time quite literally) off to the next one, with at least one shared character per section. At first it looks like Nostalgia will follow the travails of an insurance agent (John Ortiz) and the people he encounters. That’s a justifiable enough premise, but the execution is strikingly mundane.

The film eventually shakes out instead to more broadly be a series of sketches of people dealing with loss and holding on to and/or letting go of sentimental objects, which is even more nondescript than the insurance agent setup, but there are some dynamic moments. In particular, there is the scene with Ellen Burstyn as a widow selling her late husband’s autographed baseball to a professional collector (Jon Hamm). His appraisal delivers exactly the sort of human touch you want when parting with an item with such high monetary and emotional value. Hamm’s entire section, in which he and his sister (Catherine Keener) are hit with a great loss in the midst of cleaning out their father’s old stuff, is filled with understated power. Its setup is just as lightweight as the other storylines, but it delivers enough poignancy to make Nostalgia just worthwhile enough.

Nostalgia is Recommended If You Like: Jon Hamm swooping in to save the day, Emotional gut punches

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Verified Ted Williams Signatures

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