Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 4/26/19

April 26, 2019

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CREDIT: Disney/Marvel Studios

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

Movies
–Avengers: Endgame (Theatrically Nationwide)
–Knock Down the House (Starts Streaming May 1 on Netflix) – Political doc about AOC and other up-and-comers!

TV
–Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (April 27 on TBS) – Samantha Bee and the rest of the Full Frontal crew are at it again.

Music
-2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony (April 27 on HBO) – Radiohead, Roxy Music, and Janet Jackson, oh my!

This Is a Movie Review: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

April 25, 2019

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CREDIT: Amazon Studios

As the movie with perhaps the most tortured backstory in the history of cinema, it is unsurprising that The Man Who Killed Don Quixote incorporates plenty of elements about the difficulty of mounting a massive production. Of course, as it revolves around a man who is convinced that he is actually Cervantes’ title adventurer after starring in an adaptation of the novel, it was always going to be somewhat meta. I don’t think Terry Gilliam taps into anything especially uniquely profound in this regard, but it does feel like he is facing the plain truth right in its face. I have made a few short films myself, and I have a brother and plenty of friends who have worked in film and TV, so I understand the instinct to incorporate what’s going in your life into the films you make. Thus, in the end, this whole quixotic endeavor feels oddly comforting to me.

I give The Man Who Killed Don Quixote A Hug and a Lullaby.

Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 4/19/19

April 19, 2019

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CREDIT: Netflix

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

Movies
–The Curse of La Llorona (Theatrically Nationwide) – I have to watch all the horror!
–Hail Satan? (Limited Theatrically)
–Little Woods (Limited Theatrically)

TV
–I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson (Premieres April 23 on Netflix) – This looks crazy.

Music
-Cage the Elephant, Social Cues

Movie Review: ‘The Curse of La Llorona’ Puts Mexican Folklore to Some Scary Good Use

April 18, 2019

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CREDIT: Warner Bros.

Starring: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velásquez, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Roman Christou, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tony Amendola

Director: Michael Chaves

Running Time: 93 Minutes

Rating: R for Intense Horror Makeup, Drowning, Skin Burns, and Some Gunshots

Release Date: April 19, 2019

It’s generally promising when a horror movie grounds itself in some well-crafted folklore, and The Curse of La Llorona offers a bit of an emotional doozy. Originating in Mexico, the tale of La Llorona (“The Weeping Woman” in English) is of a mother who drowned her two sons after becoming enslaved by a blind rage from discovering her husband with another woman. She now lurks the spirit world in a white gown, taking other children as her own and often drowning them as well. A notice posted by the studio outside the theater assured me that La Llorona is indeed somewhere out in the real world. You don’t have to believe in ghosts to accept that as effective showmanship. This is a monster with a formidable motivation, enough to make you go, “Well, what are we going to do if she targets us?”

The standoff comes to Linda Cardellini as a widowed mother working as a social worker in 1973 Los Angeles. She first encounters La Llorona through her work with children living in unsafe homes. If you want to, you can dig into the subtext about the entanglement of domestic abuse and folklore. But this film is more about the surface thrills of discovering just how the boogeyman will pop up when someone closes a bathroom cabinet or opens up an umbrella. If you’re looking for camera tricks that say “Boo!”, La Llorona will scratch that itch. It also excels in some surprisingly goofy tension-breaking, especially when Raymond Cruz (Tuco of Breaking Bad) shows up as an ex-priest mystic man to exorcise some evil spirits by rubbing eggs all over the house. Weirdly enough, that moment makes sense in context. Bottom line: La Llorona efficiently pulls off its weirder-than-expected approach with a confident use of the standard horror toolkit.

The Curse of La Llorona is Recommended If You Like: Mama, Annabelle, The power of the crucifix

Grade: 3 out of 5 White Gowns

Movie Review: Penny Lane’s Doc ‘Hail Satan?’ Makes an Impish Case for the Fullness of Religious Tolerance

April 16, 2019

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CREDIT: Magnolia Pictures

Starring: Lucien Greaves

Director: Penny Lane

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: R for Religious Nudity

Release Date: April 17, 2019 (New York)/April 19, 2019 (Los Angeles)

After watching the documentary Hail Satan?, I am seriously considering joining the Satanic Temple, even though I have been perfectly happy all my life as a Roman Catholic. Maybe I can have it both ways. If dual national citizenship is a thing, then why can’t dual religious membership also be?

Hail Satan? is directed by Penny Lane, who became a Satanic Temple member herself after shooting wrapped. The Temple does not worship the Christian conception of the devil (though in some ways its teachings are based on an alternate interpretation of the Bible), nor does it promote unseemly practices like blood orgies or human sacrifice. It is also separate from the LeVeyan Satanism of the Church of Satan that has been around since the 1960s, though it does share some similar tenets. The Satanic Temple was co-founded in 2013 by Malcolm Jarry and Lucien Greaves, the latter of whom serves as the group’s spokesperson and the primary voice of Hail Satan? Greaves is eminently logical and boundlessly patient, making him a convincing salesperson to the intellectually disaffected and a compelling personality to base a documentary around.

For many, the appeal of the Satanic Temple is that it avoids dogmatism while offering the community of organized religion that wouldn’t be a part of a fully atheistic lifestyle. And save for that communal aspect, much of the Temple’s purpose is civic activism, in the form of holding an American society accountable to its ideals of religious tolerance. Much of the documentary focuses around efforts to erect a statue of the goat-headed, bewinged Baphomet outside the Oklahoma and Arkansas State Capitols alongside Ten Commandments monuments in the name of making it clear that the government is not playing favorites when it comes to religions. What could come off as trollish in less thoughtful hands instead comes off as the highest form of patriotism from the Satanic Temple. Even when some cracks start to show within the Temple’s ranks (as they almost inevitably do in any organization that grows to a certain size), it is gratifying to witness the portrait of a group living up to its own ideals.

Hail Satan? is Recommended If You Like: Going Clear, Religious freedom, Governments living up to their constitutional ideals

Grade: 4 out of 5 Baphomets

 

SNL Love It/Keep It/Leave It: Emma Stone/BTS

April 14, 2019

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CREDIT: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC

Jeffrey Malone watches every new episode of Saturday Night Live and then organizes the sketches into the following categories: “Love It” (potentially Best of the Season-worthy), “Keep It” (perfectly adequate), or “Leave It” (in need of a rewrite, to say the least). Then he concludes with assessments of the host and musical guest.

Love It

The Actress – When you’re an actor, I imagine you take your rewarding parts wherever you can find them. So as mundane and ridiculous as this sketch is, it strikes me as ringing 100% true. Not in the sense that Emma Stone actually has experience playing a non-sexual role in a porn video, but in the sense that she, and so many others, have surely had bizarre moments of character discovery, or have at least been fighting for them. That feeling of vulnerability is powerful, and I’m glad we got to witness it.

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This Is A Movie Review: The Beach Bum

April 12, 2019

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CREDIT: NEON and VICE Films

There are a lot of bare breasts in The Beach Bum. In the interest of naked parity, I must report that there is sadly not a whole lot of corresponding male nudity, although we do get a peek at Matthew’s McConaughey while he’s taking a drunken leak. This movie is basically the diary of a hedonist in Florida, and frankly, it could have been even more hedonistic, though it is having plenty of fun with itself in its shaggy structure. There actually does seem to be a bit of a message here, something about whether or not great men should be given the rope they’re often given to make great art, as Moondog’s shenanigans are sort of excused while he’s encouraged to write his next brilliant poetry collection. But this is also the movie in which Snoop Dogg plays a character named “Lingerie” and Martin Lawrence gets his foot bitten off by a shark, and those things seem just as important as any high-minded social consciousness.

I give The Beach Bum An Agreement to Drink a Few Sips of PBR.

Entertainment To-Do-List: Week of 4/12/19

April 12, 2019

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CREDIT: Rifftrax

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

Movies
–Her Smell (Limited Theatrically)
–Missing Link (Theatrically Nationwide)
–Teen Spirit (Limited Theatrically)
–Rifftrax Live: Octaman (One Night Only on April 18)

TV
–Bless This Mess Series Premiere (April 16 on ABC) – Another ABC sitcom to sample!

Movie Review: ‘Her Smell’ Puts Elisabeth Moss Through Hell as She Fights Her Way Back to Punk Rock Redemption

April 11, 2019

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CREDIT: Gunpowder & Sky

Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Agyness Deyn, Gayle Rankin, Dan Stevens, Eric Stoltz, Cara Delevingne, Ashley Benson, Dylan Gelula, Amber Heard, Virginia Madsen, Eka Darville, Lindsay Burdge, Keith Poulson, Alexis Krauss, Craig Butta, Hannah Gross, Daisy Pugh-Weiss

Director: Alex Ross Perry

Running Time: 135 Minutes

Rating: R for The Rock ‘n’ Roll Lifestyle at Its Most Rock-Bottom

Release Date: April 12, 2019 (New York)/April 19, 2019 (Los Angeles)

Her Smell is not about riot grrrl punk rock so much as it just takes place in the riot grrrl milieu. Although I suppose it would be fair to say that a person like Becky Something, lead singer of Something She, would be most likely to have the breakdown that she has in this particular setting. Hers is a story as old as show business: she grew up with a profound inner sense of emptiness and sought to fill it with the stage, but she also turned to drinking, drugs, and suspect shamanism. Elisabeth Moss is fully, almost painfully committed to a performance of Becky as a shell of a person who cannot cover up the destructive whirlwind she has become. This is The Elisabeth Moss Show, with Becky’s bandmates, ex, daughter, manager, and mom left to simply react in horror.

Writer/director Alex Ross Perry conveys Becky’s unraveling and possible redemption over the course of a couple of long nights and one afternoon, favoring long takes that will not allow us to escape the bowels of hell. The camera tracks around backstage hallways without ever finding the exits, keeping us stuck in a claustrophobic nightmare. The music is surprising, but effective. While Something She plays the expected Sleater-Kinney-style bangers, the score resembles that of a mystical sci-fi flick set in rural England. It contributes to the sense of how otherworldly this whole situation feels. Punk rock, and indeed all rock music, has long had a reputation of being the devil’s music. Her Smell does not believe that at all, and in fact all of Becky’s loved ones are fully supportive of her rocking endeavors. But if demonic possession is something that exists, she appears to be suffering from it, and this film makes absolutely clear which vices are  really the ones causing that destruction.

Her Smell is Recommended If You Like: A rock star biopic infused with a horror vibe

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Spin Magazine Covers

Movie Review: ‘Teen Spirit’ is a Sublime Musical Journey for Elle Fanning and for Us, the Audience

April 10, 2019

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CREDIT: LD Entertainment/Bleecker Street

Starring: Elle Fanning, Zlatko Burić, Agnieszka Grochowska, Rebecca Hall

Director: Max Minghella

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for A Little Bit of Drunkenness

Release Date: April 12, 2019 (Limited)

Does watching Elle Fanning sing her heart out to Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” sound appealing to you? Because, let me tell you something: when I witnessed that moment happening in Teen Spirit … I was absolutely spellbound. Now, this is an actress I have enjoyed for quite some time, but with this performance, she has transported me to a realm of cinematic satisfaction that I was not fully prepared for. She plays Violet Valenski, an English teenager of Polish descent who makes her way from a tiny town on the Isle of Wight into the glitz and blinding neon of the titular reality singing competition.

I don’t know if Teen Spirit is the name of an actual British reality show or not, but it doesn’t matter, as it might as well be called “Generic Singing Contest.” The plot is thin and predictable, but that’s not a big deal. First-time feature director Max Minghella (probably best known as Nick on The Handmaid’s Tale) is more concerned about capturing the emotion of the moment. That is the approach typically employed with music videos, but what works over four or five minutes can be difficult to stretch out after ninety. But Minghella has pulled it off, with his camera often focusing on emotionally intense close-ups and fluid bodily movements. One standout scene features Violet letting loose in her bedroom, inviting everyone into the transcendence that can be experienced by just plugging into the music.

Joining Violet on her journey is Vlad (Zlatko Burić), an aging opera singer enamored by her star quality who decides that he simply must be her manager. This could so easily be a character who is plotting to take advantage of our protagonist in any number of ways. But instead, he just wants to see her triumph, and he has some well-earned wisdom to offer for how she might go about succeeding. It’s always lovely when you’re watching a movie and suspecting the worst but instead you see a whole village having the main character’s back. Is global superstardom in Violet’s future? Perhaps, but what’s important now is that she has busted out enough of what she feels deep inside herself to share that joy with a grateful audience.

Teen Spirit is Recommended If You Like: Sing Street, Bye Bye Birdie, The music of Robyn, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Tegan & Sara

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Explosive Choruses

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