Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 8/14/20

August 14, 2020

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CREDIT: HBO

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

Movies
–Magic Camp (August 14 on Disney+) – Gillian Jacobs is in this.
–Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (August 18 On Demand)

TV
–black-ish, “Please, Baby, Please” (Now Streaming on Hulu) – An episode that was pulled from the schedule a couple of years ago has finally seen the light day.
–Lovecraft Country Series Premiere (August 16 on HBO)

Podcasts
–The AP Bio Podcast – A new podcast about one of my favorite NBC/Peacock sitcoms!

‘Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies’ Provides Exactly What it Promises

August 13, 2020

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Starring: Veterans of Cinematic Nudity

Director: Danny Wolf

Running Time: 130 Minutes

Rating: Unrated (But Take a Guess What It Would Have Been Rated)

Release Date: August 18, 2020 (On Demand)

You might look at the title “Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies” and bemoan, “Isn’t that just the way to be academic and stuffy and take all the fun out of a pleasurable topic!” But you should know that pretty much all the nude scenes that are discussed are shown in their full, uncensored glory. If on the other hand you’re worried that this endeavor is a little too prurient for its own good, then it should be said that this is far from a Mr. Skin-style supercut (although it’s worth noting that Mr. Skin founder Jim McBride is an executive producer). There are PLENTY of interviews to contextualize what all these examples of cinematic bare skin have meant for the individuals involved, the industry in general, and society at large. We all have bodies, and private parts on those bodies, and those parts have been featured in movies for as long as movies have existed, so it’s worth discovering the stories behind those parts.

Skin clocks in at a dense two hours and ten minutes, which sounds like it might be a bit overloaded for a documentary that’s just a mix of talking heads and film clips. But director Danny Wolf and company have about a hundred years of history to cover. No chapter is lingered upon or indulged in any longer than it needs to be. As a piece of entertainment, this thing just cooks. Nobody is shy about sharing what they have to say, and what they have to say is interesting and illuminating. Actors who have famously appeared nude like Pam Grier and Borat‘s Ken Davitian (and many others) provide illuminating storytelling, while critics and film historians identify contextual landmarks, like the looming specter of the Hays Production Code or the first appearance of pubic hair in a mainstream film.

If this is an underlying question to this whole pursuit, it is the eternal one: when is cinematic nudity essential, or at least justifiable? The answer that multiple interview subjects offer is, “when the movie calls for it.” Which is fair enough, but also decidedly non-specific. The objections to onscreen nudity that we see raised throughout this historical survey are a mixture of perfectly reasonable and protective, hyperbolic and hypocritical. Overall, Skin posits that nudity is a foundational fact of cinema. As society has evolved, so have movies, and so therefore has nudity in the movies. Perhaps an examination like this documentary can help ensure that all future onscreen nudity will be the kind that everyone can feel comfortable with and enjoy.

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies is Recommended If You Like: Intolerance, And God Created Woman, Psycho, Blow Up, I Am Curious (Yellow), If…, Greetings, Drive, He Said, Midnight Cowboy, Women in Cages, A Clockwork Orange, Alice in Wonderland (1976), I Spit on Your Grave, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Showgirls, American Pie, Something’s Gotta Give, Borat, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Fifty Shades of Grey

Grade: 4 out of 5 Private Parts

Well, Pickle Me American: ‘An American Pickle’ Review

August 11, 2020

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CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot

Starring: Seth Rogen, Sarah Snook

Director: Brandon Trost

Running Time: 89 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: August 6, 2020 (HBO Max)

I recently started a review strategy in which I determine the success of a movie according to whether or not it makes me want to do the thing that it’s about. So I asked of Eurovision Song Contest: did it make me want to watch the actual Eurovision? And now I ask of An American Pickle: does it make me want to become pickled and wake up without having aged a day one hundred years later?

To which I answer! … Maybe, kind of?

I’m pretty sure that’s not how the pickling of humans works, but hey, this is a fantasy, so let’s roll with it! The movie certainly does. Seth Rogen is basically the perfect choice to capture that vibe as he plays opposite himself as his great-grandfather and goes, “Hey dude! You’ve just woken up in the future! How crazy is that?!”

Rip Van Winkle-style stories tend to play up the confusion of the man out of time, but Herschel Greenbaum, the titular pickled man, figures out a way to get along more easily than most. Which just goes to prove my suspicion that people from any time period understand that life in the past used to be different and that life in the future will also be different. With that perspective in mind, I believe I could be resilient enough to get on with an unexpected time leap, just as Herschel is. But also like Herschel, I would be quite emotional over not being able to see my kids and grandkids grow up. Pickles are great, but they’re not a panacea!

Grade: 3 Pickles out of 5 Glasses of Seltzer Water

That’s Auntertainment! Episode 16: Hamilton

August 9, 2020

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CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot

Aunt Beth and Jeff welcome Wesley Woods (aka Aunt Beth’s son) to discuss the musical theater phenomenon that is Hamilton. They’re not throwing away their shots. That adds up to three shots! Don’t sit too close to your podcast listening device, or you might get spit on by King George.

Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 8/7/20

August 7, 2020

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MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.: “The End is at Hand/What We’re Fighting For” (CREDIT: Mitch Haaseth/ABC)

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

TV
–Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Series Finale (August 12 on ABC)

Music
A couple of albums from the last few weeks whose releases snuck up on me:
-The Sloppy Boys, Paradiso
-Taylor Swift, Folklore

‘The Secret Garden’ is Back for a New Generation

August 5, 2020

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The Secret Garden 2020 (CREDIT: Studiocanal)

Starring: Dixie Egerickx, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Edan Hayhurst, Amir Wilson

Director: Marc Munden

Running Time: 100 Minutes

Rating: PG for Some Kids and a Dog Running Around Like They Own the Place

Release Date: August 7, 2020 (On Demand)

I contend that The Secret Garden is best experienced at a young age and then remembered as some half-formed dream. I’m pretty sure I saw the 1993 adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel that starred Maggie Smith, but I don’t have any specific memories of it. (Furthermore, I don’t really remember seeing Smith in anything before Harry Potter.) When I heard that a new Secret Garden was arriving in 2020, I thought of A Little Princess, the other mid-90s adaptation of a Frances Hodgson Burnett book. With all that scrambling going on in my head, it’s important to identify one key difference, as the 2020 Garden shoots the setting ahead to 1947, as opposed to the early 20th century when the book was published.

That update doesn’t make a huge difference to me, an American who considers the vast English estates of 1947 to be pretty dang similar to the vast English estates of 1911. But it certainly makes a difference to the orphaned Mary Lennox (Dixie Egerickx), who was born in India to English parents who now finds herself adrift much as the British Empire was adrift in the buildup to the Indian Partition. She is sent to live with her uncle Archibald (Colin Firth) in a mansion that seems to have no geographic connection to the rest of the world. When she arrives, she attempts to cajole her wheelchair-bound cousin Colin (Edan Hayhurst) out of bed, but since he seems to have forgotten how to experience the joys of childhood, she must venture outside on her own to the estate’s seemingly infinite grounds. There she befriends a scruffy dog and the unsupervised Dickon (Amir Wilson) and also becomes entranced by the most sun-dappled vegetation in all of England.

For my money, The Secret Garden is about the restorative power of nature. Mary and Dickon are the only characters with any sense of joy for most of the film, while Archibald and Colin seem to be spiraling headlong into depression by spending all their time inside. When you’re a kid, the value of getting out of the house can seem like magic, especially in a setting as sublime as this movie’s. Mary certainly displays some magical thinking, both positively and negatively, as she believes herself responsible for her ill mother’s death. Whenever she views things that way, it is obvious that there is some rational explanation. Indeed, with adult eyes, the secret garden does not feel all that secret, and any magical occurrences that take place there probably only look that way from a child’s perspective. But I can see how much May, Colin, and Dickon are enraptured by their wonder of the place, and I hope there are some five-year-old kids out there who see this film and have it stick in a hidden corner of their subconscious that reminds them forever that magic is real.

The Secret Garden is Recommended If You Like: The vast English countryside

Grade: 3 out of 5 Blooms

‘She Dies Tomorrow,’ and You Just Might, Too

August 4, 2020

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She Dies Tomorrow (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Kate Lyn Sheil, Jane Adams, Kentucker Audley, Chris Messina, Katie Aselton, Tunde Adebimpe

Director: Amy Seimetz

Running Time: 84 Minutes

Rating: R for Sexual and Drug-Fueled Weirdness

Release Date: July 31, 2020 (Drive-In Theaters)/August 7, 2020 (On Demand)

It’s hard to get your bearings straight when watching a movie like She Dies Tomorrow. The main characters have a profound lack of charisma, the protagonist seems to keep changing before any sort of story arc has been completed, and the tone and genre are more or less impossible to pin down. There’s an early scene in which initial protagonist Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) plays a recording of Mozart’s Lacrimosa over and over to the point that it feels like the film is skipping and repeating. This is all part and parcel of the premise, in which people are overcome by a contagious feeling in which they are convinced that they will no longer be alive come the next day. Weirdly, this doesn’t result in despair so much as a strikingly unique form of negatively focused enrapturement.

I’ve read other reviews of She Dies Tomorrow that describe it as scary in an existential sort of way, though not really a horror movie. But I’m not sure how else to categorize it. It may not be populated by goblins or ghouls, but a persistent sense of ennui crossed with enveloping paranoia sounds to me like just about the most terrifying thing anyone could possibly conceive of. It didn’t exactly feel that way while watching it, though, at least not the whole way through. The illness at the heart of the film is so low-key that the people who aren’t yet infected with it react to those who are mostly as they would to annoying social behavior. At those moments, it feels like a purposely off-putting comedy of manners. But now that I’ve had some room to process everything, I am struck more fully by the loneliness and miscommunication infused throughout.

Director Amy Seimetz works prolifically on both sides of the camera, and she has a tendency to pop up in blockbuster fare like Alien: Covenant and more straightforward horror pics like You’re Next. The budget for She Dies Tomorrow came from the paycheck she earned for acting in last year’s Pet Sematary remake, and this is definitely the work of someone confidently following her own particular muse with the financial freedom to do so. What we’re talking about here is a creator making an appeal for human connection via cinema, and I’m willing to answer the call.

She Dies Tomorrow is Recommended If You Like: Upstream Color, Jean Paul Sartre

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Requiems

‘The Rental’ Has Rented Some Space in My Brain

August 3, 2020

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The Rental (CREDIT: IFC Films)

Starring: Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White, Toby Huss

Director: Dave Franco

Running Time: 88 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: July 24, 2020 (On Demand and Select Theaters)

While watching The Rental (in which Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, and Jeremy Allen White play a couple of couples who rent a big ol’ house for a weekend getaway), I had a thought that I anticipate is going to stick around in my movie-watching approach for quite a while: at what point do I stop thinking of the cast members as the actors and start thinking of them as the characters they’re playing?

In this case, that question most saliently applies to Brie, whose career I’ve followed closely and who I’ve watched give countless interviews. As for the others, I’m not too familiar with Vand, I’ve only seen bits and pieces of White, and Stevens is always so twisted right off the bat that I don’t need to ask. So back to how I would answer that question in Ali Brie’s case, and it happens about forty minutes in, as she really starts to doubt the trustworthiness of  her husband (as played by Stevens), and I start to realize we’re not going to see her patented bubbliness anytime soon. (Not to mention she appears to be happily married in real life, and her husband even directed this movie!)

But then this question is much, much trickier as it applies to Toby Huss, who I tend to generally think of as a lovable, avuncular mentor-type. He plays the guy who coordinates the house rental, and there are implications that he might be racist or otherwise non-avuncular. But that could all be a misunderstanding! So, I’m left wondering, am I willing to give Toby the benefit of a doubt because he’s usually such a cool dude? Or does he actually deserve the benefit of the doubt? The freaky-deaky ending doesn’t give us enough time to sort that all out. How dare you make me doubt Toby Huss’ thoughtfulness, Dave Franco!

I give The Rental a Good Review on the High-End Pacific Coast Version of Yelp.

That’s Auntertainment! Mini-Episode: Aunt Beth Tells Jeff to Listen to Traffic

August 2, 2020

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Dear Mr. Fantasy,

Will Jeff enjoy listening to Traffic?

Sincerely,

Aunt Beth

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