Golden Son

I'm pretty winded from all the year-end content posting I've been doing (ha!) so I won't say nearly as much as I could about Golden Son and what I will say will be said in bullets. We've come full circle n 2015, guys!

• The cover likely gave it away, but this is a sequel to Red Rising, the book I read a few months ago that I'm confident will be the next big movie franchise for all the tweens. Red Rising did a great job establishing a society, multiple conflicts both large and small, and some three dozen characters or so. So that's our launching point.
• This book has the highest rating of any book I read this year on goodreads. Goodreads! The IMDb of the literary world. Yeah, no. This wasn't in my top five. It might not have even been as good as Red Rising. But it might have been better!
• They're two pieces of a whole, really - with the third and final piece missing. So how can I judge either book without knowing the whole picture?
• Often with planned trilogies like this one, the second installment is the wild card. The first part will be a fairly self-contained story that sets up a bigger picture and the third part will bring everything home in epic fashion. But the second part can be just about anything, from a rehash of the first part (Hunger Games) to a close-but-not-quite failure (Star Wars) to a stakes-raising ramp up (Lord of the Rings). In a lot of ways the second story's quality is the best metric for the trilogy as a whole.
• I don't want to spoil anything - seriously, these are quick reads and they'll be movies soon enough - but Golden Son was one of the most action-packed and stakes-raising "part twos" that I've ever seen or watched. There were so many twists. There was such a high kill count. There was such a fast pace to everything... and still things are left in a place that allows for the third book to have even higher stakes. In that regard, yeah, well done, Pierce Brown.
• So what's the catch? Why am I hesitant to call this an amazing book, let alone better than its predecessor? Honestly, it was just an empty story. There was a ton of action and a fair share of betrayal and it all read like a high-octane action movie, but there was nothing there to make me think, or feel, or even care, honestly. Balls-to-the-wall action is great fun and all, but at the end of the day I want to care about the characters I'm reading about. I want to feel the betrayals and care about what's at stake.
• So, what do I want from Morning Star, the coming-in-2016 conclusion to this series? More than anything, a brake pump. Let's slow things down. Zoom in on the main character and his personal issues, zoom way out and look at this society's struggles overall - it doesn't matter. But we've seen crazy high-stakes action and now it's time to land this ship instead of just flinging it into a wall as hard as possible.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Stan's TV Dump: Late Fall 2015

Goddammit. I watched way too much TV this semester.

Bob's Burgers: Season 5

At last, I've caught up with Bob's Burgers. It's a great show! But I've got very little to say about the fifth season that wasn't covered when I talked about Seasons 3 or 4 a while back. This is a show that started out strong, but still took a few years to hit its peak. And here we are, still riding that sustained peak. Will it find another level in Season 6? Will it begin to show some signs of age? I mean, animated sitcoms have broken standard longevity scales entirely. At six years of age, Bob's Burgers is older than most shows on TV, but still in its relative infancy compared to Family Guy and South Park and, of course, The Simpsons.

The Leftovers: Season 2

The critical consensus is that The Leftovers got just so much better in its second season. I understand that, but I don't necessarily personally agree. Then again, I absolutely loved this show the first time around. That first season burned through the entirety of the show's source material - Tom Perrotta's 2011 novel - and as a result the creators had completely free reign here in year two. The result was a significantly weirder Lost-like run with scattered points of view and all kinds of supernatural stuff at play. I dug the hell out of it. Whether or not a third season will happen is unclear; the show's ratings are horrible, and it isn't clear that the show has a path forward from its second season finale anyway. Still, here's hoping for a third - and final - season.

Red Oaks: Season 1

Dang. Transparent aside, has Amazon made a genuinely "good" TV show yet? Red Oaks was a half-decent ten-episode take on 1980s comedies. You've got a kid coaching tennis at a country club. His friend is a fat stoner. His girlfriend is a smoke show, but he hits it off so well with the offbeat girl who happens to be the daughter of the owner of the country club where he works. His father is a Jewish stereotype who wants him to become an accountant like him. I dunno, the show was fine, but none of it really felt memorable in any way. Isn't that a pretty damning indictment? Especially of the first season of something?

Scream Queens: Season 1

This went about as well as I should have expected a Ryan Murphy comedy-horror series to go. At the very least, watching this allowed me to finally ignore American Horror Story from the very beginning instead of ditching another season of that mess halfway in. Like everything Ryan Murphy has created, this show had some absolutely hilarious moments inconsistently scattered amid a whole slew of nonsensical plots, terrible writing, unintentionally cringe-worthy scenes, and inconsistent tonal shifts. It was a bad show, is what I'm saying. But still one I'm glad I watched. I think.

Trailer Park Boys: Season 8

Seems like a seven-year hiatus did everyone some good! This was easily my favorite season of Trailer Park Boys since Season 4. Everyone was a little fatter and older, but it's an impressive feat that they got essentially the entire original cast back together; we've seen how hard that can be for shows like Arrested Development. Then, of course, this show ain't that one, and these actors absolutely are not Michael Cera, Jeffrey Tambor, Will Arnett, et al.

Moonbeam City: Season 1

Here's another middling-at-best offering from Comedy Central. This one is an Archer knock-off with a beautiful 1980s aesthetic. Honestly, the look of the show was all that kept me watching for the first few weeks. By the very end of its first season, Moonbeam City seemed to have figured out its voice a little bit - more Will Forte, less Rob Lowe - but it had also been banished to a time slot of 1:00am and there's almost no way it sticks around for Season 2. Eh, oh well. Not a big loss. 

You're the Worst: Season 2

Here's one of the biggest "sophomore steps forward" I saw on TV this year. Last season, You're the Worst was little more than a romantic comedy with some staunchly anti-rom-com lead characters. The premise was essentially, "here are two shitty people way too fucked up for traditional relationships - aren't they perfect for each other?" Season 2 didn't grind the same plot through the gears, though; it decided to explore what would happen if one of these characters came down with an elongated episode of substantial, crippling depression. Strong stuff! And props to the show as well for really fleshing out its to major supporting characters, giving each of them legitimate season arcs that had nothing to do with one another or the two leads.

The League: Season 7

Seven years ago (wow!) when I first heard about The League I assumed the worst. A comedy about fantasy football? Nope! Imagine my surprise - it's probably documented on this blog - when The League turned out to be one of the most legitimately funny shows on television with a deep and talented cast. At any rate, here in its seventh and final season, I think The League finally sank lower than my original expectations. There's nothing wrong with running a low-stakes comedy like this one right into the ground, but it's still never pretty when such a thing happens.

South Park: Season 19

I don't think I'll ever stop watching South Park as long as its on TV, which is why it's so nice to see the show turn in a second straight non-terrible season. I liked last year's more than this one, but this one was just fine. A little sporadic and less nuanced than some of the all time great South Park episodes, but solid all the same.

Transparent: Season 2

Overrated? Absolutely. But Transparent is still a pretty good show that got even better in its second season. Season 1 was largely concerned with Maura, her transition, and the reaction of those around her to that transition. In Season 2, Maura almost takes a back seat to her own children, whose messed up love lives dominate a number of A- and B-stories throughout the ten episode run. A great show, all in all - but perhaps the only such show on all of Amazon Prime's streaming service.

Fargo: Season 2

Dynamite second season that lived up to and in many ways surpassed the first go-round. I'd say more, but everyone reading this has either already seen Fargo or knows they need to do so. Get out there! Go! This show is just terrific.

Trailer Park Boys: Season 9

At long last, I'm caught up live with Trailer Park Boys, which really just means that going forward I'll only have to watch one season a year. Will I finally be able to differentiate seasons, given the gap between them? Or will a non-binging approach only serve to further the idea that this show is really only "kinda good" at best? Probably the latter! Anyway, this ninth season was about as good as the eighth - which, again, was better than a number of the previous ones!

The Man in the High Castle: Season 1

Oh, Amazon. Transparent is a breakout success and Catastrophe is a tight little comedy in its own right, but holy shit - where are the quality hour-long dramas? This one's a high concept adaptation from a book in which the United States lost World War II and is currently administered by the Japanese on the West Coast and the Germans everywhere east of the Rockies. It had its moments, but never really grabbed me. Still arguably the best drama Amazon has ever put out. So, there's that!

Homeland: Season 5

It could be a byproduct of my binging, but I didn't love this season of Homeland. Last season felt like a reboot of sorts and a return to glory for the show, but this one just felt a lot more like 24. I want to be invested in the adventures of Carrie and Saul again, and I want Quinn to do more than knock vigorously on death's door for an entire season. Holy shit, pal. Retire!

Jessica Jones: Season 1

It took me a little while to get into it, but I was pleasantly surprised by Marvel's latest. I never got into all of the Marvel comic adaptations - liked The Avengers and one of the Iron Man movies, but always felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of the studio's output. But this was good! And not super Marvel-y. Like, way darker than most Marvel stuff. And better! I'll check out Season 2. 

The Affair: Season 2

I love this show. I think it's one of the most overlooked series in the wide open TV landscape right now. It's a soap opera and murder mystery told from alternating points of view. I'm running out of steam and don't have much more to say, but yeah - check it out.

Happy 2016 everybody!

Stan's Movie Dump: Late December 2015

Late in the year (like, late late) I decided that it wasn't unfeasible for me to hit 100 movies in 2015. This is why I plowed through somewhere near 30 of them in December. Was it worth it? Did I get there? Let's find out together!

Tangerine

My 83rd movie of the year was this LA drama shot entirely on an iPhone. (I was pleasantly surprised by the quality!) It's about two transgender sex workers and it takes place on Christmas Eve. Needless to say, it was something very different from the white-straight-male-dominated films I usually tend to see (like everyone else). I've already seen this one on several year-end best lists, and while I can't go that far, I did find this to be entertaining, harrowing, interesting, funny, and heart-wrenching. Worth a look!

Welcome to Me

Kristen Wiig suffers from a severe form of social anxiety, or maybe schizophrenia, or maybe bipolar disorder. I dunno, it's the type of character she always plays. Anyway, the plot here is that her character wins the lottery and spends her newfound fortune producing a talk show in which she's the host and also the focus of every episode. This was nothing special, but I didn't dislike it or find it boring or anything.

The Loneliest Planet

There's a very, very specific taste you need in order to enjoy this movie. It's very largely just an hour and forty minutes of three people walking through the Caucasus Mountains. There are lengthy tracking shots and gorgeous long shots and the whole movie is pretty quiet without very much dialogue. Lots of the chatter that does take place is non-English and non-subtitled. The entire movie's conflict basically comes down to a certain incident in the middle of the film. I really liked this one, but I can completely understand why so many people hated it. As a good litmus test - did you like Gerry? (Watch Gerry if you haven't.) This is longer than Gerry and not quite as good, in my opinion. But then, I loved Gerry. Whatever.

Holy Motors

Here's an interesting one. Holy Motors can best be described as "challenging." It's the type of movie I'd love to love, but it's not one I really understood at all. Describing it in any detail feels like a fool's errand, so I won't bother trying. In a nutshell, a man seems to understand that he is an actor performing different roles as he goes about his day, but there's no camera or audience in sight. And that really only scratches the surface of some of the surreal stuff going on here. Has anyone else seen this? Can anyone help me out?

Beasts of No Nation

We're at movie number 87, for those keeping track. This was a Netflix original film from Cary Fukugawa, the guy responsible for both seasons of True Detective (so, yeah, there was a really wide range in potential quality heading into this one). It's a story - not a documentary - about child soldiers in Africa. I dunno. Didn't do a ton for me.

Spring

Hell yes. I went into this one essentially blind and was rewarded with what was nearly one of my favorite movies of the year. (The ending - the final thirty seconds, really - was total butt.) Spring starts out looking like some generic mumblecore flick about an irresponsible shithead. Then it suddenly gets scary. I mean, this had some of the most startling and jump-indcing moments I've seen all year. But just when it seems like Spring is a mumblecore movie that turned into a monster movie, that monster movie turns into Before Sunrise. It's one of the strangest genre mash-ups I've ever seen, and it works surprisingly well. I loved this! I just still hate the way it ended.

Queen of Earth

Here's the second movie in a row from Alex Ross Perry that didn't live up to the hype for me. (The last one was Listen Up Philip, which also starred Elisabeth Moss.) Oh well! Moss was great here and I'm sure this was an objectively high-quality movie; it just wasn't one I ever felt myself getting into. The premise? Elisabeth Moss gets dumped and goes to spend some time in her friend's lake house. They bicker constantly, and Moss slowly loses her mind. Not in a surreal-hey-cool-dream-sequences way, but just in a holy-shit-she's-unhinged-and-possibly-very-dangerous way. I even tried to rewatch this one, but bailed halfway through when I realized, come on, if I'm going to get to 100 movies on the year I can't be wasting time on rewatches.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part I

I liked the first two Hunger Games books just did not care whatsoever about the third one. Turns out the movie was no better, especially when said movie is just the first half of said book. I'll be back for the conclusion soon enough, I'm sure, but this was a real dud.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Movie 91, y'all! And a solid one at that. This one got some acclaim a year ago and it took me until now to check it out. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play vampires in a long-distance and severely long-term relationship; he's several centuries old and she's several centuries older. What I really enjoyed here was their two characters and their relationship. This ain't your father's vampire movie, full of blood and gore and sex and such; rather, it's an exploration of what it'd be like to live for such a long damn time - especially with the same person. I mean, imagine how "over it" you'd be. Imagine how well you'd know your partner. That's more or less the gist of this movie, and I really dug it. And yes, there's an actual conflict in there too, of course.

My Mistress

I liked Venus in Fur way back in January, and I absolutely loved The Duke of Burgundy a few months ago. But apparently lightning doesn't strike thrice, as the third dominatrix-y movie I saw this year was just a big old turd. Boring and unoriginal! Forget about this one.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I love what Abrams did here. The man knows how to tease and foreshadow like no other, and that's really the best thing you can say about this movie - not really that it was awesome as a stand-alone film, but that everyone who saw it is even more pumped for Episode VIII now. And it's only a year and a half away! Hooray!

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

Damn. I wanted to love this and I'm pretty sure I would have if it wasn't a Swedish film with English subtitles. This was full of dark, bleak humor. Every shot was a long one taken by a stationary camera and all the colors were intentionally drab and squalid. So this movie's quality rests almost entirely on the timing and delivery of its dialogue. I liked it, but I'm sure there were a few things lost in the translation from spoken words to written subtitles. Oh well!

Two Days, One Night

Marion Cotillard was great here - is she ever not? - but the movie itself was pretty forgettable. A mother of two is about to be laid off from her job and needs to spend her weekend lobbying her coworkers for their support. That's an interesting enough premise to hang a movie on, with some heart to boot, but I guess I'm surprised it won as many film festival honors as it did.

Goodbye to Language

Boy, this was not my cup of tea. It's an experimental video essay in the French language. I think it was meant to be seen in 3D, but I'm not sure what difference that would have made. It's a hodgepodge of footage and audio just kind of mashed together incoherently. The audio will cut out, get distorted, or get boosted to twice the volume seemingly at random and the footage is alternately oversaturated, black and white, tint-adjusted, grainy, blurry, or in crisp and stunning HD - again, seemingly at random. If movies are like books, then this was some really bad abstract poetry. So, why did I watch it? Sixty-minute run time! Four more to go!

Sisters

Saw this one in theaters with my - wait for it - sisters. Thanks to some fairly low expectations - seriously, those trailers - I was pleasantly surprised. There's nothing amazing here or anything, but it's Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and if you're not on board with that then, well, this isn't for you.

Kumiko the Treasure Hunter

While discussing Fargo recently, Sweeney brought up that some girl from Japan had misunderstood that the movie wasn't an actual documentary, and had flown all the way to Minnesota looking for the bag of money that Steve Buscemi buries in the snow by the side of the road. I was like, "Sween, hey now, come on. That's just a movie." Turns out the movie was inspired by the very urban legend Sweeney was talking about. And it was a pretty good movie! Imagine that.

The Bling Ring

This is Sofia Coppola's take on the true story of a group of Los Angeles teenagers who went around burgling rich and famous celebrities' homes back in 2008 or so. I liked this one more than I expected to, and I think a lot of that comes from Emma Watson playing "insufferable brat" extremely well. Like, don't get me wrong - all these kids were shit heads - but you're almost rooting for them to get away with it all until Emma Watson starts playing the victim. Good job, great stuff.

Whiplash

Oh fuck yeah, this makes a hundred! Figured I'd end on a high note. Whiplash isn't much more than JK Simmons berating Miles Teller with homophobic and slur-laden "tough love" in an attempt to push him to become the greatest drummer in the world. Is the attempt misguided? Probably - but Simmons justifies it soundly enough in a late monologue. Way to earn that Oscar, buddy!

Wow! Never again!

Stan's Movie Dump: November/Early December 2015

With both my semester and the year in television wrapping up, I've been pouring on the movies as of late. I'll be brief with each of these. I can't afford not to be.

Circle (2015)

A super low-budget indie flick places fifty people in a room and has them kill each other one by one through a voting process. It's like the ultimate reality show, with alliances and betrayals and a diverse array of people. Only one person can make it out alive - so who's it going to be? Anyway, it's an interesting concept, but the movie struggles to say anything clever or interesting. Bad acting and flat writing ensure that this is no future cult classic.

Scream 2

This felt a lot like the first movie with a few bigger moments but much less of the novelty.

Scream 3

And this one just kind of felt long and boring and bad.

Inside Out

Another gem from Pixar. Personifying emotions works really well, but I can't help feeling like they left a whole lot on the table here. There were so many more aspects of the mental and emotional aspects of growing up that they could have explored! Then again, this is Pixar; they weren't going to go too deep for children to follow what was going on, and they were never going to make a movie much longer than an hour-forty-five.

Why Don't You Play in Hell?

Just awesome. This one's a Japanese import, so be warned that there are subtitles. Be warned also that the first hour-twenty or so feels needlessly long and convoluted. But know that the final half hour is one of the greatest action-comedy set pieces I've ever seen. People have likened it to Kill Bill: Volume 1 and they aren't wrong to do so. Oh yeah, the premise? A group of amateur filmmakers crosses paths with two warring yakuza factions, and at the center of it all is a charming girl from a toothpaste commercial.

Dark Places

This one's based off Gillian Flynn's second novel. The book was no Gone Girl, but it had its own set of strengths. Unfortunately the same can't be said of this movie, a generic-feeling murder mystery that miscasts some pretty big names. Skip it.

Tusk

It's great to see Kevin Smith trying new things again. This movie, in which a man is transformed into a walrus, was surreal without losing sight of how stupid the premise was. This made for a movie that was both creepy and fun, if little else. Well done.

Midnight in Paris

A man on vacation in Paris goes back in time to the age of the ex-pats and meets the likes of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He's thrilled to be in the city's "golden age" but his hosts don't seem to agree that this is Paris's golden age at all. To them, that's the 1800s. So the man journeys further backward - only to learn that to the people in 1800s Paris, the golden age was the Renaissance. The man then comes to the realization that nostalgia is a powerful thing, and that no matter when you live, you're likely to think of the past more fondly than your own present. It's a good moral, but the whole movie kind of feels like little more than an excuse to get there. A fun excuse, with lots of big actors playing historical figures, but an excuse all the same.

Listen Up Philip

I didn't like this one as much as I hoped to. It stars Jason Schwartzman as an insufferable self-centered writer (surprise!) and uses third-person narration to explore his downfall. I liked it just fine, but for something that showed up on a number of year-end best lists a year ago, it fell short.

God Help the Girl

I went into this one blind and it turned out to be, basically, an indie pop musical. I really liked it! Your mileage may vary.

Palo Alto

Here's another one that just didn't live up to its reputation. James Franco wrote it - or at least wrote the story it's based on - and also stars as a high school girls soccer coach. Will he end up giving into the weird sexual tension he shares with his own player, Emma Roberts? Find out!

Only God Forgives

This one got terrible reviews, but it's made by the same guy who made Drive and it also stars Ryan Gosling, so how could it be that bad? Well, I'm not sure, but it was, indeed, that bad. Just awful. Slow and confusing without any redeeming depth whereas Drive was exciting, clean, and clear. A disappointment, but not a surprise.

It's Such a Beautiful Day

This is an absurd animated movie about a guy who loses his mind and sinks into a depression of sorts. That description doesn't really do it justice - there's more to all this than that. Have you ever seen Don Hertzfeldt's work before? You probably have. If not, here's some required viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuOvqeABHvQ

Phoenix
This one's already landed on a bunch of year-end best lists. It's a German film set in the aftermath of World War II and it focuses on a woman who survived the Holocaust and underwent facial reconstructive surgery. The central conflict is whether or not the woman's husband was the one who betrayed her to the Nazis. It's a slow-mover and everything about it is understated and subtle. If that's your bag, then goddamn, this is amazing. What a movie, and what an ending. But if you're like me, you might appreciate something a little quicker, brighter, fierier, louder, more explosive, what have you. I respect this movie a lot, and I absolutely understand all the love; I just can't fully co-sign myself.

The Brothers Solomon

Dumb as all hell. Will Arnett, Will Forte, Kristen Wiig - and Bob Odenkirk as the director? I had to look into this one, universal negative reviews be damned. It wasn't horrible! I mean, objectively, yeah, it was, but there were still plenty of jokes and gags that I appreciated. If nothing else, this movie was worth seeing just for the opening credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnxUBkZRBe4

I'll be back! With Star Wars! And like a dozen other movies I'm sure.