Keith Uhlich (The Completist)

March 2020: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for March 2020. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

March 2

• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Season 7, Episode 3, "March 1, 2020"

• La Comédie-Française ou L'amour joué (1996)

March 3

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 21, Episode 16, "Eternal Relief from Pain" (2020)

• Better Call Saul, Season 5, Episode 3, "The Guy For This" (2020)

• Public Housing (1997)

March 4

• Lancelot of the Lake (Lancelot du Lac) (1974)

• So Late So Soon (2020)

March 5

• Belfast, Maine (1999)

February 2020: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for February 2020. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

February 1

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 21, "The Longest Night of Rain" (2020)

• BoJack Horseman, Season 1, Episode 1, "BoJack Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Story, Chapter One" (2014)

• Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (Gojira tai Megagirasu: Jî shômetsu sakusen) (2000)

February 3

• Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Gidorâ: Daikaijû sôkôgeki) (2001)

February 4

• New York, New York (1977)

• Doctor Sleep: Director's Cut (2019)

For Whom the Zell Tolls or: I Ren/I Ren So Far A-Née

[Published February 2nd, 2020, The Completist and Letterboxd]

The Oscars are a good excuse to throw a party. (If you come by, I plan on cooking a ham.) That's about the extent of my regard for this annual orgy of self-congratulation — though I'd love it if Banderas won and Zell de Jour didn't. To that end, pain will surely outweigh glory.

A good time, still, to play catch-up with several of the nominees (or not, in one case) that I have some first-time or additional thoughts about.

I'm already on the negative review record with the three Js: Joker, Judy (aka Scary Stories to Zell in the Dark) and Jojo Rabbit. The latter, one of the worst movies ever made, is well on its way to a Grolsch People's Choice-portended upset, and I'm sure it will take gold just to spite me. Rest assured that my two (!) FYC screeners will be getting gleeful, Silence-like foot stompings throughout the ceremony.

I also previously published a very positive take on The Irishman, a movie that only grows in my estimation. There's an essay to be written on the F/X work alone and how the unconvincing nature of some of it (and not just the digital shellac; see the Dick Tracy-esque prosthetics on Dominick Lombardozzi as "Fat Tony" Salerno) illuminates the themes of regret and loss. Of realizing, even if only subconsciously, that you've lived your life in exactly the wrong way. Photorealism is the party line when it comes to special effects. I much prefer it when discernible seams are a large part of the intent.

January 2020: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for January 2020. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

January 2

• What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018)

January 5

• Peterloo (2018)

January 6

• Film About a Father Who (2020)

January 9

• Darbar (2020)

Jonas Mekas Dance Program

• Film Magazine of the Arts (1963)

• Erick Hawkins: Excerpts From "Here And Now With Watchers"/Lucia Dlugoszewski Performs (1963/83)

• Cup/Saucer/Two Dancers/Radio (1965/83)

Decade-Dance: 10 for '10s

[Published January 21st, 2020, The Completist and Letterboxd]

1. Certified Copy (2010)
2. Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids (2016)
3. Song to Song (2017)
4. Vitalina Varela (2019)
5. Godzilla (2014)
6. Monrovia, Indiana (2018)
7. The Green Fog (2017)
8. Not Fade Away (2012)
9. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
10. Step Up 3D (2010)

Any list worth its salt is idiosyncratic and inadequate. I'm sure many readers will look at the titles above — ten favorites spanning the 2010s — and play the "what about?" game. That, or rage against the machines (cultural, sexual, socioeconomic, political, etc) that my selections explicitly/implicitly endorse or extol. A tidal wave of response-riposte is more often the exception, of course. Deafening silence tends to be the rule, and I've increasingly found bliss in the collective hush. It doesn't mean the work isn't resonating; to those indeterminate ends, I'm more than happy to cede control.

I live in fear less and less these days, though I do feel more than a twinge of terror whenever the virtual hive mind begets literal mob rule, which is too often lately. That's me preemptively pleading that you put aside any thoughts of "consensus" or "authority" in my choices. I already look at the ten titles above and think of innumerable others, by artists from all walks of life. Say, Aaron Schimberg's Chained for Life (2018), which is so singular that "listing" it feels reductive. Or Pier Kids (2019), Elegance Bratton's disquieting documentary about homeless queer and trans youth, which should really be paired with my #10, the effusive stereoscopic teen musical Step Up 3D, as a yin-yang that exposes the fallaciousness of, and the horror underlying, Obama-era (p)optimism.

I submitted this list to publications that asked for theatrical releases only, so the most glaring omission — since I'm of the "motion picture" persuasion that considers theatrical, television, and gallery work equally — is the third season of Twin Peaks (2017). That and the death-obsessed yet teemingly alive finale of Deadwood (2019) are the decade's crowning achievements, while Too Old to Die Young (2019), Nicolas Winding Refn's exuberantly protracted study of toxic masculinity in descent, is the neon shit-stain on the king's assless chaps. (A compliment, yes. And, borrowing Brian Cox's description of his uproarious series Succession, an "absurd show for absurd times.")

December 2019: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for December 2019. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

December 1

• 1900 (Novecento) (1976)

December 2

• Richard Jewell (2019)

• Mr. Robot, Season 4, Episode 9, "409 Conflict" (2019)

• The Man Who Loved Women (L'homme qui aimait les femmes) (1977)

December 3

• Heart of Glass (Herz aus Glas) (1976)

December 4

• Knives Out (2019)

December 5

• That Obscure Object of Desire (Cet obscur objet du désir) (1977)

Creepazoid Groupie Stalker Meets Cahiers du Poopheads: An Ode to the Extraordinary Ordinary NYPress Film Section

[Author's Note: I wrote this piece in 2016—the final draft is dated December 5th of that year. It was to be the introduction to a book, a version of which is being published next year by Seven Stories Press, that collected the film criticism of Godfrey Cheshire, Matt Zoller Seitz and Armond White, all of it culled from their time at the alternative weekly NYPress. It was ultimately not included, for rather unpleasant reasons, and the whole experience left me uncertain about aspects of the piece, particularly whether its outlook was too rose-colored and sentimental. I put it away. But I often recalled it fondly, which is rare when it comes to things that I've written. I wanted it to see the light of day. And the fact that I conceived it as an "ode"—a tribute to people who mentored me both in print and in person—I think justifies the at times elevated tone. If my emotions about these events are more complicated now, that doesn't invalidate the place I was at when I composed this essay. I recognize this Keith, and acknowledge he once felt this way. Thanks for reading. (12/16/2019)]  

This is a book about movies. So it's only appropriate to begin with an image. Picture, if you would, a box. Not a perfect square, but an imperfect rectangle, standing lengthwise on a New York City street corner. It's about as tall as an average 12-year-old. It's made of weather-resistant plastic. "Green is its color." (Couldn't resist the Twin Peaks reference…sorry/not sorry.) There's a door on the front. You open it, look inside and discover a stack of newspapers. (Remember those?) Pick one up and ink rubs off on your hands. Hold it long enough and people will assume you've just been fingerprinted at the local precinct. There is something, come to think of it, illicit about what you're doing. At the least intensely private. Or that's how it felt to me whenever I picked up a copy of the NYPress.

What is (was) the NYPress? I get that question more and more as the years pass. So, the facts as I know and perhaps rose-tintedly embellish them: The NYPress was (is) an alternative weekly newspaper founded in 1988 by conservative writer Russ Smith. In part, it was positioned as a competitor to the long-established, left-leaning Village Voice, and I'm betting, at this point, that you think you've got the publication pegged. It's the elephant to the Voice's donkey. The red state to its blue. (Funny that the Voice was peddled in a street-corner plastic box of the rouge-iest rouge.)

In truth, the Press defied labels, defied classification, often defied common sense, which gave it that much more of an edge on the Voice—if not in numbers, then in synapse-stoking brashness. Here was a true melting pot, much of it overseen by John Strausbaugh, who edited the paper between 1990 and 2002. Smith had his column "MUGGER" in which he held "rightly" forth on the issues of the week. Other conservative voices included future Weekly Standard editor Christopher Caldwell and Greek journalist/aristocrat Taki Theodoracopulos. But turn the page and you might find a broadside penned by Irish anarchist Alexander Cockburn. Flip a few more and you'd come across one of the nakedly personal confessions of J.T. "Terminator" LeRoy, a teenage maybe-trans former male prostitute who was years later revealed to be a hoax-prone thirty-something female named Laura Albert.

The distinguished (of a kind) contributor list goes on: Soul Coughing frontman M. Doughty ("Dirty Sanchez" pseudonymously). Heartbreaking genius (to some) Dave Eggers. Jonathan Ames, trying his hand at the distinctive, if oft-irritating tweeness that would inform his two cult TV series Bored to Death (2009-2011) and Blunt Talk (2015–2016). Can't forget Jim Knipfel, who worked his way up from Press office receptionist to full-time staff writer (his column "Slackjaw" frequently dealt with the degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa, he'd been diagnosed with as a teenager). Or Ned Vizzini, the boy wonder who wrote funny, penetrating essays from an advanced adolescent perspective, and sadly killed himself in 2013, succumbing to a lifelong struggle with clinical depression.

I personally recognized how special the Press was after opening an issue and spotting a just-debuted theater column by Claus von Bülow, the British socialite (played with reptilian allure and insidiousness by Jeremy Irons in 1990's Reversal of Fortune) who was accused and eventually acquitted of the attempted murder of his wife Sunny. What shameless insanity! What glorious lunacy! By that point I'd been a regular Press reader for a few years, though I couldn't date first contact except to say it occurred while I was a film production student at New York University. I guess you see enough of those green street-corner boxes and you have to know what's in them. But none of the people I've listed above were my reason for returning to the paper each week. For within this gem of a rag lay another treasure: a nonpareil film section written by Godfrey Cheshire, Matt Zoller Seitz and Armond White.

November 2019: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for November 2019. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

November 1

• Queer Eye: We're in Japan!, Episode 1, "Japanese Holiday" (2019)

November 3

• Twin Peaks, Season 3, Part 3, "Call for Help" (2017)

• Twin Peaks, Season 3, Part 4, "…Brings Back Some Memories" (2017)

• Twin Peaks, Season 3, Part 5, "Case Files" (2017)

• Twin Peaks, Season 3, Part 6, "Don't Die" (2017)

• Twin Peaks, Season 3, Part 7, "There's a Body All Right" (2017)

• Twin Peaks, Season 3, Part 8, "Gotta Light?" (2017)

November 4

• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Season 6, Episode 28, "November 3, 2019"

• Queer Eye: We're in Japan!, Episode 2, "Crazy in Love" (2019)

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 21, Episode 6, "Murdered at a Bad Address" (2019)

• Mr. Robot, Season 4, Episode 5, "405 Method Not Allowed" (2019)

• Watchmen, Season 1, Episode 3, "She Was Killed by Space Junk" (2019)

October 2019: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for October 2019. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

October 1

• The Deuce, Season 1, Episode 7, "Au Reservoir" (2017)

• The Deuce, Season 1, Episode 8, "My Name Is Ruby" (2017) 

October 2

• The Cotton Club Encore (1984/2019)

October 3

• American Horror Story: 1984, "Slashdance" (2019)

• Uncut Gems (2019)

October 4

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 21, Episode 2, "The Darkest Journey Home" (2019)

October 5

• The Deuce, Season 2, Episode 1, "Our Raison d'Être" (2018)

• Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (Gojira vs. Kingu Gidorâ) (1991)

September 2019: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for September 2019. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

September 3

• Succession, Season 2, Episode 4, "Safe Room" (2019)

• The Terror: Infamy, Episode 4, "The Weak Are Meat" (2019)

September 5

• A Hidden Life (2019)

• Honey Boy (2019)

• The Report (2019)

• The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)

September 6

• WAVELENGTHS 1: WLS19: "Austrian Pavilion" (2019)

• WAVELENGTHS 1: WLS19: "SaF05" (2019)

August 2019: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for August 2019. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

August 2

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 4, Episode 17, "Privilege" (2003)

August 3

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 4, Episode 20, "Dominance" (2003)

August 4

• I Could Go On Singing (1963)

• Succession, Season 1, Episode 1, "Celebration" (2018)

• Succession, Season 1, Episode 2, "Shit Show at the Fuck Factory" (2018)

Joan the Maid (1994)

Courtesy of Cohen Film Collection

Joan the Maid, like many Rivette films, can be intimidating. Get past the length, and you may still need to acclimate to the movie's vision — courtesy Rivette and his frequent co-scenarists Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent — of a thoroughly mortal Joan, in addition to an aesthetic that is wholly presentational. Cinematographer William Lubtchansky favors unshowy tracking shots and full- and medium-body compositions that keep us at an objective remove. The medievalist score by Catalan composer Jordi Savall doesn't emphasize or augment emotion so much as it wafts in and out of scenes like a gentle common breeze.

In many sequences, the blocking of the actors, coupled with the spare, yet detailed production design by Manu de Chauvigny, lends the proceedings a stage-bound feel (several of the minor characters are even allowed fourth-wall-breaking testimonials). This underlines Rivette's fascination — much like one of his heroes, Jean Renoir — with theater and how it intersects with the cinema. As is his wont, Rivette is interested in how people, in whatever era they may inhabit, perform their lives.

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I was delighted to get the assignment to review, for The Hollywood Reporter, the restoration of Jacques Rivette's great Joan the Maid (1994). It opens this Friday, August 2nd at Quad Cinema and is well worth your time.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/joan-maid-review-1228515

July 2019: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for July 2019. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

July 1

• Big Little Lies, Season 2, Episode 4, "She Knows" (2019)

• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Season 6, Episode 17, "June 30, 2019"

• Too Old to Die Young, Volume 6, "The High Priestess" (2019)

• Too Old to Die Young, Volume 7, "The Magician" (2019)

• Too Old to Die Young, Volume 8, "The Hanged Man" (2019)

• Too Old to Die Young, Volume 9, "The Empress" (2019)

• Too Old to Die Young, Volume 10, "The World" (2019)

July 2

• Legion, Season 3, Episode 2, "Chapter 21" (2019)

• Years and Years, Episode 2 (2019)

July 4

• Stranger Things 3, "Chapter 1: Suzie, Do You Copy" (2019)

• Stranger Things 3, "Chapter 2: The Mall Rats" (2019)

• Stranger Things 3, "Chapter 3: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard" (2019)

• Stranger Things 3, "Chapter 4: The Sauna Test" (2019)

Straight Up (2019)

Todd (James Sweeney) is trapped in a box. Literally, if you consider that Sweeney, who also wrote, directed and produced the rapid-fire queer (or am I?) dramedy Straight Up, constricts his characters to a 4:3 frame familiar from many a Golden Age Hollywood rom-com. Performance anxiety is prevalent. You get the sense that the twenty-something, OCD-afflicted Todd speaks so rat-a-tat because to slow down would mean certain death, or at least the need to deal with a highly shambolic reality.

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Read the full review at The Hollywood Reporter

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/straight-up-review-1224334

Pier Kids (2019)

Filmmaker Elegance Bratton lobs no softballs in his documentary feature debut Pier Kids, which premiered in Los Angeles as part of Outfest 2019. The first onscreen title: "In the wake of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the world cheered the advancement of white queers and ignored the fates of queer people of color." A harsh truth frequently ignored — even oppressed minorities have strata of privilege, and any revolutionary strides more often benefit those of a certain economic, social or genetic bent. Bratton aims to shine a light on a community within the community, specifically the 40% of queer youth who are both homeless and people of color.

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Read the full review at The Hollywood Reporter

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/pier-kids-review-1224324

June 2019: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for June 2019. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

June 2

• Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017)

June 3

• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Season 6, Episode 13, "June 2, 2019"

• Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018)

• Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018)

June 4

• The Twilight Zone, Season 4, Episode 14, "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" (1963)

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 3, Episode 2, "Wrath" (2001)

June 5

• Black Mirror, Season 5, Episode 1, "Striking Vipers" (2019)

• Black Mirror, Season 5, Episode 2, "Smithereens" (2019)

• Black Mirror, Season 5, Episode 3, "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too" (2019)

• Queer as Folk, Season 1, Episode 1, "Thursday" (1999)

• Queer as Folk, Season 1, Episode 2, "Stuart Alan Jones" (1999)

• Queer as Folk, Season 1, Episode 3, "A Night Out" (1999)

• Queer as Folk, Season 1, Episode 4, "D.I.S.C.O." (1999)

May 2019: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for May 2019. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

May 1

• XY Chelsea (2019)

May 3

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 20, Episode 22, "Diss" (2019)

May 4

• Wig (2019)

May 5

• Domino (2019)

• Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 4, "The Last of the Starks" (2019)

Child's Play (2019)

Say what you will about the seven films in the Child's Play series. Their frequent unevenness aside, they're clearly homespun and filled with love. Creator Don Mancini and his loyal band of performers — including the inimitable Brad Dourif (as knife-wielding plaything Chucky) and the incomparable Jennifer Tilly (as both fleshly and plasticine love interest) — have concocted a troubadour's mythos out of a very simple premise: Dying serial killer demonically possesses doll. Bloodletting ensues.

The series began as horror, turned to comedy with this reviewer's personal favorite entry — 1998's visually evocative, shamelessly ribald Bride of Chucky — then segued back to straight-faced scares with two solid DTV entries, Curse of Chucky (2013) and Cult of Chucky (2017), that slimmed down the scale while expanding the lore. A Mancini-produced television show is also on the horizon. Think of all the special guest stars Chucky could kill! (Meryl, here's your Big Little Lies follow-up.) But now comes this controversial remake/reboot, minus Mancini, and hailing from the MGM-owned Orion Pictures, which hold the rights to the first (and only the first) Child's Play feature.

Mancini has made his displeasure with this redo known. And the biggest knock against it is that the idiosyncratic qualities (up, down and in-between) of the other films in the series have been sanded and smoothed. Stem to stern, this 88-minute slasher runs like the clockwork bit of machinery it is, and that baseline competence effectively leeches it of personality.

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On Child's Play redux for The Hollywood Reporter

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/childs-play-review-1219382

Advocate (2019)

When we first see Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel in Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche's compelling documentary Advocate (which world-premiered at Sundance and recently played the Canadian International nonfiction festival Hot Docs), she's in motion, striding through the hallways of a Jerusalem court. The frame is bisected, live-action footage on the left, rotoscoped animated imagery on the right. This stylistic tic, which recurs now and again, is Jones and Bellaïche's way of protecting the identities of Tsemel's clients, almost all of whom are Palestinians accused of extremist crimes.

This has been Tsemel's life for decades, working on behalf of people viewed by many in her orbit as inferiors and fanatics. Advocate, though, isn't interested in litigating the apparently limitless divisions between Israel and Palestine so much as it is in portraying Tsemel's tireless routine, in the process demonstrating how one person lives morally and ethically within a morass.

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And from Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, by initial way of Sundance, here I am in The Hollywood Reporter on Advocate, about the Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/advocate-1202460

Watson (2019)

We almost all have an experience that shaped us, and the course of our lives, in irrevocable ways. In the case of the Canadian-born eco-activist Paul Watson, that occurrence was especially harrowing and impactful. As a child, he was playing near the water. His friends tied him to a semi-sunken piece of wood a little ways from shore. They left him there. Soon the tide began to rise and the young Watson was certain he was going to drown. He was eventually rescued, but not before the fear of his own death was effectively eradicated.

Watson tells this story early in the documentary (directed by Lesley Chilcott) that's named after him. He has the steely look of a religious convert whose belief system is entirely devoid of concern for his own well-being. It's at once admirable and off-putting, since there also seems to be some crucial part of his humanity missing. But this intrepid quality is also what has allowed him to be such an effective fighter for the sea creatures and the briny habitats he has spent decades trying to protect.

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Rounding out some straggler fest coverage. Here's me at The Hollywood Reporter on the eco-documentary Watson, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/watson-1205450

Wig (2019)

Those looking for a celebratory tribute to the recently revivified outdoor drag festival Wigstock might be surprised by Chris Moukarbel's HBO-bound documentary, Wig, which premiered at the most recent Tribeca Film Festival. Based on the footage gathered here, the party — which took place on September 1st, 2018 at South Street Seaport in New York City — looks like it was a blast. Yet the film itself is a far from festive affair, more of an anesthetized chronicle of Wigstock's apparent irrelevance in the current cultural and political moment.

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My review of the documentary Wig from the Tribeca Film Festival, for The Hollywood Reporter

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/wig-review-1202425

Scheme Birds (2019)

Ellen Fiske and Ellinor Hallin open their documentary feature Scheme Birds, which just took a top prize at the Tribeca Film Festival, with a moment out of time. Scottish teenager Gemma is doing what many girls her age might — scrolling through the photos and Facebook feed on her phone, pausing to look over images and references to one young man in particular. It's not clear who he is or, indeed, when and where we are. What is apparent, if subtly, is that Gemma is humbled in a way that is very new to her, though as we soon find out, dejection and discouragement are default to her existence.

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On the Tribeca Film Festival prize-winner Scheme Birds for The Hollywood Reporter

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/scheme-birds-review-1208934

Bolden (2019)

Co-writer and director Dan Pritzker's long-in-the-works biopic Bolden is an ostentatious production with an enigma at its center. An opening title card admits to there being little information about its subject, African American cornetist Buddy Bolden. It then goes on in a second text crawl to claim him as the prime inventor, during the early 20th century, of the New Orleans style of music that became Jazz.

That's some primo mythmongering, though Bolden was a crucial figure in the genre's development whose work was lost to time for a variety of reasons. These include such tragic-artist perennials as drug addiction and mental illness, to say nothing of the challenges of living as a black person in the Jim Crow south. And it's to Pritzker's credit that he doesn't sugarcoat those horrors. If anything, his mistake is in treating them almost exclusively as psychosomatic window dressing.

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On the not-uninteresting musical biopic Bolden, for The Hollywood Reporter

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/bolden-review-1208125

April 2019: Viewing-Reading-Listening

(Log of motion pictures viewed, books read, music listened to for April 2019. Underlined titles I've seen, read, or heard before.)

Viewed

April 1

• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Season 6, Episode 6, "March 31, 2019"

• Queer Eye, Season 3, Episode 6, "Elrod & Sons" (2019)

April 3

• Completed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — 100% Walkthrough, 145 videos (that was something…)

April 4

• Queer Eye, Season 3, Episode 7, "Sloth to Slay" (2019)

• Queer Eye, Season 3, Episode 8, "Baby on Board" (2019)

• Dragged Across Concrete (2018)

XY Chelsea (2019)

"I love coming-of-age stories," says Chelsea Manning near the start of the documentary XY Chelsea, a Tribeca Film Festival world premiere soon to debut on Showtime. There are notes of wistfulness and defensiveness in how this former soldier/whistleblower — who uploaded caches of classified documents and video to Julian Assange's WikiLeaks website in 2010, and came out as a trans woman after she was arrested for her actions — utters those words, since she herself is stuck in something of a soul-sucking rut.

Director Tim Travers Hawkins adopts many of the same dissociative techniques utilized by executive producer Laura Poitras in her Edward Snowden profile Citizenfour (2014). The widescreen imagery is either smeary (moral complexity in literal motion) or oppressively sterile. The soundtrack is mostly comprised of omnipresent hums and drones, very Nine Inch Nails in ambient mode. But unlike Citizenfour, the film starts at the end of Manning's story — or, really, what should be a new beginning for her — with the commutation, in the waning days of the Obama administration, of her thirty-five year prison sentence after seven years served.

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From the Tribeca Film Festival, my review of the Chelsea Manning profile doc XY Chelsea for The Hollywood Reporter

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/odd-couple-review-1968-movie-1206106