Seth Harris

Movie Review – The Exterminating Angel

The Exterminating Angel (1962)
Written by Luis Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza
Directed by Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel is a director whose films are very well-known for being clever and witty critiques of the Spanish upper class. He’d been making movies for thirty years at this point, so you feel right away that you are in the hands of someone who knows exactly what they are doing. At its core, The Exterminating Angel is Buñuel pointing out the ways human existence and its institutions are easily fallible. We’re currently living through a pandemic that has uprooted what we believed would protect us. The CDC reconfigures its metrics to make the United States appear as if it has passed through the COVID-19 crisis while people continue to be infected, reinfected, and horrifically die by the tens of thousands a month. America’s leadership comprises a mix of ancient relics and avaricious technocrats that feign calm while frantically hoarding resources for themselves and their wealthy friends behind the scenes. Buñuel was already familiar with this world decades earlier.

Movie Review – The Trial

The Trial (1962)
Written & Directed by Orson Welles

The legal system doesn’t consistently deliver justice. Since 1989, over 2,400 people have been found to be wrongfully convicted in the United States. Even back amid the first World War, writer Franz Kafka understood the absurdity of the legal system and its accompanying structures. Sadly, he would pass at the young age of 40 in 1924, but a year later, one of his friends would cobble together the fragments of The Trial and posthumously published the text. While Kafka’s final vision for the book will always remain unknown, it was clear he was using it to examine the systems he lived within, particularly how cruel and cold they can be to the ordinary person. Orson Welles would be approached by producer Alexander Salkind to make a film based on a book in the public domain; this was what the director’s eye drifted to. The result is a masterpiece of visual and narrative excellence.

Movie Review – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Written by Edward Albee & Ernest Lehman
Directed by Mike Nichols

I can’t imagine how shocked audiences were when they saw this movie in 1966. It doesn’t have gratuitous nudity or sex, barely any profanity, no violence or gore. However, it features such bitter, hateful characters that this is a complicated picture to get through even by today’s standards. It wouldn’t be until 1968 that married couples on television would be shown. However, film and theater have always been ahead of the curve in pushing content boundaries. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a couple like this before. The rancor that is already overflowing when the movie begins just explodes. We’re given some moments of reprieve, but they fade quickly when the ceasefire ends, and the games begin again.

Movie Review – The Last Picture Show

The Last Picture Show (1971)
Written by Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich

We continue our “The World is Hell” series with this look at decaying rural life in an increasingly industrialized and inhuman America. Peter Bogdanovich has directed one movie, Targets (1966), and was searching for his next film. One day waiting in line at the grocery store checkout, he spied a paperback copy of Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. Reading the back cover, he noted it was kids growing up in Texas and didn’t really feel any immediate connection and put it back. Weeks later, actor Sal Mineo shared a copy of the book with Bogdanovich’s then-wife Polly Platt and the director wondered if he wasn’t being led to do something with this text. McMurtry would come on board to help with the screenplay, and the film was shot in his hometown of Archer City in north-central Texas. The combination of this profoundly New York filmmaker and a story of the loss of innocence in Texas would be a perfect match.

PopCult Podcast – The Godfather Coda/The 1970s Films of Coppola

Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in…to watch one more Coppola movie!

Comic Book Review – Immortal Hulk Book Four

Immortal Hulk Book Four (2022)
Reprints Immortal Hulk #31-40
Written by Al Ewing
Art by Joe Bennett, Javier Rodriguez, Nick Pitarra, Butch Guice, and Mike Hawthorne

In this penultimate omnibus of Immortal Hulk, writer Al Ewing continues exploring and deconstructing the Green Goliath. The tone of this book has consistently been that of body horror, a subgenre that fits the Hulk to a tee. It’s such a good match that I struggle to see Hulk working in another manner. As good as Donny Cates’ current run on the character is at the moment, it had such a massive shadow looming over it from Immortal. From the beginning, it has been clear that Ewing wants to use the Hulk to explore questions about identity and death and how the two intertwine. Gamma has become a mix of science and spirituality, a force that created Bruce Banner and may have been created out of him via some metaphysical means.

Movie Review – Bicycle Thieves

Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Written by Oreste Biancoli, Suso D’Amico, Vittorio De Sica, Adolfo Franci, Gherardo Gherardi, Gerardo Guerrieri, and Cesare Zavattini
Directed by Vittorio De Sica

The world is hell. But it didn’t just become hell. It’s been that way for a long, long, long time. Right now, the world is experiencing a significant shift in the world order, and when that happens, it is a harrowing experience. There are a lot of unknowns as a result. That uncertainty isn’t unfounded. When we don’t have guarantees about day-to-day life or even year to year, the opportunity for suffering is increased. The privileged pockets of the Western world finally feel this, while the developing world has been perpetually crushed under the boot. Nothing new for them, though they will likely be harmed more by the fallout of this changing of the order. The last time we had such a big shift was the collapse of the Soviet Union, but places like the United States didn’t really miss a beat, and Western Europe was definitely okay. The last time Western Europe went through “hell” was the aftermath of World War II, as large swaths of the region had been absolutely decimated by bombings. This is the world we enter into with Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves.

Patron Pick – Good On Paper

This is a special reward available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 a month levels. Each month those patrons will pick a film for me to review. They also get to include some of their own thoughts about the movie, if they choose. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

Good on Paper (2021)
Written by Iliza Shlesinger
Directed by Kimmy Gatewood

I want to welcome Bekah as our newest patron even though her first pick was…this movie. I can’t say I’ve ever listened to much of stand-up Iliza Shlesinger’s comedy, so I felt neutral about her going into this viewing. In the last decade, I’ve shifted to listening to podcasts hosted by comedians more than listening to their stand-up, so unless someone appears as a guest on one of those, I don’t really know much about their comedic perspective. Good on Paper opens with Ilza playing a version of herself doing stand-up. I found myself chuckling at the bit, a bit of deception as the film would probably have been better as just a comedy special. Instead, we get a tonal mess in its place.

Patron Pick – Tracktown

Tracktown (2016)
Written & Directed by Alexi Pappas and Jeremy Teicher

The Olympics-to-movies track is not one populated with much success. You need only look at the quality of Gymkata (starring gymnast Kurt Thomas) or Can’t Stop the Music (starring track star Caitlyn Jenner) to see how dubious these pictures can be. In a recent pre-Oscars interview, when asked about what movies he’s watched recently, director Paul Thomas Anderson namedropped Tracktown as one he’d watched and liked. Intriguing, yes? I have to wonder how closely Mr. Anderson was paying attention to the film as it played on his television because there is something so off about Tracktown.

TV Review – Veep Revisited

Veep (HBO)
Seasons 1 thru 7
Created by Armando Iannucci

If you follow this blog, you know one of my interests is examining how media is used to prop up the legitimacy of institutions in America. Since the early days of film, people have been rewriting history or portraying offices like the President with this sense of eternal nobility. This type of writing, present in the works of filmmakers like Aaron Sorkin, turns my stomach. It ultimately serves as propaganda to admonish activism that pushes for material change and instead pivot the American mindset into being satisfied with shallow sentiment and hollow platitudes. For example, the West Wing constantly presents those who populate the White House as flawed but virtuous, centrists who are always right and debate themselves into wins against conservatives and leftists. When The West Wing was originally airing, I remember someone I knew who liked the show admitting that it was ultimately “porn for liberals.” It provided a comforting fantasy with little to no connection to what happens in reality. Veep is the antithesis of this.