Seth Harris

Movie Review – System Crasher

System Crasher (2019)
Written & Directed by Nora Fingschedit

This is a difficult movie to write about because it touches so close to the things I encounter in my daily life. I am a public school teacher in the United States, licensed for elementary education. I have taught 3rd grade for the last five years out of the nine I’ve been a teacher. Before that, I worked as an AmeriCorps reading tutor, substitute teacher, and student-teacher since 2006. No matter what public school you enter in this country, there is a very high chance you will encounter at least one student the breaks all the supports in place, a child that feels wholly broken. This is almost always a result of abuse that stems from the parent’s psychological condition, poverty conditions, or a mix of both. System Crasher is the story of this student.

SXSW Short Film Festival @ Home – Narratives Part 1

Still Wylde ***
Directed by Ingrid Haas

Gertie finds out she’s pregnant and breaks the news to her boyfriend, Sam. They go through the typical fears and excitements of parents to be. The short is an emotional roller coaster that veers between both comedic and dramatic. These are definitely late Gen X/Millennial people, and the comedy comes out of the social signaling of those demographics. The ending, however, suddenly shakes off those tropes and reminds us how some experiences are universal, no matter when you are born. It’s a fine short film, but a little light sitcom-y for my tastes.

My Favorite Screwball Comedies

The Palm Beach Story (1942, directed by Preston Sturges)

From my review: This is the ur-text of screwball comedies, every core element boiled down to its purest essence. There are pratfalls galore, windows getting smashed, and people confusing each other for others. It exists as both an ode to the comedies of mixed-up identities from Shakespeare and commentary on the late stages of the Great Depression. This film will inspire future pictures like Some Like It Hot and Intolerable Cruelty, but it doesn’t put on airs of being profound or world-changing. This is a pure character-centered comedy that understands how important it is to have a diverse variety of roles.

Movie Review – Unfaithfully Yours

Unfaithfully Yours (1948)
Written & Directed by Preston Sturges

At one point in his career, Preston Sturges was the third highest-paid man in America. He knew his value by 1944 at Paramount and began making more demands, throwing his weight around. After some poor business investments in Los Angeles, he started borrowing more money from family and friends. His good friend Howard Hughes even bankrolled Sturges’ venture as an independent filmmaker with California Pictures, a pay cut but also a higher level of control that made others in Hollywood envious. With all this success and prominence came a decline in quality and consistency. Sturges worked best when he has a force to butt heads with, but given complete artistic freedom, he began producing subpar work. After a series of flops, Sturges was no longer a creator people sought out, and he would have one more moderate hit before everything came crashing down.

Movie Review – The Miracle at Morgan’s Creek

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)
Written & Directed by Preston Sturges

In 1922, Hollywood was an incredibly sleazy town. How little things change. The studios were dealing with backlash from some risque films and the even more troubling private lives of their stars leaking into the tabloids. To deal with this problem, they enlisted the U.S. Postmaster General William Hays to write up a code of conduct that would get politicians and angry citizens off their backs. Thus, the Hays Code, the first piece of American film censorship, was born. The Code dictated that profanity, sex, or drugs be prohibited from films. Notice no significant rule on violence.

SXSW Short Film Festival @ Home – Documentaries Part 2

Quilt Fever ***
Directed by Olivia Loomis Merrion

Here’s something I never knew, Paducah is like the quilt capital of America. The short doc Quilt Fever feels like the seed of a feature-length documentary following women who have taken the annual pilgrimage to the quilt show in said town. We get just the smallest hint of these women’s backgrounds but never the depth I would have liked. This is also a case of a documentary built in post-production. Merrion went out and shot as much footage and interviews as she could and assembled a narrative in editing. This is a very conventional doc, nothing is challenging about the structure. It’s all about the subjects being interviewed and their own natural sweetness and charm.

Movie Review – Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
Written & Directed by Eliza Hittman

Throughout every frame of the muted, washed-out colors of this film, we’re presented with contemporary life from the point of view of an older teenage girl. We start in the rainy, crumbling streets of small-town Pennsylvania and end up on the crowded flowing sidewalks of New York City. The world is vast, a background smudge of light, a maze being navigated by two young women nervous and afraid. They want to pass through a moment in their lives so they can move on, but it’s unclear if the world after will be better.

Movie Review – Hail the Conquering Hero

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
Written & Directed by Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges did something delightfully subversive in this film, choosing to make another movie that appears on the surface level to be about patriotism and supporting “our boys” in the war effort. What he did was make a satire upending military hero worship and some of the core ideologies of bourgeoise America. During my viewing, I sat there stunned at how much he was getting away with, convinced that the censors at the time were dumber than I thought. This is a criminally underrated, wholly American movie that most definitely could not be made with today’s sterile corporate Hollywood environment.

TV Review – Tales from the Loop Season One, Episode One

Tales from the Loop (Amazon Prime)
Season One, Episode One – “Loop”
Written by Nathan Halpern
Directed by Mark Romanek

Tales from the Loop was inspired by the art of Swedish painter Simon Stålenhag, images that provoke a sense of nostalgia but also of the future. His pictures depict the rural landscape outside of Stockholm, with elements of dystopian science fiction peppered in. The presence of these pieces of technology doesn’t clutter the image, but they do dominate, juxtaposed against children in 1980s clothing observing the machines or only going about their daily lives with the monoliths looming in the background. This is the mysterious world of the Loop, out of time, and the home to luminous and breathtaking feats that break the laws of physics.

Movie Review – The Palm Beach Story

The Palm Beach Story (1942)
Written by Preston Sturges & Ernest Laemmle
Directed by Preston Sturges

This is the ur-text of screwball comedies, every core element boiled down to its purest essence. There are pratfalls galore, windows getting smashed, and people confusing each other for others. It exists as both an ode to the comedies of mixed-up identities from Shakespeare and commentary on the late stages of the Great Depression. This film will inspire future pictures like Some Like It Hot and Intolerable Cruelty, but it doesn’t put on airs of being profound or world-changing. This is a pure character-centered comedy that understands how important it is to have a diverse variety of roles.