Seth Harris

Movie Review – Leviathan

Leviathan (2014)
Written by Andrey Zvyagintsev & Oleg Negin
Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev

In American cinema, there is a tradition of the plucky underdog who has all the odds stacked against him and still manages to come out on top. There is no such archetype in Russian films where the idea of a lone figure having the ability to overcome the bureaucratic power is laughable. Inspired by the bulldozer rampage of Marvin Heemeyer of Colorado, director Andrey Zvyagintsev reimagines that story through a Russian lens of powerlessness. Leviathan is such a searing pointed portrayal of modern Russia and its ugliness that Zvyagintsev, who had received government funds to help finance this film, caused the Ministry of Culture to rewrite their conditions on how a movie gets their support. Films must not “defile” the Russian culture, which is another way of saying they must support the party line and be propaganda.

Music Review – Boo Boo|Toro y Moi

Boo Boo|Toro y Moi (2016)
Produced by Toro y Moi | Carpark

Listening to Boo Boo by Toro y Moi is a profoundly nostalgic experience, taking me back to childhood in the late 80s/early 90s. There is a particular sound he manages to capture from the past while staying fresh and relevant to modern tastes. He recalls the 1980s R&B of Al Jarreau, mixed with the Miami sound, but never playing as cheesy, but respectful of the roots of what he’s trying to make. The dreamy synthpop keyboards float the listener away to a white sands beach on the Atlantic, likely somewhere around Toro y Moi’s old stomping grounds of South Carolina. The snappy drum loops capture that long ago feeling of childhood for people in my generation.

Movie Review – Brightburn

Brightburn (2019)
Written by Brian & Mark Gunn
Directed by David Yarovesky

The premise “What if Superman was evil?” is nothing new to the world of comic books. Over Superman’s eighty year history we’ve had characters like Bizarro, Ultraman, and Cyborg Superman who explore those darker aspects to a being like Superman. There have been books like Marvelman and Irredeemable that also examine these themes with even more detail. So, for comic nerds like myself, Brightburn isn’t bringing anything new to the table. However, I acknowledge that general audiences haven’t seen anything like this before, and if you are someone tired of the same old superhero origin tropes, this does offer a different take.

Movie Review – Wiener-Dog

Wiener-Dog (2016)
Written & Directed by Todd Solondz

I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed a Todd Solondz film, but I have been continually fascinated by them. He is such a profoundly misanthropic filmmaker with an aesthetic that clashes with the darkness of his material. Wiener-Dog is his most recent film, and it won’t toss anything new at familiar audiences. The film hits on the same gripes Solondz has always ranted about: the soullessness of the middle class, the lack of art in cinema, the inevitability of our deaths. All of this is told in a bright, warm pastel palette complete with a soundtrack that creates a dissonance with the themes of the picture.

Movie Review – Climax

Climax (2019)
Written & Directed by Gaspar Noe

The bliss of Heaven is matched by the torment of Hell. This is the central theme of Gaspar Noe’s latest film, a psychedelic odyssey into madness, performed by mostly non-acting professional dancers. They have holed up in an abandoned boarding school during a snowstorm where they are celebrating their planned trip to the United States for a competition. The night’s revelry begins with spontaneous dancing and the consumption of some delicious sangria. After everyone has drunk of the celebratory punch, they realize it’s been spiked with LSD, and the nightmare begins. As is Noe’s style, the film is structured in surprising ways with often overly showy cinematography.

Movie Review – James White

James White (2014)
Written & Directed by Josh Mond

The first thing you notice is the extreme close up of the young man’s face, the titular James White. Next, you see the abstracted background, unfocused to the point of becoming an impressionistic blur. The message is clear: we’re going to spend some time getting uncomfortably close to James, in his head, seeing the world from his perspective, as ugly as that might get. Josh Mond has given us a challenging and often unsympathetic figure in James White, a version of himself written as part of the director’s exploration of his own mother’s death from cancer three years prior.

Comic Book Review – New Teen Titans Volume 10

New Teen Titans Volume 10
Reprints New Teen Titans v2 #10-15, Annual v2 #1
Written by Marv Wolfman
Art by Eduardo Barreto, Stan Woch, Romeo Tanghal, and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

This volume of the New Teen Titans is a bit of a mess. Marv Wolfman is entirely at the helm of the book’s direction and doesn’t seem to know exactly what kind of stories he wants to tell. The Titans feel directionless with multiple issues that have no weight on the characters or progressing any arcs. These issues are so far removed from iconography and characters most associated with the Titans that it feels like an entirely different comic at times. Other than the connections to the Crisis event, these are stories existing in their inconsequential pocket of the DC Universe.

Movie Review – Booksmart

Booksmart (2019)
Written by Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman
Directed by Olivia Wilde

Superbad came out twelve years ago. At the time, I knew this was a high school comedy for a generation younger than myself. With Booksmart we’re presented with a high school comedy about a generation graduating nineteen years after my own, so I have begun to feel the growing chasm in my own experiences and the intended audience of this picture. Booksmart is a movie written with my students of years prior in mind, yet it is inspired by so many films that have come before.

TV Review – Barry Season 2

Barry Season 2 (HBO)
Written by Alec Berg, Bill Hader, Taofik Kolade, Jason Kim, Duffy Boudreau, Emily Heller, and Liz Sarnoff
Directed by Hiro Murai, Minkie Spiro, Liza Johnson, Bill Hader, and Alec Berg

The tagline for Barry is “a hitman tries to make it as an actor,” a premise which sounds like the worst Hollywood pitch of the post-Goodfellas 1990s. Think about pictures like My Blue Heaven or Analyze This, where mob stereotypes are played for laughs. It’s the theme of Barry that keeps us coming back every week, “Can people who have done bad things still be good people?”. Co-creator and star Bill Hader, known for his comedic chops honed on Saturday Night Live, manages to find the perfect middle ground where he can have moments to play things for laughs but then flip things around in an instant to discover the most heart-rending moments of pathos. Barry is a funny tragedy.

Movie Review – Boyhood

Boyhood (2014)
Written & Directed by Richard Linklater

Seeing the connectivity and influences that have made your life can be a very daunting task. There are profound moments that stand out, but they alone are not what shaped you into the person that exists today. Filmmaker Richard Linklater decided to attempt to tell the story of one person over the course of the actor’s actually childhood and adolescence, everyone in the cast contributing real-life experiences in a semi-improvised movie. The result is Boyhood, an ambitious piece of cinema but one that doesn’t entirely propel itself into a pantheon of greatest films, in my opinion.