Seth Harris

February 2019 Digest

Features
TV TryOuts: Mr. Robot
TV TryOuts: Big Little Lies
Best Films of 2009 Redux

Movie Reviews (*** = PopCult Recommends)
Black Swan
Velvet Buzzsaw
Modern Romance ***
A Separation ***
Alps
Elena ***
Monsieur Lazhar
Shoplifters ***
Border ***
Oslo August 31st ***

Comic Book Reviews
Justice League International Volume 4
Justice League International Volume 5
Justice League International Volume 6
Mister Miracle by Tom King

Movie Review – Oslo, August 31st

Oslo, August 31st (2011)
Written & Directed by Joachim Trier

Anders is recovering from years of drug addiction. He’s two weeks out from finishing treatment and then having to leave the rehab center. To help him make this transition, he’s granted a trip out for the night which ends with him hooking up with an old flame. On the way back to the center he unsuccessfully tries to drown himself. In the light of the new day, he prepares to head into Oslo for a job interview. Before succumbing to drugs, Anders was a writer for newspapers and magazines but doesn’t feel a strong desire to return to that. He stops by the house of some old friends before the interview, ends up calling a lost love’s phone only to get voicemail, and is ghosted by his sister when she sends her girlfriend to talk with him at a cafe. Despite the strides he’s made, Anders feels the past traps him.

Best of the 2010s: My Favorite Films of 2009

As I prepare to present my favorite films of our past decade, I feel the need to visit the last year of the 2000s. The best films list you make at the end of a year is never the same list a year later. New films are seen, and so these lists are living things, changing and reforming based on your tastes at the moment and altered by new cinema. I wrote up an ambitious 50 Best Films of the 2000s in 2009, and one day I’ll revise that list, but I thought to present a revised and updated 2009 list would be a great way to lead into our examination of the decade. Here are my thoughts on the fifteen films I find to be my favorites from 2009.

Comic Book Review – Mister Miracle

Mister Miracle (2018)
Written by Tom King
Art by Mitch Gerards

Scott Free is the man who cannot be captured, contained, or trapped. After surviving a brutal childhood on the planet Apokolips, he came to Earth where he became Mister Miracle, a super escape artist. Years have passed, and now he’s married to fellow Apokaliptian Big Barda. They live in Los Angeles, where Scott continues his career in entertainment. Periodically, he’s pulled back into the ongoing conflict of the New Gods while trying to carry on as normal a life as possible. However, something dark has overtaken Scott’s mind as of late, he begins to suspect that Darkseid has won and his Anti-Life Equation has already infected Scott, pulling him into a slow mire of depression and darkness.

Movie Review – Border

Border (2018)
Written by Ali Abbasi, Isabella Eklöf, & John Ajvide Lindqvist
Directed by Ali Abbasi

Tina lives a secluded life, markedly different from everyone around her from a chromosomal abnormality compared to the humans that populate her world. She has a pronounced brow ridge and protruding teeth recalling images of long-extinct Neanderthals. What makes her valuable to people is her ability to smell guilt and shame making her a perfect customs agent at a Swedish port of entry. After years of ferreting out contraband, she eventually meets a man who shares her facial deformities and seems to be beyond her ability to detect evil. There is an attraction between them that develops and leads Tina to discover the truth about her past and the lies she has been told her whole life.

Movie Review – The ‘Burbs

The ‘Burbs (1989)
Written by Dana Olsen
Directed by Joe Dante

The quiet cul-de-sac of Mayfield Place has been shaken up by the arrival of the Klopeks, a reclusive family who has allowed their house and property to fall into decay. Their neighbor, Ray Peterson has the week off from work and has decided to peter around the house which allows him to fall under the influence of his friends Art and Rumsfield. They are convinced that the Klopeks are murderers, Satanists, mad scientists, or some combination of these things. Ray is continuously pulled back down to earth by his wife Carol who implies this isn’t the first time her husband has allowed himself to be carried away with wild fantasies like this. She is determined to convince him the Klopeks are perfectly reasonable people. However, then something strange happens: the homeowner at the end of the street, Walter vanishes without a trace, and all signs point to the Klopeks.

TV Tryouts – Big Little Lies

Big Little Lies (HBO)
Season 1, Episode 1 – “Somebody’s Dead”
Written by David E. Kelly
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée

There is so much television I hear I should watch and with 24/7 streaming services abounding it can quickly become overwhelming. To finally get a taste of all these great shows I will start doing TV Tryouts. Each month I will watch a couple of pilot episodes of series I have been hearing rave reviews about and see if that first episode can hook me to keep watching. Now, an argument you might make is that you have to view the first six or entire first season before a show “gets good.” To that, I say, “I just don’t have the time.” A television series should have strong enough writing that its characters, dialogue, and plot naturally compel me to keep watching. If it doesn’t then that’s ok, plenty of shows for everyone.

Movie Review – Shoplifters

Shoplifters (2018)
Written & Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

Osamu is the patriarch of a makeshift family living in the shadow of poverty in Tokyo. His partner Nobuyo is the mother with adopted son Shota, half-sister Aki, and grandmother Hatsue. Osamu and Shota routinely shoplift food from neighborhood grocery stores, having developed a system of signals and distractions. On their way home after a recent venture, they find Yuri, a little girl they have talked to before alone on her parent’s apartment balcony. Feeling sorry for her level of neglect they bring her home for dinner. Nobuyo helps Osamu bring her back after and they overhear Yuri’s parents fighting, her father hitting her mother, and the admission that they never wanted the child in the first place. Nobuyo decides to make Yuri a part of the family and from their life goes on as it always has. Until one day a news report announces that Yuri’s parents have filed a missing person report.

Movie Review – Monsieur Lazhar

Monsieur Lazhar (2011)
Written by Evelyne de la Chenelière and Philippe Falardeau
Directed by Philippe Falardeau

At school in Montreal, two students discover that their teacher has hung herself in the classroom. The school works quickly to push the class past this event by repainting & rearranging the room while having a psychologist make periodic visits. A new teacher is found in a rush, Mr. Lazhar, an Algerian man who goes on about his experience teaching at a university in his former home country. Lazhar brings an approach unfamiliar to the students, emphasizing the techniques of grammar and spelling over more expressive forms of learning. He reads Balzac to the children and requires them to take dictation. One student, Alice, expresses her still simmering anger and confusion over the suicide of their teacher in an essay. This outburst causes Lazhar to re-evaluate his methods and the needs of his class.

Comic Book Review – Justice League International Volume 6

Justice League International Volume 6
Reprints Justice League America #31-35 & Justice League Europe #7-11
Written by Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis (with William Messner-Loebs)
Art by Adam Hughes, Bart Sears, and Art Nichols

So we reach the end of the JLI run that DC Comics has decided to collect. In these pages, we get the first official crossover between America and Europe with The Teasdale Imperative story arc. In a small European village what seemingly appears to be a vampiric horde has surfaced, spreading its condition slowly but continuously. Not only has this drawn the attention of both branches of the Justice League International, but The Spectre and The Grey Man (from waaaaay back in the first story arc). Through a series of increasingly complicated twists and turns Simon Stagg, an antagonist of Leaguer Metamorpho becomes involved. Everything culminates in a battle where the League isn’t even necessary. To quote Elongated Man in the aftermath, “It’s over? I still don’t understand what ‘it’ was.”