Another week has come to a close, and this has just all around been a great week of pop culture watching. I’ve seen two films up for review, one of which you can read now. That film was the Oscar contender Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, which I liked a great deal, even if I didn’t quite get “there” with it. You can read that review right here. The other film was Lady Bird, which I just watched last night. That review will be up tomorrow, but I can tell you now it’s pretty special.
To prepare for Lady Bird, as well as The Meyerowitz Stories, I watched Greta Gerwig’s supposed magnum opus Frances Ha. And as it turns out, that film is great. Like, really great. As in one of my new favorites. God, what a wonderful, wonderful film. I want Gerwig to write, direct, and star in everything for all of eternity, is that ok? Meanwhile, I’ve continued my binge of Guillermo del Toro’s work for The Shape of Water in a few weeks with Mimic. I’m not sure if it’s because I watched the director’s cut or not, but I really wasn’t a fan of the film. I didn’t think it really delivered on the ideas and fears that it was studying and playing with. Oh well. Not every film can be a winner. And I closed the week out with a double feature, a compare and contrast, if you will, with the two Cape Fear films. Surprisingly, despite the latter being the more well-known film, and the famous collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Juliette Lewis, I actually prefer the original. The sleazy charm of Robert Mitchum was much creepier to me, and I just found the Scorsese film unnecessarily nasty, sleazy, and vulgar in a way he’d never been before. If you’re going to watch one, watch the original.
Television-wise, I didn’t watch anything too out of the ordinary. Mostly I just watched the Thanksgiving specials for the ABC lineup and the season finales for American Horror Story and You’re the Worst. Neither of those FX shows really felt whole to me, and I feel like both seasons will miss out on my Top Ten list at the end of the year (which is a shame, because You’re the Worst is reigning champ). I also started watching Big Little Lies, as everyone keeps talking about how great it was. Frankly, I’m not really impressed with it – a lot of the acting seems off, and the narrative setup is soooo forced. Still, I adore Reese Witherspoon on this show, and if the only focus was her having a bitchy face-off with Laura Dern, I would call it heaven. Oh, and Chance the Rapper was a surprisingly good host on Saturday Night Live. Meanwhile, on stage, I went to see a friend in one of my all-time favorite musicals, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. The show didn’t get as many laughs as it should have, mostly because the older audience was probably expecting Hamilton and not a biting, bitter take on American politics through an emo lens, but the show is scathingly funny and, through it’s intricate study of the populist movement, fairly prescient. It feels like it was written in 2017 and not 2010. At any rate, it was a great show, and if you get a chance, you should all try to see it.
What about you? See anything good in theaters or at home? Did you get around to Mudbound, which I’m still finishing for review at the moment? Let me know in the comments, and go see movies in theaters! They’re all pretty great right now!
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