Reviews of the Bosch

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Late Fame and the Bittersweet Poetry of Aging

I have met many a crusty old poet or author in the mould of Willem Dafoe’s Ed Saxberger in Late Fame -folks whose education back in the day was highbrow, for lack of a better word, but whose work has been fleeting or sporadic and live mostly mundane, down-to-earth lives where their literary credentials might be anonymous. A couple of them taught creative writing at the modest college I went to, others I have encountered through my local prairie literary festival. It is interesting to wonder what they make of their marginal connection to fame, if maybe they strived for something more akin to some of the great writers who no doubt inspired them. Late Fame is directed by Kent Jones from a script by Samy Burch, who has fast become one of the most interesting screenwriters working today (her three film credits are her Oscar-nominated May December , Coyote vs. Acme , and this). It is based on a novella by classic Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler written in the 1890s but only published in ...

The Criterion Channel Presents: Itim (1976)

Itim is one of the most Catholic movies I have ever seen. It makes sense as it was produced in the Philippines, one of the most Catholic countries in the world. And director Mike de Leon, who made his debut with this 1976 gothic horror film, has an interesting attitude around that faith, clearly ascribing to some of its tenets in the movie’s themes, but stunned and perplexed by some of its traditions especially in localized regions of the Philippines. His avatar, Jun (Tommy Abuel) is both put-off and captivated by -for instance- a ritual where the Procession of Christ carrying the cross is reenacted along a dirt road (presumably to a church) where the Jesus analogue is authentically whipped and tormented. Like with many of the religious mores that he observes, there is something a little spooky about it and in just the general atmosphere of the environment. The film is set in San Ildefonso, an old rural community north of Manila, where Jun is visiting his father Dr. Torres (Mario Mont...

The Intriguing, Scandalous Tension of Verity

It’s hard to talk about Verity without comparing it to The Housemaid from last year. Both erotic thrillers based on bestselling novels in which a young woman comes into the household of a married couple, flaring up some sexual tension with the husband while tormented by the wife; and to top it off, both are directed by filmmakers previously known for comedies. In such a situation the one that comes after will always look more than a little derivative (even though Colleen Hoover’s novel Verity predates Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid by four years). It’s an unfortunate hand, but one that probably should be disregarded. In the literary world this subgenre of thriller is thriving -it is certainly not the last of these kind of movies we are going to see. And besides all that, Verity is ever so slightly the better film. Perhaps that is feint praise, the movie is still very contrived and trashy (a feature, not a bug), but it has a few more compelling layers than its elder cousin film -ev...

Digger, or How I Learned to Wallow in Dread Against the Futility of Satire

I'll say this for Alejandro G. Iñárritu -he comes closer to the mark of Dr. Strangelove than Adam McKay did . Feint praise, but it's not nothing. We are living through times that defy satire. There is very little in the main narrative of Iñárritu's new film Digger that feels legitimately outrageous. Its premise, its characters, and even their bluntness about their own amoral priorities feels substantially less shocking or scandalous than they might have even twenty years ago. Mocking the clowns in power and how they will destroy the world is an exercise that has lost its sting. It's not that it is too close to home, it's that it lacks sufficient hyperbole. Perhaps that is why Digger tries so hard to cultivate humour in broader ways, ways that Iñárritu is not particularly adept at. The actions at play themselves don't feel ludicrous enough, so colouring them in overblown performances and gross-out comedy may be the way to accentuate them. A trigger-happy U.S P...

Futurama Reviews: S11E10 -"Final Ending: The Last Conclusion"

Futurama is over once again. Well not quite. In the last week it was confirmed what I and others suspected given the lack of a renewal announcement: after four short seasons Futurama has been canceled at Hulu. This isn’t fully the end of the series there as it is producing three more movie-length specials to come out sometime next year, but once those are complete the show will be yet again gone in the ether. Matt Groening and David X. Cohen have made the usual remarks about looking for a new home again, and after this happening three times before I’m not going to say they won’t find one and Futurama won’t somehow come back again. But I also feel they are running out of options -they went from a major network to a cable network and now to streaming, where even could they end up next? It is worth taking at least some stock in those upcoming specials being the real finale to the show -as such the title to this episode is both premature and starkly accurate (and it might have been a ta...

The Tangible Fuel of Heart of the Beast

The star power of Heart of the Beast comes not from Brad Pitt’s rather bland special forces army veteran, but from the film’s true protagonist -his loyal German Shepherd Odin. And the big reason for that is that Odin actually has screen presence and charisma because Odin is real. In this time when most movie animals (including the rest of the wildlife that appears in this) are rendered digitally , thus feel ing spatially and tangibly removed from the human actors they interact with, Odin is a real dog -or rather several (Uber, Seeka, Ryker, and Hondo are credited as his actors) and that carries weight especially when he is the character the movie’s premise rests on. And whatever else, he is compelling to follow here. The movie is directed by David Ayer, fresh off a pair Jason Statham vehicles, and it would appear to be a bit of an effort to diversify his directorial image, if still occasionally touched by his particular tiresome masculine tropes and dim characterization. But it is ...

Down the Twisted Rabbit-Hole of Primetime

To Catch a Predator was such a distinctly 2000s artefact that people not around for it might be puzzled by its very conceit. A show that made a spectacle out of “catching” sexual predators, it was part of that initial reality TV boom of the 2000s -even as it was billed sometimes as an investigat ive journalism program. It got a lot of attention off of that public desire to watch bad people humiliated and punished (even though very few of the subjects from the show ever saw substantial prison time), and a little bit of a flare for vigilante justice. The show opined to be a bastion of justice, yet there was something just kind of seedy and gross about it. At that time and even more so now, Americans have an unusual preoccupation with pedophilia, and it was something that Chris Hansen, the creator of To Catch a Predator , was clearly aware of and keen to exploit. And as the man who always came around the corner to confront the would-be child molesters, he set himself up quite well to be...