Of Cults and Cowboys

Movies: Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino is a director I love to hate (or hate to love?). He's an asshole in real life, having put Uma Thurman in a situation on the set of Kill Bill where she nearly became paralyzed and having defended Roman Polanski on Howard Stern in 2003 suggesting that Polanski's rape of a drugged 13 year old was consensual sex (he has since apologized for saying this, but I don't buy it).

People often ask if one can separate art from artist, and I suppose it's possible, but if you actually watch/read art by assholes and predators, their sickness sometimes seeps through the screen or book. Consider Woody Allen's obsession with younger actresses and "May/December romances" and Louis CK's jokes about men being sexually out of control. Art, it seems, imitates life.

While I have given Tarantino many passes because he is, I believe, a truly great director, it is becoming increasingly difficult to watch his work and not see his misogynist and racist beliefs play out in front of you. While Tarantino has always reveled in violence and shocking the audience, his recent work (everything post-Inglourious Basterds, I'd argue) is becoming less interesting and truly provocative and more and more "edgelord".

All this said, his talent as a storyteller as well as his ability to really set the scene and submerge the audience in time and place (Los Angeles in 1969 in this case) is still top notch. I liked Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, but I didn't love it. Not the way I loved Inglourious Basterds, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood has a story at the center and a story on the periphery and in the final act of the film the two stories meet (yes, this review will have spoilers, but I'll put a warning beforehand). The central story is that of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio, bringing his excellent acting game)--a middle-aged actor who still drinks like he's in his 20's and has moved on from his glory days as the hero of a TV Western, Bounty Law, to playing "the heavy" in various shows and movies which, as Dalton's agent (played by Al Pacino) warns, is not a good idea because it gives the spotlight to younger, upcoming actors in the hero role and subtly encourages viewers to hate Rick.

Rick whines that he is officially a "has been" to his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, playing an alpha male in all the worst and best ways here). While Dalton still has a career, as well as a nice car (that he can't drive since he had his license revoked after too many DUIs) and a beautiful home on Cielo Drive, right next to Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski, Booth has a shitty car and shitty trailer where he lives with his pitbull and eats mac n' cheese out of a box every night. While one might feel bad for Booth and the way Dalton takes advantage of him, Booth is a loose cannon. He's a man who doesn't shy away from a fistfight (even against Bruce Lee) and is said to have killed his wife and gotten away with it.

While Dalton is trying to get his shit together on set, Booth picks up a young, flirty hippie chick (played by Margaret Qualley) and drives her "home" to the Spahn Ranch where he discovers dozens of skinny, dirty hippie girls living in squalor. This is where the two stories meet, and where history meets fiction. The Spahn Ranch was a real place where members of the Manson Family camped out in the months leading up to their infamous murders. Booth interacts with real-life Manson Family cult members Tex Watson and Squeaky Fromme (played by Austin Butler and Dakota Fanning, respectively) as well as 80-year-old, blind-as-a bat-George Spahn (Bruce Dern), the owner of the ranch. He also beats the shit out of a hippie. It was at this point when I started to realize what was going to happen at the end of the film...

Warning! Spoilers ahead!

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If you've seen Inglourious Basterds, you know that half the fun of the film is its historical revision in which a group of Jewish Americans machine gun and burn a bunch of Nazis to death (in fact, one of Rick Dalton's films, The 14 Fists of McCluskey, pays homage to IG). At some point in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood I realized that ol' QT was going to pull the same stunt again. And I was weirdly dreading it. Sure enough, in *this* timeline of 1969 Los Angeles, three Manson Family members break into Rick Dalton's home on Cielo Drive instead of the neighbors, where a very pregnant Sharon Tate is hanging out with friends. Unfortunately for Tex, Sadie, and Patricia, Cliff Booth is hanging out, having just smoked a cigarette dipped in acid, with his pitbull, Randy (or Brandy? I didn't quite catch the 'bull's name).

After a few witty remarks, Tarantino-style, Booth sics the dog on Tex and throws a can of dog food at Sadie's face. A fight ensues in which Brad Pitt beats the ever-loving shit out of a teenage girl and a dog mauls a bunch of people. But it's not over! That same girl stumbles outside and into Dalton's swimming pool, freaking out Dalton who is drunk as a skunk. He goes and grabs his flamethrower and torches the girl (like ya do). Once all three Manson hippies are dead, Cliff ends up going to the hospital and Dalton wanders over to the Tate-Polanski residence where he is invited inside to hang out. Ob-la-dee, ob-la-dah, life goes on, wah.

So here is where I have my issues with this movie. I get that these hippies, including the teenage girls, are "the bad guys" who in actuality brutally murdered a 8-months pregnant woman and four of her friends. So why didn't I feel the same elation as when a Jewish "inglourious basterd" machine-gunned Hitler in the face? Maybe because seeing a Jewish adult male kill a Nazi is more fun and cathartic than seeing a grown-ass man smash a young girl's face against a telephone until it's a bloody pulp? Maybe because I thought it was disrespectful to the memory of Sharon Tate? Maybe because I *know* Quentin Tarantino is a misogynist, so having the alpha male "win", even against a bad person, doesn't feel right knowing the sentiment behind it.

The movie seems to say "if there were any justice in the world, jacked, white men like Brad Pitt would be putting women, skinny long-haired dudes, and Asians and Mexicans in their place where they belong" (there's also a scene where Cliff Booth nearly defeats Bruce Lee in a fight). And I'm not alone in thinking that. It's not just me, the humorless feminist.

At the same time, the movie--and that scene in particular--still has QT's signature sick humor. The audience was laughing, me along with them. But what was lacking in me was a sense of satisfaction. This violence didn't seem "earned". It just seemed...gross and cheap.

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End Spoilers!

So how to grade this movie? At 2 hours and 40 minutes, it was overly long and not much happened. But it was funny and well-acted and the dialogue was good. I'm going to give it a B. It's not close to being Tarantino's best, but I can't actually say it was a "bad movie". I just wish Tarantino would use his considerable talent and vision for something truly interesting and provocative. At the rate he's going, he will be Rick Dalton eventually--a sad, old drunk yelling at himself in the mirror of a makeup trailer.

Grade: B

PS: yes, there are FEET

Black Belt in Toxic Masculinity

Movies: The Art of Self-Defense

Riley Stearns' The Art of Self-Defense is a movie that was barely on my radar, until I read this article (which contains spoilers) on Slate. In this case, spoiling the movie actually intrigued me enough to watch it.

It's an odd little movie that is a rather bleak dark comedy. It's one of those movies where everyone speaks very robotically, with flat affect--like a Wes Anderson movie or Napoleon Dynamite, only with a lot more violence (aside for dog lovers: DON'T SEE THIS MOVIE).

Jesse Eisenberg plays a typical Eisenbergian character--a severely beta male, if such a thing exists. His character, Casey, is a 35 year old bachelor who lives alone with his dachshund and works in accounting. One night when he goes out to buy some dog food, he is chased down and beaten to a pulp by some anonymous people on motorcycles. Casey survives and, in his quest to regain a sense of safety, wanders into a karate class lead by a man who goes by Sensei (Alessandro Nivola, doing great work here).

Casey joins up as the new white belt and quickly advances to yellow belt. After some prodding by Sensei, he admits that the reason he started classes is because he is afraid of everything, including other men. "I want to be what intimidates me" he confesses. Sensei invites him to join the "night class", which is basically Fight Club. The students are allowed to beat the shit out of each other, the only rule being "no guns" since "guns are for the weak".

Although clearly in over his head, Casey starts coming to night class. He begins to observe Sensei's blatant misogyny when the only female student, Anna (Imogene Poots), is not given the black belt she clearly deserves while another male classmate, Thomas, is allowed to advance over her, despite being not as good a fighter as her. Sensei bluntly tells Casey, "I realized that Anna being female would always stand in the way of her becoming male." Additionally, Sensei encourages Casey to pick up more masculine hobbies and interests: instead of learning French (Casey is a Francophile), Sensei tells him to learn German. Instead of listening to adult contemporary music, Sensei tells him to listen to metal. In his quest to become more of a violent, alpha male, Casey does as Sensei's instructs....until a shocking secret is revealed.

*Stop here if you want to avoid spoilers!*

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Casey finds out that it was Sensei himself, and his students, who beat him up and put him in the hospital. In fact, they would have killed him if it were not for Anna who pretended to hear sirens and lead the group away before they could finish him off. Additionally, the male student who was promoted to black belt over Anna broke into Casey's house and killed his dog. Casey finds all of this out after *he* is taken along on a motorcycle ride and encouraged to beat up an unsuspecting victim.

After making this discovery, Casey plots out a simple, yet effective plan for revenge. He challenges Sensei to "an unarmed fight to the death". Sensei agrees. As soon as the fight commences, Casey pulls out a gun and shoots Sensei in the head. Later that evening, at night class, he sics his new dog (a German Shepherd gifted to him by Sensei) on Thomas, the asshole who killed his last dog. Casey promotes Anna to the head of the class, and he himself takes his proper place as the lowest member of the night class.

Obviously, if you're not prepared for it, The Art of Self-Defense goes from "quirky dark comedy" to "violent pitch-black comedy" real quick. And anyone who has ever taken karate knows that basically the whole point of it is to AVOID violence (let alone murder) in the first place. But that seems to be the point Stearns is trying to make here--poking fun at the culture of toxic masculinity. While Casey is indeed a timid weirdo, he's also a good person and a person who understands justice and fairness. Sensei (real name: Leslie. He makes fun of Casey for having a "feminine" name and his name is Leslie!) is using martial arts to express his violent urges and calling it "masculinity". Likewise, our culture has allowed male violence, sexual and physical, to go...perhaps not "unchecked"...but to fly under the radar as "boys will be boys" and "that's just how men are". The Art of Self-Defense just takes toxic masculinity to an extreme. It also shows how futile and how much of a performance it is by having Casey break "the rules" and straight up shoot Sensei in the head. He tells Sensei's dead body "You might say that using a gun makes me weak, and maybe it does. But you are dead and I am alive, so I would argue that *you* are the weaker man". Male bluster only goes so far and it ends up eating its own tail.

The Art of Self-Defense is overall a decent film. It's not incredibly profound, but it's entertaining and ballsy in a certain way. I could have done without the affected robot voices--I felt like Stearns used the flat, blunt way of speaking as an almost protective measure against getting too close to the characters. Would have been interesting if he had allowed us to be more emotionally invested in them by fleshing them out into *real* people instead of caricatures.

Grade: B

Blood Rites

Movies: Midsommar

There is so much I want to say about Ari Aster's sophomore film Midsommar, but I'll just start by saying that the director's follow-up to last summer's gut-wrenching horror film Hereditary proves that Aster is not a one-hit wonder and is indeed a masterful filmmaker and storyteller who understands that grief and loss are just as scary as ghosts and cults.

I'll do a quick spoiler-free review first, followed by a more in-depth review after a warning so that folks who want to go in with a relatively blank slate will be able to do so.

Midsommar opens in winter. Dani (Florence Pugh in a phenomenal performance) is a college student with a boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor, appropriately groan-inducing in the shitty boyfriend role), who is planning to break up with her. But before he pulls the plug, Dani receives some devastating news which makes it nearly impossible for Christian to dump her, so the two continue on in the most depressing relationship of all time.

Flash forward to summer. Dani finds out that Christian is planning on taking a multi-week trip to Sweden to witness a once in a lifetime midsummer celebration (literally once in a lifetime, as the celebration only takes place every 90 years) taking place at the ancestral commune of his grad school friend, Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren). Along for the trip is anthropology student Josh (William Jackson Harper, aka Chidi from The Good Place) and annoying horndog Mark (Will Poulter). Upset that Christian failed to inform her about this trip, Dani invites herself along and no one is reasonably able to say no, given that she is still reeling from her loss.

The trips seems to start out well. Pelle's home is idyllic, with fresh-faced Swedes wearing all white and offering booze (and drugs, among the younger set), fresh fruit, and smiles to the Americans. Because they're in a northern part of Sweden, the sun basically doesn't set and the days are bright and hot.

While everyone seems welcoming and kind, there are small things that unsettle Dani and, eventually, other outsiders including two young adults from London whom Pelle's brother, Ingmar, invited. While Josh is fascinated by the culture and customs, Mark is chasing Swedish pussy, and Pelle is loving being home, Dani and Christian's relationship begins to unravel, especially after some of the rituals during the nine-day celebration begin to get, well, bloody.

I'll stop there and point out, as a warning to sensitive viewers, the violence in Midsommar is limited to a few key scenes...oh, but those scenes. They are NOT for the faint of heart. Read my spoiler review below if you want to hear the (literally) gory details. That said, Midsommar is not "scary" in the way Hereditary was or the way typical horror films generally are. There aren't jump scares. There isn't anything supernatural. The movie is long (2 hours and 20 minutes) so the horror is more of the unsettling, slow burn variety. If you could handle Get Out, you can probably handle Midsommar.

And it's completely worth it. While Midsommar is ostensibly about a cult whose rituals go too far, it's really about grief and how loss can completely gut us and leave us feeling unmoored. It's also about what makes a family. Is it blood? Or is it, as Pelle puts it in one scene where he has a private moment with Dani, about feeling "held". For all the strange and violent rites the Harga (the name of the people/commune in the film) indulge in, they also seem to understand the importance of supporting their fellow commune members and feeling/releasing emotions.  Perhaps what would be a trip to hell for one person is a homecoming for another.

Grade: A+

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Spoiler-filled review! Ye be warned!

Just as in Hereditary, Ari Aster weaves unimaginable grief into the tapestry of this film. Where Annie Graham loses her mother and then, in a grotesque freak accident, her daughter in Hereditary, Dani loses her entire family--mom, dad, and sister--in one fell swoop after her bipolar sister commits suicide (and brings her parents along) by allowing carbon monoxide from the family's cars to flood their house at night.

[It's important to note that Midsommar could be viewed as abelist not only because of its portrayal of a bipolar person as someone unstable to the point of committing murder-suicide, but also because of a disabled character who is considered a prophet by the commune. However, the latter is no accident and Aster has said as much. Here's an article with more info. I didn't find the abelism worth throwing the whole movie out, but others may feel differently.]

Dani's agonizing screams of grief as Christian holds and rocks her parallel the heartbreaking scene of Annie (played by the wonderful Toni Collette) moaning and rocking on the floor while her husband holds her after she discovers that her daughter has been decapitated. Aster has a flair for both gruesome death scenes and capturing what the depths of grief actually look like.

Additionally, Aster understands how acute grief transforms into a throbbing, numbing depression. 6 months after losing her family, Dani is--to put it mildly--not well. That Christian would plan a month-long trip without telling her says all we need to know about this asshole. To be fair, neither one of them seems happy in the relationship, but rather than ending things and helping Dani find additional support systems, as a decent person would do, he stays with her and resents her and takes her for granted at every turn.

Dani's depression is contrasted against the backdrop of never-ending sunshine of Sweden. Halsingland is gorgeous: tall grass, colorful flowers, asymmetrical buildings, and beautiful (if bizarre) artwork adorn the commune. There has been much discussion of the runes that Aster plants all over the film like tiny Easter eggs. Surely a place so beautiful filled with people so generous and kind couldn't be a haven for ritualized violence....could it? LOL OF COURSE IT IS.

I'll come right out and get to the "scene" in question. Pelle informs his friends that they will be witnessing a very special ritual--an attestupa--as part of the midsummer celebration. When he says this, booksmart Josh (William Jackson Harper is extremely good in this role, by the way) has a knowing look on his face, while Dani and Christian beg for more details (Pelle says "you really have to see it for yourself"). As soon as two elderly people are seated at the head of the table for the meal that commences the ritual, I knew what the fuck was up, even if our characters were slow on the uptake. Haven't these people seen the movie North before? Sure enough, after the meal, the elders are taken up to a high cliff, where they cut their hands and wipe their blood on some runes...and then throw themselves to their death. This scene is filmed in stomach-churning detail, with crushed skulls, legs pointing in the wrong direction, and loose eyeballs. While Dani and Christian are quietly horrified (horndog Mark misses the spectacle since he was taking a nap), Connie and Simon, a couple from London, are disgusted and outraged, screaming "what the fuck is wrong with you people". They are inconsolable even after the matriarch of the commune explains that the Harga see life as a cycle and ritual suicide as a gift a person can give to the community.

Unsurprisingly, witnessing two violent suicides is not conducive to Dani's healing. She plans to leave, but before she can, she overhears Connie freaking out upon finding out that Simon left for the train station without her. "He wouldn't do that!" she cries. "He wouldn't leave without telling me anything!". Hmm...indeed. And it's not long before Connie is "driven to the train station" (wink wink, Connie and Simon don't actually leave the commune, wink wink) herself. So, due to fear and also due to the fact that the Harga increase their efforts to befriend her, Dani stays.

What's interesting about Midsommar is just how much of a sneakily feminist film it is. While the women of the commune do stereotypical "women's work" such as cooking, they also appear to have a lot of power--especially over the rituals (ok, ok, human sacrifices). The women of the commune are also very supportive of one another, sharing in one another's grief and joy. When Dani participates in a Maypole dance where she is crowned May Queen, the other young women embrace her as family. And Dani, who has lost her family of birth, can't resist the gentle, insistent pull of the Harga to bring her in as "new blood".

Speaking of blood, while all this May Queen stuff is going on, Christian is drugged and all but forced into a mating ritual with a young woman, Maja, from the commune. The Harga see it as an opportunity to get new blood into the gene pool of the commune. Christian is a means to an end--surrounded by naked women (including Maja's mom--awkward) who grunt and groan along with Maja until they tell Christian to finish and unceremoniously push him off the girl once his manly duty is done. Unfortunately for Christian, Dani spies on him during this ceremony, which finally breaks any ties or good will left between them.

Poor Christian. After he discovers the dead bodies of Josh (killed for his greedy attempt to photograph a sacred book he was explicitly told not to), Mark (killed for being an idiot who literally pisses on the ashes of the commune's dead), and Simon (killed for trying to get out), he is poisoned with a paralyzing solution and wheeled out for the final, and most important ritual: the sacrificing of nine humans--four "new bloods" (Josh, Mark, Connie, and Simon), four Harga (the two elders plus two volunteers) and one additional person to be chosen by...dun dun!...the May Queen herself. And let's just say that Dani isn't ready to forgive and forget. She is, however, ready to see any remaining ties to her previous life literally burn to the fucking ground. Christian is sewn into a bear's skin and placed in a barn with the other sacrifices, both living and dead, and burned alive, as Dani looks on with an expression of, not glee exactly, but of righteousness. She has found her new home.

End of movie. Oh man, and I didn't even get to Reuben, the prophet with a deformed face who is the product of intentional inbreeding! Aster said in an interview that Reuben is a symbol of "things happening in Sweden right now that are echoes of the things that happened in the second World War" (I'm guessing he's talking about eugenics and white supremacy. Sweden isn't notable for its diversity). I'm not sure I fully buy this--Reuben is so poorly sketched out that he seems more of a red herring designed to spook people in the trailer than anything else. But Midsommar is a layered movie, so I'm not unwilling to believe that he served a greater purpose. It's also not lost on me that all three characters of color (Josh, Connie, and Simon) end up dead. I *do not* believe this was an accident. I think it was an intentional choice on Aster's part to show that while the commune may be welcoming to outsiders, it's only going to accept "pure blood" (i.e. whiiiite people) into its fold.

Midsommar was, to me, just such a pleasure to experience. In addition to the wonderful performances, beautiful cinematography, and spooky suspense, it just has so much to say about grief, family, cultural relativism, gender politics, and more. Some reviews have called it slow and derivative, but I never wanted it to end and I haven't seen a movie do exactly what Aster does in this one. It is definitely inspired by other films (The Wicker Man, The Shining, even a little The Silence of the Lambs is thrown in there), but I found it to be original, masterful, and satisfying.

Grade: A+

One Minute Reviews

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When a Man Negs a Woman

Movies: The Souvenir

Joanna Hogg's coming-of-age drama The Souvenir is a strange, quiet movie. I saw the preview some months ago and was intrigued even though I couldn't figure out what the movie was supposed to be about other than a tumultuous relationship between a young man and woman.

And it is about that, albeit with a twist (which will be revealed below, so spoiler alert). But it is also about a young woman, Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne--Tilda Swinton's daughter), who is emerging from a cocoon of privilege and severe naivete´ and blossoming into an artist.

The time period of The Souvenir is the early 1980s in England. Julie is in film school and being supported by her rich parents (real-life mom Tilda Swinton plays Julie's mom). She meets Anthony (Tom Burke) at a party and the two start meeting regularly for lunch and champagne. Anthony is the ultimate rich, arrogant preppie. He wears Tucker Carlson bowties and slyly undermines Julie's ambitions and opinions. But he hides a pretty intense secret of his own.

During a dinner at home with a pair of mutual friends, when Anthony is in another room, Julie's friend casually calls Anthony a "habitual heroin user" as he is puzzling out how Julie and Anthony know each other. Julie is struck silent, and this revelation informs the rest of the events of the movie, especially when Julie comes home to find all of her jewelry and film equipment missing and Anthony claiming that they were robbed. Her willingness to believe him is both cringeworthy and understandable. A 24 year old girl in love is going to hard-pressed to believe that not only would her boyfriend steal all her shit to feed his drug habit, but that he would do so and then lie so blatantly to her, as if she's that stupid. It's almost less insulting to her intelligence to believe him.

And so The Souvenir goes. Anthony acts like an ass while denying his drug problem, then can't hide it, then disappears, then reappears claiming he is fine, then relapses. All while Julie is puzzling out film school and what filmmaking means to her.

Words I could use to describe this film are "frustrating", "insufferable", "pretentious", "repetitive", and "boring". But despite its difficulties and almost stubborn unwillingness to be a likable or accessible film, I admired it because it was honest about how relationships really work. It's also honest about the human ability to lie to ourselves and others. Julie isn't foolish and she isn't weak, she's simply inexperienced. And because of that inexperience, she lets herself be influenced by a man who is arrogant and attractive in his arrogance. I have been Julie. I have been a young woman who is attracted to art, beauty, and arrogant men. Haven't we all been Julie, to some degree or another?

The inevitable conclusion of The Souvenir is almost annoying in it's clean resolution. Julie is free of Anthony and able to fully pursue her work, all the more wise for having had a borderline emotionally abusive relationship. And while that is what I wanted for her character, it's too neat a resolution for all the messiness and pent-up emotions that came before it. The Souvenir might be the most British film I've ever watched: despite everything--the drugs, the stealing, the sex, the fights--there is never truly an explosion of emotions. Maybe that's one benefit American have over the English: we're willing to scream and cry when it is warranted.

The Souvenir is like a museum: beautiful, curated, clean, elegant, and ultimately cold and frictionless. It's an imperfect, yet poignant film that feels like it only scratches the surface of a more interesting film lying underneath.

Grade: C

The Bitch is Back

Movies: Rocketman

When I first saw the preview for Rocketman, I thought "well, this movie is going to be embarrassing." Biopics, especially musical biopics, seem to be a devilishly difficult genre of film to get right. They either lionize the subject of the film too much and/or white wash the person's more nasty parts, or they try to cram too much of the person's life into two hours and thus feel like a Wikipedia article adapted into a movie. I'm not sure why I was so skeptical of Rocketman at first--maybe just the title alone made me groan a bit.

Well, I was wrong. Rocketman, which blends the genres of biopic and musical pretty seamlessly, was a delight and a joy to watch. While not perfect, it goes right more often than it goes wrong and actually got me close to tears in the final scenes.

Rocketman traces the rise of a shy, musically-inclined boy named Reginald Dwight as he blossoms into the campy, glam-y butterfly we now know as Sir Elton John. Beginning at a critical point in John's life--when he entered rehab in the late 80s--the film uses a recovery meeting as the frame for John telling his own story (through song and dance!) up until that point. I loved that the film doesn't use John's songs in chronological order, but rather by how well they tell the story of the artist's life. For example, the 1990s song "I Want Love" is used to show how various members of John's family were deeply repressed and unhappy: John's father was distant and disdainful of his son's "softer" traits. His mother was more interested in fashion magazine and martinis than in raising her son. Only John's grandmother seemed to understand his unusual gift of being able to memorize music by ear and play it perfectly on the piano.

And so shy, soft Reggie Dwight grows into shy, soft early-20s Reggie Dwight who decides he wants to play rock and roll and changes his name to Elton John. Taron Egerton, the rising star from the Kingsman movie, plays John and captures the musician's deep hunger to be loved and to be seen and accepted for who he really is. And it's that vulnerability that both helps John--especially in his longtime partnership and friendship with lyrics writer Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell)--and hurts him.

After Taupin and John, working under the management of Ray Williams, hit it big in the United States, John meets John Reid (played by Robb Stark Richard Madden, with a domineering intensity that is as scary as it is sexy), a music manager who eyes John like a cat eying a mouse. The two have immediate chemistry and begin a relationship, which you can tell from the get-go is not going to be good for the barely out of the closet (and apparently a virgin when he met John Reid) Elton John. Indeed, Reid convinces John to break his contract with Ray Williams and work under the management of Reid instead, which allows Reid more control over John's work (which is shooting off like, well, a rocket) AND personal life (increasingly filled with drugs, partying, and insane material wealth). The underlying message of the film is that John just wanted to be loved, but was taken advantage of by a manipulative (and, the movie suggests, physically violent) man and this lead to John's descent into drugs and "fucking half of LA", as he tells his mother at a very uncomfortable dinner.

The musical sequences that tell Elton John's story are dazzling, outrageous, and fun--and deeply moving at times. During a scene at the Troubador nightclub in Los Angeles, the audience actually lifts off the ground as John plays an exuberant rendition of "Crocodile Rock". During the height of John and Reid's relationship, Egerton and Madden sing a slick, campy rendition of "Honky Cat" that is one of the gayest things I've ever seen (that's a high compliment, btw). During John's "rock bottom" scene, he literally dives into a pile of humans and bodysurfs along a slithering mass of sexy flesh while singing "Bennie and Jets".

I've seen some reviews that ask the question "Is Rocketman queer enough?" Apparently, the film's one sex scene is a big deal (they do it face to face --I guess straight people think gay men only fuck doggy style??), especially compared to the PG-13 Bohemian Rhapsody. But some reviews have suggested that Rocketman takes the route of painting Elton John as a flamboyant, strange artist who just happens to be queer instead of revealing how queerness itself informed John's art. I don't really see a difference in Rocketman. Personally, I thought the film hit the sweet spot of reminding the audience that Elton John is gay and that is a huge part of his identity, art, and choices he made in life, but not focusing *entirely* on his queerness and sex life. In any case, between the hot/scary chemistry between Egerton and Madden, the over-the-top costumes, and the orgasmic bliss of the eye-popping musical numbers, Rocketman is gay as hell. And I love gay as hell movies.

Though Rocketman has a few cheesy scenes, I still found myself deeply moved. Maybe I just saw the movie on the right day at the right time, but even the scene where John's younger self asks grown-up John "when will you hug me?", echoing an earlier scene where young Reggie Dwight asks his neglectful father the same question, only to be told "don't be soft", threatened to make me cry (I rarely cry during movies, so even getting close to crying means the movie gave me FEELS). There was something so earnest, so humane, and so willing to be vulnerable about the film that you can't help but feel your heartstrings getting tugged. And I left the theatre with a sense of joy and happiness that I haven't felt after watching a movie in a long time.

So, long story short, go see Rocketman. It's fun, dazzling, sexy, and warmhearted--much like the artist himself.

Grade: A-

Super Bad Broads

Movies: Booksmart

Olivia Wilde's (yes, actress Olivia Wilde directs this film) Booksmart is doomed to be compared to 2007's Superbad. To be fair, the films share some pretty substantial similarities: both films depict two ride-or-die buds trying to make it to a big party during their senior year of high school; both films have a scene of a drunk person vomiting on/near their make-out partner; both films feature a high school party broken up by the cops; and both films share a sibling: Beanie Feldstein, who plays control-freak valedictorian Molly in Booksmart is Jonah Hill's younger sister.

But Booksmart has new life breathed into it. It is woker, gayer, and Gen-Zer-er than its predecessor. Gone is the homosexual panic and casual misogyny of Jonah Hill's Seth and Michael Cera's Evan and replacing it is a queer female main character (Kaitlyn Dever's Amy) who, by the way, is spending a gap year in Africa helping women make tampons, and a plus-size (which is never remarked on) female main character (Feldstein's Molly) who is bossy, whip-smart, and has a framed photo of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her bedroom.

But perhaps the most groundbreaking aspect of Booksmart is the crucial scene on which the entire plot hinges: Molly is in a gender neutral bathroom listening to a couple fellow students right outside the stalls discuss how she is annoying and condescending. She comes out of the bathroom to confront them, rubbing her acceptance to Yale in their faces, assuming they--who have partied and goofed around the last four years--are far less successful than she. As it turns out, they too are accepted into Ivy League schools (except for the dude who got recruited to code for Google and was offered a six-figure salary right out of high school). Molly is, as the kids say, shook. She realizes in that moment how foolish she and Amy have been: they avoided partying and studied hard, assuming that because they are disciplined, they will come out much further ahead than their classmates. But, as one of Molly's tormenters says to her with a sneer, "Oh, we care about school. We don't just care about school."

This scene, which upends a huge high school movie trope that pits nerds against cool kids, is pretty great. It's rare to see a smart girl realize that maybe she actually doesn't know everything and has room to improve. Of course, instead of internalizing this information and using it to fuel empathy for others and herself, Molly's solution is to convince her more introverted buddy to party their fucking asses off on the last day of school so that they can say that, yes, the *technically* both partied AND studied in high school. Technically. Additionally, Molly wants Amy to hook up with Ryan, a skater girl whom Amy has a crush on. And Molly just might have a crush of her own, which she is too proud to reveal.

The movie mostly focuses on Amy and Molly's attempts to make it to a party thrown by Nick, a hot popular dude and the class vice president (of course, Molly is the class president). But since the two girls never socialized with any of their peers, they don't know the address and have to endure two additional parties in their quest to find Nick's party.

At heart, Booksmart, like Superbad, is about friendship. The relationship between Amy and Molly is not so different from Seth and Evan's. Amy is the more passive friend (like Evan) and Molly is the bossier, more aggressive one (like Seth). As a former (still??) bossy girl who borderline bullied some of my friends growing up, I felt a kinship to Molly. You rarely see a character like her--and even more rarely are you encouraged to empathize with a character like her. But her story arc is so real. Behind her driven, ambitious nature is a real fear of her peers and of not being good enough. So when her "thing" (being smart and successful) is basically revealed to be everyone's thing since many of her "slacker" peers turn out to also be successful and smart, her mind is blown and her armor has to come off if she wants to grow as a person.

Booksmart is wickedly hilarious and features some truly weird scenes (inadvertent drug ingestion leads to an animated hallucination scene) and lots of cameos from funny folks such as Lisa Kudrow and Will Forte. The best part is the all the different "types" of high school kids--the gay, flamboyant theatre people, the rich weirdos, the cool teacher, the stoners--all get mixed together into a really nice soup of humanity at the various parties. Rivals and allies change throughout the evening, so that even though there is plenty of conflict, it never feels like a tired "nerds vs. jocks" cliche.

Grade: B+