You Get What You Get

In a group that I'm apart of there's a saying "life on life's terms" meaning basically accept the challenges and success as they come, stay in the moment, roll with the punches. Because attempting to manage and control life never works out positively. There's another saying "you get what you need" meaning if you're taking action and doing the right thing, things will work out, you'll find you are provided for. And for the most part I've found that to be true.

A couple months back a friend of mine said "people say 'you get what you need' but the longer you stick around you find out 'you get what you get'". And it really struck me. Because try as you might life happens. You can prepare, plan, and set goals all you want but no matter what there will be surprises, challenges, the unexpected, the unanticipated. And need is a tricky word, what do I ultimately need? Food, water, shelter. Companionship maybe, but that being a necessity is debatable. So anything beyond that is a want, is desire. And there's nothing wrong with it but that doesn't mean I'm necessarily entitled to those things.

Life can be wondrous and mercurial, draining and triumphant, desperate and delightful. Depends on the day, the month, the year. You get what you get. It's not about what we posses, what we attain, it's about how we handle life as it comes, with balance and grace or with resentment, fear, and entitlement. Things will come up, positive and negative, in their own time and in their own way. We don't dictate the terms of life we simply live it. What it really boils down to is acceptance.

Most circumstances and situations are outside of our control. We could have a string of bad luck followed by a string of good luck followed by weeks of the ordinary. It's about getting up every day, doing our best, and taking action to whatever degree and to whatever amount of success. Sometimes your best will be that of someone who is tired and bored, other times your best will reflect boundless energy and optimism. Both are OK. Sometimes you take action, you attempt, and you fail, other times you achieve, I would allege both are successes. Because happiness and contentment aren't a result of what we own its about how we act and who we are. You play the good hands just like the bad ones, as best you can, its not about the cards you get its how you play them. Because ultimately you don't control the deal, you get what you get.

Restless

People talk about
mid-life crises
as if they're rare
but ennui
is more common
than serenity
passive desire
and
thwarted ambition
more seductive
than contentment
at least for me
I fantasize
about new professions
weekly
replay my life
with different
machinations
towards an outcome
wildly divergent
from the present
not because it is sour,
painful, or a shame
only that its too much the same.

'Maze Runner: The Death Cure' A Review

Maze Runner: The Death Cure is a dystopian action movie the third and final installment in this YA adaptation. The movie opens on Thomas(Dylan O'Brien), Newt(Thomas Brodie-Sangster), and Frypan(Dexter Darden) orchestrating along with Brenda(Rosa Salazar) and Jorge(Giancarlo Esposito) a rescue of their friend Minho(Ki Hong Lee) from evil entity WCKD. The rescue attempt fails and Thomas and his crew head into the last city, WCKD's stronghold, in order to save their friend as he as slowly tortured for a cure to the deadly Flare Virus.

The acting is all decent but the story doesn't ask much of the cast to do beyond the psychical and brief exclamations. There are numerous cries of "Get down!" "Duck!" and "Hold on!" Esposito is the only one who's able to create a style or POV from a script which pays much thought to action and little to character. The other interesting turn is from Walton Goggins who has a brief but exciting cameo. The rest of the performances are all functional, serving the action and the propulsion of the plot, with only the most cursory reference or examination of emotion. As practical as that sounds it mostly works.

There is no doubt The Death Cure is derivative. With clear inspirations of better YA series like The Hunger Games as well as more innovative dystopian fare like Mad Max: Fury Road and Terminator 2 there is nothing terribly original about the story. However, the action is exciting, the story moves fast, and the almost exclusive use of practical effects creates a more visceral and immersive experience than this long delayed third installment in the half forgotten Maze Runner series warrants.

A fun piece of entertainment, good counterprogramming for these two months of holdover Oscar hopefuls.

Rent It.

Talking To Feet

On a family road trip
my teenage sister
kindly deigned to
entertain
her prepubescent
tasmanic brother
(me)
over protracted hours
she slipped her socks
and bared her feet
to puppet-like
introduce Left & Right
squeaky voiced friends
with whom I cackled
and conspired
until some hours later
my patient sibling
tired of the game
and retreated
behind her Discman
and Tina Turner's
Greatest Hits.

'Phantom Thread' A Review

Phantom Thread is a period drama written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film stars Daniel Day Lewis as Reynolds Woodcock an obsessive controlling fashion designer in 1950's London. The film opens on a breakfast where Woodcock's latest young muse and romantic partner has outlived her usefulness, Woodcock's sister Cyril(Lesley Manville) offers to get rid of her which he accepts then drives out to the country. There he meets immigrant waitress Alma(Vicky Krieps) who he begins to develop a similar(muse/romance) relationship with. Except this time she's not a complete push over.

The actors themselves are all exceptional but they are hamstrung by the pedantic, predictable, boring characters they play and the tired, obvious, early 90's Oscar bait story they find themselves in. If this is Lewis's last performance, as he claims it is, it would be a startling ellipses on a career that has been here-to-fore definitive. Manville is the only one who actually achieves interest but she is given to little screen time. Krieps is good and her and Lewis have chemistry but ultimately their characters and story are too thin, too petty, too pedestrian to actually engage. There are a couple scenes which spark, where the actors are allowed to really sink their teeth in and go for it but they are few and only bring the rest of the film into unappealing leaden contrast.

The cinematography is gorgeous and evoking but so what? I'd just as soon go to a museum because the element that works in the film is solely visual.

The controlling and obsessive machinations of a rich asshole are not interesting. Further, the film is full of images showing women being subservient, under the control of, explicitly acting out the will of a man or men i.e. "stand here" "wear this" "walk this way". The first shot is of 15 silent working-class women marching into Woodcock's mansion to sew as he lounges in his bathrobe. It's boring, unnecessary, and quite frankly offensive. The third act attempts to make the Alma character Woodcock's equal by an improbable and ludicrous plot device, the message seemingly being "they're both monsters and they found each other, this is a romance!" Excuses of time period authenticity are tired and at this point worthless. The male genius/female muse trope is exhausted and meaningless.

A bizarre throwback to justly forgotten frivolous awards fodder like 93's The Remains Of The Day.  Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson was either too self-involved or to isolated by wealth and success to realize Phantom Thread is exceptionally and unsettlingly out of touch.

Don't See It.

'Proud Mary' A Review

Proud Mary is an action movie staring Taraji P. Henson as Mary Goodwin a wearied Boston mob assassin. The film opens on a hit where Mary, after completing it, discovers a boy Danny(Jahi Di'Allo Winston) obviously playing video games in another room. A year later and Mary watches over him from a distance eventually intervening when he is beaten decimating a mid-level Russian mobster and his crew in the process. Chaos ensues with Mary only wanting to safely exit The Life with Danny in toe.

Henson is a star, plain and simple, any time she's on screen in any story she happens to be in she is charming, compelling, and magnetic. This story is relatively pedestrian but Henson breathes enough into the tired beats to make it entertaining. The rest of the cast does well but only Billy Brown seems to really lean into the genre and only Xander Berkeley, in a brief cameo demonstrates any real menace. Certainly the script doesn't give the actors much to work with but a little more performative relish might have carried the film a bit further than the relatively straight-on performances the majority of the cast delivers.

The cinematography and score are serviceable but unremarkable. The action especially the climactic sequence at the end are high energy and fun, doubly so with Henson in the middle of them. Since the ten years since 2008's Taken versions of this story have been virtually done to death however it is refreshing to have Henson as the lead as opposed to a parade of aging white men, this virtue transcends the plots predictability.

Rent It.

A Bitter Discovery

Childhood is precarious, nebulous, like fog. Only in hindsight can we really recognize it, it's boundaries, it's successes and failures, it's defining moments. As a kid you have no idea what experiences will turn out to be informative, what incidents will turn out to shape you, what events you'll carry with you.

One late fall/early winter evening when I was seven my dad and I went to my grandma's to visit. We stayed a bit later than I was use to and got tired. I went to go sleep in the back of our van as my dad was finishing up his conversation with his mother. For a long time I thought what happened next was an accident. But as I reflect on it now I'm not so sure.

I was drowsing in the way way back and my dad thought I was asleep. My grandma asked him what he'd gotten me for Christmas, presumably not wanting to overlap any gifts, and he replied "LEGO Dungeon Master's Castle". Wow, I thought, that was a very large lego castle from their medieval line, totally awesome and exactly what I had wanted. So cool! But. a couple weeks later when Christmas came around I opened all my family presents and the Dungeon Master's Castle was no where to be found. I was confused. Had my dad lied to my grandma? Where was my Dungeon Master's Castle? I was disappointed but I knew enough not to say anything.

The next morning Santa came and low and behold he brought me the fabled Dungeon Master's Castle. I had enough presents of mine to be excited and fawn all over everything Santa brought me but later in the day when I had some time to puzzle it out I knew the truth. It made me sad and in that moment I decided I wouldn't believe it, I would continue to act as if and maybe if I did it hard enough, convincing enough, I would be able to believe again.

But I may not have been drowsy. I may have been deliberately feigning sleep specifically to overhear potential Christmas presents. I was deceitful and I got burned. This little bit of magic was snuffed out because I couldn't leave it alone, because I was being a self involved brat, because I had to spoil the surprise, I couldn't wait I had to know. And the premmature knowledge I received lead to a painful shattering of belief and perhaps that was just. Fair punishment for a child's crime.

Whether it was deliberate or accidental(I can't remember, both seem plausible) I learned a lesson. As much as people pound the drum of truth, sometimes it's better simply not to know. Sometimes belief is easier in the absence of cold inert fact.

Top 5 Movies of 2017

Top 5:
The Big Sick
The Florida Project
Get Out
Girls Trip
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Honorable Mentions:
Band Aid
Blade Runner 2049
Columbus
An Inconvenient Sequel
Kedi
The Lost City of Z
Okja
Patti Cake$
A Quiet Passion
T2 Trainspotting

Top 5 Disappointments:
Battle of the Sexes
Dark Tower
Dunkirk
The Square
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Most Underrated:
Brigsby Bear

Most Overrated:
Call Me By Your Name

Worst Movie Of The Year:
A Ghost Story

Performances Of The Year:
Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip
Charlie Hunnam, The Lost City of Z
Laurie Metcaff, Lady Bird
Frances McDormant & Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards
Salma Hayek, Beatrix At Dinner

Scenes Of The Year:
Kitchen Argument- The Killing of a Sacred Deer
The Fall of the Valkyries- Thor: Ragnarok
"Take Me Home, Country Road"- Logan Lucky
Dance Off- Old School vs. New, Girls Trip
No Man's Land, Wonder Woman

Portent of the Future

Years ago
I went with my sister and mother
to Brown University
scouting the place
for my sibling's potential
collegiate home
and I don't remember much
as I was twelve
but I do remember
the soda machines
which could be charged
to your meal plan
with your student ID
as it was 1996
this was quite breathtaking
and technologically advanced
how easy
how convenient
how delicious
what a marvel
higher learning must be
I thought
what wonders the future must hold
for myself
and the world.

I was wrong and I was right.

'Hostiles' A Review

Hostiles is a western set in 1892 about soon-to-retire Captain Blocker(Christian Bale) and his last mission- to escort prisoner of war Yellow Hawk(Wes Studi) and his family from the New Mexico fort where they've been incarcerated for years to his tribal lands in Montana. After encoutntering and folding in the survivor of a raid Mrs. Quaid(Rosamund Pike) Blocker, his soldiers, and the prisoners have to contend with a number of varied enemies and problems, as well as prejudice, along their journey.

Bale is immersive and compelling as he always is, certainly one of the greatest actors working today, he has a seamless chemistry with the other actors in his unit, he speaks Cheyenne with a surprising delicacy, and he makes the suspect psychological journey his character goes on almost believable. Studi and the other Native actors aren't given given nearly enough time to develop, they are no question capable and interesting performers but they have very little to do, for a movie ostensibly about the coming together of these polarized groups one of them remains sorely under represented. Pike's performance, save for one riveting silent grave-digging scene, is flat and bizarrely out-of-place almost Cageian in its mechanical and presentational tone. Clearly a substantial amount of work was done by the other soldiers under Bale's characters command. Jonathan Majors is especially exceptional, sharing a scene with Bale that is easily the best of the film and shows the potential that either because of the script, direction, edit, or studio involvement was not reached. Rory Cochrane is also a refreshing competent presence.

Visually the film is stunning, wide panoramic plains and vistas, forests and mountains. Really rich epic scenery. Unfortunately the film doesn't trust the audience to pick up on any emotional and moral complexity so the Message, the Theme, are so blatant and cumbersome and ineffective it undermines what could have been a great film.

Worth a watch for the actors and scenery but not worth paying for.

Rent It.

The Fun Van

At some point growing up
my dad bought a full sized van
that someone, perhaps myself
as I was the youngest
or my sister who
was far more clever
dubbed "the fun van".

There was a TV
Captains chairs
a way way back
and a ladder bolted
on the rear door
many nooks and crannies
to explore and burrow into
hiding places for little treasures.
(including me)

For years we drove
cross-country
to family reunions
vacations and visits
coasting along in our
comfortable yet cumbersome
box on wheels
watching classics like
Adventures In Babysitting
and singing Dr. Hook's
The Cover of 'Rolling Stone'
as we ate mile after mile
on the way to Philadelphia
Phoenix, DC, Des Moines, St. Louis,
St. Germain, Menominee, Minneapolis
into the sunset of my youth.

Romantic Conflict

Recently some friends told me some things they've said to their partners when they were fighting that kind of shocked me in how combative they were. After asking around it seems its not too out of the norm for people to lash out in their LTR in this way when arguing.

To me the idea of telling my partner to "fuck off" or deliberately being condescending, insulting, or pointedly angry is pretty out there. Walks, if not totally obliterates, the line of dysfunction. But that's me and the way I operate in a relationship is different than what works for other people. Some people need the conflict to air out resentments and fears they may not have been capable of voicing outside the context of a fight. Sometimes that personality clash, that emotional explosion, is necessary, its cathartic. As long as there is resolution, as long as communication is ongoing, as long as it works, who am I to judge. Ultimately it's just a matter of perspective and viewing any situation like 'this is the way I do it and therefore that is categorically correct' is not only wrong its self-centered to the extreme.

I use to be a pretty angry guy, unpredictable with SO's, friends, and strangers alike in when I would vent my temper. Part of that was just who I was, the only way I knew to express emotion, maybe my preferred method for doing so. The other part of why I acted like that, operated out of a baseline of fear that came out as anger was because of my addiction. After I got sober I did, and still do, a lot of work on changing my behavior, how I process my feelings, and how I react to people and situations. What that amounts to is basically building in a pause(or attempting to) between my initial emotional reaction to things and when I respond. Feeling my feelings and then examining my initial response before speaking it aloud. With potential arguments or stressful situations my initial response is almost always rude or combative or counterproductive or all three. And so most times I don't. I say nothing, I walk away, I take some time and put together a constructive response.

Yesterday Nicole and I both got home late and were hungry. When I was getting out of the shower she asked me to clean out the drain more frequently. My head immediately went to tallying the various chores we do to keep the apartment in order and, of course, painted myself as the one who shouldered the majority of the burden and fanned the flames of my offense that she would even ask me that given all the other stuff I do. What I said was "OK" and walked away. After I had eaten I realized I didn't really care, the reality was that I'd be happy to take an extra ten seconds to wipe some toilet paper over the drain. We talked it out a bit more and it was all good. If I had lashed out, she would have most likely responded in kind, the conversation wouldn't have really gone any where, and it would have taken the evening maybe even the next day or two for the tension to dissipate. But that's us.

We all communicate in our own particular ways that work for us. Some more combative than others, some more reserved than others. But the important thing is to do the communicating. To put thought to voice, to listen and attempt some mutual understanding. Bottled up issues turn into resentments so its important to talk about those things we want or need or believe before they boil over. The other side of it is a discussion or suggestion or request isn't necessarily an attack or judgement even though it can feel that way. It's tough. But as long as you try, as long as you keep the conversation going, however imperfectly, you can emerge on the other end better partners. It's silence that can be the relationship killer.

'Call Me By Your Name' A Review

Call Me By Your Name is a coming of age drama set in 1983 about 17-year-old Elio(Timothée Chalamet) and his burgeoning friendship/relationship with, supposed, 24-year-old grad student Oliver(Armie Hammer) who is staying with him and his parents at their Italian estate where they summer.

Chalamet is decent, Hammer is charming but the two have no chemistry. Their dynamic doesn't go beyond a kind of combative immature flirtation. Their desire is somewhat believable but romance, love? No. Elio's parents give more fully formed performances, Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar, and the characters are accepting of their son(kind of a fresh take) which is played with grace but ultimately there's not much there. The bulk of what is going on is rich people lazing about in the sun shirtless. Esther Garrel as Marzia is a bright spot but is constrained by the surprisingly contrived beats her character is forced to follow.

Visually lush and beautifully evocative of Italy the cinematography is easily the best element of the film. Almost every other element of the film is different grades of problematic. Virtually no time is spent on developing the character of Elio so his personality and what he's actually feeling and going through is unclear. As a result what we see is an intelligent, entitled, piano playing, socially awkward, rich kid who's kind of an asshole. As the film unfolds its also unclear what conflict he's actually encountering. The Oliver character is equally vague. There are a couple scenes between the two where both the text is unclear(script problem) as well as the subtext(acting problem). It's unclear if the characters are grappling with their sexuality, their age difference, or simply the awkwardness and hedonistic eagerness of youth. Not in a way where all the subtext are implied and the dynamic feels rich with meaning but in a way where it seems vital and creative decisions haven't been made and it's the result is an emotional nebulousness.

There is a monologue by Stuhlbarg at the end which is being lauded however it also suffers from this same murkiness and lack of choice which casts not only this potentially moving monologue in doubt but the whole film. There is a lot of kissing and rubbing of hands and lips and faces between the two leads but when they actually get to the sex the camera pans to the open window like some 60's sitcom. There is no panning away however during the straight sex scene that proceeds it which seems at best odd and unsettling. There's also the treatment of the character Marzia who Elio has sex with one day, abandons the next, then three days later apropos of nothing she forgives him. This not to mention the two scenes that feature dribbling semen which all taken together make for a messy hodgepodge of a a period drama complete with unflattering 80's attire not something best-of-the-year worthy.

The affluence almost decadent wealth on display in the film is off putting, the relationship at the center problomatic because of an age difference which is never actually addressed, the script is vague to the point of lacking motivation and even emotional coherence.

Call Me By Your Name is worthy of a watch no question, this more critical than usual review not-with-standing, but is this mediocre and melodramatic rich kid romance one of the best movies of the year? Absolutely not. It is wonderful that more movies are coming out with diverse perspectives and characters. But some of them will be uneven. Maybe entertaining but not exceptional.

Rent It.

The Body

Although
the vitality of youth
is fading
or lets be honest
gone
I feel more solid
than ever
more at home
and capable
in my suit
of muscle, flesh, and bone
more fluid and myself
even graceful
not like a dancer
or wild cat
more a domesticated
and aging hound
comfortable
and
competent
not to say I am some speicmen
of mammalian might
but I have a certain strength
and stamina
(as do we all)
and know my limits
and can ply my will
with some measure
of head and limb
harmony
gone are the gangly days
the awkward days
the stumbling, bumbling, mumbling days
of juvenescence.

My health and vigor
may require more attention
but this mortal meat and marrow
I call Me
is Mine
with more Alacrity than ever.