Simple Pleasures

I take
a disproportionate

amount of joy

in calling my doctors

"Doc"

Fellowship

I am grateful
for my friend's generosity and trust
to be welcomed, subsumed

however briefly

into his family's domesticity
however simple
for that is where life is
most of the time
the routines, the day-to-day
we wake up together
eat together, run errands
figure out logistics
and for a time I am apart of it
integral, intimate, entwined
its precious
and I take none of it for granted.

After The Rain

After the rain
the succulents are
ripe and jaunty
almost preening

the desert

for a time

lush with life

and movement

the hills

if not green

then full

swollen with a

fleeting bounty

A Better Vibe

I find I'm less resentful of LA
probably because this time
I'm not driving

'Argylle' A Review

Argylle is a meta-spy action-dramedy about an author of spy novels who gets embroiled in an espionage plot.

The cast is full of A-listers but there are too many of them and they are given too little to do. The movie has a great elevator pitch but the actual script is overlong, borderline incoherent, and is populated by paper thin characters no amount of talent can salvage it.

An over-reliance on unnecessary CGI and green screen give the movie a tacky, cheap look and the handful of action scenes with manic cuts and close ups do nothing to dispel this. The movie was either re-written and/or re-edited so many times the result is something that feels AI generated.

Too much plot, no actual story.

Currently in theaters, coming soon to Apple+.

Don't See It.

'Lisa Frankenstein' A Review

Lisa Frankenstein is a horror comedy about Lisa Swallos(Kathryn Newton) a disaffected teen traumatized by the death of her mother who develops a relationship with a reanimated corpse(Cole Sprouse).

Newton is pitch perfect giving an emotionally rich and idiosyncratic performance, clearly channeling Beetlejuice's Lydia Deetz. Sprouse does a good job with no dialogue and only grunts and looks and the supporting cast is superub. Carla Gugino as Janet Lisa's stepmom is an absolute delicious terror and Liza Soberano as Taffy Lisa's stepsister is refreshingly kind and supportive playing diametrically aposed the evil stepsister stereotype. Lisa's dad played by Joe Chrest plays a smaller role but he effectively brings his brand of affable obliviousness.

Visually the film is rich evoking the time period(1989) as well as its influences- Heathers, Edward Scissor Hands, the aforementioned Beetlejuice- but does so in a way that's not derivative and serves this particular story. Its refreshing to see a new idea, influenced by previous films, that is not a reboot of them. The soundtrack is solid, the costuming wonderful. All in all the production is impeccable coming from first time director Zelda Williams, its a real feat and shows a lot of promise. If the movie stumbles its in the third act, the script meanders and kind of fails to stick the landing and bring all the various plot and emotional threads home. It prevents it from being great but it is still very much good.

Weird, funny, singularly refreshing in this increasingly homogenized release schedule.

Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.

Rent It.

Do The Day

My goal
all day
every day

is to be

in the day

that I am in

'Perfect Days' A Review

Perfect Days is a lowkey slice-of-life drama about Hirayama(Kōji Yakusho) a bathroom cleaner in Tokyo, seemingly content with his simple, disciplined, ritualistic life. The film follows him across several days of his routine.

Yakusho is on screen for the entire runtime and in close-up for at least a third so his task is monumental and he does well conveying a kind of quiet, monastic, compassion but the sparseness of the script and the character's unflinching disposition render the character, at times, unrealistically twee and/or contrived. Much is implied but nothing is explored, there's clearly a resistance to engaging with the character and subject only to a particular depth. The supporting cast is limited and are relegated to only a few scenes, some do well, some like Tokio Emoto as Takashi Hirayama's co-worker seem to be from a totally different movie.

The film looks great, the soundtrack is full of classic rock bops, but it all feels very curated, very constructed. Compare this to the tonally similar but much more successful Paterson and the clear difference is in genuinely exploring the character and delving into real human emotion and experience, even if subtle.

I don't necessarily believe Hirayama is content with his life the images and sequences are trying too hard to persuade me that this is the case. There doesn't need to be a hidden darkness or trauma revealed but there does need to be authenticity. Its almost a textbook case of show-don't-tell which is storytelling 101.

Beautiful and pleasant but underbaked. Too calculated in its attempt at transcendence to achieve it.

Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.

Rent It.

Root Canal

That dental urban legend

is not as gruesome as the talk

drills, pressure, and discomfort

but not pain at which to balk

Perhaps one day the stigma

of this operation will melt away

until then I'll tell the truth

that the rumors are allayed

Another Truth

An old timer once told me
"People say you get what you need.

Because in the beginning

that's what you need to hear.

But the truth is, you get what you get."