May Binges: Beef, The Night Agent, The Big Door Prize, The English

Yes, there’s a writer’s strike on, but that means I am catching up on all the TV that has been relentlessly hitting streaming services in the past few months. I’ve binged several things over the past few weeks, so now it’s your turn!

Beef: This show hits the gas (literally, and figuratively) from Episode 1 and never lets up till Episode 10. It stars Ali Wong and Steven Yuen as Amy and Danny, two people with very different lives who become connected because of a road rage incident that sets them both down a slippery slope of anger, resentment, and betrayal. Yes, it can get heavy, but it’s also insanely funny and impossible to stop watching once you start. 

Every episode is beautifully plotted, ending with delicious cliffhangers that leave you wanting more, but creator Lee Sung Jin ensures that the overarching series is tied up with a beautiful bow at the end. It would be a pity to give away any plot so all I’ll say is that if you want to watch a show about Asian rage, class warfare, and the little choices in our life that lead to absolutely monumental changes in our future, you must head on over to Netflix ASAP.

The Night Agent: Created by Shawn Ryan, based on the novel by Matthew Quirk, this is a taut spy thriller where no one can be trusted and our two scrappy protagonists are up against the might of the US Secret Service, FBI, and the White House. Luciane Buchanan plays Rose Larkin, a woman who discovers her aunt and uncle were undercover agents only when they are mysteriously killed in their own home. Before they were killed, they gave Rose the Night Action number to call for help, which is how she meets Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), an FBI agent monitoring the Night Action phone line. He was tasked with this job by the President’s Chief of Staff, Diane Farr (Hong Chau, in a meaty and very fun role that plays against type from what I’ve seen her in before), who tells Peter to take care of Rose and ensure no harm comes to her while they try to figure out what’s going on here. 

Well, over ten episodes, a LOT happens: many people are betrayed once, twice, or even thrice, the VP’s daughter is suddenly a main character, there’s a terrorist plot afoot, and the body count skyrockets. This show isn’t high art, and a lot of the story beats and dialogue can feel a bit tropey. But it gets truly propulsive and exciting in the second half and ends with a bang. It’s an easy binge, with episodes usually coming in at a brisk 45 minutes. Once you start, you may find yourself unable to stop.

The Big Door Prize: AppleTV+ is really getting to be known for sitcoms with heart, and this show is no exception. Developed by David West Read, based on the novel by M.O. Walsh, this is a weird but beautiful story about what happens in the small town of Deerfield, when a Morpho machine mysteriously appears in their general store. When you put $2 into this machine, it spits out a little blue card that has "Your Life Potential" on it. Well, turns out those little cards pack a punch and pretty soon the whole town is filled with people who are up-ending their hitherto predictable lives to chase their hidden dreams. 

While most of the action centers around Dusty and Cass (played by Chris O'Dowd and Gabrielle Dennis), each episode follows one particular Deerfield resident while also giving us the ongoing plot developments of the other supporting characters. The narrative is complex and intriguing, funny and wistful, and even after you know what everyone's card said, you're still left pondering, Yes, but what does it all MEAN? The finale didn't deliver many answers but teed up a promising Season 2. So while they're on hiatus, I need to get my hands on the novel and do some reading to see what further adventures are due to arrive at Deerfield.

The English: This show was less of a binge and more of a slog as far as I was concerned. Written and directed by Hugo Blick, it's an extremely slow burn Western, and despite only being six episodes long, I couldn't wait to be done with every single episode. Which is a real shame because it does star the divine Emily Blunt as Lady Cornelia Locke, an Englishwoman who arrives in the midst of the American West in 1890 Kansas and is immediately subjected to horrific treatment by evil men until she teams up with a Pawnee scout named Eli Whipp/Wounded Wolf (Chaske Spencer). 

A woman and a Native American set out to wreak vengeance on greedy white men? That should be right up my alley! But oh boy I found all the dialogue too prosy and obtuse. The one thing the show does have going for it is absolutely astounding cinematography and you would be hard-pressed to tear your eyes away from the screen. In fact, perhaps this is a show best watched on mute so you can revel in the sweeping vistas and beautiful sunsets. Otherwise, I found it to be way too violent and harsh, and there were a lot of characters and motivations that were all talk until someone drew a gun and then it was all bullets. If you love Westerns, step right up, because this might be the best show you watch all year. But otherwise, you may be better off with something else.

Weekend Watch: House of Gucci, The Power of the Dog, Encanto

This weekend I have yet another trifecta of deliciously different movies for you to sink your teeth into. There's animation, Western, or batshit crazy "Italian" so pick your fancy. There's plenty of entertainment up for grabs.

House of Gucci: I give you my one-word review of this film: Boof! Oh wait, does that not mean anything to you? Well you're not alone, as that is a completely made-up word that Jared Leto inexplicably decided to deploy throughout this movie in his weird supporting role as Paolo Gucci. In the lead we've got Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci, one of the heirs to the Gucci family business and fortune, and Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani, the woman who marries him, has high ambitions, and (spoiler alert) will ultimately plot his murder. 

Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, and Salma Hayek round out this cast and every single person is doing their own version of what they think an Italian person sounds like. Some are more successful than others (like Lady Gaga, natch), but what with this and The Last Duel, I have become convinced that director Ridley Scott is not the man you go to if you care about accurate accent work. However, you can certainly still go to him if you want a spectacle, and that's what this film delivers. It is completely over-the-top and insane, oozing with high fashion and luxury at every turn and then the soapiest melodrama as the relationships between all these characters get convoluted and chaotic. The only thing more bonkers than this film is that it all actually happened in real life, but presumably the real-life people had more believable accents.

This is definitely a great movie to watch in the theater with an audience who knows that they've come there to experience a comedy rather than a serious drama. We laughed so much at every "Boof!" and it was a very communal experience to revel in this movie that is so terrifically bad that it is amazingly good. So watch it, and then send up a thankful prayer to "Father, Son, House of Gucci." 

The Power of the Dog: If you want some tonal whiplash, watch this movie right after House of Gucci. Written and directed by Jane Campion, this is a quiet, eerie, and deliberate Western set in 1925 Montana and tells the story of two brothers named Phil and George Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons - two great actors I would watch in anything). They are wealthy ranchers but George is more of the money man who glad-hands politicians while Phil is rude and rowdy and sticks to the ranchwork. When George falls in love with the widowed Rose (Kirsten Dunst - a cute piece of casting as she and Plemons are married in real life) and brings her home to the ranch, it sets off tensions as Phil thinks Rose is only after George's money. In the meantime, Rose's son from her previous marriage, Peter (the deliciously disturbing Kodi Smit-McPhee), has a very testy relationship with Phil, and watching how all of that unfolds makes for a creepy and compelling two hours of cinema.

This movie is a bit of a mood piece - there's not a ton of dialogue and Campion is reveling in the landscapes and feel of these wide open and lonely spaces. You will also get to see some Cumberbatch nudity, if that's a selling point that will get you to watch this film. But aesthetics aside, this movie grew on me. At first I was worried it would simply be artsy and meandering, but as the tensions thickened between these characters and their motivations became increasingly murky, the movie almost took on a fascinating horror quality as I waited for something terrible to happen. It also features an absolutely stunning score from Jonny Greenwood, who I just mentioned on this blog for his score for Spencer. Like with that movie, this music has the effect of slightly unsettling the viewer and never quite making it clear what genre of film you might be watching.

This movie is an acquired taste. But since it's on Netflix, you can easily give it a try and see whether Campion is your kind of filmmaker. To me, it was very clear that there was a woman behind the camera, making a Western that focused on interpersonal relationships and high drama without the need for gun battles and shootouts. This is a rugged and spare movie that surprisingly gets its hooks in you and I was certainly glad I got to see it.

Encanto: For a colorful and blissfully enjoyable time at the movies, you can't go wrong with this animated Disney movie about the magical Madrigal family, who live in an enchanted house in Colombia and all have special powers, except for Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz). She never received a special gift, but she is still a chipper and lovely young woman who tries to help out her family, even if she can't do so in any superhuman way.

However, one day, their house starts to develop cracks, and it becomes clear that the magic they possessed is starting to wane. I won't go into any details, but suffice to say, Mirabel is going to be our heroine, the only person who can figure out what is wrong and how she can save the family. And the lessons that she learns and imparts to her family members are deeply resonant in that classic Disney way. The script by Charise Castro Smith and Jared Bush (who also co-directed with Byron Howard) is delightful, a reminder that even people who seem hyper competent need to take a break and recharge once in a while and that there's no shame in asking for help when you need it. There is so much to unpack in terms of intergenerational parenting styles (the beautiful short film, Far From the Tree, that preceded the movie already teed up that theme), living up to family expectations, and trying to find one's purpose in life. And it is all told via funny, beautiful, whimsical animation, and of course, some fantastic songs composed by Germaine Franco and written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Yes, most of the story is told through the songs, so you had better pay attention to these rapid-fire lyrics. Honestly, I could barely catch the words myself and wondered how little kids would fare. There's enough wonder and magic on screen to distract them, but I fully bought into this film as an adult who has issues with her grandmother and subsequently left the theater feeling like oh maybe I should give Grandma a call.  For Latinx viewers, I hope this movie offers up some joyous onscreen representation, with some bilingual songs and plenty of Spanish sprinkled in throughout the film. And, if I may, there was one scene where I spent a solid minute just marveling at how good we have become at animating hair. Every strand of hair on Mirabel's head looked so thick, luxurious, and alive - I know we've done some terrible things with technology, but I'm glad the Disney animators have deployed it to such greatness to capture all the beauty a human head can possess. So watch Encanto. Whether it's the music, the animation, or the story that will tug at your heartstrings, you will fall under its spell.

November Netflix Round-Up: The Harder They Fall, Meenakshi Sundareshwar, Tick, Tick... Boom!

It has been another busy month on Netflix and there are a slew of movies awaiting your perusal. Perhaps you are happily making your way through the glut of whimsical holiday movies. But if you need a break from the mistletoe, here are some quickfire reviews of a rock musical, a Western, and a Bollywood romcom to diversify your December viewing.

Tick, Tick... Boom! Directed by Lin-Manual Miranda and written by Steven Levenson, this is an adaptation of the semi-autobiographical musical by Broadway composer Jonathan Larson. Starring Andrew Garfield as Jonathan, this is a beautiful but heart-rending story of a man who is struggling to live out his ambitions and stay true to his dreams in the harsh environs of New York City. 

The movie takes place in the week leading up to Jonathan’s thirtieth birthday and the angst is palpable. He is so close to success but in such danger of burning too many bridges before he achieves it. He has a loving girlfriend (played by Alexandra Shipp, the woman with the greatest smile on the planet), who is starting to get tired of her daily grind in this unforgiving city. He also has a best friend, Michael (Robin de Jesus), who "sold out" by giving up on acting and moving to advertising, a fact that will become increasingly problematic as the story goes on. And we will see these relationships evolve, blossom, and sour over the course of two hours. Every song in this musical is either witty or devastating and Garfield turns in an immaculate performance, capturing all the energy, passion, and devastation that Jonathan must face on his quest to greatness. 

This could be a very affirming and joyous movie, but given Larson’s early death before he ever knew how much fame he would achieve via Rent and this musical, this is a movie tinged with so much sadness. It’s a celebration of a man who would have given us so many great things, but instead we must make do with the few things we did get. Which, thankfully, are excellent. So watch Tick, Tick… Boom! and let your inner Broadway geek nerd out for a while while you experience the thrilling highs and lows of the bohemian quest to create great art. You may also notice some very familiar Broadway cameos along the way. 

The Harder They Fall: Directed by Jeymes Samuel, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Boaz Yakin, this movie is a Black Western that boasts one of the most incredible casts going around. You’ve got Idris Elba, Regina King, Jonathan Majors, Lakeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz…the list goes on. And they’re all riding around the Wild West seeking vengeance, robbing banks, and shooting each other up. What’s not to love?

Well, apparently if you’re me, that is not enough to keep you compelled for two hours. This movie is aesthetically pleasing, with great production design (there’s a “white town” that made me laugh with the literal interpretation of its aesthetic) and excellent costumes, but plot-wise, it was a bit of a meandering mess. The trouble with having so many fantastic actors is that you want to ensure they all get time to shine. But I found my attention constantly wavering with the multitude of plots and sub-plots that ultimately didn't tie in together. In the tradition of most Westerns, it’s violent, there are a LOT of gun battles, and frankly, there’s only so much shooting a girl can take. Also, this is Samuel's feature film directorial debut and he really telegraphs a lot of moments; there are several pregnant pauses in scenes where I could immediately foretell what was going to happen next. Which can be fun, but ultimately starts to wear on you.

Watch this movie if you need some escapism and need to watch a great cast of actors whale on each other. But this is more style than substance. If you’re looking for a tight script and compelling storytelling, I would look elsewhere. 

Meenakshi Sundareshwar: It has been ages since I’ve watched a new Bollywood movie. So watching this one served as a reminder of everything that can be alternately cute and cringey about them. Directed by Vivek Soni (a Karan Johar acolyte) and starring the delightful Sanya Malhotra and Abhimanyu Dassani, this is a tale about what happens when two people named Meenakshi and Sundareshwar get hitched (via an arranged marriage,  natch) and then have to deal with the ensuing complications of being married to someone you don’t know that well.

The highlight of this movie for me is that the characters are South Indian. So while this is a Hindi movie, there are lots of random Tamil interjections throughout the film. Now of course, most of these actors are NOT South Indian, so without subtitles, I wouldn’t have understood what on earth they were saying as their pronunciation was fairly awful, but it was still a nice change from the usual North Indian fare. Apart from that detail, however, there is nothing particularly fresh or new about this plot. Sundar has to move to Bangalore right after he and Meenakshi get married, and the two of them spend a year apart, without even having consummated the marriage because of…random reasons that only make sense in Bollywood. It’s a spectacularly silly plot but the charm of the actors involved is almost enough to sell you on it.

Of course, there is a lot of regressive bullshit to wade through, and this movie does feel like it could be from a previous era, except we all know that some people in India still very much live like this. While it was painful to see a woman get married to a relative stranger and then have to move in with his family, who have very traditional ideas about a woman’s place in the household, Meenakshi does prove to be a mildly feminist upstart who could serve as a decent starting role model to any Indian girls watching this film. She is fiery and ambitious, and at one point, when told she needs to respect her elders, she declares that they need to treat her with respect too and dashes off, a sentiment that should be echoed a hell of a lot more in Indian society where old people are often treated with a deference they absolutely have not earned. So watch this movie if you want to spend a very silly but very charming two hours in the company of some multilingual lovers and their family shenanigans. Your mind won’t be blown, but it will certainly be tickled.

Weekend Watch: First Cow and An American Pickle

Let's be clear: the combination of First Cow and An American Pickle might be the most unlikely double feature ever devised. But in pandemic times, you watch whatever you can find, and that's what I did last Friday. These are two insanely different movies but at least one of them has to satisfy your itch for cinematic satisfaction. So are you looking for a spare and meditative western about two men in Oregon in the 1800s, or a bizarre comedy about a turn of the century Jewish immigrant who gets pickled in brine and re-emerges in present-day Williamsburg? Either way, I’ve got you covered!

First Cow: Written (with Jonathan Raymond, who wrote the novel the movie is based on), edited, and directed by Kelly Reichardt, this movie sneaks up on you. My main sentiment on finishing it was how I wished I had seen it in theaters, because this is the kind of slow, lush movie that is meant to be an immersive and absorbing experience, and not something that you distractedly watch while playing Candy Crush on your phone.

Set in 1820, it’s the story of Cookie (John Magaro), a cook who meets a Chinese man, King-Lu (Orion Lee) in the Oregon Territory. The two men team up and hatch a scheme based on Cookie’s excellent cooking skills and King-Lu's business acumen. They sell delicious biscuits for significant sums of money to the traders and trappers and other grimy men who are seeking their fortunes in Oregon but are also seeking a warm and delicious treat that reminds them of home. However, the magic ingredient in these biscuits is the creamy milk that Cookie gets by secretly milking the cow that belongs to the wealthy Englishman who recently moved to the settlement. This is the first and only cow in the area, and it’s a dangerous scheme to be stealing its milk like this, but the rewards seem to outweigh the risks.

First Cow is a mood piece. It is very quiet, with many long and languid scenes where not a lot happens. There is much excitement around the cow and the ensuing shenanigans, and the film does turn into a bit of a heist film, but at its core, it’s a deep movie about friendship, hardship, and the ingenuity that characterizes the American entrepreneurial spirit. Also, special shout-out to Eve, the cow that is the real star of the film (this was her first ever film role!). I have never wanted to drink a glass of milk more in my life than when watching this movie. And the line of folk waiting to get a biscuit reminded me of the line outside Dominique Ansel’s bakery to get a Cronut. While the setting of this film might be in the past and unfamiliar, the emotions and general capers feel just as relevant to the modern day, and it is a transporting and tranquil weekend watch.

An American Pickle: The one word I would use to describe this movie is, “cute.” Which you don’t imagine going into it, because the premise seems so utterly bizarre and ridiculous that you think it has to be a raucous, weird comedy. But instead, it turns out to have a rather heartfelt premise that sneaks up on you and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Seth Rogen plays Herschel, a Jewish immigrant who flees the Russian Cossacks and arrives in NYC in 1919 in search of a better life. He works at a pickle factory, and one day, in a freak accident, he falls into a vat of pickle brine. No one notices, and that happens to be the day the factory is shut down, so for the next century he is just slowly pickled in that vat, until in 2019, he is discovered, perfectly preserved and alive, a scientific miracle! He is released into the custody of his only surviving relative, his great grandson Ben (also played by Seth Rogen), who is a freelance app developer in Williamsburg. As you can imagine, it’s a challenge to explain to your pickled great grandpa what it means to be a freelance app developer. 

There’s a typical clash of the generations, and as things escalate, Herschel moves out and decides he is going to create his own pickle business. The jokes keep on coming, mocking Williamsburg and its hipsters, Jewish identity (for more Jewish humor, you should check out Seth Rogen's recent interview on WTF with Marc Maron, where the two men proceed to offend the entire nation of Israel), and the political and technological landscape of modern America. The movie is written by Simon Rich, based on a wonderful four-part story he wrote for the New Yorker in 2013 (even if you don't watch the film, I highly recommend reading the story), and the film wisely keeps its focus sharp and doesn’t wander off on too many tangents. In a breezy 89 minutes, we get a funny movie that mocks the sillier elements of how we live now, but also delivers a nourishing story about the importance of family, dealing with grief, and moving on with your life. Instead of broad shtick, Rogen delivers a splendidly nuanced performance, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets nominated for a Golden Globe. An American Pickle is a fun distraction, so figure out if you have HBO Max and give it a shot!

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Something Interesting Happened After a Whole Lot of Nothing

As a huge Tarantino fan, I was eagerly looking forward to watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Reunited with Brad Pitt, I was hoping for something reminiscent of the heyday of Inglourious Basterds. Sadly, I spent two and a half hours in the theater constantly checking the time to see when this agony would end.

I did not like this movie. And it saddens me to say it, because I do love Tarantino, and his previous movies have always brought a tremendous amount of entertainment value, even if they can't all be masterpieces like Basterds. But I was legitimately bored throughout this film and even while writing this review am struggling to understand how it went so off the rails. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie, it boasts an all-star cast and is set in 1969 Hollywood. These are all the ingredients for a blockbuster but they are failed by a lackluster script, which is generally Tarantino's forte. His style is to set all the chess pieces on the board and build up to an epic finale, but this time, the showdown happens in the last fifteen minutes of the film, and nothing that leads up to it feels remotely coherent or interesting. Instead it feels like a series of disjointed vignettes about characters who aren't particularly compelling. And the finale features characters who get a gory comeuppance that you don't even feel like cheering for because they barely got any screen time previously. It's hard to root for a villain's demise when you've only know the villain for about ten minutes.

The dialogue wasn't crisp, and the banter was far from engaging. There were odd bits of voiceover narration that I found particularly jarring, because the hallmark of a Tarantino flick has always been to show, not tell. And yet it seemed clear that he kept writing himself into corners that only a narrator could fix. DiCaprio as a has-been Western actor has his funny moments but is ultimately striking one note throughout. Brad Pitt is a far more compelling screen presence (when he takes his shirt off, it was like an ode to Thelma and Louise that at least got me engaged in the proceedings for a few minutes before I was bored again). But his character is played for laughs, despite him allegedly killing his wife? What? Margot Robbie is also flawless as Sharon Tate, but her character mostly exists to play a tanned, leggy, blonde bombshell without much of an interior life. Sure, she goes into a theater and puts on large glasses to watch herself on screen, which seems to be the only way male filmmakers seem to know how to tell us a beautiful woman contains multitudes within. She wears big, unflattering glasses - she's complex!

Margaret Qualley is probably the most interesting character in the piece, a hippie called Pussycat who lives with the rest of the Manson family on the ranch. I do appreciate the attention to detail by allowing her to have robust armpit hair and have her look somewhat distressingly emaciated (though still gorgeous). Note to teenage girls and all-age men who think that's what a normal woman should look like - no. She is clearly starving and that thigh gap needs to go. But again, her character is a weird one-off who brings Brad Pitt back to the ranch but serves no real other purpose. She and Pitt do share great chemistry, and the scenes where they just communicate via facial expressions might be the highlight of the movie, but otherwise, she's yet another wasted actor in this film.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood features a great soundtrack, most of which you've already heard in the trailer, and is an ode to Westerns like many of Tarantino's latest endeavors, which means great cinematography of sweeping vistas and a general desert vibe. But there is a dearth of engaging content that makes it a complete slog to watch. The same gag is repeated too often, none of the characters feel fleshed out, and it all feels a bit too self-satisfied and assured of its own success to ever win you over. I will be quickly forgetting this movie (much like I forgot The Hateful Eight) and hope that Tarantino moves away from Westerns and goes back to killing Nazis. DiCaprio did get to wield a flamethrower in this movie, but it was too little, too late. 

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: The Absurdity of Mankind

Last night I was reading up on The Myth of Sisyphus, an essay that posits Albert Camus' philosophy of the absurd and man's futile search for meaning. Then this morning, I watched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the latest Coen Brothers film that is essentially a visual depiction of absurdism. I did not plan this, but my it was a revelation.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a series of short films that all take place in the old American West. The conceit is that you are reading a book called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier and an unseen hand turns the pages to introduce each new story and then show you the closing pages as you move on to the next vignette. That flourish made me glad I was watching on Netflix as I could pause the movie and read the last few words of every story to glean some more wisdom from the mysterious minds of Joel and Ethan Coen.

I won't delve into too much detail about each of the vignettes as they pack a wallop and should be experienced firsthand. But if you've ever watched a Coen Brothers movie before, you know what you will find. A bewildering mix of comedy and pathos, with dialogue that falls trippingly off the tongue and makes you want to write it all down so you can read those sentences over and over again. I simply do not understand how they can craft such poetry but every word is a delight. Most importantly, every actor they've hired delivers those lines with the appropriate panache. However, that is only the case in some of the stories. In others, dialogue takes a backseat to Bruno Delbonnel's epic cinematography where Nature provides the necessary poetry. The pristine landscapes and wilds of the frontier are jawdroppingly splendid and highlight the absurdity of it all. These men will play their foolish games to their foolish ends but the land will carry on long after they are gone.

Be warned: this movie is a Western and extremely violent and graphic in spots, oftentimes becoming Tarantino-esque. If bloodshed and bullet wounds turn your stomach, you might want to skip some stories entirely. But each one has one central thesis: men are constantly searching for something, and ultimately, it doesn't matter whether or not they get it. The journey is the destination. As Camus said, "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." And you will really have to stretch your imagination because happy endings are not plentiful in this film.

Of the six vignettes, I naturally gravitated to the only one featuring a meaty role for a woman, The Gal Who Got Rattled. (One could argue that in the Wild West women didn't do much, but we all know that's a paltry argument and is my main quibble with this film - if you have six stories, can't some of them feature more interesting roles for women?) Zoe Kazan's performance is captivating, and the camera lingers on her face even when others are talking because getting her reaction to their words is more important than watching the words be delivered. This vignette felt the most sweet and hopeful...for a while at least. I also enjoyed Near Algodones, starring James Franco, as that featured some of the most outright absurdist comedy (Franco is not allowed to mumble more than a few words during the entire piece as that man is impossible to imagine as a cowboy). And for utter bleak despair, Liam Neeson and Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley's all grown up and magnificent in this role!) deliver quite the gut punch in Meal Ticket.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a cinematic feast, offering an amuse bouche to tickle every palate, but with a central theme of utter Sisyphean futility. It is beautifully shot, impeccably written, and well acted. I can't say it is a warm and fuzzy holiday movie, but it certainly shows you what cinema can do to transform the written word into a moving spectacle. 

Hell or High Water: Twenty-First Century Western

Hell or High Water flew completely under my radar this year until awards season arrived and I saw this movie receiving all sorts of acclaim. Intrigued, I finally watched it, and within the first twenty minutes, I was a fan.

The first thing to note about this movie is how funny it is. Written by Taylor Sheridan, the dialogue and random tangents are a sheer delight from start to finish. There are jokes about how hard it is to rob a bank in Texas now that everyone has a conceal-and-carry permit and can shoot right back at you. There's a rancher herding cattle in the middle of the road who bemoans that this is still a job in the twenty-first century. And there's a waitress in a diner who goes on for ages about that idiot from New York who showed up that one time and tried to order trout when all she serves is steak. Does that have anything to do with the plot of the movie? No. Does that make it any less delightful? Nope.

The actual plot centers around two brothers, Toby and Tanner (the delightful Chris Pine and Ben Foster). Their mother died recently and left her ranch to Toby's two sons. Unfortunately, the ranch was mortgaged, and unless the men can find a way to pay the bank loan, they will lose the ranch and the newly-discovered oil that has been found on the property that will guarantee a lifetime of prosperity for Toby's sons. Tanner has just gotten out of prison and is an expert bank robber, so of course, they do the only thing that makes sense - they start robbing branches of the Texas Midlands bank, which is the bank that holds the mortgage. Paying the bank back with money they stole from it? That's Texas justice.

Jeff Bridges plays the curmudgeonly sheriff who is a week away from retirement and must figure out who's responsible for this sudden rash of bank robberies. Together with Alberto (Gil Birmingham), his half-Mexican, half-Native American partner (who comes in for an eye-watering deluge of racial jokes and takes it all in his stride), they play a captivating cat-and-mouse game with the bank-robbing brothers, until things come to a head in true Western fashion.

Hell or High Water is a brilliant movie, witty, cinematic, gorgeous, and gripping. Set in the lonely expanses of West Texas, it will make you yearn for those landscapes and some barbecue. It perfectly captures what it means to be a working-class Texan and the sense of family, honor, and justice that can motivate people to do crazy things for the sake of their loved ones. Directed impeccably by David Mackenzie and shot beautifully by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, this is a theatrical masterpiece that will be a highlight of your award show viewing. Don't miss it.