A giant, disjointed mess. Tried to pay attention but I zoned out twice watching it. I couldn’t even tell you what this movie is about.

Watched with LD. Decent attempt at Desi Noir in picturesque Himachal Pradesh¹. Raveena Tandon is intense, vulnerable, and puts in good work as Kasturi Dogra. Great stuff by Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Zakir Hussain, and Meghna Malik. If Jeff Goldblum had a younger brother from an Indian mother, he would look like Indraneil Sengupta. The denouement was a bit rushed and left the door wide open for a second season presumably based on how well this one did. Watchable, predictable, enjoyable.

The wedding song was the laziest composition I’ve heard in a while (spoilers… maybe.)

Three-part true crime documentary that’s two episodes longer than it needed to be. The psychological evaluations were of interest, particularly from a “clinical hypnotherapist with training in crystal healing and past life therapy”.

You know… the life that you had before this one? That.

Watched with LD. Nuclear apocalypse via submarines. At least as exciting as “The Hunt for Red October”. Watch on the largest screen you have and with a good sound system. The premise and last half hour were (I hope) pure flights of fancy. Excellent stuff by Francois Civil, Reda Kateb, and Mathieu Kassovitz as Alfost¹.

A Russian mobster, a Cuban spy and a smooth operator from Miami scheme to sell a Soviet submarine to a Colombian drug cartel for $35 million.

Everything leading up to this sale is crazier than the tagline above. What a ride.

Everything you need to know about this waste of time without watching it, courtesy of SNL:

Vulture has a more charitable take and lists the “best bits”. And this is genuinely very funny:

A beautiful story about my favorite alien told with phenomenally good camera work. Left me a bit misty-eyed¹. Lovely stuff.

Stars David Lynch, his spouse Emily Stofle, a monkey, and a chicken. The oddest and most hypnotic thing I’ve seen this year (and twice.) A mere 17 minutes in length and like if film-school students used GPT-3 to generate a script an hour before the assignment was due.

Toototabon 🐓

Saw with CK. Excited because Charlie Kaufman. Mostly self-indulgent tripe. The conversations in the car were interminably tedious¹ and missing PBR hats and gauloises. The weirdness in the first third-to-a-half of the movie was excellent. Top-notch performances and camerawork.

A slasher version of A Quiet Place except The Monster gets you when you open your eyes (but only at key moments that further the plot.) Snoozefest after the first half. Had no idea that the lanky, highly tattooed extra is a famous rapper. A few plotholes that bugged me:

What exactly constitutes a safe barrier between your vision and the outdoors? By the movie’s standards, a thin-fabric blindfold and a sparse canopy of leaves count, but a security camera does not.

How did Trevante Rhodes manage to keep such a defined six-pack over the course of five home-bound years, and would he be willing to share that workout routine?

Elsewhere, Gizmodo on how the unseen monster is an allegory for the pernicious effects of social media on our lives. Huh.

Like if Rashomon and The Usual Suspects had a child. The ending got me.

As brutal, breathless, and excellent as the first season. Julia Garner, Lisa Emery, and Janet McTeer FTW 🙌

Garner on her portrayal of Ruth Langmore

She’s in a much more vulnerable place. She’s really struggling and having an identity crisis because of her dad. With Season 2, I think you have a much deeper understanding why she behaves like she does. People always go, “Oh Ruth is such a badass character — how does it feel to play her?” And it’s much deeper than that. It’s more that she has no choice.

and

[. . .] I don’t know if you remember, but I had that handbag. And I know it’s a prop, but it’s important because that’s Ruth — she wears something really ugly, but she’ll have the pink handbag she probably got at Walmart because she secretly wants a real leather pink bag. She wants nice things, and you realize this girl is a child.

TIL that they shot the series in Atlanta.

When I’m doing jokes that I do at the start of the show about lesbians, everyone laughs. It’s fine, it’s fun. I do exactly the same to men, and it’s not. That’s less to do with the men, but also the cultural practice. They’re not used to it.

That’s the way comedy is. Comedy is a man’s art form. It pretty much came from a time, post–World War II really — the 1950s are not really known for the subtle expressions of feminine life. There’s a lot of dick-swinging going on in that time, sort of like destroying modernism and bringing in postmodernism. Stand-up comedy’s come out of that era. It’s born from stand-ups doing jokes between burlesque shows. Then roasts, you know, which are basically misogyny and homophobia all wrapped up in “yo mama” jokes. The whole art form is centered around jerking off, so it’s no surprise that the endgame is Louis C.K.

A joke is a wank. Set-up … [does a jerk-off motion] punch line. Then you’ve got what I’m trying, storytelling. If the only reason to be on stage communicating with people is to tell them a joke and make them laugh, that seems thin for me. That has a place — I don’t think it should stop happening — but for me, I don’t know. I just don’t.

via Vulture. Also a contrast between Bill Maher and Gadsby.

He’s absolutely right about Indian people and mangoes. Good ones are hard to come by in Iowa, so I enjoy these refreshing beauties instead.

A “state-of-the-nation” Netflix mini-series. Excellent performances by Jeany Spark, Carey Mulligan, and John Simm. Plenty of commentary (pontification?) on the refugee crisis.