Quick Take: Calvary (2014)

With the glut of so-called faith-based movies last year in wide release, none of which were well-received by the mainstream media and only a few of which have even pleased evangelical Christian audiences, Calvary steps in as a welcome surprise. Neither preachy nor patronizing, Calvary is the story of an Irish priest, Father James (Brendan Gleeson), who is told in a confessional that he will be murdered in a week’s time. He seems to know who it was that threatened him, but he opts not to report the name to the police, instead going about his next week normally, loving the members of his parish and debating the merits of Catholicism with the townspeople. If the premise sounds gimmicky, director John Michael McDonagh and his cast manage to find the tenuous tension beween a whodunit and real-life stakes, capturing a small-town feel without adopting a condescending tone. It wouldn’t work without Gleeson’s steadiness in the central role; watching him stand firm in his faith in a real world not often seen in the movies deserves its place among cinema’s great pleasures.

Quicker take: Probably a stronger base of faith than any of last year’s “faith-based” films.

Quick Take: Fury (2014)

Sometimes I think we pressure war movies into being the next Saving Private Ryan. If you go back and watch Ryan, it’s clear that no war movie is going to be the next Saving Private Ryan. So we need to judge new war movies by different standards, rather than holding them up to that instant classic that pieced together all kinds of ideas about war and American manhood into one cohesive force. Fury has a lot in common with Ryan, but director David Ayer (the great cop movie End of Watch) is telling a fundamentally different story.

Ayer has demonstrated a knack for capturing the nuances in how men interact in his past movies, including Watch and his screenplay for Training Day, and Fury is in line with that sensibility. Logan Lerman is a green soldier originally assigned to a desk who is now thrown into the fire of war with the crew of a tank led by a grizzled Brad Pitt. The rest of the gang is filled out by Shia LaBeouf as the Bible thumper, Jon Bernthal as the wild card, and Michael Peña as what basically amounts to the dependable minority, all archetypes that wouldn’t hold up outside of the context of this one crew but that fill out Fury nicely thanks to Ayer’s ear for how men who live and die together talk to one another. Even when Fury‘s plot devolves into unlikely, only-in-the-movies feats of heroism, the strength in the characters’ relationships holds the movie’s other spare parts together.

(h/t One.Perfect.Shot for the pic)

February 2015’s Album Misses

Bob Dylan, Shadows in the Night: Even on paper, Bob Dylan making an album of Frank Sinatra covers sounds weird enough to be awesome. Maybe you’re not a Dylan fan, but I am, so the idea of him interpreting straightforward classic pop songs seemed kind of fun. Unfortunately, instead of being quirky, Shadows is just boring. Dylan’s lyrics and his distinct voice were always his strength, and when you take out half of that equation, it no longer adds up to much of anything. It doesn’t help that these songs were made famous* by the best singer of his or any generation, and Dylan is unable to take them in any interesting new directions.

*These aren’t really very famous Sinatra songs, but you get the point.

Skrip, Renegades Never Die: I’ll admit my experience with Skrip’s music is limited at best. I’ve only heard his last mixtape, The Und_erscore II, but I thought it was some of the best rap music released in 2013. I was looking forward to what Skrip could do with a full album’s worth of production, but instead of the brilliant pop-culture-sampling from Und_rscore, Skrip has backed his skillful verses with EDM-baiting beats. I guess this could have been pulled off, but Renegades has the whiff of Andy Mineo’s last album, Heroes for Sale, which filled out its instrumentation with metal riffs and guitar solos. They’re both albums by good rappers who committed too much to musical styles that don’t fit their flow.

Quick Take: Enemy (2014)

When Enemy ended, I immediately went to the Internet to figure out what the hell the ending meant. I saw one critic call it the scariest ending of any movie ever. I don’t know about that; it’s certainly up there among the most unsettling. Unsettling is a good word for the film as a whole, as we follow Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal), a college professor who has discovered a local actor who looks and sounds exactly like him. There’s clearly more going on here than a simple case of curiously accurate doppelgängers, since the creepiest music in the world is laid over the whole movie and creepy spiders are in every other scene and creepy spiderweb imagery infects the whole movie. Denis Villenueve, the director, also directed the more straightforward Prisoners, another movie committed to a very particular mood. Maybe Enemy suffers from underdeveloped characters or an occasionally opaque plot. But, overall, Villenueve and his cast do a great job of sustaining the movie on atmosphere alone. Besides, Villenueve isn’t going for coherence; he’s more interested in exploring themes of totalitarianism and conformity.

Quicker take: Eek, spiders!

February 2015’s Album Hits

Drake, If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late: Releasing a mixtape seems like a copout for Drake at this point. His last album, Nothing Was the Same, solidified his status as a hip-hop titan, someone who can hold his own against Kanye and Jay (and Wayne, though pretty much anyone can do that now). Even if it is super lowkey, If You’re Reading This works really well as a reminder of Drake’s undeniable knack for this game. Nothing Was the Same was an industry takeover, so I guess If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late is like Drake raising his hand in the wake of Kanye’s recent singles and saying, “Hey, don’t forget about me. Look at how good I am when I’m not even trying.” Favorite song: “Jungle”

The Vespers, Sisters and Brothers: This Nashville quartet’s last album, Fourth Wall, was one of my favorite albums of 2012. Their willingness to bend folk music in unconventional ways was refreshing in the wake of the Mumfords’ and Lumineers’ ho-hey folk-rock. It’s funny how unconventional sounds conventional three years later; the first couple of songs on Sisters and Brothers are uplifting but staggeringly normal and boring. No matter though- they hit their stride on the third song with the willfully weird “New Kids” and never look back. Favorite song: “Thirst No More”

Bonus EPs

Jimmy Needham, Vice & Virtue: Jimmy Needham took a break from the Internet last summer, and it seems to have revitalized his songwriting. This EP is only 3 songs long, and one is a sharp spoken word track, but Vice & Virtue is the most exciting Jimmy Needham release from front-to-back since his first album. Needham has embraced his soul roots and doubled down on a funkier sound, setting the stage for a killer full album. Favorite song: “Vice & Virtue”

Dave Barnes, Hymns for Her: Similar to Needham’s EP, Hymns for Her is the most exciting Dave Barnes release since…his first album! Barnes recorded the EP out of the desire to record something “more mature”. He definitely succeeded, and in the process got away from overproducing his songs and got at what made his music great in the first place. It’s sort of a throwaway record, but it’d be nice for him to go this direction on an LP in the future. Favorite song: “Good Day for Marrying You”

Song of the Hour: “Depreston” by Courtney Barnett

My wife and I will probably be looking for our first house soon, like before the end of the year if everything goes as planned. She just recently got a job at the University of Oklahoma. She’s been a grad student there for the past couple of years, but now that we know we’ll be in Norman for the long run, we can begin looking to put down some roots.

You may have noticed things aren’t very calm in Norman right now. We went to a student-led protest this morning, so while things may seem dark from outside Norman, I’ve never been more encouraged by the quality of the students at OU.

In some ways, as long as Vicky has a job at the university, we’ll always be tied to to ever-changing machine of academic life, the volatile nature of student life. But we’re not students anymore; at our core, we’re young people becoming adults. Soon, we’ll just be adults- with mortgages, home maintenance duties, and neighbors who plant trees on the wrong side of the property line.

Courtney Barnett, singing of an adult’s malaise with the whimsy of a young person, has made a song just for us. House hunting doesn’t seem like the most fun rite of passage, but Barnett lends it an air of mystique with the most beautiful song she’s recorded to date. Normally, her music has a more punk feel. But in “Depreston”, she seems to succumb to the impending doom of oldness by embracing a dad-rock, jangly-guitar vibe. I’ll have this one on repeat in the tape deck of our first minivan.

Trailer of the Hour: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Let’s start with the bad stuff, shall we?

I’m as excited for this next Avengers movie as the next comic-book-reading guy, but so far I have three concerns, all of which are present in this trailer.

First off (and this is actually more true of the first couple of trailers), why so serious? Seriously, what I (and many) loved about the first movie was the mix of impeccably staged action and impeccably timed banter. A dark Avengers does not get me excited, especially since world-threatening disaster has never been Joss Whedon’s strong suit, even if he tends to go back to that well over and over again.

Secondly, what happens when there are too many characters? The first Avengers was so good at juggling everyone’s development so that no one was the same after the movie was over, and yet no one got lost in the shuffle. It was already a tightrope walk; adding two more (with rumored others) seems pretty risky.

Thirdly, haven’t we already seen enough of Tony Stark’s suits? One of the cool things about Iron Man 3 is that he destroyed all of them, so it seemed like that wouldn’t be a plotline again. But now we’re back to square one, I guess? Hopefully there’s more to Ultron than that, because it’s lame the way it sounds in this trailer.

Okay, now the good stuff.

THIS MOVIE LOOKS AWESOME.

But really- everything above is just a concern. The movie could very well deal adroitly with all three. The third concern is the only one that was compounded by this trailer, since it doubles down on Iron Man’s involvement in Ultron’s creation. The first two are actually diluted by this trailer with its heavy helping of banter and its quick rundown of how all the characters will be used. Come May 1, I’ll be in theaters, ready for awesomeness to explode in my face. In Whedon we trust.

Paddington (2015)

I’m three years old. My dad has taken me to see Aladdin at the theater. My first movie. I’m happy with my candy, but my dad takes the box away from me because I’m playing with it too loudly. I’m about to melt down and demand it back when the lights dim and the movie starts. I stare up at the big screen, wide-eyed, enthralled by the moving pictures of the short, ugly man singing to me. I’m not sure what a Rabian night is. Suddenly, a massive lion head erupts from the desert floor, and I’m screaming, and then we’re driving home. I don’t want to go to the movies again.

I’m fifteen years old. I don’t even remember what movie I just bought a ticket for, but my friends and I are sneaking into The Aviator. We file into the front row, since it’s sold out and this is when movies like The Aviator still attracted over $100 million of box office business. I’m feeling rebellious and maybe just a little bit guilty when the lights dim and the movie starts. I stare up at the big screen, wide-eyed, enthralled by the moving pictures of huge planes and jars full of urine. DiCaprio’s performance amazes me, filling my head with dreams of being an actor myself and achieving the same levels of greatness. I never want to stop going to the movies.

I’m twenty-five years old. It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’ve surprised my wife with a trip to the movies to see Paddington. She’s really excited, because she had a Paddington bear doll when she was a kid. I’m feeling happy, because I’m married now and I have someone else’s excitement to look forward to. I’m worrying about the restaurant I had planned for dinner when the lights dim and the movie starts. I stare up at the big screen, wide-eyed, enthralled by the moving pictures of a jacketed bear and tubs of marmalade. The story has a madcap energy, child-like in its enthusiasm, and suddenly I’m three years old again, only this time I’m laughing at pratfalls and worried that Paddington won’t find a home in London. The movie ends, and my wife and I talk through dinner at an Italian restaurant about how fun it was.

I want to go to the movies again.

Quick Take: Life Itself (2014)

I lost count of the number of times I cried during this documentary about the life and death of film critic Roger Ebert. Surely it wouldn’t be as affecting for most people, since I consider Ebert a personal hero. As I detailed in a post just after his death, Roger Ebert is largely responsible for my love of movies and, by extension, my love of writing about movies and culture. He touched a lot of lives in this way, especially those of filmmakers whose films he championed. One such filmmaker was Steve James, one of the men responsible for Hoop Dreams. That documentary saw success because Siskel & Ebert campaigned far and wide for it. James directed Life Itself, basing it off of Ebert’s autobiography. Life was originally supposed to be about Ebert’s life, but Ebert began succumbing to the effects of all the surgeries he had undergone to remove cancer from his throat, and he died during the course of filming. James’s camera gives us an intimate look at Ebert’s last days and how those who loved him (including his wife, Chaz) handled it.

Even now, thinking back on the movie, I’m moved to tears. If you don’t know or care much about Ebert, Life Itself is still a stunning portrait of a man’s life and death. In that post I mentioned earlier, I wrote this line: “Essentially, everything I have ever written has been an attempt to start a conversation with Roger.” That’s still true today. I got the sense while watching the movie that the finished product of Life Itself was James’s attempt.

Song of the Hour: “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” by Sufjan Stevens

[Disclaimer: The song features explicit language.]

Goodness, it’s so good to hear his voice again.

Stevens is no stranger to sad music, having crafted countless acoustic weepies over the course of his career. “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” is different though. The song sounds about the same; put it next to “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” or “Heirloom”, and it fits right in. His voice is similarly breathy and melancholy, the finger-picking is on point, and the subject matter is suitably morose. But “No Shade” reaches separate depths from his other acoustic folk songs. For the first song, Stevens is giving us an unfettered look into his heart. His mother has died, and he’s turned to drugs for comfort. He knows the pills aren’t solving anything, but turning to God hasn’t made the pain go away either. Every time I listen to this song, it gets harder and harder not to hang my head and weep for him. I haven’t suffered much, but it’s hard to imagine a more accurate song about the pain of dealing with loss.

Sufjan Stevens’s new album, Carrie & Lowell, will release on March 30.