Quick Reviews, Travel Thoughts, and Other Things: May

I hope you had a great May! For me, the best thing about a long holiday weekend is spending half of it at the nicely air conditioned movie theater and the other half sleeping.

Bring on summer, where I will fully take advantage of highly air conditioned spaces like movie theaters for the next couple of months.

Anyhow, here’s what I experienced in May:

Movies

1. Renfield — Sometimes you just need to see Nicolas Cage chewing scenery and Nicholas Hoult being a sad twink, okay? This was a decent movie if you want a few laughs; it could have been a much better movie by doing away with the entire Awkwafina B-plot. Cage and Hoult make this movie work, though. I hope someone out there is writing the Renfield/Guillermo de la Cruz crossover fan fiction that I personally deserver.

2. Tár — Stunning, ambiguous, intense. Cate Blanchett is a powerhouse in this movie. Ignore all of the people writing this off as a movie about “cancel culture” or whatever; this is a much more interesting piece about power and what happens when everything propping up a powerful person begins to be ripped away. Or, alternatively:

3. The Unknown Country — Absolutely beautiful scenery; the movie takes place mostly in South Dakota and Texas, with lots of long driving scenes in between. I saw this at the Music Box, which had a Q&A with writer/director Morrisa Maltz afterwards. She talked about how she essentially started putting this film together before she really had a full plan or vision for it, and how a lot of it was shaped by the people you meet in the film along the way. (Many of the actors are not professionals and the little vignettes spotlighting individuals are all essentially documentary bits.) Hearing that makes the film’s meandering make a lot more sense, though probably doesn’t excuse it. Part documentary, part fiction, something that had I known that going in, probably would have made me enjoy the movie more. If you’ve ever driven alone across large swaths of empty plains, parts of this will resonate with you. (Lily Gladstone, who plays the lead character, is great despite not having much material to work with; she’s also already gathering critical acclaim for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon.)

4. Joyland — Absolutely devastating. Hard to believe that this is the feature length debut from director/writer Saim Sadiq, and that many cast members have very few acting credits to their names. From Pakistan, Joyland is a sensitive look at Haider, a married cis man, who begins working with and eventually falls for Biba, a trans woman, and how everyone’s lives slowly start to unravel around this moment in time. Other smarter writers than me have written eloquently about how this movie isn’t primarily about Haider and his conflict, but is instead overwhelmingly about how patriarchy and homophobia hurts us all, in ways you might not even realize until it’s too late. Every performance in this film is so tender, so vulnerable. Easily an early contender to be on my Best Of list at the end of the year. I don’t want to spoil major plot points but if you’re interested in watching this but have anything you need trigger/content warnings for, let me know.

5. A Single Man — I’d never gotten around to watching this when it came out, which was probably a good thing because I was capital-D Depressed back in 2009–10, and watching this Depressing movie probably would have been a bad time! Or at least a time for a prolonged ugly cry. This is very good and very sad and the fact that Colin Firth did not win the Oscar for this role is honestly a crime.

6. Mainstream — A take on influencer culture that isn’t as profound as it tries to make itself out to be. Also some weird artistic choices in that occasionally little animated flourishes slide across the scene — like at one point a character throws up and little animated stars appear in place of, well, you know. If the animations were consistent throughout the whole movie, that’s one thing, but aside from one sequence where they made sense in context, it was all really random. However, Andrew Garfield is fantastic and saves this movie from being actually awful. He is wildly compelling as the absolute most unhinged pretentious influencer creep who you grow to hate but also can’t look away from.

7. The Tragedy of Macbeth — Joel Coen’s 2021 black-and-white feature. Aesthetically stunning but feels very isolated, and not in a way that always helps the film. I don’t pretend that I’m smart enough to always “get” Shakespeare but I’ve seen Macbeth enough times to know that it works best for me when you understand the impact on the larger world that Macbeth’s descent into violence and madness has. The “well that escalated quickly” aspect of Macbeth doesn’t quite hit the same way in this adaptation. Excellent performances and stunning cinematography, but just missing something.

8. The Starling Girl — I described this on Letterboxd as a horror movie about evangelical/fundamentlist culture and I stand by that. Eliza Scanlen is fantastically moving as a 17-year old in conservative rural Kentucky, coming of age and coming to understand her desires; Lewis Pullman is terrifyingly believable as the charismatic, rebellious youth pastor who Scanlen’s Jem falls for. Simultaneously one of the saddest and most hopeful movies I’ve seen this year. If you’ve spent any time around the evangelical church, much of this will ring true for you, even if Jem’s particular circumstances aren’t your own. If religious trauma and highly dubious consent aren’t for you, then stay away.

9. L’immensità — A family drama/coming-of-age set in 1970s Italy. Gorgeous costuming and set design. This film’s plot lines could have been better connected, it often felt like a series of vignettes that didn’t always get a satisfactory follow through, but Penélope Cruz is magnificent. Newcomer Luana Giuliani as a teen coming of age, exploring gender identity and a first crush, displays such a perfect mix of vulnerability and Trying To Be Tough throughout.

10. You Hurt My Feelings — The movie gently tackles a problem that pretty much every relationship faces at one point or another — the little white lies that people tell to spare someone’s feelings. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is hilarious and I honestly loved Tobias Menzies getting to be in a funny movie. Overall, wildly funny but they should have just let Tobias Menzies use his natural accent, his American accent did not work. (I loved all the people coming out of the theater trying to figure out where they’ve seen Menzies before; I assume the answer is always Outlander which is why they didn’t quite place him, giving the vast gulf between Black Jack Randall and this role.) (PS, watch AMC’s The Terror. Thank you, that is all.)

Books

1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin — I wanted to sit with this one for a while after I finished it, because it did a lot of things that I generally would dislike in books, but I found Tomorrow… to be incredibly compelling. There are some interesting things in here to think about regarding grief, love, intimacy, resiliency, that I know are going to linger with me for a while. The characters are all so messy and flawed and terrible to one another and Zevin isn’t afraid to lean into that mess. She doesn’t apologize for her characters or the way they hurt each other (and themselves). I love when a book isn’t afraid to take chances, either stylistically or with their characters, and Zevin does both here. This book isn’t for everyone, it takes chances and does weird things and “tells” instead of “shows” and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that people bounced off of this book or couldn’t connect with it, but I was fascinated by the story and the way Zevin chose to tell it.

2. Trust, Hernan Diaz —With my apologies to the Pulitzer Prize people but maybe I am just not smart enough for the kinds of books they find most intriguing. The back half of this book is far more interesting than the first half of the book. I admire the experimentation Diaz did with form: one part in-universe novel, one part (auto)biography draft, one part memoir, one part diary excerpts. But if I wanted to read hundreds of words about banking in the early 1900s I would have just read a real biography about a real person. The first two sections are a lot to slog through in order to get to the more interesting bits. Interesting concept but missed the mark for me.

3. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir — This was a fun read! Yes, there are a lot of similarities to The Martian, and yes, it kind of feels like Weir can only write the Sarcastic Nerdy Male characters. And I’m sure if I read all of Weir’s books in a row, I’d be more annoyed by this. But this was enjoyable and made me laugh, and I wanted to keep reading first to understand what had happened to our amnesiac protagonist and then to see how he dealt with the situation.

4. The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, KJ Charles — She Can’t Keep Getting Away With This, where “this” = writing compelling, plot-driven romance novels that I sit down and read in mostly one sitting. This time, Charles drops you right into the action with our two protagonists, who are already acquainted, albeit semi-anonymously. “Kent” and “London” screw things up spectacularly within the first several pages, so it’s pretty easy to guess that they’ll spend the next several hundred fixing things. As with most of Charles’s books, SLoCG has an expansive cast of secondary characters, a dangerous mystery to solve, and two people who find love despite all odds.

5. Woman, Eating, Claire Kohda — I saw a Goodreads review say this book is basically “no plot all vibes” and that’s a pretty fair assessment, and honestly I love it. I had just DNF’ed two books in a row before picking this one up and the kind of mediocre reviews on Goodreads had me concerned. But this book was just what I needed. Despite being mostly vibes, I found Lydia’s struggle to find her place in the human world when she isn’t fully human to be really compelling (she is, naturally, a vampire). I somewhat wish that this was longer, that the world was fleshed out more, but at the same time, this focused look in time at Lydia’s life worked well, and, in fact, I think I would have been disappointed if this novel tried to tie up all the loose ends in Lydia’s life or expand on the vampire mythology and ballooned to a 400-page novel. It was just a (pun sort of intended) taste and overall really worked for me. (If you are a particularly devoted vegan/vegetarian or if you want to avoid content about/alluding to eating disorders, this is not the book for you.)

6. LaGuardia, Nnedi Okorafor (with art by Tana Ford) — Last time I was at my neighborhood library, I learned that there’s a whole section of graphic novels! I picked this one at random and it was fine, I guess? I liked Tana Ford’s character design for the many different alien creatures. The story itself was a little too heavy-handed (although sometimes it seems like heavy-handed is the only way to get a message like this, about immigration and discrimination, across) and I think suffered from a normal weakness of the comic book format, which is that lots of plot points get glossed over very quickly because you only have a certain number of pages to work with. I was interested in knowing more about some of the side characters, and about the backstory of Future, our lead character, and about this alien war that’s brewing without anyone noticing, but we’re given only the most cursory details on all of them. (I wanted to give this the Goodreads Rating Bump Because All The Bad Ratings Are From Racists, but I couldn’t even pretend that I four-stars-enjoyed this.)

Oh The Places I Went

South Haven (and surrounding), Michigan — I spent a weekend with my friend Hilary at The Fields of Michigan, a luxury adults-only glamping spot situated on a blueberry farm in South Haven, which is about 2.5 hours away from Chicago. The spot is beautiful and secluded, though just a short drive away from South Haven, Saugatuck, and Fennville, all of which boast great restaurants, shopping, farms, wineries, etc., if you’d like to get back on the grid for a bit. My weekend was a great blend of planned activities and down time. Very much needed!

What’s Next?

• I’m going to NYC and am going to see my celebrity boyfriend Oscar Isaac on Broadway (in The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window)! I will probably also see Hadestown for the third time. Maybe Parade? I’ll be there for several days so have time to jam in as many theater productions as possible while I’m there. (Theater friends, any recommendations?)

• I did in fact check out a big stack of graphic novels at the library — I was looking for Fun Home but ended up with like five things — so we’ll go through those this month, too.

• I’m about 1/4 of the way into The Sleepless by Victor Manibo, and just started Galatea by Madeline Miller. Not totally sure what this month’s book club book will be, but right now, I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai is winning the poll.

What about you? Cool travel plans? Stack of unread books? What does June have in store for you?

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