InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 7

MORALITY, MURDER, & MISANTHROPIC
MILIEUS IN BULLY AND O
In the summer
of 2001, Lionsgate distributed
two brutal films about young adults
carrying out murderous conspiracy plots
against their friends. The first, Larry Clark’s
Bully, premiered at the performance-focused
Method Fest in mid-June before its U.S.
theatrical distribution the following month;
and late August saw the release of Tim Blake
Nelson’s O (Othello), which followed a recent
cycle of Shakespeare adaptations reimagined
for contemporary young adult milieus
(Romeo + Juliet [1996], 10 Things I Hate About
You [1999], Get Over It! [2001], etc.) Although
Larry Clark’s singularly vicious vision differs
significantly from Nelson’s more conventional
directorial style, these back-to-back releases
exhibit fascinating thematic and tonal
convergences, most specifically in terms of
their shared moral complexity.
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The films’ mutual resonances gesture to a burgeoning sense of
pessimism in America at the turn of the century, the cumulative
consequence of environmental disaster, reactionary politics,
racial tensions, and national and military violence. Consider, for
example, Richard Baumhammer’s racially-motivated mass
murder in 2000; the ecologically catastrophic Martin County coal
slurry spill the same year; and the election of far-right George W.
Bush as U.S. president in January 2001. Bully and O were also
released two years after the Columbine High School massacre of
1999, which spurred several major studios to delay, cancel, or
significantly rework any films depicting young adult violence. O
was itself originally scheduled for release in 1999 but was
ultimately delayed after Columbine High’s Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold murdered twelve of their classmates and one of their
teachers.

films share this central conceit of murder plots enacted by young
adults, though the target in Bully is staged as a substantially less
“innocent” character than Odin. As in O, though, the murder target
grapples with his own conflicted masculinity, and with his
father’s domineering and subtly sinister presence.
Both Larry Clark’s Bully and Tim Blake Nelson’s O mine their grim
stories for nuanced and complex dealings with group morality.
The films’ central acts of violence are dislocated from single
guilty parties, arising instead from stews of personal, familial,
and social factors. O’s Hugo acts as the film’s devious narrative
architect: he manipulates others to join his plot to exterminate
Odin, whom he perceives as the ultimate threat to his
masculinity. Bully finds its own Shakespearean plotter in the
scheming orchestrator of death, Lisa (Rachel Miner), a
contemporary approximation of Lady Macbeth — it is no
coincidence that, after her friend group viciously butchers Bobby
in a remote glade, she frantically insists that she can still smell
the young man’s blood, even despite her accomplices’ assurances
to the contrary.
Clark and Nelson’s films parse their engagements with guilt by
drawing subtly on their sociopolitical milieus — interestingly, Gus
Van Sant’s 2003 minimalist high school shooting drama Elephant
explores related ideas to similar effect. Bully and O are awash in
contemporary cultural signifiers, soundtracked by ‘90s and ‘00s
hip-hop, prickly with the recent Columbine massacre’s
implications of rage-filled, adolescent male disenfranchisement.
O’s wealthy, white, handsome Hugo is suffocated by the
imposition of his father and school’s rigid class and gender
expectations (bound up in subtle and not-so-subtle forms of
racism); and Bully’s largely uneducated, hopeless youths drift
hazily through an environment typified by drug dependency,
existential purposelessness, and casual misogyny.
Indeed, these films are brutally confrontational in their portrayals
of socialized sexism: in a red haze of jealousy, O’s Odin rapes his
girlfriend Desi (Julia Stiles); Bully’s Bobby exorcises his repressed
queerness by sexually humiliating and trafficking several friends,
including his best buddy Marty, and by raping his on-and-off
lover Ali (Bijou Phillips) while forcing her to view gay
“These films’ visual particularities supplement their overarching visions of
doomed American adolescence. To watch Bully and O is to experience the
bleakest of turn-of-the-century, young adult American cinema.
In both films, Manichean moral systems falter. Neither Hugo nor
Lisa represents a one-note cipher of evil. Instead, Bully and O
grant their dark Shakespearean puppeteers with human pathos
— Clark’s film emphasizes the intensification of Rachel’s
insecurity and low self-esteem under her boyfriend Marty’s (Brad
Renfro) abusive and dismissive behavior, and O locates Hugo’s
quiet pain in the presence of his belittling, emasculating father
and coach, Duke (Martin Sheen). Bully and O further emphasize
their respective diffusions of guilt through the structures of
ensemble drama — Bully’s drug-hazed group collectively (and
haphazardly) plans and executes the murder of Bobby, while O’s
Hugo depends heavily on sycophantic classmate Roger (Elden
Henson) to set the stage for his nefarious scheme.
pornography. In O, Desi minimizes her own experience as a
victim; in Bully, Lisa laughs aside her friend Ali’s trauma. Lisa’s
moral murkiness connects to her more generalized state of
tragic denial, flippantly proposing the murder of Bobby Kent and
daydreaming about the possibility of sharing a child with Marty,
even despite his abusive response to her pregnancy. O’s own
complicated “villain,” Hugo, devotes his entire sense of self-worth
to the masculine spectacle of high school basketball games,
injecting HGH, and forming malicious schemes off-court to fill his
psychopathic void of self-comprehension.
Certainly, these films share a fundamental interest in the moral
quagmire endemic to their contemporary America. Larry Clark
3

affords his sweaty, lusty, Florida-set film with the kind of textual immersion and brutal verisimilitude that permeates his entire
preceding oeuvre (from his stunningly brazen debut photography collection, Tulsa [1971], to his harrowing, Cassavetes-esque film
debut, Kids [1995], to his texturally vivid crime-drama Another Day in Paradise [1998]). Bully is a film centered on images, befitting an
auteur whose cinematic expression is steeped in his experience as a photographer: Clak exhibits a pruriently eager obsession with
his cast’s bodies and sexualities, and he places pictorial emphasis on their milieus — Bully is sticky-hot with the texture of beaches,
middle-class domiciles, video game arcades, and humid Florida streets. Though O does not reach Bully’s level of bold aesthetic
sophistication, it does deliberately relegate most of its drama to the basketball courts and residences of its high-class prep school,
stressing Odin’s visible racial marginalization within the almost ubiquitously wealthy whiteness of its student population.
These films’ visual particularities supplement their overarching visions of doomed American adolescence. To watch Bully and O is to
experience the bleakest of turn-of-the-century, young adult American cinema. The pictures are exemplary in their brutal honesty,
ethical opacity, and pessimism. And while their dramas are distinctly intimate, Bully and O transcend the notion of a narrow scope,
gesturing to far larger cultural anxieties and crises. — MIKE THORN
4

AN ODE TO
DECADENCE
An Interview
With Albert Serra
Despite boasting a
filmography mostly known for its
unorthodox approximations to period detail
and the formal subversions that come with
it, the defining characteristic of Albert
Serra’s fiction oeuvre might be its subtler
Thematic undercurrents around the anxiety
of insignificance. Since the bumbling buffoons
of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza struggling to cope
with the death of chivalry in Honour of the Knights (2006),
Serra’s feature-length works have traversed different
approximations to the innate tension of seeing all of one’s
values and convictions crumble in real time, finding a
particular fascination in the sordid details
that arise within these decaying
environments.
5

Pacifiction sees Serra return to many of these recurring
concerns, but from a refreshed perspective, one less interested
in conceptual extravagance and provocation than in playing with
the medium’s possibilities and taking them to their utmost limits.
In this conversation, the Catalan filmmaker talks through his
stylistic evolution, the challenge of fabricating icons for a
contemporary setting, and the possibilities that come with sonic
exploration.
Since the release of Liberté in 2019, you’ve talked about
growing tired of historic depictions, and wanting to establish
some kind of dialogue with the contemporary world. Did any
creative challenges arise while making this contextual
switch in Pacifiction?
For me, the change wasn’t just about wanting to explore
something for my own artistic reasons, more so than it’s also an
inherent part of the world. In my historic works, I now feel there’s
a sense of artificiality; these worlds feel a bit staged to me. Just
by working with performers, the fact that you’re doing an historic
fiction gives them some sense of grounding in certain
iconographies. You don’t really have to create anything. With the
contemporary, you have to create something with no timely
referents; you’re constructing in real time, basically.
“Americans tend to like the
optimism behind new worlds
and their discovery, while we
Europeans seem fixated on
what’s disappearing around us.
Also, a film as conceptual as Liberté really doesn’t work in a
contemporary context — it needs the safety net and background
of historicity to avoid being pure abstraction. So I really wanted
to engage with a more narrative approach, to really go into a
sense of adventure that allows for other kinds of observations. I
took a lot from Stendhal, actually. It wasn’t a thing about having a
thesis on colonialism, nuclear war, or corruption. I feel that
without a political agenda, the film could exist more freely. That’s
why it essentially combines a more objective mise-en-scène,
with a very subjective point of view. It helps make everything
more diffuse and enhance the feel of disorientation.
In your previous works, you did play a lot with the value of
icons, essentially subverting their canonical depictions —
Casanova and Dracula in Història de la meva mort, Don
Quixote in Honor de Cavallería, The Three Wise Kings in El
cant dels ocells. How was the process of creating De Roller to
be your contemporary icon?
A lot came from working with the actors. Benoît Magimel already
boasts a pretty iconic face, with lots of ambiguity and a sense of
ruggedness to it. Then ideas came during the shooting. Things as
essential as De Roller’s tacky sunglasses were pretty much
Magimel’s initiative, and they perfectly embody what I wanted for
the character. You really can’t read his reactions or what he’s
thinking about. I also told Benoît to wear the white suit at all
times, so it became like a second skin to him.
In a way, since I don’t really read the script with my actors or
anything, De Roller came to be an almost hyperrealistic
performance from Magimel, building the character in real time
while he was on screen. Every decision seemed to double-down
on his grotesque aura, like, for example, showing his tattoo. As
soon as you see that, you ask yourself what kind of people you’re
actually dealing with.
In the film, De Roller does feel like the anchor that holds
together a collapsing vessel, which is the world around him.
Despite not having the inherent meaning projected into your
previous narrative works due to their historic setting,
Pacifiction also feels like those last moments before
inevitable change. What’s your relationship with this
apocalyptic idea around “the end of times”?
I love it, since the end of a period always means the death of
something, and the rise of another. It’s inherently
cinematographic, as there’s a natural tension palpable in the
environment. You’re right, all my films can be described as some
sort of portrait of an agonizing and decaying world that’s about
to end. The out-of-place Libertines, Louis XIV’s death: For them, a
world was ending, and then a new one immediately began.
6

Jean Douchet, a famous French critic, once said my films aren’t
about the drama of actions, but the drama of presence. When I
played with these iconic figures you mentioned earlier, the mere
fact they’re depicted on screen creates some sort of tension,
and a natural narrative immediately arises. Those twilight
moments in history are also very textured and rich, and I enjoy
creating these baroque depictions where you can see them
decomposing in every corner. In Pacifiction, the colonial setting
helps amplify these tensions. It erases the nuances of a place
like Europe, where we have bourgeois middle classes and all
kinds of distinctions, while there, you can’t escape the duality
of colonizers and the indigenous population.
Americans tend to like the optimism behind new worlds and their
discovery, while we Europeans seem fixated on what’s
disappearing around us, and have a weird fascination with what
came before us. We’re perpetually living the end of something, I
feel.
You’ve also mentioned previously the influence of ‘70s
American filmmaking, which stands perhaps in a middle
ground from these two sides you mention; having a sordid
feel for beauty underneath their bleak and doom-laden
surfaces. Do you feel that’s also the case with Pacifiction?
Yes, it’s a weirdly hopeful film for me. It has important flashes of
hope, with the abstracted romance between Shona and De Roller,
for example. If the film didn’t have that, perhaps it’d be too
asphyxiating and conceptual, and I had already done Liberté for
that.
Humor is also an important aspect of this. I like how it
disorientates the viewer and puts the images on screen into
question. The viewers have to ask themselves what kind of film
they’re actually watching, with all the ugly sides of a colonial
setting, and also the moments of absurdity that come from this
world’s contradictions and constant chaos. It’s a very unstable
film, which is something I feel sets it apart.
7

Your way of exalting these aspects of Tahiti seems very deliberate as well, particularly its sonic atmospheres, where
naturalistic and artificial textures work together to create an aura of constant paranoia. How was the process of conceiving
Pacifiction’s aural universe?
From the get-go, we wanted to avoid playing with an overly folkloric soundtrack. That, to me, is very boring and cliché. We did use
some Tahitian and Hawaiian recordings from the 1950s, but put them on their head by mixing them with other sounds. That’s the weird
music you listen to in the nightclub, for example. We wanted to keep destroying those sounds, and that’s where the music evolves into
the dissonant soundscapes that basically drown out everything else and become very oppressive.
I got inspiration from Ennio Morricone’s work on some forgotten horror soundtracks from his day in Italy, and how Jean-Luc Godard
used to approach sound as a layer detached from his films’ visuals. For me, it's an obsession. I want sound to have a relationship with
images, but also be able to give you additional information, and even contradict what images tell you.
Does that also relate to an idea you’ve touched upon earlier in your career about the “aristocracy of images” being fully
independent entities almost?
It’s all about images having their own sovereignty. Images need to be autonomous and self-sufficient. They don’t bow down to anyone.
Sovereign images are very irritating, because they don’t respect you as a viewer. They impose themselves and then mock you.
Sovereign images go beyond social or political leanings, and are much purer, almost amoral. For me, cinema is about these unjust
images, the ones you almost have to make an active effort to endure. — INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY ALONSO AGUILAR
8

KICKING THE CANON
LOCAL
HERO
Bill Forsyth
Bill Forsyth may have to bear the reductive, buzzy distinction of
having “put Scottish cinema on the map,” but he at least did so
with both a disarming degree of separation — shifting the
sensation of discovery onto his characters — and an expectedly
warm familiarity. Originally an aspiring writer, Forsyth prioritizes
novelistic detail over momentum, which allows him to poke fun at
his country while also reveling in its low-key uniqueness, juggling
breaks in perspective like they were the most graceful of chapter
or paragraph breaks.
Local Hero (1983), only Forsyth’s third feature film, is a
crystallized, just barely diaphanous collection of his gestural
strengths, the narrative hitting pockets of great poignancy and
astuteness, its ambling gait unlocking the significance of all the
circumstantial happenstance (that’s daubed upon the narrative)
as respective grace notes. With a subtle environmentalism
undergirding the film, Forsyth renders human relationships
inextricable from the natural world: A Texas oil man, MacIntyre
(Peter Riegert), is sent off to the fictional coastal town of
Ferness, Scotland, by his batty, star-gazing boss, Felix Happer
(Burt Lancaster), to convince the local populace to allow their
land to be purchased and repurposed as a refinery. MacIntyre
expects to meet resistance, but the townspeople actually
welcome the chance of being bought out, the first of many
Forsyth subversions. With figures as high as they are, Forsyth
doesn’t pretend that there wouldn’t be at least some enticement,
thus embarking on a journey of discovery rather than a standard
us-vs.-them standoff.
9

KICKING THE CANON
The beauty of the landscape — wonderfully captured and
preserved by cinematographer Chris Menges — throws Mac, as
well as his Scottish associate, Danny Oldsen (Peter Capaldi), into
something of a comfy tizzy, tendrils of relaxation working their
way over the two, as Mac goes wading through tide pools as his
beard grows out, and Danny romantically communes with a
selkie-scientist, Marina (Jenny Seagrove). The jokes are loosely
strung together, relying on a repetition that’s atomized across
scenes, rather than actual delivery, and this method of
snowballing humor makes Forsyth a modest heir to Preston
Sturges (which is even more visible in his follow-up, 1984’s
Comfort and Joy), with the comedy leveling the playing field for all
the players; there are some ripostes and whatnot, but this isn’t
exactly a movie where characters score off one another.
Lancaster, for his part, handles the broader comedic strokes,
while Riegert trades straight-man duties with Dennis Lawson,
who, as Gordon Urquhart, is Ferness’ financial advisor, hotel
proprietor, bartender, soothsayer, and more. The dynamic
between these two men — a friendship borne from what was
anticipated to be a more fractious professional exchange —
speaks to Local Hero’s simple, yet fleeting, pleasures, an almost
random union between two men that exudes a self-effacing,
puzzle-piece perfection. In fact, the majority of the relationships
in Local Hero, in their finiteness, foresee modern globalization;
Mac was dispatched with money on the mind, but the isolation —
communication with the States achievable only by faulty
payphone — effectively ensconced him. It’s not a fantasy about
being unreachable, because reachability wasn’t as all-pervasive
then as it is now, but rather proof of the tangible possibility of
inner change, free from influence of all kinds. — PATRICK
PREZIOSI
10

KICKING THE CANON
GIVE UP
THE POSTAL SERVICE
In an era when any slob with a next-day delivery synth can create bleep-bloops in
their bedroom and go viral overnight, the musical and technological landscape of
the new millennium might as well be a different planet. But back in 2001, it was the
pre-streaming, pre-YouTube era, and indie scenes mattered a great deal, either
clustered geographically (Athens, GA; Omaha, NE; Toronto, Canada) or around
certain marquee labels (Merge, Matador, Saddle Creek). We were fresh off the
explosion of the NYC dance-punk/garage rock revival but ahead of the full-blown
movement posthumously dubbed “indie sleaze.” A certain subset of overwrought
teenagers — whom this writer definitely wouldn’t know anything about — cried to
Bright Eyes and raged to Desaparecidos; their primetime viewing was equal parts
The O.C. and the Iraq War. Oh, and iPods. Rest in power, click wheel.
Given all of this antiquated technology, it’s fitting that one of the biggest bands of
the era made their music through the humblest means available: good
old-fashioned snail mail. Seattle-based Ben Gibbard, the prototypical soft boi
frontman of soon-to-be-indie megastars Death Cab for Cutie, and prolific electro
experimentalist Jimmy Tamborello (AKA Dntel), who lived in LA, were scene mates
and kindred spirits. Their one previous collaboration was the song “(This Is) The
Dream of Evan and Chan'' from the latter’s well-received album Life Is Full of
Possibilities. It’s long and fuzzy, simultaneously upbeat and muted, and Gibbard’s
exceedingly gentle voice cuts through Tamborello’s glitchy production like velvet
through velcro. This would become the critically and commercially irresistible
11

KICKING THE CANON
template for Give Up, the duo’s 2003 full-length album under the
Postal Service moniker (named for the beleaguered agency that
ferried their words and instrumentals to each other along the
West Coast, and at one point even sold the album on their
website). Widely beloved and certified platinum, the album’s ten
songs propelled a generation of college radio DJs, music
directors, ad execs, and lovesick indie kids to such great heights,
the likes of which have arguably never been reached since.
“[Give Up’s] emotional maturity
never veers into self-pity, and
complements instead of
clashes with the rest of the
album’s moony-eyed impulses.
There’s no shortage of self-conscious sincerity in indie rock, and
the early 2000s were a hotbed of singer-songwriters wearing
their thesauruses on their sleeves. But something about Ben
Gibbard — his crunchy-granola Pacific Northwest bonafides? His
observational songwriting (no gimmicks here, *cough* Sufjan
*cough*)? His downright angelic voice? — had the rare and
alluring ability to make listeners feel like actual friends, not
therapists or romantic rivals or one-sided confidantes. His lyrics
aren’t necessarily confessional; he’s too adept at toggling
between perspectives, often with the help of backup singers Jen
Wood and Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis. But Give Up’s best songs are
shot through with loneliness and self-awareness that’s both
relatable and earned. That’s why opener “The District Sleeps
Alone Tonight” is such a sucker punch; a line like “I am finally
seeing / Why I was the one worth leaving” elegantly signals
heartbreak and growth in equal measure: adulthood in a nutshell.
the best showcase of the album’s prevailing emotion, which is
raw, heartfelt earnestness. In terms of sheer lovestruck bravado,
the album’s contemporary torchbearer might just be the Queen of
Poptimism herself, Carly Rae Jepsen; both she and Gibbard have
a gift for delivering even the cheesiest line with an absolute
straight face until you, too, are left believing that there truly is
“Nothing better / Than making you my bride / And slowly growing
old together.” But it’s not cheesy if it’s true — and, as Gibbard
plaintively sings, “I want so badly to believe / That there is truth
and love is real.”
After many such songs in a row (plus a quick detour for a bubbly
little number about air travel, which is perhaps the ideal thematic
match for Tamborello’s naturally buoyant production), “This Place
Is a Prison'' comes as a tonal shock. It’s almost impossible to
make a “gilded cage” metaphor interesting, and the cynicism of
the line “What does it take / To get a drink in this place” doesn’t
track with Gibbard’s default sincerity (But in the hands of The
National? Yes). No matter: Give Up closes with the honeyed
fantasy worlds of “Brand New Colony” and “Natural Anthem,” two
gorgeously constructed pop confections that start off laughably
idealistic before becoming oddly convincing and then eventually
downright realistic through sheer force of will. “Everything will
change,” Gibbard sings wistfully, not knowing how right he’d be.—
SELINA LEE
This emotional maturity never veers into self-pity, and
complements instead of clashes with the rest of the album’s
moony-eyed impulses. And there are plenty, veering from the
mechanics of spontaneous combustion (“We Will Become
Silhouettes”) to a dream about the JFK assassination (“Sleeping
In”). But songs like “Nothing Better” and “Clark Gable” are perhaps
12

FILM REVIEWS
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA
Peyton Reed
The 31st (!) film in the never-ending Marvel Cinematic Universe,
and the kickoff to its Phase Five (whatever that means), is
Quantumania, the third entry in the Ant-Man series. But if you
approach this latest effort hoping to recover the previous
Ant-Man movies’ simple comic charms, relatively more grounded
action sequences, and earnest goofball characters, well, you
might be in for somewhat of a disappointment. But even given
this installment’s placeholder status as both a wrap-up to a
sorta-trilogy and a jumping-off point for a whole new run of
these conveyor-belt blockbusters, it’s the first one in a little while
that manages to realize some idiosyncrasy and affable silliness.
Ant-Man, AKA Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), has settled in nicely to
post-Thanos celebrity. He’s written a cash-in tell-all
autobiography about his time as an Avenger, he’s got a lovely
thing going with Hope Van Dyne, AKA The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly),
and he’s repaired his relationship with his formerly estranged
daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton). Meanwhile, Hope’s dad,
original Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), has been happily
reunited with his wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer). Janet spent thirty
years trapped in the Quantum Realm, a subatomic world where
time and space do weird movie stuff and which allowed the
Avengers to save everyone in Endgame.
Anyway, uh-oh: turns out Hank and Cassie have been doing some
science stuff tinkering in the tiny dimension. Janet seems
immediately upset, but before anything can be done about that,
everyone gets sucked into the aforementioned Realm. There they
find that it isn’t quite the desolate landscape Janet previously
claimed, but instead a bustling civilization all its own. There’s
weird monsters, sentient buildings with cannons for arms,
psychics, warrior women, and Bill Murray. On paper, the easy
comparison (and one a lot of folks have already been making)
would, of course, be a sort of mega Star Wars cantina scene, but
in practice the intrinsic goofiness, deliberately stupid humor, and
ludicrous designs have more in common with Douglas Adams.
Also down here is Kang (Jonathan Majors), a very powerful being
of some kind who has seized power and built an
13

empire in order to escape the Quantum Realm for… well, for
reasons that aren’t particularly clear. He seems to be a cruel
tyrant, though, and Janet apparently has some history with him
and is adamant that he can’t be allowed into our dimension. In
any case, setting this guy up as the newest big bad guy in the
MCU doesn’t really land, although Majors does at least bring a
curious sadness to the character that lends a little intrigue.
The humor in Quantumania is probably its strongest feature.
Rudd remains an MCU secret weapon, making Scott the kind of
guy whose aw-shucks sarcasm betrays a hint of narcissism that
sits nicely alongside his earnestness. A scene in which a being
made of goo interrogates him about how many holes his body
has features Rudd taking a beat to count silently in his head; it’s
a genuinely hilarious moment, and the movie consistently hits at
that level of funny. Also hilarious: a recurring sight gag involving
the legacy comics character M.O.D.O.K. and the digitally
smooshed face of the actor who plays him. Mileages will vary
with this bit, but it may just be the funniest thing to ever grace
an MCU film.
On the other hand, the rest of the digital work — which it will not
surprise you to learn is a significant amount of the movie — is
mostly abysmal. Certainly the green screen of it all has become a
hallmark of the Marvel oeuvre, but aside from the human actors
there seems to be barely a real physical element in the entire
movie. It’s not that the design is bad — far from it — but there
doesn’t seem to be any real weight to anything. Plus, the rusty
red/brown color palette becomes pretty monotonous after a
while, and that’s long before the traditional gigantic CGI
conflagration that constitutes the third acts of these things
arrives. Director Peyton Reed brought a lot of creative action and
formal economy to the previous two Ant-Man movies, but there’s
nothing to do with this most of the plot fodder here, and there’s a
serious dearth of the
big-stuff-gets-small-and-small-stuff-gets-big gags that drove
those previous entries.
Ultimately, what viewers will get out of Quantumania probably
depends on what they’re willing to put in. It seems likely the film
will land better for those who don’t particularly care about these
damn Marvel movies, but are instead happy to have a good time
with an amusing and deeply silly goof. For those who have any
kind of stake in MCU products for any reason, this one might fall
flat. And for anyone actively sick of them, avoid this at all costs.
Qunatumania will do nothing to convert you. — MATT LYNCH
DIRECTOR: Peyton Reed; CAST: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly,
Jonathan Majors, Bill Murray; Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer
DISTRIBUTOR: Walt Disney Pictures; IN THEATERS: February 17;
RUNTIME: 2 hr. 5 min.
OF AN AGE
Goran Stolevski
Director Goran Stolevski has given his sophomore feature, Of an
Age, a suitably malleable title that effectively expresses the
various thematic and emotional preoccupations guiding the film.
Most identifiably, it’s a coming-of-age story of a sort, or perhaps
more accurately a coming-of-sexuality story. The film opens —
and mostly remains — in 1999 Melbourne. Kol (Elias Anton), a
17-year-old Serbian immigrant, receives a frantic phone call from
dance partner and friend, Ebony. She’s woken up on an unfamiliar
beach, waterlogged, down one shoe, and without any idea how to
make it home for the duo’s dance final in two hours. She’s a
swirling mess of pure hysteria, and Stolevski stretches this
opening sequence — of Kol’s scrambling to find and retrieve
Ebony and of her barely discernible screeches into a grimy
payphone — to its breaking point, opening his film into a
profound state of anxiety (foreshadowing Kol’s inner turmoil).
Ebony, who desperately doesn’t want her mother to find out
about her late-night partying — she quickly dismisses the idea
that the bump of speed she took was the cause of the chaos;
“like half a line, a hyphen” — tells Kol to discreetly get ahold of
her older brother Adam, who has a car. But by the time Adam
picks up Kol, any hope the dancers have of making it to their
final has evaporated, and the film settles into a much gentle
register.
FILM REVIEWS
It’s an effective, if a bit heavy-handed, subversion of the film that
is to follow, which takes inspiration and cribs influence from the
woozy rhythms and delicate romances of films like Weekend and
Moonlight (more on those later), as well as Wong Kar-wai’s
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filmography (the director is even explicitly referenced). The
director’s visual style here reflects that pivot, forgoing the more
Malickian ethereality and formal experimentation of debut You
Won’t Be Alone and its existential inclinations, and adopting a
more intimate visual palette, captured in tight, dense
compositions and shot in a lot of low light. This formal character
really begins to assert itself during Adam and Kol’s extended
driving sequence to pick up Ebony, one which finds the two
young men getting to know each other. Adam, a handful of years
or so older than Kol, is moving to Argentina the next day to
pursue a Ph.D. in linguistics, while Kol opens up about his
conservative family and struggles with high school life. This bit
of bonding is mostly endearing, although it also reflects Of an
Age’s worst tendencies: namely, the rather visible formula
beneath the film’s lo-fi, swoony textures. The two bond over their
talk of classic literature, establish a former-outsider-comfortscurrent-outsider
dynamic, and embark on that favorite structure
of romantic dramas: the 24-hour whirlwind (see again Weekend,
but also the Before trilogy and Medicine for Melancholy for
obvious aesthetic, emotional, and structural reference points
here). And when the closeted Kol finds out that Adam is gay, he
immediately overcompensates by dropping “bro” into every
sentence. We’ve seen this all before.
Of course, this is only a token act of resistance on Kol’s part, and
the two soon become physically and emotionally intimate across
the day's events. But Of an Age is much more than simply a
“coming out” film; Stolevski clearly understands the reductive
and regressive nature of such representation. Soon moving away
from the familiar narrative beats that give pause in the early
going, the film begins to lean more into another functional
purpose of its title: capturing a specific time and place, and
specifically the prevailing cultural attitudes toward queerness.
Stolevski litters the early going with obvious signifiers of the
1990s — references to dial-up Internet, cheap chain necklaces,
car rides soundtracked by cassette tapes (if you want further
evidence of the film’s particular aesthetic character, note that
the diegetic music is mostly French tunes while myriad scenes
are set to the non-diegetic likes of Live and The Cardigans —
recollecting a time when even the most progressive presentation
of gay characters in the larger culture and media reduced them
to periphery types and caricatures, and that’s when they weren’t
being used in service of bad-taste gags. This isn’t mere
affectation or period detail or autoficitive authenticity, however,
but rather a carefully considered texturing that allows Of an Age
to earn its pathos. For Kol, who is just now contending with his
own identity, the tragedy of the day’s close feels real because of
its time and place; the future is always murky, but it’s now
murkier for him than it was 24 hours ago. (When Kol is first
saying goodbye to Adam, without knowing they’ll see each other
again, he offers a pitiful: “Have a safe and cool Ph.D.”) And then
there are the potential power disparities at play with the older
Adam entreating the impressionable Kol, which to this day an
embarrassing percentage of society might point to as evidence
of the predatory nature of all non-straight, gender-binary people.
Stolevski instead uses that tension to emphasize the insidious
power dynamics of all interpersonal relationships rooted in social
mores (most reflected in Ebony, who consistently mistreats her
outcast “friend”), which are historically slow-moving and
bigotry-spawning.
All of this leads to the film’s coda-esque final 20 minutes, which
skips ahead 11 years, and finds both Kol and Adam returning for
Ebony’s wedding. Immediately established here are the social
shifts with regard to queerness: Kol, who in 1999 was constantly
called a “homo” by his peers, is now living openly, and as such is
the guest du jour for the bridesmaids, who all demand a dance
and ask about his desire to marry. The treatment is kinder, but
no less ambivalent of his interiority; their allegiance is to cultural
whims. But this is also where Stolevski drops what is essentially
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the film’s thesis, and it’s an emotional doozy. Kol, pained by what
he has learned of Adam’s life since they last saw each other all
those years ago, attempts to leave the wedding early. Adam
catches up with him, and Kol delivers a monologue of both
profound nuance and power (Moonlight hat tip right here) about
still feeling captive to the emotions of one day; joy at the
experience, grief at its loss, and something more confused at
its permanent affixment in his life. Despite the obvious
touchstone-heavy nature of both this climactic scene and the
film as a whole, Stolevski is smart to cut his romance with a
necessary thorniness, understanding how the inherent inequity
of connection and emotional experience can both shape and
damage us, and the ways a life can directly flower from such
formative moments. We can be emboldened by them, yes, but
also forever trapped by their webs. It’s a moving bit of realism too
infrequently sutured into films of a romantic bent, astute in its
psychological acuity and moving in its raw emotionality. And it’s
this quality, this commitment to imbuing familiar parts with
surprising depth and grace, that allows Stolevski’s films to stand
apart. The director is two films into his career and we’re yet to
see a work unburdened of palpable influence, but he’s still
outpacing most while still honing in on his own distinctive voice.
— LUKE GORHAM
DIRECTOR: Goran Stolevski; CAST: Elias Anton, Thom Green,
Hattie Hook, Jack Kenny; DISTRIBUTOR: Focus Features; IN
THEATERS: February 17; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 39 min.
MARLOWE
Neil Jordan
For a director like Neil Jordan, whose long, seemingly
middle-of-the-road filmography actually houses digressions from
respectable adaptation into unrespectable pulp and soap, a
Raymond Chandler homage would be expected, even more so a
riff on a preexisting riff. Marlowe, named after the perennial
detective, is itself based on John Banville’s The Black-Eyed
Blonde, as much an homage to Chandler and Marlowe as it is a
continuation, written under the pseudonym of Benjamin Black.
Perhaps Jordan was able to recognize how the
mpossible-to-replicate idiosyncrasies of Chandler sank
otherwise capable filmmakers — like Robert Montgomery, whose
1947 Lady in the Lake gets strangled by the author’s own cut-up
obfuscation — and decided to put another degree of separation
between himself and his source character for some guaranteed
safety.
Banville’s straight-ahead novel reads more as a personal test laid
out by the author, to mimic Chandler’s prose sans alcoholism,
depression, erratic focus, etc. The Black-Eyed Blonde — and thus,
Marlowe — is built atop noir tropes: Mrs. Clare Cavendish (Diane
Kruger) shows up at Marlowe’s (Liam Neeson) office, inexplicably
asking for him to find an ex-lover, film extra Nico Peterson, who’s
assumed dead, killed by a mobbed-up club owner (Danny
Houston), but may be… alive? The “standards” of the plot already
call attention to the deficiencies of Banville, and in turn, Jordan,
who’s less making a palimpsest than he is a spiraling series of
copycat gestures. Marlowe is most fascinating in its margins,
bridging Dublin and Barcelona with faux-Angelino yellow filters,
imparting the idea of perpetually unsteady ground, where
“nothing is as it seems,” but quite literally.
Is this intentional dissonance or laziness? Probably the latter, but
Jordan is still too savvy not to realize the opportunity to render a
more inscrutable sense of place as applied to Chandler’s prose,
and has now taken to citing the original Blade Runner’s own Los
Angeles as an inspiration. The jaundiced palette, the influx of
disorienting neon in nighttime driving scenes (easily Marlowe’s
most immediately pleasurable sequences), do little to restore the
air that Neeson sucks out of the film every time his 100th screen
role lumbers into view. He’s no Humphrey Bogart, nor is he Elliot
Gould; he conveys little beyond his own Neesonness, a pillar of
cinematic conventionality, effectively undercutting the modestly
experimental spirit of Jordan. — PATRICK PREZIOSI
DIRECTOR: Neil Jordan; CAST: Liam Neeson, Jessica Lange,
Diane Kruger, Danny Huston; DISTRIBUTOR: Open Road Films; IN
THEATERS: February 15; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 50 min.
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EMILY
Frances O’Connor
If one thing can be said for the award-winning, box office-safe,
well-worn road of the biopic, it’s that with the volume of films
being made, at least directors are starting to get innovative with
the form. With Emily, actress Frances O’Connor (making her
writing and directing debut) embraces the lack of her heroine’s
biographical detail and uses it to her advantage, taking the bare
bones of what is known about Emily Brontë’s short life as a
starting point for a gothic imagining of the Wuthering Heights
writer’s relationship with her family and her first (and only)
romantic love. Instead of following the typical biopic beats,
however, O’Connor’s creative freedom manifests as something
slightly more chaotic, forgoing fact in favor of an emotional
honesty that feels entirely earned, and lends itself to O’Connor’s
central conception of Brontë’s life as a short one lived with
vibrant intensity.
“Emily manages to sidestep
some of the aesthetic
conventions of its genre,
leaning instead into horror
and the distinctly gothic.
With historical veracity a non-issue, O’Connor is able to branch
out from the usual limitations of the biopic trope. Instead of
feeling compelled to find ways to make the very act of writing (a
notably solitary pursuit) cinematic, O’Connor makes her film
entirely about the character herself rather than her craft. She
assumes familiarity with Wuthering Heights, but by no means
requires it, sparing her audience any knowing winks and nods to
the novel, and focusing instead on a narrative that feels far more
true to her imagined version of the author. Even more, Emily
manages to sidestep some of the aesthetic conventions of its
genre, leaning instead into horror and the distinctly gothic in one
unsettling, mask-heavy sequence — one which O’Connor
orchestrates in such a way as to provide a clear guide for other
directors on how best to subvert the current-day biopic’s
overwhelming staleness.
Emily is also a film that features uniformly satisfying
performances. But even so, Emma Mackey and Oliver
Jackson-Cohen are a cut above. The former manages to animate
Emily with an almost animalistic skittishness that lends her
moments of stillness a deeply unnerving quality, and she remains
grounded even in the film’s instances of romantic melodrama.
Jackson-Cohen’s performance, which is largely centered around
that very romantic melodrama, is an oddly brave one, avoiding
falling into the role of yet another handsome bodice-ripper in
favor of far more complex, less easily digestible character work.
As local curate William Weightman, Jackson- Cohen perfectly
marries the pathetic and disdainful with something genuinely
magnetic, conjuring up a romantic lead who feels entirely
synchronous with both Emily the character and Emily the movie,
meeting Mackey halfway while never outshining her. O’Connor’s
film finds success in balance, and the result of her consistently
surprising approach is a pleasantly subversive work of sideways
biography. — MOLLY ADAMS
DIRECTOR: Frances O’Connor; CAST: Emma Mackey, Oliver
Jackson-Cohen, Fionn Whitehead;; DISTRIBUTOR: Bleecker
Street; IN THEATERS: February 17; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 10 min.
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THE OUTWATERS
Robbie Banfitch
The found footage genre has proven itself to be quite resilient,
particularly in the realm of horror. Pioneered by Ruggero
Deodato, director of the 1980 cult film Cannibal Holocaust —
although Orson Welles made use of the technique when filming
his 2018 drama, The Other Side of the Wind, in the 1970s,
predating Deodato's Italian exploitation classic — the genre
reached new heights of popularity at the end of the millennium
with The Blair Witch Project. Although not the first of its kind, the
film captivated audiences with its raw, immersive camerawork,
and a marketing campaign that blurred the line between reality
and fiction. But while there was a novelty to Blair Witch's
infamous shaky cam cinematography, it has since become part
of a widely understood cinematic grammar, sometimes being
used to great effect and other times functioning mainly as an
excuse to cut corners.
Robbie Banfitch's The Outwaters, unfortunately, feels much like
the latter. Following a group of thirty-somethings who are
besieged by an extraterrestrial force, the film sets up its found
footage conceit quickly with the help of a panicked 911 call that
play over title cards indicating that Robbie (Robbie Banfitch),
Angela (Angela Basolis), Scott (Scott Schamell), and Michelle
(Michelle May) have all gone missing. The footage recovered from
Robbie's camera by the Mojave County Police Department begins,
innocently enough, with the group preparing to head into the
Mojave Desert to shoot a music video for Michelle. Things go
smoothly enough at first: the group makes it to the desert, goes
for a swim in a shallow lake, and finally sets up camp by a
hillside. But soon, strange phenomena begin to occur. What
starts out as loud thunder and barely discernible figures lurking
in the distance escalates into buckets of blood and gore, and
screaming flesh snakes that look like they escaped a Spirit
Halloween.
The film's gear shift comes halfway through the runtime and is
more than a little abrupt; the more it delves into genre
indulgences, the less it convinces. Banfitch's attempts at
ratcheting up the tension aren't completely devoid of excitement
— naked axe murderers aren't exactly the most original horror
adversaries, but seeing one in silhouette can still deliver decent
chills — and there is an eerie quality inherent to the vastness of
a desert. Unfortunately, the director — who also wrote, shot, and
edited Outwaters — instead treats the audience to endless
sequences of his characters stumbling aimlessly through the
dark of night while choosing to keep the screen almost entirely
black for minutes on end, the action only occasionally illuminated
by a single flashlight beam.
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Given the modest budget with which Banfitch is working, perhaps
some visual shortcomings can be forgiven. What's harder to
gloss over, however, is all the other ways this film falls apart
after the hour mark. Firstly, the skeletal narrative devolves into a
disorienting and utterly shapeless shock montage that ranges
from moderately effective to groan-inducing, never mind that it
gives up on its found footage form as soon as the story begins to
go off the rails, with numerous scenes featuring non-diegetic
music as well as an increasingly comical devotion to keeping the
camera running. Secondly, the writing — rarely the strong suit of
films of this kind, to be fair — is dreadful. After being attacked by
an axe-wielding stranger, Robbie suffers a head injury that
leaves him severely disoriented, although he still manages to
make his way back to camp in the pitch-black desert. Angela,
who doesn't notice his injuries, asks him what's going on, to
which he replies, "my head is raining," the sound of dripping
blood accompanying the ridiculous line. Later on, as all four are
being chased through the desert by an unknown entity, one of
the girls can be heard sobbing and crying out for her mother,
repeating, "I want my mommy" over and over.
The rest of the runtime is mostly devoted to Robbie either
fending off the unconvincing alien snakes, throwing up blood, or
wandering the desert in his birthday suit. There are some
implications of a time loop and a possible government
conspiracy thrown in very late in the game, but by that point, The
Outwaters is more or less completely lost. After sitting through
the last of the film's underlit night scenes — a
disturbing-but-not-really encounter with a creature that feels
like a rip-off of Possession's tentacled monster — we are sent on
our well-deserved way with one last parting gift: a character
mutilating their own genitalia. Why, you ask? Likely because
Banfitch knew someone with a knack for prosthetics. It surely
wasn't because it’s related to anything in the interminable two
hours that preceded.
Microbudget horror is having somewhat of a moment currently,
with the Canadian liminal space horror Skinamarink even
surprisingly hitting North American theaters earlier this year. But
with this mini-boom comes the chore of wading through endless
genre detritus in hopes of coming across something worthwhile,
which The Outwaters, sadly, isn’t.. If YouTube creepypasta clichés
and 2000s-era shaky cam are all these cheapo films have to
offer, it might be better to start giving young horror directors a
budget (and some decent screenwriters) again. — FRED BARRETT
DIRECTOR: Robbie Banfitch; CAST: Robbie Banfitch, Angela
Basolis, Michelle May, Scott Schamell; DISTRIBUTOR: Cinedigm;
IN THEATERS: February 9; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 50 min.
THE OTHER FELLOW
Matthew Bauer
What do a master spy, an ornithologist, and a bunch of regular
dudes from around the world have in common? That’s the
premise of Matthew Bauer’s new documentary, The Other Fellow,
whose protagonists all share a name with MI6’s most notorious
agent. The film opens with archival footage of Bond’s creator, Ian
Fleming, acknowledging that he flagrantly lifted the moniker
from one of his favorite bird-watching books. But who could have
predicted that those two syllables would eventually become a
mainstay of global pop culture? Many of Bauer’s interview
subjects were born before the existence of the Hollywood
franchise machine, and became unknowingly doomed to a deluge
of ridicule and disbelief one man likens to a “plague of locusts.”
Most view the association as a blessing and a curse, tediously
hearing the same jokes over and over again, or dealing with
endless comparisons to their suave, womanizing counterpart.
And good luck trying to Google yourself.
This complex love-hate dynamic drives some Bonds to change
their name and others to exploit it — or, in the case of Gunnar
Schäfer from Nyrbo, Sweden, embrace it to an almost
pathological degree. As a child, Schäfer latched onto Fleming’s
creation as the alpha-male role model he lacked when his father
abandoned the family. In his wake, Schäfer was essentially raised
by 007, adopting Bond’s mannerisms, wardrobe, and
bachelordom. He even legally changed his name to “Bond
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FILM REVIEWS
James,” so that he can credibly (albeit confusingly) call himself
“Bond. James Bond.” This personal obsession also bleeds into his
professional life, since he operates the world’s only James Bond
museum.
In NYC, a theater director finds himself heralded by the local
tabloids as “the real James Bond” despite being gay and
possessing a “keg” rather than a six-pack. As much as he hates
the inevitable media hoopla, he agrees to participate in various
Bond-related stunts, including an appearance on David
Letterman and a commercial for an Atlantic City casino. For him,
these activities are a way to inject his own identity into a
phenomenon that eclipses everyone but the Bond du jour. In
another segment, various interviewees describe what it’s like
having to address the police with a name that’s classic prank call
fodder. In one instance, a Black man from South Bend, Indiana, is
actually convicted of obstruction of justice for allegedly saying
version” of his namesake can get away with it. “A Black James
Bond is doomed.” Bauer connects this statement to the racism
that Idris Elba faced when being considered to replace Daniel
Craig, specifically the detractors who deemed him “too street” to
play the role convincingly.
But while these vignettes are entertaining in their own right, the
most surprising and emotional James Bond origin story actually
belongs to a woman. Escaping an abusive relationship with her
young son, she eventually changes their names — take a wild
guess what she comes up with — as a way to blend in and
maintain their seclusion. It’s a ploy worthy of the real James
Bond, and one that injects the otherwise lighthearted film with
genuine pathos and suspense.
At a brisk 80 minutes, Bauer and co-writer Rene van Pannevis let
the Bonds speak for themselves, and even return to Fleming and
his unwitting collaborator, the ornithologist who started it all. By
the time the latter’s wife Mary angrily confronts the author, the
cat’s out of the bag, and Fleming’s character is well on his way to
becoming a pop culture mainstay. But the author returns her
stern letter with the surprising offer for them to crib his name, a
fanciful twist that wouldn’t be out of place in one of his novels. As
far as we know, they haven’t taken him up on the offer. But the
007 franchise shows no sign of slowing down, and the other
James Bonds of the world seem to be coping with their
secondhand infamy. But please, don’t ask them, “shaken or
stirred?” They might respond with their own license to kill. —
SELINA LEE
DIRECTOR: Matthew Bauer; CAST: —; DISTRIBUTOR: Gravitas
Ventures; IN THEATERS & STREAMING: February 17; RUNTIME: 1
hr. 20 min.
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FILM REVIEWS
OLD REVIEWS NEW RELEASES
PACIFICTION
Albert Serra
“An apparently dramatic break from the characteristics that have
come to define it [Serra’s filmography]. Though not a total
departure from his cinematic interests, Pacifiction at times
comes off as a conscious realignment toward the values of the
[Cannes] competition programmers, adopting a more
conventional narrative structure and approach to staging… but
what initially appears to be radical departure for this director
quickly reveals itself to be of a piece with the logic that has
previously dictated his filmmaking approach.” — M.G. MAILLOUX
DIRECTOR: Albert Serra; CAST: Benoît Magimel, Pahoa
Mahagafanua, Sergi López; DISTRIBUTOR: Grasshopper Film;
IN THEATERS: February 17; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 42 min.
MUTZENBACHER
Ruth Beckermann
“Mutzenbacher as a whole, though, may be said to conduct an
investigation that is archaeological in the sense Foucault gave
the term. Beckermann’s conception is certainly pedagogical and
didactic, but hers is a pedagogy and didacticism geared toward
excavating the gap between the film’s subjects and the original
text… In this way, Mutzenbacher functions as a kind of montage
experiment without cutting, allowing Beckermann to
demonstrate a fundamental lesson of the modern cinema: that if
one only knows how to present them, it’s enough to let one’s
subjects speak.” — LAWRENCE GARCIA
DIRECTOR: Ruth Beckermann; CAST: —; DISTRIBUTOR: MUBI; IN
THEATERS: February 17; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
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FILM REVIEWS
THE INTEGRITY OF JOSEPH CHAMBERS
Robert Machoian
“In… The Integrity of Joseph Chambers, [director Robert]
Machoian announces his intentions right in the title. This is a
morality play of sorts, the gradual realignment of a man
seemingly too foolish to realize who is, and above all who he is
not… Machoian and Crawford thread a tight needle with the
character… [and] The Integrity of Joseph Chambers suggests
that many different things can make you a man, but the ability to
kill isn’t one of them.” — MICHAEL SICINSKI
DIRECTOR: Robert Machoian; CAST: Clayne Crawford, Jordana
Brewster, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Michael Raymond-James;
DISTRIBUTOR: Gravitas Ventures; IN THEATERS & STREAMING:
February 17; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 36 min.
RETURN TO SEOUL
Davy Chou
“The film you’re probably picturing with its facile emotional arc,
climactic encounter at its fulcrum, and an elliptical sigh of an
epilogue might resemble the backbone of many an indie
middlebrow before it, but this is not what Cambodian-French
director Davy Chou has brought to the table. This is all to say that
like its central heroine, Return to Seoul is unpredictable and
flighty, charismatic and cutting, a film that flows from days to
weeks to years with such bravado that you start to wonder why
more won’t do the same..” — IGOR FISHMAN
DIRECTOR: Davy Chou; CAST: Park Ji-min, Oh Gwang-rok, Kim
Sun-young; DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Classics; IN
THEATERS: February 17; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 59 min.
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16

LET’S START HERE
Lil Yachty
Though it wasn’t actually that long ago, the
pop music landscape into which Lil Yachty
first emerged doesn’t really look the same
as the one that exists today. Releasing his
debut mixtape, Lil Boat, in 2016 right as
trap’s cultural dominance was peaking, Lil
Yachty’s music managed to stir up the
genre’s last round of significant discourse;
the jingly, simplistic nature of songs like
“Minnesota” and “Good Day” reignited
debates over the merit of so-called
ALBUM REVIEWS
mumble rap years after fellow Atlanta
compatriots Young Thug and Future had
decisively put them to rest. But Yachty’s
music was so proudly goofy and frivolous
that Lil Boat was met with a fair amount
of skepticism from critics who mostly
saw the rapper/model/actor’s attempt at
a lofty concept album (in which he
embodies both the Yachty persona and
his more aggressive cousin Lil Boat) as a
juvenile take on trap music, undercooked
even by the genre’s minimalist standards.
Ultimately, the question of whether or not
Yachty was an industry troll never really
disrupted his career, the broader music
culture already mostly committed to their
poptimist slant; and besides all that, the
act appeared mostly earnest, the persona
carrying convincingly (if not always
impressively) across two more Lil Boat
mixtapes and an aptly titled studio album,
King of Teens.
The days of Yachty’s divisiveness are far
behind us, his schtick long since
absorbed into the contemporary pop
canon, so it makes
perfect sense that he’d
be looking for a new
angle from which to
work: On Let’s Start
Here, he redirects into
the world of
psychedelic rock music.
Remarkably, this career
reset has managed to
command the Internet’s
attention, provoking
social media
back-and-forths over
the project’s
authenticity
reminiscent of the
commotion around Lil
Boat. However, unlike
Yachty’s keenly timed
debut, his latest doesn’t
feel especially vital nor
likely to prove
trendsetting — the
rapper’s
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pivot to consciousness-expanding rock n’
roll music comes some years late to the
trend and offers little in the way of its
expansion.
Pulling from a similar collection of sound
and inspirations as Kid Cudi and A$AP
Rocky, Let’s Start Here recasts Yachty as a
blissed out psychonaut crusading against
the cruelties of the modern, material
world. As per usual, it's hard to doubt the
warbly MC’s sincerity as embodied in his
new, enlightened outlook (although 2021’s
Michigan Boy Boat suggested a
harder-edged direction that showed more
promise), and his positioning within the
industry has earned him access to a lineup
of excellent, relevant collaborators
(Chairlift’s Patrick Wimberly’s production in
particular, with standout contributions
from Alex G, Mac DeMarco, and MGMT’s Ben
Goldwasser), so that Let’s Start Here is at
least never a true drag. But it's never a
very satisfying album either, its aesthetic
largely borrowed and performed
competently but without much verve or
originality. Which isn’t to say that there
aren’t satisfying grooves (“running out of
time” is admittedly catchy, if still skewing
a little too theatrical) or the occasional
spark of inspiration (the ebullient power
pop switch-up of “The Alchemist.”
suggests a much more thrilling album
somewhere in between this and Michigan
Boat Boy). But this project feels effortful in
the worst ways, its songs all overly refined
and commercial-ready. And while Yachty
remains a mostly harmless artist, the
wisdoms he espouses on Let’s Start Here
leave much to be desired, the album
hitting a low point almost immediately on
“the BLACK seminole” when he muses,
“Love is not a lie / It just feels like a
Tarantino movie scene.” At worst a
somewhat cringey attempt at a rebrand,
Let’s Start Here at least manages to coast
off of Lil Yachty’s charming presence and
unaffected approach to the material, but
much cultural resonance beyond these
already established virtues can’t be
expected. — M.G. MAILLOUX
LABEL: Motown/Quality Control Records;
RELEASE DATE: January 27
THIS STUPID WORLD
Yo La Tengo
In nearly four decades, New Jersey’s Yo
La Tengo have never taken a real break,
with the smallest gap between records
being a measly four years. Alongside their
studio albums, the group has also written
soundtracks for Jean Painlevé’s
underwater documentaries, Kelly
Reichardt’s masterful Old Joy, and the Don
DeLillo-penned Game 6, as well as being
heavily featured in the films of Hal
Hartley. All that work has resulted in Yo La
Tengo developing a moderate (in relation
to peers such as Pavement or Sonic
Youth) but engaged and dedicated
following; through experimentation and a
dedication to the production of
fascinating covers, they have become
more than just your average indie rock
band. This Stupid World marks the trio’s
seventeenth studio album, and finds
ALBUM REVIEWS
them continuing in their traditional style,
which carefully oscillates between the
beautifully delicate and energetically
noisy.
Nothing highlights this dichotomy more
than opener “Sinatra Drive Breakdown,”
which begins with a minute of swirling
fuzz and settles into a calmer rhythm. But
that noise never fades, and the song
retains a brash guitar riff that cuts into
the soothing bass and vocals that carry
the song along. For many musicians who
would combine these quite disparate
sounds, the threat of collapse into
incoherent mess is very real, but Yo La
Tengo makes the fusion feel incredibly
natural. The following track (and This
Stupid World’s lead single), “Fallout,” opens
with an irresistibly catchy riff and an
enticing vocal hook; the song is
reminiscent of previous hits like 1997’s
“Sugarcube,” albeit slightly more haunting
here. This one-two punch also makes
great use of the band's multiple vocalists;
both rely on overlapping harmonies, but
the album’s exquisite mixing ensures no
part of the sound is ever confused.
On “Aselestine,” Yo La Tengo briefly slows
This Stupid World’s pace with a short, lo-fi
acoustic cut which proves to be a more
stripped-down track than any other on
the album. Despite its minimalism, the
song forgoes the sense of melancholia
that — for better and worse — so often
accompanies spare arrangements; this
band has constantly proved capable of
creating thoughtful, sensitive music that
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ALBUM REVIEWS
doesn’t wallow in sadness, and that
balance remains perfectly in place here.
Like all of This Stupid World’s tracks (and
most of Yo La Tengo’s material), the song’s
lyrics don’t seek to convey any profound
meaning or trade in intimate
introspection; instead, they offer more
direct and relatable expressions of pure
emotion. Lyrics like “Push the pin / Into
the map / And I find you” or “I see the
moon rise as the sun descends / So far
from you” might feel basic in isolation,
but they are so seamlessly and
organically integrated into the band’s
graceful music that it’s hard not to be
moved at least some of the time.
The rest of This Stupid World is tightly
constructed and never falls into
complacency. From the seven-minute
title track — which remains the album’s
25

ALBUM REVIEWS
loudest and most experimental
jam — to the jangly pop chords of
“Apology Letter,” no two songs occupy the
same sonic space, though there remains a
strong sense of cohesion to the project. It would
be easy to declare This Stupid World Yo La
Tengo’s best album in a decade (and realistically,
it probably is), but that language could also be
construed to suggest an essential deficiency to
their work of the last ten years, which would
certainly be an inaccurate examination. They’re
a band who remain fairly immutable in their
eminence and constancy, with even their lesser
records remaining worthy products. And so, while
their sound has never changed to any drastic
degree — which is so often a death knell for artists
— and their career has never propelled them to
mainstream stardom, Yo La Tengo have produced
one of the most steadfastly outstanding
discographies of the past several decades, to which
This Stupid World is another brilliant addition. —
OLIVER PARKER
LABEL: Matador Records;
RELEASE DATE: February 10
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Photo Credits:
Cover - Grasshopper Film; Page 1,2,4 - Lionsgate; Page 5 - Óscar Fernández Orengo;
Page 7,8 - Grasshopper Film; Page 9,10 - Criterion Collection/Warner Bros.; Page 11 - Brian
Tamborello; Page 12 - Sub Pop Records; Page 13 - Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios; Page 16 - Thuy
Vy/Of An Age Films Pty Ltd; Page 17 - Bleecker Street; Page 18 - Courtesy of Cinedigm; Page 20 -
Gravitas Ventures; Page 21 - Grasshopper Film; Page 22 - Visit Films; Page 23 - Quality Control
Music/Motown Records; Page 25,26 - Cheryl Dunn/Matador Records; Back Cover - Focus Features