More than any other American film actress under fifty, Tina Fey is an old-school screen siren. In the 1940s — the era of Barbara Stanwyck and Judy Holliday; the era of dames whose appeal stemmed as much from their crackling brilliance as from their gorgeously irregular features — Fey would have been the queen of marquee. As it is, this Philadelphia native of Greek descent has been edging past Hollywood’s biases against grownup women ever since she sprang out of the “Saturday Night Live” writers room to deliver the Weekend Update in 2000. Now, in “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” she comes into her own like the librarian who whips off her glasses to reveal the beauty already obvious to anyone paying attention. Continue Reading →
Archive | Reviews
The Unacceptable Agitprop of ’13 Hours’
These days, Michael Bay is best known for his seemingly endless stream of “Transformer” movies but he’s also this country’s most unabashedly pro-military director; since “Pearl Harbor” (2001), he has demonstrated an enthusiasm for artillery-laden features whose guiding principle seem to be “Keep it butch, boy.” All lickety-split edits, percussive soundscapes, deafening blasts, grunted one-liners, and searing pops of primary color, it’s an aesthetic perfectly suited to Hollywood’s oddly bland code of neo-masculinity but one that doesn’t exactly lend nuance to, well, anything. Put bluntly, this makes him both the best and worst living director to tackle “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” the adaptation of Mitchell Zuckoff’s book about the six ex-military security contractors who defended two American bases in Benghazi, Libya, during the September 11, 2012, attack that killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. Continue Reading →
‘Mozart in the Jungle’: More Than an Etude?
The second season of “Mozart in the Jungle,” the series adapted from classical oboist Blair Tindall’s 2005 memoir, was launched by Amazon Prime right before New Year’s Eve. I hesitate to use the word “dumping” but it’s safe to say most TV shows are usually on hiatus during that time for good reasons. (The multiplexes dangle plenty of Oscar bait for those keen to escape family time.) So the two Golden Globes – best TV comedy and best TV comedy actor for Gael García Bernal – that the show just won probably surprised more than the people who’ve never watched it. (My social media feed was clotted with tweets like “Guess I need to start watching #MITJ now? #whoknew.”) A colleague familiar with my appreciation for the show messaged me: “Can you pretend to defend this as the best TV comedy?”
My answer, actually, was no. In fact, I’m not even sure if “Mozart” qualifies as a comedy (though certainly it’s funnier than “The Martian,” which inexplicably won the Golden Globe for best film comedy). That said, I do believe it delivers exactly what we should expect from premium television: a glimpse into a typically unexplored subculture, truths about the human condition, and high and low pleasure. Continue Reading →