Rules Don't Apply (2016)

Film: Rules Don't Apply (2016)
Stars: Warren Beatty, Lily Collins, Alden Ehrenreich, Annette Bening, Matthew Broderick, Alec Baldwin, Candice Bergen, Ed Harris
Director: Warren Beatty
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Heaven Can Wait.  Reds.  Dick Tracy.  Bullworth.  It's quite a collection of films that Warren Beatty-Director, has amassed.  Beatty is, by my count, the only actor to have been nominated for acting, directing, producing, and writing in the same year twice.  Even Clint Eastwood couldn't equal that, which is saying something as Clint hasn't taken annoyingly long breaks in his filmography (it's worth noting that this is his first directing bid in 18 years...also that 1998 was 18 years ago), and that it was his first time acting in fifteen (the enormous bomb Town & Country which stalled a number of careers at the time).  As a result, I couldn't miss this movie.  Reds remains one of the crowning achievements of the 1980's, and is one of my all-time favorite movies-I owe Warren Beatty indefinitely for it, not to mention multiple other roles that place him amongst my favorite actors.  The reviews were scary, but it couldn't be that bad, could it?

(Spoilers Ahead) Unfortunately, it was.  Rules Don't Apply may be one of the most-hyped movies of the year for me simply because Warren Beatty is finally billed in the credits again, but even if you'd maintained low expectations for the picture, it's unlikely this would have surpassed them.  The film is the story of Howard Hughes (Beatty) toward the end of his career, when he is still an icon in American print but his output, especially as a director, is pretty low.  He keeps a stable of women in luxurious houses around Los Angeles, being chauffeured by a series of drivers who rarely understand why they're driving around these women, and have limited contact with Mr. Hughes, one of which is Frank (Ehrenreich), who develops a crush on an aspiring actress Marla Mabrey (Collins), who in turn is also romantically involved (briefly) with Howard Hughes.  The love triangle is the center of the film, though it's sidetracked by bouts of crazy from Hughes, Marla's weird focus on her own chastity and religion, and a bevy of Beatty's longtime Hollywood friends coming out for what may well be his swan song (Candy Bergen making a rare film appearance, as well as Martin Sheen-it's a pity that Beatty couldn't get his best buddy Jack Nicholson in for one last hurrah-THAT would have been something to see).

The film's problems are all over the board, and probably too innumerable to list.  For starters, Beatty has no idea if this film is supposed to be funny or a drama, and it does not combine the two well (at all).  There are scenes that are hilarious on-paper (some of the older members of my audience chuckled), and then it's followed by a heartbreaking sequence that shows how tragic the love triangle is (no matter how it lands, almost no one is going to completely win here).  It would have been better had Beatty decided to do a straight drama or comedy (he can do either), but trying to be both doesn't work, and feels like a movie that's been in production too long.

The lead actors leave much to be desired.  Alden Ehrenreich is fascinating to look at, and was great in Hail, Caesar! earlier this year, but cannot sell this underwritten character at all.  I'm not sure which old star Beatty was picturing when he wrote this (Robert Redford, perhaps?), but man is it bland.  Ehrenreich is a talent if his naive cowboy is any indication, but here his best attribute is a fascinating, John Barrymore-like profile that is framed well onscreen.

His acting is not noteworthy at all, and he has no chemistry with leading-lady Lily Collins, who is by far the worst part of this movie.  Collins has no onscreen ability or charisma, and is hopelessly generic every time I've seen her in a movie.  Considering she was abysmal in Mirror Mirror, tanked The Mortal Instruments franchise, and has now proven she can't even find talent opposite someone like Warren Beatty, perhaps it's time to stop hiring her and forcing her onto unsuspecting audience members?  There are other actors who aren't very good in the film, but they can at least claim no one cares about them (Beatty seems only focused on his three leading characters and doesn't really want to do anything other than let the camera beam at his old pals in bit roles).  Lily Collins has no excuse-this is Razzy-worthy stuff.

Beatty at the center is fun to see onscreen, though even there I question whether or not it's an okay performance or simply seeing a thousand movie memories in his wide smile that makes me give him a pass.  It's likely that after two back-to-back (albeit separated by 15 years) flops Beatty might be done at the movies, certainly behind the screen, but one bad movie or a few doesn't ruin your career when you are also Clyde Barrow or John Reed or Dick Tracy.  But it does if you're simply Phil Collins' daughter, so Lily Collins-perhaps it's time to take an acting class or seven?

Ranting On...Jill Stein's Recount

Dr. Jill Stein (G-MA)

Jill Stein is not really a serious person.  Yes, some of the issues that she has championed in her career are serious issues, and I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with them, but she long ago forfeited any claim to being anything other than a "frequent candidate" for office, someone who hasn't been able to land any position in public life other than an agitator.  Some may compare her to Ralph Nader, and they're right in the sense that they both have served as spoilers in elections (don't give me that-if Stein and Gary Johnson hadn't run, we'd be talking about Hillary Clinton's "surprisingly close" win of the White House), but they're wrong in the sense of their impact.  Ralph Nader was once a very important voice in the American conversation, with Unsafe at Any Speed becoming a critical piece of investigative journalism that forever changed the way we look at safety in the automotive industry.  Nader, before he was a national pariah amongst progressives, was a hero to the cause; Jill Stein never had the same level of support before she sold out for anti-vax conspiracy theorists and those who celebrate dictators like Fidel Castro and Vladimir Putin.

So it makes sense that Stein, in the wake of her recount efforts, was called out by many progressive-minded thinkers and journalists, as a con-woman, someone out to exploit the Democratic Party.  Her message, that the election may have been tampered with, was indeed like saying to a dying man that there's a cure, but it's going to cost you (and the reality is that that cure isn't real).  Liberals and progressives have looked at the past few weeks with horror at what just a President-Elect Trump has meant for our causes.  Gone is the Supreme Court, perhaps with it Roe v. Wade.  Goodbye to a number of collective bargaining advocates, or Obamacare, or key transgender rights bills, or a national increase in the minimum wage.  Hell, Medicare and Social Security might become things of the past.  There's a bit of cosmic justice there considering how badly the Baby Boomers have trashed Millennials in recent weeks for not voting enough, even though they themselves actually elected Trump and are about to pay a huge price for it in terms of their retirements, but as I don't really like "misery loves company" I don't enjoy that enough to see a silver lining.  All-the-while, the President-Elect has seen repeated scandals, attacked the free press relentlessly, publicly denounced Hillary Clinton, and watched silently as white supremacists carry out acts of violence in his name against persons of color and LGBT citizens across the country.  Jill Stein coming in and demanding a recount, even one that is surely going to be impossible to succeed, is clearly exploiting the grieving.

But what those journalists don't understand is that we're just as mad at them as we are themselves, and they're "listen to us, we're the experts" attitude is a bit hard to grasp after what we just witnessed. I continue to come back to the "Keepin' it 1600" guys, all arrogant after two successful elections, not focusing nearly enough on creating a sense of urgency around Trump, making him in fact a joke, but one where the punchline could mean millions of people could have horrible lives for decades as a result of what he might do.  I think of the media who insisted that Hillary Clinton's emails were of equal importance to Trump's relationships with Vladimir Putin and Roger Ailes.  I think of the "journalists" who couldn't figure out a way to ask him probing, specific questions about policy and show what a dangerous, undereducated man this figure was who was one of only two people who could be our next president.  And yes, I think of the entertainment media who simply saw ratings and not their moral imperative in protecting the country from a madman (Lorne Micheals and Jimmy Fallon, you two specifically should be ashamed of yourselves for your role in electing a demagogue).

So if Jill Stein's recount doesn't make sense to you, it's perhaps because Trump doesn't really affect you in the way he affects other people.  It's perhaps because your sense of trust in your fellow man hasn't been shattered, that your trust in the news media and "data" and "experts" isn't lying on the floor.  It's perhaps because you didn't realize that before this election, the only people who actually still trusted the news as being a beacon of hope and light and truth were progressives and liberals and Democrats.  And perhaps it's because you don't realize the incredible impact your terrible approach to Trump has taken on your credibility and your profession.

For it makes no sense to me that I should listen to people who constantly exclaimed that Hillary Clinton was going to win tell me afterwards all the things she did wrong and why she lost.  If you were 100% wrong before, why should we believe you now?  There's no sense here at all.  The media hasn't quite realized this, but they were an endangered species before November 8th, and are now critically-endangered.  For before this, it was just the FOX News/Bretibart crowd that Trump adores who hated the media.  Now, while hate isn't the right word, trust is gone from institutions like The New York Times and network news channels; we know that when it comes down to it, they'd rather have false equivalence than get attacked by Republicans (who are always going to attack such institutions).  I don't believe you.  I'm smart enough to know the odds of the recount being overturned, but you don't get to mock us for stating that we should stop betting on unicorns.  We bet on you, and we lost.  Your snideness is only rubbing salt in the wound of trusting you, not being with her.  It's because of you that flim-flam artists like Jill Stein can prey on the weak with promises of grandeur.  I know this because you just elected a president who did exactly that.  It's easy to see why the media can't understand the appeal of Jill Stein when they can't admit they just helped elect Donald Trump.

Ranting On...Secretary of State Mitt Romney

Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA)

One of the things that I've been thinking in the past few weeks in terms of Trump and, in particular, his cabinet selections is, what exactly is it I want to see here?  Democrats are still reeling, and in part we're in a position where we aren't going to be able to win.  Right now, with people like Steve Bannon as the President-Elect's Senior Advisor, we have an actual white nationalist in the White House, besmirching not only Trump but also the history of the country.  And Jeff Sessions, someone who was too racist to be picked as a federal judge in 1986 somehow has become less racist enough to now head the entire Justice Department, and is likely to be our next Attorney General.  But in the past few days we've started to hear names emerge that, well, appear to be relatively sane options for positions.  Forgetting, for a second, qualifications (and that's a big thing to forget here), we have Gov. Nikki Haley fast-emerging as the United Nations Ambassador (and the first woman to be rumored for a prominent position of power in Trump's administration) and former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. being bandied about as Transportation Secretary, a bipartisan pick as Ford served as a Democratic congressman for five terms from Tennessee.  Largest amongst these is Mitt Romney, who was the Republican nominee in 2012 and was an ardent, vocal opponent of Trump on the campaign trail, to the point that he didn't even endorse him on Election Day, who is the frontrunner at this point to be Secretary of State.

The conundrum for Democrats here is that these people, while not specifically-qualified for these positions, aren't what you'd consider to be vile, odious Republicans that are going to have the base up in arms like Jeff Sessions, Newt Gingrich, or Rudy Giuliani.  These feel like the appointments of a traditional Republican administration.  Indeed, it's not hard to picture Jeb Bush going with these exact same three people, while he wouldn't allow Steve Bannon within a mile of the White House.

In a normal situation, we'd probably have calls to celebrate this.  While cabinet appointments don't mean as much as they used to do (during the Bush and Obama administrations, some of these have felt more ceremonial than others, with the real power existing in persons like Karl Rove or Valerie Jarrett, whose positions reflect more the likes of Bannon than a traditional cabinet secretary), but these aren't positions devoid of power or influence.  Romney's and Haley's, in particular, will have a significant eye to the world, and could go a long way in tacitly holding together our international alliances from the Trump administration until we have a more reputable and qualified person sitting in the Resolute Desk.

Admittedly, it says something about Romney that he'd be willing to do this (which I will state he has not yet accepted-it's just heavy speculation at this point), considering the hit it will have on his reputation.  Romney, at age 69 and with a Republican about to take the White House, will never be POTUS-that was decided definitively the second Donald Trump won Pennsylvania-so Secretary of State would be the biggest part of his legacy.  It will be (by far) the most important position he ever holds.  As a result, a man who has dominated the Republican Party for over a decade would be giving over all of his goodwill and reputation to a man that he detests, a man whose demeanor he finds abhorrent.

You can look at this two ways.  In one corner, you have Mitt Romney, someone who was described frequently in attacks in 2008 and 2012 as an empty suit, someone only out for himself and his wallet. Taking this position, a consolation prize but one that John Kerry and Hillary Clinton both also added to their Wikipedia page, would be a way to legitimize himself in a manner that he was never going to do if he couldn't win national office.  It's the only plum left on the tree for Romney, and he may be willing to throw his entire reputation out the window for one, last moment-of-glory.  It reeks of opportunism, perhaps it's even a bit pathetic.  It speaks to the worst aspects of Mitt Romney's critics.

In the other corner, though, there is the question of whether Mitt Romney is doing the right thing even if it costs him his reputation; whether he loses in the eyes of the current public but history is much kinder.  Here's where we return to the conundrum for the Democrats.  There is a difference between normalizing and ignoring the Trump administration, which is happening no matter how many articles you read about the electoral college revolting or misplaced ballots in Wisconsin.  Normalizing it means that we routinely, constantly make sure Trump and his administration do not have it easy for the next four years if they are doing the wrong thing, particularly when it comes to equality, the environment, and international diplomacy.  Democrats need to make sure that the persecuted minority doesn't become forgotten, as it was during the Reagan administration, otherwise we're stuck with 8-12 years of this.  But on the other hand, the Democrats have to face facts: Donald Trump will be commander-in-chief for the next four years.  We need good people surrounding him, people who are competent in positions and won't abuse their power.

Mitt Romney fits that description.  I disagree with him on virtually every major issue, but he's a patriotic American who has devoted his life to public service.  He's not going to let Trump start a nuclear war without threatening to resign in the process or publicly denouncing him.  He's going to make sure that Trump maintains at least a modicum of respect for critical alliances in the EU, Japan, and Israel.  He's going to be a voice of sanity in a White House where Steve Bannon has undue power.  It's hard to say it, but we may wish we'd had Mitt Romney in the White House a year or two down the road when Trump is facing myriad international and domestic crises and is petulantly angry at his portrayal on Saturday Night Live or a CNN panel denouncing his decisions nightly.  Quite frankly, we need a grownup in the room who isn't Mike Pence or Paul Ryan, both of whom have shown such hate for disenfranchised groups like LGBT citizens or the poor that they should strike the same level of fear in the hearts of Democrats everywhere.  Mitt Romney does that.  If he accepts, we should confirm because whomever comes next is going to be worse.  It's hard to stomach, but don't confuse reality with normalizing-we have to accept the former even if the latter is something we firmly cannot embrace.

OVP: Doctor Strange (2016)

Film: Doctor Strange (2016)
Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Tilda Swinton
Director: Scott Derrickson
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Well, I guess Marvel got another hit.  That was the first thing that crossed my mind recently as I headed into yet another installment of their expansive universe.  Honestly-it's staggering to me how blindingly successful the franchises of Disney's Marvel universe are-even the films that under-perform (think of something like Ant-Man) crossed $500 million internationally, and Doctor Strange, despite being arguably the most cerebral comic book headliner in the Marvel universe, has continued that streak.  Like most of the films, I caught this one in theaters, likely surrounded by comic book fans who have never actually, well, read a comic book, and unfortunately I stayed roughly in the center of where I am with these movies-fair, but not excellent.

(Spoilers Ahead) There's really no need for a spoiler here, as this film has been done repeatedly with the same results.  This is the introduction of yet another character, so you know that Dr. Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) will, through some act of god, be forced from his high pedestal as a world famous surgeon and instead forced to avenge those around him for the greater good.  Indeed, an accident in one of the sexiest cars I've seen in movies in a while (it's a Lamborghini, for the curious), leads him off the cliff and eventually he must head to Nepal to try and find some way to get his hands and abilities back.  While there, he meets the Ancient One (Swinton), a creature that has lived for hundreds of years and teaches him how to cross into other dimensions and fight using the mythic arts.  As is the wont of such a film, the Ancient One eventually dies, and Dr. Strange, now armed with a sense of right-and-wrong and a set of powers, sets off to make the world a safer place, and indeed, during a post-credits sequence comes across Thor himself, implying he'll be back to fight with the Avengers in the near future.

The film is fun.  Let's not mistake my antipathy to the end product with the film not being any good.  There are lovely moments of levity; Cumberbatch and McAdams have good chemistry and can land their one-liners, and Swinton is a movie acting goddess, even if there's not a lot of obvious "acting" opportunities.  Like most Marvel films, the villain is less than impressive (Mads Mikkelsen is an actor I've grown weary of after playing the same bad guy so often), but the visual effects are a kaleidoscope without ever quite hitting the ludicrous places of something like Speed Racer (what's Emile Hirsch up to these days?).  Perhaps because Captain America and X-Men have now gotten there, maybe superhero films are trying harder to get into those tech categories at the Oscars, but it shows.

My problem with the film isn't that I would recommend it, but that there's nothing special here that hasn't already been seen in Iron Man, Thor, The Avengers, etc-all of these are essentially the same movie, particularly the first installment.  All have an unlikely protagonist who is led into extraordinary circumstances, questions his abilities, and then finds a hero comes along (with the strength to carry on).  One could claim this is true of the Marvel comics, but these characters don't constantly focus on origin stories, but instead have had the same characters go through multiple iterations, breathing new life into different situations.  The comic books themselves evolve enough to be the final seasons in television series-Marvel is stuck on the same, repetitive first season.  Only Captain America has properly risen above it, particularly with the frightening and effective Winter Soldier.  Here they have a character who isn't just reestablishing what we know about him over-and-over, but dealing with an inner-struggle.  Given the box office, I suspect Dr. Strange will return.  Let's hope that he finds his own Winter Soldier so this doesn't become another stale franchise being held up by a multi-billion dollar brand.

Those are my thoughts on Dr. Strange, a fine if predictable installment in the Marvel Universe.  Are you with me that you want something different (perhaps Captain Marvel or Black Panther can get there?) or am I being too picky?  Share your thoughts below!

High-Rise (2016)

Film: High-Rise (2016)
Stars: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss
Director: Ben Wheatley
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

When I was growing up, the phrase "weird for the sake of being weird" was something I believe I first heard on The Simpsons, but it was also something that my parents occasionally would impart on me.  I remember going into an art exhibit, and my mom, while waiting for my dad who has always been intensely slow in museums, saying "let's go into the modern art exhibit" and we were greeted with fur-covered antlers and sprawling canvasses painted entirely white, and if I remember correctly, a Donald Judd exhibit that had a very touchy alarm system that my mother set off (twice).  Aside from the Judd exhibit, we were both a bit dismissive of the whole thing, essentially falling into the pattern of "weird for the sake of being weird."  Since then we've become a bit more accustomed to the art, at least asking the question "what is special enough about this to have it hanging in a museum?" and are aware it's slightly a condescending argument, but there are times when I see a movie and think "this is kind of what we were talking about."

(Spoilers Ahead) High-Rise is a film that looks great in a trailer but frequently capsizes under its promise.  I, at this point, treat all dystopian pictures as future documentaries (Trump's America and all that), but even I think we'll probably have a chic-er investment than what this movie comes up with if Armageddon hits.  The movie unfolds with Lang (Hiddleston) a wealthy doctor who has moved into a posh, expansive high rise tower in London, learning about his neighbors.  The building is filled with different castes (the higher up, the better), and we find that it's a bit of literal class warfare, as the lower classes, led initially by Richard Wilder (Evans) try to take back the building, which is experiencing electrical outages and issues with the water supply.  He threatens the owner of the building Royal (Irons), and chaos ensues, with Lang going increasingly mad after tricking a young man into suicide.  The film ends with the building left in tatters, and Lang completely out-of-his-mind after most of the people in the film have died.

The film is hard to grasp-it feels like it's paying homage to the 1970's Sci-Fi films that dealt with this sort of hyper-sexualized dystopia.  Indeed, perhaps the best thing to lend itself to this film is that Hiddleston, Evans, and Miller have never looked more alluring, even with their deep character deficits, and that's probably appealing if I can't find much else to go upon, and the set is specific and ornate-I'd recommend it for an Art Direction Oscar nomination if someone wanted to ask me for such advice.

But that's about it, because the plot is easy to see coming, and the editing is purposefully choppy.  I feel the way about High-Rise as I do about films like Oldboy.  There's style there, surely, and it's provocative, but what else is there?  If I just wanted to look at the world's sexiest Annie Leibowitz shoot, I'd ask for that.  This feels like a series of Dior commercials, without much substance to lend to it.  It's higher ideals have been done, better and repeatedly, for years in film and this feels like it's more a reaction to Thatcherite England than anything approaching our modern-day consumer excesses.  A period piece about dystopia is a weird juxtaposition, and it doesn't translate easily enough over to modern-day.  Plus, I have to say it, it's kind of boring-a movie with this much action and this much sex appeal shouldn't be as dull as it is, and yet I just kept kind of hoping it would be over.

I also want to ask, and I mean it in the nicest way possible, but at some point we're going to get a truly seismic performance out of the trio of skinny, attractive British actors that we've spent so much time with in the past four years, right?  I'm talking of course about Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Eddie Redmayne.  All of them have been good in films before (particularly Hiddleston in The Deep Blue Sea and Redmayne in Les Miserables), but since they turned into leading men, doesn't it feel like they're falling flat?  I find them charming when they're on Graham Norton (forgot the italics there until I edited-though I'm sure Graham wouldn't have minded the double entendre), and they all seem lovely, but I'm not wowed by them in the way I'm supposed to be wowed by someone who has achieved this stature.  At what point is one of them going to cash in on the many chances they're given and just wow us completely?  I'm waiting...

Ranting On...Mike Pence & Hamilton

Fine, fine, fine!  I thought this story would have died by now, but the President-Elect spent the entire weekend tweeting about it (and Saturday Night Live) and it's technically in this blog's wheelhouse, so I'm going to write about the Hamilton/Mike Pence thing.

Growing up, I was the kind of teenager you pointed to your kids (internally, hopefully), and said "be more like him."  I was courteous to all adults, and had a part-time job that I was good enough in to eventually become a manager.  I was persistently, exclusively on the Honor Roll, and was in every school band you could find.  I went to national competitions in our local business club, regularly volunteered at our church, was accepted at every college I applied toward, visited my grandparents, and was in National Honors Society.  Aside from not picking up a football, I was pretty much what you'd hope your kid would turn out to be (and even then, I swam after school for several miles most days when I wasn't working).  I was a quintessential good kid.

I was, in fact, what Mike Pence would probably have pointed toward if he said he wanted an example of a good kid, aside from the Gore/Lieberman sign in my window.  Conscientious, studious, hard-working, and kind to others, all things that if he saw them in a resume would have made him proud, were I his son or his constituent.  But I was also something that Mike Pence wouldn't have been able to move past: I was a closeted gay kid struggling with that identity even if externally I was what my community expected me to be.

To people like Mike Pence, all of the good things that I was don't matter once they find out that I liked other guys.  How do I know this?  Simple-I grew up in a community of Mike Pences.
"Good people," people who would point to me and say, "what a great kid" and then in different breaths, but ones that I was listening for, also complain about the "others."  One of the strange things about growing up gay is that you get to see the other side in a way that you don't if you're a person of color or a woman-you know what people say about your community before they realize that you are, in fact, gay.  I heard friends of my parents talk about "weird" or "immoral" or "sinful" or any other more colorful word you can think of to describe gay people.  I was told I would "go to hell" indirectly more times than you can fathom.  People that you would normally describe as honest, good Americans, but they would say detestable, indefensible things about the gay teenager in their midst, and the only reason they did was because I was "one of them."

Mike Pence is one of these people, though I don't know him so can't personally vouch for his being a "good person" otherwise, but he fits the mold.  However, he frequently has made targeting gay teenagers and gay Americans a cornerstone of his time in office.  He has frequently denied gay people rights, gay people medical aid, and perhaps worst of all, espoused gay conversion therapy.  Yes, that's still a thing, something the Vice President-elect wanted funded instead of giving help to victims of AIDS.  He literally took money away from people dying of a disease commonly associated with gay men, and gave it to a practice that teaches gay people to hate themselves through physical and emotional abuse.  I shudder when I think of this-I know gay people who have gone through this process because their parents, people like Mike Pence, thought that there was something wrong with them, something to correct.  People like Mike Pence are the reason that I waited until college to come out, denying my true identity for years, because I knew that once he saw that I was gay, all of the good things that I was, all of the things that people like him found so commendable would disappear since I wanted to kiss men instead of women.

I'm aware that booing the Vice President-elect isn't a classy thing to do, particularly when he's not doing anything in an official capacity, and I'm aware that the cast of Hamilton went out of their way to make Pence feel welcome in the Richard Rodgers.  It was the audience, patrons of the arts (of whom I've been a part of more times than I can count, including at the Richard Rodgers), that booed him, and perhaps that wasn't the best course of action.  Perhaps they should have tried to welcome him in, hoping that through a connection with the art and its inclusivity he might find some sense of what the hateful things he's done throughout his life have done to communities like those of Hamilton, like those of gay people everywhere.  That is the point of art, that is the point of Hamilton or Saturday Night Live-to entertain, but also to occasionally shine a light on what we know in our hearts as a society, and point out that it might be time to change something in said society.

But I also understand their urge, and I want to be very clear to every person, typically white, straight liberal thinkers, that are thinking this is bad optics and took away from Trump University or Jeff Sessions over the weekend: you ask us to be silent a lot.  Constantly.  Exclusively.  In fact, this entire pivot to the economy may be smart to turn back Obama voters who went to Trump in hopes of victories in 2018 and 2020.  It's the core message of Tim Ryan's run for Speaker.  But it's also about making that gay teenager I was invisible again.  It's about making the cast of Hamilton stay just onstage and not say anything that might upset the "acceptance" of their play being a hit.  I'm tired of having to turn the other cheek every time a straight person feels uncomfortable with who I am.  I have spent my entire life being asked "to give them time to adjust," never having someone recognize the ridiculousness of asking me to be the bigger person while they're saying and doing horrible things to me and my community.  Tolerance is something that should be natural-it wasn't something that my parents excluded from their personal education toward me.  I'm not asking for an extensive vocabulary on social justice from everyday citizens like Mike Pence (I am asking it from him though because he's in public office), but I also think that you need to look in the mirror a bit and realize what you're doing if you chastise people for booing Mike Pence, and also more thoughtfully questioning why they're booing the Vice President-elect.  In thought, deed, and action, he has been booing people like me my entire life.  And unlike him, I did nothing to deserve that.

Thoughts on The Crown

I am now eight episodes into Netflix's newest, most ambitious affair The Crown, and wanted to start sharing some of my thoughts on the series.  The show, one I was planning on waiting until Thanksgiving to watch but for reasons that have suddenly escaped me, I decided I should commence right now (perhaps it's the fact that the discs I have home from Netflix currently are all less-than-impressive looking movies), and so I've binged through the first episodes.  Here are my thoughts on this handsome production thusfar.

1. It's Terribly Beautiful

The show cost a fortune (at $130 million, it's the most expensive series ever made), but it looks it.  It's impossible to imagine the series not gaining every Art Direction and Costume Design Emmy it can lay its hands upon, and with good reason.  The series is meticulous in its detailing, from the pristine walls of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House (we don't get that repeat set situation where we're always in the same rooms, a trick so common in TV), to the gigantic plains of Africa or the wide-open fields surrounding Sandringham.

This pays off in a lot of ways-you don't really have to imagine being a part of this world-it's there for you.  There's a lavishness in seeing two-story tall rooms, bedecked in Old Master paintings, simply flung about, and seeming real enough that if they're using a green screen, they also deserve a Visual Effects Emmy.  This critical eye for detail is something that I'd missed from television in general, but particularly with Netflix, whose business model didn't really lend itself to having such a lavish, intense series of homes.  For this alone, you should at least give the first episode a shot-I want more detailed and vibrant sets like this for actors to play with in television.

2. History is a Problem

My biggest problem with biopics, which is what this is even if it unfolds more like a Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire, is that you know exactly what's going to happen, a problem in particular for a story that's so incredibly famous, and still going for several characters we're introduced to onscreen (Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip both still being alive).  The series hasn't quite gotten to the point where it is riveting television even if we already know what happens, a problem most historical epics face but since this is a television series rather than a motion picture, one where you have to keep coming back, it's a bigger problem.

Forget, for example, the two main characters, and simply look at some side performances.  Any student of history, for example, knows that Churchill survives until 1955 as Prime Minister, and is of course succeeded by his rival on the program Anthony Eden, or that Princess Margaret's romance with Peter Townsend will end in a disaster that badly damaged her relationship with her sister.  Knowing this means that writer Peter Morgan needs to find different tactics to skate through issues that are obvious to any fan of the Royal Family, and he hasn't quite gotten there yet.  He succeeded in The Queen ten years ago in part because he showed us a side of a woman we hadn't considered, but in the years since much ink has been spilled over QEII and as she has aged, she's become significantly more beloved so seeing her inner-turmoil isn't quite as revolutionary as it was when Helen Mirren brought it about in Morgan's first interaction with the monarch.

3. The Acting is Okay So Far

I will admit that I haven't been particularly wowed by the acting as well as the writing.  There are exceptions here-Eileen Atkins is winning as the frosty Queen Mary, even if she could do this in her sleep, and I love Matt Smith's take on Prince Philip, a caddish brute who is still somehow quite charming (easily the cast's MVP), but the rest of the cast is hit-or-miss.  Claire Foy doesn't adopt Mirren's sense of inner-world, truly playing her queen as more vacant than someone struggling with the ornateness around her, and Lithgow's Churchill is too hard to read, though Lithgow, he of the thespian roots, lands all of the jokes and embellished speeches to the nation.

I will admit I'm only eight episodes in, but the acting is also hampered, as is the writing, by the truth.  It's worth noting that while there are embellishments, they aren't of the kind that is easy to disprove and hardly add to the best elements of the show to give the actors more to do.  For example, thus far we have yet to interact with Prince Philip's famed wandering eye other than a sideways glance on a plane, something that his son clearly emulated, probably out of necessity to stay in good company with the Royal Family (these are alleged affairs, after all), but it also makes for so many of the characters to be rather dull.  Even stories that are more within the confines of a traditional television series (say, Princess Margaret's affair with Peter Townsend), are given short shift and so little is known of these two characters it's hard to see this progressing to much more than a couple of episodes of drama.  This is partially the fault of Netflix (they don't know how people will react or grow with a character, still the greatest flaw in the binge process), but also with the writing and acting-it feels too plain, and not in a good way where we're naturally building to something-we know how history works, and we know the history of every major character-where is the excitement in stretching this out?

4. This Has an Anthology Feel...And Aren't We Tired of Anthologies?

Listen, when American Horror Story decided to bring back the anthology, I was all on-board.  I thought, first off, that Ryan Murphy finally found a TV format that actually worked for him and wasn't doomed to failure, and that this would be a way to create a twisty, fun approach to television where you're not entirely certain how things will turn out in the end.

That being said, it's now transformed from a great plot twist to a crutch for lazy television writers, and I worry that The Crown may in some ways borrow from it.  After all, part of the appeal in television is watching the same actors grow over the course of multiple years in the same roles, slowly watching the way that they inhabit characters and suddenly find places in those people we didn't know could exist.  Think of the empowered, emboldened way Elisabeth Moss drove Peggy Olson or the fascinating way that Josh Holloway found humanity in the initially one-note Sawyer on Lost.  There's something that's powerful about knowing that a series of actors are going to be centered around the same plot for a number of years-you get to see evolution in acting and invest more emotionally into the series.

That's a problem with The Crown which moves at a ridiculously quick clip, to the point where it's hard to imagine Matt Smith and Claire Foy playing the characters past the birth of Prince Edward without too much reliance on greying temples and prosthetic bags under their eyes.  Knowing this, it feels like the characters themselves won't have the same level of consistency, which is hard to stomach since some of the more interesting aspects of Queen Elizabeth's life, particularly those in the 1980's and early 1990's, are several seasons away.  By then, we'd rely on a more age appropriate Emma Thompson to take on the role, but there's no one who will be able to perfectly mirror what Foy and Smith are doing (even if I'm not all that impressed with the former so far), and so it just becomes a series of interpretations, rather than a comprehensive series.  Considering the investment on Netflix's behalf, this is disappointing that they couldn't get something that might end up being something comprehensive and wonderful, rather than potentially disjointed.

5. So...Do I Come Back for a Second Season?

It seems apparent given the hubbub of the show that a second season is going to happen-Netflix has only so many massive hits to be able to hang onto, after all-but will I return?  I definitely will finish out the final two episodes-I like to see where these binges take me.  However, I'm not going to stick around if it doesn't improve slightly in terms of story or acting.

There are moments that feel, especially as the show has gone forward, more interesting and key character struggles that history might not inform that I've liked.  The Queen Mother, for example, feels vastly underused.  She was trained to literally be a queen, and then has to watch as her daughter takes her out during her prime, or the strangely marvelous scenes involving the Duke of Windsor.  I thought the scene where he's got a room he goes into to reflect on his brief series of months as a god amongst men, and the way that he reminds people that he too was once a god, constantly reminding himself out loud that he gave all of this up for love (even if, occasionally, one wonders if he questioned that decision), was the best of the series.  But these moments are too far-and-in-between, and Claire Foy's queen is too central and by-far the least interesting character in the series so far, constantly buckling and frustratingly unknowing, even in quiet reflections.  It's not often you stick with a series that doesn't know how to present its main character, and so I will probably need something a bit more exhilarating or tantalizing to happen with her before I sign up for another go-around.  Still, the costumes, sets, and Matt Smith are all wonderful, and there's definitely promise in these episodes for something magnificent.

OVP: A War (2015)

Film: A War (2015)
Stars: Pilou Asbaek, Soren Malling, Dar Salim, Tuva Novotny
Director: Tobias Lindholm
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Foreign Language Film-Denmark)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Part of the problem with television, at least if you look at the larger scale portrait of entertainment history in the 20th Century, is that it occasionally intrudes in a strange way upon what genres are supposed to be seen as "television" or those that need to be "films."  Thanks to budgetary concerns, largely things like large scale romantic dramas, effects epics, and experimental independent dramas remain in the purview of the cinema, but cop dramas, family comedies, and medical ensembles feel entirely within the world of the small screen.  Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than within the legal drama, once a consistent aspect of the Golden Age of Hollywood, now a quintessential picture of the small screen, to the point where I challenge you to turn on your TV at any given time and not be able to see a rerun of a legal drama somewhere on your cable package.  The problem with this is that it feels played out and tired when the silver screen tries to reclaim one of these genres, as is evidenced by the film A War.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film might initially come across as a misnomer, as it starts with one of those cinematic mainstays, the war film.  The movie alternates with Commander Claus Pedersen (Asbaek), who is seen in war, but also looking back at his wife Maria (Novotny), who is struggling with domestic life, particularly with her children who are acting out in a variety of ways while missing their father.  While on duty, Commander Pedersen is forced to make a snap decision to perform an airstrike without enough intel, in hopes of saving his men, and in the process eleven civilians are killed, for which he is brought before the courts, since what he technically did was a war crime.  The back half of the film is when this turns into a legal drama, with us wondering whether Commander Pedersen will get to return to his home, or be forced in disgrace to go to jail, causing incredible strife on his family.

The film has such potential, it's a pity it gets lost in the predictable nature of the ending and of the ways the legal drama unfolds.  After all-it's a complicated question of what he should have done here-does he risk his men's lives by not making the airstrike, or does he take the shot while hoping that it doesn't end badly, which of course it does?  "War is hell," is a tried-and-true line of thinking for military dramas, but the more complicated "war has no right answers" is one that has become increasingly popular, most notably in the best moments of American Sniper a few years back.  If that had remained the focus, perhaps with Commander Pedersen found guilty but us questioning the morality of that decision, or even keeping that the sole focus rather than interjecting an easy out (one of his fellow army men lie to save him, giving him a not guilty verdict), it would have made for a spectacular movie, perhaps one that would have risen above its Law & Order style roots.

But it doesn't-the film is too interested in side projects to really make up for being solely predictable.  We get the family drama strife, but it just keeps getting underlined, over and over again, and we get too little of the effect the personal turmoil to, say, the men around Commander Pedersen seeing their leader going down for a crime he did commit, but to save their lives.  We see the district attorney painted as a hateful woman, rather than someone who also might see the reality of this situation, but also knows that eleven people died as a result of Commander Pedersen's actions.  There is too much pressure put on the fact that we need to save Pedersen and less on the fact that there's a reason a law like this exists, and that even in a situation with no right answers, it's a bit of a copout to give us a simple withdrawal from the debate by having someone perjure himself to give the writers a way out of a sticky, interesting situation.  Films, unlike television, need to be graded more on the way they reach their ending than anything else-A War never satisfies even if it poses some fascinating questions.

Those are my thoughts-do you agree that the legal drama just feels tired at the movies now, or do you think there's still a place for it?  What are your thoughts on A War, and whether it deserved this nomination?  Share below!

OVP: The Illusionist (2006)

Film: The Illusionist (2006)
Stars: Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell
Director: Neil Burger
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Were you to make a list of actors that I was forced to sit through one of their movies, you would be hard-pressed to find a group that would make me groan louder than Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, and Jessica Biel.  The first two, by-and-large, I've never actually enjoyed in a movie.  I can get that there might be some technical skill there, but it's so bloated and wasted in most movies they're in, and I'm usually trying to get past them in the few films that are actually well-done.  Biel, on the other hand, is an actress of such limited abilities that I'm not entirely sure what she does in cinema anymore, she so quickly fades into the back of a movie.  The three of them together, without any redeeming actor to help (sorry-Rufus Sewell doesn't count enough to make that argument), made me wonder how on earth I was going to survive The Illusionist.

(Spoilers Ahead) While I lived, it was more based on dogged determination than actual enjoyment, for this film, the poorer brother to The Prestige, is hardly worth anyone's time.  The film's focus, on a magician who performs daring feats of illusion that seem impossible to those around him, is bloated, tired, and predictable.  For a film that is completely reliant upon continually wanting to surprise you, I didn't miss a beat coming.  It was impossible, for example, to assume that the movie wouldn't end up with Biel and Norton running away together from the comically evil Prince Leopold (Sewell), and that their breakup wouldn't require them faking her death in some capacity.  I mean-everyone saw that coming five minutes in, right?

A film with a predictable plot can sometimes be saved by some other redeeming factor; after all, 90% of movies we see every day are going to be easy to spell out, but we end up liking them thanks to cool effects or fine acting, but none of these actors escaped my reputation with them.  Norton is more subdued than you'd imagine, but when the bombast is called for, he shouts like he's Richard Burton trying to steal a scene from John Gielgud (for the record, that's not a compliment).  Nowhere in the film is there any sense of who this man is, and while some could argue that aids in the mystery, so much time is spent on his backstory that this is a pretty specious line of reasoning.  Worse still are Biel, playing a role that might as well be called "noble girlfriend" for all she grows the character, and Giamatti, who is terrible as the inspector whose true intentions shift every single scene like he's in a Ryan Murphy show.  Honestly-Giamatti is not a good actor, no matter how much you may have liked Sideways-everything he's done since has been a travesty of half-hearted turns and angry enunciation.  In college I would group him alongside Hilary Swank and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the three actors that were Oscar-beloved but I couldn't see the appeal, but in hindsight that's not entirely fair.  Hoffman and Swank are uneven depending on the film, but occasionally find greatness. Giamatti is just playing the same tired cartoon over and over and over again.

The film received one nomination for the Oscars, which is why I ended up seeing it in the first place, but even that is questionable.  Dick Pope is a wonderful cinematographer, and there are moments that feel quite strong-some of the scenes that veer into a canary yellow are striking, even if they feel like they wash out the actors themselves.  However, the lighting in the climactic magic scenes leaves too much to be desired-it's too straight forward, too dark, and there are other scenes that feel entirely straight-forward.  Pope would, eight years later, create his magnum opus with Mr. Turner, a film that lives up to his strong artistry, but The Illusionist is merely occasionally striking with too many moments that feel blase.

Those are my thoughts on this film, one of the few 2006 nominees I had left to see.  What are your thoughts-do you remember this, or do you confuse it still with The Prestige?  Anyone want to defend it, or are we all in agreement this is pretty bad?  And will Paul Giamatti ever be an easy sell for me?  Share in the comments!

Ranting On...Tim Ryan

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH)

The Democratic Party, as we've chronicled quite a bit over the past week, is in a state of disarray.  Chaos, if you will.  For the past eight years, even as our mountainous majorities in the House, Senate, Governor's mansions, and state legislatures fell away, we had the glowing beacon of Barack Obama, a safe space to cling toward even in a world where people like Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton had reached toward the highest-reaches of government.  But now, that's gone-in less than sixty days, Donald Trump will become the 45th president, with a Supreme Court, Senate, House, and massive advantage in state legislatures not seen for the GOP in nearly a century.  And amid that chaos, a Democratic Civil War is brewing, though it's threatening to burst as we saw yesterday when Rep. Tim Ryan decided to challenge Nancy Pelosi as House Minority Leader.

I love Pelosi, but it has to be said-this is probably a long time coming.  Pelosi has not faced a significant challenge to her perch since 2010, when Rep. Heath Shuler made a play for the position but ultimately lost when Pelosi surprisingly bucked tradition, becoming the first incumbent speaker to stay on after losing power since Sam Rayburn.  This is a problem, considering the Democrats have lost the past four straight cycles in the House.  You can blame part of that on gerrymandering, but the reality is that, particularly in 2014 and 2016, the amount of seats that they lost seats that shouldn't have been on the table.  Watching, say, MN-2 and FL-26 slip away this cycle is as close to unforgivable as you can get, and it's correct to state that the Democrats need a change in leadership.

After all, Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Jim Clyburn have been the 1-2-3 in the House since the 2006 Midterms, and ten years is long enough, particularly considering their abysmal track record.  All of them present a face of the House that the party wants to avoid.  I don't want to get into ageism too badly, but for a party that struggled to turnout Millennials in the past election, having three Democratic leaders all over 75 is not the youthful, future-oriented direction we should be projecting.  These three have had their chances-they lost the House four times in a row now, barely gaining seats in the meantime, and in particular watching a number of winnable House seats in 2016 fall by the wayside.  That's unacceptable, and it is time for a change.

But my problem here is that Tim Ryan is not the one to do it, and in particular when it comes to taking on Pelosi, we have a problem.  Ryan's positions on a few Democratic issues, but particularly abortion and gun control, are very at odds with Democratic voters and donors.  While he's moderated his tone on some of these issues, he's also in a position where he can't go as far left as most Democrats in his caucus would want him to do, and his district puts him at risk of losing reelection if he stops moderating his tone.  He is a rising star in the party, but one that has positioned himself for a statewide run in a slight-red state, not as someone who would grow through the ranks of the House.  He should be our nominee for governor, not House Minority Leader.  He is not one of the rising stars like Xavier Becerra, Marcia Fudge, or Joe Kennedy III that has a safe seat to fall back upon.  After all, we all remember what happened to Tom Foley and Tom Daschle when their backers thought they'd abandoned their constituents in favor of running the Capitol.

This might be okay if Obama was still in power, but this position is going to be one of the last defenses for the Democrats going forward, and it's going to require a much firmer backbone than Ryan's going to be able to provide.  You can criticize Pelosi for a lot of things (namely that she never won back the gavel), but you can't go after her for not being a fierce opponent when she's in the minority.  Ryan has never exhibited that sort of stamina-it says something that this is his first foray into the leadership, and he isn't going for someone further down the food chain like Hoyer or Clyburn.  In some ways it feels like he's doing this to parlay it into a run for governor-"I'm the moderate Democratic alternative"-than to actually have a conversation the Democrats desperately need.

Because while I have a lot of respect for Pelosi, her team needs to go.  My proposal, if I had a magic wand, would be to keep her on for two more years-she's got the experience to lead in Washington, she'll keep Schumer, all too happy to give in on principles in order to be liked, inline in terms of progressive politics, and she's a massive fundraiser at a time when Democrats are going to be strapped for cash (we'll be badly outspent in 2018 and 2020 without Obama or the Clintons to provide guidance).  However, I'd promote two new people in place of Hoyer/Clyburn so we have a future for the party and not just three people born during World War II.  While Ryan would be fine here, I'd prefer Becerra, Fudge, or Kennedy, as they come with less policy baggage and have proven themselves in limited leadership roles in the past.  If Pelosi is able to win back the House in 2018, make her Speaker once more until she loses it again or retires, and if not, she needs to go as well.

But not Tim Ryan-he has the write message, but is the wrong messenger for it.  The Democrats need to win back voters in the profile of Ryan, but they aren't going to win them back by alienating everyone they already have-it doesn't work that way.

Being 17 (2016)

Film: Being 17 (2016)
Stars: Sandrine Kiberlain, Kacey Mottet Klein, Corentin Fila, Alexis Loret
Director: Andre Techine
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Do you ever see the titles at an art house theater and wonder "who sees those random foreign films that play here for a week?"  I am a pretty strong fan of trying to get out of my comfort zone at the movies, but for the longest time I was one of those people.  I would go to art house cinema, no doubt, but I would be going for the headliners-the Oscar contenders, the British comedies, anything the had Catherine Deneuve-and not the more experimental and random films.  That changed this year, though, as I've been making a point of hitting these pictures, trying to get a little outside of the mainstream filmic conversation (well, the adjusted mainstream where everyone sees major Oscar contenders).  That's how I stumbled upon Being 17, a French coming-of-age film about two boys warring with their feelings toward each other.

(Spoilers Ahead) Being 17, on the surface, is a relatively familiar story.  Coming-of-age stories for young men have been the backbone of the film industry for most of its existence, and here we have two of them, Damien (Klein), an effeminate teenager who is clearly aware of his attraction to other men, in particular Tomas (Fila), a biracial son of adoptive parents whose mother has gotten pregnant late in her life.  The film centers around these two young men, as well as Damien's mother Marianne (Kiberlain), who balances her time between a successful medical practice and her vibrant romance with her husband Nathan (Loret), a military office stationed overseas.

The film's secret, however, lies not just in that they are exploring the world of gay men (a story less entrenched in film lore), but also that it does it in such a naturalistic, sexual, and violent way.  The film shows how Damien is clearly not only in love, but in lust, over the attractive Tomas, but Tomas it's not clear what his feelings are toward Damien, and the film actually plays pretty coy with his sexuality throughout the film.  The encounters between the two feel uncomfortable, but in a way that feels authentic to the story.  Damien, for example, regularly tries to initiate physical intimacy with Tomas, more out of a drive for hormones, and then we see that his feelings flow much deeper.  The film doesn't shy away and judge such actions.  Lesser stories would have had him reprimanded, put in his place as being too sexually aggressive or it would have leered into "the gay man trying to turn the straight man" territory, but Techine keeps the movie very grounded, instead telling the story as it likely would play out in real-life, and not what the cinema has taught us.

Honestly, the first two-thirds (or trimesters, as they're referred to in the film) are excellent-the third takes too many detours.  There's a scene where Nathan dies, giving us a truly unusual curveball that I feel like may have made sense within the confines of the will-they-or-won't-they, where Tomas, devastated for his friend and his surrogate mother, decides to give in to Damien's advances just once as a way to help him cope.  It feels like that's where it's headed, with Tomas' sexuality remaining a question mark as the film closed, but it doesn't quite get there as the filmmakers feel the need to give the audience a happy ending, with Tomas essentially becoming Damien's boyfriend despite having resisted him the bulk of the picture.  The weird balance of the ending, with some parts so heavy and the others so fluffy, jarred me as a viewer.  The movie had so much promise up until that point, but I'm someone who can't quite glue myself to a film with a bad ending, and I think this one goes there, to the point where you almost wonder if the final scene is a dream, and not in a clever Otto Preminger sort-of-way.  Still, it's interesting, and isn't shy about nudity or violence (there's definitely a couple of scenes in the film that would have been edited if this was an American picture), and might be worth a watch if the initial setup intrigued you.

Those are my thoughts on Being 17-share yours below if you've caught the picture.  If not, give a recommendation on a random art house film that was even below-the-line there that you caught, and whether we should see it!

OVP: Moonlight (2016)

Film: Moonlight (2016)

Stars: Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders, Alex Hibbert, Andre Holland, Janelle Monae, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali

Director: Barry Jenkins

Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Picture*, Director, Supporting Actor-Mahershala Ali*, Supporting Actress-Naomie Harris, Adapted Screenplay*, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Last week, in the wake of the election, I decided I needed to be rewarded with something special.  I had not slept well, I was reeling from the casual racism and sexism and bigotry that our next president exhibited so ferociously (and 46% of the voting public endorsed without question).  And so I (like a number of people, considering the uptick in the box office) decided to treat myself to Moonlight, a film from Barry Jenkins that has been getting critical hosannas across the spectrum and was toward the top of the "films I want to see" list for 2016.  Thankfully, unlike the election, this movie didn't disappoint-despite sky-high expectations, I left it moved, changed, in awe of the wonderful motion picture that I had seen lain before my eyes.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film unfolds in a triptych, chronicling the life of a young man named Chiron, who goes through three phases of his life.  First there's "Little" where he's a young man who befriends a couple, all the while dealing with being bullied at school for being "different."  The second phase is years later, as he's a high school student and is constantly harassed, bullied, and tortured by his classmates, with the sole exception of a boy named Kevin, with whom he eventually enjoys a brief sexual encounter on a beach, but then Kevin gives in to peer pressure and harasses Chiron, which causes him to lash out at his chief bully, sending him to jail.  Finally, there's the third chapter, "Black," (Kevin's nickname for Chiron), where Kevin is a drug dealer, hardened through the years who is called randomly by Kevin as an adult, and they eventually admit to the feelings they've felt for each other for years.

It's a tender, wonderful movie in the vein of something like Weekend or the Celine & Jesse trilogy.  There's something remarkable about watching this young man grow up, his world so jaded by hardships (his father figure dying while he's at a young age, his mother being a drug addict and emotionally abusive), and yet seeing where his hopes-and-dreams lie.  It's telling to see a scene late in the film where Kevin admits that his life didn't turn out the way he had hoped it would, but that he is still happy.  One wonders if Chiron is hoping he can say the same as he ventures out and proclaims something he's tried his whole life to state, that he's been in love with Kevin since their childhood together.  It's a beautiful, touching moment in a film filled with them.

Honestly, it's hard to not just turn into a series of gushes for this movie.  The acting is uniformly excellent.  Usually when you have a character that ages in front of you, there's a weak link, but all of the different Chirons adapt well to their introverted, deeply-cautious main character.  Rhodes, as an adult, manages to convey the sort of toughness that is required in his character's line of work, but also still finds that shy, desperate little boy that we had seen years earlier, seeing his chance at love come before him.  I think one of my biggest weaknesses at the cinema is the "just in time" aspect of romance-movies with characters who aren't discovering love for the first time, but instead realizing that they found the love of their life just under the buzzer.  It's romantic because there's an added thrill to it, a sense of danger that lacks in other movies.  Kevin and Chiron are meant for each other, and up until the last few moments it's not entirely sure that one of them is willing to admit that.

The film is smart enough to fill up the cast with enough rich characterizations that Kevin-and-Chiron aren't the only central focus.  Naomie Harris is unrecognizable as a drug-addled mother, finding the dangerous influence she has on her son and showing that to the audience, while remaining deeply, pointedly human.  Mahershala Ali is in the same league as a crack dealer who befriends Chiron, trying to give him a life outside of the one he has, not knowing that fate will guide him into being in the same profession, as well as finding the happiness that he had hoped he would as a young man.  Both actors get great moments in the script to show their range, from Harris confessing she knows the reason her son is picked on to Ali explaining what a homophobic slur is to a young Chiron.  They feel like real people, and while very much supporting players, are rich and full in their own right.

Combined with an excellent score by Nicholas Britell, and some haunting cinematography, Moonlight is everything one could hope for in what I've considered a bit of a drought for quality cinema this year.  Check it out now, in theaters-it's something special that you won't regret.

Did 2016 Kill Ticket-Splitting?

One of the stranger things that happened, with the Associated Press now officially having called New Hampshire, one week ago today was that for the first time since the passage of the 17th Amendment, ticket-splitting between presidential candidates and senators didn't exist.  Not one state that Donald Trump won went for a Democratic senator, and not one state that went for Hillary Clinton went for a Republican senator.  In over 100 years, that's never happened.  While there has frequently been a comorbidity between the two, there have always been stragglers-popular Republican incumbents in New England or longtime stalwarts in the South, but no longer.  The question here is-what does that mean for an increasingly polarized country?

It's worth noting that this was not expected (it's also worth noting that nothing about this election was expected).  Most people assumed that we'd get some combination of a Clinton win in Florida, but a loss in the Senate, or perhaps Donald Trump would emerge victorious in Indiana, but the Democrats would get a victory for Evan Bayh.  But this might make more sense than you'd think, quite frankly.  Increasingly we have, as voters, easier access to what our federal officials do, and our federal officials are more-and-more likely to stick with the party line.  Gone are the days of someone like a Ben Nelson or a Connie Morella-today's moderates are far, far more prone to support their party than those that would have been considered moderates in the past.  It would make sense that if Washington starts to function more in the vein of a parliamentary system that American voters would begin to reflect that, rewarding straight-ticket voting.

But it's still note-worthy, and something that could have profound ramifications, particularly for Democrats, who start inherently with a disadvantage in the US Senate thanks to a number of hard-red states in the South and Rocky Mountain region that give them a number of senators that don't have nearly the population ramifications of, say, California or New York, which have in some cases 20x the populations of a Wyoming or a Mississippi, but have an equal number of senators.  This is why, in the past, the Democrats have been so reliant upon southern moderates to fill up their chamber in order to achieve a majority.

This is also why it's unlikely the Democrats regain the majority in 2018, and will struggle with 2020 unless they can reinvent the map.  We don't know quite yet if 2016 was a fluke in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all states that have traditionally been solid Democratic states, or if Trump opened up a path to turn this region into the next "South," but it's a question Democrats will need to answer soon as they have incumbents up for reelection in these states in two years.  The Democrats have a hauntingly large number of seats to defend in 2018, with 25 seats up for reelection, and ten of them being in states that Donald Trump just won (assuming his lead holds in Michigan), with only one GOP seat (Dean Heller in Nevada) being a Clinton state, and only two more Republicans in states she won by less than ten points (Jeff Flake and Ted Cruz).  The Democrats will have a slight traditional advantage in the form of presidential midterms usually favoring the party out of power, but that doesn't always hold-Democrats with longer memories will recall that in 2002 President Bush won back the Senate in a very rough election for the left, in particular besting incumbents in states like Missouri and Georgia that he had just won that previous cycle.  This is part of why the Democrats felt so defeated after Tuesday-they desperately needed a good showing in 2016 to have any say in what happens in the country in the next four years.

All of this could, of course, be an anomaly.  While the end results are the same across the board, there are still differences in the margins attained by candidates this cycle.  Hillary Clinton, for example, lost Wisconsin by less than a point, while Ron Johnson won by a more comfortable four; 27,000 votes (a pittance in a state that size) could easily have disrupted this mirror image.  And there are bigger differences in states that weren't necessarily as close as Wisconsin.  John McCain, for example, ran eight points ahead of Donald Trump in Arizona, and Marco Rubio ran seven points ahead of Trump in Florida.  Most staggering of all is Missouri, where Jason Kander was 16-points ahead of Hillary Clinton, and it says something about how badly she underperformed with working class white voters that still wasn't enough for him to end up the victor in that state.  Additionally, House races (which are also looking more and more likely to mirror the top of the ticket) still had anomalies like Collin Peterson winning a district that went solidly for Trump, though even Peterson struggled this past cycle, which is a-characteristic.

These lend support to nervous incumbents like Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, and Bill Nelson looking at their reelection prospects in two years time, but it does appear like the Democrats may need to expand the map for the White House not just to compete in 2020, but also to start making gains in congressional elections.  Stemming losses in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, combined with converting places like Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia much more quickly than their current rate, is going to be seen as a crucial in the fight to gain ground in the Senate and the House in coming years.

I Still Can't Sleep

Starting tomorrow, we will return to topics other than politics on the blog.  I have a backlog of articles that I have felt were inappropriate in the wake of an election that has hit the country so ferociously, but we will have film reviews, OVP writeups, and maybe even a thought piece or two that (GASP!) doesn't have to do with something related to November 8th starting tomorrow.

But we will continue to write about the election, and some of my myriad reactions to what happened six days ago because it's still affecting me.  I know that a lot of people in my life have started moving on in some facets of their lives.  I see it in their reluctance to bring up the election with me, of talking about Trump or simply stating something tragic had happened, but it's time to push past it and hope for the best.  It is the reaction that Americans have been taught to have when faced with something heinous-to find an equilibrium and once that's achieved, adjust to the new normal.  It's how we deal with tragedies like 9/11 and Sandy Hook, with Hurricane Katrina and Trayvon Martin.  Something bad has happened, but there's no way of changing it so we need to make the best of a bad situation.

This is usually a path of coping I find helps me as well.  I carry some of the scars and battle wounds of these fights harder than others, but I usually can find a way to move forward and embrace that something terrible has happened, but we can hopefully find a space free of that tragedy to occupy.  I will make it part of my personal political mission to prevent these tragedies going forward, to work harder for politicians who vow to end gun violence and climate change and bring social justice to all.  I will occasionally protest and stand in a crowd of like-minded individuals, but by-and-large I find a way to exist.

But six days later, I'm not better, and I can't find that equilibrium.  I haven't slept through the night since the election.  Aside from last Tuesday, every night I have woken up in an abject, literal nightmare, dreaming about Election Night or a Trump presidency and what it will mean for millions of Americans like me in marginalized groups.  I find distractions increasingly welcome, even if they aren't pleasant-I enjoy a pile of work dropped on my desk at my job more than I can ever remember, or will quickly spiral into a productive spat of cleaning my entire apartment, rifling through closets and creating messes and quickly cleaning them up.  It doesn't take a therapist to point out that I'm trying to find order in a life that isn't giving me much of it.

I think the struggle is stronger and more real because I'm still trying to figure out what I feel.  I know that I'm sad and I know I'm angry and I know that I'm frightened, but I can't process fully what exactly is making me sad or angry or scared.  Am I angry with the people who supported Trump, or is it specific people in my life whom I continually have avoided texts and Facebook messages from over the past week because I know they voted for someone other than Hillary Clinton?  Am I sad because I know what is at stake for the next four years, or is it simply because I don't know what to do, as I watch a homophobic white supremacist become a senior adviser to the president?  And am I frightened for myself, or for other people in my life, or just for knowing that the next 4-8 years of my life are unknowable-that I can't count on a solid, sturdy presence at the helm of the world?  I can't figure it out-all I know is that I'm still awash with emotions, and I still can't make it through the night without waking up in a dry sweat, dreaming about Wisconsin returns or cabinet secretaries.

The only constant that I can stomach right now, the only doubt that I can't shake, the one that is permanently scarred in my life now is this: "they hate me, so many, many people hate me."  This is not something that I didn't know-I have spoken with some candor on this blog in the past few weeks about the scars of growing up in a small Midwestern town and being different, being a closeted gay teen who wasn't closeted enough to avoid ridicule.  I know what it's like to be called heinous things to my face, I know what it's like to endure rather than thrive for years on end, in hopes that someone will come across and listen to what you have to say.  I know from years of listening to relatives and friends and coworkers justify phrases with "I don't mean you, John..." and "Why can't they just be like the rest of us?" that this exists, but the way it's so rampant is just unnerving.  I look at the dark red of my home county, a farming community that hadn't gone for a Republican since 1952 before this year, and realized that every fear I had growing up was justified-that I probably wouldn't have lived through high school if I had decided to come out a little earlier than I did.

It's very hard to live in a world where so many of the people you live beside every day voted for two men who had promised to strip you of your rights.  I am still trying to stomach this, trying to wrap my brain around it and wondering how to move past it, or if it's a scar that I'll just need to push to the back of my mind before I develop into the closeted version of myself again: a quiet, deeply introverted person who can't trust any person initially without wondering what their motivations or attitudes are toward me.  This isn't fun to read, especially if you know me in real life, I'm sure, but it's much harder to write and to live.  My sense of faith in my fellow man took a severe blow last Tuesday, as did my sense of self-confidence and my faith that things will, indeed, get better.  But perhaps more than anything, the thing that keeps waking me up is knowing that they hate me.  Millions of people across the country, when armed with only the thinnest form of anonymity, proclaimed that they hate me, the me that occupies the "other" that they find so threatening and scary.  I will eventually find a way to live with that, but because of Tuesday I don't know that I will ever find a way to get over it.  It may remain, like so many emotional scars that marginalized communities in America must contend with, something that simply is etched into my brain and soul, immovable even as I find a way to move forward.

Ranting On...the DNC Chair Election

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN)

All right Democrats, it's time to calm the f@#% down on the DNC Chair race.  I am reeling from this election to, in a way I'm still grasping, but I also am now having flashbacks at how terrible high-ranking Democrats are at losing elections.  Already, with not even two candidates announced, we have the incoming Senate Minority Leader (the most powerful elected official in the party come January 20th) endorsing a sitting congressman, not even waiting to see what other candidates are potentially going to come out of the woodwork, as if we wanted to stifle as much conversation about the future of the Democratic Party as possible.

This is one of the worst moments in the history of the country, and Democrats are in a very bad place.  I have seen the Democrats lose all branches of government before (in 2000, and again in 2002/2004).  I know how scary this is, but Chuck Schumer, you have to realize that we are now looking to you and Nancy Pelosi to lead us for a couple of years.  It will be difficult, bordering on the impossible to expect President Obama to continue to serve as the guardian of the Democratic Party, even if he will remain our most beloved figure.  The Clintons have, possibly with the exception of Chelsea if she pursues a political future, relegated themselves to the pages of history-they are now the Carter Family, a respected pair of players that will be brought out in convention videos and occasionally for interviews with Larry King, but by-and-large they represent where we were, not where we have been.  This is hard for me to write, as I pictured Hillary as our champion for the next eight years, but I know what happens to presidential losers-they disappear into the dust jackets of history.

So Schumer, and Pelosi if she stays on, are now are most ardent fighters and the figures of the party until we get a nominee again.  And I don't like them shirking their duties here, because that's what Chuck Schumer is doing.  Let's forget the fact that you just lost us the Senate, possibly for six years, by not sinking baskets in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  Let's forget the fact that the Supreme Court is likely lost for a generation because you wouldn't hold up all business in the Senate until McConnell forced a vote on Garland.  And let's forget for a second that I had to watch Rome burn on Tuesday knowing you were winning reelection by 40 points in a cycle where you ran ads for yourself.

Your leadership so far, Sen. Schumer, has been appallingly lacking, and now is not the time to relegate your duties onto another politician.  If you want to do that, go back to being a ranking member and let Patty Murray run the Senate-I promise, she won't be so quick to discharge her responsibility to the country.  You might be curious what I mean here-it's that Keith Ellison is not the right choice to lead the DNC, and you know it.

I like Ellison-he's a nice guy, a solid progressive, and he represents in Congress the building I'm currently typing this in.  But we have seen what happens when a public officeholder takes the reins of the DNC.  They do it for their own ambition, rather than the party's.  I'm not saying Ellison would be as bad as Wasserman Schultz, but that's not the bar we should be shooting to clear here.  We should be shooting for a fighter, someone whose only goals are that of a DNC Chair, which are to win as many races for Democrats up-and-down-the-ballot as is humanly possible, to raise money, lots and lots of money, and to be a pitbull.

Picking a sitting member of Congress limits our ability here-they still have a day job.  They still want to be a congressman at the end of this conversation, and their first goal is appeasing their own constituents.  That's the right self-survival priority method, but it's also going to hinder the DNC, which is in a tough spot.  The Republicans run the White House, Senate, House, and most of the country's governorships and state legislatures.  If we want a chance in hell of taking back power in the next twelve years, we have to kick ass in 2018 in governor's races, and in races for state legislatures.  If we want to limit Trump's power in two years, we have to win back the House and hold all of our red-state senators.  I'm sorry, but there's nothing in Ellison's background to indicate that he'd be a particularly good fundraiser or a political strategist.  He is a civil rights attorney and a US congressman from a sharply blue district, so I suspect he's strong in a debate, but really the DNC Chair's biggest job is recruitment, strategy, GOTV, and money.  You'd be better off going with the (very successful) path of the GOP and pick a party strategist with a large network and a proven track record.  Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily's List, or Roberta Lange, who just had a brilliant run in Nevada in 2016, would fit that bill.  Ellison does not.

Where I say you're shirking your duties as a party leader is that's what you're hoping Ellison does, confusing the title of the DNC Chair with that of a congressional leader or a president.  The DNC Chair is head of the business arm of the Democratic Party-he or she is not the leader of the actual party.  Ellison makes a fine leader, one who would appeal to Clinton voters and Bernie Bros alike, and you're smart enough to know that that's something that the Democrats need to do to move on.  But then hope he gets to lead the House or try to get him to replace Hoyer or Clyburn.  Bring him in as new blood on the Democratic House side, but don't confuse the DNC Chair with being a party leader for the people, because that's not what that is-they're a leader for the volunteers, for the donors, for the party backbone who wouldn't miss an election if their life depended on it.  They're cheerleaders and out there on every cable talk show that will have them, but they aren't supposed to be Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton.  They're a leader for the necessary elite aspect of the party, not a leader for the masses.  Ellison would be wasted at the DNC if that's what you're hoping for, and it's evident you are.

The reality is that you and Nancy Pelosi are going to have the very difficult job of being our sole sources of hope for two years, perhaps longer.  You need to start thinking like a president with patience and the weight of our dreams on your shoulders, because that's what you are to many Democrats who find themselves without a rudder.  If you're not up for that, get out now so we can avoid two years of misery that end with the Republicans winning a supermajority.  If you're up for it, then have some patience, rely upon the same strategy that made your successor so successful, and step up to the big leagues like you've wanted to do your whole career.