{"id":10851,"date":"2017-07-05T13:52:55","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T17:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10851"},"modified":"2017-07-05T13:52:55","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T17:52:55","slug":"promise-payoff-falls-shadow-movie-music-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2017\/07\/promise-payoff-falls-shadow-movie-music-reviews.html","title":{"rendered":"Between the Promise and the Payoff Falls the Shadow: Movie and music reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It Comes at Night<\/strong><\/em>: This film is incredibly effective at creating tension and dread, and pretty aggressive about refusing to be a \u201cstory\u201d in any conventional sense. Did you know that sometimes terrible things happen, due to pileups of bad luck and understandable choices? That is what this movie wants to give you. No character grows or changes (unlike in downer horror flicks like The Descent<\/em>) and no questions will be answered by the end except, \u201cWho will die?\u201d<\/p>\n

I know it sounds shallow to be all, \u201c\u2026What was the point of that?\u201d, like, art doesn\u2019t need to have a \u201cpoint\u201d exactly. But this movie uses a ton of directorial skill (that truck trip through the woods!) and acting ability (including some genuinely grueling depictions of anguished grief), to give you\u2026 some awful things that happened.<\/p>\n

Moscow Never Sleeps<\/strong><\/em>: Interlinking stories of contemporary Moscow life, made by an Irish writer\/director. There were some elements here which would ordinarily really work for me, and almost did\u2013the use of humiliation, for example, and the scenes in which a humiliated person reconciles or semi-reconciles with their assailant. It did feel slight, though. We get only small slices of everyone\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

Lots of great aerial shots of the city. My Russian friend noted that there\u2019s a scene here which borrows from Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears<\/em>, but with a nasty twist ending. She also found the ubiquitous binge drinking kind of stereotypical (along with the indoor wearing of headkerchiefs!) although I make no judgments there, and am always down for cultures whose first emotional resort is alcoholism.<\/p>\n

To the extent that the film is trying to make a point about Russia and Russians, I think we get a) political corruption, b) total absence of religion (unlike in e.g. Tycoon: A New Russian<\/em><\/a>), c) Moscow is gorgeous from above, and d) men are bad.<\/p>\n

The Hollow Crown: Richard II<\/strong><\/em>: This was fun! I\u2019d never seen Richard II,<\/em> unless taking a class from Harold Bloom counts (zing!). Ben Whishaw actually played the King as less theatrical than I expected. He comes across as someone who deeply believes that he is protected by God. It\u2019s an almost prosperity-gospel view of monarchy, where his anointing means he will succeed. And so he\u2019s shattered when he fails. Maybe\u2026 maybe you should have tried fearing<\/em> God, at some point?<\/p>\n

Loved the use of outdoor settings you can\u2019t do on a stage. The Death\u2019s-court-in-the-skull scene was amazing. The outdoor scenes and nature shots add to the feeling that this is a play about England, the land, not about England-the-concept. In Henry V<\/em> foreign battles really matter and you\u2019re supposed to root for the away team. In Richard II<\/em> the Irish wars matter for their effects on England<\/em>, the isle, and your emotional center of gravity is kept much closer to home.<\/p>\n

Too much Christ imagery at the end. Whatever you find in the text, fine, but you don\u2019t have to add<\/em> any. And, too, if you\u2019re going to make Richard II St. Sebastian you cannot then immediately turn around and make him Jesus. Pick one!<\/p>\n

This was really effective at making you feel shock and disgust at Richard\u2019s actions, but horror at his deposition. Man, by the time you play the \u201cI am the divinely-anointed King!\u201d card, you need to accept that you\u2019ve already lost. That is a form of authority you can reinforce, through your bearing, but not a form you can deploy.<\/p>\n

The Mountain Goats, Goths<\/em><\/strong>: Songs about aging goth musicians and their inevitable returns to their inescapable hometowns. The first song, \u201cRain in Soho,\u201d is genuinely phenomenal and you should seek it out. It might be one of my very favorite MG songs. Sinister, urgent and spooky; phenomenal lyrics transforming Scripture into veiled threats (\u201cWe played for you but you would not sing\/No one was gonna get away with anything,\u201d and that is not even close to the most intense example). No friends closer than the ones we\u2019ve lost<\/em>\u2026.<\/p>\n

The other songs are variable in quality but there\u2019s nothing that approached \u201cRain in Soho\u201d for me. I did really enjoy the hints we get of that real \u201980s sound, hints of glockenspiels and synth. I enjoyed the complex interweaving melodies of \u201cUnicorn Tolerance\u201d although I don\u2019t like these lyrics and suspect if I understood them I\u2019d like them less; I like the depressing, relentless drumbeat of \u201cStench of the Unburied.\u201d And in \u201cWear Black\u201d we get Izzy Ortiz\u2019s great lounge anthem, the background tune for her beach blanket brooding.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t really care so much about are the characters and stories here. I love return-home stories (and \u201cAndrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds\u201d is probably my second-favorite song) but a lot of these songs are about people looking back on their careers, either contented or resentful. And what they\u2019re contented or resentful about is the career itself, the music and the success, the artistry or the top spot on the billing. Contrast this with \u201cThe Ballad of Bull Ramos,\u201d where the career nostalgia is suffused with love of and gratitude for the people in the guy\u2019s life. I don\u2019t know, the stories here felt less urgent than the ones in the best MG songs. Also there\u2019s a lot of John Darnielle\u2019s high-pitched breathiness and man, a little of that goes a long way for me.<\/p>\n

That said, I liked this better on second listen than on first, and I\u2019ve found that their albums grow on me. (I really love the final section of \u201cHeretic Pride\u201d now, the Tianchi monster through the prom queen caught in the high beams.) So if you\u2019re into Goth nostalgia and you like the Mountain Goats anyway, give this a spin. And honestly, even if neither of those things apply to you, try out \u201cRain in Soho.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It Comes at Night: This film is incredibly effective at creating tension and dread, and pretty aggressive about refusing to be a \u201cstory\u201d in any conventional sense. Did you know that sometimes terrible things happen, due to pileups of bad luck and understandable choices? That is what this movie wants to give you. No character […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[119,104,114,44,289],"class_list":["post-10851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-horror","tag-mountain-goats","tag-the-day-the-world-turned-day-glo","tag-the-russian-soul","tag-what-you-will"],"yoast_head":"\nBetween the Promise and the Payoff Falls the Shadow: Movie and music reviews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It Comes at Night: This film is incredibly effective at creating tension and dread, and pretty aggressive about refusing to be a "story" in any\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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