My Favorite Things This Week #110
The Friday High 5: My Basketball Diaries
Every Friday I share 5 things I enjoyed this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High 5. 🙏🏻Avengers: Endgame
After the disappointment that was Captain America: Brave New World, I felt inclined to revisit this film. Partly to get the bad taste out of my mouth. But more to be reminded of what peak MCU felt like. And also to see if anything was spoiled by Marvel’s continued struggles.
Nope. Endgame still bangs.
I teared up several times. I wasn’t keeping count because it’s not the most masculine of metrics, but it was at least 3 times. Tears in themselves are not an indicator of quality, but if I get choked up by a scene that’s not inherently emotional, the movie is doing something right. Everybody cries during The Notebook; Captain America saying “Avengers assemble” just hits different.
In this case, it really is true: They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Marvel films used to be grounded in characters and emotional stakes. Now it’s all just empty spectacle.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
I’ve caught wind that this animated film isn’t beloved by Lord of the Rings fans. So maybe my expectations were low, but I genuinely enjoyed it. It’s better than the Hobbit trilogy, which is only good piecemeal, and far too ridiculous.
The War of the Rohirrim follows the story of Héra, daughter of King Helm Hammerhand (they certainly don’t make names like that no more). The story echoes the Pixar movie Brave—fiery redhead wants to blaze her own path—but there’s enough new stuff that it’s its own thing. Some people are gonna bounce off the film because it features a woman trying to live her own life; there’s nothing to be done for ignorance but ignore it.
This movie feels a bit superfluous, which of course it is. It also never quite arises above the sense of unreality that pervades most animated projects; that it evokes anime doesn’t help in that regard. It feels good to be back in Middle-earth, though, and the score purposefully reprises themes from the films. A cheap way of securing brownie points, but no less effective.
I’m a huge fan of the Rohirrim, so am probably a bit biased in liking this one.
Streaming on HBO, which I still refuse to call Max.
My Old Ass
I watched My Old Ass for the Aubrey Plaza of it all. Without spoiling anything—Plaza is in the movie for maybe 10 minutes. With her went my expectations for a cheeky comedy. Instead, My Old Ass is a moving coming of age story about the fleeting nature of time and choosing to make the most of what seems like the little moments.
Plaza plays the adult version of the heroine. Younger and older selves collide one night due to psychedelic shenanigans that somehow opens a hole in space and time. It does no good to dwell on how such a thing is possible. The movie doesn’t care, so we shouldn’t either. It’s not that kind of movie.
I’ve reached the stage of life where watching teenagers navigate life and love feels a bit perverse, like spying on someone while they change. It’s a level of intimacy that I, as an old, feel like I’m intruding on. My kids are the same age as these characters. It puts the events in a different kind of light.
Apart from that weird little squeamishness—which is probably a me-problem—I loved this movie. It’s also only an hour and a half. We need to normalize 90-minute runtimes. People are out here trying to live.
Streaming on Prime.
Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga
I have always felt a strange affinity for Led Zeppelin. The music is undeniable. But their last album was released years before I was born, and they disbanded while I was still navigating the tricky transition from pooping oneself to self-consciousness. I have no memories of them while they were still Led Zeppelin. For me, they’ve always existed somewhere between a dream and a myth.
I have theories about why I love them, based on half-remembered glimpses of childhood and a latent desire to find my father through the music of his era. It’s very much “it’s complicated,” so we’ll sidebar that for now.
All of that is pretext. The short of it: I started reading Hammer of the Gods, a start-to-end telling of the Led Zeppelin story. There are debates about the book’s accuracy—argued by no less than the band itself—and it definitely reads like it’s written by someone who considers the National Enquirer the good shit.
I get it—sex sells, and rock stars will be rock stars. Still. I’m only 1/3 of the way through the book, but if I have to hear one more time about the band’s American tour manager banging some girl on a table in front of a roomful of witnesses, I’m gonna wish I could throw an eBook without destroying the eReader. (The tour manager was a primary source and loves to make himself part of a story he has no business being in.)
That huge aside, the book is riveting. It’s an origin story in the truest sense, charting the band’s meteoric rise in great detail. As someone who wasn’t there, who has only seen Led Zeppelin in concert via the magic of YouTube, it’s after-the-fact thrilling.
Related: I watched the concert film The Song Remains the Same. It includes Led Zeppelin performances from 1976, a teeny glimpse backstage, and truly awful dreamlike segments featuring mafiosos, Arthurian fantasies, and idyllic hippie living. The scenes feel like the non-sex portions of a porno. You’re better off with YouTube.
The Untouchables
Last week my son was home for spring break. One of our shared favorite things to do is watch movies. Sometime last year I compiled a list of good movies that predated him or he was too young to see when they released. Past entries include Ocean’s 11, Tombstone, Gran Turismo, and Speed.
He picked The Untouchables this week. I don’t remember when, exactly, I first saw it. Certainly not when it released in 1987. Movies had a much longer shelf life in the 80s and 90s, thanks in part to literal shelves. I’m pretty sure my mom rented this movie sometime in the early to mid 90s, perhaps after our migration north. Apart from a few rare instances, there was no great impetus to see stuff when it was in theaters. You got to it when you got to it. This remained true through most of the 20th century. I didn’t see The Matrix or The Sixth Sense until they were on DVD; the surprises of both remained unspoiled. It was a different time.
Back to the film, before this newsletter turns into Old Man Talks Of Ye Olden Days.
I had no real memories of The Untouchables, other than the stuff I knew from history—Eliot Ness, Al Capone, Tommy guns. It’s very much a product of its time, with some unintentional comedy and a heavy-handed score that draws too much attention to itself. But it remains compelling drama. The train station shoot-out is a masterclass in drawing out tension. Worth revisiting, even if it's just to see a baby-faced Kevin Costner without any gravel inflecting his voice.
The Untouchables concerns prohibition America, when civil liberties were arbitrarily denied by Uncle Sam. It’s a mindset that’s threatening to return 100 years later. And something I may explore in a separate piece.
Your turn!
What’s giving you good vibes this week? Let me know so I can check it out.
This Week’s Peep Show
Peep Show is an extra section for paid subscribers where I share what's going on in my life and what's on my mind. I cribbed the subtitle of this post from the 1995 Leonardo DiCaprio film The Basketball Diaries. If you know the movie, you might be thinking, “Waitaminute—is Eric is about to cop to selling his body in a bathroom stall for money to get high?”
No.
The Basketball Diaries is a cautionary tale about kids and drugs, a recurrent theme for most of my young life. What began as a PSA involving an egg and a skillet ends in a dirty bathroom stall. I don’t know if that’s the natural progression of these things, but The Basketball Diaries terrified me far more than an authoritative father-figure scowling in disapproval while making breakfast. Please, bro—I saw that every day.
In a case study of one person—me—The Basketball Diaries was effective propaganda. Turns out you can be scared straight. However, as a basketball movie, it’s a complete letdown. This may sound shallow but whatever, I was 17 at the time—I only watched it because basketball was in the title. Picture young-me settling in, thinking I’m about to see an artful take on White Men Can’t Jump and instead discovering it’s about an emaciated Leo seriously feening for drugs.
At the time, I devoured anything to do with basketball.
When you’re taller than everyone else, the default assumption is you play. So I did. But I didn’t get serious until high school. After we moved to a remote area of Northern Michigan—picture the Antarctica settlement from The Thing but with more lederhosen—my brother and I lived at the community center. It was only a couple of blocks from our house, and there was literally nothing else to do.