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wazafam · 3 years

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The Falcon & the Winter Soldier showrunner Malcolm Spellman is now working on Captain America 4 with Marvel Studios - and here are the lessons he needs to learn from the Disney+ series. Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe looks and feels so very different to what has gone before. For one thing, the modern MCU is a transmedia initiative where stories move from big screen to small screen, and back again.

Fans now know that's the case with Sam Wilson's Captain America. Sam was given the shield in the final scenes of Avengers: Endgame, but even there he told Steve Rogers it felt "like it's someone else's." Falcon & Winter Soldier was essentially the story of how Sam came to accept his new identity, while acknowledging the complexity of Captain America's legacy. Malcolm Spellman, head writer and showrunner of Falcon & Winter Soldier, is now confirmed to be working on a script for Captain America 4 with Dalan Musson, a staff writer who was also attached to the show. It's safe to assume there'll be a straight narrative throughline and character arc, although it's worth remembering specific plot threads - such as Sharon Carter's Power Broker - could well be picked up in other Marvel properties first.

Related: Falcon & Winter Soldier Ending Explained & MCU Future Setup

Falcon & Winter Soldier became the most popular series in the world, but that doesn't mean it was perfect. Spellman would do well to reflect both on what worked and what didn't in order to ensure Captain America 4 is a worthy successor to the legacy of the Captain America films, which have been some of the best in Marvel history.

It's safe to assume Captain America 4 will focus on Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson, who has officially succeeded Steve Rogers as the next Captain America. But it should also feature Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes; Mackie and Stan are both tremendous actors, and Falcon & Winter Soldier was at its best when it allowed the two to play off one another. Sam and Bucky were initially only associates because they had a friend in common, but Steve's absence has meant they've bonded and become friends in and of themselves. That friendship really needs to continue, and on the big screen too. Meanwhile, there would be a smart thematic inversion in seeing Sam headline the franchise, with Bucky serving as backup; Phase 1 of the MCU was critiqued for frequently having white main heroes with Black sidekicks (Iron Man and War Machine, Captain America and Falcon), so this would turn that idea on its head.

The best Marvel superhero stories are grounded in their characters' worlds. Classic Spider-Man tales are as much about Peter Parker's love life and struggle to look after Aunt May as they are about his web-slinging; Tony Stark's battle with alcoholism and sometimes-desperate attempts to keep his businesses afloat are as much a part of his story as his suiting up as Iron Man. Falcon & Winter Soldier suggests Spellman understands that truth on an almost instinctive level, because he spent so much time developing Sam Wilson's personal world. Viewers got to meet members of Sam's family, to learn their history, and to enjoy watching Sam interact with his nephews. Even more amusingly, Bucky soon found himself drawn into Sam's world as well, and seemed to quite enjoy flirting with his sister.

Captain America 4 needs to be grounded in Sam's personal life, continuing to develop the new Captain America as a three-dimensional person who exists in a specific cultural context. This is necessary to ensure viewers have a strong relationship with Sam, that they appreciate him as a character rather than just a shield-slinging Avenger, and it will also help distinguish Sam from his predecessor. Steve Rogers was a man who was forced to give up his personal world in order to become Captain America; he sacrificed himself in Captain America: The First Avenger, found a new context working with SHIELD but had to bring them down, and ultimately tore apart the Avengers because of his refusal to compromise. Sam should feel the same tension, the pull between being Captain America and being Sam Wilson, but he should contrast with Steve in that he attempts to find a balance. That would give us a Captain America story like nothing we have seen before.

Related: Every Falcon & Winter Soldier Easter Egg In Episode 6

Falcon & Winter Soldier may have been enjoyable, but sadly it was flawed. The scripts were absolutely packed with good ideas; the secret legacy of Captain America, historic racial prejudice and racism in modern America, the plight of refugees, even the potential for a debate on the very nature of American self-identity by contrasting Sam Wilson with John Walker. Unfortunately, there's a sense in which there were simply too many ideas, and as a result few of them were well-developed over the course of the series. The show felt like it had a lot to say, but it never quite managed to say it, in spite of Sam's speeches and sermons in episode 6. Worse still, sometimes the messages was muddled and even problematic, particularly around John Walker.

Captain America 4 is a movie, meaning it will have a much shorter runtime. That actually bodes well for Spellman, because it means a lot of ideas and themes will wind up cut in order to streamline the narrative. Spellman will need to carefully consider what themes are particularly important, and what messages he wants viewers to pick up on. The shorter length should mean the narrative winds up being a lot tighter.

The final issue Spellman needs to deal with is a more subtle one; he needs to avoid over-signposting. In narrative terms, a signpost is a hint that helps you perceive which direction a story is going to take. Falcon & Winter Soldier suffered from serious over-signposting, in that it was possible to see twists coming a mile away - especially if you were familiar with the original comics. Anyone who'd read about John Walker knew he was going to fail at being Captain America, probably in spectacular fashion, and instead would be dubbed the "US Agent." The Sharon Carter/Power Broker twist was so obvious most viewers had figured it out by the end of episode 3. All this unfortunately led to a season finale that was, however enjoyable, also fairly predictable.

To be fair to Spellman, part of the problem lay in the fact it was obvious how Falcon & Winter Soldier fitted into the overarching narrative of the MCU; it was clearly going to be the story of how Sam decided to accept the shield he had been given by Steve Rogers, and suited up as the new Captain America. The purpose of the story was so clear that viewers could go into it knowing what to expect, well aware John Walker existed purely to contrast two different approaches to being a superhero, and confident where the lead character would end up by the final episode. So the issue is related to the nature of the show as much as to the writing, and Spellman can approach Captain America 4 with a lot more freedom. There are frankly countless directions Captain America 4 could take - especially if it also draws in some plot threads and even supporting characters from other Marvel Disney+ productions that haven't come out yet. This time round, the story should have some truly shocking twists.

It's great to hear that the story of Sam Wilson's Captain America will not be relegated to Disney+, but will instead continue on the big screen. What's more, Malcolm Spellman has done a tremendous job fleshing out Sam's world and developing him as a potential lead character, so he's undoubtedly the right man to be working on the script. For all that's the case, though, he would do well to cast a critical eye to Falcon & Winter Soldier and ensure he learns from both what he did right and what he did wrong. The Captain America franchise is one of Marvel's best, if not the best, and Captain America 4 has a lot to live up to.

More: How Did Marvel Get The Falcon & The Winter Soldier So Wrong?

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gusticeleague · 7 years

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With the third season of Rick and Morty on the horizon, and since I don’t think anyone’s done this before, I decided to give my ranking of all the Rick and Morty episodes (from the first two seasons).

My metrics for judgement are as follows: I’m attempting to judge the show purely on its own merits, which each episode being held to the question “is this the show at it’s best?”, which to my mind is a character-driven high concept sci-fi show that actively critiques but never outright condemns the humanist philosophies behind its chosen genre.

I’ve tried to avoid using other shows as a comparison unless it’s to illustrate a point, but in some cases it’s pretty unavoidable when this show unapologetically rips off its plots from movies wholesale. Episodes get more points for good story structure that adds to a good moral, strong critique or parody of an established science fiction trope that is otherwise well explored and strong character development that builds across episodes and firmly establishes a continuity. And when in doubt, it mostly comes down to “which would I rather rewatch if I only had those two competing episodes to choose from?”.

All clear? Alright, without further ado…

The Definitive Objective Extra-Schwifty Ranking of every Rick and Morty Episode

1. Rixty Minutes (S1E8)

Well, what else was it going to be?

What begins as an epilogue to Rick Potion #9 ends up becoming the central thesis for the entire show up to that point, that while the character’s existence isn’t significant on the cosmic scale and Summer’s birth basically creating the entire family was an accident of fate, sometimes seeing things from that perspective makes you realise how miraculous it is that you are here now, and instead of wrestling with your own insignificance and the possibility of “what could have been”, you accept and embrace the life that you have now, for all its faults. That those revelations are paired with the interdimensional TV both builds the tension for how the conflict happening outside of is progressing and relieves it by providing a reprieve from the revelations that happen from it. This episode is the show at its best, and probably one of the best episodes of television period.

2. Meeseeks and Destroy (S1E5)

One of the smartest writing decisions in the show is that it doesn’t do the old domestic magic/sci-fi show trope of having the main character’s adventures kept a secret from the rest of the family or having a convenient reset button at the end of each episode. Instead, it aims to explore the emotional consequences of interacting with Rick’s world, and Meeseeks and Destroy marks a turning point in the show where all of these adventures start to actually matter to the show’s continuity and to the character’s growth. This is actually my personal favourite episode, but I think it’s just shy of being the best for two reasons: the A-plot relies on a reversal of the normal story structure, with Morty leading the adventure instead of Rick so it’s not the most “typical” of the show overall, and the two plots don’t come together as fluidly as they do in Rixty. Still, it’s a very close call.

3. Auto-Erotic Assimilation (S2E3)

Beyond a few references at Beth’s mother and a few (potentially false) memories, we never really get to see how Rick operates in a romantic relationship. So it’s interesting to see Rick at his most vulnerable and with someone he actually has actually has some love for in Unity, the one-who-is-a-million that got away. An emotionally raw story about two people who are good together but aren’t good for each other, paralleled with a B-plot of Summer and Morty learning that given total freedom, humans (well, blue alien people) will undoubtedly give in to their worst impulses. Also, man, that ending is one of the most gut-wrenchingly depressing endings to a show I’ve ever seen, and it lands perfectly. Maybe a little too perfectly.

4. Morty-Night Run (S2E2)

Probably the show’s best straight-forward adventure episode, which helps set up the Galactic Federation conflict that will eventually pay off at the end of Season 2 and is probably the best demonstration of Morty attempting to apply idealistic Earth morality to a more morally complicated universe to which Rick is perfectly adapted. A plethora of memorable characters like Krombopulous Michael and Jemaine Clement’s crooning sentient gas cloud, some excellent psychedelic animation and art direction, and a consistently funny B-plot of Jerry’s time in a daycare full of alternate versions of himself and confronting just how pathetic he is make this episode a real winner.

5. The Ricks Must Be Crazy (S2E6)

This is the best of what I like to call the “nesting doll” episodes of the show, where the adventure is a continuous descent or ascent through several layers of the sci-fi trope of the week. The first two thirds of the episode are a great slow boil before the “oh, shit” moment of the Mini-Verse scientist killing himself, and the final race out of the teeny/mini/microverses, intercut with Summer in Rick’s car is one of the most expertly paced sequences in the entire show. It’s also the only episode that gives Rick a compelling nemesis in the form of Zeep Zanthorp - a being he unintentionally created who is smart enough to challenge him, which annoys Rick to no end. I really hope they bring him back, since Rick is pretty short on compelling enemies (besides the Council of Ricks). Fingers crossed for some car trouble in Season 3.

6. Close Encounters of the Rick Kind (S1E10)

The idea of Rick being the only person(s) able to challenge him could have served to make Rick a little too smug and perfect for his own good, but the Council of Ricks serve as the perfect synthesis and literalisation of Rick’s self-loathing and his detest for sprawling authoritarian institutional bodies. Every alternate timeline/universe/dimension (do they ever settle on one definition? They’re all used fairly interchangeably) strike a perfect balance between absurdist weirdness and incredibly internal consistency, and every rewatch makes you pick up on new details you didn’t notice before. And look, I’m not made of stone, Jerry and Doofus Rick’s friendship is actually quite sweet, and I hope they get reunited someday.

7. Look Who’s Purging Now (S2E9)

The main character throughline of Season 2 is seeing how Rick and Morty start to rub off on each other over the course of their adventures. This comes to a head in this episode as we see how willing Morty is to emulate Rick in his amorality when he goes “full Purge” and how Rick is taken aback by what his grandson could become following in his footsteps while also confronting the limits of his joy/apathy of the bloodshed that ensues from his adventures. It also has the sharpest piece of social satire the show has ever done, where after the newly freed aliens try to rebuild society after the overthrow of their aristocratic overlords devolve into arguing over the division of labour and wind up reinstating the Purge again anyway from the frustration of having to create a functioning society again. Defeatist? Maybe. Hilarious? Absolutely.

8. Rick Potion #9 (S1E6)

Probably the episode that’s most important to the overall canon of the show. It sets the tone for the adventures to follow, gives a true point of no return for the show as a whole, as well as a great deconstruction of status-quo beholden storytelling and the creepy ethics of love potion plots. Had this just been a ranking of season one episodes, it would probably rank higher, but as you can probably tell by this list, the show has definitely topped this one since. I also want to point out just how incredible the show’s art direction and character creation is when it comes to all the varying designs of the Cronenbergs. I really hope the animators got a raise after this episode.

9. Total Rickall (S2E4)

The Thing through the lens of a Community clip show turns into a paranoid existential thriller that escalates perfectly, has an excellent twist that probably ended up ruining a load of friendships in real life and revealed a ton about how the Smith family operates and sees each other. It does test the limit for how many wacky characters you’re willing to put up with, and it can’t really escape the insular insubstantial feeling of bottle episodes as a whole, especially if you buy into the theory that this episode and Morty-Night Run take place in another universe and so it doesn’t really matter to the show’s continuity as a whole. But it give us Mr. Poopy Butthole, so I’m willing to forgive it.

10. Big Trouble in Little Sanchez (S2E7)

This is a tough one to rank, because it has the greatest disparity of quality between the A plot and B plot. Beth and Jerry’s “mythologue” oriented marriage counselling is such a perfect science-fiction idea of making a metaphorical conflict real that it probably had enough to be the plot of the whole episode. Unfortunately, it’s paired with a B plot that tries to do the same thing with Tiny Rick. He’s funny as a visual, but the episode has to go to some lengths to inject tension into the proceedings. Why can’t Rick just stay in his young body forever other than some convoluted explanation about how teenagers push all their bad feelings into the back of their minds and therefore Old Rick will be erased (I think?). I felt it could have used an additional conflict where Rick loses some of his scientific brilliance because of his young brain overwriting his old one, or maybe a better acknowledgement that Summer was the one that pushed Rick into a self-described hackneyed high school plot that even he found too simple a pitch. Still, it cracks the top ten on the strength of the Beth and Jerry plot alone, which I plan to go into more depth about later, so stay tuned.

11. Anatomy Park (S1E3)

There are three inevitabilities in this world: death, taxes and sci-fi shows doing a Fantastic Voyage plot. Rick and Morty’s take is to fuse it with Jurassic Park and also have it be the show’s Christmas episode, which gives us a story which is never dull and has a lot of great jokes (“Oh, never mind, I was thinking of the T. rex”) but doesn’t come together in any interesting way other than the blood raining at the end, which also raises the question of whether the show was planning at this point to keep Rick and Morty’s adventures a secret from the rest of the Smiths. Also, I’m of the mind that Christmas episodes tend to work better when they’re placed later in the show’s run, as all the familial conflicts can play out better when you’ve had more time to get to know the characters and how they became the way they are It’s good, Maybe could have been better had it aired later in the show’s run and the writers had a better idea of what the show’s status quo was.

12. Raising Gazorpazorp (S1E7)

Having an adolescent raise a baby warmonger alien is some great application of science fiction to the mundane, and Morty’s relationship to Morty Jr. yields some touching moments. Tthe gender politics of planet Gazorpazorp feel a bit rote and stereotypical and an excuse to make a lot of obvious “battle of the sexes” jokes, and raises a lot of gripes I have regarding how mainstream science fiction comedy approaches and incorporates women and the feminine into its worlds, even if it does a little bit of softball criticism by drawing attention to Rick’s casual misogyny. Good, but could have been better.

13. The Wedding Squanchers (S2E10)

A great finale that pays off the long-brewing confrontation between Rick and the Galactic Federation, and sets up a lot of interesting developments for Season 3. But as a result of that, it kind of feels a little incomplete in a way that the first season finale didn’t because they knew they were getting renewed.

14. A Rickle In Time (S2E1)

I loved the multiple timeline split-screen bits and Rick explaining at length about how he doesn’t care about Morty and Summer, which sets up what I believe to be Rick’s arc through Season 2 revealing his softer side. But the Beth and Jerry B-plot is basically just trying to give them something to do, doesn’t really contribute any tension to the situation back home and doesn’t tell us anything new about their relationship.

15. Pilot (S1E1)

As pilots go, Rick and Morty’s one is pretty good. It tells you everything you need to know about the scope of the show, its characters and the type of humour you can expect from it. The “Rick and Morty hundred years!” rant is one of the show’s best moments. But it was clearly still finding its voice, and there’s a bit of weirdness in that you think the show is going to pivot the way having the rest of the Smith family not know about Rick and Morty’s adventures, which they thankfully did away with.

16. Ricksy Business (S1E11)

Despite introducing us to Birdperson and Abradolph Lincler, this episode feels kind of unremarkable in retrospect, and ultimately just feels like they threw in all of the ideas they couldn’t fit into the earlier episodes into this one in case they didn’t get renewed.

17. M. Night Shaym-aliens (S1E4)

The second best of the “nesting doll” episodes. The simulations inside simulations are a great Inception riff, even better than their actual Inception parody (more on that in a second). We really get a good look at Jerry’s insecurity and what drives him as a character, and the first real demonstration of Rick’s cunning and preparedness that also helps lay out the cosmic scope of his reputation. However, I don’t find the Zigerian scammers that funny, despite David Cross’ best efforts as the voice of their leader, and they’re a little too similar to the nudist scammer aliens from the first Futurama movie for my liking - the fact that they’re squeamish about nudity had to be a dig at that, surely?. But the overall set-up is solid and seeing Jerry casually strut through a low-res simulation of his life is pretty hysterical.

18. Lawnmower Dog (S1E2)

The worst (or really, the least good) of the “nesting doll” episodes. The direction the Scary Terry plot goes in is unexpected, clever and genuinely touching, but I don’t find the “dogs take over the world” plot that remarkable in any way, especially in comparison to the rest of the show.

19. Get Schwifty (S2E5)

This episode got a lot of shit when it aired, and it’s easy to see why, seeing that it had to follow a hat-trick of three great episodes. It’s a fairly solid Independence Day/Day The Earth Stood Still parody, but it’s definitely the show’s most lazily conceived plot, not to mention that I’m fairly sure that entire sections of the script appear in the previous episodes. That said, the giant space heads are a great visual (and gave us some great meme fodder), and it sets up the endgame of The Wedding Squanchers by reintroducing us to Birdperson and Tammy, if very inelegantly.

20. Interdimensional Cable II: Tempting Fate (S2E8)

On my first watch of this, I didn’t find this episode that funny, and the only TV bit that really made me laugh out loud was “Man vs Car”. The context for the Interdimensional Cable here, instead of being a distraction from the potential collapse of Beth and Jerry’s marriage is them waiting in a hospital for Jerry to recover from a fatal alien illness, which could be a potentially interesting idea if he hadn’t been immediately cured at the episode’s beginning, which immediately sucks all the tension out of the episode. Where the tension in Rixty Minutes (the episode this is self-plagiarising) lies in whether the Smith family will ultimately be broken up for good, this one ends up hinging on...the fate of Jerry’s penis. It keeps trying to ring some tension out of Jerry wanting to feel significant for having saved the galaxy’s answer to the Dalai Lama, and while I like the ultimate lesson that you can’t make people love you, the journey to get there doesn’t really work as well as it could have. They even make a meta-dig at themselves that they can’t improve on perfection, and at that point you kind of give this episode the ranking it deserves.

21. Something Ricked This Way Comes (S1E9)

At its best, Rick and Morty subverts and deconstructs well-worn science fiction tropes and the plots and lessons that tend to play out when played straight, and works best when it incorporates those proceedings with examinations of the American family dynamic and how we fight the daily battle of finding some kind humanist purpose and meaning in our lives in a universe for which that pursuit is bound to end in failure. While this episode has the best Summer plot and arguably the show’s best joke in the form of the Butter Passing Robot, Ricked is probably the most lazily conceived version of itself possible, picks a lot of very easy targets and ends up feeling very bored with itself as a result. While it aims to be an examination of how science fiction stories have replaced or perhaps better refine the old superstitions and morality lessons that horror stories play off, while actively critiquing how similar the two genres are in execution, the actual plot is basically Rick becoming a mouthpiece for how much the writers hate superstitious thinking and going “haha you brought Stephen King to a Kurt Vonnegut/Stanislaw Lem fight, get riggedy-riggedy-rekt son”. The B-plot of Jerry insisting that Pluto is a planet pokes fun at climate change denialism, and while a great demonstration of how facts and evidence have become summarily rejected in political discourse in favour of dogma and superstition, it doesn’t escalate into anything bigger like the best episodes of the show do. Hell, they can’t even agree on what the moral is at the end, and instead just resolve to literally beat up some political strawmen in lieu of actually finding a cohesive message. While that might be cathartic to some, for a show that isn’t content to give its audience easy answers, it’s punching well below its weight.

#rick and morty #rick sanchez #morty smith

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theworstbob · 7 years

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the thing journal, 6.18.2017 - 6.24.2017

the things i watched or listened to last week. in this post: i’ll keep you in mind, from time to time; the bridge; henri; under your spell; the last man on earth; beautiful thugger girls; into the maelstrom; makes me sick; truth is a beautiful thing; blind; the taking of pelham one two three; big fish theory; wolves

1) I'll Keep You in Mind, from Time to Time, by Moose Blood: One day I'll remember to write down what I think about an album when I listen to it on my computer and I literally have WordPad open in another visible window. It was a great time, it's a dope emo album and I'm the sort of person that will listen to emo in 2017 and describe it as "dope," and I apologize we're starting this off with me forgetting how I reacted to something.

2) The Bridge, dir. Eric Steel: a wonderful documentary about the golden gate bridge and the people who use it! you and your family will never look at the full house credits the same way again! This is a difficult film to review because it's a difficult film to watch. There is footage of people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, there are interviews with people who either knew someone who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge or, in one instance, are someone who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, the throughline of the film is someone pacing back and forth along the bridge, struggling with the decision, not sure what they want to do. It's a brutal watch. And it has to be, it would have been irresponsible if this film tried to romanticize suicide, if it tried to present the jumpers as heroes flying to freedom. The people being interviewed say the jumpers were trapped in the prisons of their own heads, never quite found stability in this world, but those people are also clearly affected by the choice the jumpers made, are left wondering or, worse, knowing what they could have done better.

3) Henri, dir. Yolande Moreau: gpsh this movie took forever to get where it needed to go, and then when it got there, it didn't really do anything. i dunno, i guess i just never got on its level. i never quite figured out if the dude's relationship with the butterfly was condescending or creepy or if i was meant to think it was adorable that this mess of a man kept hanging out with the poor young woman, i could never tell if the film was sympathetic to its characters or if i was meant to laugh at those pitiful souls (it's a french film, so probably "laugh at" more than “laugh with”), and it didn't seem to take any of its characters problems seriously. i dunno, it just didn't seem like a film that needed to be made, it didn't seem to be saying anything about friendship or society or whatever, it just presented some idiots and said "make of this what you will." maybe i'm missing something, but i don't think i am? (also i signed up for Mubi. this is worth mentioning, that i signed up for a service that will present me with various foreign films and documentaries, so. look out for that, i guess.)

4) Under Your Spell, by The Birthday Massacre: shout outs to everyone who listened to this band because of game grumps There are moments on this album I can only describe as nu-metally; there are instrumental breaks on "Counterpane" that sound directly lifted from mainstream rock radio in 2003, straight-up Chevelle vibes in 2017. What The Birthday Massacre understands, though, is that 2003 has a place in 2017, and that's as color to the 1980s, and they somehow use buttrock to make their Depeche Mode-y song more interesting, feel different than it had on Superstition. The Birthday Massacre know how to make great rock songs, and it's so nice to know music like this is still being made in 2017. (Words used in this review include "nice" and "interesting." I swear I'm trying.)

5) The Last Man on Earth s2, cr. Will Forte: Binging this show may be a mistake, since the main character is so misanthropic and gross and none of the characters are good people. (Except Carol, who is trying her best all the time to just be as darn nice as possible, Kristen Schaal kinda carries this show.) It's not that I'm not impressed by this show, it's a really solid show, I just question whether I'm enjoying it. Or maybe I'm just not paying attention, I dunno, we've been over how bad I am at watching things. I loved the integration of Jason Sudeikis into the group and thought he and Will Forte played well as a successful younger brother and fuck-up older brother, like the perfect use of Jason Sudeikis is as a handsome and charming foil to a Will Forte type, and I liked Todd's slow evolution into a legit jerk, it's good! I like it! I shouldn't be consuming this in one gulp.

6) Beautiful Thugger Girls, by Young Thug: The Young Thug brand of trap is my preferred brand, for two reasons. One, Young Thug has an insane voice, and I don't mean that his songs are written from the vantage point of a crazy person, I mean that Young Thug makes these fucking mouthnoises that I was unaware a human could make. Every Young Thug song is an exploration of what his vocal chords can create. Two, Young Thug doesn't just make trap. There's a strong sense of artistic identity on his records, and that lets him play around in other genres, like, there's legit country influence on this record. It's not as towering a work as Jeffery, but few things in this world are; this is Young Thug taking some time to figure out the places he can take himself, and it is a thrill to listen to him explore his abilities.

7) Into the Maelstrom, by Bigelf: There comes a time when you need to set aside ego, forget whatever goals you've set, and admit that something is beyond your ken. I stopped listening to this halfway through. It's a prog album that didn't even have an incredible opener, just an okay one, and the rest I found interminable. I thought we were compatable. Y'know? I usually like prog. I usually like albums that start with a song called "Incredible Time Machine" and follow that up with "Hypersleep." But, like, I dunno, this just wasn't fun to listen to, like, there's no acknowledgement that "Incredible Time Machine" is a silly thing to name a song. My favorite prog bands are aware of how nonsense prog is and embrace it, but this took itself a tad too seriously for my liking. Which isn't to say it wasn't good, just that I didn't want to spend more time in this space, like by the time you get to the third six+-minute-long song of the album, you realize this is time you could've spent listening to "Style" on repeat, or something.

8) Makes Me Sick, by New Found Glory: Yes hello hi welcome to The Thing Journal, where we review French cinema and New Found Glory albums like they're the same thing. For me, current New Found Glory is like finding a sweater I haven't worn in months, putting it on, feeling insanely good about how I look in that sweater, and then not wearing that sweater for another year.It's a comfortable and uncomplicated album, like hell yeah, I'm here for a song about staying indoors during the summer, you made this song just for me!

9) Truth Is a Beautiful Thing, by London Grammar: Early frontrunner for The Hotelier Award for "Album I Don't Completely Understand But Am Aware Moved Me Deeply." Like, you know that Parks & Rec episode, where Tom commissions an abstract art piece, and as he stares at $20 of art, he realizes he's deeply affected by the way the shapes interact and flow, but can't describe what he's feeling or what he's looking at? That's how I feel listening to this album. I don't know what it is about this particular brand of ethereal dream-like pop that left me floored on the bus ride home, I don't know what I actually felt as the woman crooned over the simple-but-expansive soundscapes, but here I am, trying to figure out what I listened to ("simple-but-expansive soundscapes" is the fifth draft of that phrase) and what emotion was stirred within me. This was so cool. How is it so cool? Ugh I hate that I keep complaining about how I'm bad at describing music but Criticism Santa never ever visits MY TREE'S UP, DUDE. I'M WAITING. WE CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN AT ANY POINT.

10) Blind, by Eskil Vogt: I think I got half an hour deep into this film when I realized I wanted to see this again. The way this film plays with the reality of blindness, how it gives you the sense of the main character's read of the situation before she hears a noise and realizes there's something different entirely, it's just so fucking cool. It reminded me a lot of Charlie Kaufman, and while I can't be 100% sure it's a warranted comparison and not a comparison I'm making because I have a limited frame of reference, but just the way it explored the blind woman's mind, how the story she was writing changed as she felt worse about her blindness, how she got crueler and crueler to the blind character as she felt worse and worse about herself, the way this film dissected loneliness, it's all these things I've come to associate with Kaufman and all these things I love to see in film. It's such a quality film, legit my only gripe is that everyone talked so low and softly, I honestly couldn't tell if the film was going for a low-key vibe or if the Norwegian language is just people muttering at and somehow understading each other. So it's entirely possible my main problem with this film is the Norwegian language, which honestly sounds like a mess, what's up Norway, how come none of y'all enunciate.

11) The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, dir. Joseph Sargent: I don't usually like things about New York City because 50% of all things are set in New York City and it's really hard to use New York City in a unique way. Everything is set in New York City, y'know? I more than understand that New York City is the greatest city in the world. The other 7000 TV shows I have seen about New York City have made this abundantly clear, I don't necessarily need you to chime in on this front. This film, though, this film is awesome. This was like the thing I kept wanting Brooklyn Nine Nine to be, a thriller with incredible comedy, like this is straight-up the funniest film I've seen in weeks (Bob we know what you've been watching you haven't seen a comedy in weeks we don't think) shhhhhhhAnd the comedy is mostly derived from the way the film uses New York. At the outset, no one is as concerned about the people on the train than about how the trains aren't running on time, like it's way more important that the subway runs on schedule than it is that the train not get hijacked. Like, so many people in this film treat this like just another day of New York's bullshit, the research department taking as long as they usually do to create the list of names, traffic impeding the delivery of money to the train. I loved it so so much.

12) Big Fish Theory, by Vince Staples: Vince Staples is a rapper whose projects demand attentive listening, multiple listens to grasp everything that he's going for, so of course I listened to this once on a walk and am throwing it in between a 40-year-old movie and an okay punk album. I have no doubt that the second listen will be rewarding, that I'll unlock what's great about this album and connect to it, and it's not like I didn't enjoy my first listen, Vince Staples is great at what he does and makes music that can be enjoyed even when being skimmed through, but there's so much going on, abrasive dark production and meticulously crafted lyrics, that I know I didn't catch everything. I caught a lot -- imagine not immediately understanding like "BagBak" is going for -- but Vince Staples is on that Kendrick/Danny Brown/RTJ level where he makes work that demands its audience's full attention while still being something the audience can enjoy.

13) Wolves, by Rise Against: The album opens with "Light all the torches and wake up the King/The smoke you've ignored is a flame you can't contain," which is a predictable way for Rise Against to say "I told you so," but, as previously discussed, Rise Against has as much of a right as anyone to say "I told you so" a thousand times. The main problem I have with this album is that it doesn't feel markedly different from the rest of their catalogue. There isn't any acknowledgement that there's more of a sense of urgency in these times than there was previously -- things were still bad in the last few years, but it wasn't "let's elect a monster" bad -- but Rise Against is putting out the same album they've always put out, fire and brimstone here, glossy pop-influenced single material there, the only difference being that they'll now acknowledge that they've always been right. Like, it might have been worth exploring the space they glimpsed on "Bullshit," which is a song where they are 100% excoriating their listener base for not doing enough ("Oh no, please don't life a finger, don't get up, just sit right there/Don't worry about the thoughts inside your pretty little head"), try to analyze the current situation so that, when Rise Against says it's time to fight, there's actual strategy involved? But this is fine, standard Rise Against is usually fine. Ugh, the Trump administration isn't even leading to better punk music, THEY SAID THE MUSIC WOULD BE BETTER. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO MY SILVER LINING.

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