From Deep: A doc about basketball and hip-hop

★★★--A basketball documentary. I’m a sucker for a basketball doc. In three parts. The first two parts were better than the third, which sort of went off the tracks. First part was a history of basketball and it’s connection to the black community. Second was hip hop’s roots and how it has always been intwined with the game. 

The third had the most potential and still requires the most thought and scholarship going forward. But it was also the most confusing, getting lost in the point it was trying to make. I think it was arguing that professional basketball players deserve more rights and to choose their employers via free agency without getting a bunch of crap. It also talks specifically about how the economic chasm between player and fan has never been greater. Just of sort of throws that out. 
 
Also gives a little bit of an apology for the LeBron James’ “Decision” from 2011. That’s when he had a television special to say he was leaving Cleveland. People I know from Akron and Cleveland are very protective of him, which is cool as I think he is a truly good dude. Tis true of him ass a teammate, father, politically active famous person, and so on. So I like what the doc says there, that the NBA and the city were making Lebron into a savior, which was unfair. It also talks some shit about Michael Jordan for being a corporate man in never taking a stance on anything political so he sells more Nikes, McDonalds, Gatorade, so forth. Jordan, that prick, did famously say “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” 
 
Overall, good but flawed and not super clear. Plus he sort of gets into dangerous territory when talking about African American culture for a weird looking Canadian. 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is the greatest movie of all time

Here we go. The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Played at the IU Cinema, best place to see a movie, last month. Horrorish I'd say. An extremely uncomfortable film that was beautifully done, darkly humorous, and while I'd recommend watching it, doubt that anyone, including myself will be watching it a second time. So I'm gonna call it the greatest movie of all time but I did not like watching it at all.

The film follows a cardiac surgeon played by Colin Farrell who secretly befriends a teenage boy. He introduces the boy to his family, who then fall mysteriously ill. The boy reveals that this is revenge for the doctor killing his father on the operating table three years earlier and it will only end with the death of a family member, a decision he must make. But it is also a sort of a comedy. Totally strange bummer of a flick that made me LOL twice(ish).

Rotten Tomato Consensus: The Killing of a Sacred Deer continues director Yorgos Lanthimos' stubbornly idiosyncratic streak -- and demonstrates again that his is a talent not to be ignored.

Pros: Performances are sold (especially from the creepy murder boy). The story is interesting and stressful in a good way. Surprisingly funny for a movie about a guy who has to kill someone in his family.

Cons: Uncomfortable in so many ways the worst coming off the hypothetical (obviously). The ending is garbage and there are no consequences for anyone.

Notes: It's supposed to have allusions to Greek mythology or whatever, I know more about the subject than most and didn't pick up on that shit, but ain't nobody got time for that. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, a Greek, I'm guessing, the film is based on the play Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides which I am unfamiliar. You can look that shit up if you want.

Don't care what he says, only a psycho eats spaghetti this way

The film stars Farrell as the heart surgeon/psycho dad, Nicole Kidman as his eye doctor wife, Barry Keoghan as the creepy-ass kid (Martin, who eats basketti like a psycho but thinks it's the way everyone eats it and makes a speech about it) with the dead dad, magic powers, and Robert Durst eyes, and Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic and the daughter and son respectively. Alicia Silverstone also makes an appearance as Keoghan's mom at an extremely strange dinner with Farrell and Keoghan where she just sort of starts randomly sucking on Farrell's hand, which he is not into. Yeah, it's that kind of movie.

Silverstone, still looking fly

Movie starts with Farrell and Keoghan meeting at a diner. Farrell has sort of taken the boy under his wing and is sort of a mentor, I guess. Later we see him buying him an expensive watch as a present. They meet in secret at first but then Farrell invites the kid over to meet his family and have dinner. He lies to his wife and colleague at the hospital, an anesthesiologist, about how he knows the kid. I think it is pretty safe to say that everyone universally at this point thinks Farrell is fucking that kid. Turns out he is not. He just killed his dad—by accident—when he came in for surgery. Farrell was maybe drinking but didn't have more than a drink so that isn't supposed to factor into it. But this holds a grudge, if you can call it that, and wants to even the score. Dude took a member of his family. Now dude has to take a member of his own family. Through in a bunch of weirdness and that is the movie. But the weirdness is what makes the movie.

Kinky

Some of said weirdness. Farrell and his wife have some weird shit going on sexually where Kidman pretty much pretends to be a corpse and Farrell does her. This gets even more fucked when he is thinking about killing her and was one of the many things in the movie that was hard to watch (there is also some child torturing which I shan't get into).

Basically all of the dialogue from every character is completely deadpan no matter what is going on which provides much of the film's dark humor. Like when the girl keeps losing her MP3 player and asks her brother if she can have his when he is dead in a couple of days. Or when the boy starts bleeding from his eyes and she yells, “dad, Bob is dying,” the way one would yell about say burning popcorn or something. Or when everyone, including the girl herself, keeps announcing in casual conversation that the daughter has just had her first period. It's that kind of movie.

Bob, dying with his MP3 player

In the end one person dies and everything goes back to normal—which again, not normal—and they just ignore all the insanity that went down. The outcome is just something everyone accepts and just moves on from. Murder, no big.

So yeah, solid movie. Weird as shit. No real consequences. Pretty unsettling. That about covers it.