Seven Deadly Sign-ons: The Definitive Guide to Giving Up Social Media for Lent

Pony up in the name of penitence, people. The Lenten season is upon us, which means if you’re a practicing Christian (or simply jumping on the atonement bandwagon for self-help’s sake), you’re about to sacrifice something important for the next six weeks.

Consider forsaking social media. It may not be easy to quit, but there are reported benefits if you do and frightening potential consequences if you don’t. Total online abstinence is probably unrealistic; preaching moderation or offering an unfocused list of sins both venial and mortal to conquer may not do the trick.

Just go big and take on one of the Seven Deadlies. If you’re like me and suffer from all seven, it can be hard to narrow it down. To guide you in your moral resurrection, I’ve tied each of the capital vices to its corresponding social media platform. Renounce with confidence. Peace and offline serenity be with you all.

Pride -----> LinkedIn

No one goes on this professional networking website to altruistically share job-hunting tips or congratulate a former classmate on her overnight ascension to VP. LinkedIn is a cunning manifestation of the most deadly of the Abrahamic violations: a socially sanctioned way to humble-brag and erect your own personal Tower of Babel through hordes of first-degree “connections,” career accomplishments, and inflated SlideShare portfolios.

Pride also involves contempt for your neighbors and a failure to acknowledge their achievements. Do you wait for a connection to write you a recommendation before you reciprocate? How many times have you ignored the Endorsements feature, an innocuous algorithmic pop-up that would take you exactly three seconds to click through to help an out-of-work connection look palatable to potential employers? You’re terrible (and so occasionally am I). Get your neck slab at the door before you log off.

Sloth -----> Reddit

Poet Isaac Watts could excavate idleness and mischief galore in this virtual vortex of conspiracy theories, memes, and GIFs. I would never, ever chastise anyone for physical laziness (as someone who once cauterized her own neck folds while ironing a shirt while she was wearing it) — but reckless squandering of time and talent is fair game. Subredditors could be applying their genius to discover cancer cures or new forms of renewable energy; instead they’re spinning their wheels solving True Detective or generating questions for the Lil Jon AMA.

There are other issues of indolence. Sometimes sloppy Redditors don’t perform due diligence before exposing criminals. Or they exhibit extreme apathy by upvoting or downvoting instead of adding insight to a thread. All this wasted brilliance late into the night can only lead to one thing: sleeping past noon the next day.

Gluttony -----> Instagram

Yes, I’ve shared pictures of pommes frites in a paper cone. And Inkwell-manipulated images of partially filled wineglasses. And sunsets (c’mon, some of them are so good you just want to EAT them!!!). I’ve probably even fulfilled each and every one of Thomas Aquinas’ various types of gluttony (well, maybe not “eat[ing] too daintily”).

But our collective addiction to whoring out the elaborate preparation and presentation of our meals—in both complete and half-devoured states—is out of control. Instagram gives us too much leeway to exercise our caloric free will and share it with the world. Do you think Daguerre thumbtacked Sheffield plates of his ratatouille to the studio door?

I try to be a good Samaritan in practice, even if I’m just a lapsed Byzantine in reality, so here’s unsolicited advice: There is no filter in the world that mitigates our disgusting overconsumption. Just stop it.

Greed -----> Pinterest

Excessive scavenging and amassing isn’t just the realm of TLC shows. Pinterest, which began as a “visual discovery tool” people could use to collect, bookmark, and share articles, has morphed into an online jumble of compulsively gathered “pins” that some may find useful, but most will not. Except probably you. And even you can’t possibly have time to sift through all your myriad boards, or those of any of your Pinterest pals, and so instead you keep on adding, aggregating, accumulating NEW BOARDS AND NEW PINS. What began as a list of slow-cooker recipes is now a Winchester Mystery House of Someecards jokes, home décor fantasies, and bucket-list vacation sites.

The sin of greed is described as “an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs.” We don’t need more mental clutter, even if it comes in such a clickable online package. Still not convinced? “Board” rhymes with “hoard.” My work here is done.

Envy -----> Foursquare

While your friends are checking into The Best Nightclub in Ibiza, you’ve just assumed mayoral duties at the laundromat or in the ladies’ room at Applebee’s. They’re collecting Socialite, JetSetter, and Player Please! badges while you rack up Locals and Benders (four-plus nights in a row!) at Chuck E. Cheese and the gas station. Your insatiable desire to be anywhere but where you actually are dominates your soul, because according to Foursquare, everyone else in the world is always having a better time than you, in a more exciting place, with all of the awesome people.

You can try to mitigate your covetousness with DIY self-deprecatory check-ins like “[Your Name Here] is now Mayor of the Bathroom,” but you’re not fooling anyone. The GPS doesn’t lie: It is everything you are/were/will become. Sew your eyes shut with wire or remove Foursquare from your phone once and for all.

Lust (desire) -----> Twitter

Twitter is lust personified, a meandering odyssey for fame, power, and glory via retweets and favorites. Your need for 140-character notoriety leads to an unhealthy obsession with trending topics, following-to-follower ratios, and crafting the wittiest reply to the @midnight hashtag.

Don’t bother trying to get verified. You’re not Patton Oswalt (or even Patricia Arquette), and you never will be.

Wrath -----> Facebook

There are at least nine types of Facebook users that neatly correspond to the number of circles in Dante’s hierarchy of suffering. There are enough political rants, inspirational bromides, and ill-advised selfies to incite uncontrollable hatred and fury that will last for all eternity.

Of course there are variations on that list, and I won’t hesitate to add Writers (Writhers?) Who Ask You to Read and Share Their Articles. But the real sin is this: You’re still friends with them. And maybe me. Get that final Poke in and get the hell out of there—at least for the next 40 days.

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

'True Detective,' You Just Keep On True Detective-ing (Subtitle: I Think I Know What Happens to Rust Cohle and ZOMG You Might Not Want to Know)

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Time for sleep, but some more quickly penned evidence to back up my previous theory that Martin Hart will be revealed as the Yellow King:

—During one of the interrogation scenes in the early part of "Haunted Houses," Papania says, "Nobody's looking at [Hart], because nobody wants to."

—"Marty's single biggest problem is he never knew himself." —Maggie to Papania and Gilbough

—Marty Hart downing spaghetti while watching TV with Maggie and the girls, much like the family did in the first episode of the series when Rust came to dinner, leading us back to the spaghetti-Chtulu man discussed earlier on in the series:

As for the green ears: Maybe the green is Marty's jealousy, the undeniable rage that Maggie knew she could use as a pawn to finally escape her marriage by banging Rust.

—We also saw some more unmasking tonight by Brother Cohle, most notably in the scene where he extracted a confession out of the Munchausen by proxy mom.

—Yahoo's Maggie Furlong, who agrees with the Martin Hart theory, made the great observation that the name of the show is True Detective (singular). The bar Marty ended up in with Beth is called The Fox and The Hound; Rust is hot on Marty's trail. The whole Tuttle storyline is a huge red herring to throw us off Hart's stank.

OK, ready? Combined with the Martin-Hart-as-Yellow-King theory, I think we're going to see the end of both Rust Cohle and Martin Hart by the end of the series. There have been suicide references since the beginning of the show: Rust telling the Munchausen by proxy mother that she should kill herself; the PCP addict killing himself in prison shortly after being interrogated by Marty and receiving a phone call from his "lawyer"; Rust telling Marty in the first episode that "mankind should walk hand-in-hand to extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal" (then saying he didn't have the temperament to commit suicide himself). 

Tonight in "Haunted Houses," Rust also warned Marty that "Without me, there is no you." Somehow Rust is the remedy to stopping the Yellow King. He's going to stop Marty by getting rid of himself. Rust has gotten a raw deal this whole time — his colleagues and superiors loathe him, his daughter died, his marriage disintegrated, he quit his job because he was (in his mind) unfairly suspended. Don't be surprised if he's about to opt out after all and take Martin with him. Just doing his job.

P.S. Did I mention it's now March 5 and I'm completely wrong about everything and it's probably going to just be this or something similar to "this"? Still — fun ride! Still — maybe Maggie has something to do with it, I have theories, but I'm done with this blah blah etc. whatnot.

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

I KNOW WHO THE YELLOW KING IS ON 'TRUE DETECTIVE' (Subtitle: What I Think About While the Kids Are Running Around at Lazerland on Presidents' Day)

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I'm surprised that no one's really floating this theory yet, but I'm 99.99 90 percent* sure that Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) is, was, or will be the Yellow King**. Even though it might not matter that he is/was/will be (as I'll explain in a bit). And that Nic Pizzolatto/Cary Joji Fukunaga are modern-day Kubricks/M. Night Shyamalans (Sixth Sense MNS, not Signs or The Village MNS), brilliantly dropping in seemingly innocuous details and masterfully maneuvering their cinematic smoke-and-mirrors to psychologically toy with us.

Viewers who initially approached True Detective as a standard police procedural were quickly disabused of this notion when io9 and other devotees of late-19th-century literature revealed that the show's storyline appears to be based on The King in Yellow, a bizarre collection of short stories by Robert W. Chambers. But while Rust Cohle's nihilistic banter is worthy of close attention (mainly because they're amazingly fun to listen to), these over-the-top diatribes may be a distraction, an illusion used by the creators to exploit our basic human assumptions and make us look one way while the truth runs past us down the opposite road.

Remember at the end of The Sixth Sense when we discovered Bruce Willis was dead? Suddenly, all the previous scenes shown in flashback made perfect sense, and we kicked ourselves for not picking up on the "obvious" clues. To wit: While we're hyperfocusing on Rust Cohle, Martin Hart may be running amok (or about to). Like Hart says here, the solution may be right under our noses, but we're paying attention to the wrong clues. Or not asking the right fucking questions, as Cohle more eloquently puts it.

There are the more explicit Easter eggs: Hart's daughter and her stick figure drawings/doll sex scenes; Hart examining his receding CROWN OF YELLOW HAIR in the mirror***. It's definitely fun to look for all the implanted yellow crowns, like the one Patton Oswalt spotted, or Audrey throwing Macie's tiara up into the tree, or the antlers on Dora Lange's head, or a not-so-random blinking Seagram's crown or Corona poster in a bar:

But it's more what we don't see that intrigues me. It's the varying POV that Pizzolatto and Fukunaga expertly and consistently employ that leads me to think that Hart is our man—even if he doesn't realize it himself. We don't really know much about Rust Cohle, but he knows himself. As we watch Martin Hart spiral out of control, it's obvious he doesn't know himself; what he does know he justifies with ridiculous statements about ridiculous behaviors being for the "good of the family."

When it comes to examining the Dora Lange case, we don't ever really see things from Hart's point of view. I have to go back through the previous four episodes more closely, but in last night's "The Secret Fate of All Life," we see Hart through the lens, head-on, the camera trained squarely on him and at him—we don't see things through his eyes the same way we do with Cohle, at least not when it comes to the case.

When Hart enters Reggie Ledoux's shed and finds the children, we witness what looks like horror in his eyes, but we don't see what he sees. We assume that Hart saw what Cohle sees when he (Cohle) enters the shed himself a few minutes later, but that's just an assumption on our part. We assume when Hart comes out of that shed and blows Ledoux's head off that he was overcome with emotion at what he saw in there, but we don't know that for sure. We, like Cohle, give Hart a pass because we assume he has witnessed depravity on an epic level and reacted accordingly. 

Our judgment on this, however, may be clouded: As Hart points out in "The Long Bright Dark," "if you attach an assumption to a piece of evidence, you start to bend the narrative to support it." We don't consider other reasons for Hart coming out of the shed and offing Ledoux before Cohle gets in there, because we're concentrating on the distraction of Reggie Ledoux waxing Satanic about black stars with Cohle. We don't question why Hart doesn't go for help when Cohle tells him to,  because we just watched an insane 6-minute single take the week before in which he stuck by his man Cohle and rescued him from a crazy situation into which the crazy Cohle willingly and voluntarily inserted himself because, as you know, Cohle is crazy. Our radar goes into overdrive when Cohle refuses to let Gilbough and Papania into his storage locker, but we don't have more than a passing curiosity about what Hart's keeping in his own office locker (which they show him opening more than once in the first five episodes). We don't put as much stock in anything Martin Hart says as we do that of the creepily mesmerizing Rust Cohle.

So there's that. OK. But who's Rust Cohle, then, and what is his purpose? Maybe his long-winded philosophizing isn't merely distraction. Based on the supposed influences on The King in Yellow (Poe, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Schwob), Cohle is likely The Stranger, a prophet "come out of Texas, nobody knew him," sent to remove everyone's mask and expose them to the darkness they can't or are unwilling to see. Cohle's famous interrogation technique could be seen as removing the inmates' "masks" to break them. Gilbough and Papania keep trying to unmask Cohle, but as Cohle says himself, it's not good for people to be around him: "I wear them down. They get unhappy." They remove their masks to try to remove his and end up exposing themselves to whatever "plague" he's burdened with.

It's entirely possible that Hart himself doesn't remember the things he's done—or maybe he just hasn't done them yet. Cohle talks in circles about people destined to repeat their lives, over and over, without remembering. He tells Gilbough and Papania that he's somewhat relieved that his own daughter has died, because he's spared the "sins of being a father," a fate that Hart has not escaped. Something horrible has apparently happened or will happen to Hart's oldest daughter Audrey (a blonde like Dora Lange, the missing Marie Fontenot, and the Lake Charles victim). Hart mentions in "The Long Bright Dark" how a "father's burden is too much for some men" and how "past a certain age, a man without a family can be a bad thing." 

Hart could be talking about Cohle, or he could be talking about himself. He's a man on the cusp of losing his family due to infidelity and "inattention"; even if he's not the Yellow King who killed Dora Lange, perhaps he's the next Yellow King. Maybe Cohle knows so much about this because his own father (mentioned cryptically early on) was the first one (Hart says you can't pick your partner or your parents), followed by Reggie Ledoux (King the Second), and now Hart. 

Cohle is the seer who knows that there will always be a Yellow King, and who, somewhere between Dora Lange and the 2012 killing, eventually recognizes Hart as such, yet he doesn't have the constitution to break his programming and commit suicide to escape his destiny, as he mentions in the first episode. Instead, Cohle travels from place to place, a nomadic portent of doom sent to figure out and expose the next one in the royal lineage. Maybe this is why Maggie is drawn to him, because she intuits that Cohle will protect her from what Hart is about to become.

Maybe it doesn't matter who the Yellow King is, because there will always be a Yellow King. Many Yellow Kings, in fact, as evidenced by Cohle's quote from Corinthians in "Seeing Things": "The body is not a one member but many. Now are they many but of one body." It might ultimately be futile to identify and ID him—or, as Maggie's mother says, beat up on things we can't control. 

But it's critical that there always be a Rust Cohle, the oracle tasked with exposing the king and stopping him, then moving on to stop the next incarnation. The solution's right under our noses. We're paying attention to the wrong clues; we're not asking the right fucking questions. Or maybe I'm just bending the narrative.

++Click HERE to see the continuation of this theory with more backup from the 2/23 airing of "Haunted Houses." Kind-of-spoiler alert: I speculate on Rust Cohle's ultimate fate.

* Percentage subject to change.

** You know I could be totally wrong about this, right?

*** Alternate Conspiracy Theory: Woody Harrelson as Martin Hart checks his hair in the mirror. Woody Harrelson as Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers SHAVES his hair in the mirror. Ha ha.

**** Rereading now and realizing this would all sound completely insane to someone who doesn't watch the show (and even to someone who does). Welcome to Carcosa! 

(2/17 post amended on 2/18 to add "Cohle as prophet" addendum.)

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

The Great and Powerful Amazon Will Now Read Your Mind and Send You Shit It Knows You Want Before You Order It

Don't be surprised to see this guy show up unannounced soon.

Sort of. Here's my take for Minyanville.

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

Blurbin' Street

Anyone worth their tequila salt has an embarrassing hooch story to share. Mine involves Maker's Mark, Sparks Steak House, and a condescending waiter. I'll tell it to you sometime if we ever do a bar crawl. But only if you remind me to tell it, because I won't have any idea who has read this and randomly remember to tell it next time I'm out and about on Watering Hole Mile. Which is a place I just made up, but it sounds terrific, right? And I'll fill you in only if you know when to use "whisky" and when to use "whiskey," because I always totally mix them up and should know better by now. 

In the meantime, here's an article I penned for Minyanville about Japan's Suntory scooping up Beam Inc. (which owns the Jim Beam and Maker's Mark brands). 

Bottom's up!

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

Doge Is Fate Misnamed

The culmination of watching James Franco in Spring Breakers and reading Frank Bidart was stumbling upon this clip of good friends Franco and Bidart visiting a mausoleum together, meaning:—

...there is no such thing as accident.

Metaphysical Doge

4chan, which usurped what Homestar did

not as an act of canine

imitation, but in Comic Sans defiance—

Much manipulations, many hashtagging

ensure Shibe is shared, so wow till

his masters very retweet him.

How dare t.co 

truncate his body.

Held up to an image of Grumpy Cat, he memed.

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

Crossing All the 'Good' Movies Off This List — In Real-Time!

Nebraska was here in the "best of 2013" spot  for four weeks. 
Then came Her.

I like to watch movies. I also like to make lists and cross things off those lists. I'm going to see all the "good" (read: majorly hyped) movies of 2013 over a relatively short span of time. I'm going to feel all the feels that accompany those movies. I'm going to drink all the coffee (I don't like popcorn too much). Then I'm going to cross those movies off the list. Then probably take a bathroom break from all the coffee. Brief thoughts about said movies will be added shortly thereafter. 

Here's the list.

12 Years a Slave

In total agreement with everything everyone (except Armond White) has been saying about this movie, especially regarding Chiwetel Ejiofor. Two notes to add:

• Not too many people are mentioning Sean Bobbitt, the director of photography who beautifully helped realize Steve McQueen's "unflinching gaze" through stark selective focus, mastery of light and shadow, and uncomfortably extended shots (read more about his M.O. here), so I'm mentioning him.

• The movie is based on a true story, and the Brad Pitt character is integral to the film's resolution, but his scenes seemed unauthentic compared to the rest. Probably because it was Brad Pitt. I don't know. 

The Act of Killing

Jesus H. 

Here's a movie that temporarily shuts down the 'Murica drip and reminds us how nearly every other part of the world is quite different from our own in terrible, unimaginable ways. That Joshua Oppenheimer manages to depict the horrors of the mass killings in Indonesia in 1965 without ever showing an actual act of violence is nothing short of remarkable. The concept is brilliant and surreal (Oppenheimer gets the documentary's protagonists to re-create their crimes against humanity on film, Hollywood-style), the characters are simultaneously likable and horrifying, and the dearth of consequences is astounding — unless you consider Anwar Congo's final scene a consequence of sorts.

My viewing of this was sandwiched between finishing Sherman Alexie's Flight (a time-travel narrative in the style of Slaughterhouse-Five) and starting Crime and Punishment — both complementary bookends to the moral justification and emotional fallout (or lack thereof) of the gangsters in this movie who brutally exterminated their own people. This fact should have no bearing on your own viewing.

All Is Lost

American Hustle

When it comes to long cons, I've always been partial to Hammett and Mamet (House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner). I didn't think I'd be an especially easy mark for David O. Russell's latest effort, especially since I was one of the handful of people who didn't see much of a silver lining in Silver Linings Playbook. 

But this movie was fucking fun from the feet up, thanks to a Goodfellas-style soundtrack, smart dialogue, exceptional period detail, and stellar performances from its top-tier stars (especially Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence). Maybe all the superlatives distract from a lack of any real substance, but who cares. Plus I was unexpectedly attracted to Christian Bale's gut (seriously, that's one sexy, confident gut!). So there's that.

August: Osage County

I wasn't excited about this movie because I knew it would be overacted and overblown and kind of ridiculous. And it was. Its whole was definitely not anywhere near the sum of its fun-to-watch parts. But Terry Letts wrote the screenplay, and I really liked Killer Joe, which he also wrote, so it was worth checking out. I liked it (not loved it), despite its flaws, for its campiness and masochistic one-degree-away-from-being-everyone's-dysfunctional-family quality. 

Hard, bitter Julia Roberts was also a revelation, especially during her rants against the cancer-ridden, Darvocet-addicted Meryl Streep. "Eat your fish, fucker! Eat your fuckin' fish!" just made its way onto my Julia Roberts soundboard.

Before Midnight 

Marathon-watched all three Linklater films in this series over the summer and realized that this is why you need to rewatch this sort of movie every 10 or 20 or 30 years, especially if you didn't appreciate it the first time around. No real surprise, but Before Sunrise and its successors make a lot more sense to a 40-something who's stumbled down the falling in love/marriage/kids/good times/bad times/what happens now? path than to someone just making the turn onto that thoroughfare. Hope they put out a fourth installment so I'll know what to do with it all a few years from now.

Blackfish

Won't dispute the main concepts here: Wild animals should be in the wild, separating whales from their families is cruel and heartbreaking, SeaWorld acts in the interest of profits instead of animal altruism. Plus the trainers interviewed all seemed like decent people on the up-and-up, and SeaWorld was offered the chance to tell its side for this piece and declined. 

But I wish this movie had been a little more even-handed. It's hard for me to get 100 percent behind an exposé that's only showing one heavily slanted side of things. I like to see all the angles and then make my own decision. But it doesn't look good, SeaWorld. No, it does not.

Blue Is the Warmest Color

Blue Jasmine

Cate Blanchett is all that's really memorable from this movie. As it should be.

Captain Phillips

Solid, suspenseful action-thriller. Terrific acting by Barkhad Abdi and Tom Hanks (and I'm no "oh my God Tom Hanks" campaigner). There were some nice touches (no subtitles for the Somali interactions so the audience could feel as disoriented as the captain and his crew, Greengrass' choice to shoot the opening scene in the car between the captain and his wife without ever really showing their mouths moving). Not sure the film belongs in the best pic category, though. 

Dallas Buyers Club

I've been following Matthew McConaughey's upward trajectory for quite some time, so good on you, dude. Hope you get one of those big-time Hollywood awards for this (Jared Leto, too), though you're probably raising those adorbz kids with Camila and playing the bongos and don't even care. Anyone who makes SEVEN really, really good-to-outstanding movies in just two years deserves love. I've seen them all, as well as the eighth movie in his recent compilation, Magic Mike, which was all kinds of meh — but those aren't bad stats.

Keep up the great work. Hope everyone watches True Detectives on HBO, too. You're going places, big guy. Wait. You're already there.

Enough Said

The first third of this movie was the divorced-and-dating version of Celine and Jesse from Richard Linklater's Before series, with authentic conversations and issues that wooing couples of a more mature age realistically face. The second third was basically Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character, Eva, acting like an asshole, while the third third was her character realizing (maybe?) what an asshole she is/was/had been. 

Part of me thinks this was a poignant, funny grownup movie about middle-aged dating and heartbreak, and that part was totally driven by the empathy (not pity) I had for James Gandolfini's Albert. The expressive Louis-Dreyfus perfectly captured her character's insecurities, flaws, and fears, making her one of the more accurate depictions of a divorced mother than we're accustomed to seeing onscreen. But it was hard to root for Eva, a shallow, oblivious, self-centered ball of neuroses who surrounds herself with similarly shallow, oblivious, self-centered friends. I don't get it, A.O. Scott. 

Fruitvale Station

As soon as I finished watching this, I had to know more about director Ryan Coogler. Got my mind blown by discovering he's only 26. It takes a skilled cinematic hand to suck you into Oscar Grant's world in the 24 hours before he was murdered, yet still manage to gut-punch you with the ending you already knew was coming.

Gravity

Oy. 

OK. Cuarón pulled off a cinematographicsupercalifragilisticexpialidocious feat, at least in terms of how the heck he meshed those visuals into such a stunning look-see. He deserves a best director nod for that alone. Sandra Bullock can act her astronaut ass off when she has to, and I can expertly attest to the aural realism of the film's outer-space sounds: I own this Brookstone sound machine that uses authentic NASA recordings, and the movie sounds JUST LIKE IT. Swear to God. 

But it shouldn't be a contender for best picture. Which means it's probably going to fucking win. George Clooney was given nothing else to do but be George Clooney (go ahead, argue that that's all he should be doing here); the clichéd dialogue made me cringe; and the treacly backstory was unnecessary — it would have been just as captivating and more bearable without the dead child/running away metaphors. But I guess test audiences like that sort of thing.

The Great Beauty

Her

* I haven't seen this yet. But I've fallen in love with a computer. It ended badly. I want to see how Joaquin Phoenix handles it.

** My Twitter review of this movie: "Watching Her was like watching the first 10 minutes of Up over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and o" 

A Toronto Star reviewer's review: "A poignant love story that measures the emotional toll of living too deeply within the virtual world."

Besides that, "devastating" and "revolutionary" are the only words I can use to describe what Spike Jonze pulled off with this film, simultaneously transmitting today's technologically driven loneliness and isolation, as well as all of the universal yet unique emotions we feel when we've felt and lost what we believe is true love. It's the best modern-day love story you'll see for a very long time. 

Why is Joaquin Phoenix not one of the frontrunners during this awards season? Not sure I'd award him the win (there were many fantastic actors in 2013), but this guy performed the incredible feat of holding up his end of an intense relationship onscreen BY HIMSELF for the entire movie.

Inside Llewyn Davis

Much like the Dogfish Olde School barleywine I consumed right before theatering, ILD isn't something you can expect to fully digest right away. It needs to be savored. Its notes may be obvious, thank to T Bone Burnett, but it has to be more closely scrutinized for a full appreciation of all the other hints. And, after the fermentation process is complete, I think Inside Llewyn Davis will be considered one of the best of the Coen Brothers' creations.

Most of all, this movie needs to be respected — it might go down real smooth (and give the erroneous impression that it's one of the Coens' more straightforward efforts), but it will sneak up on you, disarm you, and resonate long after the snifter has been depleted. If you've ever thought you had what it takes, there's going to be a bit of an aftertaste. It's the Coen Brothers, though. You should have known this would be the case going in. 

Labor Day

Long Walk to Freedom

Nebraska

This is not a perfect movie. If I go back and watch it a second time, I'm sure I can find those slight imperfections. But its imperfections, in combination with its perfections, are what makes it perfect. It is This Year's Perfect Movie. Contradictions abound.

Don't want to take my word for it? Need more tangibles? June Squibb. Bruce Dern. Will Forte. The simple, nothing-happens-but-everything-happens story. Authentic, funny, heartbreaking dialogue. June Squibb. Bruce Dern's eye-acting. The beautiful black-and-white cinematography. The secondary and tertiary characters who complete the movie. It's the whole package. Trust me.

Philomena

Steve Coogan did nicely here in his myriad writing, acting, and producing duties. It was nice to see him take a more dramatic turn, and Judi Dench can act like a boss without saying a word. Best picture, though? It was a nice story, but I don't think so. See how many times I said "nice"? It never really went beyond that. Get on with The Trip 2, please.

Rush

Spring Breakers

On the fence whether I really liked this movie for upending the spring break genre or hated it for its knock-you-on-your-butt existential dread. I already have a surplus of existential dread; I don't need any more of that shit. Either way, James Franco (yes, James Franco) was a fascinating spectacle, especially if you watch interviews with Riff Raff, the rapper/drug dealer on which Franco's character, Alien, is based. 

You don't have to dig too deep to pull a Rob Ager and draw an Alien/Charles Manson parallel. Watch an old clip of Chuck ranting to Geraldo or Diane Sawyer, then compare and contrast with Alien's diatribes. I've never been able to erase from my mind the scene of the Manson Girls holding hands and singing as they entered the LA Courthouse, the same way I'll never hear Britney Spears' "Everytime" ever again without thinking of the most haunting, beautifully shot scene from this movie. OK, I guess I did like this movie after all. It's not leaving me.

Stories We Tell

The Wolf of Wall Street

* Tried to see this on New Year's Eve day. 

   Told to pay a $4.50 upcharge to see it as a Regal RPX theater "experience." 

   Replied that the regular theater experience was fine, thank you. 

   Told it was only playing in the RPX theater. 

   Paid the extra cash. 

   Sat down in a cushy leather seat I assume was part of the "experience." 

   Became immediately suspicious because the audio was blaring but there was no picture on the screen. 

   Became even more suspicious when the trailers started and there was still no picture.

   Tried to fend off seizures as the same picture of Mark Wahlberg flickered on and off during The "Lone Survivor" trailer. 

   Watched with great interest as the social experiment of "who is going to get up and tell the theater people that the projector isn't working" began. 

   Mulled over what "RPX" might stand for but gave up after "Ruins People's... ." 

   Watched with great compassion as a sad-looking theater manager who was a cross between my old AOL boss and Mayim Bailik from Blossom came in to inform everyone that the projector was broken and we could pick another movie or get a free ticket, plus a comp ticket for our troubles. 

   Picked up two free tickets. 

   Went home, climbed under the covers, and read for the rest of the afternoon.

** OK, finally saw this. Hated the first five minutes, then forgot for the next three hours I was watching a movie. That's a compliment. It was basically Goodfellas 2 — the main character's voiceover (Jesus, Leonardo DiCaprio even sounded and looked like Ray Liotta in the later scenes), the pacing and setup, the character parallels (Jonah Hill = Joe Pesci; Aunt Emma = the babysitter; Naomi = Debi Mazar) — but whatever. It was highly entertaining. I'll take a Goodfellas facsimile over 90 percent of the other crap out there any day. It just makes it harder to determine if Scorsese has become a little lazy and unoriginal or if he has consciously decided to repurpose more of what the people want to genius effect from here on in.

Wadjda

The Wind Rises

ONE-SENTENCE INCIDENTALS

Bad Grandpa

I laughed at poop and penis jokes. The movie succeeded.

Cyrus

This creepy, dark comedy by the Duplass brothers was surprisingly moving.

Side Effects

Thrillers in which Jude Law gets fucked over are always pretty good — despite its progressively ridiculous storyline, this film was no exception.

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