Films and Feelings

     If you've been following my writings for long, you might know that I'm really not a fan of American Beauty . I find its depiction of domestic America scathing, reductive, and, most of all, without insight. I don't regret having dedicated an entire essay to how squirmy the film is, or that it's still one of my best-performing pieces.       But maybe, one might say, I just don't like films that critique the American dream? Maybe I think that domestic suburbia is just beyond analysis or interrogation. To that I say ... I really like  The Graduate .      I find that film's observations both more on-point and more meaningful. I think it's got great performances and witty dialogue, and it strikes the balance between drama and comedy gracefully. And I'm not alone in my assessment. The Graduate was a smash hit when it was released in 1967, landing on five or six AFI Top 100 lists in the years since.      But what's int...

  Times are hard for lovers of the musical movie. Our selections are few and far between, leaving the genre always hanging in the balance, one or two flops away from dissolving into oblivion. So what do we do with a room-temperature helping like the film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen ? Not much, I'm afraid. The movie follows anxiety-ridden Evan Hansen, a cripplingly timid high school senior who self-soothes with various rituals prescribed by his therapist (whom we curiously never see onscreen), like writing motivational letters to himself. One such letter is snatched by a troubled student, Connor Murphy, who commits suicide days later. When Connor's parents find the letter, they mistakingly assume their son had a secret friendship with Evan. Unwittingly, Evan becomes a window into the life of Connor, and Connor's family worships him for it. Feeling seen overwhelms Evan and in order to stay in the sun, he continues the charade, but soon the spotlight intensifies into someth...