Stephen Goldmeier

Welcome back to the not-entirely-irregular feature that I’m calling “Unexpected Pleasures.” It’s about trying things that I might otherwise dismiss to discover the joys hidden inside. Send suggestions to staff@enchantmentunderthesea.org.

The Footloose remake that just came out last week opens in the only way it ever could: a pretty slavish, but clean and stylish, recreation of the titles of the original, which was a series of close-ups of dancing feet. This opening certainly prepares us for what is to come, as it’s not the only slavish recreation we’re going to see (those of you that were into the original will see familiar angry-warehouse-dancing, confetti-storms, and even a rusty yellow VW Bug).

But then, maybe if this remake was a little MORE slavishly dedicated to shot-for-shot re-creation, it’s pleasures might be easier to discover.

I think the largest flaw obscuring the pleasures of this remake is that it’s trying too hard to please basically everyone. For example, there’s a weirdly action-packed bus race in the middle of the film, complete with multiple crashes and fires. And the dancing is more inspired by Step Up than the Brat Pack, presumably because the nod to a more recent dance movie will draw a bigger crowd of young people. There’s also a lot of country music and whole lines of dialogue that seem designed only to pay respect to middle-America or “Christian values.”

But then there are also those scenes that are literally line-for-line cribbed from the original. The music is mostly exactly the same. The iconic confetti-dusted “let’s dance!” is virtually unchanged, and every element during the warehouse dance scene, down to the slats in the walls, looks identical to the original film. This remake is desperately trying to bring in the Step Up-loving children of the 00s right alongside the Kevin Bacon-loving children of the 80s. The result is kind of a mess that’s hard to love from either of those angles.

Aside from the bigger tone and construction problems, the movie also has a host of other more basic problems. For instance, it’s kind of embarrassingly obsessed with the body of its female lead (Ariel, played by Julianne Hough). The camera is drawn inexorably to her rear end or her exposed bellybutton in every shot in which she appears. That means that a scene that is otherwise about a bus chase ends up with her taking her shirt off, or a scene that’s about the joys of country line dancing includes the male lead (Kenny Wormland as Ren) essentially licking her stomach and face. (And don’t get me started on the incompatibility of the innocent, virginal, “maybe I’ll kiss you someday” church-love of some scenes and the near-obscene body-licking of the others… the two leads have been grinding against each other for about a half hour before their “first kiss.”)

Another pretty major flaw here is that, despite the film’s message that dancing is all about celebrating fun and youth, the dance sequences are almost never actually fun. They’re edited like bad action movies, with not much clue where to focus or what’s worth looking at. Wormland seems to have some serious dancing training, but his training means he’s dancing with a style that is more about intensity than exuberance. The result is that, while other actors (most notably Miles Teller as Willard) are nailing the little skips and arm swings that make every member of the audience want to dance, Ren and Ariel are more concerned with crumpled-up stomping and arm-waving and booty-shaking. The dancing mostly just doesn’t look any good, or any fun.

And it’s a damn shame that the fun dance sequences are dangerously outnumbered by the either unnecessarily sexy or jumbled and cluttered ones, because the fun ones are a LOT of fun. The big finish, where Willard has learned to dance and he and Ren get on the prom floor together, is the most fun dance sequence in the film (it’s actually even MORE fun than their duet in the original). It’s still a little poorly edited and the camera angels are still not doing anyone any favors, but it’s just so fun to see the two of them next to each other and totally in sync (something we haven’t yet seen in the film, since when Ren and Ariel are in sync, they’re basically dry-humping).

And I have to also mention that Teller, as Willard, is fantastic, and the update on his character is mostly perfect. I didn’t really catch until the middle of the movie that his defining characteristic is that he always gets in fights. It’s almost as if the movie suspected that there was a little too much nuance to the character, so they have his girlfriend say to him “now don’t go getting in a fight like you always do” to remind us that he’s meant to be a one-note character. He’s not, and despite this weird undercurrent, Willard is the most interesting and fun to watch character (which in turn makes him the most realistically human person in the film).

That also means that the montage of him learning to dance is by far the best section of the film (another instances where this film actually improves on the original). Willard increasingly competently dances all over town and alongside excited and adorable children. He moves fluidly, not jerkily and showily. And he smiles. Not mischievously, not devilishly or suggestively. Just genuinely. The dialogue he has to say is, just like everyone else’s, often pretty dumb, but his performance alone is still almost worth the price of admission. If there’s a real, unadulterated pleasure in this film, it’s watching Teller act and dance.

So there are pleasures here: the exuberant joy of dancing shines through here and there, and there’s a standout performance woven in here. Maybe the fun of this movie is just how unexpected these pleasures are, buried as they are under layers of unnecessariness.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the tale of an ape, given the gift of hyper-intelligence, at the tipping point between evolving and maintaining his animal nature, caught between something bold and new and something simple. It’s oddly apt that the film itself also teeters between bold and simple. It’s got the simple appeal of a nostalgia-fueled action film, but it’s also reaching for something more complex and lasting. Let’s see where it comes out…

Despite its pedigree, the film faces challenges from the get-go; for starters, you come in worrying that you’ll find it difficult to take James Franco seriously enough to not only envision him as a scientist, but also to care about his science (a new drug that genetically manipulates Alzheimer’s disease patients to cure them – I see no downsides looming!). Luckily, it turns out that this movie, like us, doesn’t really care about James Franco, or really even the science; it’s got a better man in its sights.

Or I guess better ape. The real protagonist of this film is actually Caesar, the genetically-modified intelligent ape that Franco has created with his Alzheimer’s disease cure. The film follows Caesar from birth to rapid development, on through becoming a part of Franco’s family, and ending up, via a tragic event, thrust into the company of a number of apes that are much less evolved than he. Caesar’s journey is the heart of this film, and it’s certainly a vital one.

That journey is portrayed really artfully. Thanks to some adept and stylish directing by Rupert Wyatt, Caesar’s early life swinging wildly and fluidly through his makeshift bedroom segues easily into the intense territorial struggles between the apes, which eventually becomes a seriously smart and entertaining set-piece final battle between ape and man. Caesar’s story is so well-told (in no small part due to evocative motion capture acting by Andy Serkis and the large visual effects team behind him), and we feel right along with him throughout the emotional journey he’s experiencing, experiencing these emotions for the very first time through his eyes.

Though maybe, in looking back on the film, I’m seeing something different than was presented to me. The truth is, while Caesar is the center, and his bits are really great, the film spends a lot of its time on the pseudoscience of the drug and the politics and ethics of its testing. It also wastes precious seconds on Franco’s “love interest” (that honestly couldn’t be called anything more than merely his “interest;” theromance in this story is imperceptible and unexplored).

No, the things I remember about the film are the slow building tribe of rebellious apes, the swelling humanity of our hero Cesar, the flawless character arc that drives this leader to his inevitable coup, and the breathless action sequences. Those things were all really interesting and really well-done. And by themselves, they represent some of the best film-making this year.

That might be why I have some lingering doubts about praising this film unequivocally: I can’t help but wonder why exactly I’ve forgotten so much of the film, why only the things I liked are leaping to my mind.

Don’t mistake me: these somewhat forgettable sections are not really bad. They’re just conventional and inconsequential. The real trouble is that the rest is brilliant; it’s the most elegant and moving portrayal of the humanization of a non-human I’ve seen in a while. That disproportionate quality problem is what really irks me here.

So where does that leave us? Maybe this movie rests in that weird valley where Caesar himself lingers for most of this movie: he’s so human in so many ways, but still so wild, so animal in others. This film is equally stuck, but between brilliance and convention. And the film, unfortunately, will never get the chance to evolve.

Bitches, boasting, Benzes, bullets: one of the biggest quandaries facing white, hipster hip-hop fans is rappers’ propensity to talk about themselves, their guns, their money, and their cars, all whilst talking shit about other rappers, talking shit about women, and just plain shit talking. It can be tiring for this humble, white listener, who considers himself something of a feminist. But I think I, and, by extension, my white hipster brethren, give Jay-Z a pass because of the “authenticity” thing.

The major challenge facing the collaboration that makes up Watch the Throne is that I extend no such courtesy to Kanye West.

Here’s where Jay-Z gets his cred: Hove comes from the streets, and has lifted himself up. It’s Horatio Alger from the corner, and he can’t forget his past. So even though he is married, in his 40s, and likely spends most of his time pulling business deals, we can overlook the fact that you’d never know it listening to his lyrics these days because he’s from the hood.

Then there’s Kanye. His dad was a photojournalist. His mom was a professor. He got A’s and B’s in high school in a middle class neighborhood in Chicago. And he almost certainly lacks any semblance of self-awareness. So besides sounding like a spoiled frat boy when he raps about drugs and cars, he also happens to cast himself as a pompous douche.

That being said, I kind of consider him to be the Quentin Tarentino of the hip-hop world — undoubtedly talented, undoubtedly arrogant, but a little stiff. Both Kanye and QT are obviously obsessed with their craft, taking in copious volumes of information and spitting it back out. But along those lines, it frequently feels like Kanye the rapper (like Quarentino the screenwriter) just follows the hip-hop playbook, reaching out into the ether and pasting together various affectations and tropes (casual misogyny, self-aggrandizement, religious imagery, shout-outs to his momma).

But unlike Tarantino, Kanye works in a medium that largely redeems itself from a content standpoint only because it claims to portray “real life.”

And that brings me to my nut graf. I approached Watch the Throne with some trepidation. I am a late arrival to the Kanye West party; while I’ve always appreciated his extreme talent as a producer (he lifted up The Blueprint, no doubt), his albums are unfortunately full of him rapping. Kanye’s mic skills are just weak. Juxtaposing him next to the greatest living rapper, I thought, would expose him for the mediocre MC that he is.

I was kind of right, and kind of wrong, actually. Kanye surprisingly holds his own as a rapper, sort of, on this album. On “Ni**** in Paris,” one of the West’s standout takes on a reasonably conventional mid-tempo hip-hop track, his nasal, singsong voice actually fits into the flow of the song after Jay-Z tags him in, and he actually mixes up his rhyming pattern once in awhile.

There’s a lot for a fan of either artist to enjoy on this album, and the first few tracks are strong (“No Church in the Wild” is a killer opener). Thanks to Kanye’s trademark eclecticism and a bevy of guest producers, Watch the Throne dabbles in West Coast hip-hop, rock, soul, classical and club music, and dubstep. But it lacks the cohesion of Kanye’s albums, production-wise, for some reason. This album is uneven.

From a delivery standpoint, Jay-Z and Kanye aren’t the next rap supergroup by any means. But maybe they’ve rubbed off on each other a little. In contrast to The Blueprint, on which a young Kanye submitted to Jay-Z’s overall vision, Jay-Z on Watch the Throne lyrically adapts some of Kanye’s flavor: obsession with emulating a rockstar, rapping about his elite social status, cocaine, and European stuff. (“The Black Axl Rose,” Jay-Z calls himself at one point.)

But just because he exceeded my low expectations as a rapper, that doesn’t mean Kanye avoided the things that makes a large part of me lukewarm to Kanye West’s music (just for the record, another part loves it).

On “Gotta Have It” (co-produced by The Neptunes, by the way), Kanye and Jay-Z trade back and forth about how they will raise their as-of-now non-existent sons. And actually now that I think about it, that’s one of the few similarities between Jay-Z and Kanye as MCs – both will occasionally slip an introspective, self-critical verse or track into the typical hip-hop braggadocio (Jay-Z’s are occasionally incisive and thought-provoking, while Kanye generally seems like a robot executing some kind of self-reflection program). Still, it seems like a reasonably appropriate subject with some promise. Kanye leads off:

And I’ll never let my son have an ego / he’ll be nice to everyone wherever we go / I mean, I might even make ‘em be Republican
/ So everybody know he love white people.

Ok, so far so good, and a little funny in that Kanye West, cultural/political non-sequitur kind of way. But wait, was that an obtuse reference to Kanye’s big dumb Katrina fail? Well. It’s kind of vague I guess. But hold the phone. About a half-couplet later:

And get caught up with the groupies in the whirlwind /
And I’ll never let ‘em ever hit the telethon / 
I mean even if people dyin’ and the world ends /
See, I just want him to have an easy life.

Oh no he didn’t.

Reflecting on Hurricane Katrina, Kanye West, who in a later track “Murder to Excellence,” laments black on black crime.

In the past if you picture events like a black tie / What’s the last thing you expect to see: a black guy / What’s the life expectancy for black guys? / The system’s working effectively, that’s why.

And so it rings hollow when Kanye tries to follow Jay-Z’s lead in ruminating on the downtrodden state of African-Americans. While Hove has personal experiences to reflect upon, Kanye raps from the perspective of a middle-class egomaniac. Nothing illustrates this better when in Kanye’s mind, apparently, the biggest victim of Hurricane Katrina (which killed or displaced literally thousands of black people) is himself, because he’s just so damn misunderstood.

That’s the problem with Kanye West, and with Watch the Throne. And it’s a big, almost fatal problem.

Buried deep in the back of the opening track of Bon Iver’s recent self-titled album is the click of drumsticks. In front is a guitar line that, by itself, is haunting and beautiful enough. But buried deep behind the beautiful things on the surface are the things like those clicking drumsticks, the things that creep up slowly, the things that fill in the space around the more obvious (more easy) beauty.

Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago was a careful study in intimacy and the smallness of the sonic space there, but that kind of intimacy is an easy sell. This record is all about what happens to that intimacy when the walls are pushed back to let in… well, everything.

The walls getting pushed back might be more than just a stylistic choice; Bon Iver has developed a serious amount of cachet in the world of indie singer-songwriters. And the transition into more success and into bigger studios often causes these confessional singer-songwriters to step back from the lo-fi microphones. But while some musicians let their sound bloat to fill that newly created space, Bon Iver has maintained a tight rein on his sound to instead fill the space surrounding it with layers, revealing a more subtle beauty.

This new space is the reason why a lot of lo-fi, acoustic artists have sort of faltered on the leap from home-recorded tracks of just their voice and a guitar to the more ornamented sound that often comes with more money. One major example of this is obviously Iron and Wine, a band that never seemed to recapture the understated beauty of the early lo-fi recordings after adding a band and orchestra. Iron and Wine’s songs remained lyrically adept and still evoked some real pathos, but they were presented in a way that, for all of their prettiness, still felt too big for their own good.

Bon Iver, on the other hand, has thrived after his sonic expansion. He’s folded in a few new styles (there’s more than a little R&B and 80s pop here), and he’s taken a few lessons from the masters of big spaces (the sound of this album evokes Sigur Ros and Sufjan Stevens). The album comes complete with the Bon Iver staples: barely-sensible lyrics (more constructed for their aesthetic worth than written for their meaning) and lilting falsetto. It’s all not just bigger, but also more full (note the pleasant surprise of singer and mastermind Justin Vernon’s full voice rumbling through periodically).

But that fullness is only half of the picture of what makes the record so great. For all of its depth, this album is also still very interested in the warmth of intimacy. And it’s a paradoxical intimacy here, more akin to the intimacy of a great orator in front of a rumbling crowd than the intimacy of a confessor in a lonely room.

While the intimacy of someone confessing their deep feelings over light acoustic guitar in a stark barn can be obvious and palpable and affecting, it’s also cheap. Bon Iver instead opts to put a lot of space around himself, letting the sounds fill the space, creating a more expansive beauty. It’s a hard trick to pull off, the intimacy of a crowded room. But when it’s pulled off so well, it’s pretty remarkable.

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Remember that classic scene in E.T. where the government agents violently interrogate and then kill Elliot’s school teacher? Or remember that scene in The Goonies where Chunk’s dad and Mikey’s dad expose their history of mutual hatred? How about that scene in Close Encounters where the aliens eat human flesh?

Yeah. Neither do I. But apparently J.J. Abrams does. Those three things are all things that happen in Super 8, Abrams’s presumptive homage to the fun sci-fi features of his childhood, like those mentioned above. And I only bring them up this way because the in-kind difference that makes those scenes sound stupid in those respective movies is what makes Super 8 kind of a problem.

I’ll start by saying that Super 8 is best described as a mostly classically Spielbergian film, contrasting a rollicking, wondrous adventure with the personal journeys of its characters. In that tradition, it’s got Joel Courtney as Joe, the bright-eyed, slightly shy protagonist pre-teen, and Elle Fanning as the equally pre-teen, equally bright-eyed light-touch love interest. There’s an arc about Joe’s grief over his recently-deceased mother and about his relationship with his dad (played by Kyle Chandler, who is quite boring in this role). It’s also got banter between children, the aspect that most securely anchors this film in reality.

But it’s also got, as alluded to above, some seriously action-influenced elements that would have stuck out like a sore thumb in a Spielberg film. In essence, as many people have said before about this film, it’s basically two different movies, and only one of those qualifies as a throwback vintage summer romp. The other is kind of a mess.

Before I get started in earnest, I want to hedge against the obvious problem with thinking of Super 8 as chiefly a Steven Spielberg homage. Abrams is certainly allowed to make his own movie in any way he wants, and to pigeonhole this film into being only the light-hearted Spielberg-y romp that it seems to (at least partially) want to be would obviously be unfair.

But I have some related concerns, which I think are completely fair. Whether your film is a direct homage or not, it’s still squarely a bad idea to make some parts of your film feel like The Goonies and make other parts feel like Transformers. Because these two worlds don’t collide as neatly as Abrams might think. These two types of storytelling are not only stylistically incompatible, but also philosophically opposed.

One explores the emotional territory of the response to the unknown, but the other relies on the outsized menace of a slavering beast. One is about growing up and learning about the world and yourself, and the other is mostly just busy action. One is philosophical and wondrous, and the other is pulpy and escapist. One is Roddenberry and the connection with new consciousness, and the other is Lovecraft and the horror of the unknowable.

In short, Steven Spielberg’s style was never really suited for the kind of specified fear that monster movies play with. His style has mostly been about the fear of growing up, and how that fear starts to fade when we connect with these monsters and realize that they aren’t at all the monsters we assumed they were. The monster here remains almost entirely a monster until the bitter end.

You can sort of tell that Abrams knows he’s getting this wrong, too. After an extended running-and-dodging sequence in the alien monster’s hidey hole, the whole production slows down for what is supposed to be a heart-felt moment of shared experience between Joe and the alien. But it’s not much of a connection (the beast can’t speak, and its face is uncompromisingly non-anthropomorphized), and the ham-fisted “connection” is fleeting, lasting mere seconds. It’s almost as if Abrams realized he was too far into Cloverfield territory and had to pull back with a half-assed pathos-grab.

This scene looks even more awkward when you compare it to the scenes it’s presumably paying homage to. The two characters in Super 8 bond over how much pain and meaningless suffering there is in the world. Compare that to a heartfelt connection over Reese’s Pieces, or friends enacting a pirate fantasy, or an inter-species musical exchange. Super 8‘s moment of understanding isn’t as elegant or as fun as any of these. The film just doesn’t put in the work and EARN the barrier-crossing connection the way Spielberg nearly always did.

There’s a couple of blatant pathos-grabs near the end of this film, but this one is the most awkward. One of the arcs (the one about letting go and becoming your own person and growing up) culminates in a symbolic gesture that actually did make me thrill a little (but only for a moment; within seconds, a bit of dialogue between father and son seems to make the opposite point, that there’s no need to grow up so long as daddy’s still there). The balance between busy monster-fueled action and actual human-being-fueled adventure is just all out of whack, making Super 8 feel distinctly un-Spielberg-y.

And that’s fine, Abrams gets to make whatever movie he wants to make. He doesn’t HAVE to make a Spielberg-y movie. The failure here is in choosing to try to make two movies at once; it’s the smashing together of these two incompatible approaches to the unknown that makes Super 8 so difficult to just sit back and enjoy.

(Image: the film’s decidedly VERY Spielberg-y poster, which I love)

I guess the first question people usually ask when discussing a film is, “what is it about?” Well I’m here to tell you that Meek’s Cutoff, the new film directed by Kelly Reichardt, is not really about anything. Or at least, not anything interesting. But I’m also here to tell you that, in this case, that might not matter.

Meek’s Cutoff is a movie that barely seems written. And that’s a mercy at times, since the actual written dialogue and plot have little of interest to offer. But we’re not here for story, or even, really, characters. We’re here for a feeling, to be lost in this moviegoing experience just as thoroughly as the characters on screen are lost in the expansive dessert. In that sense, the film is pretty hugely successful.

The basic plot is that a train of settlers is headed west to start a new life. They’re being led by a guide named Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), who looks basically like a cartoon of himself. The traveling party includes the stalwart Emily (Michelle Williams) and her husband, and a bunch of other characters that the film seems really uninterested in (Paul Dano! Zoe Kazan! Etcetera!).

Yet all is not well within the ragtag bunch: the traveling party’s starting to lose faith in their guide, and every decision they make is a battle between Meek’s rough-and-tumble ‘Merican self-preservation and the remaining travelers’ more measured approach (which is later touched with Emily’s compassionate influence). The tension between these two world-views reaches its peak when the group captures an indian (Rod Rondeaux, the best, most interesting performance in the film) just as they’re running out of water and they need to decide what to do with him.

The minimal character and story beats are pretty banal and rote. Williams’s Emily is just a shade too kind-hearted and humanistic to be interesting, and Meek himself is a battle-hardened grunt, no more captivating than a kill-em-all soldier in a war film (he even seems within inches of screaming “game over, man!” at one point).

The minimalist story lacks the dynamism necessary to actually qualify as anything more than a sketch, but even that sketch is kind of bland. And the themes of cultural awareness, fate, and humanism sometimes feel like they’re more draped over the film than demonstrated by it. (Paul Dano’s character carves the word “LOST” into a log in an early scene, which is a moment so telegraphed that it’s pretty clear very early in the film that we’re not here for the subtlety of the story or the themes.)

In effect, the film wanders through the same territory that so many science fiction films have explored equally well: an alien being captured by a band of desperate colonists, the communication barriers demarcating impassable cultural gulfs, the mistrust inherent in first contact, and the semi-redemption brought about by our right-minded protagonist. Meek’s Cutoff has just a glimmer running through it of all of these well-trod story elements.

But even if it doesn’t entirely hold together as a story or a character study, Meek’s Cutoff is certainly a rousing success as a mood piece. Even as it feels like it’s dragging its way towards its bafflingly slight conclusion, the film’s sense of isolation and confusion is always pitch perfect. And that’s enough for now. But it also has me excited to see what Reichardt would do if she actually had something important to say.

The most obvious thematic thread in Joe Wright’s new film Hanna is that of Hanna’s discovery of the world. Early on, Hanna’s father reads her an encyclopedia entry about music, and we realize she’s never actually heard music before. But she wants to. She wants to discover the secrets of a world she has never known. She wants to feel music.

Turns out that maybe the best way to demonstrate that tumultuous beauty and propulsive joy of music to Hanna would be to show her this film.

Hanna tells us the tale of a young girl (a basically-perfect portrayal by Saoirse Ronan) and her father (a certainly-laudable portrayal by Eric Bana). It’s mostly a revenge plot;  the two set out to find and kill the woman (an also-pretty-good portrayal by Cate Blanchett) that tore their family apart and banished them to the icy north. They must face barren desserts, cartoonish henchmen, life lessons, and family secrets before they face off against the big bad wolf.

Ok, the bad guy isn’t an actual wolf (though the climax of the film actually does take place in the mouth of a giant wolf). But there’s no denying the pattern. Hanna is the story of a young, sheltered girl discovering a scary, wonderful, magical world, a plot that should sound familiar to anyone that’s read the book of Grimm’s fairytales that Hanna herself keeps poring over in the film. This story’s got all of the trappings of writ-large myth, punctuated with small personal stories.

At its heart, this film is nothing more than a fairytale. And a pretty coherently formed one at that.

But in addition to being an elegant and simple action-fairytale filled with some really strong performances, Hanna has something else going for it: it’s also a beautiful piece of cinematic art. Every scene has a propulsive rhythm all its own, its unique heartbeat animated by the driving score and the graceful editing. And the color and shape of every scene betray Wright’s skill and vision as a director.

The most obvious example is Hanna’s escape from the holding cell where she has been taken after becoming separated from her father. This escape sequence is fluid and dynamic, filled with flashing lights and clever spacial trickery. It brings to mind Tarantino’s flair for breezy, stylish visual language, but also Nolan’s knack for elegantly breathtaking action staging, all awash in the hues of a piece of fine art.

There are also a handful of long takes, a Wright trademark that I’ve lauded since the meandering party scene in Wright’s 2005 Pride and Prejudice. These single takes keep the relentless action sequences grounded in real time. This technique makes these sequences feel even more intense, like we’re forced to dodge, punch and run right alongside our heroes.

On balance, Hanna isn’t literature. It’s a simple, albeit well-told, story, and it might not offer literary critics much to discuss beyond the fairytale ethos of the whole endeavor. But Hanna is certainly very hard to beat for uniquely staged and beautifully portrayed action sequences. I might see more complex or more literary films this summer, but I don’t think I’ll see one as exuberant. Or as gorgeous.

There was a crazy story out of Florida not too long ago. Apparently, two young men who were watching Game of Thrones got in a fight over who was going to “win” on this show. The fight escalated quickly, and one of the men ended up arrested. Ok, fair enough, we at Enchantment Under The Sea can certainly understand getting invested in pop culture. But a fight over who’s going to “win?” What does that even mean? It’s not like this is American Idol; this is a narrative fantasy epic.

But then again, it might be fair question: can there really be a winner on this show? So far, we’ve been shown the machinations of a few different power-hungry individuals. And we’ve also seen hints that there is not enough power to go around. So there obviously DO have to be some losers. And the stage is being set for a really interesting ride to finding out just who wins and who loses in this world.

To get oriented: picture a Lord of the Rings-style fantasy epic, but made by HBO, and you’ll know exactly what’s on offer in Game of Thrones. Like any serial HBO drama, there’s family tension, dramatic conversation, detailed sets and costumes, and a lot of sex and violence. And sexual violence, actually.

But in addition to HBO’s hallmarks, it’s also got the hallmarks of any great fantasy epic: we’ve got a noble family man (with the unlikely name of Ned) destined for righteous power, pitted against scheming courtesans (like the expertly snarly queen) and slighted dynasties (the almost-albino wraiths across the Narrow Sea). The third episode even starts to paint some specifics on the standard fantasy-narrative impending apocalypse overtones. It’s all essentially what you’d expect from a capable fantasy epic given the HBO treatment.

I do have to say that there are some things that stand out as better than standard after these first three episodes. First of all, the countryside is absolutely beautiful. The show opens with a really eerie, really beautiful sequence in a snowy wood. In fact, all of the scenes that take place in the snowy country near The Wall are starkly beautiful. And the atmospherics are all dead-on, from the snowy gloom of The Wall to the glittering streets of the capital. There’s some really beautiful, really cinematic stuff happening in this show.

But the acting is probably what elevates this show the most. Peter Dinklage’s worldly, bawdy dwarf, for instance, is a joy to watch. The chemistry between Sean Bean’s Ned and his wife Catelyn (played by Michelle Fairley) is understated and believable. Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys is pitch perfect, slowly transitioning from being the broken pawn of her brother’s power games to the empowered queen with a glint of scheming behind her eyes. And Arya, Ned’s youngest daughter, is the center of a fascinating story about power and gender, anchored by a really solid performance by Maisie Williams.

In fact, Arya’s story is probably my favorite so far in the series. For a traditional fantasy epic in which the female roles are usually populated by either dim sex-objects or shrill wenches, there are some pretty interesting and complex roles for women in this show. And Arya’s story is proving to be a very good example, a story demonstrating the gendered symbols of power and how supremely satisfying it can be to see those symbols shift across gender lines.

Arya’s only one example among many of strong acting and interestingly-drawn characters. All told, this cast is filled with totally capable performers.

That’s the thing, though. Three episodes in, and that’s all I can really say: aside from some standout highlights, Game of Thrones is essentially imminently capable. I can’t say it’s groundbreaking or it’s the best example of its kind. But it is totally competent, certainly as good as any of its fantasy peers.

Maybe taking fantasy seriously and being capable is enough. In some ways, Game of Thrones is, after all, traditional epic fantasy’s first big television break. It’s taking this genre really seriously, and that’s already a step up from the goofy children’s story this could be.

Maybe I shouldn’t get too hung up on how revolutionary this show could be. In the final thrilling moments of the third episode, Ned sees the power welling up within his daughter Arya, and we can see his terror at what this power brings. Moments like this already make Game of Thrones really fascinating to watch, and it’s got swords and direwolves and just a hint of magic. That’s all I really need for now.

Welcome to a new, not-entirely-irregular feature that I’m calling “Unexpected Pleasures.” It’s about trying things that I might otherwise dismiss to discover the joys hidden inside. Send suggestions to staff@enchantmentunderthesea.org.

I used to watch a lot of The Real World. There used to be a time when I could rattle off the names and defining character traits of everyone that occupied a certain ludicrously well-appointed New Orleans house. And even if it is universal, the fascination with that kind of reality television is at least a little shameful.

That’s why it’s such a joy to find some reality television that trades in a more sophisticated currency. My unexpected pleasure for this post: Top Chef.

I’m specifically talking about Top Chef‘s most recent season. And even though it’s called by a different name, Top Chef All-Stars is actually season 8 of the long-running Bravo franchise. Other iterations of the basic premise have included Top Chef Masters and Top Chef Just Desserts, but while the nature of the cast and the food might change, the premise is the same in all of them: a crew of usually quite talented chefs are challenged with strange ingredients and strictures, and their resulting dishes are judged to decide who moves on to the next round and who packs their knives and leaves. It’s a simple enough premise.

It’s also a premise that sets Top Chef apart from what you might call the first generation of reality televison. In the beginning, reality television was literally just an excuse to watch carefully-selected dysfunctional people interact (trust me, I know… I’ve already confessed to the source of my expertise). The joy of this era (or maybe more accurately this genre) of reality television came from seeing people behave in predictably unpredictable ways, hooking up with each other, taking too long in the shower, stealing each other’s fancy peanut butter, being horrible to each other, and generally being a car-wreck from which it is so thrillingly hard to look away.

This type of reality television seems to persist (Jersey Shore and anything that contains the words “Real Housewives” being the best examples), but after a few recent weeks of thinking about reality television, I’d posit that there are a few new genres in this mix.

The first is the reality documentary, which includes things like Ice Road Truckers, Deadliest Catch, and a big portion of what TLC and the Discovery Channel air. The second is aspirational reality television, which often features a benevolent rich person bestowing gifts upon people (Undercover Boss, most of the Food Network’s programming, or the unnecessarily complexly named Extreme Makeover: Home Edition are all good examples). The final genre is the reality show as talent contest. The hallmarks of this genre include Project Runway and, our business today, Top Chef.

To a certain extent, everything that could be called reality television is a mix of these genres. For instance, The Apprentice is a mix of train-wreck reality, aspirational television AND talent show. American Idol is a little bit aspirational and is also the purest of the talent show reality programs.

So that brings us to Top Chef. For me, this show gets the balance between the genres pretty much right. It isn’t purely a battle of talent; the bickering and personality conflicts are everpresent, and they actually verge on interesting during something like “Restaurant Wars,” where a team has to work together and figure out how each of their talents and personalities are best served as a make-shift restaurant staff, complete with host, sous-chefs, and even logo designers. Some people, it turns out, think that they are better leaders than they actually are.

Top Chef has also got famous chefs, big prizes, and fancy food, the hallmarks of aspirational reality. And you might call the sections about weird foods or how restaurants work pseudo-documentary reality. It’s got splashes of all of these reality tv genres, but it uses a light touch in deploying these things, always trying to focus on the quality of the food being made. In short, the elements of this show are all carefully balanced so that it still feels like it’s at least mostly about talent, not drama.

Because by and large, the joy of watching this season of Top Chef, for me, was to see creativity and passion, not drama. Mike stole a recipe idea from Blais? YAWN. Wait, Blais is making MUSTARD ICE CREAM? Mustard ice cream always wins out over “I miss my wife” or “he’s so full of himself in the stew room.” I’m generally really fascinated with the weird food combinations that these people come up with and how they make something that resembles food out of essentially garbage.

I don’t know if that’s enough to get me to keep watching, though. I did have a lot of fun seeing traditional dishes deconstructed and presented in surprising and clever ways, but I also had to sit through a lot of complaining and inflated sense of conflict. There really is a lot to love about Top Chef, and it’s overall very well balanced. But in the end, it’s still trying to sell Buitoni pasta and make me care about how Jamie didn’t cook anything for one particular challenge (JAMIE! How could you?!)

I had a lot more fun with this show than I expected to. And I cared a lot more than I thought I would about the intricacies of how these dishes were built and conceived. I just wish there was a version of this show that was maybe only a half-hour long, that cut out the repeated slight barbs treated as damning blows (thin insults like “it had a little too much salt” accompanied by horror-movie background music). If this show could get over its own sense of drama, it could be perfect.

But as it stands, despite my misgivings about reality television and about impenetrably complex cuisine, I still often got really excited about this show. That’s a success by any metric.

(Special thanks to Rachel Shtern for introducing me to this show!)