that’s right
writer and coffee professional, formerly at Serious Eats, stuff in Bon Appetit, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Vulture, HAD, Polygon, and other places. I also have a newsletter: https://linktr.ee/jesseraub
15,677 followers 1,159 following 4,889 posts
view profile on Bluesky
that’s right
goodones.beehiiv.com
at least jean smart got to flex in Fargo 2
we saw so many great white sox games with 100 other people total when lived in chicago
noah hawley really loves wresting incredible performances out of great actors in plodding scripts that shape into something interesting if only you can erase 12 minutes per episode from your memory
i’ve been continuously dosing low THC edibles all day
got em
taylor swift and travis kelce got engaged in a very expensive showing…. now that’s *one* Swift who seems to have rejected A Modest Proposal!!!
even with scientific imaging equipment like Agtron or ColorTrack it’s almost impossible to really calibrate what light or medium are
day three of being sick and i gotta say i’m pretty sure i could shammgod the next sixth grader i see at the local park
huh. didn’t realize turn on the bright lights was matador, i was gonna cry major label shenanigans
SPEAKING OF THE SHINS BASS PLAYER DAVE HERNANDEZ HELPED JAMES MERCER SET HIS SOUND DURING OH, INVERTED WORLD AND CHUTES TOO NARROW BUT HE’S BETTER KNOWN AS THE FRONTMAN FOR SCARED OF CHAKA. I LEARNED ABOUT THIS FROM BUDDYHEAD IN 2007.
oh hey Yuuki’s been an official member of The Shins from 2011 and on. that’s good news but doesn’t help us out here. 2011 is the wrong decade. we should be talking about Pedro The Lion’s Tim Walsh
Crystal Skulls bassist Yuuki Matthews got called up after Christian Wargo noticed his work as the singer/keyboardist of Seldom
bummed that i lost two weekend days to the couch, stoked that it hung on through a workday
we need a Remembering Some Guys for 2000s indie rock bass players. i need to be able to do something with “Scott Schoenbeck was traded to Dashboard Confessional in 2002 in a three band deal that sent Dan Bonebreak to The Enablers and shifted Ryan Weber from Camden to fill Schoenbeck’s old slot”
unfortunately, pushing the boundaries of roast color, processing methods, and sourcing techniques has been back on trend for too many years, asking people to drastically change how they’ve made espresso for decades to make these coffees even remotely palatable
a well-processed, in season, freshly roasted “medium roast” coffee will taste good no matter how you brew it.
there are so many parts of this piece that are fundamentally wrong so all i’m going to say is that if you don’t like the way a coffee tastes, that means you need to buy a different coffee—not an entire new brewing set up
part of it for me is wanting it to be the right moment to full enjoy it, and wanting everything to be set up the right way
getting my ass kicked by chronic illness this morning so resharing my latest and greatest newsletter editions for anyone who missed them
in my newsletter today, i wrote about the growing unease around passive digital surveillance and how that’s portrayed in Decision to Leave goodones.beehiiv.com/p/the-ubiqui...
well, i did it. i finally wrote about Fargo. specifically i wrote about how Marge's marriage is in extreme turmoil, even if it doesn't seem that way goodones.beehiiv.com/p/the-near-d...
after a few days, i had to write down some thoughts about The Phoenician Scheme, a profoundly agnostic movie with a slightly cynical view of redemption that sits beneath the surface. that’s right: the newsletter is back goodones.beehiiv.com/p/let-s-comm...
alright, this one's going to ruffle some feathers. i wrote about how we're in the midst of a crisis of movies that don't actually say anything, with Alex Garland's Civil War standing in as the key example: goodones.beehiiv.com/p/the-shit-h...
every david cronenberg movie
of all the phrases in the English language, of all the combinations of words, this one is the most beautiful 🥹
rig of toni
bluesky user jesse raub is attacking me personally
you mean former The Roots member Scott Storch
paul! the dan-man! great to see you! loved you in that one from uh… uh what’s his name. anderson. the oil one. anyway, wanna talk about some great new roles. only problem: you’re getting too cute. i want you to have a big career, but you gotta do something for me: you gotta look like fucking shit
i am an anti-corporate rock star. i love hardcore rock punk music and i hate corporations. i also love my Porsche 911, and the branding for my anti-corporate rock band i stenciled on the back.
tried to explain to my brother, who’s never played a GTA, how much dumber Cyberpunk was even if GTA pushed the edgelord buttons harder, and he didn’t believe me. i still contend the Witcher 3 was one of the worst written games i’ve ever played.
you’re still describing the premise not the narrative
uh oh now you’re just going to activate all the Packers fans
that’s all premise! the narrative itself says nothing
i’m talking about the narrative of the narrative film. you’re discussing what you like about the premise of the film, which requires you, as the viewer, to create meaning
i think my essay was pretty clear in that i think both Civil War and Weapons have narrative issues that i don’t like that require viewers to project their own meaning
my point still stands because “this is what war in america looks like” is a premise, not a narrative. the narrative of Civil War doesn’t take a stance
Definitely feeling this after the recent "Eddington" and "Weapons" disappointments but I also don't agree with everything in this piece. Regardless, this is a great piece that gives me more to think about RE: something that was already on my mind haha
it sounds like you had a profound experience watching Weapons, which is great! but it also sounds like you’re getting a lot out of it based on what you put into it, which is my entire point: i want a narrative that has a distinct perspective worthy of discussion beyond lso what was that about”
but why would that be my position when my favorite recent movie is Decision to Leave, which embraces ambiguity whole heartedly?
that also proves my point, which is that people take away different ideas from civil war based on what they put into it. Garland says the movie is explicitly about journalism fighting extremism, but almost no one got that from watching the movie
but the question is, do viewers get that from watching the movie? my argument would be that they don’t and that requires external information to process. it could be that’s what was on Cregger’s mind while making it, but like Garland’s interview, you’d think he hated journalism if you just watched
i do try to avoid using the word “bad” because this is more about why i don’t like the movie even if other people do. i really did want to like it!
I liked the movie and also liked this piece about why it is bad.
if viewers are coming away from Weapons with a host of varied hot takes, it feels like that’s a strong sign that the movie itself doesn’t have a coherent perspective
i don’t think that’s what my piece says. my critique isn’t about movies that generate debate. it’s about movies where there’s no “there” there to even debate in the first place, which pushes the viewers to create a debatable interpretation.
i think you could probably ask 10,000 people and most of them would tell you pretty clearly what the overarching themes of Jurassic Park are. same with When Harry Met Sally or, for a modern movie, The Substance
We all sometimes fall into the trap of liking scenes that make people daydream of a better movie than the one on the screen. You're excited about the ideas that Alex Garland is repeatedly running away from exploring.
great article, nails a feeling I’ve had about some movies the last 3-4 years but wasn’t sure if it was just me or not.
but also i think your comments reinforce my point: people are searching it for meaning and they can’t figure out what’s there or they have conflicting ideas. to me, that’s a movie i don’t want to watch.
Weapons isn’t really at the heart of my critique, it’s just disappointing that it’s another “oh, a witch.” movie. it’s basically deus ex machina for any supernatural occurrences a filmmaker wants to shoot for a fun looking scene
read the entire piece!
that’s why you should read the entire piece :)
and Olympus Has Fallen. Gerry really loves letting the barrel rest on a forehead before pulling the trigger in that one
did it? it also said “well you need war, to get rid of this guy. because he was…. uh… the bad guy. well both sides are the bad guy. but war is bad but you need war.”
no i’m saying it’s a movie so boring and uninspired that the only thing people remember from it is a dance sequence
i definitely have a specific type of movie whose shortcomings i ignore, it just usually involves more point blank head shots
only the dumbest filmmaker alive can bring us the dumbest sequel to the dumbest movie…. and we’re all begging for it! garland!! huff some paint for god’s sake! give us Dredd II!!!
As someone who does appreciate these movies for what they are as well as what I am definitely putting in them, I really appreciate Jesse's critiques here
agree: i wish i had a better collection of the contrasts in what people took away from it, bur citing Garland’s own interviews was the best thing i had for a source
i can that movie has rocks for brains. it’s really fun but it’s the dumbest movie i’ve ever watched
also in consideration
that’s right
draw me like one of your “terrors from another dimension” girls
god they're all gonna be lined up at my doorway. save me, park chan-wook!
aw man well can you tell him to avoid the TV i'm gonna need it while reovering
read the entire piece :)
Great piece. The point about how the complaint of "media literacy" is often used to disguise a lack of content is very relevant today ("sound and fury, signifying nothing") but I like that he takes care to point out the flip side, which is that we should be carefully analyzing media for its messages
Very much worth reading, not least because the surface-level nonsense that made Civil War subject to so much mockery before it was even released (trust me, my Americans friends laughed at that map *so fucking hard*) often distracted from what a cowardly nothing of a movie it actually was.
i also have more hours in elden ring than he does
lol
🙄 thanks obama
aw man this is getting too much attention Alex Garland is gonna try to beat me up isn't he
both are still on my watch list but i have a feeling i strongly need to watch them soon so i can better articulate where The Line is for narrative
i'm a huge stickler for narrative, though. my Movie Club just rewatched Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma and everyone else loved it while I was stuck on 3-4 plot beats that tanked the overall watch experience for me
My (possibly unpopular) take is that as an English filmmaker it’s probably better that Garland didn’t try to diagnose our problems in Civil War, but the lack of a coherent narrative does beg the question as to its necessity in the first place.
CIVIL WAR is one of those interesting movies where I definitely think it's not good but the ways in which it isn't good are very instructive. I've thought about it a bunch myself and this is a good take on it
i do think there are ambiguous movies and then there are movies that are opaquely ambiguous on purpose—my issue is with the latter
appreciate the good faith read! and looking forward to reading your perspective!
this is a great read—particularly in my case, because i'm just now finishing up a draft of something that takes exactly the opposite view
thank you for proving my point! also, scoreboard
i thank you for your bravery. the moral of a horror movie should be “well…. pleasure… pain…. sometimes it’s easy to confuse the two. hey wait aren’t you my brother in law?”
This NAILS my indifference to "vibes" based films. Making a movie is fucking hard, the hardest thing I've ever done. Why on Earth would you go to that effort without having something to say? Why would you ask people to give their time to your art for vibes?
This is good. I hated Civil War more than maybe any film I've seen in recent years for these reasons, spiritually and morally vacant, doing its best job to appear poignant and indignant
if you read the piece, you’d know that is not necessarily true!
hey, it was me that said it! it was Stuart Wellington!
one of the reasons I like to read great criticism across genres and mediums is that there is something comforting to me about realizing the problems that are plaguing romance are actually problems that are plaguing STORYTELLING writ large.
to be clear: this piece is more about the problems i have with these movies. all of these filmmakers are talented in many aspects of filmmaking, and i even like Garland as a screenwriter when he works with a director who can translate his ideas better to screen
Me, seeing someone finally calling out Alex Garland "haha fuck yeah! Yes!!" Me, seeing them say Weapons isn't about anything "well this fucking sucks. What the fuck"
you’re not wrong there — using Garland’s interview is just the easiest way to cite a source. the issue is how audiences walked away with wildly different ideas about what the movie said, i just didn’t have a collection of those opinions to link back to
that’s right
i mean that also proves my point: Garland says the movie is explicitly about one thing and you’ve come away thinking it’s explicitly about another. that means you had to fill in the blanks!
ah if that wasn't clear, the "sometimes, there's a witch" is more about how the "wow all this terrible stuff keeps happening, why is it happening" mytery ends with "oh, there was a witch" as an unsatisfying conclusion
my peice explicitly states that the movie's option is that journalism is not how you fight extremism even if that's what Garland says in interviews. you're not disagreeing with my take, you're agreeing with it
it is mentioned that he’s ordered air strikes against US citizens but it’s never clear what that actually means. like random protesters? the separatist militaries? who knows, even Garland doesn’t seem to
yepppppppp
