Frances Ha(lladay, seriously, we need to counteract some of the twee, here)

So, Frances Ha.

I can’t figure out why this movie exists. It’s about being twentysomething, directionless and artsy in post-recession New York, but it was directed by highly successful fortysomething director Noah Baumbach, who co-wrote it with indie darling and girlfriend Greta Gerwig. Why is this a topic of interest to them? Maybe they have poor friends. Anyway, Frances Ha follows the eponymous Frances, a Vassar grad who, when we meet her, is living with her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner, daughter of Gordon Sumner aka Sting), in Prospect Heights, and trying to be a modern dancer. And here we hit my first complaint: Greta Gerwig can’t fucking dance. She is not a dancer. This is immediately, abundantly clear. And while Frances is never made out to be a great dancer, she’s supposed to be good enough to have a paying apprenticeship with a modern dance company, and as soon as you see her move you can see how false that rings. Movie, if you want me to be on your character’s side, maybe you should give her a fighting chance of success in her chosen career?

Anyway. We follow Frances through multiple apartments, various work situations, and increasingly poor life choices, culminating in a not-that-serious hit-bottom moment and the eventual getting together of her shit. And this is sort of where I throw up my hands in confusion, because man, this movie was not for me. It’s reasonably enjoyable, and in a lot of ways it gets the cultural markers of being a drifting young artsy New Yorker very extremely right, and while I watched it I definitely felt that I knew people like Frances … but the thing is, I sort of don’t. Frances is falling apart at the seams and basically incapable of social interaction. She’s not particularly sympathetic. I know people who are directionless, and I know people who are struggling, but none of them are as much of a mess as Frances (or at least if they are, they’re better at keeping it together in public than she is). Even at my own most directionless and messed up, I had it more together than she does. And for me, at least, there’s not a lot of charm in watching someone fuck up just enough to feel shitty all the time but not enough to actually fuck up. It just makes me wanna smack them until they get some perspective and then send them to therapy.

At the same time, though, I don’t want to come down too hard on Frances Ha. It’s not badly done. The writing is competent. It’s technically simple but smooth, if a little twee for me (black and white? really? really?). The editing and structure are sometimes very compelling, and the pace is comfortable. I can see how the film speaks to people who feel as much of a mess as Frances is, even they’re not. I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do and accomplishes that skilfully. That thing just doesn’t resonate with me at all. I almost feel like there’s no point in having an opinion on something that is so obviously Not For Me. I can’t figure out why on earth anyone who isn’t a semi-lost twentysomething New Yorker would want to see this or what they might get out of it. It’s niche.

Gerwig delivers a reasonable performance. I don’t like her whole schtick and I’m not persuaded it represents anything of value, but it’s inoffensive. Meryl Streep’s younger daughter, Grace Gummer, pops up as Rachel, one of Frances’ colleagues from the dance company, and not for nothing but I’m suspicious of a movie featuring two otherwise unknown children of famous people. It feels cliquey. Apparently one of the male leads is played by an actor from Girls (Adam Driver as Lev)? Which, yeah. I suspect if you find Girls in some way resonant, this may speak to you also. I wouldn’t watch Girls for love or money. This, at least, is a lot less stupid than that sounds.

Before Midnight

Before Midnight is the third installment in director Richard Linklater and actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s series of films following two characters, Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy), over what is now eighteen years. I saw the second installment, Before Sunset, in theaters when I was 17, and I was utterly blown away. I’d never been so immersed or transported by a film. I remember feeling so connected to the character of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) that when the camera would cut to his face, I was jarred by how wrong it felt to be seeing the face of the character through whose eyes I was seeing the film. I didn’t see the first installment, Before Sunrise, until a few years later, and I continue to believe what I thought then: which film you prefer says an awful lot about how you approach love and think about romance. I prefer Sunset by several country miles; draw your own conclusions.

Over the past nine years, my affection for Sunset has remained strong, though I no longer feel that Jesse speaks the words of my soul (and thank God for that, he’s half a nut). At times I’ve identified more with Celine (Julie Delpy), at times with Jesse. As I’ve aged, my view of the film has changed, but it remains one of those pieces of media that rescripted my psyche at a cellular level. And so last night, waiting to see Before Midnight, I found myself surprisingly nervous. I couldn’t focus on anything. I felt as though I was about to visit old friends I hadn’t spoken to in years; what if we didn’t get along anymore?

Having seen it, I maintain, to a degree greater than I’ve experienced with other movies, that one’s response to these films is as much about oneself, one’s experience and trajectory and personal bugaboos, as it is about the films themselves. My response to Before Midnight is driven as much by my own feelings about human relationships as it by the film’s structural elements. So let’s set the scene: we’re in Greece with Jesse, Celine, and their ridiculously beautiful twin daughters on some sort of writers’ retreat (the nature of the trip is never totally clear). They’ve been together since the end of Sunset – the evolution of their relationship is revealed as the film progresses – and for one of their last nights in Greece, their friends have purchased for them a hotel room.

The film starts, however, at the airport with Jesse and his son Hank. This is by far one of its best moves, both narratively and affectively. Jesse’s love for his four-year-old son is painfully clear in Sunset, and one of my greatest anxieties going into Midnight (yes, I had anxieties about this film, that’s how many feelings I was having) was how they’d handle that situation. On this count, I had nothing to worry about. Jesse’s love for his son and concern for his well-being is a major theme in Midnight in a way that rings very true and brought me closer to Jesse instead of pushing me farther away. Hawke, aging like a fine wine, wears pain well on his mile-high cheekbones. The recurring theme of Hank’s welfare provides a major new area of exploration for Jesse and Celine, and gives their conversation an emotional anchor.

We’re first alone with Jesse and Celine about forty-five minutes into the film, as they walk to the hotel, and they note that they haven’t been alone together in longer than either of them can remember. Their dynamic is familiar to us from Sunrise and Sunset, but I found it too familiar. Their conversation doesn’t wear the long familiarity their characters are now supposed to have; it feels like one they could have had in Sunset, nine years ago. This was a recurring theme for me as the film went on: in many ways, it feels like a recapitulation of Sunset with smaller stakes. Neither Jesse nor Celine seems to have grown much in nine years. On a personal level, I was disappointed by this in the same way I would be if I saw an old friend after nine years and they hadn’t grown. Personal growth is perhaps my most deeply held value, and I find its absence upsetting and frustrating. But I think this is more than a personal issue, it’s a narrative one. The characters have new problems, but they bring nothing new of themselves to the table. As a viewer, I kept waiting to learn something new, to see something that would warrant a new film, and I didn’t.

At the same time, those nine years of togetherness serve as an impediment to connection for the viewer. In both Sunrise and Sunset, we experience the jolt of connection, the anticipation, the shock of reconnection in real time with Jesse and Celine. We get to know them as they get to know each other, we re-meet them as they re-meet each other, and we fall in love with them as they do with each other. That immediacy is one of the films’ greatest assets, permitting an incredible level of immersion. Midnight places nine years between Jesse and Celine and the viewer. No longer do we participate in their lives; we watch and listen to them. And because we don’t know – for example – how they parent their daughters, how they arrange their time, how they divide up household chores, how they make decisions together (or separately), we can’t really know what we’re hearing. It winds up feeling like sitting next to the world’s most argumentative couple on the subway: you can listen, and you can assess, but you don’t actually know what you’re talking about.

One could argue, I’m sure, that this is the nature of long relationships, particularly ones with children: the day-to-day becomes so important that fights get saved up until they’re distorted beyond sense, the partner relationship suffers, and one’s relationship with oneself is tabled indefinitely. That may be true of many relationships, but static of that kind doesn’t make for particularly exciting viewing. Insofar as it’s a film about what happens in long relationships, that ground has been covered by others more skilfully, as in The Kids Are Alright and Shall We Dance? Insofar as it’s a check-in with characters we know and love and missed, all we know now is that they haven’t changed.

I know the level of anticipation I brought to Midnight was unfair. In addition to the intense personal importance it has to me, Sunset has one of the most perfect endings of all time. After wandering Paris all day, fighting and connecting and being upset and being alive, Jesse and Celine go back to her apartment as Jesse’s airplane boarding time gets closer and closer. She puts on Nina Simone, and while she’s making tea and puttering, she turns towards him and begins to do an impression of the late chanteuse, hips wiggling and lips pursed, and she says, in a deep, husky voice, “Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.” And Jesse just grins up at her and says, “I know.” Cut to black. The sweet anticipation and uncertainty of that ending floats you out of the theater, and by definition, making a third installment puts to rest that tension – so it needed to deliver something powerful enough to be worth it. That it didn’t isn’t necessarily problematic in and of itself. What pushes me to say that this isn’t a success irrespective of my ludicrously high hopes is that I don’t think it stands up on its own terms: it doesn’t take us to enough new places to justify its existence, and the stakes never feel as high as they’d need to be to compensate. I missed Jesse and Celine. I was happy to see them again. But if there’s a next time, I hope they come ready to play.

quick fried chicken bites: The Commodore.

If you’re interested in my endless, mouthy opinions on fried chicken, look no further. That post there tells you everything you need to know. The chicken deets from this post will be embedded there, along with a link back here.

The Commodore, located on Metropolitan Ave in Williamsburg, is a high-class David-Copperfield-style illusion. From the outside – and also from the inside – it’s a dive. It doesn’t even have a sign. It looks like the sort of place that’s been chilling out and doing business since long before Williamsburg started its not-that-long actually-incredibly-fast gentrification journey. The tables are covered in disposable diner-style placemats that spell out your choice of diner-style cocktails, and the place looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since the Reagan administration. In point of fact, The Commodore is a relative newcomer, only occupying its storefront since 2010, and once your eyes adjust to the lighting, you’ll start to notice pinball machines lurking in the corners. The combination of pre-hipster-Williamsburg dirt and resolutely stodgy decor with a menu and amenities perfectly in tune with the tastes of Williamsburg’s poorly dressed, poorly-facial-haired denizens is a stroke of genius on the part of someone clever enough to make this happen.

The vibe follows you to the bar, where you order your drinks and your food from someone who’s gotta be getting paid to act that ticked off. I made my Commodore pilgrimage with five other people, and after the first round I think I’m the only person whose drink wasn’t completely fucked up. I ordered the Trailways, a house special combination of grapefruit juice, vodka and mint that I happily downed all evening. Meanwhile, one friend’s sloe gin fizz seems to have been missing gin, and another’s Tom Collins lacked both sugar and seltzer water. This was legendarily terrible bartending. But any fucks that any of us gave were swept away the moment giant platters of chicken were placed in front of our faces. The Commodore’s basic fried chicken meal is three thighs, some dipping sauces, a biscuit and honey butter. The chicken is heavily battered, overwhelming the plate. It looks like the Ur-fried-chicken platter.

And how does it taste? Man, it is fucking delicious. The chicken is juicy and tender. The batter should be in the dictionary next to a picture of the word “crispy.” Any seasoning is mild, and the dipping sauces are both very pleasant, though unnecessary. This is the sort of plate you dive into and eat your way out of. It’s a good thing. After Monument Lane, this might be my favorite plate of fried chicken in the city. (Bobwhite Counter, I still love you, but you’re a liiiiiittle salty.)

Also, it’s $11. So you can spend the rest of your money on Trailways cocktails. (Seriously, don’t get anything else. By the end of the night half my table was drinking Trailways because it seemed to be the only drink the bartender could reliably make.)

$11
A
366 Metropolitan Ave at Havemeyer

42: America has race issues. were you aware?

42‘s in sort of a funny position. In telling the story of Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play Major League Baseball, it could easily be a feel-good-a-thon for white Americans. It could talk about how the good integrationists triumphed over the Jim-Crow-loving segregationists because they were just better people, goshdarnit, and show Robinson and his fellow Brooklyn Dodgers hitting home runs into the sunset as the crowd roars (roll credits). This would be neither true nor honest, but the grand tradition of films made by white people telling the stories of black people (see also: The Help, The Blind Side) hasn’t given too many fucks about truth or honesty as long as it doesn’t make white people too uncomfortable.

For a Hollywood movie made by white people, 42 doesn’t actually give that many fucks about making white people uncomfortable. As told here, the story of Jackie Robinson is one of forbearance. It is a story of fighting bigotry with dignity not because dignity is better than the alternative but because it’s the only option that isn’t guaranteed to backfire spectacularly. It’s a story of turning the other cheek again and again, and of the cost that exacts. Robinson is never a saint. He’s a man making a devil’s bargain, choosing to put himself in a cage for the chance to live his dream – and maybe change the world along the way.

Robinson is played by supernaturally handsome Chadwick Boseman (whose looks are all the more astounding because he’s a virtual unknown, seemingly dropped into this film from the planet of really really ridiculously good-looking people). Boseman is remarkable. I don’t see an Oscar in his future because Hollywood politics newcomer sports movie blah blah blah, but when he doesn’t get nominated come January you can bet I’ll be screaming about how he was robbed. His Robinson is a proud man, not a little bit angry about the disrespect he faces every day, who is challenged to integrate baseball and take the abuse guaranteed to come with it without fighting back. He’s barely contained. He knows his responsibilities – to himself, to his wife and child, to his community – and he knows what he represents, but none of that makes it any easier to put up with the abuse he faces for the cardinal sin of playing baseball while black.

There are a lot of ways that abuse, and the impact it had on its target, could have been depicted. A standard choice would have been a montage, or a collection of short scenes showing Robinson being harassed at a game, on the street, on a boat, with a goat, while eating green eggs and ham, and so on and so forth. 42 does something different. It chooses to spend a significant chunk of time on one incident in one baseball game and let it carry the majority of the burden of demonstrating the bigotry Robinson faced.

The Dodgers are playing the Philadelphia Phillies. Robinson is at bat when the Phillies’ manager, Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk, in an abrupt departure from, oh, anything else he’s done ever), steps out of the dugout and launches into a vicious and unrelenting torrent of slurs. I have never heard the n word so many times in my life. The abuse is non-stop from the moment Robinson comes to the plate. No one says or does anything to stop it. And we watch as it has the desired effect: it winds Robinson up. The Phillies’ pitcher is fucking with him, intentionally throwing hard-to-hit pitches aimed more at hitting Robinson than striking him out, and that combined with his evident anger causes him to foul out three times in a row. He returns to the dugout. One or two Dodgers make half-hearted overtures, but most of them say nothing. Robinson sits alone. The abandonment by his team is palpable.

He comes to bat again. Again, Chapman is there, spewing invective. Again, the pitcher is fucking with him. Again, Robinson’s rage is growing, and again, he fouls out. This time, instead of returning to the dugout, he takes his bat and goes to the tunnel leading to the dugout.

And he begins to scream.

Boseman screams like an animal caught in a trap, and with every scream, he slams his bat into the wall, shattering it, then shattering the shattered stump that remains. Finally, he collapses to the ground, gasping and sobbing, utterly confined by his situation. The man responsible for Robinson’s presence on the Dodgers, general manager Branch Rickey, approaches, but Robinson shoves him away, growling his intentions towards the next white person who opens his mouth.

It’s an incredibly powerful scene that does more with one long anecdote than it could with ten shorter ones. And while Rickey’s appearance at the end, ready to comfort Robinson while spouting platitudes, serves to protect white viewers from their own consciences, the impact has already been made. The gut punch has been delivered. If you’re a white person, you’re uncomfortable. As you fucking should be.

42 wouldn’t be a film about race in America if it didn’t have a right-thinking white protagonist for audience members to ally themselves with when they get too uncomfortable, and that role is filled by Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford, whose gruffness has hit self-parody, barreled right on past it, and is now swinging for the fences). As far as I can tell, Rickey seems to have been a genuinely progressive guy whose integration of the MLB seems to have been motivated at least in part by a sincere desire for justice. That said, making him the film’s racial conscience is a pretty clear sop to white viewers whose tolerance for the naked bigotry of our not-too-distant past, and its evocations of the only-slightly-less-naked bigotry still live in America today, is minimal. On the up side, this allows the majority of the film’s most heavy-handed platitudes to come out of his mouth, allowing the other white characters, and their relationships with Robinson, more dimensionality.

In terms of the target audience for 42, I’m about as far from it as you can get: I don’t like biopics, don’t care much about baseball, and am not particularly interested in Jackie Robinson. But as you can tell, it got me. It got me with Boseman’s raw, honest, angry, and all too human performance as Robinson. It got me with beautiful cinematography, particularly the baseball scenes (those were so exciting they had audience members in my theater cheering like they were in a bar). But mostly it got me by not totally fucking up the racial dynamics. Realistically, it’s a film written and directed by a white man in a white-dominated industry for distribution to a majority-white national audience. It was never going to be the Little Radical Race Film That Could. But for a film written and directed by a white man in a white-dominated industry for distribution to a majority-white audience, it is a good deal more honest about America’s racial tensions than I expected. And for the most part, it’s okay with making white people uncomfortable.

the tastiest and easiest chicken dish.

You guys, I am the worst. I am the worst because I have been making this for years and not sharing it with you. I’m so sorry. I have no excuse. I am deeply shamed.

This chicken dish is one of the first smitten kitchen recipes I ever made, and it sealed my allegiance to the culinary church of Deb Perelman forever and ever amen. It’s not just perfectly delicious; it’s a beautiful example of how technique, carefully executed, is as important as ingredients. Sure, the combination of chicken and mustard and shallots is a beautiful winner, but if you don’t really take the time to brown the chicken well at the beginning, you miss a crucial aspect of the dish and the addition of a whole textural dimension. And to brown the chicken well, you need to make sure the oil is hot enough before you add your pieces. It’s simple stuff, but I’ve screwed it up enough times to know that it makes a huge difference in the final dish.

The other great thing about this dish is how easy it is. Once the chicken’s in the oven, you walk away, and then you’re basically done. The sauce comes together in minutes, provided you remember to chop your shallots at the beginning. I serve it with mashed potatoes and something green, either green beans or peas. It even reheats nice for lunch.

Notes & Verdicts
Roast Chicken with Dijon Sauce by smitten kitchen

Notes: I don’t serve this with chives because I’m lazy, but I bet it’s lovely. I also have never once had the chicken in the oven done in 15 – 20 minutes. Usually it’s more like 25 – 30 minutes. Your mileage and oven may vary.

Verdict: Basically perfect. Make it immediately. A+

shrimp: the other other pink meat.

When I did a fake post (aka a recipe round-up) back in January, I talked a little bit about this delicious shrimp dish. This is the dish that two pain-in-the-ass picky eaters devoured like starving men. It is simple and straight-forward and I’m basically obsessed with it. It goes perfectly with corn casserole (which I prefer to make with fresh corn, these days).

Notes & Verdicts
Spicy Orange Garlic Shrimp by Pastor Ryan via Pioneer Woman

Notes: Couple things to be aware of with this recipe. First of all, you don’t need as much butter as Ryan says you do, but if you’re like me and you use the whole bag of shrimp, you’ll need to add butter to the pan as you remove each batch and add the next. Second of all, I don’t know what fantasy world Ryan is living in where shrimp cook through in 30-60 seconds per side, but mine do not fucking cook through in 30 – 60 seconds per side. It takes longer. It also takes awhile for the sauce to cook down such that you get pan trails when you drag your cooking implement through the sauce, but don’t despair. You’ll get there. (You also don’t need that last tablespoon of butter, I swear to god Ryan only included it because Pioneer Woman is fucking obsessed with butter.) Finally, let me caution you: do not think to yourself, “I am an experienced cook, I don’t need to measure my spices.” Or “I love cayenne pepper, I can just add more.” I did this last time and it was a terrible decision. Learn from my mistakes.

I also use >3 cloves of garlic, because, as Pioneer Woman’s obnoxious, cliche-ridden ass often says, “If some is good, more is better.”

Verdict: These are amazing. I have made them many times, and except for the time where my shrimp were sort of off, they have been absolutely destroyed by eager eaters. A

my first Deb failure.

This post marks the first smitten kitchen recipe I’ve ever made that wasn’t a success.

Well. That’s not totally true. Before I started blogging my cooking, I made these pork chops and deemed them weird and too much. But there was success in the diverse elements of the dish. The bread crumbs were amazing. The pork-chops-and-mustard combo was, needless to say, excellent. I took from the dish ideas I could build on. (That said, “dredge your pork chops in mustard and panko and then bake them” is not a delicious idea, don’t do it.) This soup … not so much.

I’m pretty sure the problem is the can of crushed tomatoes. I don’t know if it’s because I used the same kind my dad uses when he makes pasta sauce, but I do know that the can of tomatoes, plus the ground sausage, chopped garlic and onion, and bay leaves contributed to a flavor that wasn’t far off from underwhelming pasta sauce. Also, Deb’s photo of the soup shows visible lentils, which mine definitely did not have. Maybe it would’ve been different if I’d used brown lentils as she recommends instead of red lentils, which I had. (Apparently red lentils tend to get mushy, unlike brown lentils. Who knew?) All I know is that the final soup was really underwhelming with no sparkle. We ate it – it wasn’t bad – but now I don’t know what to do with the leftovers.

The best thing this soup did was introduce me to Swiss chard. I’m generally suspicious of leafy greens, as they lean towards bitter and I don’t like bitter, but the chard was delicious both raw and cooked, not bitter at all. I look forward to working with it in the future.

Notes & Verdicts
Lentil Soup with Sausage, Chard, and Garlic by smitten kitchen

Notes: I reduced to two links of sausage, as Deb suggests, but I’m not sure I like this decision. On the one hand, it really could have used more sausage. On the other hand, I feel like more sausage would have just pushed it further towards pasta sauce territory. So … I don’t know. I also, as I said, used red lentils instead of brown. I have no idea if it would be better with brown, but I know it wasn’t great with red.

Verdict: Bleh. Underwhelming to the max. C-