Destroyer Channels Green Room and Mikey & Nicky In Its Exquisitely Crafted Dark Tone

"We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us", so goes one of the most memorable lines from Magnolia and Destroyer is a crime thriller about a human being whose present-day circumstances are tormented by the past. Such a set-up, unsurprisingly, results in a grim movie that has little time for levity or hope, this is a bleak examination of a person not looking for redemption so much as a way to make the emotional pain stop, even for a moment. Such a pervasively mirthless affair won't be to everyone's liking, but me? I absolutely adored Destroyer, it's an absorbing movie that executes its dark tone with exquisite filmmaking that echoes the harrowing rawness found in Elaine May's Mikey & Nicky or Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room.

Just Because I, Tonya Is Heavily Stylized Doesn't Mean It Can't Also Be Thoughtful

Craig Ferguson is one of my all-time favorite late night TV shows hosts, this guy bent the rules of the American late-night TV show format with such glee and wit, it was absolutely wonderful. Interestingly though, one of my absolute favorite moments of his show comes not in the form of a punchline but in a thoughtful monologue he gave in 2007, which I've embedded below this paragraph for you to watch. Here, he talks about how his jokes lampooning certain people (like Kevin Costner) in situations where they're obviously having actual problems related to health or mental issues were bothering him on a personal level. He goes on to talk about the then-recent actions of Britney Spears and how they'd been the focus of widespread media attention and were the butt of countless jokes from the late night TV show hosts, including himself. He notes his discomfort with mocking her unorthodox behavior and notes how he recognizes that behavior from his own actions from he when he was an addict fifteen years prior.