Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Movies: Room 237

If you like super-duper-crackpot conspiracy theories presented with neither irony nor shame; violently forced metaphors that leave marks warranting assault charges; relentless fantasias on the numbers 42 and it goes without saying 237; gratuitous reasons to keep showing the clip of the fully naked woman emerging from the Room 237 tub (side note: it the totally cool vintage seafoam-green bathroom); clear and inarguable proof that a stack of papers on a desk looks exactly like an erection to demonstrate the hotel manager's perverse thrill about something or other AND to reinforce the hard (ahem) and fast fact that there are sexual organs hiding IN PLAIN SIGHT in the basic shapes in a carpet pattern; a poster showing a skier that's CLEARLY actually a Minotaur that when paired with a poster of a cowboy on a horse across the room is CLEARLY an indication that the movie is actually about the Holocaust, and an authoritative exegesis based on a rock-solid foundation that Stanley Kubrick staged the moon landing because the guy telling you about it has a friend who's a graphic designer or something who told HIM that it's clearly staged if you know where to look PLUS the letters in ROOM NO. 237 can be rearranged to spell MOON ... then I have a movie for you.

Theater: Next to Normal

Next to Normal —a searing, brilliant, Pulitzer-winning rock opera examining the lives of a family whose mother is desperately struggling wit...