This week at Spectrum Culture, I opted to review the new film from director Jill Sprecher, who previously created the very good comedy Clockwatchers and the sadly mediocre 13 Conversations About One Thing. It’s been a long time since that prior feature, so I had perhaps had reason to be leery. But then the movie poster calls attention to the fact that it takes place in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I couldn’t turn that down, right? It was good, but there’s some internet scuttlebutt that it may have been even better in the original cut that debuted at Sundance a year ago. Mostly, I’m proud that I made it through the entire review without invoking Fargo, which seems to be the default starting place for everyone else. The similarities are largely superficial, but the film is admittedly trying very hard to capture some reflected glory of the Coen brothers masterpiece at times.

I also had a new music review up, examining the sophomore release from Perfume Genius. I don’t have much to add about that one, except maybe to note that I had a little bit of a scramble to write that in time for my deadline and it wound up running early because of a last-minute adjustment. So I’ll attribute any syntax sloppiness to that.

Finally, I was one of many voices in our regular Oscars piece. Truthfully, there’s probably not much I contributed there that I haven’t already openly ruminated on here at some point during the long Oscar season.