There is a class of films that require virtually no real criticism—not because they are so great or horrible that there can be no differing opinion, but because they don’t need opinion, they are just ubiquitous. The point of a movie review is to give you, the reader, a better idea of whether or not any given movie is worth watching. This review is pointless: you are going to see Sherlock Holmes whether you like it or not, and probably Sherlock Holmes 2, 3, and so on.

This film, like Star Wars: A New Hope and Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl before it, is pure franchise-starting gold mined from the long-forgotten stone of pulp literature. Where Holmes differs from its ilk is in its pacing; I have never seen a Hollywood blockbuster that feels like the middle part of a trilogy. There is no origin story, and no real conclusion. Holmes and Watson, as well as love interest/part-time villain Irene Adler all exist at the beginning of the film, and even though the mystery is solved, the game, as Sherlock himself would say, is still on as the credits roll.

The story works thanks to the kinetic and maverick style of director Guy Ritchie, who not only brings endearing grime to Holmes and 19th century London, but uses this film as an opportunity to salvage his career from the tailspin it’s been in since his crime-comedy masterpiece, Snatch. His camera is fluid, his characters charming, and his drive relentless. Sherlock Holmes belabors nothing (thank god) and finishes its two-plus hours running time feeling like a ten minute jog.

Props, then, to Robert Downey Jr. who has successfully kick-started his second film series playing the same character. This Holmes is essentially Tony Stark AKA Iron Man, who was himself only a pumped-up rehash of Harry Lockhart from Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (still his best performance). Yet I’m still not tired of his antics, the man is most certainly unique and talented, even if he only plays variations on one theme.

The internet was aflame with people calling Downey Jr. out for his stylized and less-refined take on Holmes. Those people need to shut the fuck up. This is still Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes, just all the most renegade aspects of him: Holmes the drug addict, Holmes the manic-depressive, Holmes the bare knuckle boxing enthusiast, all of whom were present in The Hound of the Baskervilles but overshadowed by Holmes the gentleman.

The gentleman here is Jude Law’s Doc Watson, whose story is the real emotional heart of the film. The bickering back and forth between Law and Downey Jr. is the film’s trump card. Whenever the two are alone together high gear is engaged. Whenever a peripheral character is caught in their crossfire, chaos ensues. Wondrous chaos, if the peripheral character is his fiancée Mary Morstan.

Too bad his screen time is eaten up by Rachel McAddams’ Irene Adler, who feels more like a sketch than a well-drawn character, even if her chemistry with Downey Jr. approaches excellent when it’s not bogged down by obtuse dialog.

The weakest link is Mark Strong’s Lord Blackwood, a muscle bound pseudo-Satanist whose deception is about as opaque as stained glass. Though he’s afforded a few interesting moments, particularly his first set piece’s sleight-of-hand with a glass needle, he quickly becomes old hat and thankfully won’t be returning for the inevitable sequel.

Kalamazoo College First Year, Shafer Oudeh

Around a quarter of the way through my second beer of the evening my excellent time at the Fillimore Detroit seeing Converge, Mastodon, and Dethklok was starting to grow uneasy. Perhaps it was the extreme proximity of people—the show was extremely crowded—but that’s not unusual at a show with two popular headliners. The thing that was beginning to string me out was overstimulation: the stage during all three bands was dominated by something concertgoers had better start expecting more and more—a video screen. The concert’s multimedia approach made for a unique and cohesive experience—it was the only thing connecting the three bands I saw in any logical way.

Converge has been getting interdisciplinary with their bad selves for years. While the band is most well known as the world’s premier mathcore outfit (sorry, Dillinger Escape Plan) Vocalist Jacob Bannon is a celebrated visual artist whom FIGHT! Magazine credited with creating the skulls-with-wings motif the mainstream public (especially Affliction tee shirts) has so lovingly adopted. Bannon has been in control of the band’s now-iconographic imagery and art work for years—as they played, the video screen kept a static image of his excellent artwork on their new album Axe To Fall.

Still, they felt like the odd band out to me. Their abrasive and technical hardcore had most people besides myself standing about aimlessly, despite the boys playing their guts out; Bannon raced around the stage at terminal velocity shrieking his damndest, and guitarist Kurt Ballou did not so much play his guitar as domestically abuse it into creating sounds no manmade thing should be able to make. Even though Axe To Fall is by far their most accessible record, the material’s light years away from the power hooks touted by the rest of the bill. I’ll be seeing Converge again in a more intimate setting on their next tour to see how the sound translates to people who want to hear it.

Mastodon kicked the affair into high gear for their set by playing their 2009 opus Crack the Skye (currently frontrunner in my best album of 2009 list which I have written about before) in its entirety.  From my position near the front and center the sound was excellent, but due to sound issues—the drums, kick especially, were far too loud over the PA system—much of the nuance of that album was rendered moot to most of the audience, even though they sang nearly every lyric with guts and fury befitting Mastodon. The concert was accompanied by a film heavily inspired by German expressionist films (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari natch) which illuminated the obscure narrative behind the music. The images, often psychedelic and symbolic, pulled the album out of the realm of pure music and into an experience. This was the closest thing to seeing Pink Floyd’s seminal tour of The Wall that I may ever take part in—an experience I deeply cherish.

It occurred to me that in the age of downloading replacing the physical product, the music itself has become a promotional tool for the actual product. We here at The Kosmo are trying to bring Journalism into this abstract cloudform possibility that some people call “The New Media.” But before then, I hadn’t considered that the media I critique may be further along than I am. The question plaguing the ill music industry has become, to the progressive-minded: what is the product now? Mastodon’s answer is the live experience.

Dethklok’s answer, however, is not just the live experience, nor the Metalokalypse cartoon, nor the album, but Dethklok in and of itself. People, hear me out, Dethklok is the future.

Dethklok wants YOU to be a 'Gear'

Musically speaking, Dethklok isn’t anything too special—their particular brand of melodic death metal neatly bridges Queen and Cannibal Corpse neatly but predictably (they still write better songs than most similar ‘serious’ bands, though). Their live performance in terms of musicians was likewise straightforward, minus of course their drummer, the legendary Gene Hoglan. Dethlkok’s greatest asset is their songs—unlike predecessors Spinal Tap, Dethlkok know how to write a song that is at once brutal, catchy, melodic and funny, with healthy doses of blackened social criticism in most of their tunes.

It did not occur to me until seeing the song live with visual component that “Into the Water” was as much a warning about global warming as a song about the world being conquered by fish. The best laughs probably went to “Dethsupport,” both a rollicking barnburner about euthanasia as well as a tribute to the classic Death song “Pull the Plug”… until the song turns its barbs on the healthcare system, making small’s “It’s costing too much/ pull the plug,” frighteningly relevant. Dethlkok’s performance was all about the visual component, showing synchronized music videos matching their setlist in the style of the Metalokalypse cartoon featuring the show’s characters.

The experience impressed upon me that Dethklok is pure product, taking Spinal Tap to its logical extreme in the modern era. The TV show, videos, live concert, and album all function as one to convey Dethklok as a cohesive whole, in efforts to make frontman/voice actor Brendan Small’s semi-fictional band an actual cultural force aimed directly at both metalheads and non-heshers.

Small is aware of the cartoon’s appeal to non-metalheads: one cartoon interlude as the band re-tuned their guitars humorously explained the rules of the mosh pit to those new to the experience. As the cartoon explained “knocking someone down and not picking them up is what we scientifically refer to as a dick move.” Even I laughed out loud at that one. The concert even followed a bizarre and nonsensical plot; bringing performance back into the realm of musical theater… does that make the ‘Klok Rent for Slayer fans? Dethklok’s crowd more than any other was full of young people and women, both rarities in extreme metal, probably drawn in by the theatriciality and polish of the presentation as a whole.  Only a group of performers as in-tune with their audience could get away with calling their fans brainless mutants and be greeted with rousing cheers—a testament to how well formulated and thought out the Dethklok brand is, and how effective Small’s pitch black humor connects with the modern media age.