Sunday, March 17, 2024

The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest is a film that focuses on the daily lives of Hedwig and Rudolf Hoss: an upwardly mobile German couple raising 5 children in the early 1940s. Also, Rudolf was the commandment of the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Hoss's lived literally right next door to the camp. This is a true story. 

The film, based on a novel by Martin Amis and directed by Jonathan Glazer, has been very controversial in film circles for focusing entirely on the Hoss family and their daily activities while ignoring the death camp right next to their house. But this is entirely the point of the film: it can't be ignored unless one systematically compartmentalizes the genocide they are participating in and benefitting from. The sounds of gunshots, guard dogs barking, and people screaming echo in the distance while Hedwig applies her lipstick. The flames of the crematorium can be seen burning at night (unless you don't look out the window, of course). Prisoners from the camp occasionally come to the house to polish Nazi officer's boots or drop off goods--they are ignored. 

The Zone of Interest is less about the "banality" of evil (although much of what we see is quite banal--some have accused the film of being "boring"), and more about how natural and normal genocide and torture become when you yourself are benefitting from it.

This film, in all it's mundanity and quietness, is incredibly confrontational on a psychological level. It's hard for the viewer to distance themselves from Nazis when the Nazi officer's wife is showing her 18 month old baby the flowers in the garden. When we see not just human behavior, but sweet and kind human behavior from people we've been taught for decades to regard as monsters it signals in our minds--"they're just like us". And of course they are, because the Nazis were all too human. We are all too human.

Rudolf Hoss was a high-ranking Nazi official who was known for running Auschwitz "efficiently" (and yes, I cringe to use any word we associate positively with a concentration camp). In the film, we see him in meetings discussing a new crematorium that will reduce hundreds of dead bodies to ashes far more quickly than previous iterations. This man is despicable. But he's not a grinning, leering, mustache-twirling caricature. He's also a soft-spoken father. This is what makes The Zone of Interest so gut-wrenching to watch. We cannot look away from the humanity of evil people and we have to consider where the line of evil lies within ourselves.

In our capitalist society, we do, in fact, benefit from the suffering of others. And most of us know this. We know, somewhere in the back of our minds, that our iPhones were put together by sweatshop workers and that our purchases on Amazon benefit a billionaire. We know that when we drive our cars, take a plane on vacation, or leave a light on at night, we contribute to climate change which will likely harm people in already precarious countries. Does this make us the same as Rudolf Hoss? Of course not. There is a spectrum of damage we cause to the world and to others, and there's a difference between actively participating in the murder of millions versus kind of passively contributing to the world's many ills for our own comfort and convenience. But we must--we must--resist the idea that we are incapable of great harm to others under the right circumstances. The more we ignore and deny that fact, the less prepared we'll be when the big test comes. 

Jonathan Glazer, a director of dreamy and disturbing films, is the perfect director for this movie. He films The Zone of Interest clinically, but also beautifully. The efficiency and organization of the Nazi war crimes is echoed in the dollhouse-like shots of the Hoss home. The belief that there is a "clean" way to commit genocide is mirrored in the constant churn of chores within the Hoss home. Mica Levi's unsettling score makes the film feel like a horror movie (which, of course, it very much is). The contrast between Levi's upsetting score, the sound design (where we hear bullets and screaming coming from over the wall), and the organized, efficient, clean, beautiful house is chilling. Here are people who have a place for everything, including a place for their love and empathy: neatly sectioned off and saved for their children while hundreds suffer and die right next door.

I'll end this review by discussing the one scene of true human decency in the film. Throughout the movie, there are several scenes, shot in night vision, where a young girl leaves apples for the camp workers. This girl was an actual historical person. Her name was Alexandria Bystron-Kolodziejczyk and she was 12 years old at the time. In the film, she discovers a small box with a piece of paper inside. It is a piece of music titled "Sunbeams" and was written by Thomas Wolf, a prisoner in Auschwitz. After leaving the food, she goes home and plays the music on the piano and we hear the lyrics narrated by the actual Wolf, from a recording he made of the piece in 1960:

"Sunbeams, radiant and warm / Human bodies, young and old; / And who are imprisoned here, / Our hearts are yet not cold,” 

I almost don't want to mention this detail, but we do hear some dialogue about camp prisoners fighting over apples and being sentenced to death for it, which means that Alexandria's act of resistance could be seen as futile. However, I want to posit that while it was the Nazi officer's decision to punish the prisoners for fighting over food, the act of hiding food for desperate, starving people was an act of bravery and good within a situation overwhelmed with evil and hatred. An alternative way of reading this is that the Nazis--and, indeed, all evil people and evil ideas in the world both historical and current--could not completely squash good, hope, love, and resistance. We can walk away from The Zone of Interest crushed by depression and hopelessness, but we can also walk away from it thinking about how we can be that very small, bright spot in a world of evil. So shines a good deed in a weary world. The Zone of Interest implores us to never forget that we, too, are capable of great evil, of great harm, of great selfishness...but we're also capable of hiding apples for people. 

Grade: A

Friday, March 8, 2024

Dune: Part Two

As someone who has very little interest in space and science-fiction media (I find Star Wars...boring [I'm sorry! I'm sorry!]), I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Dune: Part One when I saw it in theatres in 2021. In addition to having a lot of actors I like (Chalamet stan here), I thought the film shared a lot of similarities with a genre I DO love: horror. The unsettling soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and the incredibly disturbing language and throat-singing of the Sardaukar made my stomach do flip-flops. The floating spectacle of Baron Harkonnen creeped me out. And the enormous ships...well, the enormity of everything in the movie made me feel small and in awe. And I haven't even gotten to the sandworms yet!

So, Dune: Part One had an entry point for me and I loved it. 

Dune: Part Two is even better.

I saw the nearly 3 hour epic in an IMAX theatre, which definitely added to the experience. My seat rumbled and trembled underneath me during action sequences, making me feel a tiny bit like I was on a roller coaster. The film brings back nearly all of the beloved characters (pour one out for Leto Atredies and Duncan Idaho--y'all were real ones. RIP) and adds a few new ones: Javier Barden reprises his role as Stilgar, a true believer in the prophecy that suggests that Paul Atredies is the Messiah who has come to lead the Fremen to paradise (and Bardem serves as the film's only comic relief); Austin Butler plays the sociopathic fuckboi nephew of Vladimir Harkonnen; Christopher Walken plays the Emperor of the known universe (that crown must rest heavy) and Florence Pugh plays his daughter. 

Chalamet continues to be, in my opinion, very good as the reluctant (or is he?) Messiah of the Fremen. Paul's character arcs moves from complete denial that he is the "outworlder" that the Fremen speak of who will come to lead them to paradise, to a genuine fear that worship of him will lead to a Holy War and many deaths, to an acceptance that he must lean into his role as the Messiah in order to bring together the cynical Fremen of North Arrakis and the fundamentalist Fremen of South Arrakis. Now, I haven't read the books so I don't know how Paul is portrayed in the original source material, but to me there was ambiguity at the end as to whether Paul was, essentially, pretending to be the Messiah in order to unite the Fremen...or if he actually believes he is the Messiah.  

The real acting MVPs here are Rebecca Ferguson as Paul's pregnant mother who becomes a religious figure as the Reverend Mother of the Fremen and who actively promotes Paul as the Messiah, and Zendaya as Chani, a Fremen warrior who falls in love with Paul the man (not Paul the Messiah, which she thinks is bullshit), only to have her heart broken. But make no mistake: Chani isn't solely defined by her love for a man. She's a fierce fighter and an independent thinker who believes that the Fremen can save themselves--they don't need this (white!) outworlder to do it for them.

The actions sequences, which range from a gladiator-style fight on Giedi Prime (the planet where the creepy-ass Harkonnens live) to the infamous sandworm-riding scenes, are great. I'm also not much of a lover of action sequences in movies, but I was enthralled. Dune's out here getting me to love all the things I normally don't! 

But what I loved the most was the whole "reluctant Messiah" plot and the focus on how faith can be something that unites people for a common good...and also can lead to the deaths of thousands. Kind of relevant, huh?! I know that the next Dune movie will explore the consequences of Paul's acceptance of his Messiah role, but this film already sets up that big question: at what cost?  

Chalamet (and in the Lynch version, Kyle MacLachlan) is an usual Messiah type: boyish, not a big, burly man. Someone who could easily be underestimated...and therefore all the more dangerous. I love that in the world of Dune some of the most deadly people look like they would immediately lose in a fight. Take Charlotte Rampling as a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother who can bring men to their knees with her voice...well, all men except Paul of course. The way gender is used in Dune is fascinating. The Bene Gesserits, who are among the most powerful people in the universe, are all women (well, except Paul, LOL). They basically run the show through their influence. Then you have the Harkonnens, which are Andrew Tate's wet dream: a world in which men are violent, cruel, and judged by their ability to fight...and women are nearly non-existent slaves. And then you have the Fremen, and especially the Fedaykin (Fremen warriors), where the genders are equal. 

There are a lot of layers to Dune, and I have only uncovered a couple of them as a casual viewer of the recent films (believe it or not, I haven't seen the David Lynch version of Dune yet!). I'm not sure if I'll read the books, but I will certainly watch any future films in this franchise. The Dune movies present a wonderful alternative to the superhero exhaustion in cinema these days: how about an action-packed film with stunning visuals, great actors, and a little moral ambiguity? 

Grade: A


What's better than a forbidden butthole? THREE forbidden buttholes!

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Stuff I watched in...February, 2024

Dream Scenario

You ever have that experience where you dream about someone and they do something mean to you in the dream and then you're mad at them when you wake up even though you know they didn't actually do anything? That is this movie. Nicolas Cage plays a professor who starts randomly showing up in people's dreams. Like, everyone's dreams...to the point where he becomes a national celebrity. He starts off mostly as an observer in the dreams--just watching crazy shit happen to the dreamer and not doing anything to intervene. But then, over time, he becomes the aggressor in the dreams--violently assaulting people like a balding Freddy Krueger. 

Dream Scenario is a (pun-intended) nightmare for anyone who fears social rejection, especially social rejection where you didn't actually do anything. Paul (the Nic Cage character) loses everything: his job, his wife, his friends...all because he did bad shit in people's dreams. The connection to "cancel culture" is pretty obvious, especially when Paul attempts to make an apology video that people find pathetic and self-serving. Paul ends up exiled in France even after everyone stops dreaming about him and moves on with their lives.

Dream Scenario was just ok. The premise is really, really good and Nic Cage sure is the ideal guy to play this milquetoast sad-sack. But the film just can't keep up the momentum and eventually peters out. The satire isn't quite as razor sharp as it could be and it doesn't really feel like director Kristoffer Borgli commits to a clear message, so any points the movie makes feel banal and toothless. There is one hell of a fart joke, though, if you're into that kind of thing.

Grade: B

***

Eileen

Based on the book by Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen is a film with so much promise that ultimately doesn't pay off. The film, directed by William Oldroyd, takes place in the mid-1960s in Massachusetts. Eileen Dunlop (Thomasin McKenzie) is a young woman who works at a juvenile detention facility for boys by day and takes care of her belligerent, alcoholic, ex-cop dad by night (played by Shea Wigham). Not a very glamorous life. But when a new lady psychologist, Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), is hired by the corrections facility and takes an interest in Eileen, it looks like Eileen might finally have some fun and excitement in her life.

I pretty much can't tell you anything else without going into a pivotal spoiler, so this is your warning to stop reading if you want to watch Eileen with a blank slate. 

So, Rebecca invites Eileen over to her house one night and Eileen, in full-blown lesbian crush mode, accepts and even gets all dolled up for the occasion. Well, it turns out that it is not actually Rebecca's house in which they are sitting and drinking wine, but the house of the mother of one of the boys at the corrections facility. A boy who killed his father. Turns out, Rebecca asked the boy, Lee Polk, what drove him to such an extreme act (I guess the last psychologist never bothered to ask) and he confessed that his father had been raping him on a near nightly basis for a long time. So Rebecca decided to confront Lee's mother, a scuffle ensued, and whoops now Mrs. Polk is tied up and gagged in the basement.  

The scene where the two women interrogate Mrs. Polk, played by the always amazing Marin Ireland, is a GREAT scene. Ireland gives a haunting monologue about being complicit in the abuse because she basically didn't know what else to do. The only problem is that the movie ends really abruptly afterward. During Mrs. Polk's confession, Eileen shoots the bitch (who wouldn't?), not killing her but seriously harming her and Eileen and Rebecca force-feed her pills to put her to sleep and then hatch a plan to kill her, get rid of the body, and go on the lam together.

And then the movie, like, just ends. Eileen drives Mrs. Polk's body to her house and Rebecca doesn't show up. She abandons Mrs. Polk in her car, which fills up with fumes (presumably killing her) and then later is seen on a bus leaving town. The end. It's a really frustrating, anti-climatic film where just as it's getting good, it's over. I'm kind of annoyed I even wrote this much about it, haha! 

So, I have to give it a B because it's a good movie...there's just not enough of it. A real tease. 

Grade: B

***

Out of Darkness

I saw this movie in the threatre on Superbowl Sunday, so there were maybe 6 people total in an enormous theatre. I read a review that compared this film to 2005's spelunking horror film The Descent, which is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, so of course I had to check it out. It did not live up to my hopes.

The film takes place 45,000 years ago, during the dawn of homo sapiens. A family, consisting of a father, pregnant mother, son, uncle, grandfather, and a stray woman, is looking for shelter and food. They left their previous home and have yet to find a new, safe place to settle. But things are about to get worse. They start hearing noises in the dark of night and one night, the son is taken from them by someone--or something--in the dark. 

There are two interesting aspects of Out of Darkness: 1) the use of the dark to spook and disorient the audience (and I was indeed spooked) and 2) the fact that the director, Andrew Cumming, basically commissioned a new language to be invented for the characters to speak. More info about that here.

Other than those two things, the movie is pretty meh and forgettable, with a hamfisted (in my opinion) message shoved in at the very end. This movie is fine to skip unless you're a huge horror fanatic. You might enjoy it even if it's not an all-timer for you.

Grade: B-

***

Fingernails

Oh god, Fingernails was SO BORING. The film is labeled as a "science fiction romantic drama", but the film is not romantic, not dramatic, and the science fiction is kinda lame. In the world of this movie, science can tell you whether you're in love or not with a simple test that involves pulling out your fingernail! Ouch, but a worthy sacrifice to find out whether or not you're *actually* in love with your partner, right? 

Anna (Jessie Buckley) lives with boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White, the only reason I watched this damn movie) and they've done the test and they're both in love....even though their relationship is clearly very dull and routine. When Anna takes a job at the Love Institute (where couples are put through a series of experiments and situations to increase love between them), she meets Amir (Riz Ahmed). LOL can you guess where this movie is going?

I'll just say straight out the gate: this movie has no gay couples whatsoever and immediately shoots down the idea that you can be in love with more than one person at the same time. So right away, you can tell this isn't a serious film and its views on how love functions are childish at best. There is no nuance to this story, no heat, no chemistry, no drama...NOTHING. I'm talking NOTHING. You know what, I originally gave the movie a "C", but imma change it to a D right now. "D" for lack of dick and lack of drama. It's shocking to me that a film with three objectively excellent actors at its center could be so dull and listless. 

100% skip...Fingernails takes an intriguing premise and commits the worst possible sin with it: making it boring. 

Grade: D

***

The Death of Dick Long

Oooohhhh boy. What a movie. This is another one that I can't really talk much about without giving away a pivotal spoiler... so for those who want to watch it knowing nothing (which I recommend), stop reading now and be sure to *not* watch this movie with children or your parents.

Directed by Daniel Scheinert (one half of the "Daniels" directing team that brought us Everything Everywhere All at Once), The Death of Dick Long is a black comedy that takes a ridiculous premise and treats it with total sincerity, thus causing major discomfort and shocked laughs. 

Three friends, Dick, Zeke, and Earl, are in a garage band together (their signature song is a cover of Nickelback's "How You Remind Me") and after drinking one too many beers, decide to get into some trouble. Or "get weird" as Dick puts it. Later, we see Zeke and Earl dropping Dick in front of an emergency room and running away. We don't know why Dick is injured and if/how the other men are responsible.

Over the course of the next day or two, it becomes clear: the autopsy shows that Dick died of severe rectal hemorrhaging. Semen is found, but the results are "inconclusive". Also, Dick owns a horse named Comet. You put the pieces together, Sherlock. 

Although Zeke and Earl (played to perfection by Michael Abbott Jr. and Andrew Hyland) didn't cause Dick's death, they try to cover it up since they would be implicated in some crimes that would likely ruin their lives. However, these two guys are the most bumbling of bumbling idiots and they screw up in every way imaginable as the walls slowly start to close in when the cops start connecting all the pieces. 

The Death of Dick Long is outrageous and "funny" but in a way that is deeply uncomfortable for obvious reasons. If a black comedy in which a man is "fucked to death" by a horse sounds like something you're interested in...then saddle up, pard'ner!

Grade: B

***

Self Reliance

This cute but uneven comedy is the directorial debut of New Girl's Jake Johnson. Johnson plays Tommy, an average dude living an average life until Andy Samberg, playing himself, pulls up in a limo and offers Tommy "an adventure". Tommy says yes and is taken to a shady warehouse where some guys with vaguely Eastern European accents offer him a chance to play "the most popular reality show game on the dark web". The premise: Tommy will be hunted by random people for 30 days. If he survives, he wins a million dollars. BUT...there is a critical loophole: he can only be killed when he is by himself. If he is able to remain within "striking distance" of another human being for the full 30 days, he won't be killed and he'll win. Confident that he can exploit this loophole, Tommy takes them up on their offer...

...and then no one believes him. His family thinks he's nuts. No one is willing to stay by his side (which includes sleeping in the same bed and being in the bathroom when the other person is taking a shit) for an hour, let alone 30 days. Tommy scrambles to find a way to stay safe and resorts to paying James, a homeless man, 100 dollars a day to shadow him. Honestly, it's a pretty good deal for James who gets a warm bed and square meals for the duration of the game. But since Tommy is living at his mother's and his mom doesn't want James living there, she kicks him out.

I think where Self Reliance stumbles is when it tries to become a romantic comedy. Tommy is contacted by a woman, Maddy (Anna Kendrick), who says that she is also playing the game and the two see if they can work together to win. It was much more interesting watching Tommy basically live in homeless camps with James than getting into romantic, twee shenanigans with Maddy while the threat of immediate death looms over them.

There were aspects of Self Reliance that were genuinely thought-provoking, but like I said, it's very uneven. There was a lot of "weird for the sake of weird" stuff going on, which seemed unnecessary for a movie with a bizarre and unlikely plot in the first place. It also just wasn't as funny as I hoped it would be. If you're in the mood for a light, bizarre comedy, you could do worse than Self Reliance.  

Grade: B

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

The Holdovers

Alexander Payne's latest film, The Holdovers, is just as good as you've heard. The film takes place in December and January 1970-71 at the Barton Academy--a boarding school for boys located in chilly New England. Honestly, that's just catnip for me right there. I love a good boarding school movie. Especially a boy's boarding school and especially in New England. Give me Dead Poets Society or give me death!

Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a professors of classics (Ancient Greek and Roman shit) and the most curmudgeonly man who ever curmudgeoned. If you look up "curmudgeon" in the dictionary, Paul Hunham's picture is next to the definition. This man is cranky. This man is pedantic. This man is no-nonsense. This man is condescending. This man has a lazy eye, so the students call him "Walleye". 

Might this man also have a secret heart of gold underneath his gruff and cranky exterior? Might the reason this man is SOOO curmudgeonly have something to do with his own history of being treated as "less than" by others? I think you know the answer to that!

Paul is tapped to stay on campus over Christmas break to essentially babysit the "holdovers"--the group of students who, for various reasons, are not going home for Christmas. This includes Angus Tully (brand new to the screen and already a star, Dominic Sessa, truly a revelation in this role), a rich, smart, arrogant kid who was originally scheduled to go on a luxury vacation to Saint Kitts with his mom and stepdad, only for said mom and stepdad to cancel the vacation at the last minute to go on a belated honeymoon instead, leaving Angus high and dry at Barton. In the care of his sworn nemesis, Professor Hunham. 

There are other boys left behind too, but they all end up getting permission to leave with one kid's dad to go on a ski trip. Of course, Angus' parents can't be reached to give their permission, so he is stuck with Paul as well as Barton's cafeteria manager, Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, wonderful in this role), who is mourning the loss of her son who died in Vietnam. What a jolly bunch these three make!

The thing is, you know what's going to happen in The Holdovers. Paul, Mary, and Angus are three very lonely misfits who have been "left behind" not just at the school but in life. To me, Mary represents the loneliness of grief, Angus represents the loneliness of anger, and Paul represents the loneliness of bitterness. And while we can tell that Mary will be ok--she is still open to connecting with others and still has a sense of humor despite her enormous loss--we're not so sure about Paul and Angus. Angus is young, but presumably on the path towards becoming a man like Paul: a man who has whittled down his life and dreams into the bare minimum because to hope for more would be too hurtful to bear. 

As Angus and Paul get to know each other over the course of the Christmas break that wasn't, they begin to lower their defenses and see the commonalities between them. If I'm being a little vague, it's because I don't want to give anything away which would diminish the emotional impact of watching The Holdovers without knowing all the details. Trust me, it's good. You can take my word on that. And you WILL probably cry, so have the tissues nearby.

But the movie is a tearjerker in the best way possible: it's cathartic. It's filled with love and hope without being schmaltzy or sentimental. It's about how broken people can heal each others' broken parts. It's also a really funny movie with immaculate vintage vibes. It's kind of like if Harold and Maude and Rushmore smoked a little weed (just a little) and then had a baby together. That baby would be The Holdovers

There's not much else to say. If you haven't seen The Holdovers yet, I really, really, really recommend it. It's a rare movie that I think most people who watch it will like, if not love, and find something within it that resonates. 

Grade: A

Sunday, February 4, 2024

All of Us Strangers

Spoilers in this review

The experience of watching Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers feels a little like when you are just starting to get sick and have a mild fever and those body aches where it kind of hurts to touch your own skin, but in a weirdly good way? The film is dreamy, achy, intimate, sad, erotic, lonely, oddly comforting, and deeply personal. "Intimate" I think is the key word here: All of Us Strangers is an incredibly intimate film, featuring a performance of almost unbearable vulnerability by Andrew Scott (probably best known for playing the Hot Priest in season 2 of Fleabag...or Moriarity in the Sherlock series). 

Scott plays Adam, a 40-something gay man living in a nearly empty high-rise in London. Adam is a writer but appears to struggle with writer's block. He also seems to never leave his apartment. It's a very lonely life for Adam. One night, 20-something Harry (Paul Mescal) shows up drunk at Adam's door and propositions him--for sex, a drink, or just some company--but Adam turns him away.  

Adam later takes a train to his old childhood home and finds his parents living there. The only thing is...Adam's parents died in a car crash when he was 12. And yet, here they are, inviting him in and telling him how grown up he is. In fact, he's older now than they were when they died. The movie doesn't explain how this is possible. It just is.

When Adam sees Harry again, he invites him back to his apartment and they talk for a while and then have sex. There's an interesting conversation where Harry asks Adam if he's queer and Adam says "Yes. Well, gay. Queer was always such an insult when I was growing up." Harry explains that "gay" was the insult when *he* was growing up, which is why he prefers "queer". I don't know why this conversation struck me, other than the fact that it comments on how time passes, yet things still kind of stay the same. And time being amorphous and circular is definitely a theme in this movie. 


The next time Adam visits his house, he comes out to his mom (Claire Foy), who doesn't insult him but is clearly upset, having always imagined Adam getting married and having children. When Adam later talks to his dad (Jamie Bell), he seems less upset by Adam's being gay, especially since he claims he always knew Adam was different (I think "fruity" is the actual descriptor he uses). 

Having never had to come out to my parents (at least not for being gay), I can't speak personally to how realistic these conversations between Adam and his dead parents are, but based on some opinions I've read about the film they're very realistic. I can, however, speak to the weird dance you do with your parents once you're both adults, where the power dynamic has changed but the emotional dynamic hasn't. They don't have any control over your life and choices anymore, but you still want their approval and love. There's also a weird thing where you can acknowledge the mistakes they made in raising you (in Adam's case it was his dad never comforting him when he cried alone in his room as a child) and they understand the mistakes they made too, and can maybe even apologize, but you can't go back and change it...so all you can do is forgive. And because you, too, are an adult...you kind of get it. Because at that point you've made mistakes. But you still feel wounded because they were your parents. Am I rambling? My point is: interacting with your parents as an adult is complex, even (especially?) if you love them. 

All of those feelings and conversations are explored in All of Us Strangers, which is why I have a catch in my throat thinking about the movie even now. That Adam gets a version of closure with his parents--getting to come out to them, getting an acknowledgement of their regrets and mistakes, and getting a final "I love you" from a dad who could barely say it in life but is free to say it in death--ooof, this is truly powerful stuff. 

The ending of the movie is fairly divisive and I will give an EXTRA SPOILER WARNING before I reveal it. 

Adam comes home from his final visit with his parents and goes to Harry's apartment to find Harry dead in his bedroom--wearing the same clothes and carrying the same liquor bottle as when he originally knocked on Adam's door that first night and was turned away. This revelation was devastating to me, feeling intense empathy toward Adam who literally just lost his parents a second time. But wait, Harry's ghost is still in his apartment. He and Adam go back to Adam's apartment and curl up in bed together, the camera pulling further and further out as the song "The Power of Love" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood plays (it's a VERY cheesy song, just FYI).

So, there's a lot to unpack here...Harry was presumably dead all along which means...Adam had sex with a ghost?! Yes, that's definitely where my mind went. But one idea that didn't occur to me later until a friend pointed it out is that maybe Adam was also dead, or dying, or in purgatory. Some version of being not alive. Which would explain how he could see his dead parents and also other weird things like why the high-rise apartment was empty, other than Harry and Adam. 

Personally, I like this interpretation a lot. I like the idea that maybe the afterlife is when we can right the wrongs of the past or have closure with loved ones. Maybe Adam was in purgatory and purgatory is just a place where you finish some inter-dimensional, cosmic business and then move on and heaven is curling up with the cute boy from apartment 6D. There's this whole "we're all part of the universe and the universe is all part of us" vibe that I kinda dig. 

Some people felt that the ending was depressing, but it didn't feel that way to me. It felt safe and warm. In fact, the entire movie feels safe and warm despite having the potential to be emotionally devastating. It's a film about grief and loneliness and time passing...but it's also about connection and choosing love. Circling back to my analogy above, it's like that warm, achy feeling you get when you're sick, but you know your mom will be in soon with some chicken noodle soup and a cold compress for your forehead: All of Us Strangers is a good ache. A good ache and a good movie I can't wait to watch again. 

Grade: A


Just a man and his ghost bae. 

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Stuff I watched in...January, 2024

Society of the Snow (2023)

Directed by J.A. Bayona, this Spanish film tells the tale of a plane that crashed in the Andes Mountains in 1972 while carrying a Uruguayan rugby team and their friends and family. It's hard to believe, but 16 people (out of 45 on the plane) survived after more than two months trapped on the snowy, desolate mountain range. 

If people know about the Andes flight disaster, the most likely think "Oh, that's the rugby team where they had to eat the dead to survive." And indeed, that's exactly what they had to do. There's a great video by Caitlin Doughty about how the cannibalism among the survivors of this disaster "feels different" than other famous cannibalism stories, such as the Donner Party. That's probably because it was handled in a fashion that was both orderly (two of the survivors prepared the meat so that those who ate it didn't need to know who they were eating) and also sacred (the mostly-Catholic group likened it to the Eucharist in order the make moral sense of their actions).

The whole cannibalism thing is handled really well in Society of the Snow, which is brutal to watch but also filled with hope and the triumph of the human will to survive. It shows how the survivors had to work together to survive--not just physically, but spiritually. They told one another not to give up, to keep looking for solutions, to keep helping one another instead of going down the "every man for himself" route. Ultimately, the 16 people who survived owe their lives to the bravery and leadership of Nando Parrado and Robert Canessa, who literally walked out of the damn mountains to find help. 

Society of the Snow is a movie that will have you on the edge of your seat, even if you already know the outcome. The story of the Andes flight disaster is fascinating and Bayona does it justice.

Grade: A-

***

The Underground Railroad (2021)

Based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Underground Railroad is a sort of magical realism take on slavery in the Antebellum South and one woman's determination to find freedom. This 10-part miniseries was created and directed by Barry Jenkins and it shows: Jenkins' signature dreamy, reflective style infuses this often horrific and seemingly hopeless series. Jenkins finds the beauty in the connections Cora Randall (Thuso Mbedu) makes during her quest for freedom.   

Make no mistake, this is a difficult show to watch, and not just for the depictions of gruesome violence and dehumanization. The Underground Railroad captures the struggle for enslaved people and those escaping slavery to find not just a safe place to lay their heads, but a home. Cora's journey is not just a physical one, but an existential one. In Jenkins' gentle hands, the series is bearable to watch, but just only. 

The one criticism I have is that a few of the episodes are slow, but given how contemplative the show as a whole is, the slowness is more of a feature than a bug. And it builds towards a powerful and heartbreaking finale. A tough series, but well worth the watch. 

Grade: A-

***

Sexy Beast (2000)

Sexy Beast is a very unique take on a heist movie. In fact, it's a good heist movie for people who don't like heist movies (yours truly) because the actual heist is like 15 minutes of the film. Most of the movie focuses on the lead up and on a truly scary performance by Ben Kingsley as Don Logan, a British mobster and all-around psychopath. 

Kingsley isn't the main character though. That would be Ray Winstone as Gal Dove, a retired career criminal who lives in Spain with his wife and friends. It's the classic "every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in" thing. Teddy Bass (Ian McShane), a London-based crime boss, has Don Logan travel to Spain to pull Gal out of retirement for a job. Gal doesn't want to do it, but also feels like he can't say no to the violent and chaotic Don. 

I won't say what happens, but the film, directed by Jonathan Glazer, is a thriller where the plot matters less than the relationships between the characters. It's a really good movie although probably not one I'll revisit often. It's good, but not great. 

Grade: B+

***

Liberty Heights (1999)

This coming of age film takes place in Baltimore in the 1950s and follows two Jewish brothers, Ben (Ben Foster) and Van (Adrian Brody) as they navigate antisemitism and racial desegregation. Hijinks ensue. I really wanted to like this movie more than I did--it's fine? There are just better coming of age movies. I will say that David Krumholtz is in this film and he really makes any movie he's in better. There's a scene where he and Ben are visiting a rich person's house and Yussel (Krumholtz's character) keeps pointing out how old the furniture is how the gorgeous oak dining table has scratches on it and is probably hard to clean, just completely misunderstanding that this is what "old money" looks like for WASPs. It's a pretty funny scene. 

If you like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, you'll probably find something to enjoy about Liberty Heights.

Grade: B

***


Sunday, January 7, 2024

2023: All the Good Stuff (and the Bad Stuff)

Due to a number of factors, I'm going to be doing my year-end best of blog posts a little differently from now on. For one thing, I'm going to start listing the top movies I watched during the previous year, paying no mind to when the movie originally came out. Yep, that means that if I watch a movie from 1973 and it's one of my favorite movies I watched during the year, it goes on the list. The only stipulation is that it has to be a "first watch", meaning the first time I've seen it. I will try to stick to a "top ten", but I can go above or below that number if I feel it is warranted.

Additionally, I'm going to start doing favorite TV shows and favorite books I watched and read during the year. These lists will probably be a bit shorter than the movie lists, though again not confined to a specific number.

I'll also list the "worst media" I consumed over the year, though it's likely that these will mostly be movies since I tend to tap out early on crappy books and TV shows.

So, without further ado, here are my lists for 2023:

***

Top 10 movies I watched in 2023

10. Saltburn

Emerald Fennell's sophomore film Saltburn is not a great film...and some would say that it's not even a good film. But what it is is a wild, fun, outrageous film and it warrants a place on this list for the glee it elicited in me. While I left some of the "big" movies of 2023 with a feeling of "that's it?", I left Saltburn cackling and texting my friends about it. Plus, Barry Keoghan's performance as the snake-y Oliver Quick is one of the most fun performances of the year.

9. The Handmaiden (2016)

It's wild that I didn't watch this erotic tale of cat-and-mouse games and betrayal between a pickpocket, a con man, and a wealthy heiress in early 20th century Korea until just this year. Based on the novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, The Handmaiden is a very tricksy movie in which men try to control and dominate women, only for the women to turn the tables--and find a hot and heavy sapphic love while doing so. Directed by Park Chan-wook, whose films always feel like the perfect mix of pulpy trash and luscious class, and with gorgeous cinematography by Chung Chung-hoon (who often works with Park), The Handmaiden is a movie you don't want to sleep on.

8. How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Speaking of sleeping on, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a tight eco-thriller that flew under the radar in 2023. Although it did get a theatrical release, I didn't even hear about it until it was streaming on Hulu. I'm so glad I watched it. The film follows a group of people we might ungenerously call "eco-terrorists" who come together to blow up an oil pipeline in Texas. Each person has their own reason for being involved in this plot, ranging from despair due to climate change to anger at an oil company seizing property under eminent domain laws. The film has empathy for the characters and pays a small amount of lip service to the regular people they'll fuck over through their act of sabotage, but it's also not a preachy movie that lionizes this group or their actions. Regardless of the politics of the film and its characters, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is thrilling and timely.

7. Infinity Pool

Like SaltburnInfinity Pool is a movie for the sickos. It contains orgiastic sex, sociopathic violence, ritualistic execution, and a completely unhinged performance by horror "It Girl" Mia Goth. Directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David, the film follows a group of rich white people vacationing in a fictional country called Li Tolqa where you can get away with murder...if you have the money. The government of Li Tolqa has a process in which a "double" can be made that looks like and even contains the memories of a person. If you commit a crime, you can pay to have a double created and executed in your place. Writer James (Alexander Skarsgard as you've never seen him before--pathetic, terrified, and weak) discovers this after accidentally killing a man while driving drunk. But it's what happens after James' double is made and executed that makes up the bulk of Infinity Pool--and baby, it's a wild (and bodily fluid-drenched) ride. 

6. Elle (2016) -- second review down

Elle, directed by provocateur Paul Verhoeven and starring the queen of fucked up French movies, Isabelle Huppert, is a rape-revenge thriller that is incredibly good despite being very upsetting and violent. It's not so much that the film is "empowering" (although Huppert's character, Michele, is definitely a strong woman), but more that it's unexpected. Elle doesn't follow any of the typical rape-revenge tropes. Michele is raped in her own home by a masked assailant and she doesn't call the police. She also doesn't gain super-human strength and hunt down her predator, like we often see in these kinds of films. She kinda just...goes on living. But she also lures her predator back so that she can discover who he is and the two begin a weird cat-and-mouse game. Some critics decried the film as being a male fantasy in which a woman enjoys being raped and brutalized. But I didn't see it that way at all. It felt more like a movie that says "who knows why people do the things they do?" How very French. 

5. May December

Well hey, here's another movie about sexual abuse! May December is director Todd Hayne's fictionalized take on the Mary Kay Letourneau-Vili Fualaau story. Natalie Portman plays actress Elizabeth Berry, who visits Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) and Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) at their home in Savannah. The Yoos are a married couple with a very large age gap: Joe is 36 and Gracie is 59. A little unusual, but no problem right? Well, they first "got together" when Joe was 13 years old and Gracie was 36. Gracie spent time in prison, where she gave birth to the couple's first child. When Gracie got out of prison and Joe came of legal age, the two married and have been happily together since. What a great love story, right? Elizabeth will be playing Gracie in a movie and wants to make sure she fully understand this "human" story. Director Haynes makes it very, very clear that Gracie is an abuser who controls Joe through emotional manipulation and  that Joe suffered dearly from being raped by an older woman at such a young age. Of course, the word "rape" is never used. Charles Melton gives a heartbreaking performance as a man entering middle-age who doesn't even fully comprehend the ways in which his wife abused him and continues to do so. May December has a campy, melodramatic tone that may be off-putting to some viewers, but rightfully pokes fun at the characters who downplay--or even romanticize--their repulsive actions. 

4. Sanctuary

And here we have a movie about sadomasochistic head games! Seeing a theme? This nifty little two-hander of a movie stars Margaret Qualley as Rebecca, a dominatrix, and Christopher Abbott as Hal, her wealthy client. After the two have an extended scene in Hal's hotel room, which culminates in Hal masturbating to completion while being told he's less than nothing by Rebecca, the two crazy kids enjoy a meal together. Then Hal informs Rebecca that now that his father is dead and he is taking over his hotel conglomerate, the two can't do BDSM anymore because it would basically make Hal look bad if it came out that he, you know, likes to be forced to clean a bathroom on his hands and knees. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game (this is like the third movie on this list that has "cat-and-mouse games"!) in which Rebecca demands more and more money from Hal because, as she argues, her dominance of him is what gave him the self-esteem, the cojones if you will, to even *think* about being the kind of guy who can run a hotel conglomerate. Sanctuary was a wonderful surprise that feels both dangerous and very, very fun and has, in my opinion, the best ending of the year. 

3. Talk to Me

Seeing Talk to Me in the theatre was probably the best movie experience I had this year. This horror movie, directed Danny and Michael Philippou, is gory, unsettling, and sad. It's not quite Hereditary-level, but it's close. And listening to people absolutely lose their shit during some of the scenes was...well, it's weird to say "fun", but that's what it was. Plus, the movie randomly shut off in the middle for five minutes and we were all given a free movie ticket. An unexpected bathroom break and a free movie? Sweet! Talk to Me is about grief and the lengths people will go to find connection in the midst of depression. The title refers to the incantation the group of teenagers at the center of the film say while holding the embalmed hand of dead person in the hopes of communicating with the dead...but it's also a plea for connection and attention. Main character Mia (Sophie Wilde) is two years out from losing her mother. She is deeply depressed and can't confide in her dad.  She also feels alienated from her friends. So when this new "game" of talking to the dead pops up in her friend circles, she eagerly joins in...until tragedy strikes and leads to further isolation and alienation for Mia. I probably thought more about Talk to Me than any other movie on this list. 

2. Triangle of Sadness (2022)

Directed by Ruben Ostlund, Triangle of Sadness is a film that satirizes the rich. It follows a young couple, Yaya (Charlbi Dean) and Karl (Harris Dickinson), who are both models and are given a free vacation on a luxury yacht in exchange for Yaya promoting the cruise company on social media. But when the yacht is bombed by pirates, the survivors must work together on an island until they are rescued. So imagine a group of super wealthy people and cruise employees who typically cook for those wealthy folks and scrub their toilets trying to get along in order to survive. When it becomes clear that Abigail (Dolly de Leon), a housekeeper on the yacht, is really the only one who knows jack shit about survival--such as how to catch fish--the power dynamics are turned upside down. Look, "eat the rich" movies are a dime a dozen these days, but Triangle of Sadness is hilarious and worth the watch.

1. Poor Things

Wildly creative director Yorgos Lanthimos strikes gold again with Poor Things. Emma Stone stars in a career-defining role as Bella Baxter, the "creation" of Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a surgeon who discovers the near-dead corpse of a heavily pregnant women who attempted suicide. Godwin--or "God" to his friends--removes the fetus's brain and puts it into the head of the woman and then revives her with, like, electricity or something. So, Bella is a baby in an adult woman's body at the opening of the film. But babies grow and learn, and so does Bella, who eventually runs off with the Victorian era version of a fuckboy, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo in an unforgettable role). Bella is horny as hell and enjoys "furious jumping" (as she terms it) with Duncan. But she also discovers that she likes exploring and reading and philosophy, making her more annoying and less adorable to Duncan as time goes by. Eventually, she abandons Duncan completely to work as a whore in a brothel in France. Every girl has to have her French prostitute era, am I right ladies? This is where Bella learns about socialism. But the party is abruptly over when Bella is sent word that Godwin is dying and she returns home to meet her maker one last time...but old Duncan has one more trick up his sleeve to destroy Bella's happiness. Poor Things is a visually gorgeous, deeply humanistic film about our capacity to learn, grow, and become better people. Bella slips out of the grasp of the many men who would control and conquer her, and she learns to be her own conquerer and protector. If you felt that Barbie was a little too basic (and capitalistic) in its views on feminism, try giving Poor Things a watch.


Honorable mentions:

The Iron Claw, Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Barbie, Asteroid City, Beau is Afraid

***

Top TV shows I watched in 2023:

5. Black Mirror, S6

After a couple seasons that fell flat, Black Mirror returned with five strong episodes. "Beyond the Sea", starring Josh Hartnett, Aaron Paul, and Kate Mara is a particular standout. Like previous seasons, season 6 of this modern day Twilight Zone is a mix of humor and horror. 

4. The Curse

The word that comes to mind when I think about The Curse, a show created by Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder, is "sinister". While the show, which stars Safdie, Fielder, and also Emma Stone (yay! 2023 is the year of weird Emma Stone), is not technically horror in the sense of ghosts and ghouls, it is a horrific (and hilarious and hella awkward) look at clueless white privilege and gentrification. There is no way I can describe this show without it sounding like the most off-putting piece of media to ever exist (which is basically is!), so if absolutely gritting your teeth in white-hot awkwardness sounds interesting to you, check it out! I can say for sure that I've never seen a show like it before. It's fucking wild.

3. Yellowjackets, S2

Yellowjackets is one of the most addictive shows I've seen in a while. The premise--a plane carrying a high school girls soccer team crashes in the Canadian wilderness and the girls have to do horrible things to survive--is enough to draw you in. But the acting, the 1990s-era needle drops, and the mysteries of the woods will keep you coming back for more. 

2. The Last of Us

I wasn't planning on watching The Last of Us, but when I found out that the cause for the zombie-like outbreak that fuels this apocalyptic show is a Cordyceps fungal infection, I was immediately interested (I knew about how Cordyceps can affect ants, so I was very intrigued but the idea of it infecting humans). What I discovered is that The Last of Us is less about how humans survive in an apocalyptic situation, and more about how they love in such a situation. It's about how and whether we choose to go on when all hope seems lost. The (in)famous third episode, "Long, Long Time" made that clear. The Last of Us is a perfect mix of action, horror, sci-fi, and heart-warming drama. It also cemented Pedro Pascal's place a Zaddy Extraordinaire. 

1. Severance

Pay attention folks: Apple TV's Severance is the best piece of media I consumed in 2023. The show follows a group of people who have undergone a procedure called "severance", in which their memories are severed in two: when they are at work, they have no memory or knowledge of their home lives and when they are at home, they have no memory or knowledge of their work lives. Sounds like a great way to increase work/life balance, right? Well, consider that the part of you that works basically never leaves the office. Not so balanced now, eh? Adam Scott plays Mark Scout, a man who underwent the severance procedure after the death of his wife because he thought it would give him some relief from his grief. But when his "outie" (the nickname for people when they're at home) starts discovering some not-so-cool stuff about the company his "innie" works for, Mark begins to wonder if severance was the right choice. Severance was, to me, a deeply emotional show about the ways in which we avoid bad feelings. The lengths we will go to avoid looking grief and pain right in the eye, and how that avoidance leads to greater pain down the road. I'm so psyched for season 2. 

Honorable mentions:

Barry, S4; The Bear, S1 and S2

***

Top Books I read in 2023

3. The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran

I heard about this book on a Facebook group I'm in called "The Turn of the Page". I had already read Gran's Come Closer in 2022 and was very impressed with how quickly it sucked me in. So when I heard about The Book of the Most Precious Substance, which follows a rare book dealer's quest to find a book of sex magic that supposedly grants the practitioner any desire they have (at a cost, of course...this is the occult we're dealing with!), I was all in. Precious Substance is a mix of occult horror and erotic thriller with a dash of wry humor. Definitely the most fun reading experience I had this year.

2. A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney

Actor and comedian Rob Delany lost his two year old son, Henry, to brain cancer in 2018. This short memoir chronicles Henry's illness, death, and the aftermath of grief. In my humble opinion this book is a masterpiece. The way Delaney approaches grief is singular--I don't know if I've ever read a book that feels this honest. Delaney expresses his boiling hot anger with people who say the wrong things to him when they hear about his dead son. He also expresses his understanding that other people can't understand what he and his wife have been through unless they've been through it themselves. Delany has immense empathy and forgiveness for those same people as well as for himself and his reactions to his own grief (which include, at one point, punching himself in the face). Despite the complete and total agony of losing a young child, Delaney finds joy, humor, and hope--being a comedian, there are some truly funny observations in the book, as well as a sense that Henry's life can be celebrated as well as grieved. A Heart That Works is a remarkable work of grief, love, and compassion.

1. From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

And in contrast to the above, Alan Moore's epic graphic novel about Jack the Ripper was described to me as a book that felt "evil". So, of course I had to see what the fuss was about! From Hell certainly is dark, but it did not feel evil to me. Moore weaves historical fact in with fiction. He takes a specific theory about who Jack the Ripper was and what his motivations were (a theory that has been presented before, but is likely not what really happened or who Jack really was) and runs with it. Without spoiling too much, the theory is that the sex workers who were murdered by Jack knew a secret about the royal family (the family of Queen Victoria, that is) and that Jack was a person close to the royal family acting on orders. Moore provides copious notes at the end of this enormous tome of a book which I eagerly read after I devoured each chapter. Overall, the book took more than a month to read and I went out of my way to read it slowly and deliberately, since I knew that was the only way to approach From Hell. The experience of reading this book was similar to eating a very filling meal at an expensive restaurant--it demanded time, attention, and thoughtfulness and the result was feeling very full and satisfied.



***

The Worst Media I Consumed in 2023:

2. Leave the World Behind

The more I think about this movie, which was recently released on Netflix, the more I am annoyed by it. For one, it squanders a lot of talent: it is directed by Sam Esmail, creator of Mr. Robot, and it stars Mahershala Ali, Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and Kevin Bacon. The premise is also interesting: what if you rented a house for a vacation weekend and apocalyptic events began occurring and then people showed up at the house claiming it was theirs but with no identification? Sounds pretty wild, right? Sadly, Leave the World Behind is an exercise in frustration and boredom. Is it the worst movie of all time? Not hardly. But it was just an all-around disappointment. 

1. The Scary of Sixty-First (2020)

This bizarre horror film, which can be found on the streaming service Shudder if you want to give it a go, is one of the only movies I've ever rated an "F" on this blog. That's because it goes above and beyond just being bad and into the realm of morally repulsive. Now, if you read this blog regularly, you might wonder what I could possibly find morally repulsive? Hell, I gave Salo, or, the 120 Days of Sodom an "A" rating! 

Well, The Scary of Sixty-First is about two young women who rent an apartment in New York for a suspiciously good price. Turns out, Jeffrey Epstein is the former owner. Yup. So, one of the women begins obsessively researching Epstein and associated conspiracy theories and the other woman somehow becomes possessed by living in the apartment and starts to act babyishly when having sex with her boyfriend: asking him to pretend she's 13 years old and talking in a high-pitched baby voice. In another scene, she furiously masturbates to pictures of Prince Andrew.

I have no idea what director Dasha Nekrasova wanted to accomplish in making this film, which is nothing less than an exploitation film which, in my opinion, disrespects the actual victims of Epstein and his associates. If she wanted to make a haunted apartment movie and even wanted it to be haunted by the ghost of a dead pedophile, sure, whatever. But why choose an actual pedophile who harmed actual people? I've watched movies about pedophilia and child sex abuse before (Mysterious Skin is one example) and they have never felt exploitative of the victims. But The Scary of Sixty-First uses a real life person who destroyed countless lives and uses him as a Boogeyman for entertainment purposes. I don't think this film should be banned or anything...freedom of speech and artistic expression and all that...but goddamn this movie is stupid and sick...and well deserving of it's place as the biggest piece of shit I watched all year.

***

That's all, folks! See ya in 2024!