Neighborly

Movies: Won't You Be My Neighbor?

There's a lot to unpack regarding my deep, deep feelings about the Fred Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?

My parents tell a story about how when I was a little girl, I once called Mr. Rogers a "screwball". Very cute, but obviously 5-year-old Jenny couldn't possibly know what "screwball" meant so I clearly picked it up from an adult or adults in my life. If I can lovingly and gently throw my parents under the bus for a minute, what I think I picked up on was the fact that Mr. Rogers was very pro-feelings and I was raised in about a 50-60% pro-feelings household. Meaning, I was allowed to feel feelings, but I was encouraged to go to my room to cry.

This isn't to criticize my parents or how they raised me because I think they did a pretty good job, and I have the money to pay for a therapist to sort out the stuff they goofed on. But I do think that I was a sensitive child and I now wish I could have heard Fred Rogers' message a little more clearly because I think it would have helped me. As a 32 year old adult, I'm not ashamed to say that I need to feel special and I need to feel loved. I have the strength to reach out and ask for these things from the people who are able to give them to me: family, friends, and even strangers I pay. I get monthly massages because I want to be touched. I meet with a therapist because I need to be heard. I'm often single, so I can't always rely on a partner for touch and for an ear to listen, so I cultivate many, many friends whom I also try to give affection and love to since these things work better as a two-way street. I've grown, I think, into a woman who loves deeply, despite my feelings of anger and fear at the world and what this country has become.


To admit that we need love, we need validation, we need to feel special is to admit that we are human. And yet, think about how hard it is for many of us to admit these things. Think of all the ways feelings have been beaten out of us as we've grown older. This is especially true for men, I believe, but it's true for women as well. Women are constantly encouraged to not be honest about our feelings and needs in order to take up less space and time.

Fred Rogers, as Won't You Be My Neighbor? reveals, understood children in a way very few people were and are able to: he could get down to their level but never lose respect for them. The doc shows that Rogers addressed racism, assassination (specifically Bobby Kennedy's assassination), divorce, tragedy (the Challenger explosion, 9/11, etc) and perhaps the scariest issue of all: one's own personal feelings of inadequacy.

In a scene so deeply touching that I wept into my popcorn, Betty Aberlin (known as Lady Aberlin on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood) sings a duet with Daniel Striped Tiger.

Daniel sings:
Sometimes I wonder if I'm a mistake
I'm not like anyone else I know
When I'm asleep or even awake
Sometimes I get to dreaming that I'm just a fake
I'm not like anyone else

And Lady Aberlin sings:
I think you are just fine as you are
I really must tell you
I do like the person you are becoming
When you are sleeping
When you are waking
You're not a fake
You're no mistake
You are my friend

Think about that song: it addresses the deepest fear everyone has--that we are not enough. All the evils in the world can be traced back to this fear. That we're not worthy of love. And Fred Rogers, a man people mocked and called "gay" and "feminine" and other supposed insults (because being feminine or gay are so terrible, right?) had the guts to address it on camera.

At one point in the doc, one of Rogers' sons mentions it was hard growing up with a man some people believed was "the second Christ" and, I have to admit, it does seem like Fred Rogers was almost supernatural in his kindness and his gentle strength. But the film reveals that even Rogers struggled with feelings of inadequacy and--perhaps especially in his final years--the question of did it really make a difference? Honestly, I'm glad he passed away before he saw the current state our country is in.

That said, here's how I see it: events on a national and international scale, such as racial animosity, natural disasters, terrorism, political oppression, etc have always been part of life and always will be. Likewise, hardships on a personal level, such as imposter syndrome, addiction, and abuse will always be part of life. As "Christlike" as Fred Rogers was, he was not, in fact, Christ and he couldn't stop these things from happening. But what he could do is help children understand and cope with these hardships and painful feelings and experiences. So he did make a difference. He made an enormous difference.

A friend once told me that the work of activism is ongoing. Activism, in whatever form it takes is by nature never complete because the world will never be perfect and safe for everyone. To choose to do activism is to choose to do what you can knowing that the goal isn't perfection. The goal is to make life more bearable for both others and yourself. This is what Fred Rogers did and what he inspired in so many others.

I beg you--please see this movie and let it make you cry. As a kid I cried a lot and sometimes had to go to my room to do it, but as an adult I cried in public watching this movie. Tears are the natural response to the exhaustion of being a kind person in a world that wants to hurt the most vulnerable. Let Won't You Be My Neighbor? inspire you to keep working. Don't give up hope. Things are scary and infuriating right now, but this is actually not new--the problem of power and violence and hate has been around since people have been around and it will never go away. But instead of letting that thought break you, let it encourage you not to try to change the entire world, but to make all the difference in the world to the people you are closest too--tell a friend you love them. Offer a hug. Pay for someone's coffee. Tell a child that they are special and loved and respected. We owe Fred Rogers that much, considering how much he gave us.

Grade: A+ 

Tainted Blood

Movies: Hereditary

I know a lot of y'all out there reading this are very curious about Ari Aster's film Hereditary, which is being hailed as one of the scariest movies EVER and also totally bat-whack insane. So for those of you who haven't seen it yet, I'll do a brief review without spoilers (although you really should go in completely blind) and for those who are too scared to see it (or want to be prepared), I'll write a much more detailed plot description below that.

Spoiler-free section:

I'll start out by saying that Hereditary is very, very good and incredibly distressing. There's already backlash against the film (which is Aster's first feature-length film, btw) saying it's over the top and even misogynist and ableist. By all means, read about the film and it's various interpretations, but this movie is pretty fucking well done in my opinion.

Hereditary opens on the day of Ellen Graham's funeral. Her daughter, Annie (Toni Collette, a force to be reckoned) gives an eulogy that reveals her not great relationship with her "difficult, secretive" mother. Later on in the film, we find out much more about this profoundly troubled mother-daughter relationship. Annie is a miniaturist who builds dollhouses and miniature replicas--very cool and also super creepy. She and her husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne, appropriately understated) are raising two kids: older teen Peter (Alex Wolff, who steals the movie) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro), an odd, introverted thirteen year old girl with some tics and a propensity for drawing creepy ass cartoons.

Not long after the funeral, the family suffers another tragedy which I won't reveal the nature of, but I will say that it sets in motion all the wack shit you saw in the preview. At it's heart, Hereditary is movie about how grief can make us go insane and turn life into a waking nightmare.

The acting in Hereditary is top-notch, with Toni Collette giving a brutal performance as a woman who suppresses a lot of negative emotions and resentment until they explode and Alex Wolff giving a performance of intense vulnerability (when was the last time you saw an older teenage boy in a movie or TV show weeping and crying "Mommy!"? Some people in the audience giggled during those scenes because you don't see older boys cry a lot in movies and TV...because our culture is fucked up in how we limit the emotions of boys...but I digress. Wolff is excellent).

The scares in Hereditary are frightening, especially if you go in blind; however, it's the almost overwhelming emotions the film potentially brings out in the audience that is truly distressing. Let's just say that if you have a bad relationship with a parent, you might want to sit this one out.

Overall: excellent horror film that will leave you feeling emotionally shredded. Highly recommended.

Grade: A-

***

SPOILERS AHEAD

Let's just get the biggest spoiler out of the way first. Not long after Ellen Graham's funeral, Charlie, the thirteen year old, dies in a freak, super violent accident. Annie forces Peter to take her to a party and while he's getting high with some friends, Charlie eats cake with nuts in it and has an allergic reaction. As Peter rushes her to the hospital, she sticks her head out the window to get some air and is decapitated by a telephone pole. How you feel about this probably depends on a lot of things, like how dark your sense of humor is. But people in the audience I watched it with collectively gasped and then went dead silent.

In the days and weeks that follow, Annie and Peter are both overwhelmed by grief, guilt, and resentment. They have a confrontation at the dinner table in the film's best and most gutting scene where Annie says she wishes Peter would just admit that Charlie's death is his fault (since he wasn't watching her at the party) and he responds, "What about you, Mom? Charlie didn't want to go to the party. So why was she there?" Of course, they're both right--but they're also both wrong in the sense that it really is no one's "fault", which in a way makes the senseless death so much harder to process. It was just the worst possible thing to happen and it did happen and for no reason other than bad luck.

Annie and Peter start seeing things. Peter sees Charlie in the corner of his room. Annie has terrible dreams of Peter's face covered in ants. These could be the understandable bodily responses to grief, or they could be supernatural. But when Annie meets up with a woman named Joan from a grief support group (Ann Dowd, also known as Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid's Tale, and just as terrifying in this film) who claims she can talk to her dead son, shit really hits the fan.

After Annie forces Steve and Peter to participate in a seance ritual to contact Charlie, the supernatural events ramp up intensely: Peter's own body betrays him at school, and it seems that whatever is haunting the Graham family has it out for him in particular. Meanwhile, Anne discovers a secret that makes her blood run cold: Her mother *knew* Joan from the support group before she died (and Joan didn't mention it), and it appears they were in a devil-worshipping coven together.

Now, again, one's response to this information depends on the individual. I could see a lot of viewers finding the devil-worshipping aspect very cheesy, but I liked it. I'm also a huge fan of Rosemary's Baby, which was clearly an inspiration for this movie.

The final 20 minutes or so goes completely off the rails. It involves Steve spontaneously catching on fire (bye Steve! You were no help to anyone in this movie), Annie floating around the ceiling and eventually beheading herself, and Peter becoming the bodily host to a devil called Paimon and being worshiped by a bunch of old, naked people. Wooo, what a ride.

Suffice it to say, Hereditary is a roller coaster both emotionally and in terms of just the sheer amount of creepy and bizarre images. I mentioned Rosemary's Baby as clear inspiration for the film, but it's also very comparable to Darren Arronofsky's mother! in terms of bat-shittery. Like mother! Hereditary feels creepy and off-kilter from the get-go and ramps up to a wild, off-the-rails conclusion that will make some viewers roll their eyes and others feel a sense of delight, like one feels while riding a roller coaster or taking LSD or whatever people do to feel something EXTREME. Personally, I enjoyed the hell out of the movie and while it didn't scare me too badly in the moment (I read a detailed synopsis, much like the one I'm writing here, before seeing it), it did give me nightmares.

Highly recommended for lovers of horror and intense, bat-shit movies. Not recommended for people who have mommy issues.

Grade: A-

Easy Watchin'

Movies: Deadpool 2, Solo

What would summer be without sequels, spin-offs, and superheroes? I recently saw two movies that I would characterize as "popcorn flicks"--movies that, while not excellent cinema, are fun and entertaining. I don't have a ton to say about either one of them, so I'm going to do a twofer review.

Deadpool 2

I've written in this blog before that I'm not really a fan of superhero movies. And I pretty much stick by that statement, though of course I've seen plenty of superhero movies by virtue of not living under a rock. However, I find many of them either too cutesy or too sincere. Too PG-13, if you will. So you can see how Deadpool, the self-aware, R-rated Merc with the Mouth is one of my favorites.

I LOVED the first Deadpool movie and there was no way in hell I'd miss the second. I left the theatre with mixed feelings about Deadpool 2: overall, I enjoyed it and was happy I saw it. There were a couple things about it I particularly enjoyed, such as the introduction of Domino, a lady superhero played by Atlanta's Zazie Beetz whose power is, simply, good luck. I also liked the hilarious, if short-lived "X-Force" that Deadpool gathers together and the father/son (or, more accurately, big brother/little brother) relationship Deadpool has with a young mutant named Firefist (on which the entire plot is based).

However, the movie felt very uneven and all over the place in both tone and plot. Previews implied that a giant chunk of the film would revolve around the above-mentioned X-Force, which was really not the case. There's also a time-traveling aspect to the film which led to a huge fucking plothole which annoyed the FUCK out of me.

///spoiler for plothole//

Ok, if Cable ends up not going back to the future at the end of the movie, does that mean his kid was never even born? Or, if she was, doesn't that mean he abandoned his family to live in the present?

//end spoiler//

I'm sure there are essays written by nerdy fans who explain this plothole, but I just was like "what the fuck, that makes NO SENSE" at the end.

There's also the "fridging" issue, which I won't get into--you can google "Deadpool + fridging" if you want to read more, but suffice it to say I thought it was lazy writing.

So: Deadpool 2. Good on some counts, bad on other counts. Definitely not as good as the original. But if Deadpool 3 ever comes out, I will 100% be there to watch it.

Grade: B-

***

Solo

In addition to not being a superhero person, I'm REALLY not a Star Wars person. I just never connected with the franchise. That said, I appreciate the importance of Star Wars in our culture. But I was invited to see Solo and that was the only way I was going to get my butt to go see it. I would have never just gone of my own volition. Hell, I still haven't seen The Last Jedi.

Solo is a fun movie. It takes a little while to get going, but the second half really picks up, especially when Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) shows up to give the movie some much-needed sex appeal. Seriously, can they just make a movie about Calrissian being a total boss and fucking sexy space-ladies? I'd go see that movie.

Solo is a heist movie. Basically, Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) latches on to some career criminals, Val (Thandie Newton, who I only see as Maeve from Westworld now) and Beckett (Woody Harrelson being Woody Harrelson) and basically fucks up their big score so then he and Chewy have to help them with an even riskier heist so the big boss, Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany, going full space-Nazi here) doesn't kill them all. There are crosses and double-crosses and triple-crosses aplenty. Maybe even a quadruple-cross. I lost count at some point.

The good thing about Solo is that you don't really need to understand Star Wars in depth to get it. I mean, it helps, but you could go see it without seeing a single one of the other films in the franchise and still have a good time. And at its heart, that's what Star Wars is all about: classic stories about good vs. evil that are fun and that you can watch with the whole family.

Grade: B

GIVE LANDO HIS OWN MOVIE