Class Warfare

Movie: Parasite

If you're a movie lover, by now you've either heard about or seen Bong Joon-ho's masterpiece, Parasite. The film lives up to the hype: it is funny, shocking, devastating, and thrilling. When I first saw the poster and title, I assumed it was a straight-up horror film. However, Parasite is more of a social horror film: it is a film about the lengths desperate people will go to take care of their needs.

The movie opens on the Kim family: father Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho, a regular in Bong Joon-ho's movies), mother Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin), daughter Ki-jeong (Park So-dam), and son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik). The family lives in a semi-basement in the poor part of town. They struggle to find work, resorting to doing menial tasks like folding pizza boxes to earn just enough to get through each day. However, they are clever and resourceful. When Min-hyuk, Ki-woo's friend who attends college, says he will recommend Ki-woo as an English tutor for the daughter of a rich family he knows, things start looking up for the Kim family.

Ki-woo shows up at the Park family's enormous, modern home and is shocked by their lifestyle. Mom Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) is a "simple" woman: a stay-at-home wife who is very naive. She is impressed with how confident Ki-woo is when he tutors her daughter, Da-hye (Jeong Ji-su) and confides in him that she believes her young son,  Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun), might be an artistic genius. It just so happens that Ki-woo knows a very talented--and very expensive--art teacher (his sister, though he doesn't tell Mrs. Park this).

After Ki-woo and Ki-jeong have infiltrated the Park family, Dad is next. The Kim family hatches a plan to get Mr. Park's (Lee Sun-kyun) chauffeur fired and then "recommend" Mr. Kim, all the while not letting the Park family see that the whole Kim family is becoming employed by them. The most dangerous and crafty move is getting the Park's loyal housekeeper fired and Mrs. Kim hired in her place. But once they accomplish this, the entire Kim family is living the high life as well-paid employees of the wealthy Park family. Hence the title.

Of course, things don't go as planned. A huge surprise is in store for both the Kims and the audience partway through the movie that makes the game they've decided to play extremely dangerous. And the movie fires on all cylinders from the moment the twist occurs until the end of the film. It's a nail-biting rollercoaster ride where you don't really know who to root for. I would say that, overall, Bong Joon-ho encourages the audience to empathize with the Kim family. They are the center of the story and not only are they poor at the start of the movie, they face additional losses throughout. But the director is careful to acknowledge that in their quest to scam the Park family, they end up hurting others who are suffering worse than themselves.

Bong Joon-ho also directed 2013's Snowpiercer, another class warfare fable. But unlike Snowpiercer, Parasite is more subtle (and more realistic, seeing as it's set in reality and not on a train that houses all of humanity and travels endlessly around the frozen planet). The concepts remain the same: rich people just have so much. So much stuff, so much space, so much food, so much help. Whereas poor people literally have to beg, borrow, and steal to survive. But this is a systemic problem and individuals, while they may not be innocent, are certainly not 100% to blame. The Park family isn't doing anything *wrong* by being rich and, in fact, the film suggests that Mrs. Park in particular tries to be very generous. And they are taken advantage of, fooled, and tricked into letting their "help" go and hiring (unbeknownst to them) a whole family. And then, of course, there's the help--the chauffeur and housekeeper--who did nothing wrong except stand in the way of the Kim's ambitions.

So Parasite is one of those juicy films where, depending on how you look at it, there either are no bad guys or everyone is a bad guy in one way or another. Parasite will have you on the edge of your seat for the entirety of the film and be thinking about it long after you leave the theatre.

Grade: A

Streaming Binge

Movies: Ready or Not, Hail Satan?, Support the Girls, Brittany Runs a Marathon

Here are some quick reviews of movies I've rented/watched on streaming lately. Enjoy!

***

Ready or Not

I was ready to completely write off this movie as...well, I don't know what. Something akin to a cheesy "Blumhouse production". But I kept hearing more and more about this thriller, in which a woman (Samara Weaving) marries into a rich family who made their money on games. It's tradition that everyone who marries into the family must select a random card with a game on it and play the game with the family at midnight on the eve of the wedding. 99% of the games are fine: Old Maid, Chess, Checkers...no big deal. But if the unlucky or bride or groom chooses the one bad card, Hide and Seek, well...let's just say the stakes become much higher.

Ready or Not is an "eat the rich" movie, where the moral is that rich people will do literally anything, include making murderous pacts with the devil, to keep their riches. Weaving is plucky as Grace, the bride who becomes the prey among a family of rich psychos who believe they must hunt her down and kill her...or all die, as part of the pact their grandfather made with a mysterious benefactor (the...devil???) Part of the fun is not knowing whether or not this "family curse" is real, or just bullshit--and hoping you might find out at the end. Darkly funny, Ready or Not is a very entertaining movie.

Grade: B+

***

Hail Satan?

This documentary is about the Satanic Temple, a "church" that really serves as more of a check and balance against the Christian right in the United States. The Satanic Temple advocates for religious freedom by basically challenging the religious right--so, most famously, they advocated for a statue of Baphomet to stand alongside a monument of the ten commandments on the Oklahoma State Capitol. Their reasoning? If Christianity gets a monument on the state capitol, surely other religions--such as Satanism--should have the same rights.

One might call the Satanic Temple trolls in action. They primarily exist to go head-to-head with fundamentalist Christianity. But their kind of "trolling" is a much-needed reality check in a country that supposedly believes in "separation of church and state"...except when it conveniently doesn't. That said, some of the Satanic Temple members are still white guys who think they know best. One of their members, a woman, is relieved of her duties as a high-ranking member of the Satanic Temple when she gets a little too radical. Even among Satanists, there are limits.

Grade: B

***

Support the Girls

Regina Hall plays Lisa, a manager at Double Whammies--a Hooters-esque sports bar that serves hot food, cold beer, and sexy babes. Over the course of a single day, Lisa has to deal with a burglar who gets caught in an air duct, new girls coming in for interviews, a manager who is not only an asshole but very stupid to boot, and her depressed husband whom she is trying to separate from.

Support the Girls is a slice-of-life film that is funny and heartwarming, but also very frustrating. Lisa sees the kind of sexism both she and the waitresses she is responsible for have to put up with, with very little recourse. The women who work at Double Whammies are generally the kind of folks living paycheck-to-paycheck and thus have to put up with rude comments, skimpy outfits, and tons of bullshit--all with a smile on their faces. Support the Girls is not a loud, flashy film, but it will stick with you when it's over...and hopefully encourage you to tip generously the next time you go out to eat.

Grade: A-

***

Brittany Runs a Marathon

Woof. Very mixed feelings about this one. Brittany Runs a Marathon is not a bad movie, but it's a movie that is benevolently fatphobic. What I mean by that is while the movie is not blatantly fat-shaming, it's very a much "all bodies are beautiful...as long as they're healthy!" type film. Jillian Bell plays Brittany Forgler, a hard-partying 28 year old. Brittany is "fat" according to New York City standards (in most parts of the country, she would be considered average). She goes to a doctor to try to scam an Adderall prescription and the doctor informs her that her BMI is too high and she needs to lose 40-50 pounds. Brittany has never heard of "BMI", which is the first clue that a non-fat, non-woman directed this film: every woman in the USA, especially every fat woman, knows what a BMI is because fat women know more about diet, health and weight than fucking anyone else. Why? Because we are forced to know it. Women are forced to know everything about calories, weight, metabolism, the "right" kind of snack (handful of almonds, amirite ladeez!?) Fat women know even more. There is no reality in which Brittany Forgler does not already know this information.

So she starts running, she starts losing weight, and her life improves. The movie tries really hard to no be fatphobic, but what do you call a film where a person loses weight and everything in her life gets better? Then, when Brittany hits a snag (she gets shin splits a month before the marathon), she reverts into a monster. She tells off her boyfriend, calling him a manboy. She commits a heinous act of fatphobia at a party for her brother-in-law's birthday where she tells a fat woman that her skinny boyfriend doesn't love her because "you can't love someone you don't respect". The movie treats this soul-crushing moment as something that is excusable/forgivable because 1) Brittany is drunk and 2) it's supposed to be her own self-hatred she is projecting. She writes a letter to the fat woman, apologizing, and the woman responds "I understand your pain". This is where the movie lost me. The cruelty with which Brittany treats this *total stranger* moves her from protagonist to irredeemable cunt in my book. I could no longer root for her. When she finally crosses that finish line at the end of the movie, I was rolling my eyes. It takes a lot of balls to have your protagonist say something so hurtful and, honestly, unforgivable and then use that to move the plot forward as if it was just another stepping stone in her journey to the skinny, self-loving good person she is inside.

Fuck this movie.

Grade: B- as a movie, but an F in my heart

Cats; or, Stop Trying to Make Jellicle Happen

Movies: Cats

Oh, Cats. What can I say that hasn't already been said? It is known and accepted that Cats, the musical created by Andrew Lloyd Weber based on the poetry of T.S. Eliot is an embarrassing, yet mysteriously popular musical. Like Seinfeld, it is a show about nothing. Cats emerge and introduce themselves through song. One is chosen to go to the "Heaviside Layer" (heaven). End of show. How this show became one of the longest running on Broadway is something that will never be explained except that maybe people like cats? Even in the pre-Can Haz Cheezburger days, people liked to watch cats prowl around and be weird, I guess.

And so Tom Hooper brings this monstrosity to the silver screen. Cats is filled with talent: Ian McKellan, Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Idris Elba, and even Taylor Swift play roles of the titular felines. Plus there are a bunch of no-names who are great dancers, such as Francesca Hayward as Victoria and Steven McRae as Shimbleshanks (these cats all have really dumb names, btw. It's kind of their thing). The dancing and singing is pretty good, overall. The acting, well...these seasoned veterans of stage and screen try their best, but there is only so much polishing a cat turd can stand.

Ok, I'll level with you: Cats is kind of fun. It's a CGI nightmare in which the cats in question have human faces, human hands, human feet, and human butts...but fur (and no visible genitals). The scale makes no sense. These cats are simultaneously human-size to a mouse, but mouse-size to a human. Bustopher Jones (James Corden) is a fat cat at 25 pounds (or an "absolute unit" as my friend who saw the movie with me said), yet other cats appear to be kitten size in scale to everyday objects. Basically, whoever was in charge of the artistry of this movie didn't give a fuhhhhck. 

But despite the insane CGI (or maybe because of it), Cats is enjoyable in a Star Wars Holiday Special kind of way: it's so bizarre and weird that it's fun. Now, not all of it is equally fun. For example, there are some songs ("The Moment of Happiness", "The Addressing of Cats", "Gus the Theatre Cat") are boring as shit, while precious few ("Mr. Mistoffeeles", "Bustopher Jones", "Shimbleshanks") are actually fun. Did you guys know that this really famous musical has really bad music? Even the award-winning song "Memory" kind of sucks if I'm honest. If it were my choice of who wins the Jellicle Ball or whatever the fuck it is, I'd give it to Mr. Mistoffelees because he has hands down the best song in the show. 

Speaking of Mr. Mistoffelees, did you guys know that this is a magician nerd who (in this version of the story) gets the sexy girl (Victoria) in the end? I don't know how I feel about that. I kind of like Macavity (Idris Elba) the "bad" (but obviously sexier) cat who is also a magician but like an evil one.

Each cat has one attribute that is its personality: Victoria is the new girl, Mr. Mistoffelees is the nerd, Bustopher Jones is fat, Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson) is also fat (I really related to her, not only because we share a name and are fat, but because if I were a cat I'd want to be a pampered-ass housecat), Macavity is evil, Rum Tug Tugger (Jason Derulo) is the cat that fucks, Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench) is old, Shimbleshanks is gay as hell, etc. There's no real character building because with about 1,873 cats and only 2 hours, there's no time to commit to giving these cats three dimensions. 

Overall, Cats is just...it's a lot. I saw a movie last year called Climax where a dance troupe accidentally drinks LSD-spiked punch and simultaneously goes batshit. Cats is basically the same movie. In fact, there's a scene where Taylor Swift (I refuse to reveal her cat-name...she is Taylor Swift) forcefully spikes the cats with cat-nip. Like I said: same. movie. If you want to watch a movie that you know, in your heart of hearts, would be WAY better if you're high as fuck, Cats is a good option. 

Grade: C+

2019: The Best and the Rest

Movies: Best of

Hello, Dear Readers! It's that time of the year where I give you my opinion (which is the *correct* opinion, of course ;) ) on what I felt were the best movies of the previous year.

A couple notes:

• Usually I wait until later in January to make this list, as I am typically still catching up on all the Oscar bait they push into theatres in late December. But, ah, I'm bored and want to do it now
• There are a few movies that I suspect would make the list that I haven't seen yet. These include Parasite, Uncut Gems, and The Irishman. I'll probably see them eventually. I'm not as fanatical about seeing EVERY critically worshipped movie as I was years ago. I just go at my own pace now.
• 2019 was, in my opinion, a "meh" year for movies, as was 2018. 2017, on the other hand, was a mind-blowing year for movies. Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you--right, Christian? Not every year is going to have a high number of orgasmically great films. Overall, 2019 was good but not great.
• I'm also going to list the movies I liked *the least* this year. Please note that this doesn't mean these movies were the shittiest of the year--they tend to be movies a lot of people like that just weren't my bag. That's why I call them "the rest" and not "the worst".
• As I'm putting this list together, I'm seeing just how "white" these movies are, with the exception of Us. While I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense that I'd be attracted to movies by and about white women, since they reflect my experience of the world, this is certainly something to take into consideration and expand beyond my comfort zone in the coming years. 

Enough! Onward!

2019: The Best

10) Booksmart (B+)

It's really a shame that this funny, sweet, and irreverent ode to female friendship didn't get more attention and accolades. Beanie Feldstein's Molly was one of the funniest characters of the year (Kaitlyn Dever as Amy was good too, but Beanie is more my speed) with her mix of snobbish disdain for the philistines she goes to school with and the feverish desire to experience the things they have experienced while she was busy being a straight-A student. 

9) Knives Out (B+)

A star-studded cast, turns and twists galore, and a huge "fuck you" to rich, white assholes who think they "own" The United States of America--what's not to love? While I don't think Knives Out is a movie I'll revisit often, it was a wildly entertaining, hilarious film-going experience.

8) Her Smell (B+)

Elisabeth Moss is slaying it these days. While her role as Offred/June in Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale is becoming a bit tiresome, her talent for playing fierce women is undeniable. In Her Smell, Moss plays the deeply unlikeable Becky Something, the lead singer of a 90s era grrrl punk band Something She. But Kathleen Hanna Becky is not--she is a nightmare to work with, a neglectful mother, and a drug-and-alcohol abuser. Where her bandmates and ex-husband have outgrown their excessive ways as they age into their 40s, Becky has only become more unhinged. Her Smell is the story of Becky's fall from grace and her quiet quest for redemption.

7) In Fabric (B+)

Directed by one of my favorite visionaries, Peter Strickland, In Fabric is a bat-shit crazy ride from start to finish. It's the tale of a killer dress. No, not like the one from the urban legend where a girl dies because the dress was worn by a dead girl and is saturated in embalming fluid. This dress is controlled by a coven of witches who run a very strange department store. The film could be read as a commentary on mindless consumerism, or it could simply be seen as another homage to psycho-sexual 1970s Italian giallo films, which Strickland is clearly fond of. Either way, it's an unforgettable ride into madness and dark, twisted humor.

6) Rocketman (A-)

I was fully prepared to write off this musical about Elton John's life as a cheesy biopic that lionizes its subject...but goddamn if I didn't cry during it. Taron Egerton captures the vulnerability of young, closeted Elton and the self-pitying drama of the older, drugged-up Elton. The musical numbers are used to highlight important moments in Elton's life: "I Want Love" reveals the loneliness of Elton's childhood home life, "Honky Cat" struts and preens as Elton and his alpha-asshole lover, John Reid, spend Elton's newfound fortune in the most glitzy ways imaginable, and "Rocket Man" shows Elton at his lowest--attempting suicide after a drug binge. While Rocketman can be cheesy at times (what musicals--or biopics--aren't?), the story of a queer, wildly talented man who has a shot at redemption is hard to resist.

5) The Lighthouse (A-)

After In Fabric, The Lighthouse was the wackiest film I saw in 2019--and I mean that in a good way. This darkly humorous fever dream about two lighthouse keepers who might or might not be going insane was everything I hoped it would be. The acting is everything in The Lighthouse: Willem Dafoe is turned up to 11 as a crazy-eyed, barnacle-encrusted old sea salt, spouting monologues and lines that sound like the were written in a turn of the century penny dreadful. Robert Pattinson is the perfect foil to Dafoe and a very unreliable narrator, especially when he finally starts drinking liquor at the encouragement of Dafoe. The Lighthouse is hard to classify: it is horror, it is comedy, it is historical fiction. But mostly, it is a fairytale dreamed up by a dark and unhinged mind.

4) Us (A-)

Here we have another horror fairytale. In fact, the villain of the movie, Red, tells her story to her doppelgänger, Adelaide (both played brilliantly by Lupita Nyong'o), starting with "once upon a time, there was a little girl..." While not quite the same level of pure genius as Get Out, Jordan Peele's sophomore effort is a solidly chilling (and funny!) horror film that, like so many movies in 2019, has an "eat the rich" message. In this case, the "rich" are those who live above ground and the "poor" are the "Tethered"-- doppelgängers/clones that were part of a government experiment that was abandoned, only to have terrible consequences once the clones found a way to come out of their underground lairs. When asked who they are, Red (the only Tethered able to talk) says "we are Americans". What is Peele trying to say? Some interpretations have suggested this is a story about how immigrants are treated in the United States. But my interpretation is that it's a tale about privilege and how in order for one person to live a life of luxury, another must inevitably suffer.

3) Little Women (A)

Greta Gerwig's Little Women was the movie I most looked forward to in 2019--and not just because The Internet's Boyfriend, Timothee Chalamet, played poor little rich fuckboi Laurie. Little Women is not my favorite book of all time (I didn't even read it until college), but there is something about the story, which is both wholesome and subversive, forward-thinking and old-fashioned, feminist and feminine, that manages to continue to attract readers over 150 years after its publication. The story has something for everyone: Christian morals (*true* Christian morals, like caring for the poor and loving others), pretty dresses, love stories, sisterhood, an acid-tongued spinster aunt, and an ink-stained independent thinker. Gerwig's interpretation is true to the text while slightly subverting the tale by putting more emphasis on Jo March's truest love of all: writing. It plays up her (and Laurie's) gender non-conformity and plays down her "happily married" ending--while still allowing enough room for the more romantic viewer to believe that Jo gets both her man AND her book (AND her school for BOTH sexes--a deviation from the text). This version of Little Women is also not afraid to look the character's imperfections in the face: Laurie is a privileged, condescending man child...who is also sensitive and lonely. Amy is a vain and spiteful little brat...who grows up to be wise and kind. Meg is blinded by beautiful things and riches...but realizes what's really important in the end. And Jo is militantly against marriage...but also feels lonely and comes to see the value love can add to one's life. I really like this because, like real people, the characters in Little Women--even saintly Marmee--are not perfect and have strengths and weaknesses. 

2) Gloria Bell (A)

I feel like I'm the only person I know who saw this lovely, empowering film by Sebastian Leilo. Leilo remakes his own film, 2013's Gloria, here and sets it in the United States instead of Chile. Other than that, the story is the same: Gloria Bell (Julianne Moore, luminous) is a woman in her 50s. She's divorced, her children are grown, but she is not alone and she's not unhappy. She's a single lady who goes to bars where other singles her age meet up and dance (and fukkk). This is where she meets kindly, sensitive Arnold (John Turturro). But Arnold is not the DILF-y dreamboat he seems. He has serious issues and baggage that, when they come to light, could be devastating for Gloria. But no, Gloria Bell is a strong, adventurous woman who knows her worth. Leilo is a cisgender man, but he has a knack for writing women (both cis and trans) really well. Between Gloria Bell, A Fantastic Woman, and Disobedience, he has more than gained my respect as a director who relishes in creating complicated female characters who go through real struggles--but who never let the world hold them down.

1) Midsommar (A+)

I saw Midsommar three times in the theatre and rented it once within a 6 month period. Each time, I watched it with different friends and each time I was afraid said friends would be pissed that I had them watch such a fucked up movie. But hey, I'm still friends with all of them! Even with that stupidly gory ritual suicide scene that anyone who has seen the film knows and shudders to remember. Midsommar is Ari Aster's follow-up to 2018's Hereditary, which I loved. But, in my opinion, Midsommar is an even greater expression of the director's considerable talent. Like Hereditary, the real horror of Midsommar is grief, not ghouls, ghosts, demons, or cults. While all those things are scary, grief is real, inescapable, devastating...and coming for us all. Florence Pugh plays Dani, who experiences a wildly tragic event 6 months before her good-for-nothing boyfriend, Christian, invites her last minute on a trip to Sweden with his friends. His university pals are studying the rare, midsummer rituals carried out only every 90 years by a small commune in Sweden where one of the friends, Pelle, grew up. As Dani, Christian, and their friends bake under the 24-hour sun, strange things start to happen. But Christian and Dani are almost too distracted by their relationship falling to pieces to notice. It's not until the end when we realize that maybe, despite the fucked-upness of the situation, this whole trip was the best thing that could happen to Dani. As she watches the last tethers to her past literally go up in flames, her smile suggests that she is now truly home.

2019: My Least Favorites

3) Jojo Rabbit (C)

Because of Jojo Rabbit's strong first act, it is the best of my least favorites. Sadly, the biting satire of the first 30 minutes of Taika Waititi's Nazi-lampooning dramedy doesn't last and the film quickly turns into a slushy "feel good" movie about accepting others. NO. FUCK THAT BULLSHIT. I signed up to watch Waititi play an imaginary version of Hitler and to watch Nazis make fools of themselves. I did not sign up for a fucking milquetoast after-school special (in which...spoiler, spoiler spoiler...

...

spoiler...

THE MOM FUCKING DIES!?!?

...end spoiler

Jojo Rabbit is the biggest bait-and-switch of 2019. It wants to have its strudel and eat it too. I went in expecting The Producers and came out realizing I'd been fooled into seeing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: an overly earnest, "childlike" look at genocide. While genocide can be satirized and mocked, in my opinion, it cannot be turned into a pat fable about how friendship conquers all. Also, some of the Nazis in this movie are "good Nazis". Fuck that--the only good Nazi is a dead one. 

2) The Souvenir (C)

The critical acclaim for Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir puzzles me. It's almost as if a boring and pretentious film automatically gets labeled as great. But despite a strong performance by Honor Swinton Byrne, The Souvenir is not great: it's boring, pretentious, and fucking annoying. A young woman, Julie (Byrne), goes to film school in early 80s England. She also begins seeing a rich fuckboi, Anthony (Tom Burke) who has a condescending attitude and, as it turns out, a heroin addiction. Despite Anthony treating Julie horribly--even stealing her stuff to fund his drug habit--she keeps forgiving him and taking him back until the inevitable happens (he dies of a drug overdose, and not a single viewer is sad about it because he's a real piece of shit and the movie doesn't even try to make you care for him). Now, while one might argue that this is realistic because young people fall into bad relationships all the time, it's just so. fucking. boring. We don't CARE about these characters so it's very hard to empathize. The Souvenir is a total snooze. Feel free to skip.

1) Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (D)

Not scary. Plot is absurd. Boring. I guess it's meant for kids? Skip the movie and read the books--with the original drawings--instead.

2019: Notable Mentions

Coulda been better if the director wasn't such a prick: 

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (B)

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood is a good movie, because all Quentin Tarantino movies are good movies. Hell, Inglorius Basterds is one of my all-time faves! With talent like Leo and Brad at the helm, you know the film can't be bad. But I tire of QT's bullshit. His films used to focus on strong women (Jackie Brown, Kill Bill [albeit he treated Uma Thurman like shit]) and he kept peeling strong women away from his recent films. Django Unchained had one female lead and she was 100% a damsel to be rescued. But OUaTiH is a new level because in this movie, women are either silent or murdered violently by men. Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate and exists to look pretty and prop her bare feet up. There are two women and one man who are part of Charles Manson's cult who, in this revisionist story, accidentally enter Rick Dalton's house (Leo), a washed up actor who lives next door to Tate and Roman Polanski. Both Rick and his stunt-double, Cliff Booth (Brad) are high as a kite and they beat the shit out of and murder the intruders. Now, of course, the intruders are bad guys--in real life they killed 8 months pregnant Tate! But with the knowledge that QT is a misogynist who has treated his leading ladies like they are literally disposable, it's less pleasant to watch Brad Pitt beat up a teenage girl. This movies stinks of male bullshit. Yes, it's "good"...but it's also shitty.

Biggest freakout:

Climax (B-)

Gaspar Noe's frenetic movie about a troupe of dancers who accidentally drink LSD-spiked punch and go bananas is...a lot. It's not as fun as it sounds. There's a lot of screaming and fucking and running around. If you want to watch a movie that feels like a waking nightmare, by all means check out Climax. I'm just still amused by the guy who left in the middle of the movie, while yelling (for all in the theatre to hear), "this is bullshit!". Too weird for you, buddy?

Best use of Fiona Apple's Criminal:
Hustlers (B+)

It felt...criminal...to let Lorene Scafaria's based-on-true-events tale of strippers who stole from the rich and gave to themselves go unmentioned, even if it didn't make my final cut. Hustlers is fun and female-fronted, with great performances by J. Lo and Constance Wu. Along with Knives Out, Ready or Not, Us, and Parasite, it follows the big trend of "fuck the rich/privileged" of 2019. But unlike those other movies, this one actually happened. Sure, they got caught, but they fucked over a bunch of rich, white guys before the pigs busted 'em. Yeah, yeah..what they did (drug men and run up their credit cards) wasn't "technically" "legal"...but the way sex workers, blue collar workers, and women workers are treated in this dumb country that thinks it's better than it actually is...well, it's a crime. They've been bad, bad girls...but unlike Apple's song, I don't believe it's a sad, sad world when a woman breaks a boy just because she can.

Best movie that didn't come out in 2019, but I watched in 2019:
First Reformed (A)

I have to give a quick shout-out to Paul Schrader's beautiful and complex film about faith, hope, and depression. It's not a flashy film, but it grapples with some of the biggest questions in life, such as how to stand up against injustice even if injustice pays your bills, and how to go on in life when you truly believe the future won't be better. The answer, it seems, is love. Or rather, there is no answer--there's only the feeling of another human being holding on to you as you both freefall into the great unknown.

***

That's all folks! Best wishes in 2020!