Stuff I watched in...June 2022, pt. 1

Ed Wood

I rewatched this wonderful film recently and it continues to hold up as one of Tim Burton's best movies and probably Johnny Depp's best performance...especially before he got all gross and weird.

Ed Wood tells the story of Edward D. Wood Jr., considered to be one of the worst directors of all time. His best known movie is Plan 9 From Outer Space. He is responsible for a number of Z-level sci-fi/horror movies and also some nudie movies as well. 

The film Ed Wood is about the power of having a vision. Even though Wood is a complete hack, he really believes in himself and will stop at nothing to get his visions onto the silver screen. It's also a movie about being your true, whole self. Wood was a cross-dresser in real life, and the film really explores that aspect of his life in depth. Other viewers may disagree, but I personally always saw Ed Wood as being sensitive and supportive of gender non-conforming and sexually non-conforming people. There is a suggestion that such people are "weirdos", as Wood's (ex) girlfriend, Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker), asserts...but Burton is a friend of so-called weirdos and he treats the weirdos in his movies with love and respect, goddamnit! 

Ed Wood encourages us to embrace our true selves and surround ourselves with people who love and accept us just as we are. There's a lovely scene where Wood confesses to his new girlfriend--who would go on to marry him--about his love of wearing women's underwear. And she thinks about it for a moment and then says "ok" and smiles. It's just a very sweet scene of accepting someone you love.

And I didn't even mention all the other amazing characters/actors in this film. Martin Landau playing the aging, heroin-addicted Bela Lugosi will make you cry, full stop. It's just an amazing performance. Vincent D'Onofrio has a cameo as Orson Welles in which he tells Wood "Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?" which is a line (and just...a sentiment!) I think about all the damn time. 

I've seen Ed Wood a lot of times and it never fails to be a delightful, odd, charming, hilarious movie. I highly recommend it.

Grade: A+

***

Dick

Here's another movie I've seen a million times (especially when I was a teenager) and still love to this day. Dick dares to ask the question: what if Deep Throat, the informant who blew (heh) the Watergate scandal wide open, was actually a pair of ditzy 15 year old girls? 

Michelle Willams and Kirsten Dunst play Betsy and Arlene, two high schoolers who accidentally stumble upon incriminating evidence against Richard Nixon (Dan Hedaya). Nixon doesn't believe these young ladies have much going on upstairs, but all the same wants to keep an eye on them. So he appoints them "Official White House Dog Walkers" and lets them come and walk the First Dog, Checkers, every day. Hijinks ensue that lead the president to resign. 

Betsy and Arlene find out that Nixon not only uses swear words and hates Jewish people, he's also mean to Checkers! Horrified, they decide to call The Washington Post and tell Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch) about a list of "creeps" they found during a White House tour (the infamous "CREEP list"). They give their name as "Deep Throat" because Betsy's brother just got caught seeing the movie and they're delighted and squealy about it. The rest, as they say, is history.

Dick is a really fun movie that reminds us of a time where political corruption meant that you might lose your job--what a quaint notion! The movie sports an excellent soundtrack of all the mid-1970s hits, a cast filled with Saturday Night Live and Kids in the Hall alum and lots of "Dick" jokes. It's a good movie to watch if you're feeling down.

Grade: A

***

Passing

This delicate, black and white film, directed by Rebecca Hall, is based on Nella Larsen's 1929 novel. It follows Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) and Clare Bellew (Ruth Negga), two light-skinned Black women living in New York City in the 1920s. Though both women are able to "pass" for white, Irene chooses not to do so. She lives in Harlem with her husband, Brian (Andre Holland), and their two sons. Clare, however, passes for white full time. She is married to a white bigot, John (Alexander Skarsgard) and is able to freely live as a white person with all the benefits that entails.

But Clare misses being around Black people, so she begins to spend a lot of time in the company of Irene, whom she knew in high school, Brian, and their friends. Passing is less about Clare, though, and much more about Irene's mixed feelings about Clare and how she chooses to live her life. Irene struggles to fully accept the reality of racism in America. When her sons want to talk about a lynching that happened in another state, Brian is willing to share the details and entire truth with them, but Irene gets upset and shuts down the conversation. Brian wants to move the family to another country, but Irene doesn't want to leave. The Redfields are a comfortably wealthy Black family (Brian is a doctor) and so they are slightly protected from the brutality of racism...but not entirely. And Irene would rather pretend that all is well as long as they stay safe within their community than to face the fact that in a country that hates Black people, they will never be truly safe. Not the way white people are.

I think Irene's internal struggle both as a mother who wants to protect her sons from the harsh realities of the world, and as a Black woman who doesn't want to fully face those realities herself is the most heartbreaking aspect of this movie. Irene shouldn't have to worry, at least not about her skin color. In a just world, there would still be plenty to worry about. But Irene lives, as we all do, in an unjust world which doubles her worries. Life is hard enough, but white people make it so much harder for Black people and it's not fair. In Clare, Irene sees a hint of possibility...but that possibility is an illusion, since Clare could be found out at any time, and would suffer dearly for trying to pass.

Passing is a very lovely, very sad film. Like I said above, it's delicate, both in its cinematography, and how it approaches racism. But just because it's delicate doesn't mean it's falsely optimistic. Like a rose with thorns, Passing pierces even as one admires its grace. 

Grade: B+

***

A History of Violence

This was another rewatch for me, although it's been years since I've seen it and it didn't leave much of an impression on me. Directed by David Cronenberg, A History of Violence is about a mild-mannered family man, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), who owns a diner in a small, midwestern town. When two criminals try to hold up the diner and threaten the lives of Tom's employees, Tom springs into action, killing both men. He is hailed as a local hero. But no one stops to wonder why Tom is so good at fighting. 

And then a man named Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) shows up one day in Tom's diner, calling Tom "Joey" and referencing Philadelphia. Though Tom pretends to not know what Carl is talking about, it becomes clear that Tom is running from a dark past that his wife (Maria Bello) and kids know nothing about. 

Tom is eventually forced to return to Philadelphia, where his brother, Richie (William Hurt), reigns as a crime boss. He has to face down Richie and his goons if he ever wants to go back to how things were with his nice little sweet life in nowheresville, Indiana. Which is exactly what Tom--aka "Joey"--does.

David Cronenberg is a great director, but A History of Violence feels a bit thin and insubstantial. It's entertaining for sure, but not anything too memorable. Viggo Mortensen is really great in it--he fully captures both of Tom's sides: the sweet, dorky dad and the mindless killing machine. It's pretty sexy actually, even though I'm annoyed I find it sexy. So I guess I would recommend this movie if you like tight thrillers that are enjoyable to watch but won't stick with you for very long.

Grade: B

***

Dumb & Dumber

Yup, another rewatch for me! Of course I've seen Dumb & Dumber! This Farrelly Brothers movie was a staple of my childhood--a pretty naughty staple, to be honest. Rewatching it now was...interesting. I mean, the whole premise is about a guy stalking a woman. Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) meets Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) while driving her to the airport. He becomes smitten with her, and when he sees her put down a briefcase and leave it behind in the airport, he goes on a cross-country road trip with his buddy, Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels), to return it to her. But, uh, the briefcase contained ransom money...so Harry and Lloyd are being tracked by a couple of goons who think the two men are masterminds. 

They aren't. Masterminds, that is.

Dumb & Dumber is a pretty fucking dumb movie. And very politically incorrect. But if you don't laugh when Jim Carrey says "So you're telling me there's a chance?!", then you're just empty inside. I will say the movie didn't age as poorly as The Wedding Singer, which I rewatched a month or so ago. Even with all the 1990s references and humor, there's something pretty essential, basic, and timeless about Dumb & Dumber. Probably the fart jokes. 

Grade: B

***

New Tricks

Movies: Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

A favorite theme of mine in films is sex positivity. Not all films about sex are sex positive, of course. For example, a comedy I love despite its imperfections, The 40 Year Old Virgin, is not a sex positive film. It's a film that is prescriptive about how sex should ideally be and makes fun of women who are too sexual.

Some good examples of sex positive films (at least, in my opinion) include Kinsey, Call Me By Your Name, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, Magic Mike (and Magic Mike XXL even more so), The To-Do List, and many more. These are just the ones that came to me (heh) off the top of my head. They are films that celebrate sex even as they acknowledge that sex is complicated and not always as freewheeling as we'd like it to be.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is an intimate, charming, sex positive film and, for an added bonus, sex worker positive film, that hit Hulu a week or so ago.

Directed by Sophie Hyde, Leo Grande is about a neurotic, anxious widow, Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson, delightful as always) who hires a sex worker, the titular Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack, both lovely to look at and a lovely actor), since it's been two years since she's been with anyone.

We find out that Nancy and her husband never did anything beyond basic intercourse throughout their marriage. No oral (he found it "demeaning"), no positions other than missionary, and no orgasms for Nancy (she just faked it). Though Nancy is clearly anxious about her meetings with Leo, she also desperately wants to experience her own sexuality. 

Leo brims with sensitivity, patience, and understanding--up to a point. Throughout their encounters, Nancy keeps trying to get Leo to reveal more and more about his personal life and about his relationship with his mother in particular. It's clear that Nancy is projecting, as she has a lot of disrespect for her own children. Nancy isn't always likable in this movie. She is a prude, judgmental, a busy-body, and honestly kind of a dumbass. She violates Leo's boundaries and is surprised when he begins to pack up his stuff and tells her they're never going to meet again.

However, Nancy makes amends to Leo by the end of the film. It's a bit unrealistic...I mean, I guess I don't know how most male escorts do business, but if I were an escort I would have blocked Nancy's number. But the movie really wants to show character growth and it only has 90 minutes to do so (it's a short-ass movie). I do dock the film a few points for making Nancy such a pill but also resolving it so quickly and seamlessly. But only a few points because overall, the movie is very good and sweet. 

Leo Grande uses its two characters to explore greater social issues about sexuality. Nancy is skeptical of sex work, even as she pays for it herself. Her main concern is that it's "degrading" to Leo. However, Leo seems right for the line of work because he finds something to be attracted to in all his clients, and he legitimately loves to help them experience pleasure and release. Nancy represents old school ways of thinking and, indeed, ways of living. She gives up her dreams to be a mom because she believes that's just what's done...and it leads her to resent her children. Leo represents new ways of thinking about sex and life--he's gone through some very, very hard things too, but he doesn't let those terrible things keep him from living the life that he feels is the best fit for him. 

Though the film is British, of course I can't help but see it through an American lens. America is deeply dysfunctional when it comes to sexuality. There is a deep river of hatred and repulsion of sexuality and sexual freedom in this country, even though we cannot deny how powerful sex is and how much people want it--politics and religion be damned! Instead of finding a way towards sexual freedom and health, our country fucks with the lights off, so to speak. We do it, but we don't talk about it or think about it honestly and point the finger of blame to others to get the eyes off of us. I'm speaking in generalities here, of course. 

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a charming, delightful film with two excellent leads which explores what sex could be like if we strove to be vulnerable and sensitive to ours and our partners' needs. 

Grade: B+

The Toll of Disbelief

Movies: Watcher, Lucky

I wrote about misogyny in my recent review of Men, which is about how women are systematically blames, disbelieved, and gaslit by men.

*** (requisite "not all men" and "not all women" and "yes, women abuse/gaslight men too" and "not everyone identifies as a man or woman" and "queer people abuse/gaslight people too"...the rest of this review is going to focus on the larger culture as a whole, in which cisgender men are more statistically likely to harm, well, everyone, but cis and trans women in particular, moreso than the reverse)***

I watched two other films recently that really dig into the culture of not believing women and show the dire consequences when we don't believe women's experiences and when women are expected to go it alone.

Watcher, directed by Chloe Okuno, follows Julia (Maika Monroe), an American woman who moves from New York to Bucharest, Romania with her half-Romanian husband, Francis (Karl Glusman), for Francis' job. Julia is adapting to a city where she doesn't speak the language, doesn't have any friends, and spends long days by herself since her husband works late. She immediately notices that a man in the apartment across from her apartment seems to always be staring at her, but because she can only see his silhouette, she can't be sure. After a man follows her into a movie theatre and sits right behind her, and then follows her into a grocery store, she becomes increasingly convinced that the man who peeps at her every night and the man who followed her are one in the same. 

It doesn't help that there's also a serial killer, known as "The Spider", on the loose, decapitating young women in their apartments! Is this man The Spider? Is he just a pervy creep? Is he even the same man, or are there multiple men following and staring at Julia? Of course, the police are no help and her husband only barely contains his condescension towards Julia. 

Watcher was a very solid thriller because it doesn't reveal its secrets until the end, making us question Julia just like everyone else. Additionally, significant chunks of the film are in Romanian with no subtitles provided, making the non-Romanian speaking audience members feel as confused as Julia. 

Lucky, directed by Natasha Kermani and written by and starring Brea Grant, has a slightly more fanciful take on disbelief of women. May (Brea Grant), a self-help author (the book is titled Go It Alone), awakens one night to the sounds of a man breaking into her home. When she wakes up her husband, Ted, he says "oh, it's the man who breaks in every night and tries to kill us". They successfully fight him off, and the intruder disappears. The next morning, when May questions her husband about what he meant, he again reiterates that a man tries to break in every night and kill them--well, May, specifically--and that this is just "how it is". When May, understandably, demands to know what the fuck he's talking about, Ted tells her he can't be with her when "she's like this" and leaves. Sure enough, the next night the same man breaks in and May fights him off. And the same thing happens the next night, and the next, and the next...

It gets to the point where May is killing this man every night, only for him to disappear the minute she turns her head. The police act like none of this is surprising and tell her to buy mace. Even her own friends simply reiterate that it sounds scary and May is "brave" to stay in the house. What in the actual fuck??

My main beef with Lucky is that it's REALLY obvious what the message is: the man who stalks her is representative of men who would harm women in general. The culture, man! So the reason that no one is surprised and people just keep saying this is "just how it is" is because...we currently live in that reality. I actually have to dock Lucky a few points here because the fact that May wrote a book titled Go It Alone and is one of these "lean in" bullshit-peddlers who encourages women to look after themselves first and foremost is never really brought to what I thought would be the obvious conclusion: that women (and men) need to NOT "go it alone". They need to help each other. But May specifically rejects that idea during a climatic scene in a parking garage where not only is she pursued by her stalker, she sees woman after woman pursued by their own stalkers. I think the film is telling us that May is wrong for trying to go it alone, but for a movie that really hits you on the head with its message, it never explicitly has May learning that lesson. In the end, Lucky just felt incomplete. It's a very short movie--83 minutes--and I think it would have benefited from and extra 20 minutes or so if it would have brought things to a more satisfying conclusion. 

Between Men, Lucky, and Watcher, we understand the message to be "misogyny is everywhere in our culture and all over the world. And people still don't believe women". But all three movies are a touch fatalistic. All three female protagonists manage to save themselves by themselves, but none of the movies have a happy ending. Which I guess is appropriate because living in this misogynistic world doesn't have a satisfying conclusion, does it? Whether the film is fanciful, as Men and Lucky are, or more based in reality as Watcher is, the conclusion is the same: men will continue to hunt and haunt you, even if you defeat them. Kinda bleak! I guess this is why I like rape-revenge films. I want to see men who do bad things punished and punished harshly, and I want men in real life who are misogynists to be very, very scared of the fact that they might get their just desserts. But what's sad is that most misogynist men aren't scared because the odds of them being punished are slim. Sure, you'll get the dudes who are "terrified" of false rape accusations (I mean, if it keeps them away from women, good!) but most men I think know on some level that they can get away with a lot of shit because the system will support them, especially if they're white and rich.

I'm lucky (no pun intended!) that the men I'm closest to are non-violent, non-abusive, and encourage me to be myself and to be assertive and outspoken. Some of that is truly luck (I was born to a good dad) and some is a mixture of luck and learning (learning to avoid bad dudes and date good dudes). But make no mistake: shitty men are on my periphery...they're in my extended family, they're the husbands of my acquaintances, they're men I've dated in the past, etc. And anyone can become a victim of a shitty man. It's not a matter of being a "strong" or "weak" person...I know strong women who have been sucked into abusive relationships. I really could write a whole essay on my thoughts about all of this, but we're now well beyond the scope of a movie review. 

I recommend all three movies: Men, Lucky, and Watcher. They vary in how polished they are, but all three films are a reminder that when we don't believe women, more women end up murdered. Which side do you want to be on?

Watcher: B+

Lucky: B-

The Broken Leg Diaries, part 2: Electric Breakaloo

 Hi folks! Here's SOME MORE stuff I watched while recovering from a broken leg!

***

Kinsey

Bill Condon's biopic of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey has been one of my favorite movies since it came out in 2004, yet I've never reviewed it on this blog. I had the pleasure of rewatching this film with my friend and, damn, it still gets me right in the feels.

Alfred Kinsey began his career studying gall wasps. But he soon realized that there was a more important subject students on his campus were ignorant about: sex. He got permission to teach a "marriage class" at Indiana University and then realized that people don't know what is "normal" sexually...and he intended to find out. This led to the eventual publication of the Kinsey reports.

Alfred Kinsey, though not a perfect man, is my hero. He systematically fought ignorance on a grand scale and his contributions to sexology changed the world. Dude was also down to fuck, big time. The movie doesn't shy away from Kinsey's bisexuality and extramarital dalliances. This nerd got his D wet--while encouraging his wife to do the same, I might add--and I think we should all celebrate that. Yeah, sure, the whole "encouraging his employees to fuck each other and wife swap" probably wouldn't fly today, but I always like to see people the early to mid twentieth century getting their fuck on! 

With excellent, sensitive performances by Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, and John Lithgow, Kinsey is a must watch for all the people out there who know that sex is nothing to be ashamed of and is actually pretty cool.  

Grade: A+

***

Black Swan

This was another rewatch for me, and I'm so glad I returned to it. This Darren Aronofsky horror-drama focuses on a tightly wound and sheltered ballerina, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), who dreams of playing the lead role in her company's production of Swan Lake. The only problem is that while Nina has no problem portraying the sweet, innocent white swan, Odette, she struggles to play the seductive, conniving black swan, Odile. 

Regardless, she gets the part. And it destroys her. Nina is preyed on by the artistic director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel, excellent at playing an absolute scumbag of a man who is also kinda sexy), and she becomes paranoid about losing the part to a dancer new to the company, Lily (Mila Kunis). She is also suffocated by her overbearing mother. Nina begins seeing things that aren't there and it's especially disturbing when those things start happening to her body. Black Swan is rife with body horror that will make you cringe and wince. 

The final act is glorious, both in how it's filmed and what it represents. When Nina completes the final act of the ballet, she says "I was perfect." The film is indeed about how perfectionism can and will drive you to utter madness. It's a horror film about the pursuit of beauty and art. Highly recommended. 

Grade: A

***

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Yet another rewatch for me. I was in the mood for something sweet and nostalgic, but with a little bit of bite, and Mel Stuart's adaptation of Roald Dahl's book was just the (golden) ticket! It had been a while since I last saw it, but the older I get the more I appreciate the very dry, and kinda mean, British humor in this movie. Gene Wilder was born to play the role of the eccentric, sarcastic Willy Wonka. And I find that I love the audacity of the more "annoying" kids. Charlie Bucket is boring--Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Mike Teevee (and Mike's mom, played by the super hilarious Dodo Denney) are the real MVPs here. They might be the "bad eggs" but this movie would be boring as hell without them. (Apologies to Augustus Gloop...from one fatty to another: they did you dirty). 

Also...how many people developed sexual fetishes from this movie? Like, it's got inflation, shrinking, splooshing, burping, feeding, humiliation. I guaran-damn-tee it, this movie spawned a generation of kinksters. And, see the Kinsey review above, I think that's a good thing. 

Grade: A

***

When Harry Met Sally...

Even though When Harry Met Sally... is a classic, I had never seen it. My friend Alex decided to remedy that and encouraged me to watch it with her when she visited me recently. And boy howdy, am I thankful for that. The Nora Ephron-written romcom is absolutely delightful! I tend to be biased against romcoms. Think of the top 10 most popular romcoms ever...I probably haven't seen half of them and I saw the other half and didn't like them*. To be clear, I'm not against romance in movies, I just don't care for all the tropes one finds in romantic comedies: the meet-cute, the bickering, the Big Misunderstanding that could be cleared up with a conversation, the big romantic gestures, etc. 

Even though When Harry Met Sally... has some of these tropes (the bickering, for one), something about it felt fundamentally different. I think it's because Sally (Meg Ryan) and Harry (Bill Crystal) are...nice people. Billy Crystal's Harry Burns in particular is just the perfect man. He's not an adonis. He's not a billionaire. He's not a rocket scientist. He's just a kind, funny man. Who apologizes. There's a scene where he upsets Sally and he says "Hey...I'm sorry." I fully expected him to say "Hey...I know you're mad, but you know I'm right." or something like that. But just a simple apology. It was so powerful. 

Basically, we're watching two people who are innately good slowly realize what they already know: that they are right for each other. Sure, there is miscommunication and arguing, but never anything nasty that makes us hate one of them. I liked this movie because this is how love should be: nothing grandiose, nothing super intense...just a slow burn that keeps you warm through many nights. That's REAL love. 

I told Alex "this feels like a Woody Allen movie, but not written and directed by, you know, a child rapist." Indeed, it has all the fast and funny one-liners of an Allen movie, along with that beautiful Autumn in New York vibe, but you know, it doesn't have an undercurrent of contempt for women. And Billy Crystal is 100000x more fuckable than Woody Allen.

So thank you Alex, for getting my stubborn ass to watch this comedy with a lovely and true romance at the center. Sometimes getting out of my movie comfort zone is a good thing!

*exceptions include all screwball romantic comedies from the 30s and 40s--those are all great.

Grade: A-

***

I Know What You Did Last Summer

This is actually another movie I watched with Alex and I think we both agree it was ridiculous. Props to Alex for drifting out of *her* movie comfort zone to watch this teen slasher film.

Four graduating high school seniors are driving home from a beach drinking/sexing session when they hit a pedestrian on the road. Even though the guy driving, Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.), is sober, everyone else has been drinking, especially the guy who owns the car, Barry (Ryan Phillippe). Although Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) wants to call the police, Barry convinces everyone, including his girlfriend, Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), to move the body to another location, dump it in the ocean, and make it look like a drowning.

A year later, Julie returns home college and receives a letter that says "I know what you did last summer". She begins freaking out, and contacts the other three. Barry thinks the author of the note is Max (Johnny Galecki, pre-Big Bang Theory!), a nerdy dude who has the hots for Julie. But later, Max is found dead.

One-by-one, strange and threatening things begin happening to the group: Helen wakes up to find a chunk of her hair sheared off. Barry is chased and nearly killed by a stranger. Julie find Max's corpse in the trunk of her car. I'm not going to go much deeper in the plot, but basically, Julie and Ray do research to track down the killer. It's a straightforward slasher film, and not a very good or memorable one in my opinion. The acting is...meh. This is the late 90s, so everyone is an archetype: Julie is the brainy good girl (brunette), Helen is the beauty pageant queen (blonde), Ray is the nice guy jock (brunette), and Barry is the mean guy jock (blonde). Not exactly a lot of nuance here.

I can't say I recommend I Know What You Did Last Summer. It's not awful, and if you love VERY 90s movies, you'll probably get a kick out of the clothing and nostalgia, but if you skip it you won't be missing out on much.

Grade: C

***

The Found Footage Phenomenon

This is a documentary about the history of food footage horror films. Tracing the origin of the genre back to mondo films and Cannibal Holocaust, the film works its way up to present day and movies set entirely on computer screens (like Host and Unfriended). It spends plenty of time exploring the greatest hits of the genre, including The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. 

Overall, the documentary is fine but not exactly mind-blowing. It did make a point that I hadn't considered before: violence in found footage films is sometimes considered "worse" or "more extreme" than if the same exact thing were shown in a regular horror film. I think that's true because with found footage, there's less artifice and more of a sense of the audience's complicity. Like, we know it's fake but there's part of our brain that still thinks it's real and if it's real, why are we choosing to watch it?

The Found Footage Phenomenon can be found streaming of Shudder. It's fine, but nothing to write home about.

Grade: C+

Women's Worst Nightmare

 Movies: Men

Wooooooo baby! Alex Garland's absurdist horror film is created to be divisive. It's a movie that has a dramatic tonal shift in the final third that will enrapture some, disgust others, and make still others roll their eyes. But since it's a controversial and bizarre film about misogyny, I knew I was gonna like it because that's my bread and butter. Here are a few other blog entries I've written that review similar films:

Mother!

Antichrist

Promising Young Woman

Rape-Revenge Films

This review of Men is going to go into detailed spoilers, so I would recommend reading only if you've already seen the movie, or you don't plan to see it but want to know what happens anyway.

Men stars Jessie Buckley as Harper Marlowe, a woman recovering from her husband's death by suicide. She rents a beautiful, old house in the countryside in England from Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), a nice enough if awkward man who clumsily asks if her "hubby" will be joining her. Just the first sexist microaggression Harper experiences in a movie filled with examples of contempt for women.

Harper takes a walk in the countryside the next day and discovers a tunnel. As she happily explores the tunnel, and its ability to cause echoes, she sees a figure at the other end. She hastily walks away, but realizes that a naked man is following her. Later, she sees the same nude man in the garden of her rented house. She calls the police and they arrest him.

She also visits an old church, where she has an encounter with a rude young boy who calls her a "fucking bitch" for not playing hide and seek with him. Then, in one of the most distressing scenes of the movie, she has a conversation with a priest who implies that she drove her husband to suicide.

Throughout all this, we see flashbacks to her relationship with her husband, James (Paapa Essiedu)...a man clearly suffering from mental illness who threatens to kill himself if Harper leaves him. James is an asshole. He doesn't just threaten suicide, he clearly states that he will do it "because then you will have to live with it." When Harper says that James is scaring her, he becomes enraged and says that he is scared of her before punching her in the face. Harper kicks him out of their high rise flat and James goes to the flat above theirs, pushes his way in, and throws himself out the window to his death.

It's pretty clear that no sane viewer is supposed to empathize with James even though he is obviously not in his right mind. Harper is 100% in the right when she calls out his suicide threat as manipulative. A person can be mentally unwell and also emotionally and physically abusive. But, it's also understandable that Harper harbors massive guilt about what happened. So when the priest tells her she's right to feel guilty, Harper gets up and tells him to "fuck off" and walks away. Atta girl!

Oh, did I mention that the naked man, the boy, and the priest are all played by Rory Kinnear? As are multiple men in a bar and a police officer. Every man except James is played by Kinnear. The symbolism is pretty obvious: they're allllll the same. AMIRITE LADEEZ? But more on that later.

After learning at the local pub that the naked man has been released, Harper goes home and the movie shifts tones into an absurdist, gruesome home invasion film. The naked man tries to break into the house and Harper stabs him in the arm. He removes his stabbed arm through the mail slot, cutting his arm in two. Next thing you know, the boy who wanted to play hide and seek is in the kitchen...with an arm cut in two. Then the priest is in the bathroom, putting his disgusting sliced arm on Harper's neck and being the most perverted skeezebag on the planet, rapturing over Harper's "slit" and telling her "this is the power you have over me". She stabs him and runs, trying to get away in her car, only to run over Geoffrey in the road. Geoffrey gets up, steals the car, and begins chasing Harper with it. 

Then it gets REALLY weird. 

The naked man, now with a sliced arm, broken leg, and pregnant belly shows up. He gives birth to the boy, who gives birth to the priest, who gives birth to Geoffrey, who gives birth to James. This shit is wild. Very Cronenbergian. It was also at this point that I realized the man's injuries (sliced arm and broken leg) were the same ones James experienced when he fell to his death. James and Harper sit on the couch together and Harper asks "what do you want from me?" and James says "your love". The next and final scene is Harper's friend Riley (Gayle Rankin) showing up at the house and discovering the wrecked car and Harper sitting outside in a bloody dress. We never see what "really" happened. End of movie.

SO. Let's break down some symbolism here.

1) Rory Kinnear playing all the men: I took this to be symbolic of the different types of shitty men. Geoffrey is the "nice guy" who is slightly able to hide his contempt for women, but it's still there lurking beneath his corny jokes and awkward smile. The priest is a victim-blamer and molester/rapist. The boy is just a straight up rude-ass kid who isn't being taught differently. The police officer is, well, ACAB. The naked man...I'm not so sure. He has a connection to nature, so maybe it's men's "natural" instincts or nature's way of being brutal to all beings.

2) The birthing scene: basically, this is saying that shitty men beget shitty men. It's a cycle, and each type of man supports and encourages the other types. I came up with a theory years ago during the whole Aziz Ansari scandal where I realized that the many, many men who do very mildly shitty things (like Aziz) form the base of the pyramid that supports the fewer men who do worse things....all the way up to the top of the pyramid where even fewer men do even worse things, like Harvey Weinstein being a serial predator. So even if what Aziz did was not illegal or "not that bad", men like him allow for other men to do worse things. Not exactly the most original theory, I know, but certainly true. And that's what I took from this grotesque birthing scene.

3) The severed arm: so, this was a small thing, but when Harper stabs the man's arm, which is coming through the mail slot, *he* is the one to pull his arm out, severing it in the process. And this injury is congruent to what happened to James. So, if people want to say Harper drove James to suicide...well, he actually chose to do it himself, just as the man chose to pull his arm back out. Harper may have stabbed him (and reasonably so), but the man is the one who hurt himself. I read this as the director saying that James is responsible for his own choices.

4) Harper's attitude and expressions at the end of the film: as the violence escalates in the final third of the movie, Harper is of course incredibly frightened and confused. She is screaming, running around, trying to hide and protect herself. But the men are relentless...they follow her and shape shift. But this is a long-ass final third and the longer it goes on, the more...exhausted and "over it" Harper becomes. Jessie Buckley's facial expressions rearrange themselves into that face you make when a man starts explaining your own career to you. Just a flat, unimpressed, slightly disgusted countenance. Misogyny is so relentless and so grotesque that for many women, fear and anger shift into disdain and boredom. By the time Harper's husband is reborn through these men, she just doesn't give a fuck any more. He's no different from the rest of them...in fact, James is the only man who physically hurts Harper in the movie. The shape-shifting men throughout the movie chase and threaten her, but they never physically harm her. Only James did that when he hit her. Despite his apparent vulnerability, he is in many ways the worst of them all. And he was the one who was supposed to love Harper the best.

5) What happened at the end?: Harper's friend Riley finds her covered in blood outside the house, so something happened. But did it all happen exactly as we saw it? Or did Harper have a mental breakdown and perhaps kill her nice-but-awkward host, Geoffrey? Or maybe she murdered the policeman. We will never know. But I'm so very glad it wasn't definitively revealed that it was "all in her head". If that had been revealed, this would be another "bitch goes crazy and kills people for no reason" movie. Since the ending remains a mystery, we can choose to believe that Harper was righteous in whatever she did to earn that blood on her dress. 

So, final thoughts: Men is a film about the grotesque absurdity and relentlessness of misogyny. Sexist men, even ones who "aren't so bad", support and encourage worse men. They cover for one another. They conspire, whether they know it or not, to discredit women and victim-blame them. Misogyny is so common and so relentless, that many women go from fearful to exhausted. They burn out on it. Misogyny takes beautiful things, like nature, solitude, and love between husband and wife...and turns them into something dangerous and twisted. When it comes to misogyny, indeed, all men are the same. Different shades, different levels...but underneath it all...it's just Rory Kinnear over and over. LOL.

So is this a man-hating movie? It depends on your perspective! Note in the above paragraph I focused on "misogyny", not "men". *Misogyny* is relentless, perverted, and hateful...not men. Women can be misogynists too. As can non-binary people and trans people. I think that Garland (a man!) set out to make an intense, absurdist horror film that shows how wild and disgusting contempt for women is...and the crazy bastard did it!

I really liked Men and I like it the more I think about it. I found it to be beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, and cathartic as hell. It is most definitely not for everyone and is designed to be divisive, but I fell on the side of "it was really great and really fun".

Grade: A-

Death's Design

Movies: Final Destination series

After watching all the Saw movies last summer (please read this blog post about it...I SUFFERED for y'all!), I found myself drawn to watching all (well, almost all) of the Final Destination films. It was a MUCH easier task and the films are definitely more entertaining than the Saw films. 

Final Destination

I had been meaning to watch this horror film from 2000 for a long time, and I'm glad I finally did. The teen horror film craze of the late 90s/early 2000s is a big blindspot for me, and the ones I have watched are pretty mediocre. But Final Destination is actually entertaining, funny, and truly haunting.

Devon Sawa (remember him!?) plays Alex Browning, a high schooler about to go on a senior trip to Paris with his French class. After being seated on the plane, Alex has a vision of the plane going down in flames and everyone dying. He awakens from his vision yelling about how the plane is going to crash and everyone needs to get off. 

He is forcibly removed, as are a few other students and a teacher: bully Carter (Kerr Smith...remember him!?) almost gets in a fight with Alex and is removed by security; Carter's girlfriend, Terry (Amanda Detmer) follows Carter off the plane; Alex's friend, Tod (Chad E. Donella), follows Alex off the plane out of concern, leaving his brother on the plane; loner Clear (Ali Larter...remember her!?) is so shaken that she also leaves; dumb guy Billy (Sean William Scott) is confused and also gets off the plane; and both French teachers get off, but Valerie (Kristen Cloke) encourages the other teacher to get back on the plane because someone needs to be with the kids and the other teacher is more of a Francophile. 

Well, the plane explodes shortly after taking off. Now, people are no longer mad at Alex for causing a scene, but are terrified and suspicious of him. How did he know? Did he somehow cause it? The FBI gets involved, but when there is no evidence of foul play, the survivors don't know what to think.

Shortly after the incident, Tod accidentally hangs himself from the shower head in his bathtub. The audience sees that sinister forces are at play, but the characters assume he took his life out of guilt from leaving his brother on the plane. Tod's parents, having now lost both their sons within a week, are furious at Alex and blame him.

Final Destination is an interesting film because it touches on the concept of survivor's guilt, which is a very real thing that survivors of catastrophic events experience. The films never go too deeply into this, but the subtext is definitely there. 

Well, after a few more accidents take the lives of the survivors, Alex starts thinking that maybe Death itself is after them because they were supposed to die on that plane. There is a wonderful cameo by Tony Todd, who plays a mortician and cryptically explains that death doesn't like to be cheated. 

Final Destination is great on so many levels. It's gleefully nihilistic in that the people who were supposed to die are ALL gonna fucking die. There is no way (except in a rare case in the sequel) for anyone to survive. It's not about being smart or being cautious because when you're up against a villain that gets ALL of us, sooner or later, you gonna lose, bud. But despite the film's nihilism it's also very funny. It never feels like a drag. 

The first film in the series is easily the best because it sets up the premise for the rest of the movies. The sequels, while good, very quickly become just more of the same. But I definitely recommend the first film to all horror fans.

Grade: B+

***

Final Destination 2

Final Destination 2 is a direct sequel to the first film in that it explicitly references the events of the first movie, and one of the characters from the first movie (Clear) is still alive (and living in a padded cell in a mental hospital) and the characters meet up with her to ask what is happening to them.

In this film, Kimberly (I'm not going to list all the actors' names since there are too many) leaves on a road trip to the beach with her friends. Before exiting onto the highway, she has a vision of a massive multi-car pileup that kills a ton of people. She ends up not just stopping on the exit ramp, but parking her car in such a way that everyone behind her is forced to stop as well. As a police officer is questioning Kimberly, the accident happens just as she envisioned it.

Due to Kimberly's vision, there are about nine survivors. Basically, the same thing happens: one of the survivors, Evan, dies in a freak accident within a couple days. When another person dies, Kimberly tries to rally the survivors and figure out how they can beat death. Tony Todd shows up and explains that if a "new life" comes into the world, death might give one of them a pass. 

FD2 is really just more of the same, but the characters are fun and, for better or worse, it's the one movie in the series where two people actually "beat death", or so we assume.

Grade: B

***

Final Destination 3

FD3 is where it really starts to get repetitive. Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, before she was famous) is at a high school event at an amusement park. She is scared of roller coasters, but is peer pressured into getting on The Devil's Flight. Before the ride begins, she has a vision of the coaster going off its tracks and killing everyone on the ride. She freaks out and her whole car is evacuated and a bunch of people (but not everyone) gets off. Sure enough, Wendy's vision is true and everyone is killed when the ride takes off.

Then it's more of the same: survivors of the ride start dying in freak accidents. Wendy starts to find clues as to how people are going to die hidden in the pictures she took from that night and she and her friend race to save their friends...but everyone dies! 

FD3 is a pretty weak entry in the series, but it has two things going for it: a pretty talented actress in the lead role, and the BEST death in the entire series. 

Grade: B-

***

The Final Destination

Not gonna lie, guys: I skipped this one. It looked really, really terrible. 

Grade: n/a

***

Final Destination 5

The most recent (I won't say final, since FD6 is apparently in the works) Final Destination entry is actually pretty good. This might be a spoiler, but given the film is 11 years old, too bad: it's actually a prequel to the first film and ends in a really satisfying way that ties it right back to the first movie.

In this film, a group of colleagues are on a bus headed to a company retreat. They have to cross a bridge which is undergoing construction and as they are stopped on the bridge Sam has a vision of the bridge collapsing and killing everyone except his ex-girlfriend, Molly, whom he manages to save in the vision. When he awakens from his vision, he freaks out and tells everyone to get off the bus and run off the bridge. Once he, Molly, five colleagues and his boss are off the bridge...boom, it begins to collapse.

Same deal as before: the survivors begin to die in truly bizarre freak accidents, Tony Todd shows up to say some cryptic shit, and Sam and Molly race to figure out how to dodge death. 

While not as good the first film, FD5 is pretty entertaining and has some truly excellent death scenes. The final scene, which has Molly and Sam on a plane to Paris...when they seem some guy a few seats over freaking out and being removed from the plane...is *chef's kiss*

Grade: B

***

Overall, the Final Destination series is really fun, gory, and--not gonna lie--makes you think about fate and death in a way few horror movies do. It actually did get under my skin when I started thinking about close calls I or my friends and family have had with death (nothing crazy, mostly just car accidents or near-accidents) and wondering how many times I got lucky simply because it just wasn't my time. 

Overall series grade: B

Valhalla, I Am Coming

Movies: The Northman

Robert Eggers' newest film, The Northman, is a spectacle of testosterone. I'm honestly not sure I have a whole lot to say about it, so this might be a relatively short review.

Also, I'm going to say up front that I probably missed a lot of the dialogue due to my trouble understanding accents without subtitles in films, so there may be subtleties I missed the first time watching this film, which I definitely plan on watching again.

Plot spoilers ahead!

The film opens in 895 AD. King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) returns home to the island of Hrafnsey, which Google tells me is in east Iceland, after doing warrior-king stuff. He has a wife, Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman), and a son, Prince Amleth (Oscar Novak). Instead of taking his wife, whom he hasn't seen in months, to bed...Aurvandill does a ritual with Amleth that involves drinking something that makes them both trip balls. From my interpretation, this ritual is meant to bring father and son closer together and also initiate Amleth into manhood. 

The next morning, Aurvandill is murdered by his brother, Fjolnir (Danish actor Claes Bang in a standout role). Fjornir orders his men to kill the young prince, but Amleth escapes and rows away to safety, vowing "I will avenge you Father, I will save you Mother, I will kill you Fjornir".

Years later, Amleth has grown up to become...Alexander Skarsgard! And also an incredibly fierce viking. After a raid where his group of berserkers kill a bunch of men and rape a bunch of women (the rape is only implied, not shown), Amleth hears that his uncle was overthrown by another king and he now lives on a sheep farm in Iceland. But being overthrown and living in exile is not enough punishment for Fjornir, and Amleth pretends to be a slave and boards a boat headed for Fjornir's farm. On the boat he meets Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), who informs him that while his strength might break men's bodies, her cunning will break men's minds.

Amleth comes face to face with Fjornir, his mother, and Fjornir's sons and no one recognizes him. After all, the last time they saw him, he was barely pubescent, and they have been under the impression that he was killed. So Amleth is able to get close to Fjornir's family and servants and no one is the wiser. He meets with male witch who informs him that he will need a special sword to kill Fjornir--one that can only be unsheathed at night. Amleth finds the sword and starts by killing those close to Fjornir, throwing the farm into a panic.

(meanwhile, Olga and him are fuckin'. Aw yeah.)

However, when the night comes to finally, finally avenge his father, Amleth has an interaction with his mother, Gudrun, that throws his whole life and world into question. She reveals that she hated Amleth's father and begged Fjornir to kill him. It turns out that Gudrun was Aurvandill's slave before she was his wife and that there was no love between the two of him. Amleth ends up killing her, as well as her young son by Fjornir.

The final scene is an epic, nude (no dick, tho) sword fight between Amleth and Fjornir and they...do that thing where they deal each other a killing blow at the same time, so they both die. WOOOO!!! And it's off to Valhalla with Amleth, who sees a comforting vision of Olga giving birth to twins before he dies. 

So, while The Northman is very good, it didn't blow my socks off the way Eggers' previous films did (especially The Lighthouse). In many regards, the film is similar to The Green Knight in that it's a movie about how important honor was to men of the past...but also, like, the quest for honor will kill you, so...???

I do think The Green Knight is a touch more critical of "honor" and what we might call "traditional masculine values" whereas The Northman is almost completely uncritical of them. Amleth saw his father murdered, made a vow, and saw that vow through even though it led to his death. And the final scene suggests that dying in this way is the best possible death a man of that time could experience. Which is probably true! Life was nasty, brutish, and short in AD 895! 

The Northman is a film that unabashedly revels in testosterone and masculinity. It's going to be a huge hit with the white supremacists too! But I don't think it was Eggers' intention to pander to toxic white men. I think he set out to make a weird, violent historical film that incorporates both history and mythology and he did it. The Northman is the film version of metal music: intense, unrelenting, primal, and something you kind of have to be in the mood for. 

Grade: B+

Blood Atonement

 TV: Under the Banner of Heaven

Warning: spoilers and strong opinions about religion ahead!

Based on the excellent book by Jon Krakauer, the TV miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven is...not bad.

In short, the book is about the 1984 murder of Brenda Lafferty, a young Mormon mother, and her 15 month old daughter, Erica. Brenda and Erica were murdered by her brothers-in-law, Dan and Ron Lafferty. Ron and Dan were the oldest of five Lafferty brothers and they came from a family that was devout-bordering-on-insane. The two brothers came to believe that God was sending them revelations, including a revelation to "blood atone" Brenda and Erica. Blood atonement is a concept from Mormon history that suggests some sins are so great that only by killing the sinner and spilling their blood on the ground can you save their eternal souls. A lot of the less savory aspects of Mormon history, including blood atonement, have been actively censored by LDS leadership in the church (note: I'm going to use LDS [Latter-Day Saints] and Mormon interchangeably throughout this review). 

If you want to learn more, I recommend reading the book and reading up on other books about the history of the LDS church. I'm by no means an expert, and the opinions expressed throughout this review are just based on the little I do know. 

The show adds two characters that weren't in the book: Jeb Pyre (played by the sensitive and always excellent Andrew Garfield), a devout Mormon detective, and Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham, a breath of fresh air and humor in an otherwise grim show), a no-nonsense detective of Paiute ancestry. The two men serve as two perspectives on the crime: Bill sees it for what it is--two bloodthirsty and violent men murdering two innocents, including a baby. But for Jeb, his entire world and way of thinking has been blown open by the fact that members of his own supposedly peace-loving religion committed such a ghastly crime.

I have three criticisms of this show. First, the focus is so much more on the murderers than the victims. Part of that is simply because that's the story from the book, and part is because the "juicy" aspect of this story is how such clean-cut Mormon boys became so depraved and violent due to their own God complexes and egos. So, it's forgivable. But I would have loved to see more of Brenda's perspective and why she married into an incredibly judgmental, fucked up family and also why she stayed. 

Another criticism I have is that the show is very expository. There are LOTS of scenes that are just discussions between people where one person is explaining a concept to another. The first episode is nearly entirely a conversation between Det. Pyre and Allen Lafferty, Brenda's husband. There is plenty of action as well, but so much of this show is for the benefit of people who haven't read the book and don't know shit about Mormons.

The final criticism is that the morals are spoonfed to the audience. As Det. Pyre gets deeper and deeper into the case, he realizes that not only will the church not help him, church leaders basically tell him to not do his job, stop asking questions, or suffer excommunication. He discovers aspects about Mormon history that suggest--*gasp*--it was just a bunch of men making shit up as they went along to suit themselves! And yet. AND YET! In the last episode Pyre suggests that Det. Taba goes through life "with no compass". The fucking stones on this guy. He just learned that his own religion is full of lies, misogyny, and violent bloodshed and he tells a man--a man with dark skin, who has faced blatant racism from the Mormons throughout the show--that he "has no compass".

Obviously, Taba tears Pyre a new one and we aren't meant to agree with Pyre, but it just felt so lacking in nuance and obvious. Has Pyre learned nothing? In the end, he returns to his wife and daughters, a loving Mormon father again. Meanwhile, I'm here screaming LEAVE YOUR FUCKING RELIGION YOU DOOFUS!!!

So I think this is what *really* annoys me about this show (which, let me remind you, is a really good show and you should watch it!): it acts like fundamentalist religion and "regular" religion are two separate, distinct things. Whereas I believe the line isn't as clear as some people make it out to be. Does this mean I think no one should have any religious beliefs. Ummm...sort of? I think the only "religion" should be kindness, as cheesy as that sounds. I think that many religions have their roots in hierarchical beliefs that put some people on top and others below, and that any religion that has hierarchies like that are inherently, well, immoral. Because it allows people to treat others as "less than" and believe doing so is God's will. 

Last week, the Southern Baptist Convention released a report of widespread sexual abuse within their denomination. The SBC is famously conservative and has fought against women in the ministry, so-called "critical race theory" in schools, and gay marriage. But it turns out, the monsters were in the house all along. This report comes as a surprise to no one who has paid a lick of attention to, well, anything within that past ten to twenty years. I mean, isn't it OBVIOUS that a super conservative church would turn out to be filled with child molesters? I thought this was so well known that it borders on parody. But I guess that's just because I run in circles that are suspicious of religion to begin with. I genuinely can't get my head around why anyone, least of all women, would want to be part of this. And yet. AND YET! 

There's that old joke: what's the difference between a cult and a religion? About a thousand years. Evangelical Christians act like Scientology is nutso and Mormonism is an affront to God. Yet, they believe a virgin gave birth to God's son...who is also God Himself...and that you have to believe in God's son so that you can be saved from a place God, in His omnipotency, could save you from Himself if He wanted to. Oh, and by the way, God is a God of love and justice but He will send you to eternal hell for finite sin (and for just not believing correctly). So...um, maybe they shouldn't judge is all I'm saying?

I'm preaching to the choir here. And I'm getting way outside the zone of a simple review of a TV show. But Under the Banner of Heaven really rustled my jimmies. Because here we are in 2022 and we, as a human race, have learned nothing. We still fall into these traps of believing in our own self-righteous bullshit. Myself included. But at least I'm not murdering or abusing children and hiding it behind God.

Grade: B