Tarred and Feathered

Movies: Tar

Before we get started, look guys, I know she has an accent over the "a" in her name, but I couldn't figure out how to do that (and if you stick with the review long enough, you'll find out why she doesn't deserve that accent anyway) so I'm just calling her "Tar". 

***

Tar is Todd Field's first movie in 16 years. He previously directed Little Children and In the Bedroom, both of which are great. Tar is something else...something that feels monumental or bigger than "just" a movie. For one thing, the film begins with reverse credits. In other words, the first few minutes of the film (which is 2 hours and 37 minutes, by the way) are the credits, but in reverse order so that the artists and experts who are least likely to be noticed in traditional end credits are front and center. You might even notice a mention of Monster Hunter, which is a fantasy role-playing video game, in the credits and wonder what the fuck that is all about. Well, if you stick with this review long enough, you'll find out! 

Cate Blanchett plays Lydia Tar, an orchestra conductor who is at the peak of her game. The film opens with her being interviewed by The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik (playing himself) and he lays out all of Tar's achievements. She is currently the chief conductor for the Berlin Philharmonic (the first female to be in that position, although Tar doesn't like to lean into the "first female" aspect of anything in her career) and she is about to oversee a recording of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. 

(Oh, by the way, Lydia Tar is fictional, in case you didn't know)

This film is what I might call unapologetically intelligent. It drops the audience right into the world of orchestras and composing, a world which not many of us are very familiar with--at least, I'm not very familiar with it--and does not hold our hand for a minute. The jargon, the references to famous composers and conductors and classical musicians are all there and if you don't understand those references, oh well. Of course, you can gather a lot from context. We gather that Tar is incredibly talented. She's a composer in addition to being a conductor. She speaks German fluently and plays the piano. She did graduate work among indigenous people about how they make and experience music. 

In other words, Lydia Tar is extremely intimidating. We quickly see that she is all about control and image. We see her getting fitted for a suit tailored to her body. We see her edit her own Wikipedia page with a quote that makes her look good. Cate Blanchett is absolutely the actress to take on this role--as an actress, she exudes control, intelligence, elegance, coolness, beauty, and talent. The role of Lydia Tar fits her just like that bespoke suit and I really hope she wins an Oscar for it!

But like many people who have a lot of clout and power, Lydia is a manipulator and an abuser. There are cracks in Lydia's life and water is starting to leak in. It's only a matter of time before the dam bursts. 

Lydia has a wife, Sharon (Nina Hoss, excellent), who works with Lydia's demands. Sharon is not a trophy wife--she plays violin in the Berlin Philharmonic and advises Lydia on all matters. But it's clear who "wears the pants" in this relationship. Lydia is in charge and Sharon knows this and agrees to their unspoken rules: Sharon will turn a blind eye to Lydia's affairs with younger women as long as Lydia seeks Sharon's counsel and makes sure that she never does anything to harm the family, which includes Sharon and Lydia's adopted daughter, Petra.

Lydia has a similar relationship with her assistant, Francesca (Noemie Merlant, who was in Portrait of a Lady on Fire--highly recommended!). Francesca is an aspiring conductor herself and is the perfect assistant for Lydia. She is always right there with everything Lydia needs and when Lydia doesn't need her, she disappears into the background. It's also pretty clear, though never explicit, that Lydia and Francesca occasionally have sex. We don't know the exact nature of this affair, but when Francesca says "I need someone to hold me" after receiving some horrible news and Lydia answers flatly "this isn't the place", we know something is going on.

That horrible news, by the way, is that a young woman once acquainted with Lydia Tar has killed herself. Over the course of the movie, we see and hear references to Krista Taylor and we're not sure if Krista was a former lover of Tar's, a student, a member of an orchestra, or what. After getting word of the suicide, Tar opens her email and looks at a ton of emails where other conductors were reaching out to ask if Tar would recommend Krista and in each one, Lydia tells them not to trust Krista, that she is "wholly unsuited" and "disturbed". Basically, Lydia groomed Krista to be her lover and at some point things went sour and Krista began demanding more. In return, Lydia blacklisted her and ruined her career, which was probably a factor in Krista's suicide. Krista left a note detailing these allegations and now Krista's parents are suing Tar.

But Krista is not Lydia Tar's only indiscretion. She has a clear history of giving preferential treatment to young, pretty women. Her orchestra knows this--it's basically an open secret. Her latest conquest is a new cellist named Olga (Sophie Kauer), who immediately disarms control freak Lydia Tar by being casual and even rude to her and around her. Though Olga is invested in her own career, she doesn't seem scared of Lydia or all that impressed with her. She's happy to take advantage of Lydia's attraction to her, though.

But the walls are starting to crumble around Lydia's tightly controlled world. During an early scene in the movie, Lydia teaches a class at Juilliard where she dresses down a student who self-identifies as a "BIPOC pangender person", which is why they don't like Bach--an old white guy who had numerous affairs. Tar asks the student whether they would like it if someone reduced their talent down to their race and gender. And, she sort of has a point. But in her desire to be right, she is tone-deaf to the changing attitudes in culture. Someone in the class secretly records this interaction and then edits it in a clearly ridiculous way that twists Lydia's words. Lydia points this out to her lawyers, but they inform her that this video is the least of her worries. The news about Krista Taylor is out and the open secret of Lydia's favoritism and abuses of power is even more open now, and she's going to pay for it.

What's ironic about the scene with the student at Juilliard is that Lydia makes the point that a person should not be judged by their race and gender, but by what they DO. In this case, she means their art and their talent. When Lydia's fall from grace happens, it's not because she's a woman or because she's a lesbian--it's based on what she DID. One video I watched points out that Lydia is playing by old-school rules, which are basically "if you're talented and powerful enough, your actions don't matter". But the world is changing and the new rules are "it doesn't matter how talented and powerful you are, your actions DO matter". And she ignored the changing winds of society to her own detriment. 

So, Lydia is fired from her job as chief conductor. She makes one final, horrible choice, which is to attack her ex-friend Eliot Kaplan (Mark Strong), who has taken over as chief conductor during the live recording of Mahler's Fifth. She is dragged out of the room screaming. This control freak has lost all control. 

On top of that, Sharon seeks a divorce and custody of Petra. The only relationship that was free of bullshit--Lydia's relationship with her daughter--is now destroyed. 

Lydia temporarily moves back to her childhood home, where we see some awards on the wall of her childhood bedroom: her name is "Linda Tarr". She apparently changed it as part of her effort to get away from her humble roots. She has an interaction with her brother, Tony, who basically writes her off the way she surely wrote him off as she climbed the ranks of success.

Lydia's crisis-management team gets her a job in Southeast Asia. It's unclear exactly what she's doing there at first--maybe conducting a small-time orchestra? The final shot is a punchline to the film: Lydia conducts a show for fans of the video game Monster Hunter (basically, she's conducting the soundtrack to the game)--they're all dressed up in cosplaying outfits. And that's where the movie ends. If you don't know what Monster Hunter is, you'll surely be scratching your head at the end.

The final scene shows Lydia in her own worst nightmare. This pretentious, arrogant woman who is used to jet-setting between Europe and the United States, maintaining multiple nice apartments in multiple cities, and being in complete control of her orchestra, is now wearing headphones with a click track (which shows that she's not even in control of keeping time for this performance) and conducting for an audience of Asian teenagers who are obsessed with a monster video game. The movie could be read as saying "ew, Southeast Asia? Icky.", but I don't think the film is saying that the humble place where Lydia ends up is inherently bad, just that to an elitist like Lydia, it's hell on earth. 

So, what is Tar about? Is it about cancel culture? Sort of! The conversation between Lydia and the student at Juilliard is designed to raise hackles among different types of people. Someone describing themselves as "BIPOC pangender" is going to make some people roll their eyes. But if you agree with Lydia's subtle humiliation of the student, you'll find that you're siding with someone who is a hypocrite, a manipulator, and an abuser. Maybe she has a point in that conversation--that Bach's work transcends his race, gender, and any indiscretions he committed. I tend to agree! I love Bach! Also, that was hundreds of years ago, who gives a fuck?! And the student barely seems to understand their own argument. I admit I had a chuckle at this Gen Z kid trying to go up against Lydia Tar. Plus, as the student leaves, they call Lydia a "fucking bitch", WHO'S SEXIST NOW!??

But it's not just this one student vs. Lydia. This scene, which is just an expertly filmed scene all around, is a sampling of Lydia's worldview. She doesn't deserve to be "canceled" for just dressing down a person of color in a classroom. It's the many, many, many wrong things she does that bring her down. Someone in a film discussion group I'm in pointed out that the film is a rather accurate portrayal of so-called "cancel culture" because the canceling of someone includes both the frivolous stuff, such as the wildly edited video of Lydia's interaction with this student, as well as the deadly serious stuff, such as her blacklisting Krista Taylor.

I don't think Todd Field is interested in coming to a solid conclusion over what we should make of Lydia Tar. Yes, she deserved consequences for her actions. Does that mean we throw out her entire body of work? If we were to look closely at nearly any artist, we would find evidence that they weren't very nice people. So where is the line? How bad does someone have to be in order to dismiss their art? Also, should a queer woman from humble roots who worked and clawed her way up the ranks on her own talent and grit be subject to the same level of scrutiny as a white man who perhaps had more advantages? 

These are questions that cannot be conclusively answered because every person is going to have their own opinion. And I would venture even further to suggest that every person will have their own biases and come down harder on certain artists than others, based on that artist's identity, the power of their work, and the person's own individual tastes. Everyone I know who who refuses to watch/read/listen to the art of one bad artist makes exceptions for other artists who have done equally bad things (including me! Example: I don't watch Woody Allen movies anymore, but I do watch Roman Polanski movies). Why is that? Because humans are charmingly, and damningly complex. Tar's favorite insult to lob at people who disagree with her is to call them "robots". And it turns out that while Tar certainly isn't a robot, neither are her accusers, her victims, and the many people who kowtow to her. Tar's theme seems to be that people are complex, their lives are complex, their decisions are complex. And so if we're inclined to be like Lydia Tar in the sense of wanting total control and wanting to perfect our public image, we do so at our own risk. 

Tar is undeniably a monumental film. The attention to detail is dizzying. Comparisons can be made to Kubrick's movies, which were also detailed, yet stylish. Cold, yet fascinating. Orderly, yet with a madness simmering just below the surface. Tar isn't a horror movie, but it is deeply unsettling for reasons that are hard to grasp--there is just an air of ominousness, of inevitability, that permeates throughout the film. 

Call Todd Field a Maestro, because he has conducted Tar to absolute perfection.

Grade: A

Movies I Watched in Sept. and Oct.

Y'all, I am way behind on my reviewing, so here is one big catch-up post.

***

Speak No Evil

Released both in theatres and on the streaming service Shudder, this Danish film is a nasty little movie about the consequences of not enforcing boundaries. A Danish family and a Dutch family, each with one child, meet on a holiday in Italy. They get along so well that the Dutch family invites the Danish family to come stay with them for a weekend. 

During the visit, the Dutch family begins to push the Danish family's boundaries. For example, they repeatedly ask the mom of the Danish family, who is a vegetarian, to "just try" various meat dishes. They invite the Danish family out to dinner but then expect them to pay. The Danish family, after one pretty bad violation, leaves...but then returns to the house when their daughter realizes she left a favorite stuffed animal behind. Bad decision.

The Dutch family asks them to stay and apologizes while also implying that the Danish family are the ones with the hang-ups. The Danish family is too polite to leave, so they stay. And it gets so, so much worse from there on out. 

Speak No Evil is an excellent psychological horror film in the vein of Funny Games. It is a "feel bad" movie, through and through, but it is so good. Definitely recommended, but proceed with caution.

Grade: A-

***

No Exit

This is film adaptation of a very good book by Taylor Adams. As is often the case, the book is far superior.

A young woman, Darby, is driving home to Utah to visit her estranged mother who is in the hospital and in critical condition. However, a snowstorm forces Darby to stop at a visitor's center, where four other strangers are also stranded. 

As Darby walks outside in the parking lot, hoping to get a cell phone signal, she happens to spot a little girl tied up in the back of a van in the lot. She does not know which of the strangers has kidnapped the girl, but she knows that whomever is responsible is likely armed and dangerous. So begins a cat-and-mouse game between Darby and the person or people responsible. 

This is definitely a movie to skip--but read the book if the plot sounds interesting. The film itself isn't bad, per se, it's just not as thrilling as the novel.

Grade: C+

***

You Are Not My Mother

An Irish film about changelings. Char is a young woman living with her mother, Angela, and grandmother, Rita. Angela suffers from depression and one day straight-up disappears. When she returns home, she is notably different--more energetic and happy, but also not quite the same person as before.

Eventually, Rita reveals to Char that when she (Char) was a baby, Rita realized that she was taken by faeries and swapped for a changeling. Rita did a ritual to bring the real Char back. Rita now believes that this new version of Angela is actually a faerie intent on taking Char back to the faerie realm.

When Char is nearly killed by some bullies, the faerie Angela comes to her rescue. In the ensuing chaos, faerie Angela is killed and Char is saved. However, this means that the real Angela returns and Char is grateful for her imperfect, yet real, mother.

This film was ok. It didn't blow me away, but if you're into Irish lore you might enjoy it. 

Grade: B-

***

The Lair of the White Worm

Directed by Ken Russell, The Lair of the White Worm is a very bizarre horror-comedy about a mythical giant snake that lives in the hills of Derbyshire. Basically, there is a sexy lady trying to kidnap virgins and feed them to a snake god. And Hugh Grant is the lord of a nearby manor whose family is part of local legend--one of his ancestors slew "the white worm". So, naturally, it falls on him to kill the snake again. Peter Capaldi (aka the 12th Doctor Who) is also in the movie as an archaeologist. 

I watched this movie a couple times as a kid when I was going through my Hugh Grant phase, but I barely remembered any of it. Tonally, it's kind of all over the place. It's got horror, sci-fi, a sexy lady wearing dominatrix-type clothes, humor that is both dryly British and also just straight-up slapstick. It's an interesting movie, but I don't really think it sticks the landing. Ken Russell also directed The Devils (see below), which is a much better movie.

Grade: B-

***

The Blair Witch Project

This was a rewatch for me. The first time I saw it, I was like "pretty good, but not really that scary". This time around I thought, "pretty good, kind of annoying, and not really that scary". As far as its importance within the horror genre, Blair Witch is canonical. It was a HUGE game changer, especially in the subgenre of found footage. It was an example of a horror movie being made on a shoestring budget and looking like a piece of shit but being actually good. Also, it did the whole thing where it was marketed as a "true story" and had a website with a whole backstory which was straight-up marketing genius. 

If I had seen it in the theatre in 1999, I probably would have shit myself. Watching it today, in the comfort of my own home, knowing that it is not a true story and also seeing memes and jokes about it for two decades...it's not scary at all. Other than the idea of being lost in the woods, which is inherently scary. But I still have to respect it as an OG of found footage with some excellent acting by the three unknowns in the lead.

Grade: B+

***

Deadstream

This film, which is streaming on Shudder, is a found footage horror comedy. Shawn (Joseph Winter), is a "canceled" YouTuber trying to make a comeback. Shawn's YouTube schtick is facing his biggest fears, so for his return to streaming, he decides to spend the night in a haunted house. He creates rules for himself--for example, if he hears anything strange during the night, he must investigate it--and if he breaks them he won't get paid by his sponsors.

Deadstream is both legitimately scary and legitimately funny, which is a difficult line to walk. The use of multiple camera makes the film ripe for jump scares, and I did indeed jump (or watch the movie through my fingers) many times. But because Shawn is ridiculous, it also felt like the scares were kind of low stakes. This is a really inventive movie and I would recommend it.

Grade: B

***

Practical Magic

My friend and I "swapped" spooky season movies recently--meaning I showed her a movie she hadn't seen before (It Follows) and she showed me Practical Magic, which is an entry in the "movies that millennial women know and love" genre that I somehow managed to miss.

Knowing me, you might think a movie about a sisterhood of witches in idyllic New England would be my jam, but Practical Magic has the problem of being too cozy (even though it's about abusive relationships). It has the same problem as Schitt's Creek, which is a show I WANTED and TRIED to like, but ultimately didn't: it's too dang nice! When I think of all the media I like, there's always an edge to it: either through violence, irreverent humor, sexuality, or ambiguity. Movies and shows that are kind, earnest, straightforward, and cozy always feel like an itchy sweater to me. Like, it should be comfy, but it's not (there are some exceptions, of course).

That said, I appreciated the vibes of Practical Magic. I totally get why so many people (mostly women, and probably mostly white women) love it. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are great in it and the message of "sisters over misters" is always an important one, especially for young girls. 

Grade: B

***

Hellraiser (2022)

I followed up Practical Magic with a movie about sadomasochistic demons from hell! But, damnit, the Hellraiser reimagining (directed by David Bruckner) just wasn't that great. Now, I haven't seen the original, so I don't really have anything to compare it to. And it wasn't bad, per se. I just expected more. 

This iteration of Clive Barker's book series focuses on Riley (Odessa A'zion), a recovering addict who is talked into committing burglary by her shitty boyfriend to make a few extra bucks. They break into a safe in an abandoned warehouse and find...a puzzle box. The box has a few configurations and when you solve part of the puzzle, a blade pops out--if it sticks you and you bleed on the box, these things called Cenobites come out and basically rip you to shreds and act like you should be happy about it.

I've read The Hellbound Heart by Barker, but I haven't read any of his other books or watched any of the other Hellraiser movies, so I don't know a lot about the "lore". But basically, Cenobites are creatures from another dimension where pain and pleasure meld together so that they are indistinguishable. They offer "rewards" to humans who solve the puzzle, but it's always a monkey's paw situation. For example, in this movie a billionaire named Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic...who, interestingly, is also in Practical Magic), solves the puzzle and asks for a reward of "sensation", thinking he's going to end up experiencing a constant orgasm or something like that. Instead, the Cenobites hook him up to a device that twists his nerve endings, causing him constant, horrible pain. When he begs them to remove the device, they're like "what the fuck dude, this was a gift".

So, Cenobites are cool. But Hellraiser is waaaayyy too long. It's 2 hours, where it should be 90 minutes. It's not gory or sexual enough, which is weird given that the whole point of the Hellraiser franchise is to mix gore and sexuality. Bruckner is a really talented director, but this iteration of Hellraiser is just ok. Pinhead said "I have such sights to show you", but this movie ain't one of them.

Grade: B

***

The Devils

The Devils, directed by Ken Russell, is CUH-RAY-ZEE. Filmed in 1971 and starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, The Devils is based (loosely) on true events. Reed plays Urban Grandier, a 17th century Catholic priest in Loudun, France. 

A nun, Sister Jeanne de Agnes, is sexually obsessed with Grandier, and after finding out he married another woman in secret, she accuses him of being a witch and possessing her. Since Grandier has a lot of political enemies in France, her accusations are taken seriously and a witch hunter is brought in to investigate. The other nuns in the convent also accuse Grandier of possessing them and begin acting out sexually.

The Devils faced censorship, primarily for a scene where an orgy breaks out in the convent and leads to the nuns pulling down a statue of Christ and masturbating all over it. I've seen a LOT of freaky shit in movies and I was surprised at the amount of sex and violence in this film, especially for a 1971 movie. It reminded me a lot of A Clockwork Orange, which also came out in 1971 (and, like The Devils, was stamped with an X rating). 

The final third of the film is Grandier being tortured, shaved, and burned at the stake, which is incredibly brutal. I thought the movie would be a light-hearted sex romp, but damn. The ending is similar to The Wicker Man with an innocent man being burned alive--only more violent and more harrowing. 

The Devils is a lot. It did not disappoint. Words like "hysterical", "frenzied", "chaotic", and "hypersexual" come to mind. It's really good, and I recommend it, but obviously it will not be for all tastes.

Grade: A-

***

Night and Fog

Night and Fog is a 30 minute documentary about concentration camps directed by Alain Resnais. It is probably one of the most, if not the most important documentaries of all time and should be required viewing for every human on the planet. The film came out in 1956, only a decade after the end of WWII, with memories of the Holocaust still fresh in collective memory.

The film is narrated and shows increasingly distressing imagery, starting with the trains to the camp and ending with piles of bodies being thrown in ditches. I believe that there is a moral imperative for everyone to watch this movie, or similar films (I will be watching the 9 hour documentary Shoah at some point in the future). There are some things in life that people should not be allowed to opt out of seeing, and genocide is one of them. To look away is to be complicit. It doesn't matter how triggering or painful it is, I believe it is our duty as human beings to bear witness to such atrocities...and also to understand how they happened and that they can happen again.

Grade: A+

***

Fright Night (2011)

Wow, I was disappointed in this 2011 horror-comedy. Despite a great cast, Fright Night--a remake of the 1985 film starring Chris Sarandon about a teenager who must contend with a charming vampire who moves in next door--was limp, unfunny, and not scary. 

Anton Yelchin (RIP--he died tragically in 2016) plays Charley Brewster, a high schooler living in the suburbs of Las Vegas. His friend, Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), becomes convinced that there is a vampire in their neighborhood because kids from their high school keep going missing. Specifically, Ed thinks that Charley's new neighbor, Jerry (Colin Farrell, whose unbelievable good looks were one of the few good things about this film), is the bloodsucker. 

After Ed goes missing, Charley becomes fully convinced that Jerry is responsible, and he and his girlfriend, Amy (Imogen Poots), seek help from Peter Vincent (David Tennant, excellent as always), a "Criss Angel" type Las Vegas performer who claims to be a vampire slayer. It's a race against time to slay Jerry before anyone else gets bitten by the charming, sexy bloodsucker.

As mentioned above, the cast of Fright Night is stacked (I didn't even mention that Toni Collette plays Charley's mom). But the writing is unfunny at best and downright misogynist at worst. Despite coming out in 2011, Fright Night has the very distinct stank of early 2000s "ironically offensive" comedy on it. And it ain't a good stank. Women are called "bimbos" and "skanks" throughout, by multiple characters (except Charley, because he's the Nice Guy, you see). Jerry tells Charley that women who "look a certain way" need to be "managed" before he murders a stripper. Ed refers to Charley's girlfriend as a "skank" and then later makes a "no homo" type joke. 

Sometimes I'm ok with edgy and politically incorrect humor when it's done well or has something else to balance it out. For example, I still love The 40 Year Old Virgin which is filled with outdated jokes, mostly because Steve Carell's inherent sweetness and innocence holds up a damning mirror to the crude characters who make the jokes. But Fright Night is just...not funny. I also found myself playing on my phone during the final third. 

I'd skip this one. Like Jerry, it sucks.

Grade: C

***

The Skin I Live In

This intense, shocking film by Pedro Almodovar is based on a novella titled Mygale (which means "Tarantula") by French writer Thiery Jonquet. I read the novella long before the movie was made, so I knew the central twist of the film, and I am indeed going to go into the twist here, so spoiler warning!

Antonia Banderas plays Dr. Robert Ledgard, a plastic surgeon developing an artificial skin that is resistant to burns and insect bites. He lives isolated in a mansion with his loyal housekeeper, Marilia (Marisa Paredes) and a woman named Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya), whom he is testing the new skin on.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Vera is a captive. Years ago, Robert's wife was in a horrible car accident that left her alive but burned beyond recognition. One day, when she accidentally saw herself in a reflection, she jumped to her death in front of Robert's daughter, Norma. Seeing this mentally destroyed Norma to the point where she had to stay in a mental institution for years. When she was released, she and Robert attended a wedding and at the wedding, Norma met Vicente (Jan Cornet).Vicente and Norma went into the woods during the wedding and began making out, but Norma has a PTSD reaction and began to scream, causing Vicente to slap her and for Norma to pass out. Vicente left quickly, but Robert saw him leave. When he went to wake up his daughter, she woke up and apparently assumed her father had just raped her, which sent her spiraling back into her mental illness. A year later, she killed herself.

If this all sounds like a wildly convoluted soap opera, well, welcome to the films of Pedro Almodovar! And the craziest part is yet to come...

Robert, believing that Vicente actually did rape his daughter (he didn't, to be clear), kidnaps him and....hoo boy...gives him vaginoplasty surgery. But not just that. He feeds Vicente hormones, does plastic surgery on him, puts the new artificial skin on him, and gives him a new name: Vera. So the woman who is mysteriously trapped in Robert's mansion is Vicente...after being transformed against his will into a woman. Well, into having the body of a woman.

I'm sure you can imagine why this movie is difficult to watch and tricky to talk about. Almodovar is queer and his movies are all about queerness, including trans and gender-nonconforming identities. I personally do not see The Skin I Live In as transphobic and, in fact, I think it shows how detrimental to a person's well-being it is to be forced to live as a gender one does not identify with. I think that such a movie perhaps helps cisgender people get the smallest glimpse of the pain trans people have to live with when they can't transition in whatever ways feel right to them.

While The Skin I Live In is not transphobic (in my opinion), it is certainly verging on exploitative. Basing a film around a forced gender reassignment surgery is A Choice! But because this is Almodovar, a filmmaker who is deeply empathic and a master of High Camp (basically, campy movies but done very artfully), the movie just works. We feel immense sympathy for Vicente, especially since he didn't do anything. I mean, he slapped Norma, yes, but he didn't rape her. But we also are encouraged to have some sympathy for Ledgard who lost both his wife and daughter in horrible ways and is so angry that he seeks revenge on an innocent person. But don't worry: Ledgard and his loyal housekeeper don't make it out of the movie alive. Vicente/Vera strategically gets closer (erm...REAL closer) to Ledgard and then when the opportunity to kill him and escape arrives, Vicente takes it.

This is a great movie, but of course I only recommend it with strong trigger warnings, especially around gender and body dysphoria. 

Grade: A-

(Literal) Bromance

Movie: Bros

Bros is being marketed as "the first gay romantic comedy from a major studio featuring an entirely LGBTQ principal cast". I don't know what's more remarkable: the previous sentence itself or the fact that it took until 2022 for the previous sentence to become a reality.

Gay rights has always been a big thing with me. I'm (mostly) not gay, but I had a lot of gay friends growing up and when you spend your life caring about gay people and seeing them as, you know, human beings, giving a shit about gay rights is part of the package. But to be clear: I'm not special because I care about gay rights. I pass the bare minimum to not be a shitty human being because I care about gay rights. Sadly, though, many people cannot even clear a bar so low, it's underground. And, in America at least, this is mostly due to the influence of evangelical Christianity. 

The fact that Bros is about cisgender, white, conventionally attractive men is no accident. This subgroup within the rainbow of diversity that is LGBTQ+ is, by and far, the most privileged group. And the film is aware of this, as it opens with Bobby, played by Billy Eichner (who co-wrote the script), recording his podcast which is titled "The 11th Brick" since, as Bobby puts it, a transwoman of color probably threw the first brick at Stonewall, and it was certainly a white cisgender man who threw the 11th brick.

I don't think we should hate Bros for being about a privileged group--it's doing the work. Not all of the work, but some of it. Different people will have different opinions, but I think a "mainstream" movie in which men unabashedly make out, do poppers, talk about not just homophobia, but the specific nuances of homophobia that they, and their friends, have experienced, and also get a happy ending is really fucking cool. The film certainly doesn't feel "toned down" to appease a straight audience. 

At the same time, Bros is a pretty "traditional" romcom in that it hits all the familiar beats we've come to expect in the genre: the men at the center of the romance, Bobby and Aaron (Eichner and Luke Macfarlane--both out gay actors), kind of hate each other at first, then fall for each other, then have the Big Mis (or "big misunderstanding"), then there is a very big and public romantic gesture, and then they make up get back together. The "types" the characters inhabit--Bobby is intellectual, grumpy, "totally happy" being alone, sarcastic, etc while Aaron is basic, model-level beautiful, warm, and open--are pretty common to romances. Also, the relatively easy, White Middle Class lives of the men is a common thing seen in romcoms. Bros is comfort food, guys, you're not going to see a lot of tropes thrown out the window here.

And there is something radical in taking something still (STILL!!!) considered "deviant" by a not small portion of society and showing that it, too, is mundane. AND YET, right off the bat the film pokes what I think is gentle fun at Lin-Manuel Miranda's famous "Love is love is love is love" speech that he gave at the Tonys mere hours after the Pulse mass shooting. Bobby makes fun of "love is love" on his podcast saying "[gay men's] relationships are different, our sex lives are different..." and the film, indeed, turns some basics of straight romantic comedy upside down, especially in how Bobby and Aaron negotiate nonmonogamy within their budding romance. 

I think Bros deftly (and not always perfectly) walks that line between honoring the uniqueness of gay men's relationships while still showing that, yes, love is a human universal and we all deserve to be loved well. The Big Mis focuses on a specific aspect of gay culture* --the difference between straight-passing gay guys and "gay-acting" gay guys. Basically, Bobby is more "gay acting" and his job literally revolves around gay history, as he is a curator for the first ever national LGBTQ+ history museum. Aaron is more "straight passing" and his job (lawyer) and hobbies (the gym, the music of Garth Brooks) is more, well, butch. Aaron asks Bobby to "tone it down" while meeting Aaron's parents, and you can guess how well that goes.

The trope of someone is being "too much" is fairly common within romcoms, but this particular interpretation of that trope is unique to the LGBTQ+ experience. I doubt straight people worry about their partner being "too straight" while meeting the parents.

That is what I love about Bros--it reflects (some aspects of) gay culture back at us, while also reflecting back some of the universal experiences gay and straight people share: being vulnerable is hard. Accepting others as they are is important to making a relationship work. Love is love is love. But also, love is not love is not love. Both are true.

The only things I didn't like about Bros are: 1) it's bit too self-aware in a way that comes off as cutesy or twee sometimes, 2) Billy Eichner really does pack the script with himself talking a mile a minute, forgetting to let the film breathe at times, and 3) uh, it's a romcom and I don't like romcoms. LOL.

But despite those little things, I really enjoyed Bros and would watch it again, which is the highest praise I can give a romantic comedy.

Grade: B+

*I make a lot of statements in this review about "gay culture" or "the gay experience" and I very much don't have that lived experience, so if I am talking out of my ass feel free to tell me so! 

Memoirs of a Young Psychopath

Movies: Pearl

Until this year, I was "meh" on Ti West's horror films. He directed The House of the Devil in 2009, which a lot of people really love, and I thought was good but a little boring. Then, he directed The Innkeepers in 2011 which I found really boring. He also directed The Sacrament in 2013, which was much better. 

Nine years later, he comes out with not one, but two horror films in one year that blew my fucking doors off! In March, we got X, which takes place in the late 1970s and is about a crew of adult filmmakers who rent a guest house on a farm from an elderly couple and secretly make a porno. I gave the movie a B+ when I first saw it, but upon rewatching it, I changed that grade to an A-. It's a really fun and funny slasher that also squeezes in some Deep Thoughts about aging and sexuality. Notably, actress Mia Goth plays both porn actress Maxine *and* the elderly woman Pearl, who murders everyone. 

Well, only a few months later, West comes out with a prequel to X about Pearl herself. Once again, Mia Goth plays the character, who we now see as a young woman. Pearl takes place in 1918, 61 years before the events of X. Pearl is probably somewhere between the ages of 18 and 22 in this movie, although she seems much younger--mostly due to Mia Goth simply looking young for her age, but also due to Pearl's immaturity and selfishness.

But it's hard to blame Pearl for these qualities, as she lives on an isolated farm with her incredibly strict immigrant mother (a German immigrant, to boot. Germans weren't looked too kindly on during WWI) and her catatonic father. Pearl is also married to a man named Howard, who is serving in the war.

Times are tough for Pearl: an influenza pandemic is sweeping the nation, her husband isn't there to support her, she has to feed and bathe her father and do a ton of farm chores, and her mother won't even allow her the money to go to the moving pictures, which is her favorite activity. Pearl wants to be a dancer and dreams of being in movies. But she is also aware that she's...different. She describes it as "I don't have something that other people have".

Pearl is filmed in gorgeous technicolor, with references to The Wizard of Oz as well as the films of Douglas Sirk. Sirk's films focus on women who are unsatisfied with their lot in life and were sometimes called "weepies". Movies like All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life are good examples to check out. And interestingly enough, although Pearl is a horror film, most of the movie is more of a mixture of the "women's weepies" genre plus some absurd comedy. The bodies don't start piling up until the second half of the movie. 

Pearl is so much fun. It's a good movie if you're dipping your toes into horror but don't want a lot of jump scares or really intense gore (there is some gore, but I didn't find it gratuitous). Mia Goth is delightfully unhinged as a young, psychopathic woman. Her needs and desires are more important than everyone else's and she will stop at nothing--including murder--to get her way. She's also just so darn cute!

With so many horror movies these days trying to be "about" something (and nothing wrong with that), it's nice to see a horror movie that is just fun, but not in a way that sacrifices quality. Pearl is much better than a low-budget slasher, but it's also much less intense than, say, an Ari Aster film. Highly recommended (alongside X) for longtime fans of horror and those just getting into the genre. 

Grade: A