Category: reviews and thoughts

The Not-At-All-Awaited Gnatty Awards

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Here we are, the final day with 2018 swiftly approaching.

And very good riddance to 2017. Not that some great stuff didn’t happen but I am exhausted and so is most everyone I know.

We aren’t owed anything, god knows, but here’s hoping the new year brings with it some new energy for new hope.

As for me, I achieved my resolved goal of 2017, which was to start writing this blog. Good for me.

It was a pretty good year for films. I enjoyed an awful lot and I found an awful lot to be truly excellent (overlapping, but not unified, circles). And I finally faced the fact that I won’t personally be able to make everyone I think should see them watch all the films I enjoyed. Doesn’t stop me from buying them in hope, though.

Now without further ado, I present the final damned list of movies I saw in 2017 (for the first time, in a theater), and the not-at-all awaited Gnatty Awards. These are awards I award totally on my own recognizance and whim to the people I feel like in categories I made up. (I will be sticking to movies that came out new this year, instead of all the ones I’ve seen.)

Top 3 laughing movies:
3. Bad Mom’s Christmas
2. Lego Batman
1. Thor: Ragnarok

Top 3 crying movies:
3. Lady Bird
2. Gifted
1. Lucky

Top 3 angry movies:
3. Atomic Blonde
2. Hidden Figures
1. I Am Not Your Negro

Top 3 fist-in-the-air triumph movies:
3. Battle of the Sexes
2. Hidden Figures
1. Wonder Woman

Top 3 Action Films:
3. Hitman’s Bodyguard
2. Wonder Woman
1. Atomic Blonde

Top 3 Horror Films:
3. IT
2. Colossal
1. Get Out

Top 3 Scifi Films:
3. Thor: Ragnarok
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
1. The Shape of Water

Top 3 Romance Films: 
3. Call Me By Your Name
2. The Big Sick
1. The Shape of Water

Top 3 Drama Films:
3. Lady Bird
2. Lucky
1. Moonlight

Top 3 serious genre films:
3. Colossal
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
1. The Shape of Water

Top 3 lighthearted genre films:
3. Spiderman: Homecoming
2. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
1. Thor: Ragnarok

Top 3 surprisingly sweet & uplifting films:
3. Table 19
2. Logan Lucky
1. Tom of Finland

Top 3 things I was looking forward to but which turned out to be huge disappointments:
3. The Mummy
2. Vallerian and the City of A Thousand Planets
1. Dark Tower

Top 3 sex scenes:
3. Call Me By Your Name
2. Atomic Blonde
1. Professor Marston And the Wonder Women

Top 3 films that I was skeptical of but which turned out to be surprisingly good:
3. Baywatch
2. Blade Runner 2049
1. Spider-Man: Homecoming

Top 3 films that were fucking superb, but which I will never voluntarily watch again (probably): 
3. The Zookeeper’s Wife
2. Dunkirk
1. Baby Driver

Top 3 films I adored that didn’t fit in the above categories:
3. My Cousin Rachel
2. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
1. Kong: Skull Island

Here are the superlatives of the year:

Film I am most likely to watch eleventy billion times for the rest of my life: Thor: Ragnarok

Film I am betting folks didn’t see that I am going to forcibly show them: Logan Lucky

Film I am most likely to show to my mother: The Big Sick

Film I am most likely to show to my brother: The Hitman’s Bodyguard

Here is the full list of what I saw in the theater (with some duplicates, you’ll notice.)

Hidden Figures, 1/7/2017
Moonlight, 1/16/2017
Arrival, 1/28/2017 (first seen 2016)
XXX: Return of Xander Cage, 1/28/2017
Lego Batman, 2/10/2017
I Am Not Your Negro, 2/11/2017
The Space Between Us, 2/11/2017
Split, 2/11/2017
Cure for Wellness, 2/19/2017
Get Out, 2/24/2017
Moonlight, 3/3/2017
Logan, 3/4/2017
Table 19, 3/12/2017
Kong: Skull Island, 3/12/2017
Power Rangers, 3/25/2017
Life, 3/25/2017
The Zookeeper’s Wife, 4/8/2017
Gifted, 4/8/2017
Fate of the Furious, 4/14/2017
Postcards From The Edge, 4/26/2017
Colossal, 4/27/2017
Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2, 5/6/2017
Baywatch, 5/25/2017
The Circle, 5/26/2017
Alien: Covenant, 5/26/2017
Wonder Woman, 6/1/2017
Wonder Woman, 6/4/2017
It Comes At Night, 6/10/2017
The Mummy, 6/10/2017
Valley Of The Dolls, 6/14/2017
My Cousin Rachel, 6/18/2017
Baby Driver, 7/3/2017
Spider-Man: Homecoming, 7/7/2017
War for the Planet of the Apes, 7/15/2017
The Big Sick, 7/15/2017
Dunkirk (70mm), 7/20/2017
Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets, 7/21/2017
Atomic Blonde, 7/30/2017
Night of the Hunter, 7/31/2017
Atomic Blonde, 8/4/2017
Atomic Blonde, 8/5/2017
Wonder Woman, 8/11/2017
Dark Tower, 8/12/2017
Logan Lucky, 9/4/2017
IT, 9/13/2017
Mother!, 9/17/2017
Kingsman 2: the golden circle, 9/24/2017
The Hitman’s Bodyguard, 9/27/2017
Battle of the Sexes, 9/30/2017
The Mountain Between Us, 10/7/2017
Blade Runner 2049, 10/8/2017
Friday the 13th, 10/13/2017
Friday the 13th: Part 2, 10/13/2017
Professor Marston And The Wonder Women, 10/15/2017
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, 10/21/2017
Suburbicon, 10/28/2017
Lucky, 10/29/2017
Thor: Ragnarok, 11/3/2017
Murder On The Orient Express, 11/11/2017
Thor: Ragnarok, 11/12/2017
Justice League, 11/18/2017
Bad Mom’s Christmas, 11/25/2017
Lady Bird, 12/3/2017
Darkest Hour, 12/10/2017
The Shape Of Water, 12/10/2017
Tom of Finland, 12/16/2017
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, 12/20/2017
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, 12/24/2017
Molly’s Game, 12/29/2017
Downsizing, 12/29/2017
Call Me By Your Name, 12/31/2017

Thanks for everything, y’all, and I will see you in 2018

Quick Reviews: Darkest Hour and The Shape of Water

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[This post contains spoilers in the form of CWs for The Shape of Water – They’re in the very last paragraph if you wish to avoid them.]

Darkest Hour

I have no idea what twists of the tides of fates (or whose design) brought this film out in the same year as Dunkirk. I think it’s unfortunate for this film, though. Where Dunkirk took a well-known story and told it in a new way, bringing both the personal implications and the larger situation into focus, Darkest Hour was just kind of fine.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Gary Oldman played a freaking fantastic Churchill. It was very clear to me he put heart, soul and work into the role. But the story wasn’t told through any interesting framework. We weren’t getting any new perspective on it. The things the film chose to highlight were pretty predictable. It was a solid biopic, but I’d much rather have seen either a story I know less (maybe some later parts of Churchill in the war, or his political fall instead of the rise) or seen the story through someone else’s eyes.

I feel as though a very good candidate for re-centering the film would’ve been Churchill’s wife, Clementine Churchill, played by Kristen Scott Thomas. I feel as though the movie gave her short shrift. I would’ve loved to see more of her perspective and her story.

The framing character was, instead, Elizabeth Layton, Churchill’s secretary (played by Lily James). But we learned almost nothing about her except in relation to Churchill himself. The scraps we’re given of her past are not enough to root her solidly in the emotional reality of the film.

The film was overall well put together, but even though I was laughing, crying and being inspired at the right times, it feels bland in my memory.

I predict it’ll make it firmly into the rounds of movies teachers show the day before a holiday and will make no other particular dent on film history.

The Shape of Water

The first disclaimer is that I’m generally a Guillermo del Toro fan. I haven’t unreservedly loved every movie of his that I’ve seen, but I am frequently in love with something about them – the look, the mood, the themes, the surreality…

The Shape of Water I loved. It was a beautiful story compellingly told. The choices made in color palette and repeated imagery were striking and appropriate. The themes were resonant. I suspect when I watch it again, I’ll find more and more hidden things thrumming through it. This is del Toro at his best, I think.

Unlike some other films that are in the ‘best of del Toro’ category (Pan’s Labyrinth) this film was mostly heartwarming and lovely. (Not to say there aren’t awful scary danger parts. There are.) The characters are broad and rich and believable, even though the world they live in isn’t, particularly. Thus the 50s b-movie-style science fiction elements are rooted in deep and genuine emotion and elevated to something greater than one might expect.

It’s a grand romance in a strangely traditional Hollywood style, in spite of its scifi flavor.

I really, really enjoyed it. This is the stuff that keeps me coming back to del Toro’s films even after a few that aren’t so captivating. I know when he strikes it right, it resonates so deeply and beautifully I can feel it in my gut.

I will warn that one pet does die in the film. Also, there is a scene of sexual harassment. Just for y’all’s info.

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My current level of inability to cope with my life is represented by the 113 unread emails in my personal inbox. Not helped by the fact that I’m working this weekend because it’s finals.

Don’t let anyone kid you, college students — everyone hates finals. It’s not just you. Staff, profs, teaching assistants….anyone who has to deal with them.

In spite of extra work, I am going to try to get to see The Shape Of Water this weekend, and possibly also Darkest Hour.

Here’s some recommendations for folks who actually have time this weekend!

Netflix

First, I would like to note that Netflix has several big-time franchise movies right now, including Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (super fun) and Rogue One (super not-fun but quite good).

It also has one of my favorite cheesy action flicks, XXX.

The first time I saw this movie, when I got to the end of an early scene where our hero is jumping a motorcycle off a building that was in the process of exploding, I was like, “This is the best fucking movie I’ve ever seen.”

It isn’t, actually, but the action scenes are a lot of fun. I kind of love the whole franchise, tbh. The films are not an intellectual challenge or anything, but they’re playing into being exactly what they are – badass stunts and explosions aplenty.

In fact, let’s take a moment to consider the stunt persons. They are epic. I appreciate what they do.

I am also totally psyched for the new season of One Day At A Time that will be coming out in January. If you haven’t watched it, try season 1. It’s fun, thoughtful, kid-safe and charming.

Hulu

Hulu has Gifted, which I’ve watched some of and is quite good and Runaways, which is one of my favorite freaking Marvel comics runs of all time. The trailer made it look amazing, but I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.

They also have the adorable and under-rated Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

It’s a dancing movie about friendships among girls and the usual teenaged stuff. It has a great soundtrack and is quite a feel-good watch.

It also has a surprisingly great cast – Shannon Doherty, Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt are all in it. Also, watch for a random appearance from one of my faves, Robert Downey, Jr.

Prime Streaming

I got a delightful surprise this week when I came home one night to find out that Amazon’s streaming video is now accessible from my AppleTV (which is my household’s main source of stuff to go on the ticky-talky box). That’s probably neither here nor there to most of you, but I wanted to mention it, in case it was.

Prime has The Big Sick, a film I’ve mentioned favorably, before. It’s a warm and moving movie probably even if you’re not already on the Kumail Nanjiani bandwagon, which I certainly was as a huge fan of his stand-up.

An aside, I finally started listening to Nanjiani’s X Files podcast and it is a freaking delight.

They also have Mr. Robot, a tense techno-thriller show with some really interesting character stuff.

If you’re looking for something lighter, consider the action comedy Rush Hour 2. For some reason the first one isn’t on streaming, but the sequel is and I don’t think it’ll hurt from the lack of the first, if you haven’t seen it.

Kids

In term of movies for little observers, Amazon is weak on movie options, but they seem to have all the Christmas specials ever made right now. Hulu still has all the freaking Disney. A good one to try might be the kid-aimed sports movie The Mighty Ducks.

On Netflix, check out Zootopia, if you haven’t. It’s an animal-as-people movie that’s better and more thoughtful than I imagined it could be. They also have a metric tonne of Christmas stuff if that is your jam.

GOOD LUCK and see y’all next week.

 

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Happy Friday, nerds.

This weekend I am planning on seeing one or more of the following: Lady Bird, The Man Who Invented Christmas, Roman J. Israel, esq., and Coco.

Movies I’m looking forward to in the coming weeks with great glee include The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s Abe Sapien whump and romance au fanfic, Downsizing, which looks like a bizarre mid-life crisis fantasy film, and, of course, the new Star Wars. I already have it penciled in to cry miserably as soon as I see Gen. Organa come on the screen. I will, for the record, be saving The Last Jedi to watch with my mom when I head Southwards to see her for Christmas, so I will be maybe the last person to see it.

The sacrifices I make for family. *dramatic sigh*

Here are some streaming recs if you’re planning on staying in, this weekend!

Netflix

I finally started watching The Punisher this week. I thought it would be a tough watch because the character of Frank Castle pretty much equals wicked levels of violence. The show is, indeed, violent, but it also has deeply thoughtful engagement with its violence and with PTSD, the various costs of soldier-hood and with the emotional state of people who lose someone or lose part of themselves. All in all, I’m finding it a much easier watch than Jessica Jones (which was excellent, but suuuper difficult, for me) in spite of the violence.

If you’re in for something shorter, Netflix is streaming the biopic The Imitation Game. — I have been furious about the story of Alan Turing ever since I had first heard it. In spite of this movie’s flaws, it tells his story with compassion (though not in the depth I had hoped).

If biopics or Benedict Cumberbatch aren’t your thing, consider the film 9. It’s animated, but not for young kids. The story is pretty scary and deeply emotional. It’s a beautiful, but dark tale set after the apocalypse.

Hulu

Hulu has Contact – a big cerebral piece of science fiction starring Jodie Foster from the novel by Carl Sagan. It’s full of Ideas and well worth a watch.

Prime

Amazon has the only Thanksgiving film of which I am aware, Home for the Holidays. It’s a comedy about family bullshit, so cw for all that entails.

Kids

Amazon has the adorable and hopeful Happy Feet. Hulu has the 90s live-action George of the Jungle, which is extremely silly but has some good gags.

Netflix has the inspiring Queen of Katwe, true story of Phiona Mutesi, a chess champion that came up from slums in Uganda to become a competitive chess player. The film is not an easy watch, as it is unflinchingly honest about poverty and its consequences, but it is a great story and done with all the polish you’d expect from a Disney film.

As a bonus, you’ll come out with this stuck in your head:

which is fun.

I hope y’all have a great weekend!

What’s funny? The Curse of Corrosive Snobbery

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[This post contains spoilers for A Bad Moms Christmas and Bridesmaids]

A friend of mine, after I posted about not liking cringe humor a few weeks back, asked me what kind of humor I do like in movies.

She loves lots of cringe humor and considers that we have very similar senses of humor (we definitely find a lot of the same stuff funny) and wondered, I think, where the disconnect is.

I generally don’t consider myself a fan of comedy movies qua comedy movies. So many of them seem to feature humor that is cruel and punches down (humor that hinges on mocking people who are already disadvantaged in our culture), or takes someone else’s embarrassment and expects me to laugh at it.

A prime example of this kind of humor is Bridesmaids, which I went to see because all the media around it kept harping on the notion that it was a make or break for women in comedy — as though if that movie failed, there would be a decade before there were any more comedies featuring women.

As it was, it did pretty well and paved the way for The Heat, Girls Trip and Pitch Perfect and a lot of the other great women-led comedies of the past several years. (Not that it was the only thing paving the way for these films, but without it, some of them may not have been green lit.)

I found a lot of the movie terribly funny, but some scenes made me squirm and at least one made me want to wither and die right there in the theater. The scene where one of the characters, bitter that everyone else can afford to fly first class and she can’t, gets super drunk and makes a scene on the plane.

Watching someone continuously and egregiously push social boundaries like that tweaks my anxiety in the worst way. I’m sure there’s plenty of psychological issues inherent in my reaction, but it goes well beyond finding it not funny. It hurts.

I enjoy absurdist humor. I enjoy fourth-wall breaking and self-aware self-mockery. The Heat‘s humor all came out of the main characters being unapologetically what they were and then doing the best they could. They weren’t incompetent or bumbling, but they did behave outside of expectations for their jobs and gender sometimes. They felt real and honest and well-drawn. Most of the humor came out of their methods conflicting with each other and how they each learned to roll with the other’s style.

So I don’t actually hate comedies. I like them. But I’m wary of embracing them all sight unseen as a group the way I do scifi films or horror films. Yes there are films I can’t stand in the latter two genres, but there are a lot fewer and it feels like the reasons I don’t like those films are individual and specific rather than a systemic issue that builds to a whole sub-genre of things that make me squirm in discomfort.

Of course, this disinclination to engage with an entire genre can lead me to miss stuff that I should see.

This weekend, I saw A Bad Moms Christmas with a friend. In spite of my adoration of Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell, I hadn’t seen the first film in the franchise. I saw this one because I’ve been having a nagging feeling that missing the first one was an error.

BMC may be my new favorite Christmas movie. It was hilarious. It was also moving in places, but wasn’t too heavy. Perhaps the funniest scene in it involved one of the main characters waxing the genitalia of a male stripper and having a romantic meet-cute conversation with him at the same time. It was genuinely a sweet conversation but the juxtaposition of the sweet words with over-exaggerated waxing sound-effects and matter of fact descriptions of what was going on out of the camera’s sight lines made it so fucking funny to me.

Everyone in that scene was happy. No one was (emotionally) uncomfortable. Yet I laughed my ass off.

Humor and laughter are a way of processing disrupted expectations and assumptions. So is anxiety. I almost feel like they’re two areas of a spectrum the way that anger and sadness are two areas of the spectrum of dealing with hurt and disappointment. It’s not really a surprise to me that something that provokes laughter in one person might well provoke anxiety in another.

Opening myself up to a broader range of art always feels like a good thing to me. And the knee-jerk snobbery and fear that leads me to avoid entire franchises or entire genres, sometimes always winds up leading me astray in the end.

So I don’t know exactly where to draw the lines. Maybe they should just go entirely. After all, being anxious for a little while in a movie isn’t the worst thing in the world. But, of course, lines always get drawn because I can’t see everything. We’ll see.

In the meantime, here’s a short (and incomplete) list of comedies I really, really enjoyed:

The To-Do List

Love and Friendship

Pitch Perfect

Obvious Child

Dear White People

Top Five

What We Do In The Shadows

Grandma

Deadpool

What do all these films have in common? Not freaking much, as far as I can tell.

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Hey all. I’m seeing Justice League this weekend, and I may also try to get to Lady Bird.

Here are some streaming recs for this week.

I shy away from recommending things that I feel like everyone has seen, but in truth there is nothing everyone has seen. So today I’m going to rec some stuff I believe was widely viewed, and which is good enough to justify that popularity.

Netflix

Netflix has the incomparable Men In Black. I wind up loving a lot of movies based on comic books. This one’s antecedents are in a relatively obscure indie that started coming out in the early nineties. The movie was enough of a powerhouse at the box office to create a franchise. No doubt this was in part due to Will Smith’s starring role. Coming just after his role in Independence Day, Men In Black solidified Smith’s ability to carry off an action comedy role.

Smith wound up starring in a ton of scifi action movies over the following decades. And references to this movie still float around my cohort to this day.

The film also capitalized on the popularity of tv’s the X-Files, which was a strong performer throughout the mid nineties.

It’s really quite funny and full of some great action scenes and one-liners.

Rated PG-13, Men in Black is safe for a lot of kids, I should think.

Hulu

Based on the classic TV show from the 60’s and 70’s that many folks of my generation saw in reruns, the 90s Mission Impossible movie adaptation took a lot of well -known tropes from the show and gave them a high Hollywood shine.

Scenes and tropes from this movie (and from this franchise) wound up referenced in a lot of other places. So you might see something you recognize, even if you haven’t seen it before.

Mission Impossible is also rated PG-13, but the violence in it is more realistic, as is the peril. I wouldn’t recommend it for kids.

Amazon

Amazon has the 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility starring Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, and Kate Winslet. I had already been an Austen-head (Aust-fan? Austling?) for years when it came out and it’s since become one of my comfort movies.

I saw it on a very awkward date with a fellow in college, but I love it anyway. Thompson, in addition to starring, was the person who adapted the novel for the screen. I think it’s a fantastic job, in spite of the many differences from the book.

It’s rated PG and is fine for kids, I believe, though I don’t know how interested that they’d be.

Kid Friendly

Check out E.T. on Netflix (the first movie I remember seeing in the theater), or on Hulu, check out a bunch of classic Disney films, including one of my favorites as a kid, The Rescuers.

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Have a good weekend, folks!

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Believe it or not, I have trouble finishing movies by myself.

It’s difficult to force myself to sit through things that are at all emotionally difficult. Left to my own devices, I tend to watch stuff that is low-stakes or cheesy or that I’ve seen before — sometimes all three!

There are plenty of movies I’ve seen a ton of times, as a result of this tendency. I don’t get people who can only watch something once (or read, or hear or play something only once). I mean – it’s okay. I just don’t get it.

I will watch certain movies just to experience the moods inhabit, or to revisit the characters like old friends. Sometimes it’s just to scratch an undefinable itch in my brain. Like when you hear a snippet of a song you love and then you have to go listen to the whole thing.

Sometimes I re-watch a movie chasing whatever head-space it put me in the first time I ever saw it. I have at least one movie I am literally not allowed to watch more than once a year because if I did, I’d watch it constantly chasing the mental space it brings. I usually watch it even less, even though it’s one of my favorites of all time. I want it to retain the maximum possible impact.

Then there are other films I just watch whenever. I can’t even think of a through-line that these movies have other than they don’t jangle my anxiety. Some of them because they aren’t that kind of film, but more of them, I suspect, because I’ve seen them so many times they’ve been de-fanged.

Watching a new movie is something I need to be in the right mood for. It’s easier in the theater when I have no control over when the film starts or stops. It’s one of the reasons I keep on with seeing so many movies in the theater.

It’s easier for me to watch at home if someone else is with me, too. Particularly someone who hasn’t seen the film before. I am fortunate enough to have some friends who trust me when I invite them into unknown fiction, so I get to do this on a pretty regular basis.

And sometimes I can force myself to keep on through something difficult. I watched season 2 of Netflix’s Daredevil in 10 minute increments with large pauses to calm down in between. I was also sick enough at the time to feel hazy and somewhat emotionally distant about the grimness and violence.

It’s funny. I know it is. Because I do love movies. And I do love fictions. And some of the ones I love are full of gore and awfulness. I am a huge fan of certain kinds of horror movies. I also love cheesy action and that can be full of violence, too. The thing that gets me is emotional connection to violence. I can’t really watch realistic war movies. I have trouble with torture scenes, particularly ones where someone’s head is being fucked with. On the same spectrum: I can’t watch embarrassment comedy. It really quickly overwhelms any emotional distance I have and makes me profoundly uncomfortable.

All this is apropos of nothing in particular. Just kind of a note to say – however you interact with stories, it’s fine. We’re all weird, somehow. This is just one way that I am. And raking myself over the coals (or being pushed by others) has never even come close to getting me past it.

I decided at some point to give myself a break and roll with it. It’s one of those arenas it’s much easier to change your environment and the way it interacts with you than it is to change yourself to fit the environment.

Life is already hard – don’t make it harder, if you can avoid it. Embrace the weirdness of your brain and find a way to work with it. Your story-times will be happier and so will you.

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I have the day off from work, today and have gotten very little done.

I don’t have much in the way of either streaming recs or stuff I’m going to see. I’m seeing Thor for the second time this weekend, but there seems to be a kind of a lull before most of the Christmas movies and Oscar hopefuls hit.

I thought I’d take a bit of time to highlight some movies on streaming that I wasn’t particularly fond of, but which might tickle your fancy.

Chappie is a story about an AI’s awful childhood told by the director of District 9. It is extraordinarily gritty and violent and had a lot of elements that irritated me (particularly in conjunction with some other AI movies I saw around the same time, but that’s another post). It was interesting and well-done, with really well fleshed-out characters–just not at all my cup of tea.

If you’ve seen District 9, you’ll find it has some similar themes and flavors.

Chappie is streaming on Netflix.

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Bound is a 90s thriller containing lesbian themes that gave a bunch of wlw at my college the hots for Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly (especially Gershon). It is a difficult watch because (again) it’s full of violence, but it does have a hopeful ending for the lesbian couple.

Honestly, I haven’t watched it all the way through since it was in the theater, but I remember it being well done.

The film is much harsher than this trailer makes it look, as I recall. Bound is streaming on Hulu.

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What If is a movie about profoundly unhealthy relationships and profoundly bad boundaries. It has stupendous actors and great performances, but is billed as a romantic comedy. I think if I had gone into it expecting a movie about unhealthy relationships with bad boundaries and unlikeable characters, I would have enjoyed it a lot better. It was billed as a romcom. Viewed as a romcom, it is awful.

[CW for transphobic language towards the end of the trailer. As I said, unlikable characters.]

What If is streaming on Amazon Prime.

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And now, I am heading back to tempering some epic laziness with a tiny smattering of chores.

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It’s finally getting genuinely cold, here. Today is clear and bright with a crisp breeze. It’s just the kind of autumn day I like the best. It makes me want to take a journey (not a trip…a serious Journey) or contrarywise to do picturesque fall things like baking or trekking through the woods in big boots and a chunky sweater or reading in a big chair under a hand-knitted blanket with hot tea at my elbow.

Of course, I work at a university, so autumn is usually the time of year I am least able to do things like that. Fortunately for me, actual fall weather held off till the second week of November, here. I can do all the picturesque things I want in the deep dark of evenings when the sun sets an hour and a half before I get off work.

It’s a season for comfort in food, in living space and in mind. We sit in the brief pause between the Halloween feasting season and the endless festive crawl that is the Thanksgiving into Hanukka into Christmas (and in particular all the relentless commercialized frivolity the latter exposes us all too, which are awful even if Christmas is a holiday you celebrate and can be a freaking apocalyptic nightmare if you don’t).

Just anticipating the mix of good and bad of stress and fun together that the Festive Season represents can make me feel as small and irrational as Gir in Invader Zim. Who eats his cupcake and then cries about it being gone.

Gir crying and saying 'Awww...I miss you, cupcake.'

We can all take this pause before we’re exposed to endless parties with uncomfortable co-worker chitchat and tense family meals where you’re just bracing yourself for some relative to say something microaggressive (or, indeed, just aggressive) about something near and dear to your heart, to feed our souls before the storm hits.

I feed mine with comfort foods and with comfort fictions. After the spook-fest of Halloween, I often like some serious rose-colored glasses viewing and reading material. It’s the time of year I’m most likely to re-read the Oz books, for example. Or to watch some of my favorite classic movie musicals like Hello, Dolly or Singin’ In the Rain.

Sometimes I also like to re-watch favorites from when I was a kid like The Muppet Movie or Pollyanna or the Winnie the Pooh Disney movie.

I also like shows with unreasonable amount of idealism (Vicar of Dibley) or an unreasonable amount of fantasy wish fulfillment (Leverage).

The real trick is to find something that I’ve never seen before that feeds the gaping maw of my small, irrational feelings to stave off the weltschmerz that winter can bring.

In the same way that it can be difficult, in adulthood, to find something that *blows your mind* and excites and captivates you as much as the things you loved in your youth, it can also be difficult to find anything that makes you feel as safe and as positive.

This is the time of year I go out on limbs for high-quality schmaltz. I like to find small, happy stories that make the best of the world shine a little brighter. I think this is the impulse at the back of the scores and scores of truly awful Christmas films and specials that infest everywhere in December. But I am looking for something more emotionally resonant than those — something that can truly soothe the savage anxiety brain-weasels and make the dark seem cozy instead of opressive.

It’s rare enough that I am not sure I can name the last time I saw a film that struck me this way, though a few things I’ve seen this year vibrate on the same frequency.

Table 19 is a comedic drama that has realistic and bitter moments, but has an overall warm and human feel that makes it well worth the ride. It’s difficult to describe without giving away the twists and turns but suffice it to say: the trailer is not remotely using the full emotional palette.

The Big Sick is on the very short list of romantic comedies that I adore. Perhaps because it’s a story straight out of real life. Perhaps because the comedy is tempered with plenty of heavy things. Probably, though, it’s just because it doesn’t follow any of the stupid compulsory-heterosexuality tracks that romcoms often do.

Logan Lucky is a story about people being much more clever and devious and ingenious and persistent than other people believe possible. And then developing a nefarious plan that is applied for good. It felt almost like a lost Leverage episode to me, in some ways.

Hidden Figures is another inspired-by-life movie about awesome women kicking ass against a system that is one hundred percent designed to hold them back. It also has bonus space nerdery. (Space nerdery is always a point in something’s favor for me.)

Gifted is a movie about family being difficult and human and also being super important.

I’m sure I’ll encounter more movies that are almost right before next fall. And if I am very lucky, maybe I’ll find a film that will be worthy of watching in a double bill with The Music Man….while sitting under a hand-knitted blanket with hot tea at my elbow.

In the meantime, I wish you mashed potatoes and gravy.

metagnat

[This post contains one spoiler for Thor: Ragnarok.]

I saw Thor: Ragnarok this weekend and really enjoyed it. I’m not going to review it cause you already know whether you’re going to see it or not.

It did introduce one of my favorite concepts from the comics, though it did it more or less in passing and failed (as the movies often do) to explore or address the implications of it.

In Thor: Ragnarok, Bruce Banner finds he has been under and living as the Hulk for multiple years and he has this moment of deep fear. While he used to feel both he and Hulk each had a hand on the wheel, he said, he feels like this time “Hulk was in the driver’s seat and I was in the trunk.” The tension between Hulk and Banner having to share one body and having totally contrary needs, goals and pleasures is one of the things I find most fascinating about the character(s).

Bruce Banner from the movies saying 'I'm not even sure.'

Bruce Banner in Marvel comics is a bitter, bitter man (when he’s alive, which is a whole other discussion which we’ll sigh and file under “because comics”). He resents the Hulk for taking huge swaths of his life. He fears the return of the Hulk as this force in himself he can’t control or make decisions about.

comic panel from Indestructible Hulk
Bruce Banner speaking to Maria Hill in issue one of “Indestructible Hulk”

It’s a really excellent metaphor for living with a mental illness. Mark Waid, the writer of some of my favorite Hulk stories explicitely compares it to managing a chronic health condition. If you can’t kill it, you have to find a way to live with it as best as possible.

Panel from issue one of Indestructible Hulk

One of the things I hate the most about my depression is the time and energy it steals from me. I think about where I could have been and what I could have achieved if I wasn’t constantly battling with this force inside of me that tries to make my decisions.

It’s a chronic thing I have to manage and figure out how to live with. There have been times it takes up so many resources I feel like the only thing I’m getting done is staying alive. It’s demoralizing.

Bruce Banner spent decades in the comics universe trying to figure out how to get rid of the Hulk. He evenutally realizes it’s not possible and starts to try to figure out how to manage it. And to manage his condition, he seeks help. He knows he can’t do it alone. The Hulk, by definition, is out of his control.

That doesn’t mean he has to be outside all control.

I mean, the metaphor does break down. I only wish my depression gave me near-invincibility and near-infinite strength as powers instead of “has to berate myself for 45 minutes to get out of bed” or “doesn’t think I deserve to eat” powers.

But even one of the ten smartest people in the Marvel universe knows you can’t go it alone.