A Ghost Story.

A Ghost Story is a quaint movie that dips its toe into the big existential questions, but retracts to tell a story about a ghost.

A Ghost Story begins and ends with the ghost’s relationship with his partner before and after he died. These parts are staggeringly intimate, you really believe the closeness between these two characters and the chosen boxed aspect ratio locks us in with them. There’s something entirely earnest about these sections of the film and book-ending it is. Between these two sections, we follow the ghost as he tries to traverse the afterlife through a series of interspersed scenes.

This movie has moments, stunningly beautiful and captivating moments, where the movie stops to make a statement about life and death. It does this like someone tasting wine, they try it in their mouth for a little bit and then they spit it out. A Ghost Story touches on legacy, memory, what happens when you die, history and the relationship between the living and the dead. Every instance of this is a shallow glimmer into something you wish it had dived fully into.

However, the way the movie flits from idea to idea somehow makes it more accessible. There’s a scene for everyone, one scene that will surely resonate with those that buy into this story.

For me personally, the scene/scenes that resonated with me most were the ones in which the ghost spoke to the other ghost that lives next door. These scenes were haunting yet warm, they also remind me of a video I made over three years ago.

Here’s the video:

 

Overall, A Ghost Story is like a field after a rainstorm. Some of the puddles are shallow, some of them come up to your knee and whether you find them or not depends on the path you choose to take. This film will resonate strongly with some and not at all with others, but it’s so earnest and personal at times that I would recommend it to anyone that’s willing to give it a try.

Wholesome Queer Media

Over this summer and pride month I’ve been reading and watching a lot of queer/lgbtqia+ media. What I’ve found, and what a lot of other people have found, is that a whole bunch of  queer of media is unrelentingly sad, miserable or pessimistic. We’re all haunted by the ‘bury your gays’ trope that pervades all media and finding something where everyone’s happy and alive at the end is difficult. So I wanted to make a handy list of wholesome nice queer media for those of you that experience the same struggle.

But I’m A Cheerleader (Gay & Lesbian) is a funny and fun loving movie that will make you laugh and fill your stomach with bubbling butterflies. It’s a light comedy about teenagers who are sent to the strangest conversion camp there is, the kids rebel and break free with the help of a few gay adults. The cast is fun, but the star of the show is the popping block colour set design and cinematography that has a sense of humour. Overall, just a really fun movie that most will enjoy.

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour (Lesbian) is a joyous book that manages to capture the essence of the golden era of Hollywood, a genre noir style mystery and a teenage love story all in one book. It’s a really easy read, I could hardly put this book down because I just needed to know what happened next. The twists and turns are exciting and you get heavily invested in these characters that you end up rooting for them from the second chapter. It will leave you warm inside with a longing for a California that only exists in movies.

Handsome Devil (Gay) is a movie filled with great acting and a genuine story that will give you flashbacks to school. This movie is about two boys in an Irish boarding school and is filled with the usual fare that you would expect. Andrew Scott and Fionn O’Shea really shine. The shot style and storytelling is very grounded, and while it does get a little sad it ends up being quite uplifting. It certainly left me smiling.

Go For It, Nakamura! (Ganbare, Nakamura!) (Gay) is possibly my favourite piece of queer media I’ve devoured all year. It’s a manga about a gay boy in high school who has a crush on his classmate and it’s the most precious and cute thing you will read all year. The art style is soft and really adds to the whole feel. It’s funny, adorable and extremely relatable. Please read about Nakamura being an awkward teenager who wants to be noticed by his crush and somehow manages to get octopus ink all over himself instead, I promise it will leave you with the biggest smile on your face.

I hope you enjoy these recommendations and the rest of your summer.

Dark And The Illusion Of Choice.

Dark is a sci-fi drama and it is just as dark as it proclaims to be.

On the surface, Dark appears to be about time travel, but underneath that there’s a story about control and free will. The futility of change within a structure larger than yourself, it’s about trying your best and failing. Every character is trying to take control of their life and change something or struggles to keep things the same. All of them fail.

You spend an awful lot of time with these characters, you get to know their lives and feel for them. When things finally unfold, you’re conflicted. You feel conflicted with every new piece of information, every turn of events leads you to evaluate and re-evaluate everything. There’s a constant sense of upheaval and the suspense continues throughout without causing fatigue.

This is because you’re allowed time to know, understand and even like the characters, the stakes are always high and the decisions always matter. The characters are forced to make decisions one way or the other, the is no other option. But at the end, it seems as though their choices never really mattered, which is an interesting philosophy to explore.

What if you were able to go back in time and change whatever you wanted, but when you came back to the present nothing had changed? What if time was a circle that you couldn’t break?

There’s a force, one you see and meet but never get to understand that is possibly behind everything and possibly has all the answers, but perhaps that is not so.

At the end of the season, Jonas sends himself on an errand. The errand may be a fool’s one, but what other choice does he really have if any at all?

The Importance of an Honest Portrayal.

The Shape of Water shows the reality of things for those of us that fit into a minority group, unlike a lot of movies that tell half truths of the stories of minorities, this movie does not shy away from showing the oppressors as they truly are. There is no white knight in this movie, the downtrodden band together and find a way to save themselves or die trying. The main character is a mute woman with visible scars, her friends consist of a black woman and a gay middle aged man. The character that comes to help them in the eleventh hour is a soviet spy, but also a scientist who wants to do good. Please also note that Michael Stuhlbarg is Jewish, which I feel is important to point out because of his possible reasons for choosing to star in this movie, but also the personal experiences he would have brought to his performance.

The reality of being a minority is that no white knight will come to save you from the oppression they don’t even see. This movie shows the reality of minorities looking out for each other. As an aside I view the fact that everyone’s okay with Eliza falling for the amphibian man from second zero is the portrayal of minority solidarity. In reality minorities look out for each other, support each other and hold each other up, it’s the only way we survive. These characters all saw a bit of themselves in each other and found compassion for one another while finding none of it in their oppressors.

The amphibian man is a metaphor for every minority, it’s easier to film the torture and pain of something inhuman, but the true genius is building him up and humanising him. The way the camera treats him in comparison to Strickland literally asks the question “who’s really the monster here?” This question isn’t posed in a kitsch or tacky way, it’s a genuine question that minorities want to ask the general populous every day.

Along with the genuine portrayal of minorities, the portrayal of oppression. The way it’s normalised, the way everyone reacts to the acts of oppression and abuse, the way no one bats an eye, the way the oppression is blamed on the oppressed. The way the camera treats these situations is so reflective of the real experience of those situations. It doesn’t shy away from showing the true horrors of humanity and in that way this is the most honest film on this subject that I’ve ever seen. I think it’s a truly powerful and important film.

It by Stephen King, a review.

On the surface, It is a story ultimately about friendship, relying on others, unity and how your childhood friends are the best friends you’ll ever have, which is pretty stereotypical of the 80’s. Underneath that there’s a little more to it, the whole childhood part is told in flashbacks and through this the story becomes about overcoming childhood trauma in an uncaring world where you have to fight to bring the good out in things.

Like anyone who likes horror/thriller movies (I lean more on the thriller side these days) and just loves movies in general, I’ve watched a whole lot of Stephen King adaptations and the one that hit me the hardest was Stand By Me, an adaptation of The Body a short story/novella about a group of kids trying to find a corpse in the woods. That story captures what it’s like to be a child on the cusp of awareness of yourself and the world around you so strongly I was captivated. It was so emotionally moving and actually made me cry, which is far more than any other Stephen King adaptation has done. Usually I find them lacking in character and plot, I could go on but Stand By Me had everything I could ever want from a movie about childhood until I saw It.

Ambiguity.

Recently, I watched Mulholland Drive and I’ve been wondering what it all meant and whether the conclusion I come to really matters at all. David Lynch is a master of surrealist media and people have been undecided on the meaning of his works since his first movie Eraser Head. He has become the face of strange and ambiguous storytelling, the phrase ‘Lynchian’ has been coined to describe his style of work.

In a world where we are often flat out told what things mean, where everyone is constantly searching for the meaning of things; things that do not mean anything or things whose meaning do not matter are dissected within an inch of their life, to the point where they both mean everything and nothing. The documentary Room 237 shows us as much, there aren’t too many unanswered questions in The Shining but even with this small amount of vagueness people will go to dizzying lengths to find meaning whether there is or isn’t any.

David Lynch’s films (and all vague media) have taught me the value of letting things sit, the value of letting things be. People’s views over time often change and that is also true for the meaning people find in media. Perhaps it would serve us better to let the film sit, savour the taste like a fine wine, before we decide what we think about it. Maybe we should be thinking about why the meaning matters and whose meaning matters? What’s more important, the artist’s intention or the viewer’s reading? Death of the author/artist is something to consider in these discussions.

I find that the simple act of ambiguity in film and media shows us something about humanity and the pursuit of meaning. Obviously all stories are trying to tell us something and there is a meaning to be discerned, but is such strenuous analysis worth more than coming to our own conclusions? The author/artist always has their own intentions but are those intentions more, less or equal to the way that the audience reads it? The answers to these questions differ from film to film and the like, context always counts, but it’s something to think about wherever ambiguity lies.

Childhood in Invisibility.

A review of Let The Right One In.

When you’re young, people will downplay the effects that bullying has on someone. The oppressive loneliness caused by the isolation, the constant fear of what might happen next, the guilt and shame that comes with thoughts of ‘they must be doing it for a reason’ and the anxiety brought on by the thought of another day of this. It’s all brushed aside as character building and kids just being kids.

Let The Right One In has something to say about this. Oskar, our protagonist, is a little weird but there’s nothing wrong with that besides the fact that he’s bullied for simply existing. He doesn’t seem to have any friends, his family seem to be hardly around and he’s often left to his own devices. He’s vulnerable.

He meets Eli, who happens to be a vampire, and they become friends. This may not seem like a problem, but Eli only looks like a child and it is unclear how old they really are. Eli is a being that holds tremendous power and vast knowledge and experiences over Oskar, who just so happens to be vulnerable.

At the end of the movie, Eli kills Oskar’s bullies and they run away together. This reminds of the stories of those that have been trafficked. They often run away from home and find someone that tells them they understand, provides that person with what they’ve been looking for, they’re enticed further from home and alienated from those that love them, then coerced or forced into sex work. In a way, Oskar is the same.

Oskar is dissatisfied with his life, terrorised at school and practically ignored at home, he has no one to turn to besides someone who is in an extreme position of power over him. Eli’s feelings about Oskar are ambiguous, but the story frames them as sympathetic and it is ultimately up to the viewer to decide whether their relationship is  exploitative or not.

Nocturnal Animals.

This is a cynical movie that’s about upper class white people and I love it and the superficial drama they create around themselves. Everything about it is so dry and raw, it leaves you feeling like sandpaper has been rubbed all over your body at the end. It’s a movie that doesn’t overstay its welcome and ended the exact moment I was hoping it would.

The structure is almost perfect in its rigidity (probably because it’s an adaptation of a book), the cinematography is sublime and perfectly contextualises the character’s view point, the characters aren’t necessarily relatable but you most definitely know or have met people like these character and they are wholly believable. The main actors are diverse and dynamic in their portrayals (Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal), but some of the background characters are a little lacking but it feels in theme with the overall character of the movie and the culture it explores.

The most interesting part of the movie are to two storylines that run parallel and the way that they interact with each other, foreshadowing, mirroring and the way they effect each other is enthralling.

It’s well worth a watch even if it does come off a little pretentious from time to time, but the characters portrayed are pretentious so if you can get over that then go watch it.

Why Mrs. Doubtfire Makes Me Angry.

This turned out to be more of a rant than a review, but I watched Mrs Doubtfire recently for the first time in literal years and I have to say that Mrs Doubtfire is the most white male middle class heap of crap I’ve ever seen pushed onto kids.

This guy quits a job just because he doesn’t agree with what they’re asking him to do and it’s not like on a moral or ethical basis he just doesn’t want to do it because of ‘artistic integrity’, just being able to do that is a wild display of his privilege. How many people do you know that can just quit their job today and be okay with it? He then goes against the rules his wife set for their children, acts recklessly and then has the audacity to call her boring for having a job and not wanting her house destroyed. After this he begins to subvert her in front of their children, he even acts violently in front of their children, yelling at them when their mother is an hour early to pick them up. He then harasses her over the phone for seemingly days, pretending to be someone else in order to illegally gain access to his children and his ex wife’s house. Don’t you think that that’s abusive behaviour? And don’t get me started on the crap he pulls when she starts seeing another man or the fact that the entire thing is wildly transmisogynistic as well as regular misogynistic.

“A flawed husband is better than none at all.” – acutal quote from the movie. Fuck that!

Kiznaiver Review.

Kiznaiver, at its heart is about opening your heart to others and how that can be one of the most difficult things for people to do. Our characters are forced to open their hearts to each other via a connection through pain, in hopes that through sharing their pain they can become close and achieve ‘peace’ or evidence of it. I will admit that the plot is buried and almost completely convoluted, but I’d say the same for Kill La Kill which was Triggers last major show, it makes little to no sense. The story’s interesting, but that’s about it, it gets you to ask a lot of questions and only answers a handful which would be fine with a competent plot but here it’s just kind of frustrating. It has all the hallmarks of typical Japanese tropes, the silent girl with NO personality that the main character is in love with (she has almost no personality, as the story develops she becomes almost a person, but that might be the part of the story), there’s the main character who doesn’t know how to do anything and never really asks questions, there’s the tsuntsun character, there’s the cutesy girl with the high pitched voice, there’s the irritating love triangle and then there’s the creepy weirdo played for laughs, it really has it all. It really is very Japanese and I think that the cultural difference leave me at a disadvantage while trying to understand just what Kiznaiver is trying to get at.

Despite all this, I watched every episode and I enjoyed it, probably because I know what to expect from Trigger, which is certainly not an understandable plot and a well woven story. What you get from Trigger are characters you can rally behind, well defined characters that are likeable despite and because of their flaws, expect spectacle and expect things that don’t necessarily make sense but are still enjoyable if you don’t think too hard about it. What makes this anime interesting and enjoyable was the development of the character’s relationships, they kept me coming back because I wanted to know how the events would affect their dynamics. Sadly the story really does have potential and ends up quite shallow, but if you’re looking for something kind of like Kiznaiver with a bit more substance then I’d suggest Zankyou No Terror/Terror In Resonance it follows a somewhat similar tale but is more of a suspense thriller with mystery elements than whatever you’d call Kiznaiver is.

Overall, I really enjoyed Kiznaiver and think it would have benefited from a second act or at least a few more episodes, either way I found it enjoyable and would recommend it to someone looking for something fun that doesn’t get too deep.