Shorts Week

 So in my last post I left you all on somewhat of a cliffhanger, what did I even think about the Oscar-nominated movie Train Dreams? Well I'm here to tell you 

My Special Boys

 As of writing my last post the only stand out movie that I had seen lately were Iron Lung and Train Dreams, even though Train Dreams was technically this week. 

I had heard a lot of bad things about Train Dreams online. People didn't like the voice over and didn't think it had much going for it, or they thought it had kind of conservative politics. I was dubious then, about what I might think of this movie.

Well frankly I needn't have worried, and now I think I'm pretty silly for ever worrying in the first place. People may dislike voice over, but I famously love it. I even love the voice over in Blade Runner, the all-time most hated voice over ever put to film. Of course I liked the voice over in Train Dreams, because I enjoy prose and third-person narration is the only way to truly recreate prose for the filmic medium. 

I do think the film probably has something vaguely conservative to say about how cool it is to have a wife and a kid and live in rural America. But frankly the film treats people with such nuance and kindness and open invitation that reading a conservative mission into it probably says more about the person saying it than the movie.

I see this issue a lot in modern amateur film criticism. I can't stop thinking about the online reaction to One Battle After Another, and specifically Teyana Taylor's character Perfidia Beverly Hills. Many people, including dear friends and relatives of mine, have criticised her portrayal as in some way racist. People say that PTA is saying that black women are all way too into sex and hate their families and are too aggressive. This betrays to me a fundamental flaw in watching. To me, the idea of seeing Perfidia go through everything that she went through and decide that she is treated by the material as somehow evil or particularly immoral, is insane. I felt great empathy for Perfidia's plight, and I found the film supported this reading whole heartedly. There are many scenes of her quietly grappling with what she's going through, and the film pretty much portrays her as a badass revolutionary who's too good for our sweet and beautiful Pat/Bob. To suggests that Perfidia is one-note enough to be a wholly negative portrayal of a black woman is honestly quite insulting to Teyana's performance, which is easily one of the best I've ever seen.

Teyana Taylor, looking cool as hell as Perfidia Beverly Hills

Aside from this, these people always neglect the other black women in the film. No respect is given to Regina King or Junglepussy or Chase Infiniti who play very different kinds of black women who are complex and interesting characters all in their own right. It also neglects to acknowledge that every member of the French 75 is shown as basically incompetent and prone to ratting everyone else out. Which also shouldn't be taken as an overall insult to leftist revolutionaries because Sensei is the best character and is a very successful leftist revolutionary.

Regina King doing what I should be doing and not listening to the criticism

The thing is that PTA basically goes to every length to make a beautiful, woke kind of movie, and I'm yet to hear an argument for it not being essentially a leftist masterpiece that isn't directly answered by the facts of the text or doesn't basically amount to the characters not all looking at the camera and telling us exactly what kind of communist they are.

Anyway none of that is about Train Dreams, but it's a good example of how we all need to put our thinking caps on a little bit with regards to aesthetic representations of conservative values, and what may or may not support them.

Also I went to go see Iron Lung again because I think it's basically delightful to me. That is my third special boy, for the special boys sections.

Shorts Forever

Later this week I had to review some horror shorts for a website I write for. I already reviewed them there so I have no interest in doing so here. You can go to THIS PAGE if you want to know what I thought about those shorts.

video so good it has a Wikipedia page

Other than that I watched a short that many would not consider a movie, however recently I've come around to thinking of it as such. That's right, this week I watched My Weekend as a 28 Year Old in Chicago. More than just having a great and evocative name, I consider this to be a great work of our current decade. It captures a kind of performance and style and irony that is typical of present day 28 year olds. This is basically American Psycho for my generation, and I find it very powerful and good.

I logged it on letterboxd this time around, which I suspect will be somewhat controversial. But I do consider this a movie, and an important one at that, so I logged it anyway.

Muppet Time

I watched TWO sort of muppet medias this week, though one of them doesn't really have muppets and is widely hated by true muppet heads.

First of all though, I watched Seth Rogan's muppet show reboot attempt. While I do want the show to get picked up and I think Rogan and the gang have a really good vision for the show, I didn't like the actual episode very much. I think there were too many musicals numbers and not enough other kinds of sketches or performances. The muppets all have very different skills and they should get to showcase them. Also I guess they fired Walter, which seems really mean, I miss Walter a lot. Still, I'm glad I at least get more time with Scooter, my close friend Scooter the muppet.

my fav muppet Scooter

Other than this I watched the movie Saturday Night. I have some pre-existing beef with this film because I didn't like that they gave it the same name as my favourite James Franco documentary. That doc is truly terrible, but I find it delightful, and I fear that the new movie will bury it further into obscurity. Anyway I liked the movie. It wasn't very well received by basically anyone, just like real SNL, but I found it very fun and impressive and I thought the cast were all funny and talented, just like real SNL.

Cinema Peak

I went to see two really good films at the cinema this week, Yi Yi and The Secret Agent. Yi Yi is a 3 hour Taiwanese family melodrama from 2002 that I've been meaning to watch for years, and The Secret Agent is one of this years Oscar contenders that I'm trying to see all of.

I thought Yi Yi was exactly as good as everyone says it is. It's the 12th highest rated film of all time on letterboxd and I think that's very deserved. It's a perfect film for me personally (huge 3 hour melodrama fan) and made me cry a lot. Though it took me a while in to know how I really felt about it. The film looked really great the whole time, but I wasn't sure if I really knew where it was going or whether I liked where it was going. It's very strangely paced and that makes the watching experience slightly frustrating the first time around. But since it all comes back together at the end in a really good way I think this is more my issue than Yi Yi's

The Secret Agent I felt very similarly about. It was difficult to know what to think since many sequences felt oddly drawn out and there were some tangents and dropped plotlines that felt really bizarre. In the end the film completely justifies all of this though, so I left very pleased with the film overall. If it wins BP then I'll be happy.

BONUS TV ZONE

Lately I've been rewatching Schitt's Creek. The news of Catherine O'Hara's passing hit me very hard and I've been struggling to come to terms with it. She was one of my favourite comedic actors ever, and has brought me so much joy and laughter over the years, 71 feels so cruelly early to lose her.

I don't think Schitt's Creek is a perfect show, but more important than that, Catherine is giving one of the best performances ever in it, and it's probably the most calming and comforting show in the world to me. Since the sun hasn't show itself in the British sky since 2025, some time in that sunny little Canadian town is exactly what I need. 

my beautiful goth-adjacent queen