movies Archives - Egregious

movie reviews, movies

Sara’s 2025 top movies

2025-12-30 /
This wasn’t much of a movie year for me, and I’ve got no good reason why. I didn’t love much of what I did watch — but it’s hard to find really good stuff when you’re not getting away from major releases, many for kids, and things you know will be slop. (Why, why, why do I subject myself to so many live action remakes?)

I only watched twenty new movies this year, which is a much smaller number than pre-2025 movies I watched. Most of what I did watch was intended to share stuff I love with my teenager. Otherwise, I was watching lots of TV shows while playing games, cleaning, and being generally idle.

That said, I did watch twenty new movies, so I can pull together an unenthusiastic top ten.
1. KPop Demon Hunters: Far and away my favorite of the year was Kpop Demon Hunters. It’s rare that I enjoy whatever is most-hyped, and I didn’t expect I’d love this one so much. What a treat to discover a wonderfully tropey plot with the catchiest music and gorgeous animation. I still don’t think I’ve heard of anyone watching it who isn’t won over a little bit. We won’t discuss how many times I rewatched this, and how the ending made me cry every time.
2. Frozen proshot: This is kind of cheating because it’s based on older media, but I was delighted by the proshot of the Frozen Broadway show. I have such a soft spot for these flicks. My eldest was exactly the right age for them, so I have a lot of nostalgia. Plus, the show fixes a lot of the first movie’s weaknesses (like the saggy, songless ending) and the performances are grand. I rewatched it a few times to flap my hands with delight.
3. The Naked Gun: Nostalgia wins again, I guess? I’ve missed this kind of silly comedy movie. One of the Lonely Island guys updated a familiar format to pander to Millennials. It’s easy to watch with plenty of LOL moments. The light emotional weight allowed this to float to the top of my list, although now I question its position.
4. Red Sonja: This digital release flew under most radars, but it’s an extremely solid workhorse of a fantasy movie. Well-written and -acted, calling back to Gale Simone’s comics run, I found this pushed every single fantasy button I have. I’d watch it along with classics like Dragonheart.
5. Predator: Badlands: I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to enjoy this one so much. Trachtenberg’s Prey was a wonderful movie, too. But while Prey gave us a girl-and-her-dog type movie, this one is a road trip buddy comedy where they fall in love and adopt a kitten. I wish the fandom for P:B was a lot bigger because I could really get into it. I also think we should just let Trachtenberg make however many movies he wants in this franchise, forever and ever.
6. Materialists: This is a flawed but mostly pleasant romcom that didn’t have to work hard to make me happy. I always judge new movies harder than whatever comes out of the vault; Materialists can go toe-to-toe with many of the romcoms I happily rewatch every year. I wish the lead three actors were different, though. I don’t think they liked the screenplay, so we got weird performances out of them. Celine Song can and has done better.
7. You’re Cordially Invited: I love romcoms. I LOVE ROMCOMS. Okay? This one lacks the artsy, thoughtful vibes of Materialists, shooting for general silliness. It does a great job. Reese Witherspoon always has great taste in projects, and Will Ferrell is an underrated romantic hero. It’s forgettably confectionary, but sometimes that’s what you want.
8. Sinners: This one is much higher on most sensible lists. What’s not to love about a prestige director doing vampires with such texture, passion, and attention to detail? I just found I didn’t love it for the same reason I don’t love its spiritual predecessor, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn. The changes in mood and genre don’t work for me personally. I’m hoping this one gets overloaded with Oscars, though.
9. Weapons: It’s more watchable than Barbarian, but I liked Barbarian better. The vibes of Weapons were a delight while I watched it. I walked away feeling hollow, and hearing the creator’s intent (it’s about alcoholism) didn’t convince me that the execution served his purpose. I did enjoy this one a lot. Over time, I’ve grown more resentful, hating how it treated the gay characters.
10. Mickey 17: I often say “I have never met a science fiction movie I don’t love,” and this is true of Mickey 17. The flaws in Bong Joon Ho’s sophomore outing are too numerous to summarize. But it’s also a freakin adorable movie with Robert Pattinson Doing A Voice. I would have rated this one higher if its third act hadn’t been a wee bit dull.
I know that doesn’t sound like a lot of excitement for a top ten, but it’s still better than what I have to say about everything on the back half of the list.

I liked Tron: Ares more than I expected, but I had to skip around the Jared Leto parts because he’s revolting. Honestly, I probably just enjoyed the edit of the movie I made in my head more than the movie itself. This would have topped my list if anyone but Jared Leto had played Ares.

Zootopia 2 was fine for a sequel, but the base conceit is too fascist for redemption. I really liked The Minecraft Movie for being old man yaoi — but I also forgot about it the instant it turned off. Everything else new I watched this year, I don’t even wanna bother typing about.

What did you watch this year? What was your favorite?
Comment

Sara Reine

Keep Reading

Movie Review: Weapons (2025) ***
2025-08-31

Movie Review: Marry Me (2022) ****
2024-02-10

Movie Review: Chopping Mall (1986) *****
2024-02-14
movie reviews, movies

The Sin of Arrested Development in Longlegs (2024)

2024-08-23 /

“I bled…bled…bled…bled…“

Giving birth is body horror.

The first time I made a human, they became stuck inside my pelvis. My vagina was stretched around their head. Despite the needle jammed into my spine, I could feel it: the tearing, the pressure. They stayed there for so long. The nurse put a hook into the baby’s skull to track the heartbeat and make sure we weren’t dying. I reached down and touched this hairy bulging thing coming out between my thighs and I kept crying because it wouldn’t come out.

I did bleed.

The second time I made a human, some vessel on the outside of my uterus ruptured. My abdominal cavity flooded with blood. Myself and my baby immediately began to die. They performed full-depth cuts through every layer of my body, ripped me open wide, and yanked the baby out.

He was dead. They woke him up.

I needed a transfusion.

“I was a handful as it weres. Momma always hated me ’cause how I’d come out wrongly when I was borned. Bled her up too much.“

You go through the horror of it because you get a baby at the end.

What a reward for the pain: something so small, so needy, so dependent upon you. They love unconditionally. They know none of your flaws, and they give you purpose.

They don’t stay babies.

Someday, in a time that arrives so quickly, the little ones grow up. You can watch it happening day to day. Sometimes it seems like they take a longer nap than usual, and when they get up, they’re just about an inch taller.

Sometime around nine or ten years old, they’ve lost all the baby parts. All the squishy cute pieces are gone. They’re starting to think for themselves, turning to the world outside, and having lives of their own.

They don’t need you as much.

They start to get long legs.

“I can’t believe it’s gonna be your birthday again so soon.“

Dolls never grow up.

They don’t have needs.

But if you want your child to stay a doll — if you want to keep them from reaching adolescence and adulthood — there’s only one way to really go about it.

You can’t let them grow.

If you accept the state of frozen development, you’re accepting destruction of the child, the baby you made, the sacrifice it took from your body. You’re accepting the annihilation of an entire family.

“You’re not a child because you were allowed to grow up. This is a cruel world. Especially for the little things. Not all of them are allowed to live.“

Comment

Sara Reine

Keep Reading

Movie Review – TRON: Ares (2025)
2025-10-25

Movie Review – TRON: Legacy (2010) – **
2024-05-09

Movie Review: What Women Want (2000) ***
2024-11-22
movie reviews, movies

What does the end of Monkey Man (2024) mean?

2024-04-24 /

MONKEY MAN is a John Wick-like action flick where Wick isn’t motivated by the death of a cute dog, but the rage of social inequity. Instead of Keanu Reeves, we have an extremely beautiful Dev Patel making his debut as auteur. He’s been training for this. Not only is Patel’s excellent physique ready for an action vehicle, but he’s been priming us for mythic arthouse flicks with queer undertones since The Green Knight (2021).

As the story goes, Monkey Man was initially slated for a release on Netflix. Then Jordan Peele — an auteur legendary for dancing the line of metaphor and literalism — saw the movie, and he said something like, “Oh no, this is way too awesome. This needs to be seen on big screens.” There is no evidence that Peele kicked his feet and squealed with delight while watching this, but I like to imagine he did.

Spoilers ahead!

In Monkey Man, Dev Patel is known only as Kid. He witnessed the murder of his mother when police drove his community off their land so that it could be claimed by exploitative imperial forces. Since then, he’s been preparing to kill the cop who ended her life. The process of it is shown in a beautiful movie edited together like a music video, with absolutely killer needle drops, brilliant camera movement, and the most fascinating close POV.

Kid’s first attempt at revenge is admirable, but not successful. The lengthy action sequence where Kid tries to Kill The Cop is amazing. Can you imagine, being Dev Patel, writing a movie that demands getting the crap kicked out of the hero so thoroughly…and then casting yourself as that hero?

It’s viscerally satisfying to watch this first act, even if he doesn’t win (yet). It’s seeded with everything thematically important. We see how Kid is not just an underdog himself, but intimately tied to the underdogs of his community. Including a literal street dog, who he feeds using the cast-off food of the wealthy in the brothel where he works. Kid is one with the marginalized.

With no name, and with dreamy cuts between exploitation in the past and present day, it’s easy to see Kid as the very embodiment of the underclass.

He narrowly survives that first act. The second act is spent in the loving arms of hijra, who are a third-gender group in India. (In America, we would probably call them trans women, but it’s more complicated and culturally specific than that. I will be using she/her pronouns recognizing that this comparison is limited.) The leader of the hijra, Alpha, encourages Kid to remain with them as he heals. She asserts that he only survived his wounds because the gods have plans for him.

Indeed, Kid is devoutly religious. When we cut back to happier times with his mother, it’s often focused on his prayers to God, and his mother sharing the story of Hanuman.

Hanuman is shown to us as a monkey-god who ate the sun in his childhood, believing it to be fruit. As the story goes, part of his punishment is to forget his divine powers. But when it comes time to save Rama’s wife, Sita, the curse is lifted, and he remembers all that he can do. He defeats the Demon King Ravana in battle to save Sita — a story which is simplified in the movie, and I am doing my best to paraphrase from my limited understanding. (Bear with me. I’m Irish Catholic.)

A painting of Hanuman opening his chest to reveal Sita and Rama within. A version from the printing press of Ravi Varma, c.1910’s

The leader Alpha helps Kid awaken as Hanuman. She gives him a substance that essentially helps him remember his power, and there’s a sequence where he opens his chest so we may see his heart. Hanuman is often depicted opening his chest, as that is where Rama and Sita reside. Then we get a totally epic training montage where Dev Patel rips his shirt off (twice, if you count when he opens his chest), cheered on by the hijra.

And at this point, the spiritual leanings of the movie are clear. Not only does Kid embody Hanuman — the titular Monkey Man — but he goes into the brothel once again to fight with a small army of hijra at his back. As a queer person, it feels intensely meaningful for the hijra to be treated as holy like this. Obviously I’m coming at this from the wrong direction to understand all the nuance. But Dev Patel has made it clear: Kid fights for the marginalized, especially those most marginalized, and they are all holy. Hijra inclusive. No matter how “unsettling” people find them.

In the movie, our Demon King is not the man who directly killed Kid’s mother, but the man who ordered that death. He’s an enigmatic cult leader named Baba Shakti. In order to reach him, Kid has to infiltrate the brothel, save Sita (literally, there is a sex worker in this movie named Sita), and kill the cop who has become a patron of the brothel.

Although the ending makes it clear Baba Shakti is absolutely the Demon King, they don’t make it clear whether Kid survives that fight. He takes down Baba Shakti, but not before he’s gored himself.

I still don’t think this ending is ambiguous.

The second half of the movie enters mythic metaphor territory. It spends the first hour-ish showing us the ways that this fight between the holy and the demons has been repeated throughout the cycle of lives. The rich crush the small. Farmers are driven from their land. Hijra are beaten and pushed aside. Over and over again, Hanuman must save Sita from Ravana.

Thus, it does not matter at the end whether Kid literally lives or dies.

He will be back in the next cycle to fight the Demon King again: he might be back once Hanuman is once again reincarnated, OR he could arise from his wounds to fight the next Demon King (whichever individual has taken up the mantle of exploiting the marginalized). I hope it’s the latter. I would love a sequel.

Either way, the ending isn’t truly ambiguous because the Demon King fell to Hanuman, as he must. As he always will.

Monkey Man is an outstanding epic of mythic rage, and Jordan Peele was so right to pull this one out of the Netflix queue. Dev Patel has proven himself an amazing auteur as well as leading man. I can’t wait to see what he does in the next life.

(header image credit: Universal Pictures)

Comment

Sara Reine

Keep Reading

Movie Review: The Dark Knight (2008) **
2024-05-23

Movie Review: Moon (2009) ****
2024-04-28

Review: Miss Congeniality (2000) ***
2023-11-10
Diaries, movies

I think I’ve written this post before, but here I go again. Venting about nuance.

2024-03-20 /
I find it very frustrating when I write out long, nuanced stuff, and then people respond with hostility to some little snippet of it without reading the rest. Like they React and then they think that Reaction should be my problem, without actually investing any effort into anything except Being Hostile.

It is normal to respond to things with your wounds first. I do this a lot. I have to be really careful engaging with people about some things (especially publishing). What I encounter the most is misogynists. If you’re a misogynist, you’re going to respond to any content that is vaguely feminist with your broken assumptions about women, and you’re going to explode over really anything I say without recognizing the nuance. That is normal. That doesn’t mean you should do it.

Disagreement is cool. Misreading (or not reading at all!) and then being hostile is uncool. It’s not hard to tell the difference between people engaging in good faith and those who aren’t. If you’re not, why engage at all?

The impulse is to stop writing long, nuanced things, except…that’s not interesting to me. So instead I tell people to fuck all the way off and block them. I am not thrilled with that response. But if they’re not making effort with me, they get my crabby low-effort side too.

Saying Nothing is always a great option.

There’s a rule of three I find personally helpful to consider when choosing to respond to someone:
- Does this need to be said?
- Does this need to be said right now?
- Does this need to be said right now by me?
The internet provides casual access to a lot of conversations I (or you, broadly) don’t need to be part of at any given moment. Access doesn’t mean entitlement to engage. Some people seem *terribly* offended by the idea that every last thought of theirs isn’t worthy to share, but if you feel that way, you should really interrogate it. Everyone has something important to say. But not on everything, everywhere, all at once.

~

People also seem to misunderstand my critical reviews a lot. There is a lot of all-or-nothing thinking. Surely if I’m criticizing a movie’s reflection of society (for example), then I mean that I hate it, and I’m attacking it, and I’m saying it’s bad or whatever. They get defensive! You would not believe the defensive reactions I get when I criticize a movie that someone loves in particular.

I love movies. I love Film and Cinema. I love Stories! The fact I love Cinema and Stories means I can extract enjoyment out of movies that Aren’t For Me through analysis. Analysis is not inherently meant to be an insult — I will say “full insult” or “insult intended” when I mean it that way, and sometimes I do! Analysis is just a process of dissecting a story to look at all its mechanical-emotional parts, which is great fun.

The truth is that I very seldom hate movies. I hated The Proposal (2009) and outlined why exactly, but that’s the only example I can even recall off the top of my head. If you look at my Letterboxd account, I heavily skew toward five-star reviews. I almost always think that a movie has some value to it.

Yet people think I’m being scathing when I point out Irish Wish (2024) was made with grossly conservative values. Did y’all miss the part where I gave it three stars? How I love Lindsay Lohan’s performance? Very little in this world is entirely one thing. I’m living in a country run by conservatives. It hasn’t escaped my notice. I still manage to enjoy myself all the time, and find valuable things to do, but I don’t do it by ignoring the gross stuff. I can point out the hostility of things and just…leave it at that.

I’ve even been telling folks that Poor Things might be worth watching for them (and I thought the story was garbage at its basic concept). For every review I’ve seen with a disabled person revolted by it, I’ve seen others who found it relatable for very similar reasons.

There is ample space for a spectrum of reactions to anything. These reactions are mine. Why does it hurt you? The movie’s not your bff, it’s not paying your bills, and I’m not even attacking it.

Before responding to me with frankly absurd assertions — like thinking my reaction to Poor Things implies only men like sex, when you’re talking to *me*, of all people — you could just stop and wonder, “Does this need to be said by me right now?” And then don’t do it. If you’ve got stuff to get off your chest, go write your own blog. Or get therapy.

~

I often hear how the internet isn’t a space for nuance. To that I ask, what is?

Have you tried talking to your extended family lately? Do you get to have nuanced conversations with them?

How about your coworkers? Your neighbors?

Is it in the newspaper?

What about academia? And if it is, who gets to access it?

Is there just no room for nuance anywhere?

Should we reduce everything to sound bites, quotes, propaganda posters, one-frame cartoons, headlines?

Where do the nuanced conversations happen? Sincerely, where? I have limited social connections in real life. I don’t have a full perspective on this. If you’d like to point me toward something accessible for a person with my limitations where I can actually get thoughtful engagement, definitely let me know, because right now it seems like there is no room for nuance anywhere.

The internet definitely makes this effect worse — or at least, social media does, with its algorithmic censorship and limited post length. Yet it also should make it possible for longer-format thoughts to reach one another. We have the tools. We have the technology. The choice to be reductive for the sake of SEO or what-have-you is definitely a choice.

As I write this, I’m looking at the “excerpt” box in WordPress and chuckling to myself. I’m going to have to produce a little blurby-doo for overlaying upon a graphic, as I do with every post.

I know I’ve written posts like this before. I think it gets whinier every time. “Why do I have to deal with reactive randos everywhere I go? Why is everything all-or-nothing? Where is the alternative?” Maybe I should just get it on a bumper sticker. But hey, if I can’t complain about this stuff on my own blog, then where do I do it eh?
Comment

Sara Reine

Keep Reading

Things I didn’t tweet around Election Day 2018
2018-11-18

small sources of wisdom
2023-10-20

sara is a [redacted] woman
2023-12-16
essays, movies, writing

Say Less: 4 Lessons for Writers from Willy’s Wonderland (2021)

2024-03-18 /

Have I ever told you about one of my favorite good-bad movies, Willy’s Wonderland?

Willy’s Wonderland is essentially an unlicensed Five Nights at Freddy’s-like horror movie. If you don’t know FNAF, you probably know Chuck E Cheese. It’s a family restaurant and arcade with animatronic mascots for entertainment. In both FNAF and Willy’s Wonderland, the animatronics are evil murderers.

Willy’s Wonderland is one of those movies that isn’t good, but it’s kinda great: you won’t be scared by the horror content, but you’ll laugh, and the central performance from Nicolas Cage is one of his good ones. You’re never sure which version of Nicolas Cage you’re going to get. Here, he’s flawless.

What makes Nicolas Cage so excellent is the fact his character has no dialogue. I’m not talking minimal dialogue like Mandy (2018). I mean, none. Reportedly, Cage agreed to do the movie only if they cut his dialogue completely.

You’d think it’s a weird choice for the big-name star playing a hero to keep his mouth shut through a film, but I’m convinced that’s the only reason Willy’s Wonderland is any good.

There’s a great history of low-dialogue characters across media. Gordon Freeman from Half-Life and Chell from Portal are notorious for their silence. One of Jack Reacher’s most common lines of narrative (not dialogue) is “Reacher said nothing.” I’ve used this myself: In my Descent/Ascension Series, Elise Kavanagh is someone whose dialogue is heavily limited to increase mystique.

You can learn a lot about writing from Willy’s Wonderland.

Lesson One: You don’t actually need character back story.

Since Nicolas Cage can’t tell us what’s on his mind, or where he came from, we can only make guesses. His hero reacts to the horrifying situations without hesitation. What kind of man doesn’t seem to care about murderous animatronics on a job site? Over the course of the movie, Cage’s commitment to doing the agreed-upon job despite peril gives you the impression of Willy’s Wonderland accidentally hiring John Wick.

By showing what he hates (bad work/life balance) and what he loves (his soda and a pinball machine), you get a strong impression of a sentimental but practical man who is a bit of a jaded, overgrown child with a hard life. It’s mounds better than anything the dialogue would have been capable of delivering, as evidenced by the back story everyone else shares.

Give your audience some credit: Write less dialogue, and write less explicit back story. Events can do the heavy lifting.

Lesson Two: Quiet characters provide opportunities for contrast.

You can contrast a quiet character to more talkative characters, sure. That’s the most obvious utility. If you’re writing for fiction, where it’s a massive wall of text, distinguishing characters can be different; contrasting how much dialogue they use is a simple-but-effective way of delineating them.

You can also contrast the character’s different emotional states to create a more dynamic narrative landscape. It builds punchlines into the narrative. You can’t help but laugh and get excited when the janitor tears into his animatronic foes.

It’s shocking when the Janitor goes from working with his head down into a violent, roaring rage, beating the crap out of his attackers. The energy level of the film is also naturally improved simply by going from longer silent periods with occasional action, to a lot of action with less quiet.

Lesson Three: Bolster your writing weak spots by working around them.

The dialogue other characters have in Willy’s Wonderland is…not a highlight. Every single line could have been cut back dramatically. Nothing can go unstated, the actors struggle with long sentences, and little room is given for emotional displays that aren’t shouted at one another. So much of it is simply unnecessary.

That isn’t to say the writing is all bad, though! The good in Willy’s Wonderland is general plot structure, the concept, and the heroic character. It’s simply fun to watch. One little edit (silencing the hero) took this from labored to a delight.

When you’re writing, you can choose to bolster the stuff you’re good at and mostly skip over the stuff you’re bad at, too.

Where are your weaknesses? If your dialogue isn’t strong, you might find yourself focusing on plot…which is what I tend to do. On the other hand, if you’re great at dialogue, maybe you want to enhance that at the cost of narrative. Play to your strengths! It’s your story.

Lesson Four: Don’t drag everything out.

Willy’s Wonderland is a brisk 1.5 hours long. Much like the hero, it shows up, does its job, and leaves.

The story begins when Cage’s hero arrives in town. His work-life balance in this flick is legendary; he walks away from active fights when it’s time to take a break. In the morning, he clears out of town promptly, and that’s where the movie ends.

My favorite writing advice I’ve received is “Enter the scene late, leave the scene early.” Willy’s Wonderland and its Janitor both exemplify this rule perfectly. It keeps things punchy, focuses on the delightful strengths, and doesn’t blow out its back dragging things out for an extra twenty minutes on the reel.

Even though this campy, low-budget ripoff of a kids’ horror game isn’t “good,” the choices the team made transformed it into an outstanding delight of infinite rewatchability. You can take these lessons into your writing, whatever your format. When you find yourself struggling with a scene, try asking yourself: “What would Willy’s Wonderland do?”

(image credit: Screen Media Films)

Comment

Sara Reine

Keep Reading

Alien (1979) is a great lesson in cinema for horror kids
2024-03-11

You might be overlooking sources of cope close at hand
2023-12-24

Exploiting Pretty Queerness in Single All the Way
2023-12-04
essays, movies

Alien (1979) is a great lesson in cinema for horror kids

2024-03-11 /

Yesterday I watched Alien (1979) with 13yo Moonlight, the eldest of my offspring. I’ve been musing how to review it since. The greatness of Alien is well-understood. Even Letterboxd rates it at an average of 4.3, and I seldom run across movies so uncontroversial.

On a personal level, as a writer and as a child-bearer, I think Alien is fascinating in how queer it is. Secondary character Joan Lambert is canonically mtf trans per its sequel. Ripley was written to be a man and gender-swapped. (CBR) The order in which people are killed on the Nostromo is “woke” enough to please a modern moviegoer like myself; they clear out the white men (including one android) before killing Yaphet Kotto’s character, then Lambert, and gender neutral Ripley is left as final girl along with her final cat. Horror deaths are known to be moralistic: it is inevitable that the people seen as “bad” in some way (promiscuous, drinkers, drug-users, queers, and often nonwhite people) will be killed first, and the final girl is ultimately the purest of them. Alien’s kill order alone can be seen as a political statement.

As the movies continued, the pregnancy body horror of it all is further teased out and expanded upon, but even Ridley Scott’s initial outing has undertones of pregnancy commentary. It’s queered up by implanting an unwilling man with a baby alien in this first movie. It reminds me an awful lot of my nonbinary ass exploding my second baby via emergent c-section.

These subjects have been thoroughly explored by others, and way better than I could. I don’t want to explore them again. I don’t have anything to say except that “There is a shortage of perfect movies in this world. It would be a pity to fail to recognize this one.”

Instead, I’d like to note that Alien is a perfect horror movie to share with kids as part of cinema education. I think kids inclined toward horror tastes should watch Alien.

Raising conscientious horror kids

My kids have grown up in an era where horror for kids is an entire *thing*. Mascot Horror as a subgenre (TV Tropes) has been defined, if not outright invented, in the time of my kids’ lives; much like Mommy, they enjoy a dark skew to their content, so it’s natural they would fall in with Mascot Horror.

Navigating horror for kids as a mother is interesting. I believe a lot of families either ban violent/disturbing content outright, or simply stay hands-off their kids’ media diets, because either options is easier than trying to navigate it with them. Parenting is *always* a matter of too many concerns and not enough time/energy to handle it. Media consumption is low priority compared to the numerous high demands of Life.

When my peer parents were blocking YouTube so their kids wouldn’t get tangled up in extremely dodgy Elsagate stuff (Wikipedia), we chose to let them stay online, unfiltered, unblocked. We kept our media consumption devices in the same room for many years so that we could keep an ear/eye on what they were watching, and “Pick a different video!” was a frequent call across that room. This spurred conversations about why we thought a video wasn’t appropriate. We told them how to navigate these things themselves, and one of my main urgings was simply: “If it makes you feel weird or bad, don’t watch it.”

Of course, they watched stuff when we weren’t supervising, and they ended up having to figure out how to filter things for themselves. Multiple times, they brought videos, games, and memes to me with questions, or just generally asking for feedback; knowing that they would never be in trouble created a fertile ground for us to communicate.

The result is kids who have extremely developed opinions about what they like, what is good and bad, what is safe and what isn’t. They know what to do with themselves on the internet and among media. They like horror a lot. That part has never changed.

Kids’ media is pretty nuts anyway

What kind of horror is “safe” for kids?

Critically, I must point out that plenty of non-horror for kids is upsetting as hell. Kids’ media is often much more upsetting than you’d think. Consider legendarily upsetting content like Bambi, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Brave Little Toaster, The Bridge to Terabithia. Kids’ media often goes straight for the places kids are most vulnerable, like death of parents, or separation from family. This stuff is scary already!

If anything, a movie like Alien is soft for kids. They are in no real, tangible risk of going to a planet in Zeta Reticuli, getting attacked by face-grabbers, and then hunted throughout the Nostromo by a big juicy monster.

Alien also isn’t all that scary for most of its length. Most of it is tension and build-up, deliciously so. Deaths mostly occur off-screen. The effects are great, but not too egregious.

I wouldn’t watch an especially gory movie with the kids, but they do play shooter games, and some level of tension and violence is fine. That rules out less-tense horror-comedy movies like Renfield, which loooves gore. The sexualization of Ripley is minimal in screen-time, which is also a concern with kids’ comfort levels. I can’t show them the hilarious Chopping Mall, for instance, because that’s in a much more exploitative tradition of horror. M3gan was a great horror movie for kids (to the point it’s kinda too boring for adults). We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is an amazing queer horror movie for the internet generation, but it’s incredibly slow and vibe-based, appealing more to Millennials.

Alien stands on top of all of these. It’s not too gory, but it’s a little gross (like the robot exploding into a glitchy white-blood mess). It doesn’t have sex scenes. It’s also, frankly, just a great movie.

A whole cinema culture class in a single film

I actually watched Alien with Moonlight for the first time when they were eight, maybe nine years old. It’s more a feat of attention span than enduring anything scary at that age. Considering Moonlight was neck-deep in FNAF at the time, and well inured to jump scares, they mostly walked away thinking it was fun to watch a movie with so much space ship in it. (Space ships are awesome.)

A few years later, Moonlight has seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, and loads more movies for grown-ups. They asked to watch Alien again. A young teenager is capable of thought abstraction in a way that an 8-9yo is not. I realized that Alien was kind of a perfect movie to watch in order to teach them more about cinema in general.

We had great discussions while watching Alien. It serves as a platform for lots of topics.

Alien has strong visual language. It begins slowly, with long shots of the vessel’s exterior and interior, and shots are roomy. The pacing is methodical. At first, the most dramatic things are considered with a sort of distance; medical procedures performed on the first victim are partially viewed through windows by the other crew.

Immediacy of the style increases as the emotional intensity does, too. By the time Parker and Lambert are attacked, the shots come quick and tightly framed. Ripley’s survivalist last act loses all the methodical dolly shots and steadycam, shaking more as the camera runs along with her.

Moonlight specifically noted the use of strobe light as a way to increase agitation in the viewers. Strobe is very unpleasant, but it makes you feel anxious like Ripley does, whether or not you’re paying close attention.

In context, Alien teaches about cultural call-and-response. Not only has Alien influenced countless media that came after it, there are prominent elements in conversation with major predecessors. The style of the early moments are a lot like 2001: A Space Odyssey (ten years Alien’s predecessor) and the long panning shot of the Nostromo’s underside is a lot like the first sight of a Star Destroyer in Star Wars: A New Hope (two years Alien’s predecessor).

I’d actually say one of its biggest influences is Jaws (four years Alien’s predecessor). I might even argue that Alien is best described as Jaws vs 2001.

All media is engaged in cultural call-and-response, and this is important for people to understand. It’s how you learn to tell what’s derivative versus what’s genre trope versus what’s a direct reference to add commentary to something else. You could not have Sunshine or Event Horizon without Alien, nor many other SF/horror movies. You also probably wouldn’t have Doom or Half-Life without Alien. The impact is seismic, and accentuating this element to young cinemaphiles can provide context for a whole lotta culture.

The politics of Alien are fascinating. Moonlight is the cusp of Gen Z and Alpha; their generation is not expected to do better than my generation, which is not expected to do better than our parents’ generation. A lot of this is due to runaway unregulated corporations. But this problem isn’t new. In 1979, Alien pointed a finger shamelessly at a parent corporation (Weyland-Yutani) for its unethical practices.

At some point, the movie reveals that the corporation deliberately sent the Nostromo to retrieve alien specimens and bring them back to Earth, regardless of how many crew died in the process. You can easily tie this to the unethical practices of unregulated corporations by watching a few episodes of John Oliver. It’s always been a practice for Big Money to throw lives away in pursuit of profit. (In this film, Ripley theorizes Weyland-Yutani wants the aliens for military use; it’s expanded upon elsewhere in the franchise.)

As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, the deployment of horror tropes and who the movie kills first is also extremely political. We often think of the past as being more regressive. But we’re in a time when trans people are spectacularly unsafe and often targeted directly by policies and less directly by stochastic terrorists; more than forty years ago, we had a movie casually throw in a couple of *very* gender nonconforming characters, one of which was trans. These are the kind of people society often marginalizes and feeds to the meat grinder.

The fight we’re fighting now isn’t new! For all its antique-looking retrofuturism, Alien had a lot of ideas we’re still battling with, right now.

Alien is defined more by what it doesn’t show than what it does. It remains a truism of art that the best stuff happens off-screen (off-page, in the gutter, out of frame, etc), and Alien demonstrates this element of craft perfectly.

The truth is that you don’t need great special effects to tell the story you want. Alien *does* have great special effects, but a lot of it is never really seen beyond glimpses. That’s not the point.

The focus remains on a naturalistic approach to the characters–showing them working, in their common life, with minimal backstory. We don’t really know why Ripley is so calculated and intelligent, but you feel like you know her anyway. Natural closure describes everything you have to know. This kind of subtlety is often lacking from blockbuster products in our current era, but understanding the raw power of closure opens up so much media to the viewers, and it makes for better artists, too.

Alien is a perfect movie to talk about cinema and art at large, and it’s a perfect lesson for horror kids in general. This is one of those evergreen flicks that I think should be taught to everyone for generations to come.

Comment

Sara Reine

Keep Reading

Criticism Is Dead, Long Live Romance
2023-11-24

Exploiting Pretty Queerness in Single All the Way
2023-12-04

The John Experiment (2023) – Colors as a Visual Language
2023-12-07
movies

Rory’s 2023: Oscar results

2024-03-11 /

Airing the Academy Awards at a different time slot on the night in the US when we sprang forward in the time change sure was a choice! It worked out for me because I missed the ceremony entirely, and I would have been frustrated if I had been watching livetweets/reactions as it happened. But it also meant I didn’t have a decent outlet for my opinions on winners, and everywhere was quiet by the time I was really ready to talk. Time for a bonus post!

Here’s the results in full. I’m going in order based on the official site’s order. Some of the awards are split into two prongs of commentary: campaign notes and personal notes.

Actor in a leading role

Campaign: Cillian Murphy’s win for Oppenheimer is not remotely surprising. He was the frontrunner the entire season, and Paul Giamatti ever getting any attention was more because he was spotted with his Golden Globe at In-N-Out than actual momentum. (The Globes are uneven as a precursor award: they awards dramas and comedies separately, and their voting pool doesn’t feed into the Oscars.) Oppenheimer getting the most nominations and wins also supported Cillian Murphy’s campaign otherwise.

Personal reaction: I’ve liked Cillian Murphy in a lot, but this was neither his most interesting role nor my favorite performance in the category. I’m glad Bradley Cooper had no real chance, though.

Actor in a supporting role

Campaign: See above, sans the Paul Giamatti meme.

Personal reaction: I don’t think the nominees in this category were very strong this year. That Robert Downey Jr. was one of my favorites of the bunch is not really a compliment, but as I said in my Letterboxd review of Oppenheimer, supporting actors tend to shine in Nolan films. As far as career awards go, I don’t have the energy or inclination to get mad about this one; I just think the nominees should have been better.

Actress in a leading role

Campaign: This was the only acting category with any uncertainty. Both Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone took major precursor awards, and if Lily Gladstone had been white, that she took the SAG award should have been a solid lead. But Lily Gladstone didn’t even get a BAFTA nomination, and that tipped me off to her probable loss (as well as Letterboxd’s fondness for Poor Things; there’s a lot of industry professionals on there). I’m not sure what the overlap in the voter base is between the two awards, but the BAFTAs and the Oscars have one major thing in common beyond who votes in both: a bigoted voter base.

I’m sure a lot of people will point to Lily Gladstone not campaigning for Supporting Actress for her loss. It’s a convenient excuse, but BIPOC actors, especially with marginalized genders (Lily Gladstone uses she/they pronouns), never have stationary, fair goalposts. I suspect another excuse would have popped up if this one hadn’t.

Personal reaction: This win was the biggest reason why I didn’t want to watch live updates this year. It’s a terrible, boring choice on the part of the Academy. Poor Things was a visually-beautiful film propping up gross amount of misogyny and ableism. Emma Stone’s performance was obvious in a way the Oscars like. Why award good when you can award big and loud, especially when it props up your own bigotry?

Actress in a supporting role

Campaign: This basically had Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s name engraved on the Oscar in advance. Well-run campaign for a deserving performance.

Personal reaction: I think this was the best round of nominees out of any acting category this year. Saying America Ferrera was probably the most-underwhelming of the bunch is wild when she’s such a soild performer. (I hated her Barbie monologue, but she did what she could with it.) Danielle Brooks was the most obvious nominee out of a massively-solid Color Purple cast, Emily Blunt was one of the better women-in-a-Nolan-film actresses, and Jodie Foster surprised me in a generally-underwhelming Nyad. But Da’Vine Joy Randolph was definitely my favorite.

Animated feature film

The Boy and the Heron was a good winner here, even if I think it should have bumped something like Maestro for a Best Picture nod. (I hate how animated films get siloed.) I thought Spider-Man had a solid chance, but I wasn’t a huge fan. Disney-Pixar really dropped the ball this year; I liked Elemental, but very few people did, and it was certainly the most flawed of their nominees in a while. I’m not surprised that my pick of Nimona didn’t win; I’m just glad it seemed to do well this award season. Robot Dreams had a really late, limited release, so it never really had a chance.

Cinematography

Another Oppenheimer win. Not a surprise or an insult. I didn’t feel too strongly about most of the nominees this year, but I didn’t even begrudge Maestro’s presence here. Could have been better, could have been worse.

Costume design

Not surprised Poor Things won, and it’s one of the least-offensive spaces for it to win, but my pick would have absolutely been Barbie. People really underestimate movies using preexisting fashion for this award.

Directing

Campaign: Christopher Nolan won the DGA, and Oppenheimer was always the favorite for Best Picture, and that meant he was a pretty solid lock for this. I’m annoyed and completely unsurprised he won the year he did a biopic instead of genre.

Personal reaction: I like a lot of Christopher Nolan films! I don’t like Oppenheimer, but it’s better than Maestro and Poor Things. I think my pick out of the nominees would have been Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest, but there was no way a movie that challenging would pick up a major award like this.

Documentary feature

I didn’t get to any this year, so no opinions on my favorites. 20 Days in Mariupol is on YouTube for free in its entirety, so I’m curious if that helped its chances. I would love to know if freer access to nominees aids in campaigning, especially for ~smaller awards. (I don’t believe in smaller awards, personally, but the Oscars treats picture, director, actors, and screenplay as their big ones.)

Documentary short

The one nominee I didn’t watch in this category won. Figures!

Film editing

Another Oppenheimer win, not undeserved; the pacing in that movie and juggling of multiple storylines while staying coherent is not easy. My pick would have been Killers of the Flower Moon—for better or worse, the editing made a long movie bearable—but I’m not mad.

International feature film

This is always such a weird category. I don’t object to having more inclusion for non-Hollywood films, but the Academy uses this to silo foreign-language film while often awarding the more palatable countries. I only saw Zone of Interest in this category, but it was good quality, at least.

Makeup and hairstyling

That Poor Things’s win here is one of the most palatable options to me shows how bad the nominees were this year. (Thankfully, Golda and Maestro didn’t win.) But I bet they mostly won for Willem Dafoe’s visible scars, and I don’t feel uncomplicated about that. It’s deeply silly to me that Barbie didn’t get nominated here.

Music (original score)

I didn’t feel too strongly about any nominees this year in terms of quality; I barely noticed scores in most movies I watched, except Killers of the Flower Moon, which I found a bit obtrusive. Oppenheimer’s an okay choice; Ludwig Göransson did the music on Community and produced some Childish Gambino as a result, so I’m kind of tickled by his win here.

Music (original song)

What Was I Made For? was my choice and winner! Wild how young Billie Eilish is with two Oscar wins.

I watched the I’m Just Ken performance and it was a lot of fun! I wish Jack Black’s Peaches had been nominated so that could have had a performance, too. Shame that Tenacious D’s cover of Baby One More Time can’t be eligible for next year’s awards.

Best Picture

Anyone paying five seconds of attention to the campaign would have known Oppenheimer was going to win here. I didn’t agree with the choice, but it could have been worse. (If you didn’t see my last Oscars post, I ranked Best Picture nominees there.)

Production design

Again, a Poor Things win I’m not offended by. I think Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon were also very worthy contenders.

Animated short film

Didn’t manage to catch any of the nominees this year. Shame.

Live action short film

I only saw Henry Sugar and The After, but The After wasn’t very good, and I think Wes Anderson should have been in longer-form categories for Asteroid City instead, if he got nominated at all. Still, I can’t believe this is his first Oscar win! Maybe Bradley Cooper should go short form if he’s that thirsty for gold.

Sound

Basically everyone who saw The Zone of Interest mentioned its sound, and it makes sense; sound was obviously crucial to its storytelling in a way that is uncommon for the average movie. It definitely would have been my pick for the category.

Looking at the nominees, it’s interesting that multiple people are nominated for multiple movies: Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic both got nominated for The Creator and Maestro, and Richard King got nominated for Maestro and Oppenheimer. Hollywood really is a small world.

Visual effects

Decent win for Godzilla Minus One. I haven’t seen it, but it was a small team working on a small budget for a non-Hollywood film, and I’ve heard the VFX was very effective.

This is a category that has a lot of mistreatment built in; a lot of the biggest-budget films will be effects heavy, not hire directors who have effects experience or value things like storyboarding, and exploit their employees to a ridiculous degree. Disney-Marvel’s the worst origin of the problem, so it’s impossible to see a nod for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and not think of it.

Godzilla Minus One is not immune to these accusations either. This Vulture article has the director speaking directly about mistreatment in Japan and how their in-house studio handled things. (Apologies for the paywall.) With the budget and the probable timeline, it seems likely the workers weren’t paid enough, and the director being one of the winners for the VFX award after prior VFX industry experience meant he probably knew what he could get away with. I don’t want to ignore the probable problems here! That this is a good win in a Hollywood context shows how hard VFX artists have it (and also, how tough capitalism is on its workers both in the US and in Japan), not a sign of positive growth.

I just think people should aim for better. No, Hollywood shouldn’t have budgets in the hundreds of millions and pay a bunch of VFX teams peanuts with dangerous amounts of crunch built in. But a small team doing a lot of a film’s heavy lifting should get a decent chunk of upfront budget and good backend, too. Pay labor what they’re worth, and don’t kill them in the process!

Writing (adapted screenplay)

American Fiction was my choice for this category, so I was happy to see its win! A lot of films have one element that stands above the rest, and for me, American Fiction’s was in its writing. Which is appropriate for a movie about writing. It’s definitely a writers-love-stories-about-writing win.

Writing (original screenplay)

Anatomy of a Fall wasn’t my choice, but I’m not surprised it won. Screenplay often goes to writer-directors who get nominated for things like Best Picture/Director but have no real chance at those awards in a particular year. Amount of nominations and how many are in the ~big categories matters for overall wins. Anatomy of a Fall had Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress besides. Screenplay is kind of an honorable mention win, in that context? This also applies to American Fiction a bit: it got Best Picture and Lead/Supporting Actor nods.

That’s not to say neither screenplay was deserving! Even if I wasn’t into Anatomy of a Fall, I thought it was trying interesting things. And a lot of nominations is no guarantee; Maestro was just bad, and its lack of wins despite nominations suggests that I’m not the only one who thought so. But the Academy loves politics and bigotry more than quality sometimes. Like, I thought Past Lives was a better screenplay than Anatomy of a Fall, but it didn’t get a director nod or any acting nods, and that happening when it was made by a Korean-Canadian director with a Korean-Canadian female character at its center is not a coincidence. Anatomy of a Fall had a female cowriter (who was also nominated for Director), so it’s an easy Diversity Win! for the Academy to point toward.

Otherwise, it’s worth mentioning that this was an oddly-controversial category this year. I’d like to think May December’s diminished chances for this award and more awards broadly was because of the ethical qualms I mentioned in my broad 2023 movies post, but I don’t give Hollywood that much credit. May December was deliberately mocking the industry in a less-friendly way than American Fiction, and I think that’s what killed it.

And I saw the Variety article about The Holdovers’s alleged plagiarism right after I put up my Oscars post, of course. (Hat tip to Sara for the link.) I haven’t done a comparison of the two sources myself, but if you’re interested, there’s a comparison document at the bottom. The behind-the-scenes on this was happening right around voting time, and the article’s drop was a big “this is why it isn’t winning” banner.

A couple last thoughts

I saw a lot of people say this was a good awards season, and I disagree. The Oscars deferred to a lot of its worst instincts on the majority of its predictable wins (of which there were far too many, if you like a good upset) and its surprises. I didn’t enjoy watching most of the nominees. The word “value” made it into a lot of my reviews, for better or worse.

Obviously, it’s still early in the year, but I don’t have a lot of hope next year’s Oscars will be any better. COVID and bad practices around short-term illness/long-term disability are still affecting production (even if no one wants to think so), the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes have changed this year’s release schedule as much as last year’s, and studio heads would rather strike finished films out of existence rather than share them, to name just a few of the industry’s structural problems. Maybe there will be some actual thought about what’s going on; I do think there were some hints in this year’s nominees that Hollywood knows things are broken. But even if major course corrections happened quickly, it won’t be fast enough to save next year’s award season.

But I don’t want to be right about this. I love the craft and creative expression of filmmakers, and there are always worthy contenders that get overlooked every year. There’s plenty of room for my doomer instincts to be wrong. I sincerely hope they are.

Comment

Rory Hume

Keep Reading

Rory’s 2023: Movies (part two)
2024-03-07

Say Less: 4 Lessons for Writers from Willy’s Wonderland (2021)
2024-03-18

Rory’s 2023: Oscars
2024-03-08