Horses are good company -- The Witcher

I really wanted to go see Furiosa last week, so I did! My vision is problematic lately so I was worried about that, but I took some edible and closed my eyes during some of the previews. The movie itself, I was able to enjoy-- because there is little to no flashing lights, and little to no shaky cam, thank you to the editors and others on this film for taking this approach. I think editor Margaret Sixel is a genius. It cheered me up to go to the movies. I don't have a ton to say about this, I need to think about it more, but it was beautiful to look it.

Challengers, starring the always-amazing Zendaya, was super fun and good. Very sexy, queer, and into complicated relationships, all tied together by a tennis match. Dang. I loved this. It just works and is so satisfying.

Hit Man, Netflix movie starring Adria Arjona (who was in Andor) and Glen Powell. Very funny comedy about a mild-mannered guy who works part-time with the police as a fake hitman. He records confessions from would-be murderers. This is so much fun, really well done film.

All of Us Strangers. 2023, dir. Andrew Haigh

A dreamy, emotionally raw fable about a lonely screen writer named Adam, played by one of my favorite actors, Andrew Scott. Adam is living in a brand-new, nearly empty high rise apartment building. He forms a tenuous romantic connection with his only neighbor, Harry, played by Paul Mescal. Meanwhile, he rides the train out to the place where he grew up, and through some trick of imagination or magic, finds his parents there at their old house, frozen in time, 1987, just before they died in an accident. Adam gets to meet his parents as an adult and discuss his life. They are younger than he is now, and are open, warm, and frank about their flaws.

Well, I don't know how to write about this film because it's like it reached right into my chest. I found myself thinking of the movie "Weekend," and how that felt like queer therapy, like someone kind was speaking directly to me, acknowledging the joys and traumas of simply existing as a queer person. It's the same director. Good job Andrew Haigh!

The LA Times called this the best film of the year, and I also agree with the review given by Sheila O'Malley at Roger Ebert dot com. I've been contemplating this line, "Both films showed Haigh's sensitivity to human behavior, as well as the good care he takes of his actors, the room he gives them to feel and create... Haigh loves actors." The implication here, and of course the truth, is that many directors do not love actors, and they do not take good care of them. Part of what makes All of Us Strangers so magical is that care and love coming through.

It's an incredible piece of art. Some viewers may find it slow. I found myself settling into the quiet of the film, and of course Andrew Scott is incredibly beautiful. The parents are played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, and so just 4 people are essentially the only characters, so it's intimate like a theater play. The colors are delicious. Bring tissues.

Content notes: this deals a lot with death and grief. Contains drug and alcohol use. One extended scene, at a dance club, has lots of flashing lights. Discusses homophobia from a queer perspective.

Other reviews:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/all-of-us-strangers-movie-review-2023

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/29/a-generation-of-queer-people-are-grieving-for-the-childhood-they-never-had-andrew-haigh-on-all-of-us-strangers

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/26/1221725627/director-andrew-haigh-talks-about-love-and-loneliness-in-all-of-us-strangers

I'm trying hard to keep my chin up and be patient and balance rest with movement. Yesterday I did laundry and took Abbie to the park for a bit. I finally changed my sheets. Today I mostly rested, worked on a puzzle a bit.

I've watched nearly all the available episodes of "Game Changer." I Recommend it generally and especially rec particular episodes since they are mostly stand-alone. I skipped the improvised Shakespeare episode; I find Shakespeare takes too much work to understand and exhausts me. I skipped an early episode where there is a conveyor belt and three people just shrieking and yelling as they try to assemble things off it.

My favorite episodes were Grant's Bachelor-inspired dating show, which is one of the most beautiful queer things I've seen. It filled me with joy. I was delighted by an episode where there's a giant mouth puppet. There are 2 episode that are just sex jokes all the way through, amazing. My favorite contestants / comedians are Ally Beardsly, Grant, Lily, Jake W, and Zac, but I like all of them.

It's a brilliant show. I like how they have regulars who come back but also fresh faces. Lots of queer and trans people, lots of people of color, lots of women, the occasional fat person (and no fat jokes). Humor that is warm, thoughtful, silly and absurd. In the extras Sam Reich says that they always consider safety and consent.

There are a few episode on YouTube, kind of a try before you buy situation, and then the whole seasons are on Dropout TV, a streamer/subscription. Next on DropOut I'm going to watch some of the spin-offs!

Tonight I watched Begin Again on Netflix, it was a delightful hidden gem. Keira Knightley plays a singer-songwriter who connects with a depressed producer, played by Mark Ruffalo. They decide to make an album together and it's about the joy of creativity and friendship. They record the album outside in various NYC locations in the summer. Also has Kathryn Keener!

It's leaving Netflix later this month!

Watched:

Backdraft, 1991, dir. Ron Howard. Netflix.

A commercially successful drama about firefighters in Chicago. Although starring Billy Baldwin, this film is spiritually a Nicholas Cage film. To me it falls into the fun kind of bad, unintentionally hilarious. There are 2 women in the film who look almost exactly alike. The brothers have weird chemistry that feels un-brother-like. Baldwin tries to keep up with experienced actors like Donald Sutherland who plays a gleeful pyrophiliac. The mystery about an arsonist is very silly and the ending was just straight-up bad.

The text over the final shot says, "There are over 1,200,700 firefighters in the U.S." Thesis statement, "Firefighters: they exist."

Netflix suggested I watch Buried: the 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche.

This felt like a niche subject matter, but a very well done documentary. Kind of sad. I learned some things about avalanches and how people try to trigger smaller ones to prevent larger ones, and in this instance they were using explosives to do that, but with enough snow on the mountains a big avalanche happened anyway.

I mentioned to jesse_the_k that I've been watching a few episodes of MASH on Hulu. The appeal for me is that they use shenanigans to resist and undercut authority figures, institutions, and bullies. Jesse said, "I think that's what Joss Whedon *thought* he was doing with his TV shows."

I bounced off several things, aimlessly browsing, not finding much that caught my interest.

Eventually I found a movie that I loved, Last Survivors, on Hulu. Made in 2021 and starring Alicia Silverstone (most famous from Clueless), Stephen Moyer (True Blood) and Drew Van Acker, who I don't know from anything but enjoyed in this movie.

A man and his grown son have survived an apocalypse and are living in the woods on their own, hunting, fishing, and growing food, while keeping watch for roving Outsiders. The father gets injured so the son has to go looking for medicine, and he glimpses an Outsider woman that he's curious about.

This film hit a lot of my narrative kinks, I totally loved it, but don't want to give too much away, because part of the joy is watching it unfold. I think even the trailer goes too far ahead in the story.

You've heard me complain about lighting in almost everything I watch, well here I want to rave about the lighting. It's so beautiful and I think they used a lot of natural light.

I highly recommend this movie if you like thrillers. I liked seeing Alicia Silverstone again and I thought all the actors were great.

Two Spielberg + Tom Hanks movies from the early 2000s.

Catch Me if You Can has such a fun premise: Leo DiCaprio plays a young con man named Frank who gets jobs as an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. Tom Hanks plays the FBI agent who chases him down. Unfortunately this is played for Serious Drama and Daddy Issues, and was not for me, though overall I think it's an OK movie. The beginning and ending were too long and slow. An editor needed to cut a bunch of stuff out including a very cringey scene with Jennifer Garner as a high-end sex worker. Frank uses his forging skills to cheat her out of 1400 dollars and it's played like some kind of gross male fantasy.

The story goes something like, Frank really wants to please his father (Christopher Walken), and this leads him down a wrong path. The right path is finding a positive father figure in the Tom Hanks character.

If you like con artist stories, Leverage is just so much better. "The Pretender" is another example of a story where someone uses his genius skills to help people and is much more warm and fun.

The Terminal also has an interesting premise but it fails to deliver. An Eastern European man, Viktor (Tom Hanks) becomes temporarily stateless and gets stuck living in a airport. This was SUCH a frustrating movie, because it had a bunch of things going for it-- good actors, some comedy, a familiar setting that gets re-contextualized, and the potential to say something interesting. But the story structure was bad. You'd think that before someone spent all that money making a movie, they would make sure the story and script are good. That is the FIRST thing one should do, the foundation.

Stanley Tucci plays the antagonist, a guy in charge of the airport, and his character is all over the place, no clear motivation or development, does not act in any kind of consistent way. There was a great moment where I thought this story might be about resisting a police state (airport as metaphor/tiny police state), or finding ways to resist and de-escalate the conflict of policing, but of course it didn't hold up.

Catherine Zeta-Jones, similar. She spends the movie getting to know Viktor and breaking away from her bad boyfriend. But then in the end she goes back to the boyfriend for no reason.

Zoe Saldana and Diego Luna were both super cute, but their romance was not well developed and ended up making no sense at all.

So, anti-rec for this film.

What my family and I absolutely love watching is The Incredible Dr. Pol, a reality-based show about farm veterinarians in Michigan. Dr. Pol is an old man with a ton of energy, a ton of experience, humor, warmth, a great love for animals. It's streaming on Hulu and we watched 3 or 4 episodes before the technology gave up on me. We used to watch it on cable but my parents gave up cable; maybe I'll see if I can borrow some DVDs or something. There are several various vet shows with a lot of episodes and this could keep us happily entertained in the evenings. (nota bene, I made a festivid about vet shows.)

We all find Dr. Pol and his colleagues super engaging and my dad even shared a story I hadn't heard him tell before, about his dad pulling a calf. He said his dad put the pulling rope around his shoulders, put his feet up on the back of the cow, and put his whole weight into it. On the show they have a chain-and-ratchet method for pulling calves that are stuck.

My dad said, "We're farm people, but I wonder what non-farm people think of this show?" It's true that they show a lot of the down and dirty of small farms and I love this. Unlike some other vet shows, Dr. Pol does not over-treat or over-test. The vets also see all kinds of animals: lizards, turkeys, camels, reindeer, parrots, chickens, etc.

Will Trent, episodes 1 and 2. Hulu.

Honestly I think this is a good show, evaluating by the writing and acting, and I appreciate that the women dress in a kind of normal way; I liked all the costume choices. I liked that Will Trent has dyslexia and has found work-arounds for that.

But the copaganda is strong in cop shows, just generally, and it's almost worse now that the writers are wink-winking about the Black Lives Matter movement and the increasing cultural consciousness re police brutality. In these 2 episodes (which are one story), the protagonists were doing all kinds of illegal shit. One cop tells another, "you can't do that anymore," implying that it used to be OK to be rough with suspects. Even if I try to tell myself it's a fantasy, I can't tolerate it any more. I also dislike the focus on murder. So, there is a lot to like in this show but it's not for me.

Heart of Invictus, Netflix, 5 episodes.

A docu-series focusing on several participants of the Invictus Games, which are an event to uplift and celebrate disabled veterans. I really liked this a lot. These games and the documentary are hosted by Prince Harry, so if you don't like him you may find that annoying (I like him though!!). There is a lot of focus on mental and emotional health. Particular athletes are highlighted, one from each of the Netherlands, Ukraine, the UK, Canada, the US, and South Korea. This series is about the lead-up to the games and then event itself, which took place in the Hague; and it's also about the war in Ukraine to a certain extent. I thought it was very well put-together, very interesting, and lets disabled people talk about their own experiences. The athletes are not selected by who is the best, but rather by "who will benefit the most from the experience." Which is a bit vague and not fully explained, but it seems to mean that these people are ones in need of support, and are getting support through the coaching, the community, etc.

I also recommend this for concussion-recovery viewing as there aren't a ton of bright flashing lights, spinning camera, that sort of thing. And the woman from Ukraine is legendary, a very memorable person with a fantastic face and an amazing story.

I noped out of Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal, for concussion reasons, it starts off with loud bangs, sped-up camera footage, club dancing, and Sue saying that her biggest fear is feeling "stuck". hard pass sorry!

I had a very mixed reaction to another documentary about disabled athletes, called Rising Phoenix, about the Paralymics. What I liked: hearing from the actual athletes and seeing them perform. I also learned some history about the Paralymics, which were founded by a Jewish doctor, Sir Ludwig Guttmann, who escaped Germany and went to the UK. He advanced care for people with spinal cord injuries and started sports competitions for disabled people. His daughter says that the Paralympics are so-called because they are "parallel to the Olympics."

I didn't care as much for the parts about the politics of the organizing committees, though other people might find that interesting.

What I found off-putting was the inclusion of Oscar Pistorius (in historical footage, and talked about), without any contextual information. There's a young sprinter who says, "At that time, he was my hero," and they leave it at that, without mentioning that Pistorius is a murderer.

They also seemed to give more time to the Italian fencer (who has this big star quality), and less time to the African athletes. One of the African athletes appears randomly with a cheetah, and this is not explained. Why is there a cheetah?

This one was a frustrating watch, lots of weird little random things that made no sense, and I seem to find I have the most to say about media I'm frustrated with.

We are Lady Parts, short comedy show, on Peacock.

This was WONDERFUL. I think it hasn't got enough attention, probably because it is all women, all Muslims, no white people, and also it is on Peacock which no one has. They should put it on broadcast TV and play re-runs all the time. I loved just about everything about this.

Amina is a sort of "good girl," a microbiology student living in England, looking to get married to a handsome Muslim man so she can settle down. She takes her cues from her best friend Noor, a type-A kind of "mean girl" who has a squad of admirers. (Interestingly, Noor is an antagonist but she's not evil; there is some nuance in her portrayal.)

Saira is the lead singer of a punk band. She decides that the titular band needs a lead guitarist, and she sets her sights on Amina.

This is about their relationship and Amina's journey to live a more authentic life. It's also about the other members of the band and various other characters.

The main critique I've heard is that the series is too short and tries to pack too much into its six episodes. This is exactly right and I can't imagine it's the fault of the people making the show. It would be interesting to see this kind of show with a good old-fashioned 26 episode run.

Similarly, Rūrangi, airing on Hulu, has just 5 episodes comprising its 2nd season. This ensemble show from New Zealand is interested in queer (and/or) trans people living in a small town, and it is interested in indigenous people. The lives and conflicts here are presented realistically and from an in-community perspective.

Caz, the central character, has returned home after years away. In the first season we see him re-connect with his best friend Anehara and his high school boyfriend, Jem. The second season continues the story of Anehara connecting with her indigenous heritage and Jem dealing with his sexuality. Caz's father, Gerald, is doing activism around something to do with sustainable farming. Caz himself is dealing with grief over his partner, a closeted celebrity who died from suicide.

I don't know the details; Gerald and Jem were re-cast with different actors for season 2 (I imagine it's for innocent reasons; they probably didn't think they would get a 2nd season, but who knows). Most of the other actors, including those in minor roles, return for this season.

It is Wonderful and again I wish for many more episodes!! Season 2 ends on, not quite a cliff hanger, but almost. Something a bit supernatural is happening in the area and it's just starting to ramp up.

In both of these shows the talent is incredible all-around.

I watched three things recently that feature Deaf actors playing Deaf characters. This feels promising and I hope it continues.

CODA (Child of Deaf Adults)

A sweet family drama about Ruby, the lone hearing person in her family of 4. The family is close-- three of them work together on a fishing boat and Ruby's mom does the books. Ruby is often tasked with interpreting for the family. At school, Ruby decides to join the choir and she discovers a talent and passion for singing. This story could have gone angsty but it stays pretty light and sweet, as Ruby navigates her busy teenage life, feeling obligated to her family but wanting to follow her new passion. The family members are charming and hilarious; they enjoy some rude humor. The film is a bit over-long and deeply heterosexual but nonetheless recommended.

Hawkeye - Marvel mini-series, Disney Plus.

I absolutely loved this series, which combines the MCU Hawkeye story with the recent comics series by Fraction and Aja. Kate Bishop idolizes Hawkeye, and so when she meets him by chance, she wants to team up. He's kind of crabby and reluctant, is mourning Natasha, and would prefer to work alone, but Kate's life is tied up in the drama, and besides she's pretty good at being a hero. The story is funny and well-written. I watched all 6 episodes in one night. The Deaf actress, Alaqua Cox, plays Maya aka Echo. She is Native American and has a prosthetic leg. She was so awesome in this show, playing an antagonist who maybe doesn't have all the information she should have. A satisfying and fun story.

Eternals - Disney Plus.

This was overly long and boring, so I can't recommend it, but I did enjoy Deaf actress Lauren Ridloff as Makkari, who is inexplicably using ASL in 5000 BCE. I also liked Kumail Nanjiani. What a charming dude. Also has the first gay male couple in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

and to catch up on Marvel, I also watched...

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Disney Plus.

This was just So Much Fun. Hilarious, pretty to look at, good performances and a good story with an interesting villain. The fighting is stylized martial arts that is beautiful and interesting. There are bright colors and brilliant cameos. I'm often unsure about whether to find Awkwafina annoying or charming, but in this I really liked her. The cast is overwhelmingly Asian actors. Despite the title, there was a group of people who came together at the end to defeat the villain: Shang-Chi, his sister, his best friend, and his Aunt, among others. Highly recommended.

I am "hard of breathing" today (term borrowed from a twitter friend), thus exhausted and having bad facial pain. Despite being chronically ill I usually have enough energy to wash the dishes every day, take care of the dog, and do laundry. When things flare up like this it gives me a taste of what it's like for people who have less energy than I do. I need to get better about asking for help-- to practice doing so.

With some friends, I watched "The Incredible Jessica James," a comedy / drama movie on Netflix, starring Jessica Williams of the Daily Show. This is what I'd call a hidden gem: I'd never heard of it before, and it was lovely.

Jessica is a young playwright living in NYC. She's trying to get over a break up and she meets a new love interest. Meanwhile she's teaching kids theater, hanging out with her bestie, and writing plays that get rejected. She's outwardly confident and self-possessed, but admits to her new love that she's often insecure. I appreciated the scenes where Jessica takes a trip home for her sister's baby shower; her family aren't bad people but she deeply does not fit in with them.

My only caveat or warning is that there are several dream sequences which are not well-marked as such. Jessica imagines her ex-boyfriend falling from a ledge and having a piano fall on him, which could be upsetting to watch. Otherwise this movie is pretty wholesome and delightful.

Jessica is passionate, creative, and interesting, and the actress does an amazing job.