Uncategorized – Page 13 – The Arts Are Life

Movie Review: Luca

Yesterday I watched another really good movie called Luca. I had heard of Turning Red because there were billboards everywhere, and I also saw a lot of publicity for Elemental, both of which, like Luca, are Pixar movies. However, I had not heard a lot about Luca. Like Elemental, this movie managed to make me tear up because the story is really sweet and heartfelt. It takes place in Portorosso, a seaside town on the Italian Riviera, and it’s about a young sea monster named Luca, who is tending to his herd of fish and also trying to make his parents happy. That all changes when he finds a mysterious alarm clock in the water and starts to wonder who left it there. Luca lives with his parents and grandmother and they want to make sure that he is safe and doesn’t go above water because it is dangerous for sea monsters. Another sea monster named Alberto convinces Luca to go above water with him, and when they do they turn into human beings so that no one knows they are really sea monsters. At first Luca is not sure because his parents told him to not go anywhere above water because it is dangerous, but Alberto, who is extremely overconfident, tells him it’s fine and Luca ends up spending a lot of time in Alberto’s treehouse. Alberto shares that one of his dreams is to get a Vespa, which is a very fancy and expensive motorbike. He invents a bicycle for them to ride but as they roll down the hills and roads the bicycle breaks and they fly off the bicycle into the sea. Luca is very nervous about riding the bicycle down a hill, but Alberto tells him to repeat this saying in his head every time he doubts himself, “Silenzio, Bruno!”, so that he can silence the negative voices and self-doubt in his head.

He decides to have he and Luca go to the town of Portorosso and be amongst the human residents there, and they end up meeting a young girl named Guilia, who lives with her father, Massimo, who is a fisherman, and their cat, Machiavelli. However, they face stiff competition from Ercole Visconti, who is the town bully who rides a Vespa bike and makes fun of Guilia and her friends. Alberto tells Giulia that they want to train for the competition so they can get the Vespa, and Giulia reluctantly agrees. Alberto and Luca face a very sticky situation, and when Luca goes home late one evening after spending the day with Luca, his mom tells him to not go above water ever again. However, Luca breaks the rules and his mom and dad have to go above water to run around the town looking all over for him. Even though Alberto and Luca pass as human beings, if they get water on them, then they turn back into sea monsters, so they do their best to avoid getting into any pools or getting splashed by water. Also, Massimo is a fisherman and when Luca and Alberto arrive at Giulia’s house, they find Massimo chopping fish heads and throwing them in a bucket, so this makes them extra on-edge about revealing that they are sea monsters. Giulia lets them stay with her in her tree house and Giulia trains Alberto to eat lots of pasta and the three of them train by riding their bicycle down and up hilly terrain. Ercole brags about how he is going to win the competition and makes fun of Giulia because she got sick last time during the competition, and it was humiliating for her. But Alberto doesn’t back down and challenges Ercole to a bet on him, Giulia and Luca winning the competition.

Alberto and Luca find their friendship tested when Luca starts to become closer to Giulia. Giulia is an avid reader who goes to school, and Luca, who wants to know more about the world, asks her questions about her classes and asks to read her textbooks. They have very deep discussions about astronomy, and Luca decides he wants to go to school with Giulia but when he shares his dream with Alberto, Alberto gets angry at him and tells him that sea monsters aren’t allowed to go to school with people and that he is risking his life by wanting to go to school. One day, Luca and Alberto get in a fight about this, and Giulia asks them why they aren’t talking to each other, and Alberto decides to get in the water and show Giulia that he is really a sea monster. Giulia is scared and Luca, who is still in human form, decides to rat Alberto out when Ercole is looking for them, and Ercole throws spears at Alberto. Alberto leaves, feeling that Luca betrayed him. When they get home, Giulia also finds out that Luca is also a sea monster, and she tells him he needs to leave even though she doesn’t want him to leave because she knows her dad would kill him for being a sea monster. Luca and Alberto did their best to hide the fact that they were sea monsters, but this was really challenging because they were on Massimo’s boat and they were right on the water so they risked getting splashed and revealing they were sea monsters. However, Massimo gains trust in them because they help him catch a huge load of fish and so he trusts them to help him with catching fish frequently. This trust could easily be broken, though, if they accidentally gave away that they were sea monsters, so that’s why Giulia has to turn him away. When Luca tries to apologize to Alberto for ratting him out, Alberto tells him to go away. Alberto feels like he can no longer trust anyone, and this is especially hard for him because his father left him and Alberto was counting the days when he would come back to him, but he hasn’t come back. Luca, however, is determined to still compete in the bicycle race even though Alberto doesn’t think they have a chance anymore now that people know they are sea monsters.

When Giulia is about to start the race, she finds Luca in a bulky underwater suit. She tells him that he can’t compete in the race because she is worried he would turn into a sea monster when he gets in the water, but he is determined to do this. They eat a lot of pasta after swimming in the water, then they have to ride their bicycles up and down several roads through Portorosso. Luca’s parents are still looking for him, and when they find him riding on his bicycle they try to get him back, but he is riding so fast that they cannot catch up with him. Unfortunately, it is a rainy day and there is no way that Luca can dodge the rain. At first he pauses because he doesn’t want to become a sea monster, but he realizes he needs to finish the race in order to win, so he braves the rain and turns back into a sea monster. Everyone is scared and runs away from him, and Ercole tries to kill him with spears, but Giulia throws Ercole off of his bike and they end up making it to the finish line. Everyone at first backs away from Luca and Alberto because they are sea monsters, and Ercole is determined to have them disqualified, but the judge sees that Alberto, Giulia and Luca made it to the finish line, so they end up winning the race. Ercole is angry and tries to get his friends to gang up on Luca and his friends, but his friends decide to not do that, and instead the town celebrates Luca, Alberto and Giulia for winning. Luca ends up going to school with Giulia and Alberto ends up staying behind with Massimo to help him out because Massimo has become a father to him when his own dad left him. Luca’s parents see that he has a bright future ahead of him and so they let him go to school and assure him that he can still visit them and that they will always love him no matter if he is a sea monster or a human.

This movie has a really good message about not giving up when accomplishing your dreams and not letting fear prevent you from going for what you want. Luca doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle or walk like a human being at first, and learning how to do these things is frustrating at times, but when he finally learns how to do them, he gains confidence in himself. Learning something new takes patience and perseverance, and it’s not something that one can accomplish overnight. Alberto’s confidence inspired Luca to believe in himself, and when Alberto didn’t think he could enter the race or get the Vespa, Luca helped him regain his confidence again and decides not to give up. That was really encouraging because a lot of times when I encounter failure, rejection or disappointment, I tend to feel resigned and think, Maybe I should give up. But keeping at it one day at a time has kept me from becoming burned out or giving up too quickly, and over time I have learned that success takes a lot of perseverance and effort rather than just talent or luck. I remember having an orchestra audition several years ago, and I was extremely nervous about auditioning even after practicing for hours and hours. The day of the competition I wanted to give up because I was so burned out and was doubting myself, but I chanted about it and even when I was crying and scared, I did my best when playing my cello for the judges. I was happy to get on the list of substitute cellists, but I think looking back, it was about so much more than just getting the section cello position. In order to even enter the competition, I had to win over this voice in my head that was telling me I wasn’t good enough to audition, to not even bother trying. This journey I have been on in my creative work is teaching me that winning always begins with winning over my negativity, which often manifests as self-doubt. I also read this really good chapter in The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace by Daisaku Ikeda, and in one of the chapters he talks about appreciating one’s uniqueness, and he shares in the chapter that no one has perfect confidence at the beginning and that we should appreciate ourselves for who we are and not worry too much about how we measure up to others. I tend to forget this a lot, but it is something I need to remind myself any time I face a challenge or don’t think I can accomplish a goal I am working towards. I have also found that when I win over my doubts and insecurities, I can encourage others who may be dealing with similar challenges.

The animation in Luca was absolutely beautiful, and I definitely found myself crying a little towards the end. And the music was very fun to listen to. Watching this movie made me want to travel to Italy one day, and seeing all the pasta dishes that the characters were eating in the movie made me very hungry haha. 🙂

Luca. 2021. 1 hr 35 min. Directed by Enrico Casarosa. Rated PG for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence.

Movie Review: Mid 90s

I just finished watching a really excellent movie called mid 90s. I really love A24’s movies so this one caught my eye and the trailer looked really good. The movie takes place in 1990s Los Angeles, and it was directed and written by actor Jonah Hill. While not all of it is based in her personal experience, one of his experiences growing up was listening to ’90s hip hop, which is heavily featured on the film soundtrack for each of the scenes. It was really interesting to watch this movie because nowadays it is so hard to imagine a time before we had smartphones. In the movie, people talk face-to-face, not a single person is looking down at a cell phone, of course because this was the 1990s, way before smartphones came out. But it just made me think how social interactions have changed so much since the introduction of smartphones. That was just a little detail I thought of while watching this movie.

The movie opens with Stevie (Sunny Suljic) being beaten up by his older brother, Ian (Lucas Hedges) and then going into his brother’s bedroom and looking at his albums and taking notes. The scene cuts to him eating at a restaurant with Ian and their mom, Dabney. Stevie gives Ian a CD as a gift, but Ian puts it down without thanking him or looking at the gift. They have a very complicated relationship because Ian is older and constantly beats up Stevie. Stevie doesn’t have many friends, but all that changes when he looks across the street and finds a group of guys skateboarding and cussing out a storeowner. Intrigued, Stevie goes to the local skateboard shop where they hang out. At first, they aren’t keen on him since he is so young and shy, and one of the guys in the group, Ruben, gives Stevie hate, making him feel bad for saying thank you and just being himself. A lot of Ruben’s bullying gets to Stevie, and he starts to develop a hard shell, and starts drinking and smoking. He sneaks out to hang with the guys and skateboard and this worries his mom and his brother, Ian, who is trying to protect him. Ian, though, isn’t all that much of a role model himself. When he tries to get a new skateboard, Ian has Stevie sneak into his mom’s bedroom and steal $80 from her drawer, and Stevie refuses to take accountability for what he did, putting the blame on Ian and prompting Ian to beat him up. Stevie starts to give into peer pressure, and there is one scene where he goes to a party and hooks up with a woman who is much older than him and brags to his friends afterwards about losing his virginity. Stevie also starts to become aggressive towards his mom and Ian, and after he gets drunk and stoned at the party Ian yells at him and Stevie beats him up. When his mother takes him to his friends to say goodbye because she is not coming back after all the shenanigans he got up to, they get in the car, and he screams “Fuck you” over and over again to her. Ray, who is the level-headed one in the group, starts to notice that Stevie’s behavior has changed, and tries to protect Stevie and remind him that he doesn’t have to be anyone other than himself to be in the group.

This movie shows how important it is to be true to yourself and to follow your dreams even when your circumstances or people make you feel like you can’t accomplish them. One of the people in the skateboarding group, Fourth Grade, wants to be a filmmaker. However, Fuckshit and Ruben, the other guys in the group, make him feel bad and make fun of his dreams of making movies. This really affects Fourth Grade’s self-esteem and he gives into everyone’s negativity and says that he should give up on his dream. However, he continues to make films, and in one scene where everyone is skating in the park, Fourth Grade films Ray and Fuckshit talking to a guy about their skateboarding and their dreams and it’s three people just talking heart-to-heart about life. Fourth Grade puts together a really cool film that features footage of everyone skateboarding, going to parties and hanging out together. It serves as a reminder of how important it is to not give into other people telling you that your dreams aren’t worth working towards. This scene also showed how these four guys really treasured each other’s friendships with one another. Even though they didn’t always get along with one another, they continued to have each other’s backs through both the good times and the bad times. Of course, at the end, they all had to take accountability for nearly getting Stevie killed in the accident, but Stevie still wanted to be friends with them because they made him feel like he belonged and that is what Stevie really wanted because he didn’t have many friends at the beginning of the movie and he wanted to get away from his problems at home. I don’t know much about skateboarding culture, to be honest, but I think it’s a human need to want to belong somewhere so it makes sense that Stevie would find the crowd that he did. The movie also showed me though that even in a group of people, you need to be yourself and know yourself so that you don’t get influenced too much by what everyone else is doing.

Stevie has this quiet strength that I actually admired while watching the movie. When he thanks Ruben for giving him a cigarette, Ruben makes fun of him for saying “thank you” and tells him not to say “thank you” because it will somehow make him less than. However, when Ray gives Stevie a new skateboard and Stevie asks if he can thank him, Ray is confused why Stevie is asking to say “thank you,” and Stevie tells him what Ruben told him. Ray tells him that saying thank you is common manners and that he shouldn’t feel bad about saying thank you. Ray is the only one in the group who seems to stand up for Stevie and appreciate his uniqueness rather than tearing him down. This part reminded me of when I was in fifth grade, and I would always say hello to people and say thank you and sorry all the time, and people would often joke, “Stop being so polite,” and my guidance counselor even pulled me into her office to explain to me that I shouldn’t be too polite. I understand where she was coming from in retrospect, because she didn’t want me to become a pushover, which is what happened at some point in school unfortunately. I think after a while I started to become very self-conscious about it and thought, Maybe these kids are right. Maybe something is wrong with me and I need to stop being polite all the time. But there were some adults though who reminded me to keep being true to myself and I still appreciate these people to this day. I really appreciate that Ray told Stevie that it’s okay to say thank you and be himself rather than trying to fit in with anyone else or make himself look cool, because it reminded me that I can be true to myself and that while I am naturally going to grow and learn from life and change, I don’t have to change to seek anyone else’s approval. It’s still a work in progress to develop my sense of self and become more confident in who I am, but it helps to know that a lot of people are going through that same journey in their own unique way.

Stevie, Ray, Fourth Grade, Fuckshit and Ruben realize at a crucial moment just how precious their friendship really is when Fuckshit, who is drunk, drives around with everyone in the car and gets in a near fatal car accident. The car flips over and everyone is injured, but Stevie actually has to go to the emergency room and no one knows if he is going to live or not. His brother, Ian, doesn’t give him a hard time but just sits in silence at Stevie’s bedside. Stevie’s mom goes to the hospital and finds all of Stevie’s friends in the waiting room. She had assumed they didn’t care about Stevie and were just going to abandon him after the accident, but the fact that they showed up for him probably changed the way she felt about Stevie’s friends at that moment, and so she lets them go into the hospital room to see Stevie because she realizes that these people really are genuine friends to Stevie, even when they got him in a lot of trouble. I think this is a crucial moment for Stevie and his friends because they realize that they really do care about their lives and that they need to look out for each other.

I also loved the scene where Ray talks with Stevie after Stevie has a fight with his mom. Ray opens up and tells him that even though he thinks he is the only one dealing with a difficult home life, he isn’t the only one because everyone in their friend group is dealing with something. Ruben’s mom beats up on him and his sister when he gets home, Ray’s brother died after getting hit by a car, Fourth Grade struggles with money and couldn’t even afford socks, and Fuckshit is continuing to party and drink recklessly. I think this was really courageous of Ray to open up like this to Stevie because at the beginning when Stevie meets everyone, they make fun of him for being shy and not knowing how to smoke or fit in with them, but when Ray tells Stevie that everyone in the group has their own personal challenges, it helps him establish that trust with Stevie so that Stevie doesn’t need to feel like he is the only one who is dealing with challenges and insecurities. I remember in high school and college I would often compare myself to my peers, thinking how much fun they were having with each other and how everyone’s lives seemed to be more perfect. It seemed I was the only one dealing with low self-esteem and insecurities while everyone else on the outside seemed perfectly confident. However, I remember seeing a counselor during my first year of college and she told me that it seems like everyone on the outside is cool as a cucumber and everyone is confident, but in reality, everyone during that first year of college was also dealing with insecurities and a lack of self-confidence, and they, too, were also wondering, How am I going to make friends? How am I going to do it all? Even though it wasn’t overnight, I have gradually come to develop more confidence in myself and have realized that everyone has problems, many people struggle with feeling good about themselves, and that I’m not the only one with issues. I thin especially in this age of social media and the Internet it can be easy to pretend to seem confident and perfectly put together, but in reality, as I have learned over the years, life really isn’t that simple and even though someone may be successful, they still are human beings and deal with different struggles. I may not have the same struggle as someone else, but I can develop the compassion to understand what they are going through. It is much easier for me to envy other people’s lives and compare my life to others, but as I have learned over the years, that only led me to harbor feelings of bitterness and jealousy at not having achieved what others had, so it made it hard for me to genuinely be happy for others since I couldn’t be happy for myself. I think reading Daisaku Ikeda’s writings really encouraged me to keep growing and studying, and to also strive towards my own goals.

Overall, this was a really excellent film. I also really love the score. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross collaborated on the score; I really loved the work they did on the score for another movie I love called Soul. And I love the songs they chose for the movie because I have been getting into 1990s hip-hop in recent years, so I have been listening to the Notorious B.I.G. and A Tribe Called Quest. I looked at the credits and saw that “Kiss From a Rose” by Seal was featured in the movie, and I was like, What? When!?! So I re-winded the movie and sure enough, if you listen closely, the song is playing in the restaurant that Stevie, Dabney and Ian are eating at. It’s one of my favorite songs and growing up in the 1990s it was something I would listen to on the radio a lot, so I was pretty excited that it was featured in the movie. I also really love the way the movie is filmed. At the beginning it was really cool when the skateboards spell out A24. I thought that was very fitting because it served as an introduction to one of the key themes of the movie, which is skateboarding. Of course, looking back, the movie was so much more than just about skateboarding. It was a coming-of-age movie that shows the ups and downs of being a teenager and growing up and trying to fit in.

Mid 90s. 2018. 1 hr 25 min. Written and directed by Jonah Hill. Rated R for pervasive language, sexual content, drug and alcohol use, some violent behavior/ disturbing images-all involving minors.

Book Review: The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama

I just finished this really excellent book by Michelle Obama called The Light We Carry. A friend gave me this book as a gift and I really loved reading it. I had not yet read Becoming, her other book, but it had been on my list for a while of books to read. The Light We Carry has a lot of really good messages about life and how to navigate it, and some parts resonated with me personally. I really like the chapter where she talks about relationships and how she and Barack navigated the ups and downs of being in the White House. In one part she writes about how she wanted her daughters, Sasha and Malia, to not view marriage or relationships as the end all be all, but to develop independence and learn what works for them in relationships and what does not. She also affirms that it’s okay to not have a partner if that’s not what you want in life. I think this was really affirming for me because I am unsure whether I want to be in a relationship or get married yet, but it can feel like a lot of pressure since many of my friends are getting married and having families. Michelle Obama debunks this myth I had in my head that simply getting married and having children will make all my problems go away and explains that relationships take effort and patience and that at the end of the day, you still need to face yourself and all your strengths and weaknesses. I had this naive idea that getting married and having a family would fix all my problems and bring me total bliss, but I am realizing that’s not a very healthy way to look at relationships. Reading Discussions on Youth by Daisaku Ikeda also really helped because in the “What is Love?” chapter he talks about how it’s important to not lose sight of one’s personal growth when falling in love with someone and that even in a relationship or marriage it’s important to be independent and secure in who you are. I am still figuring out who I am, to be honest, and I think that’s why I was so worried about getting in a relationship because I thought I had to change who I was for the other person. I had a boyfriend back in 2016 but we broke up after a year of doing long-distance, and it was really painful. When we were together it felt exhilarating and like I had just won a prize, especially because the guy I was crushing on before I found my boyfriend was already in a relationship, so I couldn’t be with him. Falling in love with this boy felt magical, but then when we went our separate ways I had to navigate a lot of emotions and pain, while also dealing with my work, friendships, and other things in life. I really appreciate that I have this time to myself to figure out what I really want. I want to be truly happy for my friends when they date, get engaged, married and start families, but I think being truly happy for them means being happy for myself, too and celebrating the growth I have achieved in just these past few years.

Another thing I really love in the book is how she talks about “when they go low, we go high.” I just remembered it as a phrase, but Michelle Obama says that going high doesn’t mean ignoring injustice or inequalities in society, or acting like things will work out without taking action. It requires a lot of effort and patience and also self-compassion because doing the work of dismantling oppression or injustice takes a lot of planning and action. She differentiates between responding and reacting. The former is more reflective, like figuring out how to react in a constructive way. There is a lot to be angry about, of course. But as Mrs. Obama explains, simply reacting out of emotion is not always going to help address decades of injustice. It’s the easiest thing to do, but the hardest thing to do is channeling that anger into constructive action. I remember when George Floyd was killed, and like many people I was furious and upset and confused and scared for what the future held for so many Black people like myself. It was also during the pandemic, so I pretty much stayed inside, but I wanted to make some sort of cause for the racial justice movement in my own way, so I chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo a lot about it, and I wrote a poem in memory of Breonna Taylor, a young Black woman who was killed by police in early March of 2020. I couldn’t get rid of my anger, but I didn’t want to let it keep stewing silently until it ate me alive, so writing the poem and sharing it with others helped me feel that my writing could be a medium to bring up social injustices and express my hurt, pain and frustration.

Mrs. Obama also talks about the importance of setting boundaries. Even when being in the White House was busy and she had a lot of engagements, Mrs. Obama talks about how she made sure to take time to exercise, eat well, and take care of herself so that she could continue to have the energy to show up for people as her most authentic self. This really resonated with me because these last few years I have realized the hard way that self-care isn’t something you only practice when you have free time or when your schedule is totally clear. It is a daily weekly thing you should make time for. In college, I rolled my eyes every time one of the seniors told me to make time for myself because I thought being busy was a virtue and self-compassion and self-care was just laziness. However, by junior year I was exhausted and my body literally could no longer get by on four hours of sleep every day. I was sleeping in class, my emotions were out of whack, I was calling in sick to work, I was stress-eating, and I became very lonely because I would often say “no” to meeting with people, even for something as casual as ice cream. This leads to another good part of the book where Michelle Obama talks about the importance of friendship. Even though I’m an introvert, having close friends has been one of the things to get me through those ups and downs of life. My friends were constantly checking in with me and inviting me to eat with them and hang out with them, and they would come to my room and remind me to take a break and go out for some good food and drinks instead of staying holed up in my room studying. I am forever thankful to them for that because I loved studying and loved my classes, and I studied a lot, but in retrospect, so did everyone else. Looking back, those relationships in college helped me grow leaps and bounds, and these friends helped me get through so much stuff even when I wasn’t always open to talking about what I was going through and wanted to just pretend everything was okay. I really appreciate Mrs. Obama talking about the importance of cultivating friendships and reaching out to people because these past few years I have learned that a lot of times, I need to reach out to people in order to overcome my feelings of isolation and loneliness. And friendships take a lot of work and patience, and as someone who isn’t very patient, I am learning to be a better listener and grow from my friendships.

I have so many more thoughts about this book that are just running and bubbling through my mind, but I am getting sleepy, so I will talk about it more at a later time. Overall, though, I recommend you read The Light We Carry if you haven’t already. It is really good.

Movie Review: To Leslie

I just finished watching the movie To Leslie, a movie directed by Michael Morris and starring English actress Andrea Riseborough as Leslie, a divorced alcoholic woman who lives in rural Texas and is estranged from her son, James. She is living through poverty and homelessness and struggling to make her way through the struggles of life. I didn’t know much about the film before I saw it, I just kept reading the news that its nomination for the Oscars last year created a serious stir of controversy because there was a grassroots campaign for the film that it seems violated the rules for Oscar nominations, and also that it wasn’t fair that Andrea Riseborough, who is white, got nominated while Black actresses like Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler didn’t get nominated for their performances. I am not going to pretend like this part of the controversy isn’t important because Hollywood has a very long history of racism and even with a greater diversity of stories from directors who are Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian, Hollywood and the Academy I am sure still have a long way to go in addressing issues of diversity. I haven’t read enough about the controversy to form an articulate, well-formed opinion about it, but that was how I first heard about the movie was because of the news surrounding its nomination.

The movie, To Leslie, takes place in rural west Texas. At the beginning they show pictures of Leslie, from her childhood to her teenage years to the birth of her son James, to that moment when she won the lottery. One significant moment in that montage shows her bruised eye up close, and it implies that her marriage was an abusive marriage and that her husband was abusive towards her. The song “Here I Am” by Dolly Parton is playing during the montage of photos. There is footage of Leslie on television when she won the lottery and she is screaming and cheering in excitement while her son, James, looks quiet and subdued and uncomfortable to be on national television. Six years later, Leslie is curled up in a motel by herself and a man pounds on the door, telling her she needs to leave. She gathers her belongings and cusses out the manager and everyone at the motel, and leaves. She contacts her son, James, who she hasn’t spoken to in years, and he reluctantly allows her to stay with him. He gives her a condition though: no drinking. He lets her stay long enough so she can figure out a plan for what to do with her life. Leslie promises to not drink like she used to, but when James is at work, she goes through his drawers to look for cash so she can get alcohol. At first, things seem to be okay, and one night Leslie is smoking a joint with James and his coworker at the construction site, Darren. Darren informs James that something happened to Leslie, and James comes home to find empty liquor bottles under his mattress. When James finds out that his neighbor allowed Leslie to come over to his apartment and get alcohol from him, he beats the guy up and then screams at his mom for breaking the rules and drinking when he told her not to.

He threatens to contact Dutch and Nancy, two people in their Texas town who don’t like Leslie, and he has Leslie stay with them. Dutch and Nancy let Leslie stay with them, but they aren’t happy about it because Leslie left her son and wasted her lottery money. Dutch tells her she needs to stay and help with painting and household chores and needs to stop drinking. Leslie promises to work, but then she goes out to bars and drinks heavily. She is lonely and feels ostracized by the people in her life, and there is one scene where Dutch and Nancy are drinking around a campfire and everyone is talking trash about Leslie, but Leslie is cooped up alone in the house because everyone is gossiping loudly about her drinking and her past. She overhears Dutch and Nancy loudly fighting about Leslie’s alcoholism and her fraught relationship with her son. When she goes to a bar, she flirts with a man at the bar who is talking with a buddy of his. She is trying to get a conversation going and asks him to dance, but he is uncomfortable with her being drunk and rejects her advances, leaving her to dance alone. She also finds out from the bar owner that the picture they had of her winning the lottery was taken down, and so she leaves and gives the guy the finger. When she comes back to Dutch and Nancy’s place, they have locked the front door so that she cannot get in and they left her suitcase on the porch. She leaves and has to go find another place to stay. Pete, Dutch and Nancy’s friend, offers her a ride and buys her dinner. While she is eating in the car, he makes a crack about her drinking and tries to make sexual advances towards her, and she runs out of the car and leaves. She happens upon a motel and sleeps outside the motel. Sweeney, the motel manager (Marc Maron) kicks her off the premises, and Leslie goes. However, she leaves her suitcase behind, and Sweeney and his coworker, Royal (Andre Royo) go through the suitcase and figure out whether they should even bother giving it back to her now that she is gone. However, she comes back looking for the suitcase and Sweeney offers her a job at the motel. At first, Leslie doesn’t seem to show much promise. She sleeps in and shows up late, and she smokes and drinks frequently while working. Royal and Sweeney are frustrated with her, but they don’t give up on her. In fact, they are literally the only people who have not given up on her. All of Leslie’s friends have deserted her and her son kicked her out, so she doesn’t have a lot of people to talk with. Leslie goes to the bar and reflects on how she is living her life, and she also visits the old house that she and James used to live in. It is inhabited by a new family, and when she comes in, the husband who lives in the house is uncomfortable with her being there and she reminisces about the days when she would cook and clean in the house and how comfortable and nice her life was in it.

Sweeney finds Leslie and picks her up and takes her back to the motel, and Leslie resolves to quit drinking cold-turkey. This is incredibly difficult and she suffers from withdrawal. She vomits frequently and while eating dinner with Sweeney, her hands and body shake and she cannot keep her food down. However, she is determined to go through with her recovery. Sweeney opens up about his personal life to Leslie and doesn’t prod her about her alcoholism, and he tells her that he has a daughter and a granddaughter, and that he left his wife because she was an alcoholic. He apologizes for wanting to know personal details about her drinking and invites her to a party that the whole Texas town is going to be at. When Leslie hears that everyone in the town is going to be there, she declines but Sweeney insists on her going. She goes and at first she is having fun, and she gets to play carnival games with Sweeney’s daughter and his granddaughter, Bernice and Betsy. However, while Leslie and Royal are sitting and watching everyone dancing, Pete’s kids run up to her and asks her if it’s true that she really won the lottery. This brings up bad memories for Leslie, and Royal shoos them away when he finds out that they are Pete’s kids and that Pete and Nancy has been gossiping to them about Leslie. Leslie confronts Nancy and Pete when Pete gets atop the table and announces in glee that he won the lottery. Leslie tells him that he isn’t special just because he won the lottery and that he’s going to waste all the money anyway, and Nancy takes several nasty jabs at Leslie’s drinking and her leaving her son. Sweeney tries to break up the fight but Leslie decides to leave the gathering. Sweeney begs her to not go by herself, but Leslie refuses to stay and leaves.

Sweeney finds Leslie in her room and tells her he got a tape of old footage of her winning the lottery. He expects her to feel good about it and to regain her confidence, as a way to remind her that she is not the low life that Pete and Nancy made her out to be. However, watching the video makes Leslie feel ashamed, and she tells Sweeney to leave and cusses him out. She quits her job at the motel and leaves. She goes to a bar and a guy who finds her attractive goes up and starts talking to her, and she is suspicious about his motives and asks him if she really finds something in her or if he just sees her as a one stop shop. He backs off and tells her that she doesn’t have to be interested in him, and she leaves the bar. Nancy and Pete come into the bar, and Sweeney is looking for Leslie, and Nancy and Pete make some snide comment about Leslie and Sweeney punches Pete, prompting the owner to break up the fight. The bartender threatens to throw out Pete and Nancy and the guy who fell in love with Leslie offers to beat them up. Leslie sleeps in a run down ice cream shop that Royal’s dad used to own, and she peers through the window and finds Royal dancing and howling at the night sky and Sweeney comes over and they hug after not being able to find Leslie. The next day, Sweeney finds her and Leslie tells him that she wants to renovate the ice cream shop and make it a diner, but Sweeney thinks that it will be impossible because they don’t have the finances to open up a diner. But Leslie is determined and then when she asks why Sweeney was so kind to her, Sweeney reveals it’s because he has a crush on Leslie and they share a sweet kiss. Ten months later, Royal, Sweeney and Leslie have finished building Lee’s Diner out of the ice cream shop, and they are anticipating many customers coming on opening day. However, as night falls, no one has come to the diner and Leslie gives up hope. However, she hears a knock at the door and finds Nancy arriving to dine at the restaurant. Leslie gets angry and pretends to serve Nancy, and Nancy tells her to cut the bullshit and angrily opens up about how Leslie fucked up when she left her son and made bad life choices and didn’t take responsibility for them. Leslie is pained that Nancy is bringing up her past, but she ends up thanking her and Nancy brings in James to the restaurant. Leslie breaks down in tears and serves her son dinner, and when he expresses appreciation for the meal, she breaks down and gives him a hug because she has so many regrets about what she did and she just really wants to be a good mom.

This movie’s themes reminded me of some other movies I have seen in the past. A couple of years ago, I watched a movie by A24 called The Florida Project, a film directed by Sean Baker, and it’s about a single mom named Halley who is raising her six year old daughter, Moonee, in a motel in Kissimmee, Florida, which many tourists visit because Disney World is located close by. Moonee and her friends Jancey and Scooty seem to be enjoying their lives running around and getting ice cream and playing in parks with other kids whose parents live in the motel complex. But while watching the movie, I also saw how Halley and the other adults have to face the reality of poverty and struggling to get by, and how even though the tourists have this glamorous view of Disney World, it’s not super glamorous because a lot of people in the local community struggle with poverty and other challenges. Halley also has strained relationship with her friend, who is Scooty’s mom. Scooty’s mom works at a diner, while Halley struggles to make ends meet after losing her job as a stripper. Halley’s financal situation only gets worse as the film goes on, and she has to take up sex work again to make ends meet. Ashley is unhappy with what Halley is doing and Halley beats her up. The movie showed how no magical person was ever going to save the people from poverty and that everyone was a human being who was just trying to do their best to make ends meet and take care of their kids. Bobby, the motel manager (played by Willem Dafoe) is doing his best, too, to especially keep the kids at the motel from confronting the harsh realities that the adults have to face every day. There was one particular scene in the film that shows this, and it also stuck with me because it’s a pretty hard scene to watch. The kids in the motel are playing in the park and a middle aged pedophile starts to approach the children. Bobby approaches the guy and gets him a soda and then kicks him off the premises so he doesn’t mess with the kids again. It showed me how Bobby really cared about the residents at the motel and that he is willing to do anything to help them. However, he could only really do his best. He couldn’t protect or shelter Moonee from the harsh realities of day to day life, and this is evident when agents from the Florida Department of Children and Families comes to take Moonee away from her mom after finding out that Halley was doing sex work, and Moonee goes with one of the other kids and escapes from the DCF agents. The film pulls no punches when it portrays the reality of poverty and trying to survive in a harsh world, but it also shows how the kids in the movie create value and meaning from these harsh realities. Leslie in To Leslie has big dreams of starting an ice cream shop but Sweeney wants her to be realistic about her expectations. But after the lottery winning thing fell flat and her relationships didn’t work out, Leslie wants another shot at life and to do better, and opening the diner helped her start fresh.

To Leslie also shows the challenges of living with mental illness and addiction. In a pivotal scene towards the end of the film, Leslie takes a flask of alcohol from Royal’s coat, and she sniffs the alcohol and is tempted to drink again, but she remembers the promise she made to herself and closes the bottle without drinking it. It was pretty painful watching the physical impact that withdrawal had on Leslie, but as someone who has listened to experiences of people who recover from addiction, I have learned that the process of recovery is not easy at all and when someone gets sober, it’s a very major milestone for a lot of people. I haven’t struggled with addiction, but I have struggled with mental illness and loneliness, and it can feel painful when you feel that you have to battle your suffering alone, and it can bring up a lot of feelings of guilt and shame. You know you should reach out for help, but that guilt and shame holds you back so you tell people you don’t need help and suffer alone. I think that is why I had to see a mental health professional at some point because I could not face my anxiety and depression alone. Being in that dark place where you fight your inner negativity can be scary, and it can honestly feel like you are alone and don’t have anyone around to help you even when people offer to help. I also didn’t feel comfortable telling a lot of people about my mental health because I felt ashamed, so it helped to find someone who was licensed to deal with these issues and encourage me to do the inner work needed to look honestly at myself and realize that my anxiety and depression doesn’t define me and that I can overcome it with little baby steps each day. Seeing how Leslie pulled through and was able to reconcile with Nancy and her son actually gave me hope after seeing how she struggled throughout the movie. Sweeney and Royal don’t initially warm up to Leslie after seeing her struggles with addiction and how she treats her job at the motel but they also deal with their own stuff, too, and when they open up to Leslie about what they go through, it gives Leslie the courage to keep going because she has a couple of friends who she can trust to come back to even when it seems that she can’t pull through.

I also thought of the movie, Moonlight. In Moonlight, a young Black man named Chiron lives with a mother who struggles with addiction (Naomie Harris played her so well) and she depends emotionally and financially on her son, while also ostracizing him for being gay. The emotional abuse and homophobia Chiron suffered as a child and teenager follows him into adulthood, and he puts on this emotional armor and makes himself look like this tough person. He dons a grill, works out and deals drugs, and it seems like he has moved on from his past. However, his mother reaches out to him and she is recovering from addiction, and they meet up and she breaks down in tears and apologizes for the abuse she inflicted on her son and tells him that she really does love him even when she never really showed it. This brings Chiron to tears because he loves his mother, too, and forgives her but that forgiveness isn’t easy because it pains him that for so many years she neglected him and made him feel less than. At the beginning it seemed Leslie was going to live a blissful comfortable life with her son after she won the lottery, but this doesn’t end up happening and she becomes estranged from him for many years. She comes back but it’s only really to ask him for money so she can keep drinking, and at some point he gets sick of seeing her drink and not take care of herself that he kicks her out. However, when she sees him again it brings back a lot of shame and guilt for her and she feels like she was a bad mom for what she did, and like any mom, she wants to feel like she was doing the best for her kid.

This was a really powerful movie, and I also really love the acting. Andrea Riseborough was fierce in her role as Leslie and her acting captivated me even well after the end of the movie.

To Leslie. 2022. 1 hr 59 m. Directed by Michael Morris and written by Ryan Binaco. Starring Andrea Riseborough, Owen Teague, Allison Janney and Marc Maron. Rated R for language throughout and some drug use.

Movie Review: Volver

When I was in middle school, a movie called Volver came out. I was really intrigued by the poster of Penelope Cruz surrounded by these very colorful red flowers, with this troubled expression on her face as she looks to the side of her. It just seemed like such a mature movie to me, but I don’t think I would have been able to appreciate the film if I had seen it back then because it does have a lot of mature themes. I am glad I finally saw it now after so many years of wanting to see it because it really was an excellent film. I had seen Pedro Almodóvar’s other movie Julieta, which came out a decade after Volver did. That movie was really good, too.

The movie Volver takes place in Spain, and it opens with several women cleaning off the caskets of deceased loved ones. Penelope Cruz plays Raimunda, a woman who is grappling with the loss of her parents. Her sister is named Sole (Lola Duenas) and Raimunda also has a daughter named Paula (Yohana Cobo). They go over to their aunt Paula’s house, where Aunt Paula takes care of herself. Sole finds her mother’s old bicycle in Paula’s attic and starts to wonder more about her mother. Meanwhile, Raimunda has to deal with another issue: her husband, Paco, lost his job. We also find out Paco is a shady dude because Raimunda’s daughter is sitting on the couch, Paco looks at her crotch. He also walks past her room and finds her naked and starts looking at her in a creepy way. Raimunda is stressed because Paco isn’t doing anything to find a new job; he is just sitting and drinking beer and watching sports, while she has to take on several jobs to make ends meet. When Paco wants to have sex, Raimunda refuses and he masturbates instead. When Raimunda gets off the bus to walk home, she finds her daughter waiting for her at the bus stop. When she asks where Dad is, Paula says he is at home and she also looks very shaken. They arrive home to find Paco dead with a knife in his body and blood pooling around him. Paula tells her mom that Paco tried to rape her and so she stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife. Raimunda, shaken that Paco would do such a thing, cleans up the blood and plans to dispose of Paco’s body. She also takes the blame for what Paula did and decides to not tell anyone about what happened to Paco. Emilio comes to the house and tells Raimunda that he is going out of town and needs someone to run his restaurant in his absence, and he gives her the keys to the restaurant. The next day, Raimunda takes Paco’s body and puts it in the freezer in the back storage room. The person in charge of a film crew comes to the restaurant and tells her they want to eat at the restaurant while they are shooting a movie. At first, Raimunda is reluctant to do so, but he offers to pay her well, so she lets him and the crew eat at the restaurant. Aunt Paula passes away and Sole and Agustina are grieving her death. Raimunda continues to run the restaurant and asks some women around the neighborhood, including Regina and Ines, if they could lend her some food (pork and cookies) to the restaurant for her to prepare for the film crew. They help her out and honestly seeing the menu of what she was serving in that restaurant sounded delicious even though I’m a vegan. I have never tried meat from Spain but I bet it’s delicious. Meanwhile, Soledad is driving and she parks her car outside her house, and she hears a woman whisper her name. When she opens the trunk she finds the woman is none other than her mother, Irene, the lady she thought was dead for years. Sole lets her mother stay with her, and her mother reveals that her husband cheated on her when they were married. Sole is divorced and doesn’t live with anyone, so her mother says they can live together. However, Sole decides to hide her mother from Raimunda so that Raimunda doesn’t know that her mother is alive, and Sole has a bunch of women come to her home so she can do their hair, and she has Irene pretend to be from Russia and not understand Spanish so they don’t know it’s her. When she is at the restaurant, Paula (Raimunda’s daughter) goes into the freezer and gets suspicious about what Raimunda is hiding in there, and when she asks about it, Raimunda tells her that no one is to look in that freezer, not even Paula. When Paula asks if Paco is her real dad, Raimunda tells her that Paco is not her biological dad and that her biological dad passed away a long time ago. The film crew has their final celebration at the restaurant and Raimunda finds a group of guitarists playing, and she decides to go out and sing for everyone. Soledad pulls up to outside the restaurant with Irene hiding in the car and Irene overhears Raimunda singing this beautiful song that her grandmother sung to her a long time ago called “Volver” by Carlos Gardel (which I finally realized is the significance of the movie’s title), and she is moved to tears. The next day Raimunda calls to rent a van to put Paco’s corpse in, and Emilio calls her to asks about how the restaurant is going and Raimunda confesses that she has taken over the restaurant. Emilio is disappointed because no one told him about this, but Raimunda has another big problem to deal with, not only how to get rid of her ex-husband’s dead body in a very discreet way but also her neighbor, Agustina, has cancer and is dying, so Raimunda has to go to the hospital to see her. Agustina has a request for Raimunda before she dies: that Raimunda inform her whether her mother is dead or alive. She also says that there is a friend who requested her to be on a TV show and wants to interview them about their mother’s death and the fire that she died in, and Raimunda, who already has a lot on her plate, refuses to do so. Her daughter, Paula, ends up staying with Sole many times because Raimunda is trying to visit Agustina and also take care of getting rid of her husband’s body. Raimunda gets her friends, Ines and Regina, to help her get the fridge with Paco’s corpse into the van and then they dig a ditch and throw his body in there. While Raimunda is working at the restaurant, Agustina comes to see her and reminds her that she promised to tell her whether her mother is dead or alive. Apparently Raimunda got the story about her mother all wrong because Agustina tells her that the death of Raimunda’s parents in the fire in the village and her mother’s disappearance may be connected in some way, and tells Raimunda that it’s possible that Agustina’s mom was having a secret affair with Raimunda’s dad, and that is why Agustina went to live with her grandmother. Raimunda didn’t know that part of the story, and she thinks Agustina’s lying, but Agustina insists that the death of Raimunda’s parents and her mother’s disappearance are deeply connected. Back at Sole’s house, Irene is hiding under the bed and Paula is there with her, and she overhears the TV playing in the room. The women who are having their hair done by Irene are wondering why she disappeared when she was supposed to be doing their hair, but Sole can’t tell them what is really going on. Sole, Raimunda and the woman getting her hair done go into the room to watch this show called Donde Quiera Que Estes (Wherever You Are). Agustina appears on the show, and the interviewer asks her to divulge details about her mother’s disappearance and if there was another woman involved in the fire in Agustina’s village. Agustina feels uncomfortable and refuses to talk about the details of the fire, and her sister expresses anger and disappointment when she does. It gets even more awkward when the interviewer announces Agustina has cancer, and so Agustina walks off the show. While preparing flan, Raimunda tells Sole that Agustina approached her asking for details about her mother’s appearance and that Agustina said that her mother was having an affair with Raimunda and Sole’s dad. It also turns out that there was more to this story than Raimunda thought, because Sole tells her that Irene has been around all this time, and that she stayed with Aunt Paula and took care of her and even helped out with Aunt Paula’s funeral, so she was very much alive and contrary to what Raimunda and Sole thought, Aunt Paula was never alone because Irene was taking care of her. Sole takes her to her bedroom and Raimunda finds Irene very much alive and well, and she leaves with her daughter, Paula, shocked and in tears to find that no one told her that her mother was alive and that she didn’t die in that fire in the village. Paula encourages Raimunda to go back to the house to talk with Irene and Irene later that evening while they are on a walk tells Raimunda everything that happened. She explains that she left Raimunda’s father because he cheated on her with Agustina’s mother. Not only that but Raimunda’s father sexually abused Raimunda and she got pregnant and then had her daughter, Paula. He moved to Venezuela because he felt ashamed of what he did, and Irene felt angry that she didn’t know that her husband was not only cheating on her with Agustina’s mom but was also raping her daughter. And that is why she understood why Raimunda didn’t talk to her for many years because she was still grappling with this painful trauma. Irene found her husband and Agustina’s mother having sex in a hut and she set fire to it, killing them both. Before she went into hiding, she went to visit Aunt Paula, who lived alone, and decided to take care of her until her death. She went into hiding after setting fire to the hut and killing her husband and Agustina’s mother because she didn’t want to get caught, but even while in hiding, she suffered a lot and felt a lot of shame and pain for what happened. Irene visits Agustina when she is unwell and promises to take care of her because she feels bad about what she did to Agustina’s mom, and Raimunda is about to tell her what happened to Paco but Irene insists she can tell her later. I thought the end credits were very interesting, because they are very colorful and flowery and yet this was such a dark movie. I did love how they made the designs, though, and also the music throughout the movie was really beautiful.

Honestly I think the part about this movie I loved the most was the acting and the dialogue. Penelope brought so much to her role as Raimunda and shows the psychological and emotional toll that grief took on her, and how she is was grappling with a lot of shame and trauma in her marriage to Paco and when her mother reveals what happened to her as a young woman. Grief is a central theme in this movie, but the movie also shows how it is also messy and complicated, especially when you find out that the person you thought was dead was actually alive the whole time. When Raimunda finds out her mother is actually alive, she feels pained because everyone kept this a secret from her and Sole and Paula didn’t tell her that they had been hiding Irene in Sole’s house while Raimunda continued to think that Irene was dead. I haven’t seen any other films by the actresses who played the other characters, to be honest, and I haven’t watched many other movies with Penelope Cruz. But after watching this and his 2016 drama, Julieta, I definitely want to check out more of Pedro Almodóvar’s movies, especially his 2013 film I’m So Excited! and his most recent one, Parallel Mothers, which also stars Penelope Cruz and is on my watchlist.

Volver. 2006. 2 h 1 m. Directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Rated R for some sexual content and language.

When I am most happy

Daily writing prompt

When are you most happy?

View all responses

I am most happy when I am spending time with loved ones, when I am practicing Buddhism, when I am writing, when I play music as a hobby. I am also happy when I am working towards a goal, and I am also happy when I exercise.

Movie Review: Barbie

So I heard this movie was all the rage, and I knew about the phenomenon called “Barbie-heimer,” during which Barbie and Oppenheimer opened on the same day. And I saw the trailer. So I thought, Ok, I need to see what all the talk is about this movie. Especially because I really loved Greta Gerwig’s movie Little Women, and also loved her in the movie Frances Ha. I didn’t know how I was going to like the movie, to be honest, but after watching it I was left with a lot to think about. It’s actually a pretty philosophical film if you think about it.

To give a brief summary, the movie takes place in Barbieland, where Stereotypical Barbie (played brilliantly by the very talented Margot Robbie) seems to be enjoying her life and being happy every day. It seems her life is so perfect on the outside. She wakes up to Lizzo singing her theme song and Helen Mirren narrating Barbie’s seemingly perfect life. Her waffle comes out perfectly out of the toaster, she wakes up without bags under her eyes, she always manages to fit perfectly into heels and stay on her tip-toes, and all the Barbies, Kens and Allan (there is only one Allan, and he is played by Michael Cera) knows her and says hi and she knows everyone and says hi, too. She also has a lot of Kens competing with her (the main Kens are played by Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu and Kingsley Ben-Adir), but Ryan Gosling’s Ken just can’t seem to get her to be with him. One evening, while everyone is dancing and having fun, Barbie asks out loud, “Hey, do you guys ever think about dying?” And everyone immediately freezes, and when Barbie realizes what she said, she covers it up by saying “I’m dying to dance!” And then things seem to go back to normal. However, Barbie can’t seem to sleep because she really is thinking about death.

The next morning, Stereotypical Barbie’s life starts to seem a lot less perfect: she wakes up and feels tired instead of perky, her waffle comes out burnt and the milk in the carton is spoiled, and worse of all: her feet are flat and she can no longer walk perfectly in heels. All the Barbies think something is deeply wrong with her or that she is malfunctioning, so they take her to Weird Barbie (played by Saturday Night Live alum Kate McKinnon), who everyone ostracizes and gossips about. Stereotypical Barbie goes to Weird Barbie and asks what is wrong, and Weird Barbie tells her that she needs to go to the Real World to repair her relationship with the girl who used to play with her because there is something off in their relationship that is causing Barbie’s life to feel off-kilter. So Barbie goes on a mission and goes to find the girl who used to play with her. She intends to go by herself, but then she finds that Ken (Ryan Gosling) snuck into her car and now he is going with her. I seriously thought this was going to be them in the car just having a long road trip and getting on each others’ nerves and then falling in love when they realize they have a crush on each other.

But that’s not how it works out. They get to the Real World, and they end up dressing in these roller blading outfits and Barbie gets catcalled by men and she finds that the Real World is very different from Barbie World (especially because in Barbie World all the Barbies ran the show: there’s a Barbie who is president, there is a Barbie who is a doctor, there is a Barbie who is a lawyer, and other intelligent confident Barbies in positions of power). Ken, however, ends up soaking up all this male energy and when he walks around he sees men in positions of power, and he starts to read books about the patriarchy. Meanwhile, Barbie is trying to figure out which girl she belonged to. She closes her eyes when she stops at the bus stop and sees a young woman named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) and her mom, Gloria (America Ferrera) playing with Barbie and then when the girl becomes a teenager, she becomes moody and stops playing with Barbie, which hurts her mother because her mom loves Barbie. She goes on a quest to find Sasha, and she finds her sitting at a cafeteria table outside with her friends. She walks up and introduces herself to Sasha and her friends, but Sasha dismisses her, telling her that Barbie is the reason why these girls hate themselves because she seems so perfect and these girls think Barbie sets this unattainable standard for beauty. Her and her friends call Barbie a “fascist” and tell her to go away, and Barbie is hurt and pained that this girl no longer wants her. At the Mattel Corporation, everyone gets word that Ken and Barbie are in the Real World and not in Barbie Land where they are supposed to be. Gloria (played by America Ferrera) works at Barbie and draws the designs for Barbies. The drawings are of an ordinary Barbie, a Barbie with every day human problems. When Gloria is picking up Sasha from school, she finds that Barbie and Ken are being escorted into a black van to take them back to Barbie Land, but then Gloria gets Barbie to come with her and Sasha and hide from the vans. Sasha isn’t receptive, of course, but then Barbie explains why she is in the Real World, and she ends up taking Gloria and Sasha to Barbie Land. Gloria is so excited to be in Barbie Land, but Sasha is not. However, they arrive in Barbie Land only to find out that all the Kens have taken it over, and not only is Ryan Gosling’s Ken now in charge, but all of the Barbies, who once held positions of power, are serving them beers and wearing maid uniforms and being the Kens’ casual girlfriends. The new theme song for the Kens is “Push” by Matchbox Twenty, and after watching this movie hearing this song when I am out and about is going to remind me of the Kens.

Barbie is (rightfully) angry at Ken for doing this, but he tells her she made him feel bad for rejecting him, so this is his payback to her for rejecting him, otherwise he wouldn’t have done all of this. Barbie loses her self-confidence and gives up and starts saying negative things about herself, and Gloria and Sasha try to cheer her up, but Barbie tells them to leave her alone because there is nothing they can do to stop the Kens from taking over. However, on their way back to the Real World, they find that Allan is going with them because he can’t deal with the stress of being with all these men who are treating these women like crap. They find a bunch of Kens trying to stop them from going to the Real World, and Allan fights them off. Meanwhile, the Mattel CEO (played by Will Ferrell) and his fellow board members are still chasing Barbie and Ken down, so they go to what is now Ken-Land to track them down (earlier when Barbie is at a board meeting the CEO tries to get her to go back into the box she came packaged in, and Barbie escapes and goes into another room and meets Ruth, played by Rhea Perlman from the movie Matilda) who gives her sage advice about life and getting older.)

Gloria and Sasha team up with Weird Barbie and Allan to encourage Barbie to regain her self-esteem and not let those Kens make her feel worthless. They end up hatching a plan to reprogram the Barbies to be independent and confident again and for the Kens to all fight amongst one another. Seeing how they execute this plan was brilliant. They pretend to be interested in watching The Godfather with their noncommittal Ken boyfriend or asking them to teach them how to play certain sports, while they bring each other back in secret to Weird Barbie’s place so they can be reprogrammed again. The Kens no longer have control over these women’s lives, and so they fight amongst each other in a very fun and also very well-choreographed dance to the song “Just Ken.” Ken is upset because he feels that Barbie has taken away his power from him, and when Barbie takes over again he cries, and when she comforts him he thinks that she wants to be his girlfriend, but she lets him know that just because she is nice to him doesn’t mean that they need to be a couple, and she lets him know that she needs time to figure her life out and that he himself needs to take a moment for himself and not depend on her for his happiness. Barbie realizes that she wants to live life as a human being even if it’s not perfect.

This movie reminded me of this Disney movie I saw a long time ago called Life Size, with Lindsay Lohan and Tyra Banks. It’s about a teenager named Casey who plays football and hates dolls. She is struggling with grief after losing her mom, and has stopped hanging out with her friends. She finds a book at a bookstore called “The Book of Awakenings” and she recites a spell to try and bring her mom back to life. However, the next day after reciting the spell she finds out the spell brought Eve to life, not her mom. Casey is of course freaked out that this small plastic doll is now a full-grown human being, and she sets out to change Eve back to being a doll. However, things change when Eve saves Casey from getting hit by a truck after the owner of the bookstore chases Casey down for stealing “The Book of Awakenings,” and Casey’s dad lets Eve stay with him and Casey. Eve gets a job working at an office, and thinks she needs to handle everything and know everything but she ends up needing her coworkers to help her. In return, she helps them learn to love themselves and become more confident in who they are. However, Eve learns that she isn’t perfect and doesn’t have to be perfect. In one scene, Eve is making a cake and Casey comes home only to find the kitchen is smoky and the cake is on fire and Eve doesn’t know how to put it out, and after wrestling with the fire extinguisher, Eve gets fire extinguisher foam all over herself, and she beats herself up and calls herself stupid. Casey laughs and Eve is upset at first, but Casey gets Eve to look in the mirror at her face, and Eve ends up laughing it off. As Casey and Eve get to know each other, they become good friends, and that is why it is so painful for Casey when Eve goes back to her world of being a doll because they created such a beautiful friendship. It reminded me of Sasha and Barbie’s relationship. Barbie learned from Sasha that girls want someone who they can relate to, not someone who has everything figured out. And Sasha realized that just because she is a teenager it doesn’t mean she needs to throw away Barbie or pretend like she didn’t care about Barbie, because that connection with Barbie was always going to be in her heart no matter what stages of life Sasha went through.

And I loved when Gloria breaks down all of the double standards that women are expected to adhere to (e.g. have money but don’t ask for a raise, be thin but not too thin, be a boss but don’t be mean).

It reminded me of this book I read by Reshma Saujani who wrote a book called Brave, Not Perfect, and she breaks down all of these double standards in the book as well. Girls and women are often held up to these unrealistic expectations and while they are told to “lean in” and ask for raises and be bold and confident, they still don’t get the respect they deserve and society still has a long ways to go in challenging all of these traditional ideas of how women and men should think, act and behave. It reminded me of this Amy Schumer sketch I saw a while ago in which three women are on a panel and a man is facilitating the discussion and each time they introduce themselves they apologize for taking up space, making a mistake and even correcting the facilitator when he incorrectly says their names or what they do for a living. The women also apologize to each other when they interrupt each other, or when they express their viewpoints, and at the end when one of the women asks for a coffee, the person bringing her the coffee spills it on her, and the woman cries and apologizes for being alive. The male facilitator at the end doesn’t apologize, but instead says “whoops.” This was very real for me as someone who tends to apologize a LOT. I have been saying sorry to people for the longest time, and many people have told me that I don’t need to apologize all the time. Even still I continue to do it, but I think that is why I love Buddhist practice because it gets me to look within myself for what I need to change in my life, and as I started to see my behavior more clearly, I really am seeing that I do tend to say sorry a lot and that I need to work on saying sorry less. Gloria’s speech showed me that even though Barbie was telling women they can be anything they want and to have self-confidence, Ken destroying Barbie Land really wrecked her self-confidence and made her feel powerless and worthless, so Gloria was letting Barbie know that she needed to look within herself to find that self-worth because no man can really take that self-worth away even if he tried. Not even Ken, who ended up being a really insecure man who needed to find his own self-worth outside of being with Barbie and running the patriarchy.

This movie also reminded me of a concept in Buddhism called relative versus absolute happiness. Relative happiness is when all of your desires are fulfilled. You get a nice car, you get a nice house, you get the partner of your dreams. Those things do bring a sense of joy when you get them, but over time, the joy you feel when having those things doesn’t last long and we can’t hold onto them when we die. Plus, even with those things, you’re still going to go through problems in life. However, absolute happiness is something you experience when you can view life itself as a joy, no matter what your circumstances are. As I have continued to practice and study Buddhism, I am realizing that while it’s okay for me to want things, I am still responsible for my own happiness and no one can hand it to me. I felt like my life was a living hell when I was in the depths of suffering, and I felt like there was no meaning in life. But as I chanted and studied about the Buddhist view on life and death, I began to understand that life had much deeper meaning and purpose than I thought, and I started to just appreciate being alive on this Earth. Barbie realized that she needed to seek a much deeper sense of fulfillment within herself rather than always seeking it outside of herself. Even though her life seemed perfect on the outside, she was really figuring out what her purpose in life was and no one around her could tell her what the answer was because everyone was busy running around running Barbie Land and trying to fulfill these prescribed roles that they were given. No one had time to think about death because it seemed in Barbie Land everyone was just going to live forever and not ever experience dying. Ken didn’t really understand who he was until he had that moment of reflection, but it took Barbie time to reflect on herself, as well as her relationship with Gloria and Sasha, to figure out that she didn’t need to continue to fulfill this prescribed role that she was given by someone else just because that is the way things have always been. Because she had that journey of self-actualization, she was able to encourage Ken to go through his own journey of self-actualization, and so he could encourage the other Kens to figure themselves out. I really love the song in the film “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish because it illustrates Barbie’s journey of figuring out what her purpose in life is and what happiness means to her.

Overall, it is a really good movie and I am really happy Greta Gerwig got to get the movie made. I honestly wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

Barbie. 2023. 1 hr 54 min. Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language.

Movie Review: Elemental

To be honest, this is another movie that I had not looked up much about nor watched the trailer for. I had seen so many billboards around when driving and would see this movie being advertised, but I wouldn’t think much of it. I guess I had been on a too steady diet of R-rated films with swearing and violence, and I think I just realized after a while, I need to go back to my roots and watch some Pixar movies. Pixar always manages to produce movies with powerful and universal messages and most, if not all, of them bring me to tears. When I saw Encanto, I was already having a rough day at work and so the minute I sat down and saw all the beautiful animation, I full-on broke down like a baby. And this wasn’t even five minutes into the film. I was just so blown away by all of the beautiful singing, the colors, everything. And I think after a day of loneliness and stress, I just needed to unwind and watch a good Pixar movie.

Elemental was one of those movies. And honestly, my eyes are exhausted from the serious water works workout it did during this film. Seriously, even just thinking of the movie’s main song by Lauv is almost bringing me to tears. The movie takes place in a bustling and diverse city which is made up of the four elements: fire, water, air and land. A fire couple immigrates from their community of fire people to Element City and like many immigrants, they face challenges when they first arrive. They face housing discrimination because they are fire, and fire burns wood, so the wood people won’t rent to them. And they can’t room with water because they are fire and fire and water aren’t supposed to go together. They also speak Fire-ish, which the customs officer doesn’t understand, so when the couple gives their names the officer, who I think is a tree, says “How about we put Bernie and Cinder as your names on your passport?” Bernie and Cinder finally settle in, and they give birth to their child, Ember. Bernie has big dreams of Ember running the shop when he retires, but on one condition: she needs to overcome her fiery temper. However, this is extremely difficult and it doesn’t come without a lot of training and practice, and Ember finds herself blowing up at customers who take things without paying or when she finds herself working the counter alone and she is dealing with several customers at once. One day, she tries to hold her temper in, and she is dealing with a lot of stressful customers, so she goes into the basement and gets angry and bursts into flames. The water pipes bust and the basement floods, and Ember now has another problem to fix. A water inspector named Wade emerges from the flooding in the basement and tells Ember that she violated a serious inspection code and also finds out that her dad’s shop violates a lot of other health inspection codes, and so Wade tells Ember that her dad’s shop is going to need to shut down. Ember begs him to not get her dad’s shop closed down because it was his dream to have that shop and shutting it down would take away everything he worked so hard for. Wade does his best to let it slide because Ember is furious with him, and water doesn’t want to mess with fire. He also has a serious crush on her and asks her out, but she isn’t interested in being with him. However, as they get to know each other they develop a very beautiful relationship. Cinder and Bernie don’t approve of Wade and Ember’s relationship because he is water and she is fire. When Ember meets Wade’s mom, she is sweet and accepts Ember for who she is, and when one of the glasses breaks, Ember uses her powers to weld the glass together into a beautiful sculpture. Wade’s mom tells her she has an incredible talent and recommends her for a glass making internship but Ember has a hard time believing it because she is focused on fulfilling her dad’s dream of her owning the shop when he retires. However, she ultimately decides to pursue the internship and eventually her parents respect her relationship with Wade and her wanting to pursue her dreams.

One scene I really appreciate and that also moved me to tears was when Wade and Ember are at a sports game and one of the players is losing the shots and everyone is booing him, but Wade feels so much compassion for this player because he knows the guy’s mom is sick, so he literally makes a water wave (doing the wave) and everyone begins to follow him in cheering on the player. I don’t know why that scene moved me so much, but it just did. I also just got really emotional during the song “Steal the Show” by Lauv, which plays during the scenes where Wade and Ember fall in love. Honestly, I am actually tearing up remembering how beautiful the song is. And just how beautiful the movie was. After watching so many movies with violence and heavy themes, I think I just needed a movie that was heartwarming and touching and for kids and family. This movie really hit all of my emotional spots, and oh my gosh I am not kidding I am literally tearing up as I write this blog post because I am remembering how incredibly sweet this movie was. I think it was just really emotional because I am dealing with a crush on someone right now, and seeing Wade crush on Ember and fall in love with her really hit me hard because it reminded me of how I thought of my crush and I being together. I think this is why I love movies because they make me feel less alone in my experiences.

There is also a beautiful and touching feature after the movie where the film’s creator, Peter Sohn, talks about how the film is inspired by his personal experiences. His parents were immigrants from Korea and they faced a lot of challenges: financial, emotional, social. They ran two shops while providing their sons with a living, and Peter also felt conflicted because he wanted to be an artist but that was unheard of in his family. He also dealt with challenges from his parents when he married a white American woman because his grandmother before she passed away told him he needed to marry a Korean woman. Watching this feature after the movie was pretty emotional because it just reminded me that everyone has a story to tell, and movies are an incredible avenue to tell our unique stories so people like me, who don’t know what it’s like to have immigrant parents or immigrate to another country, can understand and learn about these experiences.

Overall, I really loved Elemental. I think if I see it again I might be like Wade and his family because they cry so much (after all, they are water).

Movie Review: Cruella

Last week I watched the movie Cruella with my family. I had been wanting to see it for a while because every time I went on YouTube, I would see a Disney+ commercial showing a clip from the movie. I am so glad I finally saw it because I really loved it! Emma Stone is such a great actress, and Emma Thompson (the two Emma’s!) is also a really good actress in this one. I really loved her in The Favourite, and I really loved seeing her in the trailer for Poor Things. I also really loved Emma Thompson in a movie she starred in with Mindy Kaling called Late Night.

If you haven’t seen Cruella, it takes place in England in 1964, and Cruella (Emma Stone) is narrating her early childhood, when she was Estella. She describes how she was bullied as a child in school for her hair, which was part black and part blonde, and how she found a friend in a schoolmate named Anita, but soon gets expelled for her behavior. She also finds an adorable dog when bullies throw her in the dumpster and she finds a dog in the dumpster, and she names the dog Buddy. Her mom wants her to feel like she belongs in school, but it just gets too tough to deal with the bullying and also all the trips Cruella has to make to the principal’s office. Cruella is just trying to defend herself because she is always being picked on, but the school wants her to adhere to their strict rules, so she gets expelled. A pivotal moment comes when her mother goes to talk to the Baroness (Emma Thompson) and tells Cruella to wait in the car. However, Cruella doesn’t listen and instead gets curious and goes to the party that the Baroness is at. She becomes immediately enthralled by the dresses and suits that people are wearing at the party, but Buddy causes trouble when he runs under one of the partygoer’s dresses and Estella has to run and fetch him, causing more mayhem to ensue. Cruella runs around the place and there are three vicious Dalmatians who chase after her. She gets ahold of this heirloom that belongs to her mother. Cruella’s mom and the Baroness are talking outside on the balcony, but then the Baroness prompts the Dalmatians to run, and they knock Cruella’s mom over the balcony and she falls to her death into the ocean. Cruella is shocked but she doesn’t have time to register her grief because she and Buddy need to run away from these Dalmatians who are chasing them. The next day, Cruella realizes that she really has no mother and that the heirloom is gone, and she goes to Regent’s Park and cries. She feels ashamed and responsible for the death of her mother, but then she meets two orphans named Jasper and Horace, who get her to join them in pickpocketing and stealing. Cruella dyes her hair red in her 20s and continues to be roommates with Jasper and Horace, and they continue to steal stuff on the bus, when going out, and other places. Cruella’s life changes when Jasper gets her a gig at a high end fashion boutique, and Cruella immediately takes the gig because she is studying fashion design and wants to have a career as a fashion designer. However, her dream in crushed when the head person of the department store has her working as the custodian who cleans toilets and takes out trash. She is mistreated, and one time when she goes out to take a break and get some lunch she is locked out of the building. She tries to tell the manager that she has expertise in fashion and can help in the fashion department, but he dismisses her and tells her to go back to cleaning. One night she explores the department with all of the fancy clothes and then ends up repositioning one of the mannequins in the store window who is wearing an incredibly beautiful dress. The next morning, Cruella, who is hung over, finds many people looking in the shop window at her disheveled appearance and the displaced mannequin. Her boss finds out and chastises her and is about to fire her, when all of a sudden the Baroness (played by Emma Stone) comes into the store. Immediately everyone starts to kiss up to her and they also try to arrest Cruella, Jasper and Horace. The Baroness ends up approving of Cruella’s placement of the mannequin in the shop window, thinking what she did was a work of art, and she gives her her business card and offer Cruella a job to come work for her. The store manager is appalled but Cruella ends up going to work for the Baroness.

Cruella’s life changes and she ends up working as an assistant to the Baroness, sketching fashion designs and also delivering lunch to the Baroness while the Baroness takes her nine-minute naps with cucumber slices over her eyes. Cruella finds out that the Baroness has stolen her mother’s heirloom, and she is appalled but she also doesn’t want to lose her job by out-rightly telling the Baroness, so she devises a plan with Jasper and Horace to get back the heirloom. When at work, she is Estella, with her red hair and glasses. But after work, she is Cruella, with her black and white hair and exquisite fashions. She wants to outdo anything that the Baroness did, and she makes these grand appearances at the Baroness’s parties. The Baroness, unsurprisingly, becomes jealous and tries to take credit for Cruella’s work. Cruella, disguised as Estella, pretends to be just a regular assistant, but when she is at these parties and social functions, she wears these extravagant dresses and tries to outdo the Baroness. However, all of this planning she is doing to get revenge on the Baroness is taking a toll on her friendships with Jasper and Horace, and they begin to feel taken advantage of. She seeks friendship early on in Artie, a gay man who runs a boutique and resembles David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, and Artie helps her out with her plans to get back at the Baroness. Jasper gets angry with Cruella for becoming full of herself and taking advantage of their friendship. Things really take a turn when Cruella finds out that the Baroness is her biological mother who actually did not want to have anything to do with Cruella and gave her away to this lady who worked for the Baroness. The Baroness burns down Cruella, Jasper and Horace’s apartment and arrests Jasper and Horace. Everyone thinks Cruella died in the fire, but she doesn’t and instead has a funeral for her old identity as Estella, marking her embracing her true identity as Cruella De Vil.

Honestly, one of the reasons I watched this movie was because it won for Best Costume Design at the Oscars in 2022. I can see why it won because every piece of fashion in that movie was STUNNINGLY beautiful, and it must have taken so many hours, so much research and so much work to put together all of the clothing. I always focus on the actors, but I forget that there is so much work that goes on behind the scenes of every movie, and these people who work behind the scenes on the costume design and makeup deserve just as much praise as the actors do. Cruella put so much work and detail into the dresses she designed, and one of them was a beautiful dress that used a lot of tulle, and it looked like trash from a sanitation truck, but when the truck drove off slowly, the dress trailed behind and left this very beautiful train of colorful fabrics for people to admire. I also really love the soundtrack for this movie. It includes some of my favorite songs, like Supertramp’s “Bloody Well Right” and “Time of the Season” by The Zombies. I also just really love the acting and the dialogue, and I didn’t realize this, but the guy who plays Cruella’s boss was a character in the show Fleabag, which is a British TV show that I really loved. I think this movie gave me a good backstory as to how Cruella De Vil turned out to be the person who she was in 101 Dalmatians. I really loved Glenn Close in that movie as the character of Cruella De Vil, but it has been such a long time since I had watched them, so it was refreshing to watch a movie where I get to understand the motives and backstory of one of cinema’s most famous villains.

Cruella. 2 h 14 m. Rated PG-13 for some violence and thematic elements.

In Memory of Andre Braugher

Today while browsing the news at work I found some really sad news: Andre Braugher, who played Captain Holt in Brooklyn 99, passed away this week at 61. When I read the news, I was really shocked and saddened because Captain Holt was one of my favorite characters on TV. If you haven’t seen Brooklyn 99 yet it is about a department of police officers in the 99th precinct of Brooklyn, New York, who fight crime while also managing to have a sense of humor. Jake Peralta, played by Andy Samberg, loves to engage in pranks and other shenanigans but also loves his job in the 99th precinct. He works closely with Captain Raymond Holt, who is the commanding officer of the precinct and has a wonderful husband named Kevin and a cute dog named Cheddar. Andre Braugher played Captain Raymond Holt throughout the show and he brought me so much joy. Even though Andre Braugher is no longer here, and even though I never got to meet him, I really appreciate him and the work he did as an actor. He will be very much missed.

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