A24 – The Arts Are Life

Movie Review: American Honey

Some time ago (I cannot remember when) I watched the trailer for a movie called American Honey. I really love A24 distributed films, so I immediately gravitated towards this one because it was an A24 film. And not just because it was an A24 film, but because the trailer was just really good, so I wanted to watch it. And honestly, I wasn’t disappointed in the least. This was a really good movie. It definitely wasn’t an easy film to sit through, but as I watch these heavy-hitting drama movies and independent films, I have come to appreciate that movies can stir a whole range of emotional experiences in us, and they should. This film was a really moving and raw portrayal of young people trying to survive in a harsh world.

The movie starts out with a young woman named Star dumpster-diving with two kids whose stepmother, Misty, doesn’t want custody of them, and she fishes out a chicken breast from the dumpster and gives it to the boy so they can bring it home. Star has a really rough life at home. Her stepfather is sexually abusive, and her mother died when she was really young of an overdose. She goes to a bar where the kids’ mother is dancing, and she tries to give the kids to her, but the mom wants nothing to do with the kids. Star goes to K Mart one day to run some errands, and she sees a group of teenagers running around and dancing to “We Found Love” by Rihanna. One of the young people in the group, named Jake, looks at Star and is attracted to her, and they share a mutual chemistry. The employees kick the kids out of the store, and Jake approaches her and tells her that she should come join them in their mag crew, where they go door-to-door selling magazines and other stuff. Star at first isn’t sure about Jake, but he comes off as this charming guy, so they fall in love. However, Star has to deal with the leader of the mag crew, Krystal, who hates Star for falling in love with Jake. Krystal does whatever she can to keep Jake away from Star, and things get tense when Jake tells Star that they can’t have a romantic relationship because Krystal thinks it’s “bad for business.”

Star has this interesting insight into life that kind of sets her apart from the other teens in the group. While she does play around with them and go along with them, she also retains a lot of her sensitivity, especially when she is around animals. Even though the film is pretty deep, it has its tender moments. While whooping and dancing around the campfire with everyone else, Jake gives Star a small turtle, and Star gently puts the turtle in the water and watches it swim away. There is also a scene where Star is sitting in an open field and a grizzly bear just casually comes up to her and says hi before going on its merry way. In another scene, Star sees a bee in the house that everyone is staying at and instead of killing it, she catches it in a glass jar and releases it outside so it can be among the flowers. It was these little scenes that I needed to take time to appreciate, because for most of the movie Star is just out here trying to survive.

I thought one scene in the film was particularly powerful and shows Star’s sensitivity. As they go door to door, the teens in the mag crew have to make up stories about their lives so that people who answer the door will have pity on them and buy the magazines from them. They start off going into wealthy neighborhoods, but then later on in the film Krystal drives them into a poor neighborhood and has them try to get the people in the neighborhood to buy magazines. Star knocks on the door of one house, and instead of an adult answering the door, a little boy wearing a Pikachu costume opens the door and a little girl wearing an Iron Maiden shirt invite her in. A third kid is holding a cat. Star looks around and finds that the TV is blaring Wendy Williams’s show, but the parents are nowhere to be found. When Star asks where their mom is, the boy says she is sleeping, and when Star asks where their dad is, he says that their dad is in Omaha, Nebraska, so he can’t take care of the kids. Star has this moment where she’s like, Wait, Krystal drove me here to get money from these people? These kids are struggling, I don’t think I can do this. The mom comes out of her room and lays down on the couch in front of the TV, not even looking at Star or any of the kids. Star sees a meth pipe on the table and realizes that the mom is a meth addict. Star asks for something to drink, and the kids open the fridge. There is almost nothing to eat or drink in the fridge, other than a liter of Mountain Dew. Star ends up going to the grocery store and buying the family a bunch of groceries. Even though she was struggling herself, Star was able to have that compassion for the kids because her own mother died of a meth overdose. It just reminded me of how in Buddhism, we go through challenges so that we can encourage others who might be going through similar challenges. I haven’t grown up in poverty or with parents who have struggled with addiction, but the film really showed me how poverty is very real, and people are really out here in America trying to get by paycheck to paycheck. To be honest, as I was watching the film, all I could think was, Wow, I really can’t fathom what these people in the film have to go through to survive.

Another thing the movie made me think about was the importance of having big dreams and aspirations. Star and the other teens are dropped off at a gas station where they find a bunch of men driving these big 18-wheeler trucks, and they promote the magazine subscriptions to them. The first guy Star asks isn’t interested and walks away, but the second guy actually gives her a ride in his 18-wheeler and they have a genuine conversation about their lives. The driver tells Star about his wife and that his daughter got married recently, and then he asks Star what her dreams are. Star tells him that no one has asked her what her dreams are before, and she tells the man that she wants her own place to live and to have a family. She later asks Jake the same question, and he tells her the exact same thing: no one has asked him what his dreams are. He tells her in private that he wants his own place in the woods and shows her all the money and treasures he has stolen from the houses of the people they sell magazines to. Star asks him how stealing these things is a dream of his, and he tells her that he is going to use these treasures to buy the thing that he wants eventually (i.e. his own place.) I just reflected on this scene where the man asks Star about her dreams, because in this book I’m reading called Discussions on Youth by the late educator and philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, Mr. Ikeda talks about how young people should have big dreams and can use the practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to bring out their unlimited inherent potential to achieve those dreams. Growing up, a lot of adults in my SGI Buddhist community would encourage me to have big dreams, so when at thirteen I told people at my Buddhist meetings that I wanted to play at Carnegie Hall in New York City one day, many people encouraged me to go for the dream and not give up. I often take it for granted that I have this Buddhist community where people encourage each other to not give up when achieving their dreams and that they can chant about what dreams and goals they want to accomplish. Watching this movie showed me that many young people are told that their dreams are impossible to achieve, and they aren’t around people who encourage them to have dreams and goals for the future. I really want to share more about the Buddhism I practice with other young people so that they can feel encouraged to bring forth the confidence to go for their dreams. I also want to recommend people read Discussions on Youth, whether you’re Buddhist or practice another religion/ no religion. It has given me a lot of hope over the years and has encouraged me to keep striving for those dreams that I think are impossible, like becoming a writer and a musician. I still battle my own doubts and insecurities about being a good enough creative, but chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo helps me challenge those insecurities head-on so that I don’t let perfectionism, or my inner critic, keep me from taking action towards accomplish my goals and dreams. And at the end of the day, what my Buddhist practice has taught me is that it’s not just about reveling in my own success, but about encouraging others to achieve their dreams, too.

This movie reminded me of some other movies I have seen. There was this movie I saw called The Florida Project and it was directed by Sean Baker, who is a really good filmmaker, if you haven’t seen his movies. I have only seen Tangerine and The Florida Project, but I want to see his other films because he is a really good director. The Florida Project is about three kids who are all friends with each other and who all live in a budget motel in Kissimmee, Florida, which is near Walt Disney World. I had this idea of Walt Disney World being this magical place, but this movie showed me that income inequality is still a reality even in the most seemingly magical places. The people who stay in the budget motel are all struggling to make ends meet, and one of the main characters in the film, Halley, loses her job as a stripper and has to find other ways to make money, relying on her friend Ashley, who works at a diner, for food. Halley’s daughter, Moonee, is oblivious to the struggles that the adults go through, and she and the other kids do stuff like steal ice cream and set an abandoned house on fire. Halley and Ashley’s friendship goes down the deep end when Ashley finds out that Halley has resumed sex work and is bringing clients into her motel room, and she threatens to tell on her. Halley beats her friend up and when her and Moonee go to the diner where Ashley works, Halley gets upset when Ashley refuses to give her free food anymore. Finally Ashley caves and reluctantly serves Halley and Moonee breakfast. When Ashley finds out that her son, Scooty, was involved in setting the house on fire, she tells him that what he did was really bad and explains what the consequences of his actions are. Halley, however, doesn’t really care what Moonee does. She is struggling to survive and the antics her daughter gets into is the last thing on her mind. Like American Honey, this movie is a very sobering portrayal of poverty in America, and there is no savior character who comes to save the characters who are struggling to make ends meet. These movies give a realistic picture of class and income inequality.

I also really love the acting in American Honey. I saw Riley Keough in this movie called Zola (like American Honey and The Florida Project, it is an A24 movie) and she was really good in her role as Stefani. If you haven’t seen Zola, it’s a movie based on a real Twitter thread that A’Ziah “Zola” King posted about how she worked as a stripper in Detroit and met another young woman who was also a stripper, and how this young woman, named Stefani (in the Twitter thread, the girl’s name is Jessica) coerces Zola into going on a trip with her, Stefani’s boyfriend Derrek, and her pimp X, but the trip ends up being a sex trafficking operation. At first, Zola is thrilled to have a sisterly bond with Stefani, and when they are all in the car at the beginning of the film, they are all rapping to “Hannah Montana” by Migos and having a fun time. However, as the trip draws on, Zola starts to have a gut feeling that this trip isn’t going to be a fun time. Stefani, who is white but talks in a “blaccent,” talks in a degrading way about how this Black woman was “up in her face” and Zola is visibly uncomfortable. Zola ends up having to take stripping gigs that don’t compensate her fairly, and also Stefani’s pimp, X, is intimidating and threatens Zola, Stefani and Derrek throughout the trip if they don’t do as he says. It’s interesting how in American Honey, Riley Keough plays a character who is running the magazine crew and is in charge of getting the money everyone makes. Her character, Krystal, has a very scary power and wields it against Star, threatening to kick her off the team if she continues to pursue Jake. In Zola, however, Colman Domingo’s character is the main guy who everyone is scared of, and Riley Keough’s character, Stefani, has to submit to everything he tells her to do. In one scene, Zola helps Stefani make more money from her clients after she finds out that X was having Stefani charge clients a low rate. When X finds out that Zola was helping Stefani, he is upset and when Stefani gently asks him if she can have some of the money she made, X withholds the money from her, telling her she should be even grateful she has food in her belly. Stefani is left feeling powerless and Zola is left feeling angry.

The music in American Honey was incredible. I love hip-hop and the soundtrack had a lot of great songs. I was curious about the significance of the movie’s title, and in one of the scenes in the film, the teens in the van play “American Honey,” a song by a group I love named Lady A (they used to be called Lady Antebellum, but they changed the name in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement because “Antebellum” is reminiscent of the South’s racist past. Of course, racism isn’t a thing of the past in the South. It’s still very much alive.) To be honest, it was a little uncomfortable at first hearing the white characters use the N-word when singing to the rap songs and even calling each other the N-word. But it’s not something that’s new to me. Growing up in the South, I often heard white kids say the N-word in jest and even call me the N-word at times. I often heard kids of all races saying the N-word as a joke. In Tangerine, the white characters, Chester and Dinah, use the N-word around the Black women in the film, and they call an Armenian cab driver the N-word, but their use of the N-word doesn’t go mentioned or anything. I remember one time I was in the car with a bunch of my friends (I was the only Black person in the car) and “Holy Grail” by Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z came on. I and the friends started off having a grand old time singing to Justin Timberlake’s intro, but there is a verse where Jay-Z uses the N-word over and over again, and my friends sung along without censoring the word, giggling as they said it, like “Oh my gosh, this word is so fun to say!” I was uncomfortable, but I was afraid that I would come off as being overly sensitive if I told them that I wasn’t ok with hearing them use the word, so I looked out the window in silence, pretending to not care. One of the girls in the car asked if I was ok, and I told her I was fine. I’ve moved on since then, but I just wanted to mention it because I thought of that moment as I was watching the movie.

Ok, I’m pretty tired, so I’m going to wrap it up and just end things right here. I’ll probably have more thoughts about the movie that I want to share over the course of the week, but I’m going to take a break. In short, if you haven’t seen American Honey, it’s a really good movie.

American Honey. 2016. Written and directed by Andrea Arnold. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout, drug/ alcohol abuse– all involving teens.

Movie Review: 20th Century Women

Content warning: I do briefly discuss menstruation at one point in the review, so if you get easily grossed out, it’s totally okay to skip this review. Also, it’s a long post, so thank you for reading it.

A few years ago, on Halloween night, I was staying indoors instead of going out trick-or-treating. I didn’t really feel like going out, and the way I tend to wind down after a long day is to watch a movie, so I decided to rent a film called 20th Century Women, a film directed by Mike Mills that stars Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning and Billy Crudup. When I first watched the film a few years ago, I unfortunately didn’t get past the first ten minutes because something else came up and I decided to do that instead of finishing the movie. I decided to pick it up again this time because I wanted to know what happened later in the film, and I’m glad I finished the movie because it was really good. I saw another film directed by Mike Mills last year called C’Mon C’Mon, a film starring Joaquin Phoenix as a man who involves his nephew in a film project he is doing. It was a really touching film, and it was really cool how it was shot in black and white even though it takes place in the modern day. Somehow, I am attracted to films that were directed in the 21st century that use black and white coloring during the film, such as Frances Ha, Roma, Mank and Belfast. There is just something aesthetically interesting about using black and white. Even though Frances Ha takes place in the modern day, when I saw that the film was black and white, it gave it this sort of mellowed down feel. I also love seeing Elle Fanning all grown up; I remember seeing her in this one movie called Phoebe in Wonderland several years ago, and she was so young, so it’s really awesome to see how she and her sister, Dakota Fanning, have grown in their acting careers. I also loved Billy Crudup in Big Fish.

If you haven’t seen 20th Century Women, it is a coming-of-age movie that takes place in Santa Barbara, California in 1979, and Dorothea is a divorced single mother in her 50s raising her 15-year-old son, Jamie, while also living with tenants Abbie Porter and Julie Hamlin. The film opens with Dorothea and Jamie shopping at a grocery store and then finding their old car, the one that Dorothea’s ex-husband owned, up in flames. Abbie is a photographer recovering from cervical cancer and Julie is friends with Jamie. Abbie is in love with William, who works on the house that they live in, and they have a sexual encounter. Even though Jamie and Julie sleep in the same bed, Julie wants them to stay friends so that it doesn’t ruin their friendship, but Jamie wants to be with her. Also, she is sleeping with other guys, so he doesn’t have much of a chance with her. Dorothea is worried about her son, especially because he hangs around a lot of kids who are bad influences. He hangs out with a lot of kids who skateboard, and they invite him to Los Angeles to go to a party. He comes home drunk, and Dorothea becomes worried. She enlists Abbie and Julie to support him as he navigates adolescence, and Abbie has Jamie read a bunch of books on feminism and introduces him to the punk rock scene. Through his friendship with Abbie and Julie, Jamie learns a lot about himself and gets educated on a topic that most guys his age probably wouldn’t bother exploring.

One key theme throughout the movie is feminism. Abbie has Jamie read several works by feminist authors and these works fascinate him, such as The Politics of Orgasm by Susan Lydon. However, the other guys he hangs around think he is less of a man for wanting to learn about feminism. While hanging out at the skateboarding park in one scene, a teenage guy is talking about his sexual encounter with a young woman and how he penetrated her, but then Jamie talks about female orgasms. The guy calls him a homophobic slur for being interested in learning more about the female body and beats him up. I didn’t know this, but apparently the punk rock world was pretty divisive, so in the film there is a clash between bands like Black Flag and The Talking Heads. After Jamie gets beaten up, Dorothea goes out to find her car spray painted with “Art [homophobic slur]” and the other side with “Black Flag.” (I don’t listen to much punk rock, to be honest, but I guess the clash between punk rock groups was the 1970s version of modern-day feuds between hip-hop artists such as Drake and Kendrick Lamar.) In another scene, Jamie reads aloud a passage from a feminist book to Dorothea, and she turns around and asks him why he read it to her. Jamie is confused as to why she doesn’t encourage him to read it, and he says he is interested in the topic, but Dorothea tells him that he doesn’t need to explain feminism or the female body to her because she knows about it already. Dorothea confronts Abbie about teaching Jamie about feminism and tells her that learning about feminism is too much for Jamie and to stop teaching him about feminism. Later, when they are at the dinner table with friends, Dorothea finds Abbie sleeping at the table. He has Jamie wake her up, but Abbie says she is tired because she is menstruating. Dorothea is embarrassed and tells Abbie to not mention that at the table, but Abbie continues to explain that talking about periods shouldn’t be taboo, and even has everyone at the table say the word “menstruation” so that it becomes less taboo. Dorothea tries to end the topic, but then Julie brings up that she had sex with a guy while on her period and goes into graphic detail about the encounter. Dorothea is upset and has everyone go home after seeing how uncomfortable everyone is talking about menstruation and sex.

Honestly, though, I appreciate Jamie for making the effort to educate himself on feminism and female sexuality. It reminds me of this sketch I watched from Key and Peele called “Menstruation Orientation,” in which Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are two men named Shaboots Michaels and T-Ray Tombstone speaking to an audience of men during a Ted Talk (it’s called FAS- For All Species- as a parody of the TED Talks logo) about what to do when their female partners are on their periods. They emphasize to the men in the audience that even if they are uncomfortable with learning about menstruation and don’t want to attend the lecture, they aren’t the ones that have to deal with having a period every month, so they need to learn and get educated on what their wives and girlfriends have to go through. (Note: I am continuing to learn about and get educated on gender and sexuality, and I understand that the experience of menstruation is not limited to cisgendered women like me, but also encompasses people who are trans and nonbinary.)

Warning: contains strong language

When I first saw it, I busted up laughing but as I thought more about it, I really appreciated that Key and Peele did this sketch because growing up, I didn’t know many guys who were comfortable talking about menstruation or willing to educate themselves about it. During health class it was a topic that elicited giggles and inappropriate comments from 8th grade boys (to be fair, I did giggle when my health teacher started talking about the reproductive system, so I was part of that group of immature kids who laughed.) Menstruation always felt like this thing I felt embarrassed about or that I could only talk about with other women, but watching this sketch gave me hope that if I was with a guy I didn’t have to feel embarrassed about mentioning whenever I was on my period or had mood swings. Even still, I sometimes feel embarrassed to talk about my menstrual cycle around people and even feel awkward when getting sanitary pads from the pharmacy and self-conscious while wearing them. But watching how Abbie in 20th Century Women felt openly comfortable talking about her period around men and women, especially during the 1970s, was, well, I don’t have the right word to describe it, but “empowering” sounds about right. I do appreciate how we are working to take the stigma out of talking about menstruation more often. There is a sweet commercial that Hello Flo where a girl called The Camp Gyno goes around giving her fellow campers tampons and giving them “menstruation demonstrations” with a Dora the Explorer doll (spoiler: her program fails miserably because all the girls are getting Hello Flo period starter kits in the mail, so they don’t need her to be Camp Gyno anymore.)

Somehow this movie reminded me of other movies I have seen. Julie and Jamie’s friendship reminded me of When Harry Met Sally, because there is one scene in the movie where Harry tells Sally she is attractive even though he is dating her friend, Amanda, and Sally is offended. Harry thinks it’s ridiculous that he can’t tell her she is attractive without it sounding like he is coming onto her, and when she firmly tells him that they are just going to be friends, he tells her that they could never become friends as a straight male and a straight woman because “the sex part always gets in the way.” Harry argues that a man can’t be friends with a woman he is attracted to because he will always want to have sex with her. Even though Sally remains firm about remaining friends, Harry continues to find her attractive. Even though Julie wants to remain friends with Jamie, he has romantic and sexual feelings for her. Jamie educates himself on female orgasm because he wants to know how to pleasure a woman, but Dorothea is uncomfortable that Jamie is learning so much about the female body at a young age. It’s interesting how their relationship has unfolded over the years, because when he was younger, Dorothea advocated for him to have his own bank account, and even let him skip school when he didn’t feel like going (she even was impressed that he forged her signature when signing absence permission slips.) However, as he gets older, they struggle to have a good relationship together because he is becoming a teenager and is becoming more distant from him. Dorothea loves keeping track of stocks, and has Jamie calculate the stocks with her, but he isn’t interested in doing that anymore. Even though Dorothea asked Abbie and Julie to help her have a deeper relationship with Jamie, Dorothea still wanted to keep Jamie sheltered from a culture of drugs, parties and punk rock.

Also, it’s wild to say this, but it boggled my mind while watching 20th Century Women that there was a time period when people lived without smartphones. They had to entertain themselves and be bored, they couldn’t just watch YouTube or TikTok. There is a scene where Jamie has Julie take a pregnancy test, and they have to wait two hours for the results, so they go outside and learn how to smoke. They didn’t have cell phones at the time, so they had to be bored and find creative ways to have fun. Julie tries to teach Jamie how to smoke like a cool guy, and not look unsure of himself while he does it. But then Jamie decides to stop because he learned that smoking wouldn’t be good for his health. I can only speak for myself, but whenever I feel bored now or stressed or anxious, I want to distract myself from those uncomfortable emotions that are coming up. I distract myself nowadays by going on my phone and scrolling through YouTube. Even though deep down I know my brain is overloaded by all the data and information it is taking in as I spend time scrolling on my smartphone, I still do it because my brain gets a temporary rush of dopamine every time that I check my phone. However, that’s why I have to keep checking my phone so I can have those repeated rushes of this pleasure chemical, dopamine. But before I know it, I have passed time and haven’t done much other than scrolled through YouTube videos on my video feed. I scroll through my phone to avoid being bored, but I end up not feeling great after my phone use. When I finally got bored of YouTube, I decided to pick up a book and read. After I dove into a few pages of the book, I remembered how much fun reading was. While my phone is helpful in many ways, I have also noticed that I tend to be on it a lot, and that I could benefit from cutting back on the time I spend on it. Jamie and Julie would probably live a very different life if they had smartphones in 1979.

Annette Bening is amazing (she is the actress who plays Dorothea, Jamie’s mother). She was in a movie I saw several years ago called The Kids Are All Right, which stars her and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple who meet the man who was their sperm donor when they conceived their two kids. She was also in a really good movie called Nyad, which is a true story about a swimmer named Diana Nyad who came out of retirement and swam from Florida to Cuba in her 60s. That movie was truly about never giving up, because she had to overcome serious obstacles: panic attacks, killer jellyfish, and saltwater. Not to mention she had to start over several times. But she never gave up, even when her team told her that she could potentially die if she continued chasing this risky dream. It was a great film, and Annette Bening and Jodie Foster made a really good on-screen duo. I also love seeing Greta Gerwig with red hair; for some reason, her character, Abbie, looked like someone I knew in college. Also, I love Greta Gerwig’s other films, which she directed: Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie. Each of these films spoke to me personally in some way, and the stories for each of them were really touching. In 20th Century Women, I really love how it spans from past, present and future. We get to know each character’s backstory and how their lives unfolded in the future. In all, I’m glad I finally got around to watching the entire movie because it ended up being a really touching and powerful movie.

20th Century Women. Directed by Mike Mills. 2016. Rated R for sexual material, language, some nudity and brief drug use. 118 minutes.

Movie Review: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

To be honest, it took me a really long time to write this blog post. I watched Marcel the Shell with Shoes On a few months ago but didn’t get around to writing the post. I mean, how can you convey how this incredible film made you feel? Seriously. It was that good. It was a really cute film, and for some reason I found Marcel’s voice very soothing. Before I saw the movie, I saw the trailer for it. Normally the films I see from A24 are R-rated features like Midsommar, Hereditary and X, all films that I don’t have the stomach to watch unfortunately because I am not a big fan of scary movies with a lot of blood. To be fair, I have seen quite a few A24 features, like Lady Bird, Uncut Gems and Minari, and those weren’t super bloody features. But I was really excited when they said they were coming out with a PG-rated feature about a shell who goes on an adventure to find his family. I had not seen the original “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” clip when it came out (or maybe I did, but it was a long time ago, so my memory is fuzzy) When I saw the trailer, the song they played during the trailer was “Take Me Home” by Phil Collins, and that has been one of my favorite songs since I was a kid. I remember on the way to school in the car with the radio on, my mom and I listening to those powerful drums and the moving vocals of Phil Collins. There was something so beautiful about this song, and it still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it. I ended up watching the trailer for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On three times, and each time I watched the trailer I started crying because it looked like a very touching story.

From what I can remember about the movie, it is about Marcel, a small shell who goes on a big adventure with his Nana Connie and his trusty friend, Dean Fleischer Camp. They have to go on a journey to find Marcel’s family because the family lived in the house of a couple who got into an argument and the boyfriend walked off with Marcel’s family of fellow shells in a drawer. Marcel learns the spirit of not giving up on himself, even when he faces challenges along the way when trying to find his family. The movie also shows how Marcel’s journey goes public on YouTube and how Marcel deals with being famous on the Internet. I thought the most touching part of the movie (then again, the entire movie was quite touching) was when Marcel reunited with his family, and he sings “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by The Eagles. For some reason, I couldn’t stop tearing up during this scene because it was really adorable and also just really poignant considering Marcel lost his Nana Connie while on his journey. Nana Connie has so much wisdom and she was really supportive of Marcel throughout his journey. For some reason, this movie made me think of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie or really any SpongeBob episode where they featured real people because in the movie David Hasselhoff makes a cameo appearance as a live action human being (not a cartoon) and takes them back to Bikini Bottom (I saw the movie back in 2004 so it’s been more than a minute, so my plot details are pretty fuzzy.) I really love the song “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by The Eagles, so I think that is why the scene where Marcel sings it is really touching. I thought it was cool how Marcel got to appear on 60 Minutes because that was his dream.

The movie also made me want to appreciate the little things in life. Marcel lives a very simple and beautiful life, and his Nana Connie tends the garden, and he has his living space set up in a certain way. And his voice was also really soothing and sweet. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t watch Marcel the Shell with Shoes On when it first came out, because it would have cheered me up when I was in high school. This is the original video. It really warms my heart each time I watch it.

Movie Review: Close and a General Discussion Around Boyhood and Manhood

Disclaimer: This movie review does talk about suicide. If you or someone is in crisis, please call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

A few months ago, I watched the trailer for a Belgian film called Close. It was so touching and powerful that I wanted to watch the movie, so I decided to watch it last night. As you know, I love movies distributed by the film distribution company, A24, and honestly, after watching this movie, all I could think was, Man A24 you got me with these tearjerker movies! It was a very powerful story, and the acting was incredible. It is a powerful story about friendship, grief and love. The film score was also breathtaking, and by the end credits, my tear-ducts were exhausted, and I had a huge wad of tissues at my side.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, it takes place in rural Belgium and it’s about two thirteen-year-old boys named Leo and Remi who have a close friendship with each other. They ride their bicycles through the countryside on the way to school, they have inside jokes that they share with each other, and their bond is just so pure and authentic. There was one scene where they are eating together, and Leo jokingly slurps up his spaghetti noodle while placing his hands behind his ears, and Remi follows suit, prompting them and their parents to crack up. Remi is also an oboist in the school music group, and Leo and him crack jokes while Remi rehearses for his oboe recital. Leo also comes to Remi’s recital, which means a lot to Remi because he and Leo have such a special friendship. When Remi played his oboe solo, I broke down crying. It was just such a beautiful piece, and seeing the special connection that Leo and Remi share during that moment Remi is playing showed me how incredibly deep and beautiful their friendship is.

Seeing Leo and Remi share these incredibly natural moments together was so beautiful, which made the rest of the movie very devastating to watch. Leo and Remi’s friendship changes over time as the bullying at school continues and people start to make homophobic and unkind comments about Leo and Remi’s friendship. In one scene, a group of girls ask Leo and Remi if they are a couple, and Leo tells them that they are not. Remi wonders why Leo finds it so problematic that they have this kind of close platonic bond, and he tries to not let it affect his friendship with Leo. But Leo has changed. He has started letting the bullying get to him, so he tries to distance himself from Remi so that people will stop teasing them. However, Remi becomes hurt when he sees Leo is purposely trying to ignore him and distance himself from him, and he attempts to make new friends, but he has such a close bond of trust with Leo that it’s hard for him to feel comfortable making new friends. He even goes to visit Leo when he is playing ice hockey, and Leo tries to ignore him, but Remi wants to continue to support his friend. However, as Leo continues to distance himself, Remi becomes lonely and soon he stops coming to school. One day, on a field trip, the teacher is doing rolecall, and he finds Remi isn’t on the bus. While on the field trip everyone seems to be having a smooth and fun time, but then the chaperones have to get everyone back to the school since there has been an emergency. They head back to the school, and several parents are lined up to meet with their kids. Everyone gets off the bus, but Leo stays on. His mom comes to pick him up, and when Leo asks her to tell him what is going on, she tells him she will tell him when he is off the bus. But Leo insists on knowing what happened, so his mom hesitates then tells him that Remi died. Leo then has to navigate the intense painful grieving process that comes after finding out about Remi’s death.

The scene where Leo meets with Remi’s mother, Sophie, was powerful. Sophie works at a hospital in the neonatal unit, and one day Leo goes to work to visit her because he is carrying a huge feeling of guilt. He feels that he was responsible for Remi’s death, and he wants to let Sophie know that he feels that way. When she approaches him, he tries to tell her this, but he hesitates because he doesn’t know how she will react to his apology. Sophie tells him that she is at work and that he needs to come back another time, but she ends up giving him a ride home after finding out he took the bus to see her. While she is driving him, Leo confesses that he feels responsible for Remi’s suicide. Sophie gets quiet and then starts crying, and then she tells Leo to get out of the car. Leo gets out and runs through the forest. Sophie realizes that Leo might endanger himself because he feels so horrible about what happened, so she runs into the forest to get him back, and she finds him standing in the forest, holding up a large stick to defend himself. He is sobbing and is racked with so much grief and pain, because he regrets ostracizing himself from Remi and he realizes that no amount of guilt is going to get Remi back. Sophie understands this because she is also racked with grief at losing her son, and she embraces Leo in a huge hug.

There was another really sad scene where Sophie and Peter are eating dinner with Leo and his family, and Leo’s brother, Charlie, is talking about his plans to travel with his girlfriend. Peter suddenly starts crying because he is remembering his son, Remi, and Sophie gets up and goes outside because she is grieving, too. It just reminded me that suicide has an impact on loved ones, and even when you think no one will need you when you are around, it’s not true at all and when someone takes their own life, it really hurts their family, friends and people who knew them. It’s why, when Leo is in a group of his classmates and they are remembering Remi, he realizes that these people didn’t really know Remi like he (Leo) did because they were never that close with him. One of them talks about how Remi seemed like a happy person all of the time, but Leo knows about how Remi being ostracized was impacting his mental health, and so he questions the student, like “How do you know Remi was always happy?” And he finally leaves when the other students are sharing their thoughts on Remi because they all feel to Leo like very shallow remembrances. It reminded me of this book I read called The Reading List, and the protagonist has a brother who takes his own life. When she looks on social media, she finds people have written all of these shallow comments about her brother’s mental health and she realizes that these people aren’t offering genuine condolences because they rarely knew how deep his depression was or how hard it was for him to ask for help.

This movie also reminded me of the harm that homophobia has on kids, because I just feel like if the kids were more accepting of Leo and Remi’s friendship, then Leo wouldn’t have felt the need to ostracize himself from Remi. It would easy for me to tell Leo, Oh, haters are gonna hate. Just do you. But kids are still growing and forming their identities in a very cruel world that tells them that they can’t be themselves unless they hide who they are. Also, being ostracized hurts like hell, so it was understandable that Remi was feeling incredibly isolated because his one true friend no longer wants to hang out with him. It was painful to see Leo and Remi being called homophobic slurs and being disrespected. It also showed me though how ideas of manhood can influence kids and have a huge impact on how they view themselves. I used to use the term “toxic masculinity” but as I am learning more about it, I am coming to understand that masculinity isn’t in and of itself toxic. It’s cultural standards about how men should express their masculinity that can be a real problem. Gillette called this out in a commercial that featured boys bullying another boy, boys fighting and their fathers shaking their heads, laughing and joking “Boys will be boys,” and then these grown men catcalling women and engaging in sexual harassment. It then shows what happens when we have these tough conversations around outdated gender norms, and help these boys develop healthy self-esteem. They show these young men intervening when their fellow men try to catcall women and remind them how uncool that is, they show a father encouraging his daughter to affirm she is strong, and one of the dads at the barbeque breaking up a fight between two boys. I understand that the ad got a lot of mixed responses, and Saturday Night Live even parodied the commercial.

However, the first time I saw it, I got goosebumps and thought that Gillette did send a pretty important message about how, when men are forced to conform to stereotypes about what it means to be a man, they face a lot of stress to keep up with these unrealistic expectations, and it can lead to increased physical and mental health issues. It’s why I appreciate shows like Ted Lasso because they allow men to be vulnerable and also show what happens when men have spent years of their life not being allowed to be vulnerable, and how being vulnerable takes courage. Ted is trying to help these young men be the best versions of themselves, and he even starts a group where he and a few other men on the AFC Richmond team talk about their feelings with each other in an honest, judgement-free way. Ted also learns how it’s okay for him to ask for help, too, and that he doesn’t have to handle his panic attacks on his own. At first, Ted thinks it’s no big deal and that he doesn’t need therapy, unlike the young men he coaches on the team. However, when he has a severe panic attack, he realizes that he can’t deal with his panic attacks on his own and that he needs Dr. Fieldstone’s help. At first, it is hard for Ted to open up about his mental health, but when he goes through the intense process and opens up about his childhood and his life, he develops a close bond with Dr. Fieldstone and learns to trust her. Ted struggled to be vulnerable because he didn’t want to seem like he was letting anyone down, but what this show taught me is that it takes courage to admit you are struggling and need help.

The film Close reminded me of the power of friendship, but also of close male friendships. As a woman, I don’t have much insight into male friendships, but seeing these kinds of movies has helped me understand that male friendships can be just as complex and intimate as female friendships. Remi and Leo sleep in the same bed, they ride their bikes together, and they enjoy each other’s company. They just let themselves exist in each other’s company without a hidden agenda. Which is why it was painful to see Leo pushing Remi away. Leo starts doing stuff to distance himself from Remi, like kicking Remi out of his bed and forcing Remi to sleep in his own bed. It’s like the kids at school weren’t allowing Leo and Remi to define friendship in their own unique way. To fit in, Leo had to adhere to a certain idea of what it means to create friendships as a man, and Remi felt like he was losing Leo when Leo started acting differently towards him. It reminded me of this movie I saw called Moonlight, because there are two young men, Chiron and Kevin, who form a close bond with each other. Both of them admit to liking each other, and they kiss on the beach under the moonlight. Kevin is tight with Chiron and stands up for him, but then the school bully is picking on Chiron, and he wants Kevin to participate in the bullying. Kevin doesn’t want to betray Chiron’s trust, but he also doesn’t want the bully to beat him up, so he decides to participate in a cruel game where he has to pick out a young man in a circle to beat up, and he picks Chiron and beats him bloody. The bully gets off scot-free (I think) and Chiron ends up going into class and hitting him over the head with a desk, and Chiron gets arrested. Later on, when he is an adult, Chiron has adopted a tough-guy persona and is buff and has a set of grills, and he deals drugs. He has put on emotional armor so that he doesn’t get bullied like he did when he was younger. However, what breaks him emotionally is when he finally goes to visit his mother at a rehabilitation center where she is recovering from addiction. She admits she treated him poorly and loves him a lot, and they both break down in tears. When Chiron meets up with Kevin, they share a beautiful embrace and a really tender moment. This movie illuminated the beauty of men just being authentic and vulnerable with each other.

Close. Directed by Lukas Dhont. 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving suicide, and brief language.

Movie Review: The Humans

I just finished watching a movie called The Humans. I love films from the distribution company A24, and The Humans is an A24 film. I didn’t know much about the movie, but I saw the trailer a while ago and it looked interesting. I read some reviews saying it was a horror movie but without jump scares. I’m not a big fan of horror, and as a child I was always stressed going into movie theaters and Blockbuster during Halloween because they always had these big advertisements for scary movies, and I got nightmares. And not just Halloween, but summer as well. I was around eight or ten years old and there was a poster for a film in the Chucky franchise, and the minute I turned to look at it, I almost screamed. So, I thought it was really interesting when I looked at the genre for The Humans and saw that people were calling it a horror film. I remember seeing a movie called Lamb (another A24) film and it was categorized as horror, but it didn’t have any jump-scares. It just had a lot of disturbing scenes. There are some jump scares in The Humans, but it’s not like anything supernatural is jumping out at you. It’s just the sounds and the overall atmosphere of the movie that makes it extremely unsettling.

If you haven’t seen the movie, it takes place in New York City, and the family is meeting together for Thanksgiving. Erik and Deidre have two daughters, Aimee and Brigid, and their mom, Momo, has dementia. They all go to visit Brigid and her boyfriend, Richard, for the Thanksgiving holiday, and at first things start off really chill, but as the film goes on, the interactions get more stressful and there is a lot of tension in the family. The apartment Brigid and Richard live in is pretty creepy, and they always hear suspenseful noises coming from upstairs or stuff is coming out of the walls. I think the most stressful part of this film was the conversation that Brigid has with Erik and Deidre. Brigid is a musician, but she keeps getting rejected for opportunities. She has her parents and sister listen to a piece of music she composed, and they like it, but she said she didn’t get the grant for the music, and she feels dejected. Erik doesn’t provide any consoling advice, and instead tells her that she should find a real job instead of chasing her passion. Brigid is upset that her dad doesn’t support her dreams, and Richard tries to reason with her, but Brigid is sick of feeling like no one supports her dreams. Erik is in a lot of hot water himself; he tells his daughters that he and Deidre had to sell their lake house because Erik lost his job at the school that he worked at for having an affair with one of the teachers, so he is working at Walmart to pay the bills. Even though he assures Brigid and Aimee that he and Deidre are working it out, Brigid and Aimee wonder why he did what he did and whether he has anything saved up, and they start to worry about his financial situation. Aimee is also dealing with a lot of stuff; her partner, Carol, broke up with her and is seeing someone else, she lost her job, and she has health issues. In between these stressful moments, Erik is hearing strange noises from the house and honestly, the ending of the film gave me the creeps. I really thought some ghost was going to pop out, but it was just more of a suspenseful moment, the feeling of being in this dark room when everyone else has gone. Honestly, I felt for Erik at that moment because as a kid I remember hating dark spaces. We went on a tour to this big cavern when I was younger, and it was pitch black and I’m pretty sure I almost got a panic attack. There was another time when I was in fifth grade and we had to learn about slavery and the conditions on the slave ships, and the teachers had us go in this classroom and we had to lay down next to each other and they turned off the lights. We had to imagine that we were slaves on these ships with no ventilation, no lighting, all cramped together in chains. The minute they turned off the lights, my heart started racing, my breathing shortened, and I started to hyperventilate. I did not want to be in the pitch-black room anymore, and I almost screamed and started crying. The kids around me had to convince that it wasn’t real, that I was going to be ok, but honestly that did very little to assuage the intense panic I felt at that moment in that pitch dark room. I remember my parents saying I used to not be afraid of the dark as a kid, but honestly, I can’t remember that time anymore because as I got older, I started hating being in rooms where it was pitch black and I couldn’t see anything. Maybe this is why I fear death because it’s going to feel so weird losing my consciousness, losing my breath, losing my hearing, my taste, my tactile senses. While Erik was in the dark by himself, I felt like I was in that dark room, wondering how you are ever going to get out. Erik starts panicking and he rushes downstairs and recites a Biblical verse over and over again while crying. Brigid tells him his cab is ready to take him and Deidre home, but it takes him a while to recover from the scare he had until he finally musters the courage and strength to leave the house.

I also related to the theme of family tension, especially when Brigid was talking to her family about her dreams as a musician, because there were many times I would talk to my family about wanting to move to a big city like New York or Los Angeles to follow my dreams as a musician, and they would tell me, “It’s too expensive to live there” and I would always get so defensive and upset, to the point where I would be passive-aggressive during meal times or throw tantrums because my dreams weren’t working out the way that I wanted them to. It’s something I still struggle with, to be honest, and sometimes I wonder if something is wrong with me, because there will be times during family meals where I will be totally quiet and thinking about some stressful event, and I will just be reluctant to talk about it with my family because I worry about them judging me. I also related to Richard’s past struggles with depression, because I have struggled with depression. It’s not easy to talk about one’s mental health, especially because there is a lot of stigma attached to talking about it. There is a scene where Richard talks about how he was depressed, and Brigid tells him he doesn’t have to bring it up with her family because she doesn’t want him to feel pressured to talk about it, but he tells them he was depressed at one point. Erik then tells him that in their family, they don’t believe in depression or taking medications and going to therapy. Instead, Erik believes that religion is the best antidepressant, and he wonders why his daughters aren’t religious anymore. I’m a religious person, too, but I realized after a certain point that the purpose of my prayer was to give me the wisdom to seek proper treatment for my depression. I was just praying for it to go away, but I realized that it was neither realistic nor safe to wish a serious medical condition like depression away, and that I needed to get help for it right away. As much as I loved my friends and family and people in my religious community, I found seeing someone who is trained in dealing with mental health issues to be immensely helpful and therapy gave me tools so that I could continue to do the work on myself to manage my depression. I also realized that a lot of people struggle with depression, so I could use my experiences with mental illness to encourage someone going through it. It’s easy to think there is something inherently flawed about you when you go through a depressive episode, but getting the right treatment helped me learn how to manage it better and that instead of beating myself up for being depressed, I needed to have more self-compassion and understand that recovering from depression takes patience and effort, and that I needed to take it one day at a time. It definitely wasn’t an overnight one-time event, and for many years I struggled with moments where I felt ok and where I felt like, I’m not feeling great, I need to go see someone about this.

One part of this film that I really loved was the dialogue. It was just incredibly brilliant. When I first saw the trailer, I thought it was going to have supernatural creatures because the characters at one point talk about these scary stories and scary dreams that they have, but there are no supernatural entities that jump out during the film. It’s just the overall suspense that leaves your heart racing during this film. It’s not a fast-paced movie at all; in fact, it reminded me of my experience watching this film called The Zone of Interest (which is another A24 movie. Like seriously, A24 is killing it with these incredible dramas. I don’t know how they do it.) At the beginning, it was slow and starts off with a pitch-black screen and ominous choral music at the beginning, but as the film builds it just gets more and more disturbing and by the end I was like, Wow, that was…something. I like films that don’t feature a lot of frenetic action or stylized violence. Sometimes the films that get me are movies that start off slow but build with suspense until my skin is crawling. Also, I saw June Squibb (the actress who plays Mo-Mo) in another movie called Nebraska. I haven’t finished the film yet, but she was a really great actress in the movie. I also really love Beanie Feldstein, who plays Brigid, in Booksmart, which is a funny movie about two high school straight-A students who decide to party and not take themselves seriously during their senior year. I also love Amy Schumer, who plays Aimee, in her sketch show Inside Amy Schumer. I watched that show a lot when I was in college and going through a rough time. I haven’t seen a lot of work by Steven Yeun but I saw a movie he was in called Sorry to Bother You. It was about a Black man named Cassius living in an alternate reality who becomes successful as a telemarketer when he starts to sound like a white person, and the film shows the dark side of capitalism. Steven Yeun plays one of Cassius’s friends who rejects capitalism and ends up dating Cassius’s girlfriend, Detroit, when Cassius becomes a sellout. Another Steven Yeun movie I love is Minari (another A24 film), which is about a family from Korea who moves to the American countryside and learns to adjust to their new life in America. I really want to see his Netflix series with Ali Wong called Beef because I watched a lot of awards shows this year, and Beef won quite a few awards. I saw Richard Jenkins in this movie a long time ago called The Visitor. It’s about a middle-aged man living in New York who meets a couple who is undocumented, and he lets them stay with him. It was a very moving film, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Richard Jenkins was also in another film I love called Kajillionaire, which is about a family of con artists living in Los Angeles who encounter a mysterious woman who goes on a heist with them and falls in love with the couple’s daughter, Old Dolio. Richard plays Old Dolio’s dad, who doesn’t have any real love for his daughter and is just stringing her along so that they can scam people out of their money. Even though it was a depressing film, I loved the acting in that movie.

I didn’t know this movie was based on a play until I saw the opening credits. I’ve seen a few films that were originally plays, and it’s interesting to see how they bring the play to the big screen. There was a film I saw called The Whale that was originally a play. The movies Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom were originally plays by August Wilson, and the movie Doubt was a stage play. Watching these movies makes me want to see the original stage plays.

The Humans. 2021. Rated R.

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.

A Buddhist’s Perspective on The Florida Project (note: I started this review a month ago, but didn’t finish it until now)

June 19, 2020

Categories: Buddhism, movies

After watching the 2017 film The Florida Project, I am still trying to breathe like normal again, because throughout the film I kept holding my breath. It is a deep film set in a motel near a highway around Disney World (specifically in Kissimmee, a city in Florida) and follows the adventures of six-year-old Mooney and her two friends Scooty and Janey. I had been meaning to see this movie for a while, especially because Willem Dafoe got nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and the clip they showed during the nominees presentation was so powerful. Frankly, I think this award should have gone to Willem Dafoe, but then again I didn’t see Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri yet, so I can’t say anything about Sam Rockwell’s win. Or at least it should have gotten some kind of Academy Award.

For some backstory, The Florida Project got its name because Walt Disney World, an entertainment complex, used to be called “The Florida Project” as a supplement to Disneyland in Anaheim, California during the 1960s. The movie is important to watch because it paints a different side of the magical Disney World (then again, this video shows how Disney hasn’t exactly been magical to its employees.) It takes place in a motel, in a low-income area, and Mooney and her friends find themselves often going to abandoned housing projects and breaking things, tampering with the electricity system of the motel, and asking strangers for money so they can buy themselves ice cream. Meanwhile, Mooney’s mom, Halley, is a struggling sex worker trying to pay Bobby, the hotel manager, her rent on time but falling behind each time. Her friend, Ashley, works full time at a diner and steals food from the kitchen to give to Mooney and her friends because she doesn’t want to ruin her friendship with Halley by saying “no.” However, things take a turn with their friendship when Scooty, Ashley’s son, breaks things in the abandoned housing project with Mooney and Jancey and lights a pillow on fire, burning the entire place up. Even though people are out cheering and calling the old place a dump, Ashley knows that Florida Department for Children and Families (DCF) will come for her and her son for what he did, so she keeps Scooty from playing anymore with Mooney and Jancey while also distancing herself from Halley because she didn’t prevent Mooney from doing what she and her friends did.

While I did at first have some sympathy for Halley’s struggle, I noticed there was a major difference in how Halley handled it and how Ashley handled it. Even though the film focused on Halley and Bobby, there’s a lot to be said about how Ashley deals with Halley’s shenanigans. Ashley is a woman of color and Halley is white. Halley was able to get off scot-free while Ashley, who doesn’t benefit from white privilege, was aware that she would be the one getting in trouble (10.10.21: looking back, I don’t want to assume anything about the race of these characters, but it was just an observation I made while watching the film that may or may not be true.) This difference makes itself more prominent at the diner scene, when Halley and Mooney go to the diner Ashley works at. Halley is angry that Ashley is keeping Scooty from playing with Mooney and Jancey, and is also angry when Ashley tells her she doesn’t allow Mooney and Jancey to steal food from her anymore because she is getting in trouble for it at work, and so Halley cusses her out and gives her a hard time, letting Mooney order all this food and then having a burping content with Mooney in the diner while eating. This shows the racial disparity between the two women in their experiences; even though both Halley and Ashley live in poverty and both are struggling to work and provide for their kids, Halley does not think twice about the consequences of her actions while Ashley doesn’t get to get off as easily. This also impacts how they tell their kids about the realities of what they are dealing with. When Ashley finds out about the abandoned houses setting fire, she reprimands Scooty and tells him that the DFC will come for them because of what he did. Halley, however, refuses to tell Mooney the truth and tries to hide it from her, thinking that as a six-year-old Mooney won’t be able to understand what is going on (even though, at some point, she was going to have to find out anyway.) She still acts as if Mooney shouldn’t take responsibility for participating in the fire, and lashes out at anyone who criticizes her for not taking responsibility. She takes Mooney on all these adventures around town, taking her to stores and restaurants where they get to act up and cuss people out.

The dynamics in Halley and Ashley’s friendship get even starker when Halley comes to Ashley’s room to apologize and asks for financial help, and Ashley laughs in her face because she knows Halley has been bringing clients to her motel room for sex work even though she is not supposed to bring unauthorized guests to her room, and tells her she can pay her rent herself. Halley takes this as an insult though and beats up her friend very badly. Even when the DFC finally comes to Halley’s apartment because of her neglect of Mooney and her illegally bringing clients to her room, Halley denies she did anything wrong. When Mooney asks what is wrong, who the adults are outside her and her mom’s apartment and why they are screaming at each other, and why DFC is taking her to live with another family, none of the adults take the time to explain the situation to her. None of them feel she will understand what is going on, so they keep trying to convince her that everything will be okay and to just stop talking and come with them, even though the situation is clearly not okay and Mooney will be in fact taken away from her mom. Ashley seems to be the only adult in the film who tells it like it is to her kid; the other adults try to implant this idea in their kids’ minds that poverty is an adult issue that kids shouldn’t have to grapple with.

Another important part is the scene in the middle of the film where a couple walks into the motel and tells Bobby that they looked at the pamphlet and thought they were going to be staying at Disney World. When Bobby tells them they are at Disney World, they tell him he is wrong because they expected to be staying at a nice fancy hotel (the website shows that there are a variety of places in Kissimmee for tourists. And yes, your good old Super 8 Motel is one of these places listed.) A lot of people say Disney World is the happiest place on Earth, but it’s just like anywhere else. There’s a cool episode of SGI-USA’s “The Buddha Beat,” in which people walking around Orlando answer the question, “Is Disney World the Happiest Place on Earth?”

In the video some people say yes and others say no. Some people said it wasn’t the happiest place on Earth because it is super crowded, another said that for the Disney workers walking around in the costumes it isn’t the happiest place on Earth. The interviewer then tells them that Buddhism teaches that happiness lies within you no matter where you are, and a lot of people in the interview agree with her.

In his letter “On Attaining Buddhahood in this Lifetime,” Nichiren Daishonin says the Lotus Sutra teaches that there are no two lands, pure or impure, but that “the difference lies solely in the good or evil of our minds.” (The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, volume 1, page 3.) Even though Mooney and her friends don’t have much money, they find happiness where they are, and they also treasure their friendship with one another even when the adults in their lives are dealing with stressful situations. I can’t relate to the situations of the characters in the movie, let alone the real-life residents of Kissimmee. But as one reviewer of the film put it, The Florida Project doesn’t sentimentalize poverty or try to send in someone to save Mooney, Halley or any of the other people living in the motel. It shows people just living life, challenges and all. Which is probably why, as many reviewers have said, the Oscars snubbed the film. As Heather Dockray, the author of a Mashable review on The Florida Project, rightfully calls out: “Oscar voters don’t historically like to look at women who are poor, especially when they are asked to stare their poverty head-on.” (Dockray, Mashable) Dockray explains that award-winning films about poor people, such as Precious and The Blind Side, often show a savior coming in to rescue the poor person from their circumstances. Mariah Carey helps Gabourey Sidibe get an education and escape her abusive mom forever. Sandra Bullock adopts a homeless Black teen and magically unlocks his potential as a student and football player. However, in The Florida Project, no one is coming to adopt Mooney or save Halley, Ashley or really anyone in the motel from their problems. Even Willem Dafoe’s character fails a lot even when he’s trying to help Halley. He can’t rescue her from her problems, especially when he’s dealing with his own. The women try to look out for each other, but due to their circumstances it’s hard because they are all just trying to survive.

Movie Review: Good Time

Ok, to be perfectly honest, after watching Uncut Gems I had to watch Good Time. Seriously. The filmmaking of Uncut Gems made me want to watch Good Time. Like a lot of people, I saw Robert Pattison in the Twilight movie franchise and thought he was good in it, but I hadn’t seen his other films like Cosmopolis, The Lighthouse or Good Time. I finally watched it and honestly it was amazing.

The movie is about a guy named Connie (played by Robert Pattinson) whose brother, Nick (Benny Safdie), ends up at Rikers Island after the two guys attempt to rob a bank, only to have their plans to rob the bank backfire and Nick ends up going to jail (my one thought though was why the choice of bank robbery masks? It kind of looked like they were wearing blackface, but maybe I’m being paranoid, I don’t know.) Connie needs bail money to get Nick out Connie does what he can to get his brother out of jail, and when he finds the guy he thinks is Nick at the hospital and wheels him out, he stays with a Black woman named Annie and her granddaughter, Crystal (Taliah Webster). Connie involves the daughter in his plan to get Nick away from the hospital, but what ends up happening is that Connie finds out that the guy he thought was Nick isn’t really Nick but some other guy named Ray (Buddy Duress) who, like Nick, looked beaten up badly. Connie thinks of leaving the guy but can’t because the guy opens up to him this story about this bottle of LSD he bought from his friends that’s worth more than a pretty penny, and how it got left in an amusement park and the guy never retrieved it because he took a cab and then told the cab driver what happened and then the cab driver wanted to take him to jail and so the guy jumped out of the cab and injured his face badly while doing so. In the end, the guy jumps out the window in a suicide attempt and Connie ends up going to jail. The movie ends with Nick in a facility where they have a mental health group therapy session for everyone, and in the session they play a game where they have to step across to the other side of the room if some event happened to them. The end credits roll as Nick ponders as to why this game is even relevant and why he even has to play it.

Honestly, while watching this film, I had the same bodily reaction that I did while watching Uncut Gems. It was so packed with action, and the movie pretty much just jumps into the plot without stopping or building up suspense. The music by Daniel Lopatin is the same kind of music that Uncut Gems had, and it gave the scenes their intensity.

9/18/21: So it’s September 18, and it’s been a couple weeks since I started writing this review. I was really chanting and pondering about what kind of review I wanted to write about the film, and I was also wrestling with why Connie did the things that he did. And so I chanted and reflected this morning, and I think seeing the film from a Buddhist perspective helped me process it a little better. In Buddhism, there’s this concept called The Ten Worlds, which are ten states of life that any one of us can experience at any given moment. The first four of these ten life states are hell, hunger, animality and anger. I think Connie did the things he did because he was constantly in the life state of animality. I read this really helpful book called An Introduction to Buddhism that the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) published, and it talks about each of the ten worlds. According to the book, “when in the state of animality, one acts based on instinct or impulse, unable to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil…In the world of animality, people lack reason and conscience, seeing life as a struggle for survival in which they are willing to harm others to protect themselves. Unable to look beyond the immediate, they cannot plan for the future. Such a state of ignorance ultimately leads to suffering and self-destruction.” (An Introduction to Buddhism, p. 19) As I write this, it makes sense why the film moved so quickly the more I reflect on this probable reason for why Connie did the things he did. All Connie wanted to do was get his brother out of Rikers and get him home, but he didn’t really have a way out because the police are still tracking him down and the news keeps reporting about the failed bank robbery he and Nick set up. When he’s on the couch with Crystal and they’re watching television, the news suddenly comes on and his mugshot appears. Crystal looks at him and is trying to figure out if he’s that same guy that robbed the bank, but then Connie panics when he realizes she might turn him in to the cops, and so he forcefully kisses her. It’s hard to tell whether or not this kiss was consensual, but it showed me just one example of how Connie is in the world of animality. Because all he can think about is getting away from the cops, he’s willing to take advantage of Crystal to make his plot work. Even when Connie realizes that the guy he thought was Nick is actually somebody else, he still has Crystal drive him and the guy to White Castle to get them food with the little money that he has left. When Connie and the guy go to the amusement park to retrive the bottle of acid, a Black security guard stops them and Connie beats him up and steals his uniform while Ray pours the LSD down the guard’s throat. Connie by this point is not thinking about Crystal and when she gets arrested even though she’s obviously not the one who robbed a bank or beat up a security guard and poured acid down his throat, all he can do is just look silently as she is taken away. I was wondering why, while watching this film, it just seemed Connie was just going and going and couldn’t stop for anything, and I read the Wikipedia plot summary of the film after watching it and reading it gave me more insight into why the film moved so quickly. I know you’re thinking, Well, duh, silly, it’s a crime thriller, of course it’s gonna be fast-paced. But I think on a deeper level, seeing this movie from the perspective of the 10 Worlds concept helped me understand what might have psychologically or emotionally driven Robert Pattinson’s character to commit the actions he did. I mean, I can definitely see why the film got critical acclaim though, because Robert’s performance was really good.

I’m definitely still reflecting on the movie, and I’d probably have to watch it a second time just to maybe dive a little deeper into the film (and also, because the music was excellent.) I wasn’t even really thinking about what grade to give the film, I was just enthralled with the acting and the visual effects because the acting and visual effects of the Safdie brothers’ last film, Uncut Gems was excellent. My feeling about the movie at this point is pretty neutral; I just was more enthralled by the acting than anything else. Uncut Gems was really good, and I think after watching a lot of A24 films (Good Time is an A24 film) I think I just love the acting in them.

Good Time. 2017. Rated R for language throughout, drug use, sexual content and violence.

Movie Review: Uncut Gems

I had been meaning to see this film for a while. It’s an A24 film, and I am a huge fan of A24 movies, so I was definitely glad to see this one. I watched it a week ago with subtitles, and while at first I was able to keep up with the dialogue, I decided to watch it a second time without the subtitles. There is a lot of dialogue in the film, and pretty fast moving dialogue, and while normally I watch movies and TV shows with subtitles so I can hear the characters better and not have to turn up the volume, I missed out on a lot of key elements in the film because I was trying to keep up with every word the characters were saying. When I watched it without subtitles, I was able to fully take in the characters’ expressions and the dialogue flowed smoothly. The first time I watched it, I didn’t fully get into the film until toward the end when I turned the subtitles off. I’ll probably keep watching movies with subtitles, but this time I decided to keep them off the second time I watched the movie.

I also watched it a second time because in college I had to watch a lot of movies, and I found that movies are like literary texts. I would study literary texts over and over and would find something new each time, and would also be able to make connections between different things I read and saw and listened to. And after getting more into studying the Buddhist philosophy I practice, I found a lot of concepts in Buddhism that could be applied to Uncut Gems.

But just to give a brief plot summary: The movie opens in the Welo Mine in Ethiopia in 2010, and a group of Ethiopian Jewish miners are trying to help one of the miners whose leg is badly damaged, to no avail as their supervisors just stand by while the man is dying. A couple of miners go underground and find this rare black opal that is scintillating and is full of all these iridescent colors. Then the film fasts forward to New York City, where Howard Ratner, a Jewish American jeweler, is getting a colonoscopy (for those squeamish about medical procedures, maybe close your eyes around where the title of the film comes on because that’s where the movie leads into the scene with the colonoscopy.) Most of the movies I see, the suspense doesn’t happen until later in the film, and gradually builds up to it, but for this film, the intensity is evident the minute Howard leaves that office after his colonoscopy and heads out into the streets of NYC. Why is it so intense? Because Howard owes so many people money. He is in a lot of debt and is figuring out how to pay everyone back. On top of that, he has to figure out his crumbling marriage with his soon to be ex wife, Dinah (played by the lovely Idina Menzel. I first saw her as Maureen Johnson in Rent and have loved her ever since.) and his relationship with Julia, his girlfriend who works with him at KMH, Howard’s jewelry store. The guy who brings him clients to his store, Damany (played by LaKeith Stanfield, whose acting I also really love in Sorry to Bother You and Get Out) brings in Kevin Garnett. Howard shows Kevin the black opal and tells him about how he saw on the History Channel a documentary about Ethiopian Jewish miners mining the black opal, and so he bought it for a bonkers amount of money. Kevin’s eyes immediately flash and he becomes so engrossed with the opal that he ends up smashing the jewelry display case he is leaning on in order to look at the opal. He wants it, but Howard tells him it’s not for sale, and to come to an auction later on to bid on it. His deal with Kevin about the black opal gets him into even further trouble, though, because Howard is addicted to gambling, and so he stakes basically his whole life and his money on Kevin winning so that he can pay back the debts he owes everyone.

Honestly, I’m glad I watched this a second time, because when I watched it the first time I didn’t really understand why Howard acted the way he did towards everyone he met, but after watching it a second time, it made more sense from a Buddhist perspective. In The Lotus Sutra and its Opening and Closing Sutras, there’s a chapter called “Five Hundred Disciples,” and in this chapter there’s this beautiful parable. In this parable a man goes to his friend’s house and gets drunk and falls asleep, and while he’s asleep his friend sews a priceless jewel into the lining of the man’s robe, and leaves it with him when he goes out. The man travels to other countries the next day, searching for food and clothing and struggling to get by on what little he has, and because he was asleep he didn’t see his friend sewed the robe in the lining of his robe. When he meets up with his friend, his friend finally tells him that he sewed a jewel into his robe so he could live in ease. (LSOC, 190) This parable symbolizes the jewel of the Buddha nature within each of us, and this Buddha nature–our wisdom, courage, compassion and life force–already exists within our lives. While it’s of course ok to want nice things, I’ve found when I make external validation the center of my life, when I make external validation define my identity for me, I’m going to crave that validation, and in the long run that has made me suffer. When I chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo though, I’m able to remind myself of the jewel that is within my life: my innate Buddhahood, which has existed in me and in the universe from what we call in Buddhism “time without beginning.”

While watching Uncut Gems, I almost wished that Howard was real so that I could share Buddhism with him. Howard already had the jewel of Buddhahood in his life, but his fundamental darkness made it hard for him to see that Buddhahood. Him and Kevin both placed prime importance on the jewel as the key to their success; for Howard, the jewel was his ticket to paying off his debts, and for Kevin, it was the key to winning his basketball games and winning him recognition and success. However, as I watched this movie, I thought about a quote by Daisaku Ikeda, a Buddhist philosopher and educator, about what true winning is:

“Any goal is fine. The important thing is to strive toward it, triumphing in each challenge along the way. Winning doesn’t mean getting rich or becoming important. There are many rich and important people who succumb to negative influences and grow corrupt. Such people cannot be said to have won in life. True victory is winning over your own mind. Others’ opinions don’t matter. Nor is there any need for you to compare yourself with others. A genuine victor in life is one who can declare: “I lived true to myself, and I have won! I am a spiritual victor! Please remember that.” (Discussions on Youth, p. 422-423)

The film’s ending is actually sad because Howard won the bet, but it’s like he never got a chance to win over himself or change his karma with money in the end. Also, I kept thinking long after the movie was over: how is Howard’s death going to affect his family? Did Howard have a will? Julia is seen getting in the car so she can give the bags of $1 million in cash to Howard, but when she finds he is dying in the jewelry store, she is obviously going to be distraught and also how is she going to settle the money with Dinah, who was Howard’s wife?

I also thought about the concept of the Ten Worlds in Buddhism, particularly the worlds of hell, hunger, animality and anger. Howard goes through these four worlds throughout the film, and the other characters reflect his negative life states (a concept called esho funi, or oneness of life and its environment.) In one particular scene I felt for Howard even though he hadn’t paid off all these debts to the people in his life, because he was in a state of suffering even though he tried to put everything on the backburner. He has so many people who remind him of the debts he owes to them, and finally, after Phil, one of Arno’s henchmen, punches Howard in the nose and throws him in the fountain, Howard goes back to his office and tells Julia to send everyone working at the store home. When she comes up, he lets himself break down and cry, telling her through his tears that he doesn’t know how to handle all the debt he owes people and that he screws up every time he tries to do something. He is deeply hard on himself, and doesn’t feel like there is any way out. Even when Julia shows the tattoo of his name she got on her butt, he cries even harder and tells her he doesn’t deserve even that. The first time I watched it I didn’t have much sympathy for Howard, but the second time, after thinking about the Buddhist concept of the Ten Worlds, I actually realized that he’s not just this arrogant guy who only thinks about himself and his own problems, but someone who is deeply suffering. Howard suffers because he can’t see the potential he has to pay off the debt he owes to people and he also can’t see the jewel of his Buddhahood within his own life.

The fundamental darkness in his life makes it also hard for him to see the interconnectedness of himself with everyone else and other events. The movie reminded me of the music video for “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” by Kanye West because you see these young kids working in these mines and in one scene one of the kids holds up the diamond he mined and then we see above him a white jeweler taking the diamond from the kid and showing clients the diamond. Howard was so enthralled with this black opal that he couldn’t recognize that the opal not just had years of history, as he says, because it was mined by Black Ethiopian Jewish people, but also because of the dark history of European imperialism that can’t be separated from the sale of these jewels, no matter how much Howard doesn’t want to think about that.

Here is an interview where Josh and Benny Safdie talk more about the film. Honestly reading it helped because both of them are Jewish, and Jewish identity and culture is a central theme throughout the film, and I don’t have much knowledge about Judaism other than what I have read in some books and watched on TV shows, so reading this interview gave me more context when thinking about the movie.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/12/uncut-gems-director-interview-jewish-stereotypes-adam-sandler.html

Uncut Gems. 2019. 2 hr 15 min. Rated R for pervasive strong language, violence, some sexual content and brief drug use.

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