movies – The Arts Are Life

Movie Review: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret

Themes discussed in this post: adolescence, sexuality, puberty, friendship, faith/religion, family

A few weeks ago, I watched this really good movie called Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. Even though I have not read the book by Judy Blume, I still really wanted to see the movie because I really love the actress Rachel McAdams, and she is in this movie, so I really wanted to see it. It is about this young woman named Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) who moves from New York City to New Jersey with her parents, Herbert (Benny Safdie) and Barbara (Rachel McAdams). Margaret struggles with puberty, friendships and her religious identity, but she ultimately realizes that it all is just a part of growing up. I love this film, too, because I watch a lot of coming-of-age movies. Somehow watching coming-of-age movies makes me feel less alone, because even though I am no longer a teenager, it is cool to see how other young people navigate their young adulthood in movies. I didn’t go to a lot of parties or date growing up, so I always find watching coming-of-age movies fascinating because these kids in the movie are going through all of these different developmental stages and figuring out who they are, and it has helped me gain a new perspective on what growing up is like based on people’s individual experiences. Young adulthood isn’t going to be the same for everybody because each individual grows up with a different cultural background, and each culture has its own traditions and beliefs about what it means to be an adult and enter adulthood. I am still a young adult even though I am no longer a teenager, but I sometimes feel behind because I have not accomplished all of these traditional milestones of adulthood, like buying my first mortgage, getting married and having a child. That’s why I love watching coming-of-age movies, because watching them reminds me that growing up is just a part of life and you are still figuring out your identity and your brain is still developing, so it is important to set your own timelines and milestones because everyone develops differently.

One of the key themes in this film is religious identity and faith. Margaret’s father is Jewish, and her mother grew up with conservative Christian parents. Margaret’s teacher has the class write a personal essay about a topic of their interest and Margaret’s teacher suggests that she write about religion because she wrote that she doesn’t like religious holidays in a writing assignment done in class. When the teacher asks her to explain more about that, Margaret tells him that it is because her father is Jewish and in New Jersey she is around a lot of kids who celebrate Christmas and are Christian, so she feels embarrassed because she grew up in a different faith than everyone else. Margaret’s mom, Barbara, won’t tell her why her parents never come to visit the family. Margaret is close with Sylvia, her grandmother on her dad’s side, but she doesn’t know anything about her mom’s side of the family. One day after school, Margaret approaches Barbara and asks her why her mom and dad don’t come to see them or why they are not in contact with Margaret’s family. Barbara at first doesn’t want to talk about it, but after Margaret expresses genuine interest in knowing why, Barbara tells her that her parents disowned her for marrying a Jewish man because they are strict Christians and thought marrying a Jewish man would go against their beliefs. It is a really painful moment for Barbara to tell her daughter this because it caused her a lot of pain that her family didn’t want to speak to her simply because she married someone of a different faith than Christianity. Throughout the movie, Margaret goes on her own journey to figure out what religion she should uphold, Judaism or Christianity. When she goes to New York City to visit her grandmother Sylvia, who is Jewish, she asks her grandmother if they can go to the local synagogue for one of the services. Sylvia is super excited to take her granddaughter to the synagogue, and when they arrive, she introduces Margaret to everyone there and helps translate what the rabbi is saying during the service since Margaret does not know Hebrew and the rabbi is speaking in Hebrew. After the service, Margaret talks to God and tells him that she isn’t sure how she feels about it because she thought it would be different somehow. However, her grandmother wants Margaret to commit to being Jewish and thinks that is what Margaret wants. Margaret’s mother, while writing greeting cards to loved ones, decides to send a greeting card to her mother and father, Mary and Paul Hutchins, without telling anyone, even though she knows deep down that her parents do not like her husband because he is Jewish. She thinks that her parents might have had a change of heart in the time that they have not been speaking to their daughter and her family, and they surprisingly write her back and let her know that they want to come to New Jersey to visit her. Margaret, however, has already made plans with her grandmother to come down to Florida and visit her. Her grandmother left New York City to go to Florida because she lives by herself after her family moves to New Jersey and is feeling lonely, so she moves to Florida to live in a retirement home. When Barbara tells her husband that her parents want to come visit, he is upset because he knows that they don’t like him because he is Jewish. Even though Barbara tells him that she is sorry and that she only wrote to them because she thought it would help mend her relationship with her parents, but Herbert is not convinced. When Margaret comes home from school, Barbara breaks the news and tells her that her parents are coming to visit them, but Margaret is upset because she wanted to visit her grandmother in Florida and already made plans to see her. Barbara gets on the phone and tells her that Margaret has to cancel her flight to Florida because her grandparents are coming to see them, and her grandmother, Sylvia, is upset because she wanted to spend quality time with her granddaughter. Honestly, I was worried that Margaret’s grandmother would unexpectedly die and that Margaret would regret not deciding to stick with her plan to visit her in Florida. However, Margaret’s grandmother decides to fly to New Jersey with Morris Binamin, the man she met at the retirement home, to visit Margaret and her family, even if Barbara’s parents are coming.

Margaret is super excited that her grandmother is there, but things take a turn when the family has dinner together. Barbara prepares a delicious pot roast, and everyone is enjoying the meal, but Sylvia decides to propose a toast during dinner and says “l’chaim” which means “to life” in Hebrew and is similar to saying “Cheers” in English. Barbara’s parents, Mary and Paul, are confused and upset even though they are trying to be polite. Even though Barbara and Herbert try to keep the tension low and change the subject, things erupt when Mary and Paul ask Margaret if she would be interested in going to Sunday school and becoming Christian, but Sylvia tells them that she is not going to Sunday school because she is Jewish. Sylvia argues with Mary and Paul about which faith Margaret should choose, and Herbert and Barbara try to intervene and say that Margaret is not going to choose what faith to take up until she becomes an adult. Finally, Margaret, sick and tired of hearing them argue, tells everyone to be quiet and that she is sick of them fighting over what faith she should uphold. She angrily runs up to her bedroom and slams the door. The adults feel bad that they caused this argument and Sylvia and Barbara’s parents leave in separate cabs. Margaret ends up writing in her essay to her teacher, Mr. Benedict, that she realized that religion causes conflict and war, and leaves the classroom in tears. I grew up practicing a different religion, so I could not relate to what Margaret was going through, but I can’t imagine how difficult it is to have adults fighting over what religion you should practice at a time when you are still developing your own identity and figuring out what you want in life. I thought about this experience I read about in this Buddhist magazine I read, and it was about this young woman who grew up in three different religions: Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism. She wrote about how she wanted to help end religious conflict, and looking back, after watching this movie, I really appreciate her for wanting to make that cause of helping end religious conflict. I grew up with parents who grew up Christian but started practicing Buddhism later on after seeing how it helped them transform their lives, and they raised me and my sister to practice Buddhism. But they never put pressure on us to accept Buddhism or chant every day. I still practice Buddhism because I have seen the positive changes and personal growth that I have gone through in the course of practicing it, and as I get older, I still feel like every day is a new day for growth. I think without having this philosophy in my life, I would not know what purpose my life was for.

And honestly, as I am writing this, I am reflecting on how important it is to have dialogues between people of different faiths. In college, I was really happy because they had an Interfaith Council club on campus, and even though I didn’t get to go to a ton of meetings since I was busy with schoolwork and orchestra, going to even just a few meetings felt really comforting. Everyone was respectful of each other’s beliefs, and I learned a lot from listening to people talk about their personal experiences being Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and other religions. I also got to talk about how I was born into a family that practices Buddhism and how I apply the principles of Buddhism to my daily life.

Another theme in Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is fitting in, being true to yourself and finding genuine friendships. When Margaret’s parents tell her that they are moving to New Jersey, Margaret is upset and tells her parents that she doesn’t want to move because she has so many friends in her hometown and would miss all of them if they moved. When they first move into their new home in New Jersey, the family is still unpacking and there are boxes everywhere. A popular girl in the neighborhood named Nancy invites Margaret to come over to her house and play in the sprinklers, and right off the bat tells Margaret that her house is much larger than hers. Nancy’s family is wealthy, and they live in a big house, and when Margaret changes her clothes to put on her bathing suit, Nancy looks at Margaret’s body and starts making comments about how she is flat-chested. Nancy is obsessed with boys and growing breasts, while Margaret is shy and isn’t at first interested in that stuff. However, Margaret, like the other kids, wants to fit in, so she goes with what Nancy tells her to do. One of the rules of Nancy’s exclusive club is that they cannot wear socks. Margaret’s mom tells her to wear socks and asks her why she isn’t wearing socks on her first day of school. Margaret doesn’t want to tell her that Nancy told her to not wear socks, and she endures blisters on her heels instead of deciding to say “Fuck it” to Nancy’s no-sock rule and wear socks. Nancy also loves to gossip about her other classmates, including a tall girl named Laura Danker who has large breasts and keeps to herself. However, later in the film, Margaret sees that Nancy is deeply insecure about herself and is just an insecure mean girl. Nancy also lies to Margaret about when she gets her period. Even though she sends Margaret a postcard from a family trip, excitedly saying, “I got my period!” to prove she wasn’t the last one to get it, during a restaurant dinner with Nancy and her family, Nancy goes to the restroom and is crushed to find out that she actually didn’t get her period during the family trip. She got her period that evening during the family dinner at the restaurant. Margaret witnesses the entire exchange between Nancy and her mom, who has Margaret fetch Nancy a pad from the sanitary pad dispenser, and when Nancy comes out of the restroom stall, her face stained with tears, Margaret gives her a look of disappointment and anger because one of the rules that Margaret formed for the exclusive girls’ club was that everyone had to tell the truth, and even though Nancy swore she would tell the truth, she did not keep that promise.

Margaret also realizes that Nancy isn’t a very great friend and realizes that Laura Danker, who was the target of everyone’s bullying, is actually a good friend. Unlike the other girls, Laura doesn’t gossip, and she also has integrity. During a party at their classmate’s house, the students play a game where they have to go into a bathroom in pairs and kiss each other. Laura gets paired with a shorter boy and everyone snickers at her, making Laura feel humiliated. Nancy spreads rumors about Laura, telling Margaret that Laura lets the male students feel up her breasts. While Margaret and Laura are in the library working on an assignment for class, Laura catches Margaret cheating on the assignment. When Margaret shrugs it off, Laura tells her that what she is doing is dishonest. Margaret gets angry with Laura and lashes out, telling her that she knows about Laura letting the boys feel her breasts. Hurt, Laura storms out of the library and Margaret runs after her, apologizing. Laura goes into the Catholic church where she confesses to a priest and Margaret follows her. Margaret decides to confess to the priest even though she is not Catholic, but she is so embarrassed for how she treated Laura that she ends up running out of the church and not confessing to the priest. Margaret realizes that everything that Nancy told her about Laura Danker was not true, and that Laura, unlike Nancy, is a genuine person. I remember when I was in middle school and I felt insecure about myself. To cope with low self-esteem, I decided to get involved in gossip about other classmates. I also wrote in my diary how much I hated my classmates, but looking back, I hated my classmates because I deeply hated myself. Margaret comes to understand that she doesn’t have to act like Nancy or anyone else in order to make friends at school. She can just be herself and she will find people who like her for who she is. I think that is why I love practicing Buddhism, because my mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, who was an educator and writer, encouraged young people to be true to themselves and not worry about following superficial trends or pretending to be someone they weren’t. When I chant this Buddhist mantra called Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, it gives me the courage to live in a way that is true to myself. Even though I do a lot of nerdy hobbies like reading, painting and knitting, I have learned to not feel bad about doing those things. I also consider myself to be an introvert at heart even though a lot of people think I am an extrovert. Growing up, I used to hate being called shy and quiet, but as I got older, I learned that I don’t need to really worry too much what other people think about my personality, and that as long as I am working on developing myself and growing as a person, then I am on the right path in life. Even though it is a challenging process, it has been very rewarding in the long run. Sometimes I read my old journals and think, Wow, I am so glad I journaled during my teenage years because I had so many emotions to process. I didn’t experience the same ecstatic enthusiasm about getting my period, though. I was too busy having painful menstrual cramps to enjoy it. I do remember my mom and I eating chocolate cake and ice cream while watching School of Rock with Jack Black to celebrate me being on my period, though. However, the brief celebration about getting my period was, well, short-lived. While watching the girls in the movie chanting “We must, we must, WE MUST INCREASE OUR BUSTS!!!” and squealing about who was going to get their period first, as hilarious as it was to watch this scene, I couldn’t really relate to be honest. In school, my big boobs got a lot of unwanted attention. Boys would constantly stare at them, and it made me feel uncomfortable. Also, as I got older and my breasts increased in size, it became harder to fit in clothes. Also, period cramps were–and always will be–very painful. My period cramps were so painful that I found myself in the high school bathroom stall vomiting and curling up on the floor in fetal position until my parents came to pick me up from school. I REALLY hate period cramps. They were the bane of my existence throughout high school, college and even well into my early 30s continue to be the bane of my existence. I remember watching a commercial from a menstrual products company called Hello Flo, and the girl in the commercial pretends to get her period by putting red nail polish on a pad. All of her friends got their periods except for her, so she pretends that she got it. Even though her mother secretly knows that the girl put red nail polish on the pad, she pretends to be excited and throws her daughter a “first moon party,” inviting her grandpa, friends and other people in the neighborhood to celebrate her daughter’s first period. The daughter is extremely embarrassed, especially because her mom chose a bunch of corny games like “Pin the Pad on the Period” and had a fondue fountain with red fondue to look like period blood. The mom reveals to her daughter at the end of the commercial that she knew her little red-nail-polish-on-the-pad trick and gets her daughter a Hello Flo period starter kit. It is a really funny commercial. Here it is below:

I know this was a really lengthy review, so if you have made it this far or even read a paragraph, let alone a single sentence, thank you for your long attention. Long story short: I recommend you see Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. 2023. Runtime: 1 hr 46 minutes. Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving sexual education and some suggestive material.

Battle of the Sexes and My Love of Other Sports Movies about Badass Women Punching Sexism in the Face

Last week, I watched a movie called Battle of the Sexes, which is about a tennis match that took place on September 20, 1973, between 29-year-old Billie Jean King and 55-year-old Bobbie Riggs at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. It was amazing, and I watched it partly because I really love Emma Stone (who I found out actually prefers to go by “Emily” because that is her real name. Since there was another Emily Stone in the Screen Actors Guild, she had to go by another first name, and so she chose “Emma” after Emma Bunton, also known as Baby Spice, in The Spice Girls.) I don’t watch much tennis, so I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about this event in history, but I am glad I watched the movie because it was a pivotal moment for not just female players, but for the sports world in general, which has historically been male dominated. I am glad I rented the movie from the library because there are lots of free DVDs at the library and so I don’t have to pay for streaming (I am on a budget.) Also, I had to take the movie back to the library at some point because

Watching this movie reminded me of a documentary that I watched called LFG (an acronym for “Let’s Fucking Go!”). The documentary is about the U.S. women’s soccer team and their fight for equal pay. It features famous players like Megan Rapinoe, and at first, I didn’t think I would be interested in watching it because I don’t watch a lot of sports on TV in general, but after witnessing the #MeToo movement calling out decades of sexual violence and harassment against women, I needed to learn more about gender inequality so that I don’t think that women getting paid less than men is somehow ok. The women’s soccer team went to court several times to advocate for themselves because they were getting paid a lot less than the male soccer players. It was a serious battle of sweat and tears, and watching these women speak out against the injustice they dealt with in the male-dominated soccer world was empowering to see. I am actually glad I watched the documentary, because it is important to be aware of what is happening in the world, and most times I like to just hide under a rock and pretend like gender and racial inequality has nothing to do with me, which is wrong because it doesn’t just affect cisgendered women, it affects everyone. Also, Megan Rapinoe is freaking hot. Just sayin’.

Battle of the Sexes movie reminded me of LFG because in Battle of the Sexes, female tennis players were getting paid much less than the male tennis players and it wasn’t fair. In the movie, Billie Jean King and her manager, Gladys (played brilliantly by comedian Sarah Silverman), approach the promoter of the tennis tournaments, Jack Kramer, and demand that the female tennis players start their own tour because they are getting paid less than the men. However, Jack starts spouting all of these misogynistic beliefs about women competing in tennis and doesn’t budge. Billie and several other female members of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, which is the governing board for tennis in the United States of America, start their own tour despite Jack’s objections, and Jack bans them from the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, leaving them on their own to fund their own tour. The women encounter numerous battles to keep their own tour, and it gets even more complicated when Bobby Riggs, a pro-tennis player for many years who is much older than Billie Jean King, calls her in the middle of the night to propose that Billie and he play a match against each other. At first, Billie doesn’t want to participate, especially because Bobby, like Jack Kramer, holds sexist beliefs about women participating in sports and loves promoting himself. Bobby has a serious gambling addiction, which leads to him draining his money and tension between him and his wife, Priscilla, who has had to put up with his gambling addiction and is fed up. But then, Billie sees Bobby playing against Margaret Ward, and when Margaret loses against him and she sees Bobby walking around, gloating about his success, it provokes Billie to accept Bobby’s offer to play against her in a match called Battle of the Sexes, where female tennis players play matches against male tennis players.

Also, Billie Jean King realizes that she doesn’t really want to be with her husband, Larry, after she falls in love with Marilyn, her hairdresser. When Billie and the other female tennis players are getting their hair done for their public appearances, Billie meets her hairdresser, Marilyn (played by Andrea Riseborough) and they develop serious chemistry for one another. Even though Billie tries to act like she is in love with her husband, she realizes that she is a lesbian and her and Marilyn start seeing each other in private. They go to a party, and even though Billie tells her she is married, Marilyn knows that Billie is sexually attracted to her, and there is one scene where the song “Crimson and Clover” is playing and Billie declines to dance with Marilyn, so Marilyn dances with a random guy at the club, but as she sits at the bar and sips her drink, she watches how Marilyn dances with him and she sees Marilyn peering into her eyes. Marilyn and Billie end up having sex in Billie’s hotel room, and Billie tries to keep it a secret, but her tennis rival, Margaret Court, sees Billie and Marilyn leaving their hotel room together when Gladys has the female soccer players check out of the hotel so they can continue their tour. Margaret sees them together but doesn’t say anything to them, but then tells her husband that Billie is a lesbian and that Marilyn is not just a friend but is actually her lover. When Larry, Billie’s husband, travels to assist Billie with preparing for her tennis tournament, he finds a bra that isn’t Billie’s in her room and realizes that Billie has been having an affair with Marilyn. Even though Larry feels betrayed and that Billie lied to him, he continues to support her. There is a really memorable scene when Larry confronts Marilyn one evening and tells her that she and Billie need to end their relationship, not just because he is Billie’s husband but because Billie is focused on her career as a tennis player and the affair would distract from her achieving her goals.

Even though I haven’t gone through the struggles Billie had gone through in her tennis career, I kind of related to the idea of focusing on your career instead of a relationship. I remember when I fell in love for the first time with this guy in India and I thought that love was supposed to be this intoxicating thing where it was just you and the other person together, and nothing else mattered. However, I realized that this relationship didn’t need to be the center of my life because I had so many hobbies and extracurricular activities (and, of course, graduating from college) to focus on. Even though I am glad that my boyfriend and I stayed in touch during my last semester, I think it was best for us to separate eventually because we had grown apart. Not having that physical intimacy was hard for both of us, and I was just too preoccupied with a lot of stuff in my personal life to focus solely on this relationship. Also, I was chanting a lot for his happiness and I’m sure he has found a relationship where his needs are fulfilled, and he can be truly happy. Recently I developed feelings for a close friend, but at some point, they found someone else. I was pretty heartbroken, to be honest, but after chanting about it, it made more sense to just focus on my professional and personal development. A lot of times, the fleeting crushes I’ve had on guys have been a form of escapism to distract me from whatever painful stuff I was dealing with in life. I guess I’m glad that those guys were in other relationships because I realized that I wanted to focus on my personal goals, like my blog and other stuff I’m striving towards. I may want a relationship in the future, but I want to be with someone who supports my goals and doesn’t want to make me the center of their life. I want us to have our own personal hobbies and interests outside of the relationship.

I really love Steve Carrell’s acting in Battle of the Sexes. I didn’t know anything about Bobby Riggs before watching the movie, but after seeing it, all I could think was, Man, this guy was a hustler. But Steve plays him so well. Bobby Riggs completely underestimated Billie’s potential to beat him in the tennis match, and he even admitted to it when she won the match against him. Bobby and the men in the movie make all sorts of degrading statements about the female tennis players, saying they should stay in the kitchen and not be on the tennis courts, or that they are biologically not fit to compete in tennis tournaments. While watching the movie, I kept groaning every time they made these kinds of gross sexist comments, but I also had to remember that this was the 1970s and before the #MeToo movement called all that out. Of course, even if it’s 2025 and there is more discussion about reproductive rights and dismantling sexism, we still have a long way to go in establishing policies that treat cisgender women and trans women with the respect they deserve and afford them basic human rights. That’s why I love watching historical movies, because we need to learn from the past not just so we don’t repeat it in the future, but so that we can see people like Billie Jean King who broke through gender barriers and think, Dang, if she can persevere through all this sexism and men putting her down, then I can achieve my goals too even if I deal with a lot of obstacles along the way.

When I watched another tennis movie called King Richard, I felt so empowered seeing how Venus and Serena Williams fought not only sexism, but also racism, to win all these championships, and how they still stayed down-to-earth even with all of their success. There was this part in Citizen that really stuck with me, and that was when Rankine is talking about a tennis match during which Serena’s rival, a Danish tennis player named Caroline Wozniacki, impersonated Serena Williams’s curvy figure by stuffing her shirt and skirt with tissue paper and prancing around the tennis court, flaunting her fake “curves” and imitating Serena. I checked the comments from 2011 when they posted a video of her doing the impression while in a tennis match with another player, and while I understand that for many people this was harmless and Caroline was just trying to be funny, after reading Claudia Rankine’s take on it, I can see why Caroline’s impersonation was racist to many other people. Sure, Caroline didn’t put cork on her face and paint her lips red, but still, when you look at it from the perspective of US History, it was just as bad as an 1890s minstrel show. Of course, I do not know Serena or Caroline personally, but I am guessing they are friends and that Serena didn’t take it the wrong way. However, after learning more about the history of Jim Crow and blackface in the U.S. while I was in college, I realized that for Caroline, a white woman from Denmark who didn’t know anything about the history of slavery and racism in the U.S., it seemed like harmless fun, but viewed from a U.S.-centric context, it was offensive. Before reading Citizen by Claudia Rankine, I didn’t know much about the racism that Serena and Venus had to deal with as Black tennis players in predominantly white male spaces, but reading Rankine’s book made me more aware of all of the shit they had to deal with as Black women in a space where people gave them the message that they did not belong there. Of course, they have proven the haters wrong so, so many times with Grand Slam championships and other awards. However, it’s important for me to remember all the blood, sweat, tears and discrimination that they dealt with during their long careers. However, I was so encouraged to see the Gen-Z-aged tennis player Naomi Osaka, who is half-Haitian and half-Japanese, competing in the Australian Open and winning the tournament. To be honest, I don’t watch many sports on television, but my orchestra teacher from college told me about the Australian Open because he loves tennis. With nothing to do and nowhere to go that day (it was 2021 and I was able to work from home during that time and didn’t have to go anywhere), I woke up at 2 am to watch Naomi play against Jennifer Brady. Watching the Australian Open was FIERCE.

Overall, I thought Battle of the Sexes was a great movie, and I recommend that you see it.

Battle of the Sexes. 2017. Directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. Genre: Sports/Comedy/Drama. Starring Emma Stone, Steve Carrell, Andrea Riseborough and Sarah Silverman. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content and partial nudity.

Why Everyone Should Go See CODA If They Haven’t Seen It Yet

I LOVED CODA. I know it sounds like I am screaming when I write all caps, but I will say it again, even louder. I LOVED CODA.

Seriously, I was weeping by the end of the movie. I started watching it a few months ago, and then stopped halfway and watched other films, but finally after a long day and because I was having period cramps and needed to do something relaxing for a while, so I collapsed on the couch and turned on Apple TV. I thought about what to watch and then realized I had not finished CODA. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to finish it, so I did. And honestly, it was the best decision I made.

For those who haven’t seen the film yet, CODA is a movie about a young woman named Ruby Rossi who lives in a fishing village in Gloucester, Massachusetts. She helps her parents, Frank and Jackie fishing business and also translates for them in American Sign Language because they and her older brother are both deaf (CODA stands for “Children of Deaf Adults”). Ruby loves to sing, and at the beginning of the movie, she is singing along to “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” by the legendary soul singer Etta James while helping out Frank and Jacki on a fishing boat. Her life changes when her music teacher, Bernardo Villalobos, encourages her to apply to go to college at the Berklee School of Music, but when she tells her parents, they don’t want her to leave because she is their ASL translator and they also cannot afford for her to go to college. Through this emotional journey of a movie, Ruby learns that no matter how far she is from her family, she will always be close to them, and they will always love her. I got really emotional when she started singing “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell during her audition for Berklee. I didn’t grow up listening to much Joni Mitchell, to be honest, but hearing the song “Both Sides Now” was such a moving experience. Joni has a beautiful voice, and when I saw her on TV performing at the Grammys, I was deeply moved by her performance.

I was so happy when CODA won for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 2022. When it won, everyone in the audience applauded in American Sign Language, which involves waving your hands in the air and twisting them at the wrists. Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur, who play Ruby’s parents in the movie, were incredible actors, and Troy actually was the first deaf male actor to win an Academy Award. I haven’t seen a lot of films with deaf characters, to be honest. The last film I saw was Babel, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. One of the characters in the film was a girl from Japan named Chieko and she was born deaf. The movie shows her communicating in sign language with her classmates, who are also deaf, and struggling to communicate with people who don’t understand her. Babel was a really powerful movie that also had me bawling like a baby, and the actress who played Chieko was incredible. You could see the pain on her face when people could not understand her, when she faced rejection and loneliness, all while grappling with the death of her mom.

I also didn’t know anything about Children of Deaf Adults (CODA), but I now want to learn more. I didn’t grow up with deaf parents, but I remember watching an episode on a Buddhist YouTube channel about a young man named Alex who overcame his battle with leukemia, and the video showed him communicating with his parents in American Sign Language because they were deaf. I also started to become more curious about the deaf community after watching a video of a deaf professional dancer in Germany dancing to Beethoven. Her performance was incredible, and so I started looking up social media channels by deaf people and was really fascinated by their videos. The Buddhist organization I am a part of has virtual meetings every few months for people who are deaf/ hard of hearing. The meetings are also open to hearing people who have deaf spouses, friends or siblings, and anyone who wants to help support any deaf and hard of hearing Buddhist members in their community. Even though I am a hearing person, it was really cool to see people communicating in American Sign Language.

Even though CODA is about deafness and children of deaf parents, it is really, at the end of the day, a story about family, connection and the power of music. It also has a great message: to never give up on your dreams even if they seem impossible. Ruby is frustrated that she has to always translate for her parents and that she cannot go to college because her parents depend on her to translate for them, but they see her perform at her high school choir concert and they can see how much she really loves music. Earlier in the film, Ruby sings “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye for her music teacher, Bernardo, and he sees she has a lot of potential, so he encourages her to apply for music school. Even though she doesn’t have an extensive background in music or come from a prestigious family of musicians, Ruby feels the music with her life, and it is truly her passion. However, her family’s fishing business is struggling and the family and other people in the fishing business are dealing with unfair policy changes by the local government, which could put them out of business. Ruby is responsible for being her parents’ translator, so she can’t focus on preparing for college because she always working on the boat with them. Bernardo becomes frustrated with her for skipping rehearsals and thinks she is not as serious as he thought she was, but over time he becomes more understanding and even meets Frank and Jackie. It was funny because he tried to say, “Nice to meet you” in ASL, but he ended up saying “Nice to fuck you” in ASL, which is something he learned on YouTube. Ruby is mortified, and Bernardo apologizes when he realizes that he said the wrong greeting, but Frank laughs it off and jokes “Nice to screw you, too” in ASL to him. It was a sweet scene, and what really got me emotional was when Ruby is about to leave for college and drive off but then she gets out of the car and hugs her family. I cried until my eyes got red and puffy and my shoulders shook as I couldn’t stop crying. I was bawling especially during the end credits because Emilia Jones, the actress who played Ruby Rossi in CODA, performed a beautiful original song called “Beyond the Shore” and all I could say at the end was, “Wow, this was such a touching movie.”

I also realized as I was writing this that a coda is also a musical term, so it was fitting that this was the title of the movie because the movie is not just about children of deaf adults, but also about the power of music. There is a scene in the movie when Ruby’s parents are at her choir concert, and they are looking around at the audience and everyone can hear the music and is singing along and clapping, but they don’t know what they are trying to communicate. Their son, Leo, has his girlfriend with him, and she translates for him during the concert, but Jackie and Frank don’t have an ASL translator who can interpret the song lyrics in ASL for them, and they cannot rely on Ruby because she is onstage performing. Later in that scene, the volume becomes silent and for a couple of minutes you cannot hear the audience clapping or Ruby singing. They show the scene from the parents’ perspective to show how the listening experience at the concert is for them. Early on in the movie Frank and Jackie pick Ruby up from school, and as Frank pulls up in his truck, he is blasting loud rap music and jamming along to it, much to the embarrassment of Ruby, who doesn’t want to be ridiculed at school for having deaf parents. Ruby says that even though her dad is deaf, he likes to still jam out to rap because of the bass. I take it for granted that I can hear and listen to so much music that I don’t even think about what listening to music is like for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. I would be interested to learn more, because even though I am a hearing person and a young person, at some point, when I get older, I am sure I will also gradually lose my hearing and will need to wear a hearing aid to listen better, so I cannot take it for granted that I am a hearing person. Watching CODA also reminded me that deaf people are human beings who deserve the same respect as everyone else. I don’t have any friends who are deaf so the only way I would know more about the deaf community would be through watching films like CODA that represent deaf people as complex human beings rather than as people to be pitied. I also didn’t know anything about Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur, or Daniel Durant, the deaf actor who plays Ruby’s brother, Leo, in the movie. I have seen Emilia Jones in a previous film, though. She was in a movie with her and Nicholas Braun (Greg “The Egg” Hirsch from the show Succession) called Cat Person, which is based on a viral short story in The New Yorker by a writer named Kristen Roupenian about a college student’s awkward (and uncomfortable) date with an older man. Even though it wasn’t my favorite film, Emilia Jones was a good actress in the movie. Her performance in CODA, though, was phenomenal and she is such an incredible singer in the film.

Movie Blog Post: Capote (2005)

Trigger warning: I go into some pretty gruesome descriptions of true crime, the death penalty and the history of lynchings in this movie post, so if you need to skip reading this movie review for the sake of your mental health, I totally understand. I promise. It’s also long as fuck, so you might be better off playing pickleball or making yourself a delicious cheese sandwich than reading this long-ass movie post.

Oh. My. Gosh. I just finished watching the movie, Capote, with Philip Seymour Hoffman. It blew me away. I had been wanting to see this movie for a really long time. When I was around 11 or 12, I watched the Academy Awards Ceremony, and Hilary Swank was reading the nominees for Best Actor. Hoffman was nominated for his role as the author Truman Capote in the film Capote, and even though they showed just a little clip of his performance, it was pretty powerful. He ended up winning the award for Best Actor that evening, and I actually rewatched the speech on YouTube because it was so moving and it made me miss Hoffman. If you don’t know Philip Seymour Hoffman, he was an American actor who starred in drama films such as Doubt, Moneyball and Capote. I don’t have an extensive knowledge of his filmography, and there are many movies that he was in that I still want to watch, like Synecdoche, New York and Moneyball. but I absolutely loved his performance as a priest in the film Doubt with Amy Adams and Meryl Streep. Like his performance in that movie, his performance in Capote gave me chills. Like, long after the movie was over, I was just stunned into silence. I could not believe what I had just watched, and while as a kid I wasn’t old enough to see Capote (it was rated R and as a 12-year-old who didn’t watch any true crime shows or movies, the subject matter would have gone over my head) seeing it now as a grown adult was still a deeply haunting but powerful experience. Honestly, I miss Philip Seymour Hoffman. Watching Capote reminded me of the incredible legacy that he left for the world of cinema, years after his death.

The film focuses on Truman Capote’s journey writing his famous book, In Cold Blood, which investigates the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. (I haven’t read In Cold Blood yet, but when I was at an orchestra rehearsal in high school, one of the orchestra members I was talking to had brought a copy of the book with her because she was reading it for English class.) The movie opens with a young woman going into a house and finding the dead body of a girl in bed, with blood splattered on her wall. Shocked, she leaves the room. The scene switches to New York City, where famed American author Truman Capote is entertaining a crowd of writers and intellectuals and recounting a conversation he had with fellow author James Baldwin, who was writing a book about a Black man and a Jewish man having a relationship with each other, and how he worried about it being too controversial for readers. The next day, Truman reads the papers and finds out that a family was murdered in Holcomb, Kansas and police are investigating who murdered the family. Truman has a large following of people who love his books, but instead of writing within his comfort zone of fiction, he decides to write a non-fiction book covering the Holcomb family murders. His childhood friend, Nelle Harper Lee, writer of To Kill a Mockingbird, assists him in his research for the book, which involves not just talking to the witnesses in Kansas but to the very men who murdered the Clutter family, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. Of course, the movie is a biographical drama, and usually when you direct a movie you take artistic or creative liberties with the script and the characters, so I had to understand that there were probably going to be some inaccuracies in the film. Then again, I am not a scholar in American history and didn’t know anything about the Clutter family murders, so all I knew about In Cold Blood was from watching this film.

The movie shows the psychological and emotional toll that writing the book and investigating the murders took on Truman Capote, especially because the court denies Perry and Richard’s appeal and sentences them to execution. I honestly thought about stopping the movie just four minutes shy of its end because the execution scene looked like it was going to be unbearable to watch. Of course, what Perry and Richard did was inexcusable. They should not have murdered the Clutter family. But when Truman visits Perry in jail, he gets to connect with Perry’s humanity even after this awful crime that he and Richard committed. Perry’s sister even warns Truman that he needs to be careful around Perry, because Perry can come off as being this innocent nice person, but he would have killed Truman in a heartbeat if he had the chance. Truman also has to be careful about divulging too much about his personal life, such as his mother’s suicide, because he is starting to become close to Perry, which blurs the boundaries between them. It also puts a strain on Truman’s relationship with his partner, Jack, because Truman is so focused on his research and his visits to Perry’s jail cell that he doesn’t have much time to spend with Jack, who is also a writer. This reminded me of another movie I watched called Trumbo, which is about an American screenwriter named Dalton Trumbo who is blacklisted as a Communist by the U.S. government and struggles to maintain his reputation and keep working while under government surveillance. Trumbo is so busy with his work that he writes his screenplay in a bathtub, much to the frustration of his family. He doesn’t have time to celebrate his daughter’s 16th birthday because he is busy working on his screenplay, and the family can’t do normal daily stuff because Trumbo has to always deal with the press invading his personal life and interrogating his involvement in the Communist party. It is frustrating for his children and his wife because they just want to spend time with him, but he is under so much scrutiny that they can’t just kick back and relax and enjoy private life as a family.

I think the hardest scene to watch was the minutes leading up to the execution of Perry Smith. Truman is devastated when he finds out that the court rejected Perry and Richard’s appeal and is sentencing them to death, so devastated that he cannot get out of bed. He feels ashamed that he didn’t do more to help their case, to prevent them from getting executed, and he tells Perry and Richard this in the holding room before the execution. But Perry and Richard understand that he did what he could, and they confront their last moments with (literal) gallows humor. I tried to get through the execution scene, but it was way too hard. Watching Truman’s pained expression as he watches Perry get hanged before his very eyes sent chills through my spine and my stomach felt queasy as I watched Perry’s dead body hanging from the ceiling. It reminded me of when I watched this movie called Just Mercy, which is based on the true story of a Black lawyer named Bryan Stevenson who fought against racial injustice in the criminal system and to overturn wrongful convictions of people of color, namely the wrongful conviction of a man named Walter McMillian, who was accused of a murder he didn’t commit and was sentenced to death. Fortunately, McMillian was released from death row, but there is one particular scene in the movie that still haunts me to this day. In the movie, Bryan tries to overturn the conviction of another death row inmate named Herbert Lee Richardson, but his appeal to release Herbert is denied, and Herbert is sentenced to death through electric chair. Bryan witnesses the execution of Herbert, which is a traumatic experience. However, as a passive viewer of the movie, I closed my eyes instead of watching the actual execution because I knew it was going to be too emotionally difficult to watch. It was painful because in the scene, Herbert, while in the execution chamber, requests that they play music so that his fellow inmates wouldn’t have to hear him being electrocuted to death. Honestly, watching movies like Capote and Just Mercy made me wonder about the ethics of the death penalty. I remember when I was in ninth grade, and I wore an Amnesty International T-shirt that said, “Rock, Paper, Scissors” and below it “Rope, Chair, Needle,” with a caption below that reading “the death penalty is not something to play with.” I hadn’t done much extensive reading on the topic of the death penalty, but all I know is that it can be a very contested issue and everyone is going to have their own perspectives on whether the death penalty is justified punishment for those who have committed a crime. Some argue that the death penalty is justified because it brings justice and closure for the families and victims of murder. In the film, there is a chilling scene (then again, the whole movie is bone-chilling) where Truman walks into the room where the Clutter family’s coffins are placed, and he sees four coffins lined up next to each other. It is a heartbreaking scene, and he also looks through some grisly photos of the murder victims lying in pools of blood with graphic gunshot wounds. When Perry finally decides to describe the night that he and Richard murdered the Clutter family, it is very hard to sit through, and they show the murders happening in a flashback. Because I am a weakling and squeamish, I also ended up closing my eyes during this scene.

However, one of the arguments against the death penalty is that it doesn’t do much to deter crime and that it is much more expensive than lifelong imprisonment as the other option for punishment. Another is that the death penalty also tends to discriminate against poor people and people of color, who often cannot afford to hire an effective lawyer. I was reading a Brittanica article about the death penalty, and it quotes that Bryan Stevenson said that the death penalty is “the stepchild of lynching.” If you read the history of lynchings in American history, I must warn you it is very disturbing. When I was in my sophomore year of college, we had to read an excerpt from an academic book that described lynchings of Black people in graphic detail, and to this day, while I don’t remember the name of the book, the excerpt we read still haunts me to this day. White American families loved enjoying picnics where they watched Black men, women and children get hung from trees. During my fall semester of college, junior year, the professor set up a little museum in the library with racist artifacts on display so that we could learn how pervasive racism against Black people was not just in the U.S. but also around the world. These artifacts included old postcards of white families enjoying their lemonade, chicken salad sandwiches and whatever the fuck else white people ate at that horrible time in history, while watching with sadistic glee as an innocent Black man, woman or child got swung from a tree and had his/ her flesh burned off. As a young Black person, I was angered, hurt and heartbroken reading about this history and encountering these artifacts, and I nearly threw up when I saw that these postcards actually existed at some point in history, but as much as I wanted to remain blissfully ignorant of this history, I simply could not. Sure, reading about it made me hate being Black during that whole junior year, but since then I have come to realize that no amount of racism can take away my inherent dignity as a Black person in this country.

Another argument of the death penalty is that it is a form of torture that is immoral. Religious figures like rabbi and former public defender Benjamin Zober argue that regardless of whether it brings justice to the family or the victims, the death penalty still involves the taking of another human life. As a Buddhist, I grew up with the philosophy that each person’s life has inherent dignity, and reflecting on a lot of the violence I witness in society, I have realized that it stems from a lack of respect for the inherent dignity of human life. The death penalty involves brutal methods of torture and inflicts pain and suffering on inmates. In Capote, when Truman visits Perry in jail, he has starved himself for a month because he cannot go on living and he is emaciated. Truman, not wanting to see him starve to death, goes to the grocery store and buys a can of baby food and feeds a spoonful to Perry so that he can get even just a little food in his system. He gets to know Perry as a human being even though he and Richard committed a horrendous murder of an innocent family. The actor who played Perry Smith, Clifton Collins Jr., is a phenomenal actor in this movie. He shows the pain and shame that Perry experiences while in his jail cell, reflecting on that grim moment when he and Richard murdered the family, and the isolation he experiences in jail. Early in the film, he is held in a jail cell within a lady’s house and Truman gives him aspirin, hoping that Perry will trust him enough to open up about that night that he and Richard murdered the Clutter family. Truman opens up about himself so that he can find common ground with Perry, so that Perry will trust him enough to give him permission to talk about the murder in the book. As he continues to visit Perry in jail, Truman realizes that Perry is a real human being who is grappling with a traumatic past. It makes me think that people who commit murder don’t usually just go out and kill people for funsies. Like I said, I avoid true crime podcasts, movies and TV shows like the plague. I was in group therapy one time, and we were talking about what we do for self-care after a stressful day. Someone in the group said their form of self-care was watching a TV series that aired on Netflix called Dahmer- Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. I wouldn’t honestly have the stomach to watch that show. Hell, I couldn’t even read a Wikipedia article on Dahmer without wanting to run in a corner, crawl up in fetal position and cry “Mommy! I’m scared!” And as much as I love Zac Efron as Troy in High School Musical and Link in Hairspray, I can’t watch him play Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, even though I respect his willingness to expand his range as an actor by playing darker, more mature roles like Ted Bundy.

Many, if not all, of the cases of serial killers and mass murderers involve the killers having some sort of traumatic childhood in which they faced abuse, emotional neglect and abandonment by their parents, mental illness, or the death of a parent or family member. Of course, not everyone with a traumatic childhood or a mental illness goes on a rampant shooting spree at a high school or Walmart, or dismembers other people for consumption (sorry, I had to include Jeffrey Dahmer in this. We are talking about true crime, after all!) There are plenty of people who manage to go to therapy and talk to someone so they can process difficult traumatic events from their past. They even use their traumatic experiences to help someone else going through harrowing experiences that are difficult to cope with. But of course, Capote was set during a time when someone couldn’t just cough up $100 to sit on a therapist’s couch and talk about their fucked-up childhood. Perry kept a lot of his trauma to himself and it is hard to discuss trauma, so at first he didn’t want to open up to Truman because all these events from his past–his mother’s alcoholism and death from drinking, the suicides of two of his family members, his sister’s estrangement from him, not to mention living as a Native American man in a world that still hadn’t grappled with centuries of the genocide and intergenerational trauma of Native American communities–were painful and he had no one to talk with about them who he felt he could trust. Truman was the only person that Perry felt he could trust to tell his side of the story, and as the epilogue of the movie concludes, In Cold Blood was a best-selling book and paved the way for other true crime stories to be told.

It took a LOT out of Truman, though. He couldn’t even celebrate the success of Harper Lee’s best-selling novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, being made into a movie. Even when Jack tells him to focus on celebrating Harper’s success and not on his own personal problems, Truman sits alone, ruminating about the case and his book, unable to find the time to celebrate Harper’s accomplishments. When Harper politely approaches him about it, asking him how he liked the movie, he blows her off, leaving her feeling sad and unrecognized by her friend. Even though she helped him with the research of In Cold Blood, she also accomplished something of her own worth celebrating, but because the research and visits with Perry had taken such a toll on Capote, he doesn’t have the energy to be present with Harper and celebrate her achievement with her. You could probably argue, Wow, Truman was a total asshole for dismissing his fellow writer friend’s success, but at the same time, as much as it sucked for me to watch that scene of the movie where Truman blows off Harper and doesn’t give her credit for her success in getting her own book published, I can’t imagine the stress that Truman went through, writing a book about a true crime and being unable to get two men off of death row. I haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird (sadly), but I remember seeing the black-and-white movie when I was younger and being blown away by the acting and the storyline. I understand the movie was supposed to focus on Truman Capote’s writing of In Cold Blood, but I kind of wish that the movie had also taken more time to celebrate Harper Lee’s work as an author. She did Truman a huge favor by helping him do the research for the book, so she should at least get some recognition for working on her own manuscript while helping her friend write his. Then again, they only had a little under two hours of history to cram into the movie, so they probably didn’t have time to focus on Harper Lee’s friendship with Truman. They only had screen time to focus only the process of writing In Cold Blood. I loved Catherine Keener’s role as Harper Lee, though. I loved her in the film Get Out. Her role in that movie scared the shit out of me, and frankly I can’t watch that movie again because it was terrifying (also, because racism is real, not a fictional supernatural possessed killer doll who wears overalls and runs around with a knife).

Overall, though, the movie Capote was phenomenal, and even with its bleak subject matter, I think it was worth a watch. I am glad I decided to not stay up late and watch the movie, though, because I don’t think I could have fallen asleep after watching a movie about something so harrowing and disturbing. It reminds me of when I watched Killers of the Flower Moon. I had to pause the movie multiple times not for its 3-hour-runtime, but because it was incredibly disturbing and horrifying to watch Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro team up as Ernest and Bill Burkhart to poison, maim and butcher countless Native American people and steal their fortunes. But I had to watch it because I didn’t know about the Osage murders growing up, and you can’t learn about American history without learning about the genocide of Native Americans and the intergenerational trauma that Indigenous communities have had to grapple with for centuries. I didn’t know much about Truman Capote other than his book, Breakfast Tiffany’s, so this was a really intriguing movie. It was also timely that I watched this movie this month because it is LGBTQIA+ Pride Month and while they don’t dive deep into Truman’s life growing up as a gay man in the movie, the film does show his relationship with his partner, Jack, and how they navigate challenges in their relationship as Truman buries himself in work. The music score was fitting with the movie’s bleak and grave subject matter. It was somber piano music, and it gave me goosebumps. Even though I miss Philip Seymour Hoffman, I am so glad that he won the Oscar for Capote.

Capote. Year Released: 2005. Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes. Directed by Bennett Miller. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr. and Chris Cooper. Rated R for some violent images and brief strong language.

Movie Review: Mona Lisa Smile

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the library to check out more DVDs because I wanted to watch some more movies. I had seen clips of the movie Mona Lisa Smile, which came out when I was young, but I cannot remember if I had watched the entire movie before. I love Julia Roberts and Kirsten Dunst, so I was really excited when I first saw the trailer as a kid. However, I didn’t actually watch the full movie until last night. It was truly a beautiful film, and I really love the acting in the movie.

The movie takes place in the 1950s at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Wellesley is one of the Seven Sisters colleges, a group of seven historically women’s colleges in the United States. Katherine Watson moves from California to become a professor of art history at Wellesley, and she thinks that the students know nothing about art and are going to be learning something new each day. However, when she puts up the images of paintings on her overhead, the students know the name of every painting that she puts up because they read the entire art history textbook already. Katherine is flabbergasted and has no idea what to do because these students made her look stupid, and she wonders if she is cut out for this job at Wellesley because clearly her students know everything, so why do they need a professor to educate them on stuff they already know? The administration at Wellesley doubt that Katherine has what it takes to be a professor at the college, but over time, Katherine starts to find creative ways to engage her students and gets to know them more. Even though she has a boyfriend back in California, she falls in love with a charming professor named Bill Dunbar, who is rumored to be sleeping with his students, one of them being Giselle Levy, who is in Katherine’s art class and has untraditional attitudes towards marriage and womanhood. Elizabeth “Betty” Warren, another student in Ms. Watson’s class, challenges Ms. Watson and acts like she is superior to her because while Ms. Watson is a single unmarried older woman, Betty is a firm believer in being a proper wife dedicated to the household and her husband. Betty writes a column for the Wellesley school newsletter reprimanding anyone on the staff who espouses unconventional attitudes about femininity and doesn’t uphold conservative ideas of marriage and family. Betty constantly makes disparaging comments about the other girls, and even gets the school nurse, Amanda Armstrong, fired for offering contraception to the student body by writing about it in the newsletter. Even though Betty is mean, we actually find out later on in the movie that her mother is controlling and restricts Betty from living her life the way she wants to.

Connie is another student in Ms. Watson’s art class, and I loved her character because like me, she plays the cello. Betty tells Connie that she will never find a husband or anyone to fall in love with her, but Betty meets a young man named Charlie, who loves her for who she is. However, while they are at the pool, Betty tells Connie that Charlie is getting engaged to another woman and doesn’t actually love Connie. When Charlie finds Connie at another dance later in the movie, he tries to run after her and explain himself, but Connie doesn’t want to hear any of it. Betty tries to cheer up Connie and tell her that Charlie wasn’t meant for her, but Connie sees through Betty’s lies and tells Betty that she lied to her. Betty realizes that she isn’t going to have the happy fairytale marriage she envisioned having with Spencer, because one evening Giselle spies Spencer kissing another woman and I’m guessing Betty soon has to find out that her fiancé was cheating on her. What really bugged me was when Betty’s mom tells her that she can make it work and that Spencer will somehow feel sorry for what he did and stay committed to Betty, but that got me thinking, Well, this may not be the last time he cheats on her.

I think that is why I am kind of glad I watched this show called The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel a few years before watching Mona Lisa Smile, because in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the protagonist finds her own path in life and bucks traditional conventions for married women. In the first episode of the show, Miriam Maisel is a typical 1950s housewife who lives with her parents and takes care of her husband, Joel, and their two kids, Ethan and Esther. While Miriam is cooking the brisket, Joel is telling the same dull jokes and recycling the same boring standup routines about Abraham Lincoln at a comedy club called The Gaslight in Greenwich Village. However, everything changes on the evening of Yom Kippur when Miriam finds out that Joel was having an affair with his secretary, Penny. They separate and Miriam drinks an entire bottle of kosher red wine and delivers an impromptu, foul-mouthed monologue that evening at the Gaslight, skewering her now ex-husband for cheating on her and flashing her breasts to the audience, prompting the police to arrest her. Susie Myerson, who runs the Gaslight club, at first doesn’t see any potential in Miriam when she first meets her, but after seeing Miriam perform, she sees that Miriam is actually pretty funny (and, frankly, much funnier than her ex-husband). Miriam sneaks off after putting her kids to sleep to perform at the Gaslight under the pseudonym Amanda Gleason and even gets a day job at a department store called B. Altman to support herself financially. Her parents, Rose and Abe, are confused as to why she seems so different, so much more independent than before, and later on in the show she confesses to them (and Joel’s parents) that she is a comedian. Rose is disappointed that Miriam won’t just be a good wife who stays at home and takes care of the kids and is upset when she finds out that Miriam was sneaking off behind her back telling foul-mouthed jokes at a comedy club when she should have been making the brisket and changing her kids’ diapers. Even though she doesn’t like the person Miriam is becoming, Miriam realizes that at some point she has to live the life she wants to, otherwise she is going to go her entire life seeking approval from her parents and other people who don’t actually want her to live life as an independent young woman. Even though she gives up a life of domesticity for stand-up comedy, Midge learns to become her own person and that even though she has to deal with a lot of sexism and misogyny in the male-dominated world of comedy, she is pursuing a dream she could have never envisioned for herself and that is true happiness for her. Of course, she still loves Joel, and he sticks up for her through thick and thin, but even he realizes that she is happy pursuing her own life outside of being married to him.

In Mona Lisa Smile, Katherine is frustrated that the women who go to Wellesley are getting this well-rounded and elite education so that they can get married and have children (which of course isn’t a bad thing. Maybe I want to get married and have kids one day even though I’m currently not sure if I want to or not.) One of her students, Joan Brandwyn, wants to go to Yale for law school, but she is conflicted about whether she can do that and be a wife at the same time. Even though Katherine tells her that she can do both, Joan believes that isn’t a possibility. Katherine slips Joan an application to apply to Yale during class and Joan feels encouraged, but when she tells Betty that she is going to Yale, instead of celebrating Joan’s accomplishment, Betty chastises her and tells her that she will be getting married, NOT going to law school, because if, God forbid, Joan gets a law degree and becomes this kick-ass lawyer, then she will absolutely RUIN her chances at finding a husband and will just spend her life being a strong, independent “childless cat lady” (J.D. Vance’s words, not Betty’s). However, after Betty finds out that Spencer cheated on her, she realizes that she doesn’t want to live her life married to a scumbag, and she ends up moving into an apartment with Giselle and leaving her mother’s house because her mother doesn’t actually care about her daughter’s happiness.

I did have to reflect on my attitude towards domesticity at some point in the movie, though, and maybe I was being too judgmental towards Joan. When they are at a dance, Katherine meets Joan’s husband, and he tells her that he got into Penn State. When she asks if Joan is still going to Yale, Joan’s husband tells her that Joan won’t be going to Yale and will instead get married and move to Philadelphia to be with him while he gets his degree and she comes home every day to have dinner on the table for him by 5 o’clock. When Katherine approaches Joan about this, Joan assures her that just because she wants to get married and have a family doesn’t mean she is any less smart or accomplished. Even though this was hard for me to hear, too, it made me think, Hey, yeah, maybe I am being too judgmental about Joan deciding to get married instead of going to law school. Not going to law school didn’t make her any less smart or capable, and maybe she was happier getting married and having a family. It reminded me of the 2019 remake of Little Women (directed by Greta Gerwig) because Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is this fierce, independent young woman who wants to become an author and doesn’t want to get married. Her sisters, however, are growing up and do want to get married and have a family. Jo is frustrated and sad that her sisters are all moving out and having families and marriages, and even her friend, Laurie (Timothee Chalamet), gets married to Jo’s sister Amy (Florence Pugh) and has children with her. However, Jo realizes that she has her own path in life and that if she spends her life comparing her life to her sisters, she is going to be unfulfilled and unhappy, so she pursues her writing career and even meets a man who encourages her to pursue her dreams. I’m actually glad she didn’t end up with Laurie, because I don’t think Laurie would have supported her career or her desire to be an independent young woman. In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Miriam’s ex-husband, Joel, falls in love with a Chinese American woman named Mei, and after they have sex, she finds out that she is pregnant with his child. At first, Joel is worried that his parents, who are white American Jews, will get angry with him for having an interracial relationship with an Asian American woman, but Joel’s father tells him that it’s not the fact that she is Chinese that they don’t approve of, it’s that she is not Jewish, and he tells her that in order for her and Joel to get married, she has to convert to Judaism. However, Mei ends up bailing out of this whole situation by dumping Joel and getting an abortion, telling him that she wants to go to medical school to become a doctor and she can’t do that and be married to Joel at the same time. Honestly, I was happy that Mei left to become a doctor and not settle down with Joel, because I’m sure she would have regretted not following her dream of becoming a doctor. And that is Katherine tries to tell Joan, that she will regret it for the rest of her life if she gets married instead of pursuing her law degree at Yale. But Joan reminds Katherine that she told Joan that she could do anything she wanted with her degree and her life, and getting married and having a family is something that Joan truly wants. And honestly, I don’t say all this to shit on women who are raising kids whether or not they are employed or unemployed. I REALLY don’t want to do that. Raising kids and being a mom is a fucking full-time JOB for a lot of women. So that’s why I am glad I have been watching different things, reading different things, to get people’s perspectives on motherhood and womanhood in general. Because the last thing I want to do is make any women (and people) with children feel like utter shit for doing what they do, and they have all the respect from me.

Now that I am older, this movie hits a lot harder because I am at the age when my peers are getting married and having families with each other, and I am still a childless “cat lady” with no cats (even though I want to have one, I don’t want my mom sneezing around the house if I suddenly get a heart and bring home a stray abandoned tabby named Muffin that I found in the alley. I definitely couldn’t bring Muffin home if she was preggo with kittens, either, because that would be double the allergies. Maybe I will be an actual cat lady in my next lifetime, just not this one.) I recently watched a TED Talk by this woman named Bella DePaulo, who writes about the joys of singlehood and the stigma that single people have to deal with every day. It was very reassuring and reminded my young ass that even if my old ass remains single and unmarried, I can still live a happy fulfilling life. I also just finished reading her book, Single at Heart, which talks about the stigma that single unmarried people deal with from society and how single people like me can live their best lives. Like I said, I might find someone who is so sexy and fine that I want to say, “Damn, I want to jump your bones AND get married to you.” But for now, little old possibly asexual me hasn’t found that person yet. And frankly, even though I have a crush on someone, I probably should just focus on taking care of myself rather than worrying too much about finding a date. Not that dating is bad. As someone with minimal dating experience, I am sure it is fun to go on dates with people. But right now, my mental health isn’t great, and I am really trying to take care of myself both physically and mentally.

Movie Post: Sinners

I just got done eating a dinner of scrambled tofu with tortillas and a side of fruit, and I am writing this post because I am still processing the movie I just saw, and writing helps me get my thoughts out. Honestly, I hope I get a good sleep tonight because I went to the 5 o’clock showing of Sinners and it was good but HELLA scary. To be honest, I don’t like horror movies. I had a traumatic experience as a kid going through Blockbuster (for those who were still embryos and fetuses in the belly around the time of Blockbuster and never got to experience its magic, it was an American video store chain that went out of business unfortunately. For a lot of millennials, it was a key memory of our childhoods and something we often looked forward to). While some Blockbuster stores did a good job of keeping the kids and family movies away from the horror movies, one Blockbuster store did the opposite. My dad, sister and I would walk in, and I would have a hard time going through the video rental store without having some sort of panic attack. Surrounding me were creepy covers of movies like The Silence of the Lambs, Child’s Play and Friday the 13th. Even though I tried to focus on finding a kid’s movie to rent, I was so freaked out that I just wanted to get the heck out of Blockbuster and go home and cry and curl up in fetal position. Okay, I may be exaggerating, but I certainly wasn’t exaggerating about the anxiety I would feel going into Blockbuster during Halloween because all of the scary movies were being heavily advertised throughout the store.

However, I took a chance and decided to watch Sinners. I had seen the trailer and thought, Oh, no, this is way too scary. I am not seeing this. But then someone I knew texted me and told me that they recommended I see it because it was a really good movie. And honestly, at the end of a stressful workday, I just wanted to do something fun and not have to think about work, so I was willing to push my boundaries to see a scary movie. As someone who is highly sensitive to violent movies and tries to not watch too many (although I have seen quite a few, like The Last King of Scotland, Pan’s Labyrinth and Gladiator) this was a huge act of bravery for me. For the past four or five movies I have seen since coming back to a real-live movie theater after the lifting of the SARS-COVID-2 emergency declaration (note: I am aware that COVID is far from over and is still fairly transmissible, so I wore my N95 mask throughout Sinners because I was next to quite a few people who were not masked. I only took the mask off when I was eating my Nutter Butters and drinking a few sips of water), a lot of these movies show red band and scary movie previews. And I either have a mini-panic attack and scamper down the steps to the restroom until I calm down, or I cover my eyes (and ears, because the horror previews are LOUD) and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to calm down. I thought, If I can’t handle watching movie previews for 28 Years Later, Until Dawn and Drop, I probably should steer clear of Sinners. Watching the trailer was probably a warning sign for me to not go, but I went anyway, because like I said, I was tired and burned out at work and wanted to do something that wasn’t work-related, and going to the movie theater is something I enjoy doing from time to time.

I kind of wish I had brought my knitting to the movie theater, but I wanted to make the 5 o’clock showing since it was a matinee and only $6. Evening showings of movies are usually more expensive, and the gas tank of my car was running low, so I stopped to get gas. I was able to also share about my Buddhist practice with the cashier at the gas station. Whenever I share about Nichiren Buddhism with others, regardless of what religion they practice, I always feel happier. When I went to the cash register to ring up my Nutter Butters and Dasani water, I also gave the cashier a card with information about Nichiren Buddhism and Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I felt happy after giving him a card about chanting.

I went over to my seat in the farthest row from the screen. I learned my lesson several years ago when I went to a showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with my dad the summer before tenth grade, and we got to the theater too late and all of the seats except for the ones at the very front of the movie screen were taken. So, my dad and I had to sit in row A, which was right in front of the screen, so we couldn’t really enjoy the movie because our eyes (and necks) were so strained from looking at the movie screen. It was so close that I really couldn’t zoom out and watch the movie from a comfortable distance. I left the theater with a headache, and a much-needed visit to the eye doctor in case my vision got damaged.

I found myself rather anxious at first about watching Sinners because I haven’t seen a lot of horror movies, and so I went into the restroom and took a few deep breaths. When I got into the theater house to watch Sinners, I found myself in company with a lot of people on my row, which in this particular instance was good, because I wouldn’t want to watch a horror movie alone in a movie theater. A comedy or drama, yes. Horror, no. I sat in the theater and followed suit when I saw my fellow moviegoers resting their legs on the recliners of the movie seats. I pushed the button on the side and rested my feet on the recliner. One of the previews I walked into was for a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio called One Battle After Another. When that finished, the preview for Final Destination: Bloodlines began. Thankfully, I knew what to expect because I “watched” the trailer. I put the “watch” in parentheses because “watching” a supernatural horror for me looks like closing my eyes/ covering the phone screen so that I don’t have to actually watch the trailer itself but instead listen to it. It allows me to be scared by the sound effects of screaming and jump scares rather than actually see the decapitations, impaling and other gnarly gruesome stuff that is shown in the trailer. The minute “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” by Etta James was playing, and the family was making lemonade in their backyard, I closed my eyes and groaned, “Ugh.” Of course, what do you expect? If you’re going to see a supernatural horror like Sinners, it’s only fair that the previews are scary, too. But I still found even just listening to the screams and other scary stuff in the Final Destination: Bloodlines trailer was enough to get my heart racing (in a stressful way.) I sat through the two minutes of that trailer with my eyes closed, and I’m sure glad I did, even though others around me watched the trailer. I have realized over time that my threshold for violence and gore in movies is going to be different from other people’s thresholds, so I am responsible for setting boundaries for myself around what kind of content or media I consume. Once I watch that kind of intense gory content, it’s really hard for me to un-see it.

But I am digressing, so let’s talk about the movie. The movie takes place in the 1930s Mississippi, and it opens up with a young man walking into a church, his clothes bloodied, and his face worn. The young man is carrying an acoustic guitar, and when he walks into the wooden church-house and his father, a preacher, sees him come in, you know that there has been some trouble and something traumatic has happened to this young man. Sammie, also known as “Preacher Boy”, aspires to be a blues musician. He has the talent, the voice, and the soul to become one. However, his father disapproves, and admonishes Sammie for his love of blues music, which his father considers to be immoral “devil’s music.” Sammy refuses to listen to his father, and his father warns him that he is “dancing with the devil” by playing blues music and that he is going to unleash a demonic force if he continues to play the blues. Sammie refuses to listen to his father, and sets out with his cousins, twin brothers named Smoke and Stack who come back to Mississippi after doing business in Chicago and decide to open a juke joint for the members of their community. Mary, who is a Black woman passing for white, is Stack’s ex-girlfriend and confronts him for leaving her. Stack and Smoke recruit members of the community to help them open the juke joint, including a Chinese American couple, Smoke’s estranged wife named Annie and others. Sammie plays guitar for Smoke and Stack, and they praise him for his musical talent. While Smoke and Stack are getting ready for the big opening of the juke joint, a ragged young white vampire named Remmick jumps out of nowhere and arrives at the home of a white couple. He convinces them that he needs to stay with them because he is escaping a dire situation and is helpless. The couple ends up believing him and takes Remmick into their home. Remmick then turns them into vampires. Meanwhile, at the juke joint, Sammie gives a soulful blues performance on his guitar and the sound of his guitar summons Remmick and the now-turned vampire couple.

Remmick and the white couple approach the juke joint and try to convince Smoke, Stack and the people of the Black community running the juke joint that they want to join the party and play music for them. At first Smoke, Stack and his friends don’t trust these vampires, but then Mary decides to go talk to them since she passes for white and can somehow figure out whether these people are who they say they are. However, things take a turn when Mary comes back to the party after talking with the vampires, having turned into a vampire herself. She kills Stack and turns him into a vampire. Remmick turns the other Black people at the joint into vampires, leaving Smoke and Preacher Boy to fight off all of the vampires. The scenes where the people turned into vampires was pretty gruesome and terrifying, but somehow, I was able to sit through all of these bloody scenes. Not that I didn’t think it was gross, but I had read about the movie content on Does the Dog Die and Kids in Mind before seeing Sinners, so I kind of knew what to expect. I know, you think, reading a parent’s guide before going to see a movie takes the fun out of watching the movie. But to be honest, I don’t like jump scares, so knowing which violent content I could expect when seeing the movie helped me feel somewhat (if not totally) prepared for all of the scary stuff that happens in the movie.

Even though it was a scary movie and I tried to do something relaxing after watching Sinners, it truly was a powerful film. I saw Ryan Coogler’s directing work for the Black Panther movies, which Michael B. Jordan also stars in. Also, I love the actress Hailee Steinfeld, so that is also partly why I wanted to go see the movie (she was in a coming-of-age movie I really love called The Edge of Seventeen, where she plays Nadine, a clinically depressed teen who hates high school and loses her best friend when her friend starts dating Nadine’s brother. I have seen it three times and it still touches me each time.) One thing I really loved (and that made me want to get up and dance) was the movie’s film score, produced by Ludwig Goransson, who produced the film score for the Black Panther movies. I bobbed my head, I sang along, and I swayed to each blues song that the character, Sammie “Preacher Boy”, played on his guitar. I didn’t grow up listening to blues that much, to be honest, but as I have gotten older, I have developed more appreciation for the blues, especially after watching the movie Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. I have started getting into B.B. King and Muddy Waters lately. A famous blues musician makes a cameo at some point in Sinners, and as he strummed, played and belted out the blues, I felt as if the musician was pulling out the pain from my soul and casting a spell on me, because I was practically dancing in my recliner seat to the blues music. The movie shows how powerful blues is in the tradition of African American music. The movie takes place during the 1930s in the Jim Crow South, and music is a key avenue for the Black community in the film to express their pain, their joy and other human emotions. Music feeds the soul, and as I was watching the people dance in the juke joint, I felt like these people in the movie were feeding my soul through their powerful performances of the blues.

Honestly, the last vampire movie I saw was Twilight, so I really wasn’t prepared for how terrifying those vampires in Sinners were actually going to be. Unlike Edward Cullen, the vampires in Sinners don’t sparkle. They look terrifying, and I know a lot of you reading this are probably rolling your eyes, like If you are going to be scared of vampires, then why the heck did you even go see this movie?!? As someone who doesn’t watch a lot of movies with blood, I was surprised that I was able to sit through the entire movie without closing my eyes when I saw the characters bleeding and baring their vampire teeth and sucking the life out of the human characters and turning them into vampires. The blood gushing out of people’s bodies was intense, but I think what helped me get through the gross bloody scenes was reminding myself that at the end of each day, Hailee Steinfeld, Michael B. Jordan, Omar Miller and the rest of the Sinners cast are not real vampires. They are human beings who are doing their job as actors to make us feel all the fear and other emotions that come from watching a suspenseful movie like Sinners. And no one is actually dripping blood or having graphic wounds. It is prosthetics. Doesn’t make it any less scary, but it was a great thing to try and tell myself while getting through Sinners. Also, mad props to the makeup and special effects team on this movie.

Movie Post: Mickey 17, My Weird Obsession with Dark Comedy, and Other Tangents

On Monday this week, I decided to go see Mickey 17. I saw the trailer for the movie when I went to the movie theater to see another movie called A Real Pain, and I absolutely loved the trailer for Mickey 17. I thought it was original and unique, and I remember seeing Bong Joon-Ho’s other movie, Parasite, a few years ago and it was really intriguing. I also really love Robert Pattinson, so I was pretty excited to see the film. I know that he has done so much more in his acting career since his days as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and as Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise, and for the past few years I have seen him in more intense, independent films. A few years ago, I saw a movie directed by Benny and Josh Safdie called Good Time, and it’s a crime thriller movie. It was pretty dark, but I watched it because I enjoy movies distributed by this movie company called A24. They have a lot of interesting cool films, and even though I won’t get to see all of them, like X and other horror movies that A24 has distributed (I don’t like scary movies), I have enjoyed many of their films since I saw Moonlight. In Good Time, Robert Pattinson plays Connie, a young man living in New York City who tries to rob a bank and also looks out for his brother, Nick, who has a developmental disability. It was a total contrast from the Robert Pattinson I saw in Twilight and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and I think that Good Time catered to a different audience. When he was in these two movies, a lot of the audience members were teen girls, like me, who really loved the Twilight book series by Stephenie Meyer and a lot of people in my peer group loved Cedric Diggory. I’m sure there are still young women who love his current movies, and I am glad he got to star in those movies, but I’m also glad that he gets to find other projects that he wants to explore and roles that different from what he has played in the past. The last movie I saw him in was The Lighthouse, which is another film from A24, and in the movie Robert Pattinson and a legendary actor named Willem Dafoe play two lighthouse keepers who are stranded on a remote island off the coast in New England. The film takes place in the 19th century, and to give it its olden ancient feel, they shot the film in black and white. Honestly, I don’t remember any specific details that stuck out to me about the movie. All I remember is that it gave me chills, and I probably should have watched it with subtitles because the dialogue is old New England dialect, and I had a hard time understanding what the characters were saying. I don’t know if I can watch it again, though. It’s pretty unsettling and left me with goosebumps.

I think what got me more interested in learning about Robert Pattinson’s acting is an interview that he did with the incredibly talented actress, musician and producer Jennifer Lopez (she will always be “Jenny on the Block” for me. I love ya, girl). The interview is so authentic and so lovely to watch. Just seeing two people talk passionately about film and praising each other’s movies was so heartwarming and so delightful. I have always seen Robert Pattinson as this dark, serious person when he was playing Edward Cullen, or being a heartthrob as Cedric Diggory, but honestly, I loved watching him just nerd out with Jennifer Lopez about the work they do as actors. Actually, the entire Actors on Actors series is very wholesome to watch. I haven’t seen all of the interviews, but I have seen a few of them. There is one with Emma Stone and Timothee Chalamet, another with Kristen Stewart and Shia LaBeouf, and another with Daniel Kaluuya and Timothee Chalamet. I want to see the rest of the series on YouTube because I don’t know much about the business of being an actor in Hollywood, so it was really cool to hear the different acting methods and processes that these famous actors go through to prepare for their roles.

But I want to segue into my experience going to the theater to see Mickey 17. I got off work at 4 pm, and there was a showing at my local movie theater at 5 pm. Perfect timing! I asked my mom if I could borrow her car, and she was fine with it. I drove up to the movie theater, excited to see another movie. I felt once again like I was that 8-year-old kid getting excited to go to the movies. I pulled up, and I got there at 5:05 because I was running late. I rushed over to the ticket counter and purchased a ticket for the 5:00 pm showing of Mickey 17. I paid my $11.10 in cash (it was a matinee showing), got my ticket and walked into the theater. I felt like I was in paradise. I went to the person at the front desk near the concessions and showed him my ticket. I needed help finding House 11 on my ticket. The person told me where House 11 was. I thanked him and fast-walked towards House 11. I was worried I was going to miss the beginning. I walked past a large ominous poster for The Monkey, a horror film directed by Oz Perkins. It freaked me out, but I kept walking.

When I reached House 11, I opened the door. It turns out that I wasn’t late after all, and they still had ten more minutes of graphic violent bloody red-band previews to go. I told myself to not turn around as I heard squelching noises from the large movie theater screen. It was the red-band trailer for Novocaine, an action film. I thought about going back outside because I am sensitive to movies with violence and gore, and the sound was pretty loud. But I didn’t know if, when I waited outside, the movie was going to start without me, so I closed my eyes during the previews. There were only a few people in the movie theater seeing Mickey 17, which was kind of nice because I am still trying to be cautious about COVID-19 since I live with my parents and don’t want to get them (or myself) sick (although I haven’t been very good at masking all the time, to be honest.) So, I had the entire row G to myself. I put in my foam earplugs because the noise from the previews was pretty loud, and I have sensitive ears. They played another trailer for The Woman in the Yard, which is a horror film. After that preview, my heart kept racing, and I thought I was going to get a panic attack. I violated a huge movie theater rule, which is to not use my phone during the movie. Because I didn’t have the common sense to just walk out during the ten minutes of violent scary previews and just stay there until it was safe to walk back in, I opened my World Tribune app and read some faith experiences about members who used Nichiren Buddhism to overcome various challenges. But I couldn’t focus because my anxiety was at such a high level, and it was screaming at me to get my butt out of my recliner chair and go into the bathroom to recollect myself instead of thinking I just had to sit and close my eyes through the trailers and that would be enough. Even though I had my earplugs in, just hearing the screaming and the jump scares from these trailers set me on edge and almost made me cry and freak out right there in Row G. After quivering and closing my eyes through a trailer for a scary movie based on a Play Station horror video game, I opened my eyes when the trailer ended. The movie had started at last, and so I finally got out my skein of acrylic yellow yarn and size 8 needles and started knitting in the comfort of my recliner chair.

The movie opens with a young man named Mickey Barnes (played by Robert Pattison) lying down in an icy cavern. His friend, Timo (Steven Yeun), finds him down there and asks him what it’s like to die, and after he disappears, a bunch of aliens (called “creepers”) surround Mickey’s body and try to get him out of the ice. Mickey begins to narrate how he and Timo left Earth and ended up on the planet Niflheim. The movie takes place in the distant future, and Timo and Mickey are unable to repay a loan they owe to someone and as punishment they have to watch a man get his legs amputated with a chainsaw (I don’t remember if they showed it or not because I was closing my eyes during this scene). Mickey and Timo sign up to be crew members on a spaceship that takes them to a planet called Niflheim, which they seek to colonize. Even though Mickey tells the person at the desk that he read through the paperwork before knowing what he was getting himself into by signing up as an “Expendable,” it turns out that he lied and didn’t read the paperwork before signing up. He ends up taking a job where he becomes literally disposable and dies multiple times and is cloned over and over again for research purposes, so there are multiple clones of Mickey throughout the film. Even though Mickey’s job is thankless and bleak, he falls in love with Nasha, a beautiful crew member on the ship, and they have sex frequently and become a couple. Everyone else on the ship makes fun of Mickey for being an “Expendable,” but Nasha always sticks with Mickey and provides him a source of love and companionship that is missing from his daily job. Mickey 17 and 18 are the clones who end up surviving, and they have to find a way to stop Kenneth Marshall, who is a corrupt politician, from killing Mickey. Kenneth and his wife, Ylfa, aren’t only plotting against Mickey, but they also want to kill off the original inhabitants of the planet Niflheim, the “creepers,” and Nasha and Mickey have to find a way to stop Ylfa and Kenneth from forcing Mickey to carry out the plan to annihilate the creepers with poisonous gas.

I am still processing the movie, so I can’t give an explicit synopsis, but I will say that this film is pretty brilliant, even though it is goofy and outlandish at times. I tend to gravitate towards black comedies for some reason. I don’t know why, but one of the reasons that I saw Mickey 17 is because it is a black comedy. I had to look up more about the elements of black comedy to understand it more, and according to Brittanica, black humor “juxtaposes morbid or ghastly elements with comical ones that underscore the senselessness or futility of life. Black humour often uses farce and low comedy to make clear that individuals are helpless victims of fate and character.” I think my earliest memory of reading something that had dark humor in it was when I checked out a book at the library called The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, which is a poetry collection by Tim Burton. In the book, the young characters in the book go through horrible ordeals, such as Oyster Boy, whose dad eats him so that he can boost his sex drive, or a kid named James who gets mauled by a bear. Don’t forget the Mummy Boy who kids mistake for being a pinata and bust open. As a ten-year-old, the adult themes of these poems went completely over my head, but somehow the characters resonated with me, probably because they, like me, were outcasts. I also think I just liked the book for the illustrations because I found them to be unique and interesting. I’m pretty sure I checked out The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy several times because to this day, I still have those grim illustrations stuck in my psyche. I reflected on it as an adult, and I thought, Wait….why are these poems so depressing? Also, I read some of those poems on PDF as a 30-year-old and realized, Oh, wow….wow, that was an adult joke or wow, wait, they were talking about sex in that poem?!? How did I not realize this when checking this out from the library?!? And then I looked online for more background about the book, and it said the poems are full of black humor, and it made sense why they kept this book in the adult section of the library rather than the children’s or young adult section of the library. It’s not every day you see an eight-year-old kid reading a poetry book about a bivalve whose dad eats him to increase his sex drive. But honestly, I have no regrets because I really loved reading those poems, even if they were bleak and sad. Maybe the loneliness of the characters spoke to me somehow. I was a pretty introspective quiet kid back in the day (I still am, even though I have discovered that I can also be outgoing at times) and was often lonely and didn’t have lots of friends to play with on the playground because I was weird and picked my nose and cried a lot. Books were great friends to me during that time, and so I guess I felt some sort of empathy for the characters in The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy that made me want to read the poems over and over again. As I got older, I started to watch more movies in the dark comedy genre, such as Birdman and The Lobster. I really loved The Lobster. It was one of my favorites, but it is a really sad movie. It’s about a dystopian society where people have to find a romantic partner in 45 days or else they will be turned into an animal of their choice. The characters have to deal with these harsh restrictions, but they show little to no emotion, which I guess is why this movie is a black comedy. It’s pretty wild to think that we could live in a society where singles face such absurd discrimination and turn into non-human animals if they don’t find a companion. But the film does present a social commentary about the stigma that still surrounds being single. Even though more people are open to saying they are single or want to take care of themselves after a breakup or wait until dating again, there is still that pressure sometimes to find a romantic partner to spend your life with. I am inundated with Bumble ads, images of happy friends at their weddings and engagement parties on social media, and sure, I want to be happy for those people, but sometimes advertising has a way of making you feel that you’re missing out if you’re not doing a certain thing just because everyone else is. It’s why I had to delete my Facebook after a while, because I found myself comparing my life with my peers who were engaged, married and had kids and not being happy for them. I have thought at times about getting married one day or having kids, and obviously there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that I am still unsure at this point in my life if that is what I truly want, and even just having the chance to think about it is something I need to appreciate. I might change my mind one day and want to have kids and get married, but right now, I’m still figuring my life out and trying to take care of myself, so I appreciate that I have the space to do that. Watching The Lobster was uncomfortable at times, because the society had very little regard for the single people and expressed a cold unfeeling attitude towards them. The humor is really offbeat and deadpan, not normally the kind of humor I watch on a regular basis. But as I watched more of Yorgos Lanthimos’s movies, I came to understand he uses a very offbeat style of humor in his movies, like in The Favourite and Poor Things. I haven’t seen his recent movie Kinds of Kindness yet, but I’m pretty sure that is a pretty dark film, too.

I guess the movie Mickey 17 is a dark comedy because it grapples with the uncomfortable topic of death and dying. In real life, once someone dies, you can’t clone them. Their physical form is no longer there. But because the movie is science fiction, Mickey gets a new chance to die, not a chance to live, every time scientists on the ship clone him for research. It’s pretty bleak and messed up if you think about it. He has to die multiple times so that these researchers can do experiments on him. He can’t live a normal life. He has to live a meaningless existence where his entire purpose in life is to die and be cloned, die and be cloned and repeat. Honestly, I found it hard to watch the scene where they kill that one baby creeper. I know they are weird-looking creatures, but for some reason, I think after realizing that the creepers were trying to help Mickey, not kill him, I started to have more empathy for the creepers, especially the baby creepers. They were big and scary to watch, but I didn’t get any horrible nightmares or wake up screaming in the middle of the night after watching the movie. I did have to close my eyes during the scene where Kenneth Marshall and his wife, Ylfa, invite Mickey to dinner and serve him this unpasteurized meat, which he devours. I closed my eyes because I have an irrational fear of vomit scenes in movies, and Mickey vomits after eating the unpasteurized meat. It is a pretty long scene, and I chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo under my breath to calm myself down because vomit scenes actually make me have panic attack symptoms. Thankfully, I didn’t miss anything super huge by closing my eyes during the scene. I am glad I read Does the Dog Die before watching the movie to see if there were any vomit scenes in it.

I think my favorite scenes where when Nasha and Mickey were making love. For some reason, I found these two characters making love with each other to be incredibly hot and sexy. I haven’t seen the actress Naomi Ackie in a ton of stuff, but I saw Steven Yeun, who plays Timo, in a few movies like Sorry to Bother You, Minari and The Humans. I really love Mark Ruffalo, and he played a very convincing Kenneth Marshall. Even though Bong Joon-Ho, the director, said that Kenneth Marshall wasn’t based specifically on Trump, but on authoritarian leaders throughout history in general, Kenneth’s way of talking and mannerisms were very similar to Donald Trump’s, and at the rally on the planet Niflheim, there are pro-Kenneth Marshall supporters who wear red baseball hats similar to the MAGA hats that pro-Trump supporters were. I found it hard to watch the scene where Nasha has to save the baby creeper, which is hung on a hook and about to be killed.

Movie Review: Anora

Contains spoilers

I cannot believe it, but next week is officially the Academy Awards, and I have been doing my best to watch as many movies as I can before next Sunday comes around. Some of the movies I won’t be able to stomach, like The Substance and Gladiator II, because I am not a fan of body horror and I saw the first Gladiator and the film score was incredibly beautiful and blew me away, but unfortunately I have a weak stomach and often flinched and closed my eyes during all of the battle scenes (being a wimp about movies with lots of blood and gore kind of ruined my experience watching the movie because well, it’s a movie about gladiators and killing people and buckets of blood was the form of entertainment back in that time, so I probably should have just listened to the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and called it a day instead of forcing myself to watch it because it was a cinema classic. Even though Russell Crowe, Connie Nielsen and Joaquin Phoenix’s acting was fierce A.F., after the first battle scene in the arena, I wanted to throw up as I watched folks get decapitated, cut in half and killed in other bloody unpleasant ways. But alas, I digress.)

So, I won’t be able to watch some of the movies, but I have already seen a few of the nominees: A Real Pain, starring Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg (who also directed the movie), The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones and directed by Brady Corbet, and just five minutes ago, I finished streaming Anora, which was directed by Sean Baker and stars Mikey Madison and Mark Eydelshteyn as the main characters. I had heard about Anora many times in the past few months and saw the trailer, which looked really good. However, I am squeamish about vomit scenes and pretty much all of the films I have seen that are directed by Sean Baker have a pretty gross vomit scene in them. In one of his movies, Tangerine, which is about trans sex workers, an Armenian cab driver (played by actor Karren Karagulian) is driving around Los Angeles on a normal day, and two drunk guys vomit in his cab. I know it sounds silly, but I have emetophobia, which is a weird and irrational fear of vomit. I don’t know how I ended up getting emetophobia in the first place, but it has haunted my life for 31 years and it’s the reason why I had to keep getting up and going to the restroom whenever my health class teachers showed the class Super-Size Me, because there is a really gross vomit scene, and it freaked me out and I almost got a panic attack. So long story short, I have to look up the parent’s guides on IMDB and go on Doesthedogdie.com to often look up whether movies that I watch have vomit scenes in them so I can be prepared to close my eyes (and sometimes ears) in case they do. Sure, I would be reading spoilers, but honestly, I would rather read a few important plot points than go into a panic attack when someone surprise-vomits in a movie scene. So, I did the same for his other movies, Red Rocket and Anora.

But honestly, my fear of vomit is not the most important part of this blog post, of course. It’s what I thought about the actual movie, Anora. As I write this, I am catching my breath (in a good way) because MY GOLLY GOSH, MIKEY MADISON CAN ACTTTTTTT. Seriously, I had chills while watching her performance. She is not a damsel in distress, even though she is a very dangerous situation. She is a tough-as-nails Brooklynite who takes no nonsense and swears like a sailor (I was going to say, “she swears like a born-and-bred-New Yorker”, but I am not from New York City and don’t want to offend those native New Yorkers who don’t cuss a lot.) I could tell she really worked very hard to prepare for her role as the title character, Anora, who goes by Ani. Ani is a sex worker living in Brooklyn who is struggling to make ends meet, and she works at a strip club called HQ Kony Gentlemen’s Club. Her life changes, however, when her boss assigns her to a young male client who speaks Russian. Because Ani speaks Russian, she is able to communicate with this young man, who she finds out is named Vanya (or Ivan). At first, she is just treating him like any old client, but he woos her and then wows her when she finds out that he is the son of this wealthy Russian oligarch. They end up developing an intense infatuation with one another. Ani at first doesn’t think he is serious about wanting to be with her, and when they spend the night together at his super lavish pad (which he doesn’t actually own. His parents do) she wakes up the next day and tells him she has to go back to work. However, he tells her that he will pay her a ridiculous amount of money for her to be his girlfriend for a week. He takes her to these lavish parties, showing her off as his girlfriend and making her feel like most important person in his life. He has maids that clean up the floor while he plays video games all day, and she does her work and dances for him. He is entertained and she thinks, “Well, I need to go back to work and my regular life,” but Vanya tells her that he is sad that he will have to go back to Russia to work for his father, and that the only way to get out of having to go back to Russia is to marry an American woman so that he can stay in New York City. Ani doesn’t think Vanya is serious, but when he actually proposes to her, she does so, and they get married in a chapel in Las Vegas.

Ani is living the dream, but the next day, her romantic fantasy is quickly crushed when some guys who work for Vanya’s father come barging into Vanya’s penthouse suite when they find out that Vanya married Ani in Las Vegas. Igor and Garnik, two henchmen who work for Vanya’s dad, come in and demand to see the marriage papers so that they can annul Vanya and Ani’s marriage. When Vanya and Ani don’t comply, Ani is tied up while Vanya escapes from the house. Ani screams bloody murder and attacks Igor and Garnik, while Toros, who works for Vanya’s dad, too, has to leave a baptism at an Armenian church because he has to now get involved with annulling Vanya’s marriage to Ani. Igor assaults and restrains Ani while she screams for them to let her go, and Toros finally arrives and tries to calm Ani down, but she continues to yell at them to let her go. Igor gags her and Toros calls Vanya on Ani’s phone, but Vanya doesn’t pick up. So Garnick, Igor, Ani and Toros have to drive all around New York City to find Vanya. After they spend hours looking for him, they find him at the HQ Kony Gentlemen’s Club in a private room where Diamond, Ani’s red-haired jealous competition, dances for Vanya while he cheerfully stuffs dollar bills in her thong, with Iggy Azalea’s banger hit “Sally Walker” thumping on the soundtrack, not knowing how much heartbreak and suffering he caused for Ani, Garnik, Igor, Toros and his parents in Russia. While he is intoxicated, Ani tries to convince him that she and him are going to stay married and get away from all this drama in their life, but Vanya laughs it off and doesn’t care. Ani and Diamond have a brutal fight with each other, which gets the attention of everyone at the gentlemen’s club, and Garnik, Igor and Toros grab Vanya and get him out of the club into the van so that they can take him over to the courthouse and get Vanya and Ani’s marriage annulled (and get them prepared for a serious vodka-infused ass-whooping from his parents, Nikolai and Galina, who DO NOT PLAY.) Ani tries to convince Vanya to take this entire matter seriously and tells him how worried sick she was when he escaped, but he acts like it was no big deal. They go to the courthouse and Ani, pissed as fuck, cusses out the judge and Toros and everyone who made her life a fucking nightmare (including the once-dreamy-Prince Charming-now-scumbag-Vanya), and the crazy part? The judge says they have to go to Las Vegas to sign the annulment papers because that is where Ani and Vanya got married. They can’t annul the marriage in New York. So, Vanya’s parents fly from Russia to the U.S., and even when Ani tries to gain Galina’s approval, Galina refuses to shake her hand and tells her coldly that Ani will never be part of Vanya’s family because of her reputation as a sex worker. At first, Ani refuses to get on the plane, but Galina tells her with an icy smile that if Ani refuses to fly with them to Las Vegas to get the annulment papers signed, she will lose everything. Ani finally gets on the plane, and they go to Las Vegas to sign the papers. Vanya and his parents go back to Russia, even after he tries to reason with them that what he did was no big deal, and Ani comes back to New York City with Igor, shattered, destroyed and heartbroken. Even though Igor violently restrained Ani at the beginning of the film, he ends up being the one to bring her some much-needed consolation in the end and seems to be the only one who is willing to sit with Ani in her pain and suffering. When the credits rolled, I was speechless. All I could think was, When they announce the nominations next Sunday evening, this movie HAS to win at least one Oscar. Seriously. It was another reason why Sean Baker is one of my favorite directors.

What I really appreciate about Sean Baker is that he presents a very realistic portrayal of what life is like for sex workers in his movies. And I appreciate that Hollywood is gradually starting to portray sex workers as these human beings with regular lives rather than as these objects of men’s desires who don’t have a voice or a narrative of their own. Even when watching the 2005 film Hustle and Flow, because I had seen the film Zola, which is told from the perspective of a Black female sex worker, I couldn’t help but notice that the female characters in the movie don’t have much of a voice of their own. They are just supporting characters in helping a man further his hip-hop career. Don’t get me wrong, Taryn Manning and Taraji P. Henson were absolutely incredible in the movie, but I am glad I watched a movie like Zola that doesn’t exploit sex workers in the movie and gives them agency and a voice of their own. In Zola, Zola is a young Black woman who meets a white girl named Stefani while they are stripping in Detroit, Michigan. They become fast friends, until Stefani coerces Zola to go with her on what she thinks is going to be a fun trip to Florida where they get more clients but instead is actually a dangerous sex trafficking operation that Zola finds herself unable to get out of. Even though Colman Domingo’s character, a pimp named X, and Nicholas Braun’s character, Derrek (Stefani’s boyfriend) are key characters in the film, they are supporting characters in the movie. The film focuses on Stefani and Zola’s complicated friendship. Even though they bonded over being sex workers, at the end of the day, Stefani didn’t respect Zola and was just taking advantage of her, and the two of them fight throughout the film and are no longer having fun as friends. I watched the movie twice because it was so good, and the acting was incredible. I didn’t know anything about the original Twitter thread that Zola had published, but when I watched the movie, I started to read more about it and became more interested in the story because I am not a sex worker and don’t have much knowledge about sex work.

Anora was a really powerful movie, and even though it is a romance movie, it definitely defies the typical fairytale romance storyline. Today, I did a study presentation at my Buddhist center for a morning chanting session, and the study I did my PowerPoint on was from an article in the February 7, 2025 World Tribune (our weekly Buddhist newspaper) called “We Create Our Own Happiness.” In the article, the late Buddhist educator Daisaku Ikeda shares a quote by the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, and the quote, to paraphrase, is that while wealth and property can be inherited, happiness cannot. People can possess lots of money and status and power, but those things bring a temporary form of happiness and doesn’t get rid of people’s problems. Of course, there are plenty of examples of people who use their wealth for good causes, to help other people and fund various charities and nonprofit organizations. However, what Buddhism has taught me is that happiness is a matter of what we feel inside, our inner state of life. Even though Ani married this young man who came from money and thought he could give her true love, he was actually just using her and didn’t truly love her at all. He inherited all this money and took her on all these lavish trips and parties, but he was still empty and miserable and so was she. Even though his parents let him stay in this luxurious penthouse suite, he does not have a very warm loving relationship with his parents at all. They are controlling, and even when Ani tells Vanya that he doesn’t have to listen to his parents, he can’t just leave his life because then that would mean giving up this lavish lifestyle that he has simply by virtue of being the son of a wealthy Russia oligarch. His parents, however, could never hand him happiness on a silver platter. They didn’t even care about his happiness. Even when Ani tried to make it work with her and Vanya, she could not. Their marriage was transactional, not real love. That is what Toros was trying to tell Ani even when she kept convincing him that her marriage to Vanya was true love and was going to make her happy. Toros told her over and over again that Vanya really didn’t love her and that she was not legally married to him, and that this fairytale idea of her and Vanya getting married was just that, a fairytale, not reality. Vanya was always going to treat Ani like she was disposable and was only going to see her as a prostitute who was just there in his life to give him a short-lived thrill before he moved on to someone else. Seriously, the final scene of the film where she cries after having sex with (and slapping) Igor as he cradles her in his arms really broke my heart. It made me think of when I fell in love with this guy and had all these delusional daydreams about us ending up married with children, living a blissful carefree life well into retirement. I fell in love with him because he thought I was attractive, and as a girl with terrible self-worth at the time, I assumed that the way he felt about me in college was the same way he felt about me at 27 when we reconnected. But by then, I quickly realized that he had moved on, he had changed, and he was in a happy soon-to-be marriage with someone else. It took years of therapy, Buddhist practice and self-care to finally get to a place where I could confront the reality that me and this guy were never going to be together, even though it was painful. My crush was my escape from the humdrum reality of my 9 to 5 office job. However, I think chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and studying The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin and Daisaku Ikeda’s writings reminded me that I had profound self-worth even if I wasn’t in a relationship with this guy. I also realized that this guy couldn’t ever give me the happiness that I wanted. I had to be responsible for my own happiness because I have my own problems to deal with, and he has his. It took a lot of deep digging and human revolution, but I have developed so much profound love for myself in the process and have developed what Buddhists call “absolute happiness,” which is a kind of happiness that can’t be destroyed by changing external circumstances because it is within our own lives, and we cultivate that happiness through our practice of Nichiren Buddhism. I really love looking at movies through the lens of Buddhism because it helps me understand both the good and dark sides of human nature.

I am sure that this what Ani went through is not just something that happens in fiction only. A lot of young women deal with heartbreak, and I am sure there are women who are coerced into these unhealthy marriages where they never find true happiness and are just being treated like a transaction instead of a flesh-and-blood human being with thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants. Sean Baker’s films have really opened my eyes to the tough reality and stigma that a lot of female sex workers (including trans sex workers of color) face on a daily basis. Of course, as someone who doesn’t work in the sex work industry, I don’t know if the film speaks for the reality of all sex workers, and I am sure plenty of sex workers have good and bad things to say about the movie just like they have various opinions about the movie Hustlers. But it was definitely empowering to see a young woman who works in sex work playing the main role as this bold protagonist who doesn’t take nonsense from anyone. I think after watching his other movie Red Rocket, which is about a washed-up 30-something male adult film star who falls in love with a 17-year-old cashier at a donut shop and tries to get her into the adult entertainment industry, watching a movie like Anora was a different experience. Red Rocket was a black/dark comedy that really left me disturbed and unsettled because of its subject matter. Simon Rex’s character, Mikey, wasn’t supposed to be likeable. He was a creepy middle-aged white guy who flirted with a teenager (even though in the movie he justifies that in Texas, he can flirt with her because she is 17 and that is the legal age of consent) and also took advantage of his ex-wife and her mother, as well as the people in his community.

I need to head to sleep, but I am just glad that I got all my thoughts about the movie out so that I can sleep at night.

Anora. 2024. 139 minutes. Distributed by Neon. Directed by Sean Baker. Rated R for strong sexual content throughout, graphic nudity, pervasive language and drug use.

Movie Review: The Peanut Butter Falcon

A few weeks ago, I finished watching The Peanut Butter Falcon. It’s starring Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson and Zack Gottsagen. I went to the library to take back a bunch of movies I had checked out, and I thought, ok, I’ll leave the library once I take these movies back, but then I ended up exploring the DVDs section for almost an hour and checked out twenty more DVDs. The Peanut Butter Falcon was one of the movies I checked out. It is a really wonderful film.

The film is about a young man with Down Syndrome named Zak who grew up without family to support him, so he has to stay at a state-run care facility. After trying to escape the facility many times, especially because he is being poorly treated there, an older man named Carl finally helps Zak escape in the middle of the night when all the staff are asleep. Zak has a dream to become a professional wrestler, and he watches an old videotape of this wrestler named The Saltwater Redneck many times and talks to Eleanor and Carl about his dreams of becoming a professional wrestler. Meanwhile, Tyler is a fisherman who is on the run from two men who want to hurt him. Zak hides in Tyler’s fishing boat, and Tyler finds Zak after he escapes the two men who are after him. At first, Tyler wants nothing to do with Zak, but Zak has no family and no one else he can trust, so Tyler lets him go with him. Zak and Tyler develop a beautiful friendship, and Eleanor, who at first is trying to get Zak to come back to the care facility under orders from her boss, ends up developing a romantic relationship with Tyler and re-evaluating the way she has treated Zak.

The film shows the discrimination that people with intellectual disabilities often face. As someone who doesn’t have Down Syndrome and has only met a few people who have Down Syndrome, I can’t speak for people who have Down Syndrome. But the movie showed me that Zak had to overcome a lot of prejudice from others who thought he wouldn’t be able to achieve his dreams just because he has an intellectual disability. It also showed how hurtful slurs used against people with intellectual disabilities are, in particular the r- word (I don’t like saying it anymore, so I would just Google “the r-word” if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) Growing up, I often heard the r-word used in casual conversation by able-bodied people like me, and they would often use the r-word to describe each other, themselves, or inanimate objects. I even used the r-word many times in casual conversation just because everyone else around me used it and I thought it was harmless to call my binder the r-word or even when I made a mistake, instead of calling myself “stupid” I would call myself the r-word.

However, I didn’t understand how hurtful and outdated slurs like the r-word actually were until I got to college and was doing research in the archives at the library. In the archives, there were some articles that students with intellectual disabilities had done calling out the r-word and other slurs used against people with intellectual disabilities, and it was also my first time learning about ableism, which is discrimination against people who have disabilities. I grew up in a conservative Texas town, so there wasn’t much information about ableism, but when I got to college on the East Coast, I started learning more about other forms of discrimination besides racism, sexism and homophobia. I learned about sizeism, which is discrimination of people based on their body size, and ageism, which is discrimination of people based on their age. Of course, I probably shouldn’t generalize because there are people in Texas who are aware that this kind of discrimination isn’t ok and are speaking up about it, just as there are people in Massachusetts who don’t know about ableism, sizeism or ageism. I, too, as I mentioned above, was very ignorant about ableism and would use often ableist language growing up because I grew up with people saying it like it was no big deal, so I assumed it was no big deal. In high school, we had students who were in special education, and I often had pre-conceived ideas and assumptions about people with intellectual disabilities.

But watching this movie made me reflect on these biased ideas I had in my head about people with intellectual disabilities. There is a scene where Tyler, Eleanor and Zak are on a raft in the water, and they end up having a conversation involving the R-word. Eleanor doesn’t think Zak is capable of doing a lot of things without supervision. Tyler thinks that Eleanor is presuming that Zak is the r-word and he has Zack hold his breath under water so that he doesn’t hear Tyler use the r-word. Tyler tells her that when Eleanor thinks Zak is the r-word, she is saying that he isn’t capable of doing things. Eleanor gets upset and tells Tyler she never called Zak the r-word, but Tyler tells her that she is treating Zak as if he was the r-word. There is an earlier scene where Tyler tells Zak that he can’t come with him on his journey to escape from the guys he owes money to, and Zak stays behind. Tyler comes back to find a kid shouting at Zak to jump into a lake even though Zak doesn’t want to, and the kid calls Zak the r-word. Tyler shouts at the kid to leave Zak alone and punches the kid. Tyler doesn’t think he can help Zak, especially since he is dealing with his own issues, but Zak places his trust in Tyler since Tyler doesn’t abandon him like everyone else did. Tyler also doesn’t condescend to Zak or make him feel like he needs to be babied or treated differently just because he has Down syndrome. Tyler doesn’t have any friends or family he can depend upon, and his brother died, so he is grappling with a lot of grief and loneliness. He doesn’t have anyone he can trust, so at first, it’s hard for him to open up to Zak about himself, even his name and where he is from. But Zak doesn’t try to pry into Tyler’s private life; he also doesn’t have any friends, so he and Tyler pretty much only have each other. Tyler teaches Zak how to be resilient and become physically stronger. Along the way, he teaches Zak how to fish, how to shoot a rifle and other survival skills that no one at the care facility could have taught him. When Zak tells him that he wants to meet the Saltwater Redneck, a pro-wrestler who he admires, Tyler doesn’t know who the Saltwater Redneck is, but he promises to take Zak to meet him. Even with all the challenges they face, Zak also shows Tyler and Eleanor that he is capable even with his disability and that he doesn’t need people to condescend to him or feel sorry for him.

The music for the film is incredible, though. I love old Motown music, and lately I have been enjoying listening to The Staple Singers. I don’t know their entire song catalog, so listening to “Freedom Highway” was a new one for me. The song plays when Zak is trying to escape from the care facility he is staying at and ends up getting caught, and the song continues to play while Tyler is out on the river fishing and gets chased by two guys who are after him. The song was perfect for the opening because it is an old song with gospel rhythms, and the film takes place in the southern United States. I couldn’t stop listening to the song after hearing it in the movie.

Movie Review: La Vie En Rose (2007)

When I was in middle school, I was watching the Academy Awards, and the nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role came on. They show the clips from the films for each nominee, and the French actress Marion Cotillard was nominated for her movie, La Vie En Rose, a biopic about the late French singer Edith Piaf. When I saw the clip the first time, it blew me away. And Marion Cotillard won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role that evening.

Fast forward to 10 pm tonight, and I just finished watching La Vie En Rose. I can now see why Marion Cotillard won an Oscar for her portrayal of Edith Piaf. I had seen Marion Cotillard in one film when I was younger. She played Josephine, Edward Bloom’s pregnant wife in the movie Big Fish, but in that movie, she is not the main character. She is a supporting character. When I watched La Vie En Rose, I got to see Marion Cotillard playing in a leading role. To be quite honest, I didn’t know anything about Edith Piaf, and I had only listened to a couple of her songs in passing. I had only one song of hers on my iPod nano (I can’t remember which song, but I think it was “Hymne a L’Amour”) and I heard her famous song, “Non, je ne regrette nien” on the film soundtracks of movies like Babe, Pig in the City and Inception. And I have heard “La Vie En Rose,” but mostly covers of the song by Louis Armstrong and other artists. I didn’t know anything about Edith Piaf’s life at all before watching the movie. All I know is that Marion Cotillard put her heart and soul into playing the role of this woman, whose life was short and also filled with many challenges, including childhood abuse, emotional neglect, substance abuse, grief, and loneliness.

The movie reminded me of a movie I saw a few years ago called Judy. It stars Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland, and like Edith, Judy died in her 40s. And like Marion Cotillard, Renee Zellweger is an incredible actress and was so incredible in her portrayal of Judy Garland. Renee Zellweger, like Marion Cotillard, won an award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in a biographical drama. Both of these women were commercially successful but faced a lot of pressure in the public eye and used substances like alcohol and drugs to cope with the stress of their careers. I remember sitting in the hotel room while on vacation, sipping from a little bottle of red wine I found in the minifridge, and watching Judy. By the end, I was a sobbing mess of tissues. I only knew Judy Garland as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but what these biopics show me is that you have to look past the role someone plays in a movie or TV show or on stage, and you get to see them wrestling with all this deep personal stuff when the cameras are off and they are dealing with their pain alone. Edith lived through a lot of tragedy, and it was even more tragic because there is a scene in the film where she is about to die, and it is scary to see her suffering as she faces her death alone. The film doesn’t hold back from showing the suffering that comes with illness and death. Seeing Edith’s gut-wrenching pain and sadness as she lives her final minutes on her deathbed was painful, especially because she had already dealt with so much grief in such a short time. The man she loves, Marcel, dies in a plane crash. She is thinking he is still alive, and she goes over to bring him breakfast, but then her staff inform her that Marcel died in a plane crash. Watching Edith run down the halls, screaming and grieving with tears running down her face, was an emotional rollercoaster. Actually, the entire movie was an emotional rollercoaster. I really loved watching the special feature afterwards where they discuss the movie. Marion Cotillard had a lot of prosthetics on her while playing the role of Edith Piaf, and she said that she tried to bring her own interpretation of Edith rather than just imitating her. I find the process of actors fascinating, especially when they are tasked with playing people who actually lived.

The movie is entirely in French, but I watched it with English subtitles. Honestly, I don’t know if I would have been mature enough to watch this movie the year it came out. I was only 13 at the time, and I don’t know if I would have gotten through the emotional rollercoaster of this movie. Also, there is a lot of mature material in the movie. Edith grew up in a brothel, and one of the women working in the brothel is sexually assaulted. Edith is separated from the women in the brothel, and it is a pretty painful scene to watch because Edith dealt with her mother abandoning her at a young age. I probably wouldn’t have been able to deal with watching the subject matter very well, especially seeing Edith grappling with illness and death. Even at 31, I still couldn’t fathom how painful this woman’s life was. Marion Cotillard showed through her movements and facial expressions the pain that this woman went through in her life. Even though the movie shows a few happy moments of Edith’s life, it doesn’t flinch from showing the grim realities of poverty, addiction and grief. I think after studying Buddhism, I think it helped me think about the movie from a Buddhist perspective. In Buddhism we deal with the four sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death. Even though someone may be wealthy or famous, they are still a human being at the end of the day, and they are still going to experience these sufferings. Even though Edith lived a short life, she really gave her all to her career, so it was really sad to watch the scenes where they show her later in life when she is unable to continue performing due to her declining health. Watching this movie helped me appreciate the legacy that Edith Piaf left, and it also helped me appreciate Marion Cotillard’s work as an actress. (Also, side note, but I recognized one of the actors in the movie from a movie I saw with Queen Latifah in it called Last Holiday. I found out the actor’s name is Gerard Depardieu.)

La Vie En Rose. 2007. Directed by Olivier Dahan. Starring Marion Cotillard. In French with English subtitles. Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, sexual content, brief nudity, language and thematic elements.

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