movies – Page 4 – The Arts Are Life

The Screen Actors Guild Awards 2024

On Saturday, I watched the Screen Actors Guild Awards. I saw it a couple of years ago, and I really loved it, and I didn’t want to miss out this time, especially because I was bummed about missing the Emmys. Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t miss it, because after a historic writers strike last year that lasted from July to November, it was time for me to pay my respects to all the writers, producers and actors that work hard every day to produce the shows I love. Of course, I also watched it because I love seeing the people getting dressed up. And because I love movies and TV. Honestly, it made me wonder what it was like actually being at the awards ceremony. It seems so glamorous to me as an outsider, but I guess this reminds me of when I went to Los Angeles and had this glamorous idea of how it was going to be. I thought I was going to see celebrities just walking around, but I didn’t end up seeing celebrities and that was probably the best thing, because I would have tried to disrupt their day to get an autograph and they probably wouldn’t be too thrilled about that. I remember talking to the Uber driver while we were going through Sunset Boulevard to get to the place I was staying, and I was feeling so intimidated that we were going past all of these famous people’s homes, and he told me that at the end of the day, celebrities are just human beings. And I’m glad he said that, because I didn’t want to keep walking around thinking that Hollywood was this glamorous thing and that actors just came out of the womb reciting lines from memory. I think watching interviews and Variety series like Actors on Actors helped me see that the people who recite these brilliant lines of dialogue and get inside the minds and bodies of these characters are people with families and bills to pay. Of course, I love entertaining my little fantasies about being at these glamorous awards ceremonies now and then, because I enjoy daydreaming.

There were some really powerful moments during the ceremony. Barbra Streisand received the Lifetime Achievement Award and delivered a speech about her love of movies and acting and how important the work of actors is. I haven’t seen many of Barbra Streisand’s movies, and I have only heard a few of her songs, so I have a lot of catching up to do, but hearing her speech reminded me why film is such an important medium. I’ve learned from watching these movies and television shows that film is a really powerful way not just to entertain, but also to gain more insight into the human experience. The human experience is complex and full of emotions: joy, sadness, grief, anger, fear, love, gratitude, the list goes on. I really admire that there are people out there who can convey various human emotions, play different characters, and share stories that resonate with people from all walks of life. I remember doing theater briefly in middle school, but I ended up sticking with orchestra. I wasn’t all that great at it, but I still loved going to plays, musicals, and the cinema and watching other people do it. I think that is why I loved The Fabelmans, because it gets into the mind of a young filmmaker who is trying to chart his own unique path in life amid societal pressures and the pressures of growing up. I was curious about how these people got into filmmaking and how they became so good at what they did, and I feel like the secret to Sammy charting his own path in the movie was that he just kept making and directing films. He didn’t start with a big budget; he was making movies with his high school classmates. He spent hours making the movies and editing the movies, even when things got tough in his life. He managed to create something profound out of his painful experiences.

There were other great parts about the SAG awards. I was really excited when Da’Vine Joy Randolph won for her role in The Holdovers. I haven’t seen it yet, but I really liked the trailer and I love Paul Giamatti’s acting. I was also really happy when Ayo Edebiri, Lily Gladstone and Elizabeth Debicki won awards. Elizabeth Debicki is an incredible actress; she played Princess Diana in a series called The Crown. I also really loved her in the film Widows, where she plays one of the women who has to go on a heist mission after her husband gets killed. I thought Pedro Pascal’s speech was really heartfelt; I don’t think I have the stomach to watch The Last of Us (I’m squeamish about zombies and blood, unfortunately) but it was nice seeing him have a heartfelt conversation with Tan France, who interviewed the winners backstage. I was really happy when Succession won because I just finished watching the show, and it was really good. I didn’t really get into the buzz about Succession until after the show had wrapped up. The only reason I started watching it was because it won several awards and received lots of nominations at the Golden Globes, so I was like, Dang, this show must be really good. For some reason, I got emotional after Succession was over. Maybe it has to do with it being close to my period, or I’m just an emotional mess, but I just got teary-eyed. I keep forgetting that even though it’s a comedy-drama, a satire, a black comedy, it was still in the drama category for a reason. I think because I had my own personal experiences with grief this year that season 4 really knocked me out of the emotional ballpark. I haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet, but it won quite a few awards, and Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr. won for Best Actor and Best Supporting Male Actor in the Motion Picture categories. I’m curious about Beef. I don’t know much about it, but Ali Wong and Steven Yeun both got awards last night for the series and it got good reviews.

Honestly, this was a really good ceremony. I loved the conversations between Tan France and the winners of the awards. They were just so delightful and sweet. And the best part is, the actors got to make their speeches without the swear words being bleeped out because it was technically on Netflix and not live TV. If they swore on NBC or ABC, they would be bleeped out. Also, I really love the part where Billie Eilish signed Melissa McCarthy’s face. And Idris Elba. 🙂

TV Show Review: Succession season 1 (some thoughts, part 1)

Written a couple of weeks ago when I first started watching the show. I don’t remember when that was but it was probably the week of January 15th.

So I decided to watch the show Succession after hearing a lot of buzz about it. I wasn’t super hip to the show when it first came out, but I saw it advertised all the time. When I watched the Golden Globe Awards this past Sunday I saw it kept getting all these nominations and awards, and I was like, Wow, this show must be really, really good. And as stressful as these first few episodes have been, it is quite good.

To be honest, I was really nervous to watch the show at first because I was reading the parent’s guide on IMDB and they mentioned that there is a scene where a character vomits. I have emetophobia, so I am pretty sensitive to vomiting scenes in movies. But I read on some other sites that have trigger warnings, such as Does the Dog Die and a tumblr dedicated to emetophobia warnings in movies and TV shows, about the scene, and after a while, even though my heart was racing and I was getting pretty nervous about watching the scene, I thought, It is literally just one scene. I don’t want that to make me not watch the show. And thankfully, I knew that the minute Greg goes to the theme park I could close my eyes and not have to watch the scene, which didn’t last super long.

The first episode, titled “Celebration” opens up with an elderly man waking up and walking through the house. He urinates and has to get the assistance of the lady who is helping him. The show opens with an incredible theme song by Nicholas Britell. It conveyed a lot of the power and prestige that runs throughout the show, and I love how he uses the strings and piano. I really love Nicholas Britell’s music. I remember he composed the music for the movies Moonlight and Vice, both movies I really enjoyed watching. Seeing the footage of the Roy family was also really intriguing, just seeing them grow up in this wealthy lifestyle. I was also excited to see that actor Will Ferrell was one of the producers on the show.

There were a few scenes from the Celebration episode that stuck with me. One is when Greg meets the Roy family for the first time when he goes to Logan’s birthday celebration, and everyone pretty much ignores him. He is the only one not wearing a fancy suit; he is wearing baggy clothes and he stands out. Greg has a really unlucky gig at an amusement park when a bunch of kids jump all over him and he vomits. When he gets fired he has to contact his great-uncle Roy (Greg’s mom is connected to the Roy family) for a job, and when he arrives it’s like the family treats him with a cold distance. There is also another scene where Conner, who is the firstborn of Logan Roy, gets Logan a sourdough starter but Logan calls it “gunk” and dismisses it, which frustrates Conner because he just wanted to get his dad something to make him happy. There is another scene where someone gives Logan a really nice watch as a gift but then when they are playing ball in the park as a family, Logan gives the watch to a family that is nearby. I also saw how Roman’s character was, because Roman promises this kid in the park that he will give him one million dollars if he hits a home run, and when the kid doesn’t win the game, Roman acts cruel and tears up the one million dollar check he was going to make out to him, prompting his sister, Shiv, to knock it off. Throughout the show, Roman comes off as overconfident and thinks that when he becomes the Chief Operating Officer of Waystar Royco he is going to get this prestige but he is unaware that it is going to be much more than a job to him. He also does something wild. He goes into one of the offices, unzips his pants and starts jerking off against the window. He cleans up his mess, but it kind of showed me how this power and influence can go to people’s heads.

Movie Review: You Hurt My Feelings and Some Personal Thoughts about Failure, Criticism and Self-Worth

Yesterday I watched a movie called You Hurt My Feelings. I really love movies distributed by a film company called A24, and I really loved the trailer, so I was excited to watch this movie. I haven’t seen much of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s other work, to be honest, except for a sketch she did on Inside Amy Schumer called “Last Fuckable Day.” If you haven’t seen that sketch, by the way, it is absolutely hilarious and calls out a lot of ageism and sexism in Hollywood.

You Hurt My Feelings is about an author named Beth who is also a creative writing professor. Her husband, Don, is a therapist who struggles to connect with his patients, and her son, Eliot, works at a weed shop and is having a hard time moving forward in life. He is a writer like his mom but doesn’t believe in his work. Beth has a sister named Sarah who is an interior designer and volunteers with her at a local church by giving away clothing, and Sarah is married to Mark, a struggling actor. Beth is working on a novel and has written several drafts of her manuscript, and she is rightfully proud of herself, and her husband seems to think that her story is good. And on the surface, she is happy in her marriage with Don and they celebrate their anniversary on a happy note. She is encouraging to her students and celebrates their ideas for stories even if they don’t seem that great. But things go downhill when Beth meets with a publisher and the publisher tells her that her manuscript wasn’t that great, and this crushes Beth’s self-esteem. And the ultimate blow for Beth is when she and Sarah are out and about and they run into Mark and Don talking at a department store. Beth overhears Don telling Mark that he doesn’t actually like Beth’s novel, and she runs out of the store in a panic, feeling betrayed that Don lied to her face about liking her book. Sarah tries to calm Beth down, but Beth’s life and marriage is already shattered. The movie shows how Beth tries to regain her self-worth after finding out her husband, whose opinion she valued so highly, doesn’t actually like her book.

The movie shows how difficult it can be to give one’s honest opinion about something because you are worried about hurting the other person, but it can hurt worse when you lie about liking someone’s work and not give them your honest opinion from the get-go. The film explores how rejection and failure impact how the characters see themselves in relation to their work and careers. Mark is in a store with Don and someone approaches him and says he recognized Mark from this movie where he played a pumpkin. Mark is ecstatic that he got recognized for something, but when he asks the guy if he can take a selfie with him, the guy hesitates and they declines, leaving Mark feeling dejected. Mark reveals to Sarah one day that he is uncertain about why he is pursuing acting, and he realizes that he did it because he wanted to become famous. She encourages him to do it because he loves it, not because it brings him fame. I resonated with this because when I first started auditioning for professional orchestras and pursuing a music career, I had this idea that I was going to become famous and make a lot of money and that everyone was going to respect me. But I think as I dug deeper into my Buddhist practice, I saw over time how I based so much of my self-worth on having this prestigious career, so I had to take a step back and really ask myself why I wanted a career in music. I still love to play my cello, but I am realizing that whether I have a prestigious career in music or not, it doesn’t determine my worth as a human being. When I based my self-worth on my success as a musician, I think it became really hard to handle stuff like rejection and disappointment, and over time I had to understand that rejection, disappointment and failure are a part of any career, and that the important thing was to not give up on myself. I think that is why I love reading the Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda’s works because he reminds me that my life is a treasure and that I have inherent worth regardless of whether I am facing success or failure in life. It is still a daily struggle to believe in my worth, but as I continue this journey of awakening to my self-worth, I have become a much stronger person, and I am able to encourage other people who struggle with low self-worth.

The movie also reminded me of another film I saw called The Wife with Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. In the movie, they play a couple named Joan and Joe Castleman who are excited because Joe won the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, as the movie progresses, it is clear that there is a rather sinister backstory to Joe’s success as a writer, namely that his wife wrote most of his work and he didn’t give her credit for it. Joe is not a great character, and he basks in praise while his wife is just seen as, well, his wife. Their son, David, wants to become a writer, too, but when he asks his dad if he read his story, Joe hedges and doesn’t want to share his honest opinion about David’s story. It’s not until they meet at a bar that Joe shares his honest criticism about David’s story, but David wants to hear that he did a good job, not that the story was bad, and he gets angry with his father for not telling him that he did a good job. Joan encourages David because she believes that everyone needs validation, but Joe says that getting external validation won’t help David grow in his writing career, so he is hard on him. This leaves David feeling terrible about himself throughout the movie. In You Hurt My Feelings, after Beth finds out that Don didn’t like her book, she goes through each page of the manuscript saying “Shit for brains” over and over. The novel is based on her childhood and dealing with a lot of verbal abuse from her father, and in real life, Beth’s father would call her “Shit for brains” and “stupid” her whole life, so this made her feel very poorly about herself. Don told Beth for years that he loved her work, especially because she wrote about twenty drafts of the manuscript, but to hear that he actually didn’t like it, after years of lying to her and telling her that he did so that he wouldn’t hurt her feelings, took a blow to her self-worth as a writer.

This reminded me of a scene in The Wife when Joan is having a flashback to her 20s, when she was a student at Smith College in the 1950s and she fell in love with Joe, who was a married professor with kids. Joe has an affair with Joan and loses his job (and also his wife, who divorces him) and they are happy together at first. Joan is an aspiring writer and seeks advice from a famous female writer named Elaine Mozell. Joan thinks Elaine is going to tell her “Yeah, girl, go for your dreams! The sky’s the limit.” But Elaine gives her pessimistic advice on having a career as an author, telling her that her works, like Elaine’s, will end up on shelves unread because it was a male-dominated field where female authors often didn’t get their works recognized or published, so Joan is better off not pursuing a writing career so that she doesn’t have to deal with disappointment or rejection. Joan sees firsthand how rejection can really take a blow to someone’s self-esteem, in this case her husband’s. Joe has Joan read her manuscript, and even though he asks for her feedback, she tells him her honest opinion, that she doesn’t think it is that good. That is not the feedback he wants to hear. He wants her to validate that he is a good writer because he cannot handle the rejection that comes with it, and he gets angry and threatens to divorce her if she doesn’t tell him that he is a great writer. He projects so many of his deepest insecurities onto her at that moment, telling her that if he doesn’t make it as a writer, he is going to have to go back to being a professor at a “second rate college” and making brisket (at first I rolled my eyes and was like, Oh boo-hoo, but then I had to remember that this was the 1950s and women still had to follow these societal expectations that they would stay home and let the men become successful in their careers while they held onto their unfulfilled dreams.)

Honestly, as much as I loathed Joe’s character and how he treated his wife and his son and crushed every last ounce of their writing dreams so that he could fulfill his, I somehow could relate to his struggle with self-worth and this idea that your career defines your worth as a human being and that if you fail or fuck up, it means you are a failure for the rest of your life and you will never recover. I remember when I worked really hard for this one audition for a symphony orchestra, and when I got on the list of substitute cellists, I felt my ego take a boost. But then my sister and dad asked me to do chores, and I had to get off my high horse for a while, and that somehow made me mad, so I lashed out at them and threatened to kill myself (I was a real nut.) I continued to define my worth by having this prestigious career for years after that. I worked at Starbucks and thought that working there instead of playing for the symphony meant that I had failed, and so I felt really ashamed going into these classical music circles and academic circles and telling people I worked at Starbucks because I thought they would see me as less than. I would tell people at work that I was going to be this successful musician and then I auditioned for another professional orchestra, but I got rejected and I just broke down crying. I think holding onto these unrealistic ideas about success and inflated self-worth made it hard for me to do my best where I was, because I was always thinking, When I quit food service, when I get this music career, when I play with these famous musicians, then I will finally feel like I made it and I will finally feel good about myself and I will finally feel worthy. I felt like every time I faced rejection or disappointment, it took a blow to my self-worth and so I constantly vacillated about whether or not I could make it as a musician. There was one time I went to a professor’s house to audition for a spot in his advanced chamber music ensemble, and I was so nervous because I really wanted this person to like me. I wanted him to think highly of me, so I tried to avoid talking about how I was paying off my student loans and working at Starbucks. But I honestly couldn’t B.S. anything. At the end of the day, I was just me and I couldn’t meet this man’s expectations no matter how much I tried to put on airs or be someone I wasn’t. I just wasn’t at the skill level he wanted me to be at, and this really made it hard for me to feel good about myself. But after I chanted about it for a while (key word: a while. It wasn’t overnight) I realized I needed to stop worrying about being rejected by this guy and focus on my efforts to pay off my student loans and do my best work at Starbucks. I also had to appreciate that I was with a really good music teacher and he and I worked very well, and he helped me do a lot of inner transformation, or human revolution, in overcoming my arrogance. I really thought I was hot shit as a musician, but that is because my ego was so huge. I realized that I didn’t need to think less of myself, I just had to change the way I thought about this career. When I actually met with professional musicians, I began to realize that this career wasn’t just about me-me-me. I would still need to learn to work with others and acknowledge that there will always be people with more credentials than me, and that is an opportunity to learn from people. It took a really long time to get to that realization, though, because I had to do a lot of human revolution, or inner transformation, where I developed greater self-worth and started to focus on doing my best and making sincere efforts rather than solely focusing on winning the audition.

It is still a challenge for me to take criticism and feedback well, to be honest. An I think that is why You Hurt My Feelings resonated with me so much because it showed me that it can be really hard to face honest criticism from those closest to us. I still find myself getting defensive or upset when I receive negative feedback, or when I don’t get a response after sending in a job application. No matter how politely the rejection email is worded, the rejection still stings, but then it’s like I have to keep reminding myself to use the rejection as an opportunity to improve and get better. And I really resonated with Beth’s struggle with self-esteem. I grew up with supportive people in my life and I think I felt pretty comfortable in my skin, but then I went to a new school and I really struggled with low self-esteem because I struggled academically, and this was new to me because people always praised me as this smart kid. But my self-esteem took a real hit when they chose some of the smart kids for a Gifted and Talented program, and I wasn’t selected, and it really hurt. It’s silly to be thirty and still thinking about that stuff. It’s like, Get over it, that was twenty years ago! But at that point in my life I really suffered from low self-confidence. I often wrote in my notebook that I was stupid, that I was ugly, that I was worthless, that no one liked me. And the reality is, no one was calling me these things. But I often said those negative things about myself because I wanted people to tell me, No, no, that’s not true. You’re smart, you’re capable. It’s because I didn’t believe those things myself, so I was constantly wanting the people around me to affirm that I was worthy and beautiful and smart. Of course, wanting validation is totally normal and human, but when I started doing a lot of inner work on myself, I realized that it’s important to develop my own confidence. That was the hardest to do for so many years because I wanted people to affirm that I was enough because I didn’t want to believe myself that I was enough. I had really supportive family growing up, so I’m sure it was painful for them to hear me say these awful things about myself because they never called me stupid, ugly or weird. Looking back I also remember being around a lot of kids who also had low self-esteem even though they were talented and smart, but at the time it seemed that everyone else had it together on the surface. This perception of my environment carried on into middle school, high school, college and even after college, and it is still something I have to remind myself is just my perception. Because we are all human and we all struggle with something.

Movie Review: Mid 90s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: To Leslie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: Volver

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: Barbie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: Cruella

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: Nyad

I didn’t know much about the movie Nyad, although I had seen it as one of the suggested movies on my Netflix feed. But man, what a FORCE. I didn’t know anything about Diana Nyad before watching this movie, but after watching this movie I was just so blown away by her perseverance, her fighting spirit, her endurance in the face of so many obstacles. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I totally recommend it.

This movie really showed me the importance of not giving up even when it seems you have exhausted all of your strength to keep going. The footage shown at the beginning shows Diana when she was a younger swimmer, and the movie shows her in her 60s figuring out what to do with her life during her retirement. Her trusty friend Bonnie always sticks by her side through thick and thin, even when Diana sets out to complete her record of swimming from Cuba to Key West, Florida. Diana learns the importance of not giving up. She is stung by jellyfish, has hallucinations and vomits after swimming for 24 hours. But she continues to persevere even when she faces these really life-threatening situations while going towards her goal. She also learns that she couldn’t do the journey alone; she needed a team of people to help her pull through, especially Bonnie.

The movie also shows Diana grappling with sexual trauma she faced as a child. When she was younger, she had a male coach named Jack who seemed to believe in her and the other female swimmers’ potential. However, as the film continues, it shows flashbacks to when Jack leads Diana into his bedroom and sexually assaults her. Unfortunately, Diana’s assault is not an isolated incident because there were other young women who Jack assaulted when they went into his office. It reminded me of Larry Nasser, who was the doctor for the US women’s gymnastics team and assaulted many young female athletes. It showed me the dark side of power and how Jack used his authority as a coach to abuse the young women he was coaching. This experience continues to haunt Diana and in one pivotal scene while she is continuing to swim from Cuba to Florida, she recalls Jack assaulting her as a girl and has a serious panic attack and has to be pulled out of the water. Later, Jack dies and Diana still is (rightfully) furious with him for abusing her for many years, and she beats herself up about it and Bonnie has to remind her that what Jack did to her wasn’t her fault.

After watching this movie, I was just blown away because in the face of such life-threatening situations, Diana pulled through and she never gave up in the face of adversity. It reminds me of this saying I have on a shirt of mine called “Never Give Up.” I also love both Annette Bening and Jodie Foster’s acting. To be honest, this is the first film I have seen with Jodie Foster in it. I haven’t watched her other movies but she is an incredible actor and this was a really good role for her. I have seen Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right, and she was also in another movie called 20th Century Women but I didn’t finish that movie yet. I really loved her in The Kids Are All Right though. Her and Julianne Moore played their roles really well.

Nyad. 2023. Available on Netflix. Starring Annette Bening and Jodie Foster. Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving sexual abuse, some strong language and brief partial nudity.

Movie Review: Her and some personal reflections on technology

In my junior year of college I remember when the movie Her came out Saturday Night Live did a parody of it called “Me” with Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. Even though I had not seen the movie yet, the parody was incredibly hilarious. I think now that I watched the film and understood the plot better, I found the parody even funnier. But when I saw the actual movie of course, I was left pondering a lot of deep questions and themes. If you haven’t seen the movie it is about an introverted lonely man named Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) who is getting a divorce and writes letters for other people for a living. He befriends an operating system named Samantha (played by Scarlett Johansson) and what starts off as a casual friendship becomes something much deeper. Even though Samantha is not a human, she experiences human emotions and has empathy just like humans do, even more so it seems than the people around Theodore. Theodore lets his love life with Samantha consume him, and it puts him at odds with his ex-wife (played by Rooney Mara), who accuses him of escaping his problems and not dealing with real emotions, which is the same problem he had when they were married. However, Theodore’s relationship with Samantha changes over time as well. He thought that he could hold onto her forever, but like any relationship, whether between two humans or a human and an operating system, things change and people grow and start to learn more about themselves. The only other person it seems who can truly know what he is going through with his love for Samantha is his friend, Amy (played by Amy Adams), who makes documentaries and also is not happy in her marriage to Charles. When Amy and Charles break up, Theodore and Amy both engage in relationships with their operating systems and when the operating systems don’t continue anymore, they are left to face themselves.

This movie really made me reflect on how technology has played a role in my life. I actually wanted to watch the film now because I was keeping up with news about the writer’s strike and the actor’s strike and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Hollywood was a huge debate. Many argued that it would force many actors and screenwriters out of their jobs, and others argued for it. To be honest, I didn’t dive deep enough into these debates, but I will say, technology has had a pretty huge impact on how people function. Honestly, the idea that people walk around with these operating systems in their ears and don’t talk to each other wasn’t all that surprising as I watched the movie. I go to the supermarket all the time and see quite a few people talking into their Bluetooth headsets, and I often see a lot of people spending time on their smartphones whenever I go out, whether to my place of worship, or the supermarket, or restaurants, smartphones are pretty much everywhere. Not that having a smartphone is a bad thing, of course. I use my phone to navigate directions when I am going to someone’s house. I use my phone to watch funny videos and exercise videos, and also listen to music. I listen to podcasts on my phone. I use my phone to call and text. But like anything else, you need balance, and I think these past couple of years my phone use has increased and I often find myself scrolling the news on my phone to avoid talking to people or when situations get uncomfortable or make me nervous. I would see the people in my life spend time on their phones when they had spare time and I started to think, Okay, well this might be a social thing so maybe I should do it, too, and before I knew it I was spending lots of time on my phone. I really didn’t think I would use it that much. I got my first smartphone in 2016 to go out of the country, but I didn’t even use it much because there wasn’t much cell service where I was, so I could not call home much or even text. And I also dropped my phone while texting and walking down stairs, which in hindsight was not a great idea, because I was about to catch a flight back home and could not call my family to tell them what happened (the least I could have done was borrow someone’s phone, but I was so deep in grief and shame and self-criticism while sitting at the airport, with no phone, that I didn’t even bother.) I think watching The Social Dilemma and reading more about my addiction to technology helped me understand ways that I could better monitor my behavior because they let me know that smartphones and social media were purposely designed to be addicting. That is why smartphones have bright colors and why we have all these apps where you can like, share and comment, because it releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine in the brain, which requires you to do activities that bring you pleasure in order to get that dopamine or reward boost. I’ve realized after doing more research and becoming more aware of my phone use that I want that pleasure hit, so I need to check my phone constantly. But after a while, you realize you probably don’t need to be on the phone all the time. It’s gotten to the point where we need to even have books about phone addiction and limiting phone use and screen time. I checked out a book called How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price and listened to a podcast special where Vivek Murthy and Catherine are talking about being more mindful of phone use. I first found out about the causes of phone addiction from reading a book called Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, where he talks about why phones and social media are so addicting. It’s because companies designed these devices to be like slot machines, which also make you use them all the time because it releases that dopamine in your brain. I really didn’t think my phone use was going to get that bad. But I think watching Her made me really reflect on why I am using technology and what I want to get out of it in a super hyper connected but lonely world.

In the film Her, Theodore writes other people’s letters for them for a living. Of course, there may be valid reasons but considering Her is a science fiction movie it just made me wonder if people stopped writing letters because they now relied on artificial intelligence to do everything for them (I thought it was interesting how all the employees at this handwriting company write the letters on computers, which I think shows how even when it comes to writing letters, people still need to rely on technology to write them. Not that there is anything wrong with that of course, but it reminded me that this is a science fiction movie that takes place at a time when technology is everywhere and people need to rely on artificial intelligence for everything.) I love writing letters, and no matter how many times I text someone or how eloquent I sound over text (which I usually don’t) nothing beats writing a handwritten letter. In 2020, while in quarantine with family, I often wrote letters to my friends and writing these letters felt so personal and allowed me to convey stuff that would be really hard to type over the phone. I think writing letters also is good practice for me as a writer, too, because it helps me get my thoughts out on paper. For some reason the company Theodore works for, Beautiful Handwritten Letters.com, reminded me somewhat of the movie Young Adult, which is about a ghostwriter. Even though I saw it a while ago, there is one scene I remember from the movie where Charlize Theron’s character, Mavis, who is the ghostwriter of a series of young adult novels, goes into a bookstore and finds the books she ghost-wrote on clearance. She is appalled and starts signing the books with her name in them. When the clerk tells her she cannot sign the books, she tells him she is the actual author of the books, not Jane McMurray, who created the series but didn’t actually write the book. When she asks if he wants a signed copy, he declines and says that if she signs the books, they can’t take them back to the publisher, which they were intending on doing because while the series was once popular, no one will probably buy her books now because they are no longer popular. When he turns away, she starts grabbing all of the books and signing them, and he gets angry at her and tells her she can’t write in the books, and she leaves angrily with the copy she signed. Mavis spent much of her career writing these books under someone else’s name, and at this point in the movie when things are just not working out for her in any area of life, she is fed up and seeing the books she worked so hard to write end up in clearance because they aren’t going to sell like hot cakes anymore really hurts. Writing is such a personal journey and even as someone who is not a professional writer, I am sure Mavis put a lot of work into writing those books and they even became a part of her. I was not sure if Theodore Twombly was going to get credit for writing those beautiful handwritten letters (as I listened to him read the letters he was writing I found myself pretty moved by his beautiful writing) but Samantha decides that he deserves at least some credit for writing these letters so she has compiled some of his letters into a book and sent it to be published. It would be really interesting if the company Beautiful Handwritten Letters existed in real life and I would be interested to know what goes into the business of writing other people’s letters. I am sure there are instances in real life where people have others write their letters for them for various reasons. But to be honest, I don’t want handwritten letters to go away. I want to keep writing letters for as long as I live, as long as I have a pen and paper in hand. The existence of Beautiful Handwritten Letters in the movie is a pretty significant detail because it reminded me to not lose the art of writing a handwritten letter to someone even in this age of technology. I haven’t written long letters in a while, but I think at some point I want to go back to writing them.

Loneliness is a pretty huge theme in this movie. I have started becoming more interested in learning about the science of loneliness after grappling with my own challenges of loneliness. I remember in 2021 grappling with serious anxiety and depression and I felt I had no one to turn to. I remember reaching out to one of my friends and taking part in Zoom meetings with my SGI Buddhist community, and I think that helped a lot. Even though loneliness is painful I have been using my Buddhist practice to create value and meaning from it, and I have also come to understand that everyone feels lonely at times. Having a romantic partner doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be lonely, and even as a single person who was happy being introverted, I soon realized after spending a lot of time in isolation in 2020 that like everyone else, I am a social creature and need human interaction and connection just like everyone else. I remember reading the book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by Vivek Murthy, and I remember feeling a sigh of relief because I thought that I was the only one feeling lonely and disconnected from others and reading that book reminded me that loneliness is a common experience for many people, to the point where it’s even become a serious public health issue. Reading the book made me want to cherish my connections with people more.

There was a scene in the movie Her that really almost made me choke up. Maybe it is because earlier I was still crying after writing that review of the movie Lamb because it brought up a lot of my own experiences with grief these past few years and the more recent experience of grief I had after losing my mentor in faith. In this scene, Scarlett Johansson’s character, Samantha, tells Theodore that she has an idea to spice up their relationship: because she doesn’t have a human body, she will hire a surrogate partner when they are having sex. He tells her he is not comfortable with this because allowing a third person in their relationship would only leave them hurt, but Samantha insists that she really wants a surrogate, and not wanting to upset her, Theodore reluctantly agrees. Isabella arrives and attaches Samantha (in the shape of a beauty mark) to her face, and as she has sex with Theodore, she doesn’t say anything but lets Samantha’s voice do the talking. When they are about to get really heavy into the sex and Isabella is really enjoying it, Theodore suddenly stops and tells Samantha he thinks this is to weird and begs her to stop because he doesn’t know Isabella. Hurt and crushed by what Theodore said, Isabella leaves in tears and Samantha and Theodore both beg her to come back, but she says that no one really wants her to be there and that she saw how pure Samantha and Theodore’s relationship was and she really wanted to be part of something like that. Theodore misspeaks and says that isn’t true, and Samantha becomes angry with him for implying that their relationship wasn’t pure love, and Isabella leaves because she is just really heartbroken that Theodore and Samantha seem to not want anything to do with her anymore. I don’t know if I’m reading too deeply into this scene or not, but it really made my heart heavy because it showed me that even though Isabella was supposed to just do her job of being a surrogate partner, she is also a human being who wanted to feel respected and valued and she didn’t feel respected or valued by either of these people. Isabella must have also felt really lonely, too, and she wanted human connection, and she felt really sad that Theodore and Samantha didn’t want her to be in their relationship. There is one scene where Theodore reflects on what his ex-wife criticizes him about when they meet, that he is dating a computer so that he doesn’t have to deal with the problems that he faced in their marriage , and he tells his friend Amy that maybe Catherine is right, that he is dating Samantha because he is not ready for a real relationship. Amy gives him pause and asks him if he really thinks that relationship with Samantha isn’t a real relationship just because she is an operating system. She finds happiness with Charles’s operating system, Ellie, and is even happier with Ellie than she is was with Charles, who she often got into fights with.

There is also an earlier scene where Samantha sets Theodore up on a blind date and he goes on a date with this woman, played by Olivia Wilde, and at first things are going well. They are talking and laughing, and getting drunk. And then Olivia Wilde makes out with him and Theodore struggles to get intimate with her, and she asks him to assure her that he is not going to be like the other guys she went on dates with who didn’t call her back. She wants to know if he seriously loves her and wants to be in a relationship with her. When he says he isn’t sure, she is upset and says that at her age, she cannot afford to waste her time with someone who isn’t willing to commit, and calls him a creepy dude and when he offers to walk her back, she refuses and leaves. As someone who hasn’t been on many dates and has only had one romantic partner in my life so far, I didn’t really know whether I could relate, but I could definitely relate to that feeling of loneliness, that craving for human connection and love and respect, and I saw that the blind date felt that this was not the man she would feel okay being in a relationship with. And Theodore was also on the fence because he finds himself falling in love with Samantha, and he isn’t interested in having a committed relationship with the blind date because he really loves Samantha. However, as I saw later in the movie, he finds out that his relationship with Samantha is changing over time and she eventually moves on and hangs out with other operating systems and becomes an operating system for other people, so she can’t really commit to being with just Theodore anymore. It seemed like Samantha was the key to alleviating Theodore’s profound loneliness, but when their relationship changes and she moves on with her life, he is back to square one. But it gives him time to reflect and so he writes to his ex-wife apologizing to her and expressing his appreciation for her.

Honestly, this movie was very profound. I had heard so much about it but I had not seen it until now. Theodore’s experience with loneliness and love really resonated with me, and it was a very touching film. And the acting was amazing. I wanted to go to bed early, but I just couldn’t stop watching this movie. It was really good.

Her. 2hr 6 min. 2013. Directed by Spike Jonze. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara, Amy Adams and Olivia Wilde. Rated R for language, sexual content and brief graphic nudity.

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