Tag: reviews

Movie Review: Red Rocket

A few weeks ago, I watched a movie called Red Rocket. I watched the trailer, and it looked interesting, especially because it played one of my favorite songs, “Bye, Bye, Bye” by NSYNC. I really love Sean Baker’s movies. I loved The Florida Project and Tangerine, so I was looking forward to seeing this one. It’s a black or dark comedy, so it will make you pretty uncomfortable watching it, but I tend to gravitate towards dark comedies a lot of the time. I don’t consider myself a cynic or anything, but somehow, I gravitate towards dark comedy probably because it gives insight into human nature and the less favorable aspects of human nature. Not everyone is a nice person and not everyone is going to change for the better. I really love Sean Baker’s films, too, because they shed light on marginalized communities that don’t get a lot of great representation, such as trans sex workers in Tangerine and low-income communities that live near Walt Disney World in The Florida Project. I haven’t seen a lot of movies that have empowering representations of female sex workers other than Zola (directed by Janizca Bravo), and I didn’t grow up watching a lot of movies that presented an empowering portrayal of trans people, or even a lot of movies that had trans actresses playing the main characters. The only other movie I saw that shows any empathy or compassion for trans characters is A Fantastic Woman, which came out in 2017 and stars Daniela Vega, a trans actress and singer from Chile.

I also haven’t seen many films that shed light on the lives of sex workers in general, or ones that feature them as the protagonists, other than Zola and Tangerine. Red Rocket was really intriguing to watch, because the main character is a retired adult film actor whose wife also worked in the adult film industry. Mikey Saber, who worked in the adult film industry for two decades, comes back to his hometown of Texas City, Texas to try and make a comeback in his career. I don’t know why he left Los Angeles, which is where he worked in the adult film industry, but it was apparently something really not great that motivated him to leave the city and go back home. When he comes back home, he expects everyone to celebrate him coming back, saying “I’ve missed you!” He wants people to think he is still a glamorous actor, but instead he gets the total opposite. His neighbors and friends ask him, “What are you doing back in Texas?” and aren’t glad to see him, and his estranged wife, Lexi, and his mother-in-law, Lil, are especially not happy to see him come back. Mikey asks if he can move back in with them, but Lil and Lexi don’t want to put up with him anymore. He continues to beg Lexi to let him move back in with them, and finally she gives in, under the condition that he contribute to the rent and help around the house. For some reason, I resonated with Mikey’s story a bit, mainly the fact that he came back to his hometown expecting everyone to treat him like he was famous, but instead it was the opposite. I’ve never worked as a sex worker or in the adult entertainment industry, so I don’t know what it’s like, but I could kind of relate to him coming back with this huge ego. After graduating from this elite liberal arts college on the East Coast, I thought I was entitled to have any job I wanted because of my degree. But honestly, it was so hard to find a job, and it was a total blow to my ego. I wanted a job where I could directly use my philosophy degree, but the only other option was to go to graduate school and as much as I wanted to go, I was super burned out after undergrad and needed time to recuperate, especially because I had some really bad mental health issues. That, too, was really hard because I couldn’t deal with having depression. Every day I struggled to get out of bed and feel motivated to do anything. I auditioned for an orchestra in my hometown and when I got called for the substitute cellist list, I was pretty elated and thought that I should be treated like royalty because I got on the substitute list. But then my dad asked me to vacuum the living room, and I threw a huge bratty tantrum because I thought, They should be celebrating me right now! Why the hell are they asking me, of all people, to do chores? Looking back, I didn’t have a very healthy sense of self, and so much of my self-worth was wrapped up in these past achievements and this music career. I thought about my past experiences with overcoming my ego when I saw how Mikey would go up to people in his hometown and expect them to recognize him and his work, but only a few people liked what he did. Most of the people he runs into don’t know about his work, and so he has to keep shoving it in their faces that he was an adult film star for several years and that he has a very famous account with all the videos and movies he starred in. I wanted to be a successful cellist, but looking back I placed so much of my self-esteem on whether or not I won auditions or whether or not people liked me. At some point, though, I realized that doing that wasn’t healthy and that I needed to develop more self-worth so that I wouldn’t think that I was a loser just because I didn’t play with a famous orchestra.

I think that’s why he falls in love with this 17-year-old girl named Strawberry. Honestly, I really didn’t know how to feel about her and Mikey’s relationship. I know that technically she was of consenting age according to Texas law, but I feel like he was partly using his relationship with Strawberry as an escape from his problems with the people around him. Mikey constantly disrespects the people around him, and he talks down to Lexi and Lil, even walking around naked and grossing Lil out. Strawberry and Lonnie (who knows about Mikey’s work) are the only two people who put up with Mikey’s bullshit throughout the movie. Mikey has Lonnie take an exit at the last minute while driving, and Lonnie swerves and causes a serious pileup accident. Even though Mikey and Lonnie escape, Mikey has Lonnie accept the blame even though Mikey was responsible for telling him to take the exit. Lonnie accepts it, but Mikey doesn’t tell anyone that he was also responsible for causing the accident. Mikey is only focused on running away with Strawberry and having her become an adult film star like him. The ending of the film creeped me out a lot. Overall, it was a really interesting film.

Red Rocket. 2021. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and pervasive language.

Movie Review: 50/50

I watched a movie a couple of days ago called 50/50. It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Bryce Dallas Howard, Angelica Huston and Anna Kendrick. I really love these actors; I have seen their other movies, and they are all really good in their movies. I really loved Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 500 Days of Summer. This movie was pretty serious; it’s categorized as a comedy-drama, but it’s about a 27-year-old man named Adam who finds out he has cancer. It is based on the director’s own experience with finding out he had a rare form of spinal cancer in his 20s. (I also looked up Will Reiser, the director, on Wikipedia and I found out he attended Hampshire College, which is really cool because I took a couple of courses at Hampshire during my time in college and the people there are pretty cool.)

Even though he is a healthy person, Adam receives the cancer diagnosis, and it shatters his world. When he first tells his friend, Kyle (played by Seth Rogen), Kyle acts as if he is going to be okay and that the cancer is no big deal, but as the movie went on, I saw how Adam’s cancer diagnosis took a hit to his self-esteem and made him question his existence in life. It was also hard for his parents to find out about the cancer, especially because Adam was so young and his mom was already taking care of his dad, who has Alzheimer’s. When they are at the dinner table, Adam tries to prepare his mom for the news, and she laughs it off at first, saying “How bad can this really be?” But when he finally tells her he has cancer, she goes silent and then she cries when she finds out because she doesn’t want to lose her son. Adam also sees a therapist named Katherine, who tries to help him process all of the intense emotions that have come with hearing about his diagnosis and going through chemotherapy. At first, Adam doesn’t want to open up and he thinks that Katherine is only trying to make him feel better and cheer him up, but that what she is doing isn’t effective. However, Adam begins to reflect on what is important to him in life after going through chemotherapy. He is still friends with Kyle, and Kyle has his back the whole time, but it’s really hard for Kyle to see his friend going through this intense battle with illness. The scene where Kyle finds out that Adam’s girlfriend, Rachael, cheated on him was pretty sad, but it also showed me how hard it was for both Adam and Rachael when he found out he had cancer. They hadn’t had sex in several weeks and she felt like they were growing apart. She is late picking him up from the hospital one evening and she apologizes, but at this point he is too worn out to hear about her apologies. Kyle goes on a date and finds Rachael making out with another guy, and when Rachael comes home to Adam and pretends like nothing happened, Kyle comes in and tells Adam that Rachael is cheating on him. Rachael is at a loss of words, and Kyle kicks her out of the house. Rachael tries to come back, but Kyle tells Adam that she needs to leave and that they put her box of stuff outside the house. Rachael tries to reason with Adam that it’s been really hard for her lately and that no one picked up her art at her exhibition. At first, I thought Adam was going to feel sorry for her and want to get back together with her, but then Rachael starts kissing Adam and then he realizes that she cheated on him and he tells her to leave. Kyle then starts taking Adam to parties, celebrating his newly single status, and he tells Adam to use his cancer diagnosis as a tool to pick up girls, but it ends up not working out well. They go out with two girls, and one of them is curious about Adam’s cancer and asks if she could touch his bald head. He lets her, and they go home, but while Adam and the girl are having sex, Adam feels a lot of pain and is too tired from the chemotherapy to have sex, so the girl ends up leaving.

Adam’s cancer diagnosis gets him to start thinking seriously about what he wants out of life. In one hard-hitting scene, Kyle is drunk and wants to drive Adam home, but Adam insists on driving Kyle even though he neither knows how to drive nor has a driver’s license. Kyle at first doubts him, but then he lets him drive since Adam doesn’t have long to live. Adam almost gets them killed and almost hits other cars. Kyle finally has him pull over and shouts at him for his erratic driving and Adam has him get out of the car. Then Adam screams and then breaks down crying because he doesn’t have long to live, and nothing in his life is going as planned. He feels hopeless, but what helps is him calling Katherine to let her know that he is really not feeling okay. This was a total contrast to when he first met her because at first, when she tried to get him to open up, he didn’t want to talk about how he was feeling and insisted he was fine, even when he was going through a very intense chemotherapy process that made him feel like hell. But he realizes that it’s okay to reach out to people and admit that you aren’t okay. Katherine and Adam develop feelings for each other, and Adam begins to feel like he can trust her because she gives him space to feel what he is feeling. Adam also realizes that Kyle is also trying his best to support him because he goes back home and sees that Kyle has been reading a book called Facing Cancer Together, which shows that even though Adam thought Kyle was only focused on sleeping with women and getting high on weed with Adam, he really was doing his best to try and understand what Adam was going through and was willing to do the work needed to support Adam. I thought about this movie called Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which is about a young man in high school named Greg who doesn’t have a lot of close friends but ends up befriending a young woman named Rachel, who has leukemia. At first, she doesn’t want him around, but as the movie goes on, they develop a strong bond and he and his friend, Earl, support Rachel through her battle with leukemia. It was a pretty sad movie, but it reminded me that facing illness is a battle that you can’t fight alone. I thought about this chapter I read in a book called The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace by philosopher Daisaku Ikeda. The chapter “Facing Illness” talks about illness and death from a Buddhist perspective, and Ikeda says that “illness teaches us many things. It makes us look death in the face and think about the meaning of life. It makes us realize just how precious life is.” (p. 255) I haven’t battled cancer, but I have battled mental illness, specifically clinical depression, and honestly, depression really forced me to look at how I was living my life and got me to examine honestly how I wanted to live my life moving forward. I had thought that I was so useless, that my life had no value or meaning, but through getting professional treatment and engaging in my spiritual practice of Buddhism, I have learned that my life has so much profound meaning and that I can encourage others who are battling depression that it’s okay to ask for help. For so many years I was reluctant to see therapy, to get on medication, but I am realizing that those things are important to taking care of my mental health. In the book I highlighted this one quote in the chapter that really encouraged me: “Though one may be ill, this has no bearing on the inherent nobility, dignity and beauty of one’s life. Everyone, without exception, is an infinitely precious and noble treasure.” (The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace, part 1, revised edition, page 254) I had to read this quote often because having depression made me feel like my life was worthless, that I wasn’t going to be able to live my life because I have depression, but I learned that I’m not the only one struggling and that it’s okay to ask for help. I realized after a certain point that it wasn’t safe for me to continue tackling depression without seeking professional help, and that getting professional help or treatment didn’t make me weak. I love reading the “Facing Illness” chapter in the book because it reminds me that my life is still worthy of respect and valuable even though I have this depression that is telling me that my life doesn’t mean anything. It’s still a battle, but I am hoping to encourage more people through sharing about my mental health challenges more often.

Another part of 50/50 I liked was when Adam made friends in the hospital who were also battling cancer. The first time he meets Mitch and Alan, Alan offers Adam cannabis-laced macaroons and Adam eats a few, and he finds himself going down a hallway with this dazed look on his face and it seems like he is heaven, even as he passes all these people on stretchers and the nurses and doctors running through the halls on these stretchers. Adam looks back and then starts laughing, but then he snaps back to reality, and he is back at home throwing up in a toilet. He develops a great friendship with Mitch and Adam, but then when he finds Mitch is not with him and Alan, Alan tells him that Mitch died. It’s during this scene that Adam has to grapple with the reality that he is dealing with a life-threatening illness, and it makes him feel depressed and wondering why he is still living. Even though Kyle at the beginning was telling Adam, “Oh you’re young, you’ll be fine,” Adam realizes that he can’t take life for granted anymore because he only has a 50/50 chance of living. The pivotal scene comes when Adam and his parents are at the doctor after Adam has gone through chemotherapy, and they are hearing the news of whether the tumor has gotten less or worse. The doctor tells him that the cancer has gotten bad and that they need to do a surgery on Adam to get the tumor out, but that it’s a life-threatening surgery. Adam gets the surgery, and right before he goes in, his mom hugs him and doesn’t want to let him go, but the doctors pull her away and lead Adam into the surgery room. It was pretty painful to see Adam’s parents being unable to spend more time with their son before the surgery because they didn’t know whether he was going to come out alive after the life-threatening surgery. Thankfully, he survives, but that scene was pretty intense. It was easy for me to think that because I was young, I didn’t have to worry about illness and dying, and I thought very much like Kyle, this attitude of “Oh, you’re young, you’ll beat cancer.” But many of my close friends who were older passed away, and it really made me face my own mortality, the inevitable reality that someday I, too, was going to die, so I started to study more about the Buddhist perspective on life and death. Reading this philosophy made me want to take my life more seriously, and I started to get more serious about what goals and dreams I wanted to accomplish. I have started to appreciate my life on a much deeper level, too.

Movie Review: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

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

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

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

TV Show Episode Review: The Crown, season 6, episode 5 (“Willsmania”)

I took a break from watching The Crown for a while. I had finished part 1 of the last season and was just really saddened when Princess Diana (played by Elizabeth Debicki) dies in a car crash with her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed (played by Khalid Abdalla) while they are in Paris. I just didn’t think I would be able to continue to go on with the show after that part. But I decided I wanted to finish the series because it has been incredible to watch, and I wanted to know what happened next. I totally forgot that I had watched this episode, “Willsmania” before, but it was helpful to watch since it has been a few months since I finished part 1 of the final season. In this episode, Diana’s sons, William and Harry, are grappling with the death of their mother and the grief process. This episode mainly focuses on the grief that William is dealing with. Harry appears in a few scenes, but mostly this episode was focused on William. William finds himself studying extra hard and also missing the extracurricular activities he once did, and the headmaster checks in on him often. There was a scene in the episode where William finds two bags of letters in his dorm room. One bag has letters from fellow students at William’s school, and the other bag is full of letters from young people around the world, many of them teenage girls who have a crush on him. When William comes out of the car and the Royal Family is walking past the crowds, Queen Elizabeth is miffed when she finds that the crowds aren’t focused on her, but instead are focused on William. When William comes out, a bunch of girls scream and fangirl as he is walking. They are shaking and leaning over the fence and also crying, holding signs expressing their romantic feelings for Will. It was kind of a stressful scene to watch. To be honest, I probably would have been like those girls in the crowd, freaking out when I see a famous person walk by. But now that I am older, I realize that celebrities might not always want that public attention and that they just want to live life like normal human beings. William ends up throwing the letters from the girls because it is really overwhelming, and honestly, that is fair because he going through a lot of grief. He also harbors a lot of anger and resentment towards his father, Charles, because Charles had an affair with Camila while in his marriage to Diana. In one scene, Charles meets with William to patch things up, but while Charles walks on eggshells, William calls him out for not taking accountability for Diana’s death. Charles explains to him that he is going through his own grief and that he, too, is still grappling with Diana’s death. Philip, who is Charles’s dad, meets with William over chess and tells him that William isn’t actually angry at his dad, but that he is actually angry at his mom because she was comfortable in the public eye, and he is not comfortable with all the publicity around him. William ends up hugging his dad later on.

To be honest, I didn’t know much about William or Harry before watching The Crown, other than watching a clip from the royal wedding between Harry and Meghan Markle. I’m sure I learned about them in history class, but that was so long ago, and I haven’t kept up much with news about the royal family. However, I watched a documentary last year (I think it was last year) called Harry and Meghan, and it was pretty good. I know it left a lot of people divided and people had a variety of opinions about it, but I don’t know enough intimate details about Harry and Meghan other than what they covered in the documentary to give an in-depth critique about it.

Movie Review: Perfect Days

Last week, I watched a really good movie called Perfect Days. I didn’t know much about it, but my mom told me about it and so we watched it as a family. It’s a really touching film, and after watching a very intense film like Killers of the Flower Moon (great film, just couldn’t sleep for a few days after watching it) I needed a film that could let me go to sleep at night without getting nightmares. This film is about Hirayama, a man in Japan who cleans public toilets and gets great satisfaction from his work, even though few people are praising him for it. The film shows Hirayama waking up and spraying his plants with water, looking up at the sky with appreciation, getting his can of cold coffee from the vending machine, and driving to his job as a public toilet cleaner. We don’t know a lot about his personal life, like his past relationships, but seeing him go about his daily life reminded me why I need to continue having a morning routine. I loved Hirayama’s choice of music. Throughout the film, he puts on cassettes and listens to old hits like “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding, “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone and “Redondo Beach” by Patti Smith (I am not too familiar with Patti Smith’s music so listening to “Redondo Beach” was my first Patti Smith song.) He finds peace in his daily routine, and he takes his work seriously, regardless of whether people thank him or not. This film reminded me that there is intrinsic satisfaction in doing your best at work, even though it may not get a lot of praise, and it made me want to appreciate people who do these kinds of unseen jobs, such as in maintenance, retail and food service. Hirayama works with Takashi, a young man who doesn’t take his job seriously and is always goofing off with his friend or opening up about his girl problems to Hirayama. But Hirayama continues to take his work seriously. Honestly, I love the way that these public toilets operate, because the doors changed colors to show whether they were vacant or occupied. It was just kind of retro, speaking as someone who hasn’t been into a bathroom stall that changes colors.

I was really worried that Hirayama was going to have to sell his cassettes. As a 90s kid I remember listening to cassettes while my mom drove me to school, but ever since getting an iPod in middle school and then streaming music on YouTube, I had forgotten the lost art of listening to cassettes. And that there is a very specific way you have to take care of them so that the tape in the cassette doesn’t get tangled. Hirayama has a very specific way that he organizes his tapes, and he makes sure they are wound properly. He is also a voracious reader, and he is seen reading a book by William Faulkner. For some reason, I thought about Haruki Murakami’s writings because he sometimes references a lot of American literature and music in his books. I really like the scene where Aya, Takashi’s girlfriend, takes interest in one of Hirayama’s cassettes, a recording of Patti Smith’s “Redondo Beach.” One day, Takashi ends up driving Hirayama’s van to drop off Aya somewhere because his motorcycle is not working, and they listen to “Redondo Beach.” Aya falls in love with the song, and when Hirayama isn’t looking, takes the cassette with her. Later on, she returns it, but she doesn’t want to let it go because she really resonates with the song, so Hirayama lets her listen to it one last time. She probably didn’t grow up with cassettes and the kind of music that Hirayama listens to, and the song probably resonated with something personal in her life. I still listen to old hits from when I was a child because it brings back memories for me. There is just something about music that I cannot express in words to people; it allows me to express and feel emotions that I otherwise wouldn’t express in daily life.

This movie for some reason made me think of a movie I watched called Paterson. Paterson is a movie starring Adam Driver as a bus driver named Paterson, who lives in a city called Paterson in New Jersey. He works as a bus driver and is content with the work that he does, and in his spare time he writes poetry and spends time with his wife. Paterson doesn’t have a cell phone because he doesn’t feel he needs one, but there is a scene where his bus breaks down and he has to call for help, but he doesn’t have a cell phone, so he has to borrow someone’s cell phone to make the call. I remember throughout middle and high school I didn’t have a cell phone, so I would always call my parents using my teachers’ landline phones. One time in high school (this was ninth grade. I finally got a flip phone in sophomore year) there was inclement weather, and everyone had to go home, but I didn’t have a cell phone so that I could call my dad and have him pick me up, so I used my friend’s phone to call him. At the time I didn’t think I needed a cell phone, but nowadays it would be hard to not have a cell phone because I am in contact with so many people 24/7. I do look back on my flip phone days with fond memories, and now that I have used my smartphone for the past seven years I think I would need to go back to having more patience when using a flip phone because on a flip phone I had to take my time pushing the buttons while texting, because unlike a smartphone, where I can let my fingers fly across the keyboard and send a text message within six seconds, with the flip phone the numbers and letters would appear on the screen at a more leisurely pace, so I had to be patient and it would take a little longer to send that text message. Perfect Days reminded me of Paterson because both Hirayama and Paterson enjoy the seemingly ordinary and boring aspects of life and they have gratitude for each day. They are both introverted people who do jobs that the public takes for granted; for Hirayama, it is cleaning toilets, and for Paterson it is driving a bus. Both of them also love spending time in nature. Hirayama frequents a park where he eats his lunch; he doesn’t look at his cell phone, but instead enjoys the present moment. He uses an old-fashioned camera to take photos of the trees and he organizes the photos when he gets home. Paterson also likes to spend time in nature, and I think because he isn’t constantly checking his phone, he gets to be fully present in his interactions with people and while spending time in nature. While I appreciate having a smartphone, I am taking steps to be more mindful about how I use it. Anytime I face a stressful situation, the first thing I reach for is my phone and I end up scrolling on YouTube and the news because I want to distract myself from the stress that I feel. I don’t want to sit with my feelings; I want to run away from them, but the more I run away from them, the worse I feel. I think I need to be more like Hirayama and Paterson and live in the present moment.

Perfect Days also reminded me of another movie I saw called The Intern, which stars Robert de Niro and Anne Hathaway. Robert de Niro plays Ben, a widower who has hobbies but is looking for greater purpose in life after his wife’s death. While walking down the street, he finds an advertisement from a fashion company calling for applicants ages 60 and older to join their internship program. Ben is hired, but even though people are excited to see him the first day, when he meets his boss, Jules, she doesn’t give him any work to do. Jules isn’t great at working with older people, and most of the people working at the company are Millennials. However, rather than waiting for Jules to give him work, Ben decides to take initiative and starts finding creative ways to help around the office, like helping employees with carrying things or cleaning off a really cluttered area of the office that no one had time to clean. People at the office recognize Ben’s hard work and praise him, and he appreciates the praise, but he is also humble about it because he has been in the workforce for many years, so he knows it’s important to work hard whether you get recognition or not. At a crucial moment, Jules realizes that Ben is indispensable at the company. Ben looks out the window and finds that Jules’ driver is drinking, and so he approaches the driver and encourages him to call in sick. The driver takes Ben’s advice and tells Jules he can’t drive, which means Ben ends up driving her. Jules develops trust in Ben because he has shown that he can take initiative at work with minimal supervision, and he genuinely cares about creating value at the company, especially because several years ago, he started working in the same office that Jules is running her business in. The work he did was different, but he still has a fondness for the office. After watching The Intern and Perfect Days, it made me reflect on my attitude at work. When I first started working at my current company, I was training under a supervisor and I didn’t have any work coming in after finishing my assignments quickly, so I would often read my book. Some of the managers approached me and asked if I needed something to do, and finally after a few weeks, one of them gently told me, “You might not want to be reading, because it looks bad around here” and then she gave me work to do. However, at some point, I had to realize that I needed to learn to take responsibility on my own and not always wait for them to give me stuff to do, especially because they were busy with their own tasks and assignments. Sometimes I would think, Does this work matter even if I’m not receiving recognition for it all the time? But I think that is why chanting and studying the writings of my mentor, the late philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, helped because his writings encourage me to do my best every day. His mentor, Josei Toda, always used to say, “In faith[ our Buddhist practice] do the work of one. At your job, do the work of three.” There is also a quote from a letter in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin where Nichiren, a Buddhist reformer, is telling a follower “Regard your service to your lord as the practice of Lotus Sutra,” (“Reply to a Believer,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, p. 905), which means that we express actual proof of our Buddhist practice through working hard at our jobs. It can be hard to gain a sense of intrinsic motivation for doing something, especially since most of my life has revolved around receiving external praise, but over time I gained an intrinsic satisfaction whenever I did something at work and realized that my workplace is a place where I can do my absolute best. Of course, I still have challenges and there are definitely days when I lose motivation or don’t know what to do, but I chant the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo every day to do my best. And I am becoming more serious about my writing and my cello playing, because that is what I love to do in my spare time, so even when the work I do seems tedious, I appreciate that I have a stable day job so that I can do what I love in my spare time.

Honestly, this film reminded me to have appreciation for each day. It’s easy for me to be impatient and think, Gosh, why don’t I have the apartment I want? Why don’t I have a boyfriend yet? Why am I so miserable? I tend to be really impatient, and it’s often easy for me to think I will be sad and miserable forever when things don’t go my way. But it’s easy to forget that I am still alive, and that life goes fast, and that I need to enjoy each moment of it so that I don’t lie on my death bed wondering, Geez LOUISE. Where did the time go? It is easy to forget sometimes because I get so caught up in the stress of daily life that I often forget to have gratitude, but I’ve been lately writing down on Post It notes small things that I am grateful for, even if it just being alive. I want to know when I die that I lived the best life possible. Watching a film like Perfect Days reminded me that it’s important to enjoy the ordinary things in life that I often take for granted.

Perfect Days. 2023. Directed by Wim Wenders. Running time: 2 hours and 4 minutes. Rated PG for some language, partial nudity and smoking.

Movie Review: The Zone of Interest

I just finished watching The Zone of Interest. It made my skin crawl by the end. I saw the trailer for the film a few months ago, and because I love A24 films (this one is from A24) I wanted to see it. It also won for Best International Feature and Best Sound at the Academy Awards and so I thought, Wow, this must have been a really powerful film. And it was. I have not read the book by Martin Amis but after watching this movie I want to.

I streamed the film on my laptop, and the first three minutes of the film, I didn’t know if my screen was black on purpose or if there was a technical glitch but then I realized it was on purpose. The film opens with very ominous somber music, and I guess it was to prepare me for the disturbing horrors that I was going to sit through and watch for the next hour and a half. Honestly, I can see why this movie won for Best Sound at the Academy Awards. It’s not like other films I have seen. Most of the films I watch have big loud scores or lots of soundtrack music and are also heavy on dialogue. I got pretty distracted at the beginning, to be honest, but I think when I could sit with the silence throughout this movie, I was able to appreciate the unique way it was filmed. It required patience because there wasn’t a lot going on at first, but as the film gradually went on, my blood started to curdle as it became more evident that this was not going to be a comfortable film to watch. Because the film is focused on the Hoss family’s life and them going about the day-to-day, it was easy for me to forget that these people didn’t actually live normal lives. The seemingly calm blissful shots of Hedwig tending to her garden or her children playing in the pool are unsettling, because against the backdrop of these fun and games is the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The film does not show the Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz being killed or gassed on-screen; however, the atrocities and the genocide of these prisoners is very much on-screen in a way. They just show the atrocities through sound. You may not see the atrocities, but you can hear the screaming, the beatings and the other atrocities that the Nazis put the Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz through. Even in the seemingly quiet moments, it feels disturbing when you consider the overall theme (aka that this family is raising their kids right next to a concentration camp.) The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp is always in the background, and I think that is gave me goosebumps throughout the film. The coldness and apathy with which the Hoss family regards the genocide of the people in Auschwitz haunted me. The film does show Rudolf, who is this Nazi officer, as an everyday human being who, like a lot of people, had a wife and kids who he loved, but also, the film shows that at the end of the day, he and the other Nazis were still responsible for the horrors they committed at Auschwitz, and no amount of seeing him put his kids to bed or eating dinner with his family was going to take away this disturbing fact.

It was also interesting because in many of the films I have watched about the Holocaust, they focus on the men who perpetrated these crimes. However, Hedwig is just as accountable for these atrocities as her husband. In one scene, she is telling her mother that people are now calling her the “queen of Auschwitz.” It reminded me of the film 12 Years a Slave, because Master Epps’s wife inflicted cruelty on the slaves and especially an enslaved woman named Patsy. Epps frequently rapes Patsy, and Mistress Epps frequently makes Patsy a target of her violence. While studying about U.S. slavery, it seemed that the perpetrators of this cruelty were all men, but after watching 12 Years a Slave it showed me that the wives of these slaveowners were just as bad as their husbands in inflicting cruelty on the slaves. In The Zone of Interest, Hedwig finds out that her husband has to move to Germany because he has been promoted to deputy inspector of the concentration camps, and she tells him she can’t move the family because they have such a comfortable life there. Honestly, it was disturbing that this woman wanted to still let her kids live next to a place where fellow humans being were being murdered. Jewish people aren’t the main characters in the film, but they appear whenever they are bringing things to the house and Hedwig and her family act like these people don’t exist. There is one scene that I won’t forget, and it’s when one of the prisoners at Auschwitz brings a bag of clothes that the Jewish people in Auschwitz once wore. Hedwig tries on a fur coat that belonged to a Jewish woman, and she is looking in the mirror at herself and then she finds lipstick in the woman’s coat and tries it on. It seems so banal, so ordinary, seeing this woman trying on clothing, until I remembered that this coat once belonged to another human being who, unlike Hedwig, didn’t get to live and enjoy her life because she was murdered in Auschwitz. The movie showed the horrors of the Holocaust through silence and a lack of dialogue. I watched The Pianist a couple of years ago, and it shows onscreen the violence that the Nazis committed against the Jewish people. The Zone of Interest showed the violence of the Holocaust, but in a different way. I saw silent shots of Auschwitz in the background, while Hedwig and Rudolf act like it’s perfectly normal to live next to a site where people were being gassed and tortured in the cruelest ways. But as the viewer, I know that it’s not normal. In fact, it’s horrific. This film showed me that silence in the case of human rights abuses only perpetuates more violence. It was also disturbing to know that their kids grew up thinking this kind of life was normal (later on, one of the children joins the Hitler Youth.) Children’s brains aren’t fully formed, and so they grow up believing this propaganda and misinformation is the truth. The adults indoctrinate them and in the long run, dehumanize and desensitize these children to this violence, and throughout the film Hedwig and Rudolf go to great lengths to shield their children from these horrors that are happening behind-the-scenes. In one scene, Rudolf goes swimming with his kids, and they are playing in the water, but then Rudolf finds the human remains and ash (I’m guessing they are remains of prisoners at Auschwitz) in the water, and he tells his kids to get out. The women who work for Hedwig and Rudolf have to wash the kids’ bodies of this ash, showing how they didn’t want the kids to learn about the horrors that were happening right next door to them while they continued to play and enjoy their childhood. Over the fence, right next door, there were children in Auschwitz who once lived normal happy lives like Hedwig’s kids but unlike Hedwig’s kids, they never got another chance to experience their childhood because of the horrors they went through in Auschwitz.

I think that is why Jojo Rabbit’s message was hopeful because Jojo overcame his ignorance when he actually got to know Elsa, and he learned that his ideas about Jewish people were misguided. When he saw Elsa’s humanity, he realized he didn’t need to follow Hitler anymore. However, as much as I loved watching Jojo Rabbit, I had to understand that it was a fictional movie that intended to incorporate humor even with its serious subject matter (Taika Waititi plays a cartoonish version of Adolf Hitler), and that a film like The Zone of Interest wasn’t meant to be charming or funny. The Zone of Interest showed the coldness and apathy with which people treated the Holocaust, and there was no happy ending, as the final shot of the film showed. However, there was a moment of hope later on in the film. At first, I didn’t know what was happening, but there are several shots of a Polish girl leaving food at the work sites of the Jewish prisoners, which is the rare moment in the film that shows that there were people who cared and wanted to help the prisoners. I remember the director, Jonathan Glazer, mentioned this woman in his acceptance speech, but I didn’t know much about her until I looked her up. The Polish girl was inspired by a real woman who left apples for the prisoners at Auschwitz (this Wikipedia article talks more about her story.) They used a different camera to shoot these scenes with the girl so that it looked like she was glowing in the dark during the film, and during his speech, Glazer mentioned the woman who inspired the girl in the film, Aleksandra Bystron-Kolodziejczyk, “glows in the film as she did in real life.” I think shooting the scenes with girl with a thermographic camera gave her an angelic quality to kind of show that her scenes were the rare moments of humanity and hope in an otherwise matter-of-fact bleak movie about how people dehumanize other people.

And this film reminded me why education about genocide, slavery and other human rights abuses is so important, and that is why during the last scene, which takes place at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, my skin crawled with goosebumps. They didn’t even have to say anything at the end for me to know what this film was trying to communicate to me. It communicated to me that we need to study history and have these museums so that people like me can be aware and learn about these horrific crimes, because history repeats itself far too often. My blood ran cold when Rudolf and the other Nazi officers are talking about their plans to build gas chambers and crematoriums, and the cold distance with which they talk about these horrors is beyond horrific. They treat it like it’s their normal everyday job to commit mass genocide. It reminded me of when I watched Killers of the Flower Moon. As someone with only a textbook understanding about Indigenous history, watching the film was chilling and dark in how it showed the cold and calculating nature with which these white people carried out the mass murders of the Osage people. There is a scene in which Ernest tells his uncle, William “Bill” Hale, that he is going to testify against him, and Hale tells him that people are going to forget about the Osage murders and in another scene, he referred to what he was doing to the Osage people as a “death business.” The word “business” sounds transactional, and it reminded me of the dehumanization and desensitization that went into committing these murders. Ernest kept telling Mollie he loved her and that he wanted to be with her and their kids, but he poisoned her and also killed her family members, so it was no surprise that she had to get away from him, no matter how much he wanted to stay married to her. I didn’t know much about the Osage murders before watching the movie, but seeing onscreen the brutal ways these white men carried out the murders made my stomach churn, and it also made me angry, sad and deeply pained. At the end of The Zone of Interest, seeing the display windows with the mass piles of shoes and other remains of the Jewish prisoners chilled my blood and reminded me that studying history in the present is of the utmost importance because forgetting the past only perpetuates this kind of inhumane violence.

The Zone of Interest. 2023. 1 hour and 45 min. Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Rated PG-13 for thematic material, some suggestive material and smoking.

Succession, season 3, episode 7: Too Much Birthday

In this episode, Kendall is putting together his 40th birthday bash, and he does everything he can to make it glamorous so he can rub it in his family’s face. At the beginning, he sings (I really loved Jeremy Strong’s singing voice in this scene. It was really good!) and Naomi loves it. Kendall is really pumped about this party, but then his siblings, Shiv, Roman and Connor, crash the party and insult him with lots of mean words.

I really love the part where Greg asks Comfrey, Kendall’s assistant, out on a date. When he tells Tom he wants to ask Comfrey out, Tom laughs and tells Greg that Comfrey is out of his league, so he shouldn’t even bother trying. However, Greg has a measure of self-confidence and is persistent in asking Comfrey out. The first time, it doesn’t work and he doesn’t have the confidence to ask her out, and she walks away when he tries to imply that he likes her and wants to go out with her (as someone who is awkward and introverted, I could really resonate with this situation.) Comfrey is busy on her phone dealing with Kendall’s stuff, so she doesn’t have time to talk to Greg. Greg approaches Kendall when Kendall is riding the elevator down, and he asks Kendall if he thinks Greg should ask Comfrey out. Kendall tells him to stay away from Comfrey because she is out of his league, but then Greg says that he doesn’t think that is the case and that he has a chance with Comfrey. Kendall is dealing with his own stuff, though, so it’s the last thing he wants to think about. Unfortunately, he insults Greg and calls him a loser (he calls him worse than a loser), leaving Greg feeling disrespected. However, I think Greg’s optimism paid off because he ends up approaching Comfrey again and finally asks her out. Comfrey at this point is fed up with Kendall bossing her around and making unreasonable demands, and she tells him she had to sort something of Kendall’s (I think it was a bunch of lunchboxes) and so she tells Greg he should just ask her out. I thought it was sweet when Greg asked her out, and I was honestly like, “Oh my goshhhh, Greg!!!” Just gushing with love.

There is a scene where Kendall meets at the bar with his ex-wife, Rava, and he asks her how she likes the party. Her reaction is lukewarm, which isn’t the response he wanted because he wanted her to be dazzled. He jokes that her idea of a birthday party is too laid-back compared to his, but Raya says she is fine having a laid-back birthday celebration. Kendall wants to see Raya again, but Raya wants to move on from their marriage because she wants Kendall to get his stuff together. Kendall’s battle with addiction is a huge theme throughout the show, and no one seems to support him in his battle with addiction. His father insults him, and Shiv decides to post a letter detailing his addiction struggles on the Internet, prompting Kendall to isolate himself from others. Raya asks Kendall if he received a present that his kids, Iverson and Sophie, sent him. Kendall received a lot of presents and was too busy worrying about his business with Roman and Shiv and keeping everyone entertained (unfortunately, few people were enjoying the party), so he didn’t notice. But he promises Rava that he will check to see if he got their present. He goes downstairs, and Naomi helps him go through the huge pile of presents that people left for him, and he ends up getting really stressed out about not finding the present. Naomi tells him to take a break and shows him a present that she got him. The gift turns out to be a watch, but Kendall isn’t impressed. He tells her he likes the gift, but that he already has a watch. This leaves Naomi feeling hurt and she berates herself for giving him that gift, saying it was a stupid gift to give him. He tries to hug her, but she tells him it’s fine. He goes through all the presents and throws them all around because he cannot find the gift his kids sent him, and Naomi begs him to calm down. He finally calms down and says he needs to go home.

There is another scene where Greg and Tom are going through a maze where random people give you compliments, like “You are amazing” and “Keep doing you.” I can’t remember if that is exactly what they said, but all I know is that they were positive affirmations. Honestly, this was one of the few times in the show where I heard genuine affirmations of respect and love, because the rest of the show involves tearing people down and talking poorly about them. Greg accepts these compliments in a genuine way, but Tom thinks that the guy who tells him he is awesome is just joking and not serious, so he tells the guy to fuck off and gets upset with him. Greg has to restrain Tom and tell the guy that Tom didn’t mean to hurt him. Greg is also just really happy that Comfrey accepted him asking her out, but Tom is angry and tells Greg that it’s not okay that Greg is happy while Tom is unhappy. Tom is not happy in his marriage to Shiv; she is still on contraception even though he really wants to have a baby with her. He is also still in hot water about prison even though he found out during his meeting with Logan that he probably won’t go to prison. Earlier in the episode, when Tom finds out he is not going to prison he is over the moon, and he goes into Greg’s office and upturns his desk, throwing Greg’s stuff everywhere and screaming in joy, which scares Greg and prompts him to back into a corner. Tom then tells him that he and Greg are not going to prison, and then he kisses a reasonably freaked-out Greg on the forehead. A couple of Waystar employees walk past him, giving him side-eyes like, “What is the deal with this white boy’s office? It’s a mess.” Greg assures them nervously that he was celebrating some good news, and they just walk away, leaving Greg to clean up his mess and lift the heavy table back to its regular position, knocking himself backwards.

I think seeing Tom’s anger and jealousy of Greg’s happiness from a Buddhist perspective helped because in the Buddhism I practice, we talk about joy for self and others, which means not only that we become happy through our Buddhist practice, but we also help others around us become happy as well. I have been struggling a lot with comparing my happiness with my friends’ happiness and I begin to think my life is less fun than theirs is, which is why I had to take a break from Facebook for a while because I was comparing my life to my friends (I understand that many people don’t struggle with self-esteem issues when using the site, but from my personal experience, I found it really hard to be happy for my friends when they posted photos of themselves getting married and starting families or getting into graduate programs, and I found it hard to feel happy for them because I wasn’t happy with my own life. I thought that if I just didn’t have any problems, I could finally feel good about my life, but practicing Buddhism has taught me that problems are a chance to grow and become a better person, and through practicing Buddhism I have learned my happiness can’t just exist by itself, but it must exist in cooperation with other people’s happiness. I’m not saying it is easy, but I think practicing Buddhism has helped me create my own happiness in the present so that I don’t feel like I need to seek it in some distant future. Tom showed me this concept in Buddhism called the life state of anger, or asuras, which is a life condition where people think they are superior to others. There is a really good book called The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra by Daisaku Ikeda, and he breaks down the concept of the Ten Worlds in Buddhism, which are ten states of life that anyone can experience at any moment. The lower six paths consist of hell, hunger, animality, anger (asuras), humanity and heaven. They are life conditions we experience in reaction to our environment. Ikeda talks about how arrogant people outwardly make look humble or fawning, but deep down they think they are better than others and they don’t want to admit that there are other people who are better than they are. Tom sucks up to Logan and acts like a humble servant, but in private he manipulates and disrespects Greg. However, a lot of his bullying towards Greg comes from deep insecurities he has about himself. As someone who has wrestled with my own arrogance and thinking that I am superior to others, it has taken a lot of Buddhist faith, practice and study for me to see that I have strengths, but I also have weaknesses and I’m not perfect. It was easy for me to be fawning towards people in higher positions than me, but I secretly thought I was better than others. During sex, Shiv tells Tom that she doesn’t really love him as deeply as she thinks he does, and that she is out of his league. Shiv thinks she is superior to Tom, and Tom just fawns towards her because he fears losing her, even though deep down he feels a lot of resentment and low self-esteem when she ridicules him or manipulates him in some way. So Tom has to take his frustration out on Greg to make himself feel that sense of superiority. Tom puts down Greg by telling him he has a small dick while he, Tom, is epic in bed, and Greg nervously tells him to prove it, but Tom ignores him. Again, it is still amazing to me how Tom can be so terrible to Greg but also in the presence of Logan and Shiv, he becomes fawning and servile.

When Shiv, Roman and Connor enter the party, the host asks them to take off their jackets, but the Roys decline and push through security to go inside the party. Kendall really livened up the party by having a big sign outside the building reading “The Notorious Ken– Ready to Die” as an imitation of rapper The Notorious B.I.G.’s album Ready to Die. Kendall wants to rub his success in his family’s face after they kick him out of the family for going against Waystar and working to leak the allegations against Waystar of corruption and sexual abuse. He has them go through an entrance that is pink, and is modeled after his mother’s vagina, and his siblings find it over the top and disgusting. They confront Kendall and the four of them exchange insults and tell him his party is absurd and no one is going to like it. Logan sends Kendall a birthday card, and I didn’t expect him to write a nice message because Logan hates Kendall for trying to bring down Waystar-Royco, so when Kendall reads the card, it reads “Cash Out and Fuck Off.” Shiv and Roman try to enter the treehouse because they want to meet a shareholder named Lukas Mattson, who they want Logan to negotiate a deal with (at the beginning, Logan arranges to meet with Mattson but Mattson flakes out at the last minute), but Kendall refuses to let them enter the treehouse because they refused to join him in taking down their father and insulted him so many times. Roman and Shiv try to push past, but with no success. Shiv finally gives up, and goes to the bar to get hammered and then dances like there is no tomorrow on the dance floor because she has to get out all of her frustration towards Kendall. I don’t blame her. I dance a lot to get out my stress as well. Roman ends up going in the tree house and meeting with Mattson, and Roman tries to convince him that he should negotiate a deal with Logan because Waystar’s stock is tanking and they want to acquire a streaming service called GoJo. Mattson, however, flaked out on his meeting with Logan because he doesn’t like him and he is doubtful about Logan’s potential because Logan is old and close to death. Roman tries to sidestep the question about when he thinks Logan is going to die, and tries to convince Mattson that they really need to acquire this company. He and Mattson go into the urinal and Roman convinces Mattson to urinate on his phone because the game he is playing is still loading and going slow. Mattson agrees to the deal, but in the next episode, I found out that deal wasn’t going to be as easy to negotiate as Roman thought.

When Naomi is leading Kendall on his way home, Roman insults him and Kendall insults him right back. Naomi tells them to leave him alone, but Roman thinks he is ready to pick a fight with Kendall, so he makes a lot of insulting comments towards him, and Kendall leaves, trying to ignore him. Roman trips him and starts laughing at him, and Shiv calls out Roman for being immature and doing that to Kendall. Roman really struggles to respect people’s boundaries, and he reveals that Waystar has been harassing Rava and her and Kendall’s children. Even Shiv thinks that is a boundary Roman should not have crossed. Don’t get me wrong, Shiv still hates Kendall for turning against the family, but even she thinks that what Roman did was carried away. Kendall ends up going home, and Naomi cuddles him while he rests in a warm blanket, feeling hopeless. He had this big birthday party and just wanted to feel good about what he was going, but he feels that his siblings ruined it.

I was in a discussion meeting today and we talked about the Buddhist concept of the Ten Worlds, and we specifically talked about the world of insatiable desires, of hunger. The life condition of hunger is one of constant craving, and desire, according to Buddhism, is neither good nor bad, but if we are controlled by those desires, they can become a source of suffering because there is no limit to our desires but there is only so much one can have. Kendall thought the night was going to be fantastic and he made it super expensive, but at the end of the day, what saddened him was that he didn’t get his siblings’ approval and they weren’t fazed when he tried to rub his success in their faces. Even when Naomi gave him a watch, he wasn’t happy with the gift because he already got an expensive fancy watch. He is supposed to give this elaborate performance at the end, but he ends up backing out because he is emotionally overwhelmed by everything going on at the party. His assistants are actually relieved that he backed out of this one because they were already feeling overwhelmed by his wild requests and demands. I was reading on the Wikipedia page about the episode, and I didn’t know this, but the title “Too Much Birthday” comes from a Berenstain Bears book titled Too Much Birthday. It has been a long time since I read The Berenstain Bears, so I didn’t catch the reference until reading about it, but I remember devouring those books as a child, so it was pretty cool how they incorporated that reference in there.

Succession Season 3, episode 4

I am just going to be talking about a few scenes in this episode. This is just a rough draft.

Gregory goes to see Logan and he greets Logan with a hearty good morning. Logan offers him something to drink and Gregory has this confused look on his face and asks Logan if he means an alcoholic drink. Gregory asks for a rum and coke, but he is at first joking around, but Logan takes him seriously and asks Kerry, his assistant, to bring him a rum and coke. Gregory says that Kerry doesn’t have to do that, but Logan says “What Greg wants, Greg must have.” Greg is very nervous throughout his discussion with Logan because Logan is an intimidating man, and Gregory is in hot water because Kendall went against the Roy family and talked about a lot of corrupt practices that the company did for many years. Gregory still works for Logan, so Logan has Gregory sign a non-disclosure agreement, but Gregory wants to know what is in it for him. Logan tells him that is not how things work with him, and so he makes Gregory sign the agreement. The scene where Greg wonders if Logan means to offer him alcohol reminded me of the scene in Mean Girls, where Cady Heron goes to Regina George’s house for the first time, and Regina’s mom, who is a permissive parent who lets her daughter do whatever she wants, brings them drinks. Cady asks Regina’s mom if there is alcohol in the drinks, and Regina’s mom tells her “Oh, honey, no! What kind of mother do you think I am?” But she tells Cady that if she wants alcohol, she has it in the house and Cady is welcome to it, but Cady politely declines. Greg reminds me of Cady before she became a Mean Girl because he is polite and awkward. They both remind me of me when I was growing up because I am awkward and introverted, and I remember people would always joke that I was too polite.

There is another scene where Tom approaches Greg in Greg’s office about how he, Tom, might go to jail. Greg is excited because he might be transferring to another department, the Parks division. Tom is not happy for Greg because all he can think about is his lawyer telling him, Tom, that he might go to jail after he testified for Congress about the Cruise documents. Tom tries to beat up on Greg and starts hitting him and telling Greg to fight him, but Greg tells him to stop hitting him and that he doesn’t want to fight. Tom and Greg have a very toxic relationship. I wouldn’t even call it a friendship because Greg just tries to do whatever Tom says because Tom intimidates him. I really do love the acting between these two characters. Somehow Greg’s office got cleaned up pretty quickly. At the beginning, Tom offers Greg the office and it is very unkempt and messy and there is stuff everywhere, and there is no room for Greg to have a space to work. But by the time Tom comes back, he sees that Greg has a desk and space to work, and there is a basket of large croissants and other pastries on the desk. Honestly, those pastries looked delicious. I am vegan but I would have loved to enjoy a pastry or two with Greg and Tom at the moment.

There is another scene where Logan gets heat exhaustion. He, Josh and Kendall are talking about the shareholder deal with Josh, who is a major investor (I was really pumped to see Adrien Brody playing Josh’s character because I loved his work in Cadillac Records, The Pianist and The Grand Budapest Hotel), but Logan has health problems and can’t walk that far, and Josh is taking them on the hike way too far. Logan refuses help when Kendall offers to call a doctor, but then he starts vomiting on the side of the road and then has a heart attack, prompting Josh and Kendall to get him to a doctor immediately. Kendall asks Josh about the deal, but Josh thinks Kendall should focus on taking care of his dad. Roman tells Kendall that Josh pulled out of the deal because Logan’s heart attack scared him.

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.