Not Really Taking "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three"

Hihi,

One of the ways I'm clearly coping with/utilizing the ever-shortening time before Second Child is born is by writing.  I've been really glad to be able to dedicate some time to this every day for the last few days.  It's satisfying to start the year not only with several movies watched, but also with several entries written.  As my due date grows very near, it's possible that this is the last entry I'll be able to write before my new Child arrives, but of course at this point nothing is certain; if I can write more, great, if I don't obviously that's fine as well--I'll do my best to find time here and there to write once they're here.

I've watched a couple of movies throughout my pregnancy (including, for example, re-watched Martin Scorsese's "GoodFellas" (1990)) that have prompted my Husband to declare that I am experiencing what he terms "pregnancy bloodlust".  I have no explanation for this trend, although I'm sure Freud would have a squeamish-cluelessness-about-women-induced field day with it.  In any case, the most recent movie I watched to fit this pattern is "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974).

I chose "Pelham" because I was in the mood for a heist movie, which is a genre I've come to enjoy more especially since "Logan Lucky" (2017) and "Hell or High Water" (2016) demonstrated just how good these films can be.  In addition, I was guided to this film by: 

• this list of the best heist movies, which listed the movie as #1,
• my occasionally resurgent film student-y instincts to watch the "classics" (and by "film student" I mean "I took like 3 film classes in undergrad"), and 
• its setting in assuredly classically gritty 1970s New York City (and my itch to chase, for example, "Dog Day Afternoon" (1974)).

With those criteria satisfied, this film seemed like a great option.

And here's the thing: Somewhat paradoxically, I've glad I watched this movie because it generally satisfied the rationale I just stated, and I also didn't think it was all that great.

Firstly, perhaps surprisingly, I didn't feel myself drawn into the potential thrill of the claustrophobic set-up of a bunch of innocent bystanders held captive by a coordinated team of thieves in the belly of New York's subway.  This might have been enhanced if the film had spent more time rounding out the characters trapped in the subway car while the clock ticked away on the thieves' ultimatum to the city to pay up or face their bloody consequences; instead, unfortunately, the captives were reduced to a variety of tropes likely meant to satisfy a contemporary audience's assumptions about the riffraff and non-English speakers who occupied New York City.

And that of course brings me to my second complaint: I know that I'm likely signing up for this when I watch a movie from this era, but I still feel affronted, annoyed, and puzzled by how compulsively so many movies from the '70s flesh out their dialogue with needless racism, homophobia, and sexism.  It is so grating, and on so many levels it pisses me off.  It pisses me off that casually expressing those kinds of attitudes in film was so acceptable and commonplace, that filmmakers were fine with only making movies for other straight white men and alienating and oppressing anybody else (and that the filmmaking industry was almost exclusively populated only by straight white men during this era and so much of the industry's history), and that screenwriters and everyone else involved in making movies during this period couldn't figure out another way to tell stories and add "color" to their scripts than relying on idle racist, homophobic, and sexist chatter often propped up by lazy stereotypes of the groups their language oppressed.

This pattern was persistent enough through "Pelham" that it watching it felt more akin to the much less satisfying for similar reasons "The French Connection" (1971) than 1974's "Dog Day Afternoon".  "The French Connection" sticks to rote centering of straight white dudes whose talk is peppered with the same kinds of oppressive talk as "Pelham" as it trails Gene Hackman's Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle's pursuit of heroin smugglers (although to be fair it does include that wild car chase).  Alternatively, "Dog Day Afternoon" tells the story of a heist conducted so one of the men involved can pay for gender affirming surgery for his partner, and is electrified by Al Pacino's intense and frenetic star performance as Sonny Wortzik.  The existence of this latter film proves that it was possible to make a somewhat more inclusive and therefore interesting heist movie in 1970s New York... not to mention that it is completely unsurprising that I apparently find it way more interesting when heist movies focus on the thieves and not law enforcement.

With all this taken into consideration, in rating this movie I balanced these considerations against the particular satisfaction I take in at least watching another film that further deepens my understanding of the history of American cinema, and especially a movie that gives me the opportunity to spend some time in a city I love even if it's not cast in a particularly flattering light.  I gave "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" a 3.

{Heart}

Take a Trip Back in Time to "The Automat"

Hello again everyone,

Let's talk about another movie I watched recently!

If you're in the market for a pleasant, engrossing, yet relatively low-stakes documentary, might I suggest:

The Automat (2021)

It might be hard to imagine that a feature-length movie on what appears to be a primordial and now-defunct fast food restaurant could truly be entertaining, but director Lisa Hurwitz delivers an extremely effective, comprehensive, and enjoyable film about a bygone and largely forgotten institution of a restaurant.  Located only in New York City and Philadelphia, Horn and Hardart's Automat restaurants were revolutionary for their time on many fronts; in fact, we learn from "The Automat" that the gleaming little nickel-operated doors unleashing treats upon the eager public were only the tip of the innovation iceberg for the chain.

First of all, to view automats as an early version of fast food restaurants is evidently a major mischaracterization that genuinely misses some of what made these eateries remarkable.  To start, the original restaurants were GORGEOUS, with gleaming marble and metal fixtures, high ceilings, and art deco decor.

Second, as essentially every talking head in the documentary enthusiastically attests, the food and coffee were apparently delicious, made from real ingredients well before the advent of food so chemically altered as to be unrecognizable.

But perhaps the most lovely aspect of automats was their commitment--with evident follow-through--to serving everyone, regardless of race, sex, or socioeconomic class.  The beautiful interiors and high quality food at a Horn and Hardart attracted, it seems, everyone, and because of the affordability of the offerings everyone could actually afford to dine there.  But beyond that, the chain had a stated aim to welcome everyone; patrons even shared tables with strangers during busy times, and no one was to be hustled or harassed out of the restaurant even if they lingered for hours.

As the film charts the rise and decline of Horn and Hardart over almost the entirety of the 1900s, the sincere affection expressed for the restaurants by the often very famous people interviewed (including Mel Brooks, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Colin Powell) invites the audience to join in gentle, wistful nostalgia for a dining experience we may never have shared ourselves.  It's a remarkable accomplishment for a documentary that, at first glance, was just about a humble restaurant from the past.

I gave this movie a 4.  You can learn more about it here, or stream it on HBO Max.

{Heart}

Adventuring Back into the World with "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"

Oh hello!

I mentioned in my recent resolutions post that I've happily already had the pleasure of watching a bunch of movies in 2023.  I'd love to write a few posts about some of those movies before new Child is here, so to start let's talk about one of them!

Yesterday I went back to a movie theater for the first time since the pandemic began.  It was at once such an everyday-seeming thing and also an incredibly meaningful thing, especially since I was able to go to one of my two favorite local theaters.  

This is one of the two theaters from which I bought movie tickets the day the local COVID-19 shutdowns began because I foresaw the possibility that the shutdowns would be much longer than the initially projected two weeks, and I was terrified those beloved theaters would close down for good.  Of course one or two extra tickets sold wouldn't make a life-or-death difference for a movie theater, but these institutions are so precious to me and I wanted them to know that their patrons would look out for them as best they could.  And here this theater is, having survived.

And what fine cinematic masterwork did I choose for my first foray back into the movie-watching public?

None other than:

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

When deciding what to see, there were three factors I considered:

1. Was the movie playing at one of the two aforementioned theaters? 
2. Was the movie playing at a time that accommodated my dog's grooming appointment?
3. Was it a movie I was in the mood to see given the extremely close proximity to my forthcoming Child's birth?

I've essentially already explained why criterion 1 was important: After almost three full years of longing to return to movie theaters, of course I would want to go to one of my two favorites.

The second was simple practicality: In addition to partaking in cinema, yesterday was the grand crescendo of our nesting-induced cleaning of all the things, which included orchestrating a simultaneous professional deep clean of our house and professional deep clean (aka grooming with deshedding) of our beloved dog.

Care of Hyperbole and a Half

Everything is now SPARKLING.

And finally, the third criterion speaks to the fact that while there are movies currently out that I would be very tempted to see under different circumstances, I didn't want to risk putting myself in a weird emotional headspace *right* before having a baby.

So I saw "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish", because it checked those three boxes, had such remarkably high ratings that it was almost perplexing, and had been affirmed to be a good movie by a friend.

And: I thought it was delightful!  It's funny and charming, and the vocal performances are very well-delivered.  The animation overall is really great, including action sequences have an appealingly slightly herky-jerky comic book feel to them reminiscent of sequences in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" (2018).  The movie has overall sweet and healthy messages about the importance of friendship and chosen family, trust, and overcoming fears.  The cast is diverse and the script incorporates a decent amount of Spanish, and that inclusivity further enhances the story.  The film is paced well and packs in lots of fun twists and turns for its relatively brief (and therefore both child-friendly and punctually-picking-up-dog-from-groomer-compatible) runtime of 1 hours and 42 minutes.

I should also probably note that I haven't been a dedicated viewer of movies in the "Shrek" (2001) franchise, having only seen the first and second (2004) movies, so it's perfectly possible that my relative naiveté about these movies influences how I experienced this one.  I almost certainly missed allusions to events in the previous Puss in Boots movies (2011 and 2012), for example.

I have only two complaints with the latest "Puss in Boots": First, it's a bit scary for children.  The premise of this film is that Antonio Banderas's titular Puss is down to the last of his nine lives, and is being actively pursued by Wagner Moura's bounty hunter (or is he?) Big Bad Wolf.  In stark contrast to his typical bravado, Puss experiences these encounters with sheer and palpable terror.  These moments are very effective for their drama and emotional impact, but so much so that I would be concerned about very little kids watching this movie.

My second complaint is an age-old pet peeve of mine about children's movies that make jokes that are not intended to be understood by or appropriate for children.  I'm remembering this was a factor that irritated me about the original "Shrek", so I'm not surprised that this trend continues to some extent in the franchise's newest chapter.  To be fair, there aren't a ton of these kinds of jokes in "The Last Wish" (there are a few bleepings of the business end of the term "bullshit", for example), but to me these moments always beg the question of why?  Why can't you just write jokes that everyone in the audience can enjoy, especially when you are explicitly making a children's movie?  To do otherwise just seems cheap, lazy, and a bit mean-spirited or disrespectful toward kids--the film equivalent of clapping your hands over a child's ears so they can't hear a spicy segment of a conversation between adults.  Who wants that when you're watching a movie that's supposed to be for you?

All that said, this was overall a very successful and charming movie, and I'm glad it was a part of my post-pandemic transition more fully into the world.  I gave the film a 4.

{Heart}

Closing 2022: Resolutions Edition

Hi team,

As time grows (very) short between the now-times and the after-Second-Child-is-here-times, I'm feeling increasingly eager and anxious to write.  Driven by that energy, let's check in with how I did with last year's annual resolutions and set some goals for 2023. 

Last year's resolutions were:

1. Practice and maintain healthy boundaries.

2. Meditate most days.

3. Write at least twice a month.

4. Watch 52 movies.

And here's how I did with fulfilling each of them:

1. Practice and maintain healthy boundaries.

I'm generally feeling really proud of my progress on this goal, which I've had to put into practice on a couple of key occasions as well as plenty of small ones.  Some guiding principles and questions that have really helped me accomplish that are:

--I don't have to respond on someone else's timeline.  

It's better if I take the time I need to regain calm and formulate my response than if I respond impulsively just to assuage someone else's dysregulation.  It's my job to manage myself, and theirs to manage themselves.

--"Is there a different way to solve this problem?"  

Asking myself this question with genuine curiosity, especially when I feel myself dragged into old and intense emotions and thoughts about something upsetting or difficult, has been really helpful in discovering new and more skillful ways to handle things.

--"Am I people-pleasing?"  

This question is the product of my somewhat wild discovery this year that I absolutely have a people-pleasing streak.  I've long thought of myself as willful, opinionated, and willing and able to address things directly instead of avoiding conflict.  Those things are definitely still true, but not in every circumstance.  I've discovered there are plenty of times, unfortunately, when people do things that make me feel angry, upset, hurt, or disrespected and I go into this very frustrating autopilot-y polite and minimizing mode without even realizing that's what I'm doing... except then I ruminate intensely over such incidents for hours, which makes me absolutely miserable.  Not only am I sick of doing that to myself, I'm also annoyed at this pattern as a behaviorist; it's evidence that I'm choosing to be consequenced for someone else's behavior and reinforcing behavior that hurt me by not addressing it.

The moment when I truly realized this was relatively small.  A student sent me a stunningly rude email about an assignment in a class I teach.  I registered right away that I was affronted and angry that they felt comfortable addressing me the way they did, but bafflingly, before I realized it I had responded in a way that didn't remotely address that--instead, I noticed that my response actually made it seem like their attitude was totally acceptable because I didn't address it and bizarrely instead proceeded as if their behavior was perfectly fine.

The difference this time was that I realized what I'd done basically the second I hit "send" on my response.  I felt my old potential habitual rumination gearing up, felt annoyed with myself for doing that to myself (and unwittingly protecting this student from the consequences of their behavior), and decided I needed to take a different approach.  I quickly drafted and sent a follow-up email that simply said, "If you're interested in understanding the rationale for the assignment, I'd be happy to share that with you.  Just let me know."

This second response worked so much better for me.  It communicated clearly that, despite what the student had suggested, there was a thorough thought process behind the assignment they were griping about and it was on them to be curious about that instead of assuming I had just blithely assigned their class busywork.  It also communicated that I also wasn't going to do the emotional labor of explaining myself unless they took the accountability measure of actually asking.  And they did!  Which gave me an opportunity to concisely lay out how every aspect of the assignment was actually constructed to make a future, bigger assignment easier to complete.  In other words: I think what you meant to say was"Thank you," friend!

--"Is there a way to say this kindly?"  

If the answer to that question is not "yes," then I'm doing it wrong and I clearly need more time to figure out how to address a problem.

--"Is there a way to solve this problem collaboratively?"  

This is about both practicing more humility, but also having, again, genuine curiosity about and respect for the fact that other people are going to have ideas and perspectives I don't and which are valuable.  It's also a lot easier to solve a problem if the other person feels included in solving it rather than like they're just being told what to do by a pissed off/upset and bossy person.

--"If this behavior continues, will that diminish my wellbeing?"

To the immense benefit of my emotional health, I have responded to behavior that depletes me like what it is: unacceptable.  By feeling empowered to respond to behaviors that harm me by setting and enforcing increasingly uncrossable lines, I've felt so much more emotional peace and stability.  It's hard to imagine going back to betraying myself by willingly making space for other people's harmful stuff in my life.  

It's not like I'm using all of these principles perfectly, but the ways in which I've used them well so far have granted me so much relief from unnecessary suffering.  I'm really grateful for those benefits and eager to nurture them further.

2. Meditate most days.

Lol.  Nope.  Not even remotely, not even close.  Very sadly, I can probably count the total number of times I meditated last year on both hands.  I'd love to be able to reinstate this practice, but it just didn't happen in 2022.

3. Write at least twice a month.

I'm excited that I did a pretty good job with this one!  It felt really good writing more regularly for much of the year.  I'm disappointed that my pace of writing tapered off by the end of the year, but it's also very clear why that is, and those reasons are partially informing my resolutions for this year.

One thing that I have ambivalence about is my lack of consistency with antiracist accountability posts, and the ways that my goal to write at least one of those a month impacted the overall pace of my writing.  This was absolutely not a major factor in my declining writing output over the course of the year, but it nevertheless played an observable role: In an important way, my commitment to writing those posts diverted me from the original purpose of the blog, which is to write about movies.  This, of course, includes writing about movies through an antiracist lens and writing about movies that are about and made by people of color in general.  Broadening the scope of my accountability posts beyond movies just didn't really work as well as I thought it would--it started to feel a bit homework-y and a bit performative, neither of which is ideal for sustainable antiracism.  While I absolutely plan to maintain an emphasis on broader antiracism in my overall life, I think I need to return to a specific focus on movies here.

4. Watch 52 movies.

As you may be aware, I was thankfully successful on this one, albeit a little bit by the skin of my teeth.  That acknowledged, I'm still feeling really happy that the overall caliber of movies I watched was a significant improvement compared to 2021.  I'm glad I got to enjoy a lot of really solid films in the past year as I met my evergreen movie-watching goal.

And now, we can move on to the goals I'm setting for 2023.

This year's resolutions are:

1. Practice and maintain overall emotional health.
2. Watch 52 movies.

That's right: I'm perhaps questionably reducing my typically longer list of annual goals to only two.  But that's because, with a new Child imminently on the way and a lot of possible changes in what my day-to-day life will be like in the next 12 months, my overarching aims are simply to stay sane and watch movies.

That said, I consider my first resolution as comprised of multiple possible sub-resolutions.  Let's get into it!

1. Practice and maintain overall emotional health.

--Maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships.

This largely means continuing and building upon the practices I elaborated upon earlier.  I'm hopeful and excited that continuing this personal work will further deepen and improve my relationships, as I've already seen them have those kinds of benefits in several relationships.

--Maintaining healthy boundaries with work.

This will be especially challenging and important as I return to work after wrapping up my parental leave with Second Child.  I have some ideas for how I want to do this, including ending my work day earlier to prioritize evening quality time with my family and making some adjustments to my work commitments to prioritize the work I find most rewarding.

--Maintaining regular practices that prioritize peace, balance, and space for things (including people and pursuits) that matter to me.

Last year, it made me really nervous to not set specific resolutions about things I enjoy.  The relatively well-reasoned leap of faith I took was that I would have more time and energy for those things if I focused on upstream issues like setting and maintaining more effective and healthy boundaries.  Generally speaking, I think that's true: In the past year, I wrote pretty consistently and hit my movie-watching goal, but I also more consistently returned to reading for leisure and spent a decent amount of time cultivating plants, cooking and baking, spending quality time with my family, and I dunno maybe playing a really amazing VR minigolf game that I'm kind of obsessed with.

It's helpful to have these natural rewards for the (frankly pretty substantial) time and effort I've put into personal growth and recovery this year, so in this part of this resolution I'm committing to continuing that work.

While it's predictable that a lot of my leisure stuff will take a hit in my Second Child's first year, hopefully I'll have lots of quality time with them as well as at least some time in these other pursuits as proof that I've put this resolution into practice throughout 2023.

2. Watch 52 movies.

As always, my treasured evergreen goal. <3  Excitingly, I've already watched 9 movies this month alone, with several 5-rated films already in the film inventory 2023.

Here's hoping this year is even better than our hopes for it.  Thank you for being a part of that!

{Heart}

2022 Movie Round-Up!!

Hi everyone,

It's time for our annual review of all the films I watched in the previous year!  As always, I'm excited to share all the movies I watched over the year with you and uplift (or roast) the best and worst of the previous twelve months.

I'll note right away that I barely made it to my 52-movies-per-year goal, only cramming in enough films in the last few weeks of the year to make it past that benchmark.  As always the reasons for something like that are complex, but probably the biggest explanation is that I spent most of 2022 pregnant with my now-very-soon-forthcoming Second Child.  

While I have thankfully continued to be lucky in that my overall experience of pregnancy is pretty easy, as many pregnant parents of at least one child can attest, it is simply harder to be pregnant when you already have a kid, even in a best case scenario situation with an extremely supportive and actively involved partner like Husband.  I also found that my experience of the first trimester this time was harder than in my previous pregnancy, with more intense fatigue and nausea that seemed to have also lasted a bit longer (or maybe just started earlier?).  Thankfully a decent chunk of the second trimester and the majority of the third have been much easier, which also allowed me to catch up on movie-watching before 2022 concluded.

All that resulted in my having overall both less energy and tolerance for the commitment of feature-length entertainment for several months last year, especially for films I hadn't seen before.  I've previously talked about how a variety of emotional and practical circumstances can impact a person's particular appetites for distraction, and while these are very happy circumstances that I have experienced on purpose and with loving enthusiasm, the outcome was generally the same: I watched fewer movies, and to some degree what I watched was either of lower quality or of aggressively, bankably higher quality because I didn't want to sign up for something that could be disappointing.

So with that preamble, I present to you:

The PsychoCinematic Year in Movies
2022 Edition

1. While You Were Sleeping (3.5)
2. The French Dispatch (5)
3. Single All the Way (4)
4. Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage (2)
5. The Power of the Dog (4)
6. Encanto (3)
7. The Mitchells vs The Machines (4.5)
8. 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible (5)
9. Hearts of Darkness (4)
10. Meru (4)
11. The River Runner (2)
12. House of Gucci (2)
13. The Alpinist (5)
14. Spencer (4)
15. The Tinder Swindler (4)
16. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (4)
17. I Want You Back (3)
18. Red Rocket (2)
19. Free Guy (5)
20. Spider-Man: No Way Home (4)
21. Turning Red (2)
22. Kingsman: The Secret Service (4)
23. The Founder (4)
24. Vacation Friends (5)
25. Don’t Look Up (1)
26. Julia (5)
27. White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch (3.5)
28. Plan B (4)
29. The Valet (4.5)
30. Fire Island (4)
31. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (4)
32. Dancing with the Birds (5)
33. Hot Fuzz (3)***
34. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (4)
35. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (1)
36. GoodFellas (4.5)***
37. Nope (3)
38. The Hangover Part II (2)***
39. Into the Inferno (4)
40. Bros (2)
41. Don’t Worry Darling (5)
42. The Book of Life (2)
43. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2)
44. See How They Run (3)
45. The Wonder (4)
46. Bullet Train (4)
47. Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests (3.5)
48. Four Christmases (1)
49. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (2)
50. A Bad Moms Christmas (1)
51. Single All the Way (4.5)***
52. The Lost City (4)
53. A Hollywood Christmas (1)
54. Call Me Miss Cleo (3.5)

And a reminder of the meaning behind the various annotations used throughout the list:

* = got nauseated

** = fell asleep

*** = rewatch

I suppose I should cut myself some slack, as I actually watched the exact same number of movies as I did in 2021.  The noteworthy--and stressful--difference between 2022 and its predecessor is that I kept a consistent pace to stay on track in 2021, whereas this year I started pretty strong by being solidly halfway to my 52 movies goal in the first four months of the year before my viewership fell off a cliff with the beginning of my pregnancy.  I allowed myself to coast for a bit because I knew I was ahead, only needing to hustle a bit to catch up once I had coasted for longer than I anticipated I would.

I'm not actually calculating this, but based on a perusal of my ratings between the last two years, it happily also looks like I watched more movies I enjoyed, with a rating of 4 or higher, than I did in the previous year.  I imagine this is due in no small part to the (excrutiatingly) gradual amelioration of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the very positive circumstances that stepped in to impact my movie watching.  The overall emotional state I was in while watching movies in 2021 was very different last year; this year I was tired or didn't feel well, but I wasn't feeling actively traumatized by a grinding and seemingly ceaseless world event.  It's probably unsurprising that that impacted my responses to films and shows up in my overall more positive ratings in 2021.  This is so heartening!  I'm glad to have this opportunity to take stock of subtle changes in my movie watching in recent years.

And now, let's commence with the first of our two tasks tonight: identifying 2022's worst film.

Last year's worst offenders were:

For being an unnecessarily triggering, very poorly timed, and highly ineffective comedy:

Don’t Look Up (2021)

For being (admittedly predictably) very dumb, but also very boring and 

occasionally unnecessarily gross:

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)

For the dubious accomplishment of being a roundly cynical and humorless Christmas movie:

Four Christmases (2008)

For promoting tired toxic societal brainwashing that we maintain family ties at any cost:

A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)

For being aggressively bland despite making gestures at shaking up 

the exact holiday movie formula it rotely follows:

A Hollywood Christmas (2022)

(Well first of all, I clearly need to up the quality on the films included in the Christmas movie medley if I'm going to continue that new tradition.)

This really is a battle of which movie I actively hate most based on their respective impacts on their audiences.  The two major contenders are "Don't Look Up" and "A Bad Moms Christmas".  

The more obvious emotional assault of "Don't Look Up", with its combination of epic too-soonness and utter lack of sincere, laugh-prompting humor, still flabbergasts me, but it's the more banal yet devastating psychological warfare of "A Bad Moms Christmas" that perhaps troubles me more deeply.  While "Bad Moms" is hardly the only movie hammering the message that it's a child's job to roll over in the face of supremely unhealthy, neglectful, critical, or even outright abusive parent behavior because family always comes first, it's a particularly egregious example of the blatant self-betrayal that messaging demands of people thrust into the position of deciding between their own wellbeing and the demands of their harmful family member.  

As I alluded to in the Christmas movie medley, Mila Kunis's Amy is accused of ruining Christmas because she attempts to bar her mother from her family's Christmas celebration (gasp!!)--after her mother, Christine Baranski's Ruth, invades Amy's home, extensively redecorates it without Amy's permission, repeatedly gives Amy's children expensive gifts despite Amy's requests not to, and drags Amy's family through unpleasant holiday events that no one but Ruth is interested in, all the while compulsively and unabashedly peppering Amy with direct and indirect insults.  Taken individually, none of these behaviors is okay.  Taken all together, it's extremely obvious that a firm boundary is the only appropriate recourse left to Amy.  

But still: the narrative this movie asserts is that Amy is the one who ruins Christmas by attempting to set that boundary, not Ruth via her relentless campaign of boundary violation, control, and verbal abuse.  This moment is made even worse by the fact that Amy's children, who have witnessed much of their grandmother's harmful behavior toward their mother and who have largely enjoyed the ways in which Amy has tried to instate her family's own plans for the holiday, are nevertheless the ones who accuse Amy of ruining the holiday.  The messaging to anyone in the audience is clear: If you set boundaries with horrendous family behavior for your own health and sanity, everyone will think you're a terrible person and no one will understand or respect your decision.  Better to just absorb the maltreatment forever and model to he next generation that it's okay to mistreat family members if this film got its way, apparently?

So yeah, with all that explanation, the worst film I watched in 2022 was:

A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)

No more movies like this, please!  I would actually be FASCINATED to see silly ass holiday movies in which characters successfully set boundaries with bad family behavior and then rode happily into the festive sunset.  What would that be like?

And now, onward to the year's highest rated movies!

Happily, unlike last year, there were so many movies that I rated a 5 that I don't feel the need to include the 4.5-rated films in this year's list of contenders.  It's so nice that I watched so many movies I really liked last year!  The movies with 5 ratings in 2022 were:

The French Dispatch (2021)

14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible (2021)

The Alpinist (2020)

Free Guy (2021)

Vacation Friends (2021)

Julia (2021)

Dancing with the Birds (2019)

Don’t Worry Darling (2022)

What a fun array of favorite films!  I love that I saw some truly enjoyable and recently made comedies this year with "Free Guy" (2021; thoroughly confirming Ryan Reynolds as one of my favorite comedy stars) and "Vacation Friends" (2021), both of which make me really excited to see what the future of funny movies holds.  

The year's highest rated adventure-based documentaries, "14 Peaks" (2021) and "The Alpinist" (2020) were beautifully made, expertly balancing gorgeous, austere, and remote terrain against the lovely, brave, vulnerable human beings at their center.  The documentary "Julia" (2021) was both engrossing and impressive in its comprehensive dive into multiple facets of its famous titular chef.

I deeply enjoyed Wes Anderson's latest directorial offering in "The French Dispatch" (2021) and am still glad it was one of the first movies I watched last year; in many ways, doing that (at Husband's excellent suggestion) probably helped set the precedent for 2022 to be a year filled with more satisfying films.

I am still furious over the distracting bad press surrounding "Don't Worry Darling" (2022) and maintain that it is an excellent and hopefully not perpetually underrated or overlooked movie.  It was exceedingly well made it pretty much every way and offers a subtle yet disturbingly incisive and timely new take on feminist horror.

Despite all these excellent contenders, I can't help but uplift perhaps the most humble-seeming entry: "Dancing with the Birds" (2019).  My love for this movie is deeply personal, having watched it at a minimum dozens of times with my Child, sometimes more than once in a day, and watching him come to recognize each of the featured birds of paradise and even imitating some of their delightful dances.  I found it to be exceedingly comforting and pleasant every time we watched it, which is an entirely remarkable feat given the high rotation it was in for several months.  In fact, for some time this was the first and only thing we were comfortable with Child watching recurrently when we finally introduced television to him in 2022.  This movie became so beloved in our home that it even inspired our family's Halloween costumes last year.

Perhaps the clearest endorsement for this movie is that despite watching it more times than I could count, the film's final dance, performed by a Carola's perotia, still moves me to tears every damn time.  It's hard to fully articulate why, but to make my best attempt: It combines beautiful, intimate footage of a sweet, earnest little bird dancing his little heart out in the hopes of winning over a mate--displaying a craft of artful movement he has honed for his entire life--set to T. Rex's glam rocky "Cosmic Dancer" about dancing out of the womb, as a little child, and until the end of one's life, and I've now watched this over and over with my sweet little Child dancing along with that sweet little bird, and how could the precious, fleeting, poignant sweetness of those moments not bring me to my knees in tearful gratitude?  

I am so thankful to this little documentary for giving me that gift over and over again.  So of course, my favorite film of 2022 is:

Dancing with the Birds (2019)

If you're interested, you can watch it on Netflix here!

I'm looking forward to many beautiful new things this year, and hopefully many beautiful new movies.  I hope 2023 is an excellent year of joy and growth for all of us.

{Heart}