- Part 1: Overview
- Part 2: The Worst Movies
- Part 3: The Best Movies
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
2023 Movie Round-Up!! Part 1
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Living in the Margins
Hi friends,
This month, I watched about a third of a movie and am putting off the 2023 round-up yet again.
I feel sad about this somewhat dramatic and abrupt change in my ability to engage in two things that are really important to my identity as a whole person, not only a caregiver: writing and watching movies. I also feel a bit anxious about this change, because I don't totally understand why it suddenly feels like the already very thin margins on the logistics and demands of my life have suddenly gotten even narrower.
That's maybe because it's not due to only one thing. There are the obvious contributing factors, like our Second Child becoming more mobile and communicative in the months before and since his first birthday, and enduring the cliché parade of different kid-borne plagues, the latter of which at best slowed the rate at which we're able to handle the everyday tasks of life and work. I've also gradually started to increase my work hours while simultaneously trying to stay on top of various routine obligations like doctor and vet appointments. And then there are the "bonus" unanticipated disruptions, like being sent on a wild goose chase of possibly buying a second car because of a dubiously dire assessment from an unfamiliar mechanic about our current one (lesson learned: always get a second opinion, ideally from a mechanic you already know and trust), or rescuing a cat who showed up in our backyard and yelled at us through the window until we finally gave him the chance to walk right into a cat carrier and set up temporary residence in one of our bathrooms, or the surprisingly large lift of completing enough continuing education credits to renew one of my licenses.
On the lighter side of things, Husband and I have also recently rediscovered our love for Love Island as well as discovering a new show we're really enjoying, which together gobble up the potential movie-watching time in the evenings. I've been putting a lot of effort into meeting and building relationships with other parents in our neighborhood, and also unwittingly but joyfully building relationships with several types of local wildlife who now frequent our backyard.
It all makes sense when I lay out all the things that have accumulated to the point that they fully color in the page of my life to its very outermost edges. I just keep waiting for there to be a little more breathing room, a little more consistent reprieve from the happy relentlessness of this stage of life. It truly is happy, but it truly is also relentless.
I started this blog as an accountability check during grad school, to hold myself accountable to myself for making space for my whole self as I engaged in a process that could easily consume everything I had to offer: learning to be a psychologist. I am not only a caregiver. I knew that then, and I know that now.
The happy trouble is, I'm really good at caregiving, and I love doing it. I love my work and I love parenting and I love maintaining everything that is my family, including my home and all the living things within (and around) it. It gives me a deep sense of fulfilled, values-directed purpose and satisfaction. That signals a change in my caregiving that I've taken stock of recently--I'm caring for things in a way that doesn't feel like pouring into a bottomless vessel. I used to do a lot of that impossible kind of caregiving, and it was at times pretty devastating. At best, it was draining, made me feel devalued, and cloudied my mental vision. I think I've become more realistic about what I'm responsible for and what my care can and cannot accomplish, and when I stay within the new boundaries that awareness creates, caregiving feels radically different.
Now, I feel the ways in which my love and care can create an echo chamber in the same way depression, fear, or trauma can. I feel my own care and love reflected back to me, and added to, when I'm with my children and husband, when I see a fox in our backyard or hear birds singing around our house, when I know more of my neighbors, and when I do my work. Each of these things is evidence of the love and care I've planted blooming. I'm tired, overworked, and overwhelmed most of the time now, but I'm also happy and emotionally full most of the time, too.
So where in all this do movies fit? I don't know. They don't really, at least not with the regularity they used to. I've taken to reassuring myself that however over-the-top things feel right now, my life won't feel like this forever. There will be times when there is more freedom in my days for other things, and hopefully I'll enjoy those, too, because the love and care I plant continues to yield a bountiful and broad harvest.
I'm genuinely so excited for the movies I'll watch when it's possible again. There's so much good stuff out there to see.
{Heart}
Thursday, February 29, 2024
Decently Good "Good Grief"
Monday, January 15, 2024
2023 Movie Round-Up Preamble: Lightning Round!!
Hi friends,
As I was preparing to write my annual round-up post--like as I was literally highlighting the list of movies I watched last year to copy and paste them into a blank blogger window--I noticed I'd underlined a couple of titles with the aspirational intent to come back to those films and write about them. I felt disappointed to move onto 2024 without talking about those movies. This happens every year: there are always movies I meant to write about that end up simply getting passed over and, unfortunately, ultimately forgotten about.
Well NOT THIS YEAR.
Because it's better to write a few sentences or paragraphs than nothing at all, I'm going to attempt to write a lightning round-style post about (at least some of) those movies.
Here we go!
The first thing that viscerally registers about "Norma Rae" is the noise. The film opens in the thunderously loud warehouse where Norma Rae, her parents, and her neighbors toil, and the intense and droning din is instantly oppressive and overwhelming. In this manner, the movie reminds me of the use of sound in the much-later "Children of Men" (2006) to wrenchingly ground its audience in its bleak world--the sounds of this world aren't only impacting the characters in the story, distorting their perceptions of reality, but you, the viewer, as well.
Beginning with this bodily experience of the consequences of the working conditions of Norma Rae and her compatriots, "Norma Rae" is still a remarkable, gripping, and inspiring film about the desperate importance of the labor movement. It is just excellent! I gave it a 5.
I watched this movie shortly after watching "Norma Rae" in an attempt to continue watching some of the empowering lady movies of yore, but this one fell pretty flat especially by comparison to its union-celebrating predecessor. "Thelma and Louise" is fun in a pulp fiction-y way, but also a bit rough to watch. To my unpleasant surprise, despite being billed as an early women-driven buddy movie, "Thelma and Louise" struggled with the same casually compulsive sexism of movies from over a decade prior without reckoning with it in a clear-headed way. Sure Thelma and Louise variously kill and inconvenience a variety of extremely shitty men, but I was still struck with how harshly critical Susan Sarandon's Louise was at times of Geena Davis's Thelma. I'm glad I watched it given its importance in cinematic history, but it didn't move me nearly as profoundly as "Norma Rae". I gave it a 3.
I know this seems ~*~inconceivable~*~, but I actually had never seen the "Princess Bride" before last year. I was a bit hesitant to watch it because I couldn't imagine it would live up to the deep adoration many people have for it, and I feared that being a late-comer to the film would mean I would find it particularly underwhelming. On the other hand, I thought it would be convenient to finally get the jokes and references people make to this movie every once in a while.
Happily, I honestly liked it! It was cute and silly, and I understand why people find it so lovable. I know this is probably the oddest of details to hang onto, but I really liked how you can see where the set designers incorporated crash pads into the set so the actors safely engage in dramatic leaps during one particular sword fight. Something about the low-fi nature of the movie's stunts really endeared me to it. Also apparently Andre the Giant was a goddamn delight! I gave "The Princess Bride" a 4.
An offshoot of my micro-theme of empowered lady movies was to watch a few Audrey Hepburn movies, starting with the documentary about her followed by "Funny Face". Despite absolutely loving Hepburn as a person and actor, I unfortunately found both of these films pretty underwhelming. The documentary is a bit lifeless, which is kind of astonishing given its incredible source material--Audrey Hepburn is one of the most magnetic, charismatic, lovely performers of Hollywood's Golden Age, so it's a crime that a movie about her dramatic, impactful, and jam-packed life be so dull.
I chose to watch "Funny Face" for the fashion and also because I wanted to see Hepburn's dancing. While it delivers on those two fronts, I was again underwhelmed by other aspects of the film, including its unconvincing romance between Hepburn and (a comparatively much older) Fred Astaire and its overall belittling attitude toward Hepburn's Jo (are you kidding me with the title referring to her face??), but especially her intellectual interest in a new philosophical doctrine. Blech.
I gave both movies a 2.
Especially after reckoning with how much I liked "Minions: Rise of Gru" (2022), I basically had to watch these movies. I was genuinely curious to see how I'd feel about "Despicable Me" upon rewatching it, and whether "Despicable Me 2" would uphold the generally solid quality of this series of movies. Neither disappointed! I didn't enjoy them quite as much as the Minions movie, but both juxtaposed goofy slap-stick humor for children against competent and thoughtful relationship themes, first the father-child relationship and then the parent-new partner relationship. I really like that these movies exist to model non-problematic versions of these relationships for children, as movies like that are bizarrely rare.
I gave both movies a 3.5.
I have a few straggling movies from 2023 that I genuinely hope I can write last-minute longer-form posts about, because I really want to dig into them a bit more than would make sense here. That sure would be consistent with my first resolution for 2024, so here's hoping I pull that off!
{Heart}