Quick Reviews and Other Stuff: September

It took me three tries to spell September right. Happy Sepepmber.

Movies

1. Nimona — I can absolutely see why Disney tried to shelve this when they took over and subsequently shut down the original production company, and for the first time in a long time, Netflix did the right thing by rescuing the project and bringing it to life. I’d never actually read the web comic/graphic novel that originated the story, although I’m familiar with ND Stevenson’s works. (Somewhere in a box I have some prints that he sold way way way back in the day when he was mostly just doing silly fan art on Tumblr.) So I went in not knowing too much other than the broad outlines of the story and, man, this did everything I could have possibly wanted it to do. It is laugh-out-loud funny, the animation style is charming, I even cried a little. Stevenson, who came out as trans/bigender several years ago, has talked about using the comic to work through some stuff, and the hindsight of coming to understand Nimona, a shapeshifter who much of society ostracizes when they find out that fact, as a trans allegory was unexpected but also totally obvious, after the fact.

2. Bottoms — I usually do not go for things described as raunchy comedies, particularly raunchy teen comedies, so I was kind of wary about this one. But holy heck guys I have not laughed so hard in a long time. This movie is unafraid to be gross and ridiculous and horny and a little surreal, but also deeply honest about the pain of being a teenager with desires and fears. Solid entry into the “I support women’s rights but I also support women’s wrongs” genre.

3. Fremont — Charming black and white indie film about a recent Afghan immigrant who finds work at a fortune cookie factory and grapples with loneliness, guilt, trauma, and adapting to American life. Far wittier than I’d expected going in, thanks in no small part to the mostly inept psychiatrist played by comedian Gregg Turkington. Newcomer Anaita Wali Zada, an Afghan refugee herself, brings vulnerability and authenticity to her lead role as Donya; her deadpan reactions to some of the things happening to/around her are absolutely priceless.

4. The Nice Guys — Another entry in favor of the idea that Ryan Gosling should just do nothing but goofy comedy movies. He and Russell Crowe are private investigators of varying levels of competence who ultimately have to team up to solve a mystery. Quite frankly the mystery itself is the least interesting part of this movie and is unnecessarily convoluted with a conspiracy theory aspect. The real gem here is Gosling and Crowe’s chemistry and somewhat unexpected comedic chops.

5. The Last Samurai — This is, as the saying goes, a perfectly cromulent movie. It’s not one that I’ve thought about much over the last 20 years but upon watching it again this month, I was like, oh yeah, that was pretty good. It knows all the right buttons to press to get the viewer emotionally invested. (I cried at the ending when I saw it in the theater 20 years ago, and I cried at the ending when I rewatched it now. It knows how to get you.) Tom Cruise as usual does a solid job playing a deeply wounded man who just absolutely has a death wish.

6. La La Land — Am I really going to have many thoughts about this movie like seven years too late? I think I am. a. This movie wasn’t good enough to deserve Best Oscar and that whole snafu is even funnier in retrospect.b. The easily available street parking is highly unrealistic, although the scene where Mia leaves the party and finds her car towed is like my worst nightmare every time I’ve had to rent a car in LA.c. As someone who deeply, unironically, would move there if money/job made it possible, loves Los Angeles, I appreciate that this movie is a love letter to the city (and Hollywood in particular) and also wish that the city itself was more of a character. d. OK, go with me on a journey here for a minute. Back in college, I read a romance/~women’s fiction~ book about a young woman who felt stifled by her life in the midwest, who didn’t love the man who she was engaged to marry (who had just experienced a significant health issue), and who generally was just depressed about the status quo. So she picks up, moves to NYC, finds a passion for fashion design or something, finds a man who makes her feel alive. And she spends the whole book discovering herself and who she wants to be and what she desires, and then she just up and fucking moves back to the midwest because??? And I have been furious for like 15 years about that ending because why go back to a life you hated, that didn’t fulfill you? Anyway, this is the first thing since then that has made me so mad in such a similar way about the dumbass choices of its protagonist. e. Out of curiosity, I went and read Goodreads reviews from that book I loathed and it’s like, all the five star reviews are from people who loved the protagonist’s choice, and all of the one stars are people going “WHAT, NO” like I did. Reading reviews/analysis of La La Land all these years later and it’s much of the same thing. Your feelings about the movie seem to depend a lot on whose side you take in this, Mia or Sebastian’s, or if you, Reddit-style, are like, “no, everyone sucks here”. f. So much of this movie is about sacrifice — what you sacrifice for yourself, for others — and I was so angry that Mia did not recognize Sebastian’s actions as sacrificing his dreams so that he could be the stable job-having guy that he thought she wanted. What did Mia ever sacrifice for him? He asked her one thing — to come to Idaho while he was doing a show — and she was like, but no I cannot rehearse lines for my one woman show anywhere but here. Girl, do you think HE wanted to be in Idaho??? Yes, they both should have used their words, but also, being an adult and being in a relationship is about compromise! Sometimes you have to accept doing something you don’t love in order to have a sustainable life, or in order to support your partner going after their dreams! Sometimes you work the gig that pays you a shit ton of money so you can eventually quit and do your own thing! Artistic purity is great and all but also so is not getting evicted! Is “I want to have a financially stable situation so my partner who I love very much can go pursue her dreams” selling out? Being a starving artist isn’t actually sexy! I have never in my life been so mad at a time skip in a movie! Obviously Mia and Sebastian both got what they wanted in the end — she’s a famous actress and he has his old timey jazz club — but! God! Why!

7. Red, White & Royal Blue — Okay, listen. I read this book back when it came out and it was … fine. Not the worst book I’d read, certainly not the greatest, but it was entertaining and that’s about what I hope for out of contemporary romance. I was fully prepared to hate the movie version, though, based on social media chatter about it. So ha ha joke’s on me but I actually found this to be very cute. They cut out some characters/condensed some roles/simplified some subplots and I think the story is better for it; the movie didn’t need to be any longer than it was. Now, don’t get me wrong, Alex is still an infuriating character and there’s a lot of this that is just so wildly cringe and that will feel very dated in just a few years, but, man, I couldn’t help getting sucked in. The montage showing their texts/emails together as they’re staring to get to be friends was really creatively done. And Nicholas Galitzine was actually so good as Henry? Yes, it’s Attractive Man Does Face Acting but the absolute look of horror on his face after he kisses Alex for the first time was so well done and in general he’s great playing a character who wears his heart on his sleeve. This movie isn’t great art but Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez do good with the material they’re given. As a bonus, Sarah Shahi is absolutely perfect in her role.

8. Cassandro — Gael García Bernal stars in the biopic about Saúl Armendáriz, a gay Mexican-American lucha libre wrestler who decides to begin wrestling as an exótico, a type of wrestler who dresses in drag and is sort of campy comic relief. Except Saúl, wrestling as Cassandro, wants to win. I appreciate the fact that this movie comes in at just over 90 minutes long, but wouldn’t have minded if they’d lingered a little longer instead of rushing through Cassandro’s ascendancy from joke to hero. It’s also probably too big a task to ask of this movie but there’s so much that could be touched on regarding homophobia in a) Mexican b) male c) sports culture, and Cassandro/Saúl being an openly gay athlete/entertainer in the ‘80s/’90s. García Bernal is fantastic in his role, though, shining in both the high and low moments of Cassandro’s life. Why isn’t he the lead in more movies?

9. After Yang — Quiet, contemplative, cozy sci-fi that didn’t quite resonate with me. I think there’s some interesting stuff in there about what it means to be human or to have memories or to even just exist, but it just didn’t land for me. The script/plot is pretty thin and despite being a brisk 90 minutes, it still felt unnecessarily drawn out. I think the questions the story poses probably mean a lot more to people with children, anyone who has ever had to explain death and grief to a small human, but I was mostly left wanting more. Aesthetically beautiful, and the score is perfect, and Colin Farrell rocks a very good mustache.

10. Flora and Son — Did you know Bono has a daughter? Who acts and sings? And who plays Flora in this movie? I did not know that until after I watched this. Surprise! Eve Hewson was really good in this, though; a legit talent in her own right. Anyway, this the second movie in a row that didn’t resonate with me largely because of its focus on family/motherhood. I mean, it’s called Flora and Son, so I don’t know what I expected. This had a bit of a rough start with me — there’s a prison rape joke in like the first 10 minutes and I was despairing to think that was setting the tone for the rest of the movie — but bounced back nicely. It’s a story about music bringing people together, bridging gaps that you didn’t think could be reconciled. As a Not Parent, I was more invested in the blossoming long-distance sort-of love story between Flora and Jeff (a charming Joseph Gordon-Levitt) than Flora repairing her relationship with her son, which made the ending frustrating for me. Overall a charming story, and breaking Gordon-Levitt out of the computer screen, so to speak, was done really well, but left me wanting mostly in a “I’m not the target audience for this plot” sort of way.

11. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. —I know I read the book as a kid but don’t honestly remember that much from it, so I was nearly coming in fresh. This was very charming and Abby Ryder Fortson, who plays Margaret, is fantastic at really capturing that awkward tween age. The movie also made me really glad that I don’t remember much from that period of time and also that I was kind of a loner because the friend/boy/etc. drama that Margaret has to deal with seems absolutely exhausting.

Books

1. A Thief in the Night, KJ Charles — I’ve been kind of stuck cycling through books lately, with nothing catching my interest, so figured I’d jump start things with a quick novella from one of my favorite writers. Ultimately I will take anything that KJ Charles gives me but I wish this was longer — the transition from Miles barely tolerating Toby to the inevitable declarations of love seems to happen very quickly, and I imagine in a full length novel, it would have been more satisfactorily drawn out. Because of the short format, things obviously have to move quickly and in this case I probably would have sacrificed some of the mystery plot for more of Miles and Toby, who I both genuinely enjoyed as characters.

2. She Who Became The Sun, Shelly Parker-Chan — It took me a bit to get into this one, as it starts sort of slow and has a very specific character voice that’s different from anything else I’ve read lately. But once I got through the first few chapters, it was nearly impossible to put this book down. Parker-Chan brings such life to their characters, all of whom are flawed and broken and cruel and cunning and ruthless, a whole book of glorious anti-heroes just for me to enjoy! The plotting and political machinations here are immaculate, good people do terrible things in the name of achieving their destinies, and the Gender Everything about this story is absolutely [chef kiss]. The library wait list for the sequel is like 2+ months long, and while I’m trying to buy fewer books in general, I definitely went to the book store and bought it so I don’t have to wait. This feels like a book that will reveal more of itself upon reread so I look forward to revisiting this in the future.

3. The Haunting of Maddy Clare, Simone St. James — A completely average mystery/ghost story/romance. A quick read but took a while to get into because I just wasn’t connecting with the author’s style. Also, the lead character, unfortunately named Sarah, is wildly annoying, vacilating between being hopelessly naive and incredibly forward and worldly, but always thinking about how unattractively large her breasts are. (No, seriously.) I liked the haunting aspect, that was creepily well done, and the mystery was fine, and I think the two male leads had potential to be interesting in a Give Them More Depth Via Fan Fiction sort of way, but overall this isn’t one I’ll think about again after this.

4. Neon Gods, Katee Robert — I didn’t pick this up because I thought it would be good, I picked it up because the blurb says it’s “unspeakably hot” or whatever. This book followed through on that very well, but the vague worldbuilding and plot leave something to be desired. The story is set in a modern-day Olympus which is like, somehow in America, I think? But they are kind of normal people but also kind of magical? It felt like someone wanted to write a mafia romance and decided at the last minute to shove the names of Hades and Persephone on there. There is no backstory and no actual explanation of the world and that’s okay if I’m just reading several hundred pages of sex scenes but this book also expected me to care about its plot, so I think it’s not too much to ask for the rest of the book to actually make sense. I didn’t love this but I also didn’t hate it enough to put it down. (Speaking of putting things down: every romance author who uses the “man carries dainty love interest around like a sack of potatoes” trope owes me a dollar. Please. I hate it!)

5. Cemetery Boys, Aiden Thomas — About a queer, trans Latinx boy who’s trying to prove to himself and his family that he can be accepted as a brujo, and in doing so he accidentally summons the wrong ghost and has a mystery to solve. On Goodreads, I rated this book higher than I otherwise would just because I feel the representation in it is so important. I enjoyed the story and characters but it left a little to be desired in terms of pacing and style. The whole story takes place over just a few days so the instalove between Yadriel and Julian is pretty blatant, and the writing as a whole feels closer to middle grade than YA. But this is clearly a meaningful story to the author, who took a chance on representing their culture and lived experience and I’m excited to see more from them in the future.

Other Stuff

• I watched Jury Duty and it is so charming and funny and actually wholesome? The episodes are short and you really find yourself rooting for Ronald. If you’re not familiar with the premise, it’s a mockumentary following a group of jurors through a trial, only everyone is an actor except for our main “character” Ronald, who thinks the whole thing is legit. It’s hard to believe that such a genuine person is the real deal. The behind-the-scenes episode, taking you into the “making of” the show, is fascinating as well to see the lengths they had to go to in order to keep Ronald from catching on. It’s streaming on Amazon’s Freevee service.

• To give this newsletter something pretty to look at, here’s an alpaca that I met in Wisconsin:

What’s Next?

• October’s already been pretty busy — I’ve been in California (for Mountain Goats concerts), and then head to Colorado later, and Texas at the end of the month (for, yes, you guessed it). While in California, I’ve taken a few fun side quests so will have some neat pictures to show you in next month’s newsletter.

• I’ve already finished a couple of books (thanks, plane rides) and as usual have more library holds than I know what to do with. I just started Thunderhead, which is the sequel to Scythe, which I gushed about a few months ago. While I’m traveling I’m pretty much strictly a Kindle person so don’t be expecting much heavy fare next month. Hope you’re all excited to read about romance novels and YA books that I’m too old for. That copy of American Prometheus has got to wait.

• Not much on the horizon in terms of movies, but Strange Way of Life, the Pedro Almodóvar short with Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke as gay cowboys is hitting theaters and I’ll be seeing that next week.

What about you? What have you been enjoying?

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