Review of Darren Aronofsky's "Mother!"

There is my 10 minutes, spoiler-ridden review of this movie. In short, don't go see it.

I loved Black Swan and had a lot of respect for Requiem for a Dream, so as soon as I heard this movie was coming out, I bought tickets to see it without even seeing a preview or reading about it. I only heard that there were some controversial aspects.

I'll save you the trouble of seeing it: the main thing that probably bothered people is that there is a scene where a baby is taken away by a crowd, killed, ripped to shreds, and then eaten as a form of communion. Maybe I've watched too many horror movies, but this didn't disturb me that much. The scene immediately after, when the crowd turns on Jennifer Lawrence and starts beating her, kicking and stomping on her when she's on the ground, was more disturbing to me, but mainly because I thought it was headed towards a rape and that they were going to show it. (at that point, I would have thought they were depicting a rape for the sake of being shocking--more on that later.)

It's hard for me to articulate why this movie bothered me, and it appears that some of my reasons don't line up with what others are saying.

I do agree with the general puzzlement that most reviewers, mainly, WTF is this movie about. First it's one thing: this woman is rebuilding her husband's house after it had been burned down while he bitches and moans about the fact that he can't write (poetry) anymore. Then a rando stranger (Ed Harris) shows up, and it turns out he is secretly a huge fan of Javier Bardem's poetry. Bardem invites him into the house despite what Jennifer Lawrence feels comfortable with, then his creepy wife shows up. So maybe this story is about the accommodations we make for our spouses when we really don't want to when their egos need stroking.  Then their two kids show up fighting about a will and one son kills the other. Reviewers have posited that maybe it's a Cain and Abel story.

Then some uninvited guests start showing up for the wake. This is where the movie seems to take a turn from what had originally felt like maybe a creepy home invasion movie, or maybe something like The Invitation (2015). Here it turns into an increasingly ridiculous conceit. The wife decides she wants to have a baby. They make one and this seems to have unblocked the husband's writers block. He demands a pen immediately and takes out his inkwell to write poetry! Within minutes, his publisher calls him, and then you hear that his poetry book has sold out. (this guy incidentally, apparently makes a full time living as a poet who doesn't write and his wife also doesn't appear to work and they can afford a nice house without having to teach or anything. also, a poetry book selling out....lol) Fans show up and the wife gets increasingly disturbed as the party gets more and more raucous, eventually descending into chaos, war, violence, destruction, etc.

Here's where I differed from other people's reaction to this movie.  Hollywood continues to be so white that the casting of minorities feels really intentional. When the uninvited guests start showing up for the wake, I couldn't help but notice that a lot of them were minorities- maybe it was only thirty percent, maybe it was twenty percent. But the guests start destroying the house essentially, literally tearing down the walls and breaking things, while Jennifer Lawrence is screaming, "What are you doing, this is my house!" I started to feel uncomfortable that the movie was making an awkward point about immigration. Because the "uninvited" guests are certainly terribly and entitled, making themselves at home while a white Aryan woman is disturbed by their presence. But because she is the protagonist, and the guests are absurd, the viewer has to side with her.

I kept getting pulled out of the movie with scenes like this.  There are scenes where riot police and these uninvited guests (many of whom were minorities) are clashing-- I cannot watch that and not think about the current sociopolitical context of both protestors and Black Lives Matter. There are scenes where people in the house who are desperately trying to escape the war that has broken out are locked behind barbed wire gates. I can't see that and not think about the current refugee crisis. The most disturbing scene from me wasn't the baby supper, but a scene where people lying on the ground with their bags over their heads are shot point blank one by one. I was completely pulled out of the movie because I thought about how I have seen real videos like that. All for what?  The closest thing this movie comes to being about something is about how the male artist can take and take and the woman keeps on giving even though it is her undoing. I am okay with the depiction of violence, but when it touches close to reality, it's only worth it if it brings something to the table about that issue, or if it doesn't, at least that it treats it with respect.  Sexual assault survivors have been making the same argument about the depiction of rape in TV and movies--that it not be for the sake of shock value, or shoddy storytelling, but that it actually respect the people who have been through this trauma. I don't take depictions of war lightly.  I think you can make silly movies that you're not supposed to take seriously that involve "war" (eg, any superhero movie), and you can make serious movies that are making points about war and its costs (eg, Born on the 4th of July). But to use all these extreme acts of violence as a metaphor about how male artists are self-absorbed struck me as a mismatch between very real geopolitical conflicts and the stupidity that is the idea of a poet who writes with an inkwell and somehow has an income that supports a wife who doesn't work.

Review of Stephen King's IT

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TLDR: Go see this.

Like most people I was skeptical when I heard they were rebooting this. While I had some fond memories of the miniseries people seem to love, it had some serious issues, like not having the space to spread out, or the awful claymation spider. Tim Curry, everyone insists, is unbeatable as Pennywise.

First off, the movie focuses solely on the childhood events--the best part of the book in my view--which gives a good amount of time for the story and more importantly the characters to develop. The childhood timeline has been updated from the 50s to the 80s-- not sure why exactly but it does place their childhood right in the time frame of when my childhood was when I read the book.

The narration adheres pretty closely to the plot and mood of the book opening with the Georgie scene. About Pennywise-- I think Bill Skarsgard did an excellent job of making the role his own, which was good considering people keep talking about how awesome Tim Curry was in the original. After I got back from the theater I rented the original miniseries to compare--here's the thing, it's worse than I remember. Like really bad. Awful overly dramatic music, terrible acting. John Ritter isn't a bad actor but he's acting badly in this movie. Tim Curry was just a bright spot in a bad piece of art. The overall feel of the miniseries is pretty cheesy and laughable.

The movie relies more on creepiness than it does jump scares--pretty refreshing considering how stupid horror movies have gotten. Throwing something at the audience and making a loud BWHWAAAAH! sound effect isn't particularly clever. A lot of the fear in this movie is based on atmosphere, visuals, or this feeling of being unnerved. The wall-eyed seemingly otherworldly clown in the sewer drain talks to Georgie long enough that it's the feeling of unnerving dread you that makes you really uncomfortable, not the feeling of being startled. There are several scares in this movie that did this particularly well. Some things were swapped out from the book--the mummy and the werewolf--which I think makes sense because people tend to not find them scary these days. I thought it was dead-on that Stan had an odd fear of a painting in his father's office that he would block out with his hand when he walked by. That was something I would have done as a child, much like how Georgie is afraid of nothing in particular and huffs it up the stairs like something is chasing him. (Okay I still do the latter thing).

The movie was far more successful than the miniseries in establishing the kids' friendship and the barrens looked EXACTLY like I pictured them. I was initially skeptical of the casting (I thought the kids looked to similar) but I stand corrected. They are what makes this movie. Eddie and Richie's banter is hilarious. And the shit talking and humor that filled the book was conspicuously missing from the miniseries. Ben was so tender and adorable, Beverly was one of the strongest characters and the pain in that love triangle was palpable. One of the thing that It does particularly well is show the callousness of adults. They literally can't see It, but they also turn their heads aside when kids are being bullied right in front of them. The kids are left to face these horrors on their own because nothing else will protect them. Anyone who's been bullied as a child can tell you about that callousness.

While I still overall had a really positive opinion, a couple of omissions were questionable. First the slingshot and the battery-acid inhaler are left out... which means the kids show up at the first confrontation with It unarmed. Mike, at least, has the sense to pack some heat in the final confrontation. Also, in the book, it is blatantly obvious that the reason Mike is hated (by Henry Bowers and others) is because he is black (like, the N-word abounds, which does all the more to flesh out Henry). It's clear that the movie intended to have Mike be the victim of racism . . . but it's never actually spoken. Henry calls him "an outsider" while beating him and tells him to stay out of town. Why dance around it? Just say it. He's black--this is racism. Just say it. Yes, racism still existed in the late eighties. It's even more relevant because of the terrible way his parents died.

The writers made a rational decision and left out that Infamous Scene. When I originally read the book, I never really blinked at that scene--it made sense to me. They're still at that age where sex is mysterious to the level of being mystical-- it is literally referred to as "doing it." Of course it then takes on a magical symbolism. That said, it's not like I wanted to watch that scene and it would have been a really weird, awkward way to end the movie.

I'm looking forward to the next chapter, which hasn't been cast yet. Is there any way they can get Amy Adams, because the current Beverly Marsh looks just like her. Also, Jerry O'Connell as adult Ben.

Looking forward to seeing Mother! next weekend, and hopefully an end to this awful summer of mostly bad movies.

The Dark Tower, a movie, I guess

Sweet Jesus what was that. 

I first read The Gunslinger in high school when I was a hardcore Stephen King fan and would read pretty much everything he wrote. It was definitely different than all his other books, walking some weird line between Camelot-dark fantasy-horror.  My particular edition had a long author's note where he described the long process of writing the book, then eventually moving on with the series.  The Drawing of the Three and The Waste Lands are probably the best two in the series, and yes it takes some dips over the course of seven books (the eraser thing at the end..) but I always thought it would be an awesome TV show.  At first I thought it would be, especially when Game of Thrones stuff was getting hot, but I was totally willing to accept a movie.  It would be a no brainer: just film the goddamned book and people would be happy.  I was particularly excited after hearing Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey would be in it-- not a fan in the latter, but he's a good actor, and I thought he'd be an excellent Walter.

But seriously, what the fuck.

Where do you start the movie?  How about the man in black fleeing across the desert and the gunslinger following?  You know, the desert.  The devil grass.  Those weird towns.  The intense loneliness. 

It's hard to count all the ways this movie went wrong but I think the most profound was the decision to center the movie around Jake Chambers.  Centering the movie around a random boy in New York City who suddenly discovers a secret portal to another world, and oh by the way there are all these bad guys after him, but why, now you have to find out why for that to make sense TAKES WAY MORE EXPLAINING than the actual starting of the book.

For the love of god, you got Idris Elba. He could trim his nails and make it riveting.  The book is called The Gunslinger.  The way the series eases you into all the crazy fantasy elements is starting with something really simple: here's this western-ish guy walking through the desert with a really single purpose: find the guy who screwed over his mother (and a bunch of other people).  In staying with him, we can slowly unravel the history of Gilead.  Of the lore surrounding Gunslingers-- about what it even means.  In the movie you literally get one scene where Roland's father gets killed--we don't even know the context or get to actually SEE any of Gilead.  (How do we even know who Roland is without seeing where he's from?  What he's lost?)

They should have just straight shot the movie, but I'm guessing they didn't because they thought audiences wouldn't get it.  They wouldn't get why Roland wanted to get to the Dark Tower without knowing exactly what the Dark Tower is.  So the movie tries to deal with this by getting into stuff from the later books--like the last three--about the kids with the shining and the weird humanimals--but that stuff is just so WACKY that if you don't ease into it you're like WHAT NOW? WEASEL FACES?

How about trusting that an audience doesn't have to be spoon fed everything?  Or if not that, that the movie is going to be seen purely on the basis of Stephen King's name and fans of the series so don't worry about all the lose ends not being tied up. 

Spoilers follow:

Walter has all these magical powers, but we are given no sense of what he wants, what he is doing, why he wants to bring the Tower down (only a vague sense of wanting darkness to come).  There are references to the Crimson King and Sombra but no explanation whatsoever of what those things are (so why include them?)  There's none of the complex personal history between Walter and Roland.  Matthew McConaughey delivers these stiff lines with none of Walter's oily evilness.  He's an awesome character, and McConaughey can be an awesome actor when he wants to--so what happened? 

Same thing for Roland--he's an incredible character I was happy to follow across a long series of books.  Idris Elba has amazing range when he gets a good script, but it felt like he has a third as much dialogue as Jake (who I give two fucks about), NONE of his history is covered, which then makes no sense because all he wants to do is kill Walter, and he doesn't care about the Tower until Jake tells him to. I don't even think the word Gilead is mentioned.  Or any of his ka-tet.  There are some stunts (I guess you could call them that?) that were the kind that made you cringe because you could tell the director wanted you to think they were cool but they so weren't. 

Then the movie shoots itself in the foot in an attempt to wrap everything up cleanly.  Roland kills Walter pretty easily (never mind that takes the entire series of books to happen and how it happens is way creepier).  The tower-breaking structures are easily blown up.  There's no "Go then, there are other worlds then these." Jake and Roland happily walk into the sunset despite the fact that the former's entire family is dead and the latter had no real character arc. 

The thing that makes this saddest is that it was so bad, there's definitely no way Drawing of the Three is ever going to get made.  There go my fantasies of Aaron Paul playing Eddie Dean. #SAD

Propagating Succulents

I have half a dozen adult succulents and have been conducting some casual research on how to propagate them. (Propagating succulents sounds like a good band name.)  You can pretty easily make a baby succulent just by using the leaf of an adult succulent.  I've tried several different methods that I've found online, but what is depicted below was the fastest/ easiest. 

 

I believe this is a Graptopetalum (a "ghost plant"). Go through your succulents once a week and gently wiggle some of the lower leaves.  If a leaf has some give, you can remove it without ripping the plant.  Some practically fall off on their own.  If you have to struggle, leave that particular leaf alone. 

 

Lay the leaves out (several different species are here) for a day or two to dry them out.  If you skip this step, the leaves will rot rather than budding.

 

Closeup of leaves. Note that the break point is pretty clean.

 

I tried several different methods, and the water-based method was best.  At first I tried a more standard method where you take the leaves after having dried for a couple days and lay them down on a thin bed of soil.  Spritz the soil every day with water.  This does work--about half the leaves will bud, and half will rot. However, this method works faster, and results in fewer rotted leaves.  Take a cup, fill it up halfway with water, tightly secure it with some plastic wrap, then use a knife or paperclip to make some small holes in the top.  Take the leaf and either put the open end of it very close to a hole, or gently push it slightly inside the hole.  Leave the cup in a sunny place, and it will basically take care of itself. 

 

 

The first thing that will happen is that a small bud will emerge that looks like a tiny flower.  The bud will continue to emerge along with these thin, spidery roots (seen above) that start to reach down into the water. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once they've developed a good amount of roots you can plant the buds into a planter with other ones. Some won't really make it, but at this point they're pretty robust.  I spritz mine every morning with water.  If you travel, don't worry about it too much-- they don't actually need a lot of attention and can go a few days without water. 

Trying to up my food photo game...

Literally everyone has the same two phones as me, and my food pictures are terrible.  This doesn't matter because I am almost never possessed by the desire to take a picture.  Exception: sometimes I bake something really lovely and can't photograph it for shit.  Anyhow, these are pictures from a recent trip to Europe, including the best meal I have ever had-- a tasting menu from Envy in Amsterdam.