2025-06-03 07:40:43
For the past few years, I’ve tried to start out the month of June by reconsidering the concept of “pride” and what exactly it means to me. This year in particular, it’s become pretty clear-cut, since so many politicians and public figures have stopped even trying to pretend to be decent human beings, and they’re now shamelessly persecuting trans men, women, and children.
As somebody who’s not transgender, but has just a basic level of human empathy and decency, I think it’s appalling, disgraceful, and inexcusable. As somebody who’s gay, and who has mostly kept my mouth shut because I can’t and shouldn’t claim to speak for anyone else, I think it’s especially disgusting to see people trying to drive a wedge between trans people and the rest of the LGBQs.
It’s shameless, because they’re using the exact same arguments against trans people that they used against gays and lesbians during the years of fighting for marriage equality. Now they’re attacking people’s identities — demonizing people not for who they love, but for who they are. When a professional flatulating asshole like JK Rowling claims to have lesbian and gay allies, her hope isn’t just to legitimize her own bigotry, but to encourage now-properly-assimilated lesbians and gay men to join in the attacks on a new minority. “Whew, we’re safe. Who can we persecute next?”
Instead, what it’s done is clarify just how cartoonishly empty and meritless the attacks have been all along. They’ve always been attacking people’s identities. It’s always been disingenuous, bad-faith bullshit. And for me personally, it’s made me regret all the times I tried in the past to treat it as if it were in good faith.
Since I came out, my philosophy around gay rights and marriage equality in particular has always been to stand your ground, but extend grace to the people who want to understand. After all, it took me many years to get comfortable with the idea of coming out, so why should I expect anyone else to just “get it” immediately? Don’t accept anything less than full equality at the governmental/societal level, but be patient at the personal level.
At the time, it seemed to make sense. Even after the political issue is resolved, we’ve all got an entire lifetime left to live around each other. Doesn’t it make sense to try and help people understand where you’re coming from, and how it’s just the most basic question of fairness and justice, instead of letting any question of “legislation from the bench” or “forced tolerance under penalty of law” linger in the background, waiting to cause problems again at some point in the future, as soon as it becomes politically convenient for someone?
The obvious problem with that line of thinking: being patient and trying to make sure that people were comfortable with the idea of tolerance is exactly why it took me so long to come out in the first place. For years, I said that I wished I’d come out in my 20s, but for practical reasons. I could’ve had a lot more life experience by the time I started getting into serious relationships. But now, I wish I’d come out in my 20s because it would’ve given me more years to shed all of the impulses that kept me in the closet.
Which of course is one of the key ideas behind Pride. Having the strength of conviction to declare “this is who I am,” without having to first wait for anybody else’s approval. It requires the realization and acceptance that you will never be good enough. The people who want to find fault with you will always find a way to find fault with you. And the people who actually matter will never think of you as just “good enough.”
That means being a person of integrity, standing up for yourself, and standing up for other people who are being treated unjustly. In my case, it means not staying silent because it’s not my place and I don’t know what it’s like to be trans, but speaking up because I know what it’s like to be human. And it is my place, because a lot of cartoonishly unnecessary bullshit is making life worse for several people I care about.
Back when marriage equality was the wedge issue being used to make people miserable for the purpose of votes and money, we heard an awful lot of clowns complaining about the gay agenda being “shoved down people’s throats.” And we’d mock it, because it was obvious bullshit, but also patiently try to explain in firm but easily-understandable language how that simply wan’t true. People want to be themselves and live in happiness, it doesn’t affect anyone else in any way, and they’re not trying to “shove it down your throat.”
Now, it’s been several years since marriage equality and laws against anti-gay discrimination have spread over the United States. And it’s been proven that it was such a complete non-issue that only the shittiest and least-effectual politicians are even attempting to dredge it back up again as a wedge issue. And yet we’re seeing the exact same bullshit arguments lodged against trans people, with the exact same false claims about “protecting children” from people who don’t give a shit about children, and the exact same capitulation from the Democratic party who still treat basic human decency as a political hot potato that they’re unwilling to touch. So I think it’s long past time for patience or grace for people who don’t deserve it.
I think now, if you’re being true to your identity and someone accuses you of “shoving it down their throat,” the correct response is “Choke on it, asshole.”
2025-06-01 12:31:09
After Asteroid City, I was concerned that my time as a Wes Anderson Movie Enjoyer had come to an end. He’d gotten so enamored of his own affectations and mannerisms that everything became completely impenetrable, and I was left like one of his characters, staring blankly at everything and unable to feel anything.
So it’s a relief that I thought The Phoenician Scheme was actually pretty funny. It’s still in love with all of its own affectations and mannerisms — and rigid compositions, and flawless art direction, this time set in 1955 and delivering a mid-century modern take on an alternate-reality Europe and Mediterranean — and it’s still about the familiar themes of dysfunctional families, odd people unable or unwilling to connect with their own emotions, unexpressed grief, and flawed men trying to make sense of their own legacy. But it has a lot of fun with it.
As usual, it’s the side characters who are the most interesting, since the main characters are invariably forced to deliver perfect performances all delivered in a deadpan monotone. Here, the standouts are Jeffrey Wright (playing almost the exact opposite of his character in Asteroid City), and Michael Cera as a tutor turned administrative assistant with an absurd accent. I’m not the first person to say it, but it immediately feels as if Cera has been part of Wes Anderson’s ensemble all along, instead of this being his first time.
One thing I really liked happens in a scene in which Benicio del Toro’s character Zsa-zsa Korda is getting a blood transfusion from his business partner Marty. The two men are lying with another man sitting in between them, manually pumping the blood. Korda is being grilled by his daughter Liesl (played by Mia Threapleton) asking pointed questions about her mother.
The scene is shot like a fairly typical argument in a Wes Anderson movie, cutting back and forth between POV shots of Korda and Liesl as they give short bursts of dialogue. Korda says something offensive, and Liesl slaps him. But we see the slap from Korda’s POV, meaning that Liesl pulls her hand back, and the camera whips to the side to show Jeffrey Wright’s character looking alarmed. The argument continues a bit, and she slaps him again, and the camera once again whips around to show Marty.
The reason I like it so much is mostly because it surprised me. It took me a second to realize what exactly had happened, and it was only after the second slap that I put it all together. These movies are so rigid and so formalistic — and here, even the camera movement is a perfectly level 90-degree quick pan, instead of like reacting to an actual slap — that they’re so rarely surprising. Even when there is a dramatic jolt, like in the first few minutes of this one, both the characters and the camera tend to react completely dispassionately. I feel like I’ve seen a similar scene dozens of times in Anderson’s movies, where a character displays a sudden burst of emotion, and they’re all filmed the same way: the camera remains static, and all the characters immediately reset to default. It was a surprise to see the camera become more than just a silent observer, and to realize that we were actually seeing things from Korda’s perspective.
And it was a surprise to see a Wes Anderson movie having fun with the format. Or more accurately: all the movies I’ve seen have the feeling that the filmmakers are having a lot of fun, but this felt like an attempt to let the audience join in.
There’s another bit later on, where Korda is talking to Liesl about his possibly getting baptized as a Catholic. During the scene, his dialogue and his delivery both subtly change. His speaking throughout has been very tightly controlled and reserved, but here it gets slightly more naturalistic. Less regimented and like self-consciously written dialogue, more like the character is trying to say what he’s actually feeling in the moment.
It all feels a little bit like small cracks in the ice, like the movie is very cautiously considering the possibility of maybe slightly breaking through all of its layers of deliberate artifice. As if it’s trying to be playful in a way that engages with the audience, instead of playful in a way that’s presented to the audience, and we’re expected to politely clap and say, “yes, quite delightful, that. Good show.”
Before going to see the movie, I’d read several reviews that complained that the movie was too detached and impenetrable to be enjoyable. But I thought that’s just baseline levels of Wes Anderson Movie, where you’re occasionally not even sure if it’s trying to be classified as a comedy. I didn’t think The Phoenician Scheme was quite as funny as the movie itself seemed to think, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a Wes Anderson movie that could surprise me.
2025-05-31 14:06:50
Earlier I said that I was hoping that Season 2 of Poker Face would start leaning away from the comedy a bit and more towards detective stories. Episode 6, “Sloppy Joseph,” isn’t really much of a detective story, but it was so well plotted and executed that it’s already become my favorite of the season.
The setting is an elite private school for young children, and the concept of pitting an adult against a horribly-driven over-achieving child seems like it’d turn into a younger version of Election. They even used an equivalent to that movie’s use of Ennio Morricone-style music to show Tracy Flick’s rage; in “Sloppy Joseph,” whenever demon child Stephanie goes on the warpath, we hear “Spitfire” by The Prodigy.
The unsettling black comedy about teenage politics in Election would be horribly tone-deaf with prepubescent children, so Poker Face wisely keeps it low-stakes. The murder here is upsetting enough to make you intensely dislike the villain, but isn’t on the same scale as, say, a man murdering his wife with a fireplace poker, or a woman murdering her sister by pushing her off a cliff.
And yet, I loved how thoroughly this episode manipulated me. I really wanted terrible, life-ruining things to happen to that child. And for Charlie to bring down her horrible boss, who was clearly enabling the villain. So when we got the reveal of who was giving Charlie insider information to help bring the murderer to justice, I had to pause the episode. Just to say out loud how much I loved how they put everything together.
My favorite moment in the episode is when Stephanie becomes outraged that Charlie’s figured out a way to use the kids’ kindness to defeat her, and she takes off to do the worst thing she can think of, “Spitfire” playing to represent her blind fury. There’s a camera cut and the music suddenly stops, just to remind us that this climactic moment is just a little girl running down a hallway. A teacher calmly and quietly says, “No running.”
I loved having the realization that I’d gotten so caught up in the story, and so caught up in the injustice of the whole situation, that I’d started to think of it in the same way as the other episodes, which deal with actual murders.
It culminated in such a sweet ending (before the final stinger!) that was a reminder of what seems to be turning into the season’s overall themes: having sympathy for and showing grace to even the seemingly irredeemable. And recognizing that “justice” doesn’t just mean punishing the guilty, but getting a resolution where everyone gets what they need and they deserve.
2025-05-28 10:42:01
After over a decade of cultural diffusion — marketing campaigns for four movies and now a spin-off, countless memes, the character’s appearance in video games — the act of actually watching any of the John Wick movies seemed like just a formality. I assumed that whatever magic was inside had dried up a long time ago, and I was impossibly late to the party.
But after watching the first movie, I suspect that it might’ve been excellent timing. This is a movie about a character whose reputation precedes him. So much of John Wick is devoted to scenes establishing what a fearsome bad-ass John Wick is, without actually showing him being a bad-ass. I’d imagined it would be an hour and a half of non-stop slow-motion gunfights in purple-lit nightclubs, but that doesn’t really make up the bulk of the running time. Instead, we get lots and lots of people telling us how scary he is.
This is delivered best by the bad guy Viggo, a mobster who talks about Wick as if he were a fairy tale. He’s not the boogeyman; he’s the guy they send to kill the boogeyman! Much of this is in Russian, with stylized subtitles filling much of the screen, certain words given particular emphasis.
They’re light on specifics. The only actual story I can recall is when Viggo says that Wick once killed two men with just a pencil. A pencil! I felt like I wasn’t sufficiently impressed by this detail, though: I’ve already seen The Dark Knight and don’t consider it that much of a stretch to imagine how a pencil could be used as a lethal weapon.
As it is, the first time we see Wick really show his stuff is when he kills a bunch of dudes (presumably; they’re in masks) trying to get into his house, in a vain attempt to stop his pending killing spree. We know that he kills twelve of them, but I’ve got to say it feels like pretty rote stuff. Certainly more home intruders than I would be able to kill, but not exactly an unprecedented number for an action movie.
But by that point, the movie has done a really good job of establishing its vibe. I was already familiar with a lot of the “Wick-iverse” from the aforementioned cultural diffusion, so I knew about the hotel that catered to assassins and had a strict code of no-killing-allowed. But I’d imagined that all of it would be bigger, or given out in small dollops of lore across at least the first two movies.
Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by the restraint in John Wick. It’s a fairly simple, straightforward story, coasting mainly on vibes and mood. Apart from repeating what a bad-ass John Wick himself is, there’s very little exposition, and it’s all streamlined and economical. You know very quickly who each character it is, and which role they play in this story. The simplicity really does give it the weight of modern mythology: a bunch of archetypes playing their parts in a simple story about revenge.
And about this recurring idea of “honor among killers,” which is bullshit in the real world but makes perfect sense in an action movie that’s presented almost like a fable.
If anything, I wish they’d gone farther into making Wick a super-hero. Have him doing five-finger death punches and the like, without ever breaking a sweat. When commenting on one of his many wounds, he admits that he’s “rusty.” But it creates this weird dissonance where everyone talks about him as if he’s a super-human killing machine, but the movie also wants us to relate to him as a John McClane, seat-of-his-pants type. I think it would’ve been stronger if they hadn’t bothered to put any tension around his getting wounded or kidnapped, but instead made the stakes all about his allies being in jeopardy, or simply the chance that his target will get away.
I definitely wouldn’t add John Wick to my list of favorite action movies, but I was impressed by how confidently it seemed to know exactly what it wanted to do. And how it seemed to suggest a story, a history, and a world much bigger than anything they needed to actually show us.
2025-05-28 01:00:00
At the beginning of the month, we went to the Fan Fest Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. This was the first year of the event, which was structured like Horror Nights, but for non-horror licensed IP. On the whole, it was better than I’d expected, and we enjoyed it a lot.
Two of the properties were anime, one of which (One Piece) we were aware of and the other one neither of us had even heard of. We don’t go to anything in the Harry Potter section of the park anymore, because of the asshole author who still profits from it. So it was just Dungeons & Dragons, Star Trek, Back to the Future, and lower crowds in Super Nintendo World.
The D&D walkthrough was definitely the highlight, with an extremely impressive Beholder animatronic. We went through twice, and as far as I’m concerned, that alone made the night worth it. I appreciated what they were trying to do with Back to the Future — give fans a chance to walk around the actual backstage set, combining photo ops with a mini-LARP and live music on the prom stage — but neither of us are big enough fans to get the full effect. And the Star Trek walkthrough was let down a bit by its scale and scope; I just felt like I’d been spoiled by the permanent Las Vegas attraction years ago. But all the cast and team members were super friendly and seemed to be having fun, so the whole night just felt like a good time.
One thing that I especially appreciated was the loop of 1980s background music that was playing over the escalators to the lower lot and around the tram tour. If the point was nostalgia, they nailed it, because I spent the whole time having vivid sense memories of middle and high school. I felt especially at home when they started playing “Centerfold” by The J. Geils Band, which I was a little bit obsessed with back in 1981 or 82.
And I can’t say with 100% certainty that they also played “She’s a Beauty” by The Tubes,1 because the tram ride down to the Back to the Future section played “The Power of Love” on a constant loop, which (along with “Take on Me” by a-ha) drove every other song out of my mind. But even if they didn’t, this was 100% the vibe they seemed to be going for. And I was eating it up. I was tempted to just stay on the escalators all night.
It genuinely never occurred to me just how many of the favorite songs of my adolescence were all about guys being horny for unattainable women.2 I guess it should be obvious in retrospect, since that’s what adolescence is for most guys. I was just in it for the vicious guitar solos.
2025-05-27 09:17:11
Apparently there’s a new Mission: Impossible movie out? Who knew? You’d think they’d have at least put up a poster or something.
I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world, but at least in Los Angeles, the advertising is inescapable. The other day I went to a mall that’s not even attached to a theater, and coming out into the atrium, I was confronted with a positively gigantic LED screen, 25 feet tall at least, showing Tom Cruise’s face squinting out over his domain. It was like being in a modern update of 1984 where a bunch of Hollywood producers had said, “Well of course our main objective is to stay true to Orwell’s original vision but also we think obviously, Big Brother should be more handsome.”
I had plans to see the new movie, but was feeling an odd combination of gastrointestinal distress and extreme lack of interest. It seemed more or less guaranteed to be an entertaining action movie with some stunts that take full advantage of the IMAX screen, but I’ve been unable to work up even the smallest bit of enthusiasm for it.
But heading into the weekend, I felt like I needed to do some prep work to get the full effect. I’ve still only ever seen the first three movies in the series, after all. (Or in other words, I stopped right before they started to get good, by most accounts). But then I saw a recap of the franchise that made me realize I actually had seen at least one of the other ones, but had forgotten everything about them. But then I realized that all the details have blurred together, and while I think I remember seeing a scene of Henry Cavill beating the hell out of somebody in a bathroom, it might’ve been The Man From UNCLE or Casino Royale or maybe it was when he was wailing on me, in one of those dreams I’m not supposed to mention in polite company?
Whatever the case, the Mission: Impossible movies just don’t resonate with me at all, and I’ve been talking a lot of shit about them on social media lately. So much so that I’ve been concerned it comes across as the type of person who is super-quick to volunteer that they have no interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Where I’m never quite sure how we’re supposed to react. Congratulations on your sophisticated and refined tastes, I guess?
So it’s important to be clear that whatever it is that makes Mission: Impossible movies pass through my like fiber, it’s solely a matter of preference, and no value judgment is expressed or implied. (Except for the second movie, which is just not good). I love a high-budget, well-made action movie, and I love a summer blockbuster that everybody can enjoy at the same time as a Big Event. I have less than no interest in letting my obnoxious, pretentious movie snob come back to life after I’ve done such a good job of silencing him over the past several years.
Which is something I’ve been very wary of, since I’ve gotten back into Letterboxd. I like their YouTube videos, I like the social media aspect of it, and I especially like the idea of having a movie-watching diary that doesn’t require me to devote a couple of hours to farting out a post on this blog. What I don’t like is that it keeps reminding me of everything I hated about film school and about online film and popular media commentary.
And I start to waste time thinking about stupid stuff I absolutely don’t need to think about, like whether this movie “deserves” three stars, or do I bump it down to two and a half? Do I need to add a review to clarify my rating, even if I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say? Would it be fun to write something nasty about a movie I strongly dislike, instead of just ignoring it?
It’s all in danger of becoming performative instead of participatory. Like not just wanting to engage in interesting conversation about a movie (whether positive or negative), but needing to have your tastes recognized and validated. Where it’s not a celebration, like it should be, but a challenge that you can and most likely will fail at.
For example: choosing the four favorite movies that will go at the top of your Letterboxd profile, which is part of the site’s branding, since they ask celebrities on red carpets to list their four favorites. Mine are shown at the top of this post — The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Miller’s Crossing, and Rear Window. I mean, obviously.
But I’m gradually getting the impression that the rules for choosing these are more complex than I ever imagined, and I’ve done it wrong. For instance: I’ve just outed myself as basic. You’re supposed to choose something under-appreciated, to demonstrate that you’ve got more eclectic tastes. Ideally, something that is obscure enough that few others will have chosen it, but popular enough to dispel any sense that you specifically chose the most obscure and pretentious movie that you could think of.
“What’s wrong with Empire or Raiders?!” I protest, making even clearer that I’m missing the point. It’s not that people dislike them; it’s that so many people like them that it says nothing to list them as your favorites. You want to pick something that says, “this choice tells you something specifically about me.”
But each of those movies does say something specifically about me, to the point that it almost feels like a victory. For one thing, my memory is absolutely terrible, but I still vividly remember seeing each one for the first time1 and realizing I was seeing something that was unlike anything I’d seen before. For another, each one changed how I think about art and what I value in it. Two of them obviously played a big part in my moving to California. Rear Window was like a light bulb going off2 and changed the way I interpret movies. And Miller’s Crossing carried itself like both an art film and a gangster action movie, suggesting the distinction wasn’t as rigid as I’d always assumed.
And for about as long as those have been my favorite movies, I’ve gone through cycles of being a pretentious snob, to rejecting pretentious snobbery and becoming an arrogant snob instead, to just being kind of a self-righteous contrarian, to trashing stuff if I thought it would be funny, to whatever phase I’m in now. And honestly, it just feels like a victory to realize I just can’t get that concerned about highbrow vs lowbrow, knowing that I’ve seen a lot more blockbusters that resonated with me than “art” films have.
It feels like a victory to grow up feeling like a nerd, seeing all my nerd favorites become enormously successful business to the point that you were a weirdo if you didn’t like them, and then seeing that whole fandom fracture again. It feels like a victory to know that I’ve grown out of my arrogant phase where I scoffed at Stephen Spielberg as being too “corny” or “maudlin.” And it feels like a victory to realize that absolutely none of this matters at all, but I can still find a way to try and turn it into an introspective metaphor for self-discovery and growth or whatever.
But the most valuable reminder, at least for me, is just to remember why we’re fans of stuff in the first place. Ostensibly it’s to celebrate the stuff we love, instead of knocking down the stuff we hate. To discover new details about our favorites, or to discover new favorites. And resist the urge to let out the inner arrogant film critic, and instead just choose to enjoy things and let other people enjoy things.