Stranger Things Didn’t End When it Should’ve

I’m technically on an ER binge but dinner entertainment’s been taken up by the last, most redundant season of Stranger Things. Netflix’s obsession with making movie quality/length episodes which are overfunded and overhyped has never been more obvious with this show. I get this was their biggest originally produced show, but that was literally a decade ago. And nobody signed on for five seasons, they fucking signed on for one, so you can forgive your core acting like they’re so fucking over this and phoning it in the whole time. Noah Schnapps finally gets more than a couple of lines but isn’t particularly good enough to engage me (and I don’t know how expects to have a career after what he said, I don’t think he did since he’s barely got one now). Maya Hawke is going overboard, she’s not burnt out but she’s not cynical, she’s overly goofy. Everyone else is pretty much exactly the same if not more insufferable, there are a lot of montages and a lot of “planning” for their “crawls”, another obnoxious nod to D&D. The way the dialogue’s written you can tell someone’s taken a cursory glance at one player handbook and shoehorned in references, yeah we get it. Plus they’re sneaking in other sci-fi references while forgetting how endearing it was originally. It’s basic bitch writing since the episodes are too long and need padding out. Jonathan’s hair is… the most distracting mess I’ve ever seen. They’ve toned it down on Steve’s iconic cut, everyone else’s hair is still badly designed even by 80s standards. The costuming now looks comical especially when you’re putting little kid clothes on older teens who are clearly more developed than they canonically should be (if there’s been any binding going on in that area, that’s proof enough this show should’ve ended last season and not now). They’ve absolutely de-ageing characters because of this, littler kids have Noah Schnapps’ baby face on them. I totally get people have made 20 somethings play teens forever now but in this case, it’s so laughably inexcusable and so avoidable. I get COVID got in the way but they could’ve shut this shit down well before then, we didn’t need five seasons, people barely wanted four and I was absolutely pissed it didn’t end back then. But the show’s getting better ratings, it seems to be nobody wants to say bad shit about anything anymore, you can’t be critical without seeming “mean” and anything overhyped has to have reviewed favourably like it’s a crime to shit on it. Anything with that much hype rarely earns it.

Max is the only interesting character left and all she does now is monologue. I think they de-aged her since she’s a lot taller than before, they even briefly de-age Winona. Sorry, having the tech doesn’t mean you find excuses to use and abuse it flagrantly. Also, get over the Kate Bush scene, you’ve singlehandedly ruined that song for other people and other shows, I kinda wish she hadn’t given you permission to use it. (I prefer the Placebo cover, too, which is blasphemous). The scene they used it for wasn’t that cool so using it for ‘memberberries when it was only last season shows they have nothing original to add. Every episode feels like a short film, too much visual and not enough decent storytelling. Vecna’s basically the Nothing now, he exploits the weak and hopeless to make himself powerful. It’s even gotten to the point the worlds are about to be sucked into a vacuum and destroyed slowly like the Nothing did, even though it’s a “wormhole” scenario.

Anyway, we did not for the love of Christ need to see Max and Holly waste so much time before they ran for their gates to weep over how strong Holly needed to be and how it wasn’t about the music despite Robyn making a big deal about the “songs” attached to the people in the Upside Down. I don’t know how Robyn knew Holly loved Tiffany, Mike would’ve explained Will’s affinity with the Clash, who Nancy hates. And we had to suffer through a big drawn out scene about how Jonathan and Nancy hated stuff about one another but trauma bonded anyway and loved one another but didn’t want to actually get married. The fact people are demanding the deleted scenes be replaced when there are tedious as fuck, no action moments like this you’re rolling your eyes through, like Netflix picked the wrong shit to edit out and the promotion suggested we’d see more than we’re getting. Again, fans who demand so much and get pissy about what they do get don’t get my sympathy. Netlfix only cares you gave them a decade of subscription money, they don’t care how dedicated you were to the show. Well, they care insofar as they got your money by teasing you with more Stranger Things than you deserved, they didn’t intend for it to turn into this so your rabid fandom produced this half-assed response. I’m not saying I’m not impressed by some of the scenes they did, they weren’t predictable, but they’re not saving me from giving the rest of it a scathing review. 

And they made the unforgivable mistake of having a ‘90s brand logo in a scene, reminiscent of the Starbucks debacle from Game of Thrones, again I did not care enough about this show to notice or care but this is a studio error from being under the pump to rush to print and edit episodes, a symptom of having a rabid fanbase who threatens to remove their subscriptions if they don’t get what they want when they want it. Fans need to realise the pressure being exerted on these people to get a product out quickly not perfectly. So they’re not going to look at every damn frame and shot the way you expect. I really wish these people would spend a day in an editor’s shoes, or any other crew member, they do their best under shit conditions and you demand perfection when any one of you in that position would’ve easily fucked shit up under pressure. Grow up. Yeah the production staff could’ve picked it up, but the boom operator in a lot of movies has been blamed for letting the mic dip into random shots, even on a fucking Scorsese movie he spent literally forty years trying to make. These fuckers are not being paid enough. The money you throw at Netflix and HBO doesn’t go dollar for dollar into these people’s pockets. They’re even giving the finale a theatrical release, and the episode we just watched was supposed to be nearly two fucking hours. It didn’t need to be, and one cast member is already comparing these fans to Snyder Bros wanting the offical cut based on a bullshit rumour spread probably for clicks on articles. Just the way these articles are literally being padded out with random fan quotes because the subject has no real substance beyond reiterating interviews and adding context and links to other articles on the same website. This is why I can’t do this work for a living. You’re not saying anything, you’re not contributing anything to journalism with this fluff. And you have to work so hard to signal boost it you have to write clickbait titles to even hope to get eyeballs. I couldn’t even get an article through an automated review process to get any audience, so I gave up.

I will have more to add at the end of this buffoonery.

I did add more but Blogger stops autosaving on published posts. I had a theory this last episode is trying to be Oscar bait since it’s running in theatres but it’s missed this year’s deadline so next year, maybe. It doesn’t make sense to distribute to theatres unless Netflix is pretending it cares about theatres. But this episode was awful, and people are already accusing the haters of homophobia and nothing else, when it was a bad coming out scene/scenario, and it didn’t need to be this big group love in. Well, it kind of did I guess but having people there who do not know you, it’s a little much. It’s Will’s meeting with the goddess, Southern Oracle mirror gate moment. It was another tedious scene that could’ve been cut down all while people still insist there are reams of footage we’re not seeing. You think you want three hour episodes but you don’t, not ones with pacing issues and dialogue problems as bad as these, not ones with barely any action in between. Not ones with embarrassing epiphanies from dumber characters who owe their inspiration to smarter characters, who are kind of too smart at this point for kids their age. Writing nerds who know literally everything and can decipher complex notes and explain them to the dumb character and audience is a total stereotype. Nerds tend to have niche interests and don’t have encyclopaedic levels of knowledge at their disposal. I know you want a sassy, smart black girl who can make the boys look dumb, but those schools do not have elite level intelligent students who always know the answer and drive teachers nuts with it. You wanted some “you go, girl” moments out of her. I dunno, I don’t care and I wish someone would just leak the entire last episode script or synopsis or just something digestible so I don’t have to endure 2 fucking hours of them stringing all these things back together to conclude with something fans will be split on at best and downright furious at worse.

I was somewhat right they spent so much fucking time on unnecessary dialog, I was so bored with the wrap up scenes that were boring as hell. I didn’t cry when El died, I didn’t cry when they were all wrapping up D&D. When they managed to kill the big bad with a coordinated attack and Winona chopped Vecna’s head off, the movie was over for me. It was done, it should’ve been done. But no I think we had to endure another 40 minutes. I get you had to have a fake out victory, that was all too good to be true, but not actually seeing what happened to Linda Hamilton and her army was anticlimactic. I didn’t care El was even sacrificing herself. I get Mike had to lose her to grow up and Will had to stop being afraid but if they were expecting like massive “fuck yeah” reactions from when Will went full core wizard, it didn’t earn it. It did not earn a theatrical release for how cheap it looked. It wasn’t as bad as Game of Thrones but it definitely means I will never watch it all from scratch for any reason, I’m only glad it’s actually done. and I don’t think it’s blowing up the internet the way they wanted to.

I’m watching a few takes on how badly this went down and there’s been mention of a stage play that’s supposed to flesh out HenryVecna’s arc. This shit literally drives me so insane. Stop making inaccessible supplemental material (comics, graphic novels, TV series, fucking plays, probably the hardest one to consume) then blame the audience for being ignorant to it when the diehards tell them “Oh, well it’s all explained in this thing you will never read/see. It’s on you for not being an uberfan”. Shut up. The point is you built a whole emotional arc for the audience which needed a worthy catharsis and you failed to deliver it. The studios keep burning these people out into absolute fuck it states because they never asked to be where they ended up, but these guys committed to delivering something even if it wasn’t the same plot/characters, you surely wanted five seasons but you didn’t want to make this season as it was. So are the fans to blame for loving the first season way too much? It’s a weird scenario.

Just a Girl… Interrupted

I get Winona Ryder’s voice stuck in my head on a loop when I think of how I framed my future to other people: “I plan to write”. She was met with dubiousness and concern, as much as I should have been, the admissions woman is still, “But what do you plan to do?”. I’m a writer, I make no money, and maybe Susanna lives on royalties from the movie, but I was allowed to make stupid bold statements even if I couldn’t stand by them. 

It’s a weird book to read, it’s not remarkable it’s only full of things people normally never see. I don’t even know if a “wrist banger” is a thing. A lot of what I see is audio-sensory issues, along with the dissociation, the absence of linear time, the sense something may have been a dream. I think Wynona should’ve gotten an Oscar as well, she didn’t even get a look-in by then, I thought she did, I can get she may have been salty.

I heard Kesha was denied her keyboard in ED recovery and I think that’s horribly mean, so Polly being disciplined for wanting to play is saddening. Again, if you gave space for expression when desired, people would recover, you shouldn’t punish pain with removal of soothing items. The lens isn’t entirely on a Dutch angle, it’s slightly askew when Susanna comes in. I can’t be mad at Angelina but I don’t appreciate the Tumblr Aesthetic bullshit around her character. We have to look at everything through Susanna’s perspective. Having an Irish nurse is still a thing these days. I tried to be “good” when I still had my marbles it’s hard to be when you don’t. I’ve lost bits, been in dazes, nightmarish ones. Living in a nightmare is all I can describe it as, you can’t wake up or sleep to make it go away. You may as well sit still your first few days so the poor nurses who have to do 15 minute checks can find you. Also, it doesn’t help autistic people when they need to leave a room you get roped into therapy, you’ll have passive aggressive counsellors telling you to stick around and commit to it whether it works or not. (Also, take the laxatives if they offer you them, you WILL need them if you’re on any meds that fuck with your metabolism, unless you’re suspected ED or similar to Daisy, you won’t get them). Also, tonguing your meds won’t work if they give you wafer meds. Also, they won’t indulge you keeping chicken bones under your bed. Just eat the cookies they leave for you, sweetie, there’s free tea and coffee (some reason me microwaving milk at night was a fascination, how I eat my food is a topic of conversation all the time). Unless your parents actually support your illness, don’t keep them in your life and medical consultations. Especially if they’re like Susanna’s. Sometimes your family accidentally adds to the issue, it’s not their fault, it’s better they don’t bring their opinions into it. Also they may actually just chuck a piece of paper at you with your initial diagnosis which will be full of misquotes because they misunderstood everything you said. It still happens to me. Also, they do take you out in public but you have to be at a point of relative normalcy. Nurses also LOVE to play, “I’m not with them” when they take you for walkies around the compound. But I do love the ice cream parlour scene. It’s another movie with those TikTok soundbites that get overused one month then disappear and reappear if someone’s late to the party. Also, I have had someone nod off in front of me, so Susanna talking to a sleeping doctor is realistic. If they’re not sleeping they’re inattentive and distracted easily, I liked to call my first doctor out on that shit. Also, hospitals at night especially the corridors are super liminal. Madness is liminal too.

Clea Duval gets literally no respect. When you do a biopic for Oscar noms it’s often the case you get outshined by the people who aren’t there to impress anyone. I fucking hate Jared Leto but he was so good back then before we all discovered his insane ego. I liked Angelina back in the day, I like she’s not a celebrity who insists on being on camera, but I think her inflated ego got the better of her for a long time. Winona seems more down to earth now.

Susanna’s kinda over-admired as the main character, the boys all love her, she’s so pretty. I don’t think the real Susanna experienced it. I don’t really want to reread the book again, I don’t want to write one either. There’s not that many “feel good” moments. I think Lisa’s needlessly a total bitch as an antagonist, I don’t believe she needed to be that narcissistic. She’s supposedly sociopathic. And yeah, raising promiscuity in women as a fault while it was encouraged in men is sexist. I was sad she chose to stay over leaving with Toby, I think it’s shitty she got sprung for making out with two guys in one day. You can’t make out with orderlies but you will notice patients forming their own sorts of cliques and social groups while judging you for being on the periphery by choice. Also, don’t wear the “lazy, self-indulgent” accusations, they don’t let you leave after those accusations so it cannot be true, if it were, they’d let you out. The very fact Susanna has to demand reasons for why she’s stuck there, why she cannot leave, why she isn’ ready, just for a nurse to reframe it as “oh, it’s all your problem, you’re not crazy”, I’m not even kidding, I’ve had that happen to me. Nurses tried to reframe it as an anger management issue, everyone has issues with their boss, I do, you don’t see me sitting in a psych ward about it. That’s a fucking opinion, it’s not a diagnosis. Deal with the anger but don’t let people dismiss the diagnosis. It would be highly irresponsible of a doctor to hold you as an involuntary patient for no good reason. Valery tells Susanna to write it down and deal with it but Susanna’s been trying to do so this whole time, it’s dehumanising to be detained and then denied a proper explanation. I’ve written it all down and I’m still dealing with it.

This movie does instil a proper narrative to a book that’s more like a series of vignettes. I don’t think the lesbian angle was necessary, someone wanted to see the main characters share a kiss. Lisa terrorising Daisy is sad but poignant, there’s no real recovery, there wasn’t back then, there isn’t really now. Defining recovery is personal. 

The shots feel very misty and soft. Daisy killing herself is really to drive Susanna back into hospital and break her from Lisa. RIP Britney, we lost a perfect one and it wasn’t fair. There’s an interesting “high road, low road” shot when Lisa leaves Susanna with Daisy’s hanging body, Susanna curled up in the bedroom doorway upstairs as Lisa callously walks out the front door. I did analyse some of this in university based on one viewing. One thing my experience lent to was adding some kind of perspective in essays pertaining to self and the body.

Also, they won’t let you keep a dead previous patient’s cat on the ward. I get pet therapy is good but honestly letting people bring animals to work or anywhere and they’re not an assistance animal is mean to people with allergies and phobias of animals. Also, you need supports when you leave but unless people are willing to give them to you, you have to force yourself to fit moulds on the outside that don’t suit you. I went back to school for two years then had to be given a job via a very casual interview by the agency who was supposed to find me a job. I think they should have better supports, you kinda get kicked into an uncaring community assistance program if you go in publicly, privately means little too, you think you’re winning by not paying, trust me, I have gone through two separate government funding avenues and have wound up relying on private providers anyway. I don’t think Susanna was personally terrorised the night before her release, the tension mostly comes from the somewhat false narrative as it can do with biopics.

If you’re sane now, it’s a privilege because you’re not noticing reality. If I notice it, it’s self-indulgent and I’m ignoring what I have. Nothing is fair and you should be mad and insane and refusing to conform. And I don’t think this film should have a Teens Choice Award. I know a lot of ED girlies and other mental health girlies probably over-idolise this movie as some kind of ideal they could’ve known instead of what they got inside. I have to put up with people’s perceptions of it as friends and family members of patients, but I’ve been kinder to those who were admitted. At least they know about it. I do know people who kinda glorify this depiction over the reality of it but again, I don’t think they’ve really had a horrible inpatient experience that’s contributed to literal medical trauma and made hospitals inherently unsafe environments for you.

I just realised we got books on tape in lieu of VHS copies.

I got stuck on a channel that’s made a handful of video essays on Disney movies and their cultural significance and historical relevance or allegorical importance. I appreciate the way people can marry historical education within the framework of pop culture, you’ll never find this stuff on network TV unless some station took it and chopped it up. It’s why Netflix trying to do this with the Toys that Made Us was such a bad idea. You ain’t no Defunctland, baby.

I saw very few Disney films before the Little Mermaid. I think I was supposed to see Snow White once and saw Charlie Brown and the Wizard of Oz instead. I never saw it on home video, nor did I see Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (which I actually would like to see now). Best I got was Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast and Lion King, the really good ones. But there were a handful of less popular ones, like the Rescuers, Robin Hood and the Fox and the Hound, that I had as a book and tape version, that were popular and cheaper to buy for your kids. I don’t even remember asking for them, I think because we didn’t own a VCR and sat in the car on long trips out of town, it was better to just inundate us with these. Even at five, I sat in my dad’s van with the key in the ignition just to run the tape player and listen to our books. Or we’d be on a single foam mattress pretending to be sicker than we were in a warehouse while my dad did his work. I carried my little black radio with me for ages.

So my memories of those Disney films is reduced to whatever the abridged book on tape version was, along with pictures which were just stills from the movie, of course, so they would’ve been much cheaper to make than VHS. Now I’m seeing clips from these movies and I’m remembering what I saw in the book but there’s nothing from the movies themselves. I’m not so bummed, seriously if you’d given me a book on tape adaptation of the Last Unicorn, I’d have still loved it. I technically did it myself by recording the whole thing onto a cassette tape, like I did with multiple movies, contenting myself with listening to it, which is apparently something a lot of kids did. I think buying VHS tapes was cost prohibitive, video rental stores didn’t start selling whatever wasn’t being rented or what was removed to be replaced with new stock. I bought a bunch of DVDs from the local rental place who were closing down and I don’t know why I got them, I haven’t watched them, I was sick and spending money I didn’t have. But I have a stockpile of DVDs now, some of which turned out to be damaged despite me rarely touching them, I still wound up buying the final episode of Six Feet Under off YouTube since my disc was unwatchable. So I used to settle for listening and building the movie in my head as best I could, either from pictures or memory. But it’s odd to have a nostalgia for movies I never actually saw.

American Gothic - That devil’s the pesky one, ain’t he?

I remember Lucas Buck being so much more malevolent than mischievous. He’s really just an irritant while he gets what he wants, so whenever Caleb thwarts his temptations, he’s more of a cartoon villain who’s thinking, “I’ll get you next time, kid.” He and Caleb’s angel sister Merlyn are in a tug-of-war over Caleb’s soul, his cousin Gail brought back to town once he’s orphaned, only for her to be seduced by Buck.

The show’s about as good as I remember but I had no idea Sam Raimi was involved at all, the fact Bruce Campbell shows up for one episode was absolute evidence of this but I blanked on that. Bruce is a good sport too, he’ll get in makeup for a shot. Even the score is a little noir mixed with Twin Peaks. A lot of basic horror tropes pop up in egregious Dutch angles, montages of fire overlayed with that film negative style shows and movies used at the time to make a normal image somehow scarier. The violin stings come in often. But there’s a charm to it the way Raimi likes to be a little campy and overblown. That’s the tone I’m getting this time around, sappy one-liners, cheesy editing and quick closeups. This was another show that moulded my brain in terms of how I approached fiction, that and it had a certain seductive quality to it, it wasn’t so horrific I wasn’t allowed to watch it but it was on late at night so we had to tape it like a lot of shows. I don’t even know how I discovered these shows before the internet other than TV commercials.

I think the show did a good job of making sinners out of angels while the devil manipulates already maligned townsfolk into further strife more to get back at them for their slights against him. If anyone happens to benefit without being in debt to Lucas is a fortunate byproduct of Lucas’s revenge. Merlyn commits selfish acts out of a sense of unfairness, she’s malevolent in her own way to punish Trinity and Lucas, but he has the upper hand over Caleb. The doctor saves Lucas from a potential gunshot wound when he could’ve easily let the lady shoot him. But he doesn’t report her.

I get why Buck is “ever-present” but it’s a bit comical when he just appears behind people. I like Selena stands up to him more and tells him to shove it. Lucas’s “mother” comes back to town to get Matt to kill him. Gary Cole gets to mack on alotta ladies.

Also the way I’m watching it was not the intended network order since they cut four episodes from being cancelled but then didn’t release them in order for DVD and syndication. So I say I’d never have seen them on TV where I was since it never aired again where I was (far as I know). And tacking these onto the original series like they’re supposed to be in this order is jarring and makes you disinterested in them as they were probably removed for having the least amount of through-line that wouldn’t wreck the ending. They’re filler episodes anyway so why bother unless you’re a completionist. Plus the Potato Boy one is way too “after school special”, even the closing credits are saccharine. Dr. Mike’s suddenly back, Lucas is acting like Caleb wasn’t totally possessed last week, Merlyn’s same as always.

Next episode Gail’s lamenting over leaving Trinity, the key she found in the car is suddenly significant. I don’t even think she’s fucked Lucas and gotten pregnant so if this was supposed to set up her sudden infatuation with him, it’s annoying they took it out. More so for the scenes where she finally investigates Lucas, it’s like they just didn’t care to develop her relationship with Lucas so it’s weird she’s suddenly all over him. And she’s trying to convince Caleb to go with her. Her ambivalence keeps her there. And Lucas manipulates her further tempting her with the truth. Matt picks on her about Lucas, so does everyone else, but he’s the fuckin’ devil, that’s the point. (The Mayfair Witch show seems to have borrowed somewhat from this but in truth, that thing looked so bloated with derivative shit it’s impossible to tell). Plus Gail’s mother might’ve been carrying a baby, the fact Lucas is so evidently around when people were younger and he’s not aged a bit doesn’t seem to bother anyone. I don’t think they even cared about developing Gail’s past properly for how much they made a big thing about her coming back for answers not just Caleb. Suddenly she’s finding cigarette burns on her wrist so it’s implied Lucas is messing with her to think her dad deserved to die. She finds the box for the key she got earlier in the series.

I think the next missing episode was a Ben-centric one so these all look like earlier episodes that would’ve fleshed out a lot of shit that feels so out of nowhere if you don’t have them. It also establishes Merlyn was haunting him a lot too, not just Caleb. And one of them had the scene where Gail’s joking about Lucas to her recorder only to get in bed with him. IMDB thankfully has everything in order since AI on google doesn’t. If I were in charge of the Internet Archive I’d have uploaded them based on IMBD’s listing. I’d do that as a career, just upload shit to a website, but you need coding skills from what I can see. This particular episode has a terrible scene with Lucas’s voice “echoing” to gail, it’s corny AF, the rest of it’s fine but again, I don’t know if this is Raimi camp or meant to be taken seriously. Ben gets way too much dirt on Lucas now he has to go over every “accident” or mercy killing Lucas happened to be around. Merlyn knows she can’t implicate Lucas she can only prevent more bullshit. Again, would’ve been nice to have that context for how often Merlyn doesn’t get Buck in the shit for his wrongdoings. As long as Lucas can bend all the truths into pretzels he’s fine. Plus Caleb has another moral conundrum so he’s showing Lucas’s “teachings”. He’s more complicated than a Damien character since he’s using Lucas’s moral ambiguity to “punish” bad people. Caleb has to learn free will sometime, but leaving this whole episode out again denies the audience a chunk of character development for him.

The other one was the ghost of the Boston Strangler coming back to “kill” Merlyn, I guess this must’ve been the most redundant besides the Potato Boy episode, that really had nothing going for it. Merlyn’s supposed to be Caleb’s spiritual guide so she can help him do kind deeds, it gives her more importance than if she was just dissuading him from Lucas’s influence. It’s a very big argument for nurturing the devil’s son to avoid any supposed nature. The Strangler tries to make a deal with Merlyn to double cross Lucas but she goes against him. I liked Merlyn was presented with the problem of evil if it meant Lucas’s undoing, then it was justified. It’s a clever show, not brilliant but clever and could’ve had a bigger audience. Caleb ends up thwarting the Strangler before he obliterates Merlyn and she’s scared Caleb’s about to succumb to the darkness, so this had a decent amount of story in it too and they still dumped it. I got through them all and I’m annoyed I didn’t do my own control the way it was set up online, it would’ve been a pain in the ass hopping around. The fact you couldn’t trust network TV to deliver on late night, low rating shows, they didn’t really care how you felt, you could write the network and bitch but unless you sent avalanches or had fanbases like Twin Peaks did, which was a feat to organise, mobilise and execute a campaign to keep it on TV without the fucking internet, there were no avenues to complain. Your favourite show might’ve just been filler if a broadcast schedule had an unexpected lull in programming.

Anyway, I got sidetracked and really wasn’t watching this at all by the end, it was very much on in the background, again because it was out of order and those episodes were slower anyway. I would say it’s still worth a watch, I can see the potential and it’s something maybe a reboot could save, it has a bit of a Goosebumps/Who’s Afraid of the Dark? feel but for adults.

 

Trust… And other Hal Hartley movies…

I didn’t know how to feel about Trust at first, I have a bigger thing for the other two Long Island Trilogy movies, Simple Men and The Unbelievable Truth. I remember putting on Henry Fool for the first time, there’s a weird way Hal sucks you in by showing you something supposedly mundane but the entire scene veers into chaos really quickly - someone drops dead, someone else sees two methheads having sex and gets screamed at, someone else gets boned in the middle of a heist by their two accomplices and vows to punish some other blonde out of spite.

Trust is a great film, I had to see someone else praising it to remember. Adrienne Shelley was such a wonderful actress who a lot of people wouldn’t know if you mentioned her. I was so geared up with Where to Land featuring the girl I still follow on Instagram. I think the end result will be amazing, it’s just weird thing there’s another universe where this girl wound up in an indie movie.

I don’t know why Trust failed to win me over, it’s got so much going on. The casting’s off in terms of age, I don’t really see Martin Donovan’s character as particularly young, Shelley’s got that young ingenue look that can pass as teenage. I can’t tell how old Matthew’s supposed to be comparatively but he looks too old and his dad seems too young as well as Maria’s father.

Maria takes too much of the blame for her father’s death, she slaps the guy, he drops from a heart attack, it’s really a horrible coincidence. She’s forced to rapidly grow up and adapt to life immediately after being turfed. She finds someone possibly more worse off but still walks into danger anyway. A baby goes missing, she realises her boyfriend only saw her as a body, now everyone hates her. Matthew’s stuck living with his abusive dad and walks around with a grenade, a small allegory of his internal struggles, his always blowing up on people, one day he’ll pull the pin and all hell will break loose. He and Maria find solace in each other through their mutual displacement, societal rejects on the fringe. He hates repairing TVs, the new opiate of the masses, according to him, in a way he’s his own worst enemy but too much of an idealist to stop himself. He winds up between Maria’s sister Peg and Maria, who needs him more as a human shield against her crotchety bitch of a mother who basically wants her to suffer. She chooses to suffer, and she has a cute make-under when she puts her dorky thick framed glasses back on and finally appeals to Matthew, all the while trying to educate herself rather than remain ignorant as she was before. Maria’s mother decides to make his life more difficult along the way, so Peg’s on his back trying to get him into bed while poor Maria does penance. She takes a menial job, back then you could basically just walk into a factory and do whatever, it’s why Boomers don’t understand why we can’t get a job now. Maria also decides she has to find the father of the stolen baby, she’s doing a lot to make up for something that’s not really her responsibility, so her mother loves having her there as a maid. Peg’s also recently divorced and robbed of her kids. The mother tries to convince Matthew to date Peg, then cracks onto him herself. Matthew would rather Maria be treated kindly than suffer for her supposed sins. The mother doesn’t want to lose Maria she only hides it behind a need to control her because her own life is spiralling, but she’s also hiding Maria’s slap was perfect timing, she could get rid of her husband without a divorce.

The colours in this are a lot brighter than usual, I like Hal’s use of mostly natural tones, but Maria’s gaudy early 90s outfits, the fluorescent pink and orange highly contrasted against the greyness around her. 

Hal’s kinda flew under the radar with the age gap relationships onscreen, he made these movies back when this was more common than people knew (but at least the actors themselves weren’t literal kids, you don’t see Henry with Susan until she’s well over 30). But Matthew’s obviously a grown man and I’d never get away with showing this to my friends any more than I did getting flack for lending my copy of Leon to them or when someone else watched Mysterious Skin with me. Yeah, I can’t share my movies with people and I don’t hate it, it’s another thing I get to like in peace. I put these on more to get off the internet, I thought we lost our connection this morning but it came back anyway.

Trust is fun, it’s got a cute anti-romantic ending. So I moved on to Simple Men, which I have a bigger fondness for. And you get a hot, young Holly Marie Combs before Charmed. And a cop has a fight with a nun. I like you don’t know if Bill’s actually conning Kate, I more found it weird the psycho ex-husband really wasn’t a threat, he looked like a bigger hopeless case than the guy who gave them the shoddy bike. The ex is more a shell of a guy who just wants a jacket, he looks pathetic but Kate fears him, he could easily snap and Bill’s not sure what to think. Everyone’s scared of the asshole until Kate shows up. She’s bolder than all the twits combined, Kate’s resilient and by the end she’s had it with men, clearly, she has to set them straight, Elena’s too innocent and has to run off with the father. Kate resolves things with Jack only to realise Bill’s a criminal too. And he needs her to lie to the cops, rightfully she won’t, she’s done. Bill finally takes it like a man and he ends up pitifully in love with Kate. There’s shades of Amateur in this, what truly makes a man a criminal, what makes him fundamentally dangerous or is he entirely desperate? Kate understands the law from having dealt with Jack, but she’s found someone she may be able to trust in Bill. His big plan to fuck over the next blonde woman he met falls down. He takes one more look at his deadbeat dad, mans up and goes back to Kate to turn himself in. We don’t see his arrest, just a final tender moment with Kate as the Sheriff says off screen, “Don’t move.”

Reality Bites?

I’ve seen this movie ripped to shreds by younger members of the internet and their take was 100% valid. But then I watched dumb clips of Wynona Ryder and Ethan Hawke making out and I felt needless nostalgia for this piece of shit that I was too young to appreciate when I first saw it and am now too old to relate to.

I refused to watch Girls after the scene involving the main character having to ask her parents for money for a personal project. I couldn’t stomach a lot of what that show was depicting even after I’d gotten a job and dealt with my own finances. Even now, I childishly want to divest myself of all financial responsibility purely so I can stop thinking about it. And I’m not broke I’m just jobless and unable to find anything that won’t kill me. I left school with false direction, I didn’t plan past university, I didn’t even really care or was able to conceptualise my future at seventeen, no kid should be forced to anyway, but you are. They didn’t worry about me since my grades were sufficient.

So I saw Reality Bites before I was able to make sense of its ideologies. Our heroine of disillusioned youth, college Valedictorian Lelaina already has a paid internship with a studio, already has a guy named Troy madly in love with her, and she got a BMW for free off her dad, who divorced her mother, so she has to take it to appease a public meltdown between them. And she’s got a gas card for a year’s worth of what would’ve been cheap fuel back then. Shit was bad back then, she makes 400 a week, that isn’t much, sadly I’d settle for it and have. And she dates Ben Stiller who is too attracted to her to be mad she crashed her car into his. He’s not bad in this, I tend to find him annoying. Ethan Hawke got away with looking like unwashed trash which was the style at the time. Troy refuses to get a job because it’s beneath him so Lelaina holds that over him because she’s got a job and her name’s on the lease to the very large shabby apartment they rent, she’s kinda infected with the Boomer mentality that dictates if you work hard, you’ll be fine. Troy’s in a band, he’s too fucking smart but sleeps with groupie types. And he’s insanely jealous of Ben Stiller. Meanwhile, Janeane Garofalo and Steve Zahn hang out and get wasted in the background, one managing the Gap and the other facing an uncertain romantic future as a closeted gay in the mid 90s. Most of Lelaina and Troy’s discourse is her being a bitch to him and him responding in kind while the sexual tension festers between them. 

And we get to see the gang hang out in gas stations stoned and dancing to My Sharona (songs back then were only relevant to my generation when they ended up in TV and movies). This exploration of Gen X on the verge of adulthood was pretty superficial. If you had fuck of money everyone hated you, but if you didn’t have money, you were tolerated, barely. Nowadays, people are waking up to the actual reality that people who got too much too soon can’t sustain their own future while the rest society struggles to make rent and buy food and can’t even save responsibility if they want to. So then they get blamed for their avocado toast addictions instead. Ben Stiller is much nicer to Lelaina but he’s creatively bankrupt and dorky and weird and their interactions are so hard to watch, they can’t get along due to differing tastes but people allegedly still rooted for them as a couple. She’s kind of too young for him in a sense, he’s too straight and responsible but wants to hang out on the fringe just to date her. He doesn’t have big aspirations for a fancy car and house, he’s a college dropout, which was fine if you had a way of getting right into corporate America with the right contacts, but then he’s all wistful about what he’s missing out on. He listens to Frampton which is bad if you’re in another movie about disaffected Gen Xers.

Troy is obnoxious in his jealousy. He’s negging Lelaina’s choice of romantic partner. She negs him back over this, it’s kind of gross but I must’ve thought it was hot at 13. Oh, and I loved Lisa Loeb sincerely and have her one big album I still listen to, and that song was a depressing bop. Plus I sing that Julianna Hatfield song a lot too. Troy’s also very obnoxious about what counts as 90s hipster, anti-Yuppie philosophy. AIDS looms ever present in the background, I think KIDS did a better job of making this a genuine threat versus Vickie getting a clean bill of health that just makes her calm down on her rutting. Lalaina humiliates John Mahoney and puts her foot in it by insulting Vickie’s offer of a job when she’s fired, predictably. Troy sympathises because it means Lelainia’s down on his level. Like it’s fine to be fired repeatedly because fuck your future. I don’t know how I survived with my dumb assery, I didn’t even know how unemployable I was before I was diagnosed, now I’m extra fucked. Troy makes a move anyway, again, he seems to only really want her when she’s down in the dirt. She keeps making her “documentary” of interviews of her friends, all children of divorce who want more than what their parents displayed in terms of romantic relationships. She keeps dating Ben Stiller, again, she’s not really got anything in common with him but he makes her laugh, I guess. Andy Dick jump scare, by the way, and he wasn’t loved by all back then. She’s “over-qualified” for studio work but can’t work for a newspaper because she can’t give the dictionary definition of “irony”, and apparently neither can Troy though he thinks he knows. Once Lelaina’s “rejected” him for Troy, he rejects her outright and she can’t even get sympathy from him.

She even goes through the same exact scene Lena Dunham does in Girls only she’s less demanding about asking her parents for a loan. David Spade jump scare. Again, she had a paying job that wasn’t worth sacrificing, I don’t even think she was about to get fired, she just uses petty retribution but she’s not rewarded in any way. Ben Stiller’s offering her options that she has to consider like selling out to some kind of MTV simulacrum. And she’s all pissy about Troy being out like a stray dog fucking around. Latoya Jackson jump scare. She calls a psychic hotline which obviously keeps you on the line to drain your credit card and rack up a phone bill. I think this was supposed to be more satirical than people thought it was at the time. Everyone’s broke and pissed at her but she has a rich boyfriend and won’t ask him for a loan. She gets a speech not unlike I got when I was crying about a guy outside a bar and I still had a job. Lelaina and Vickie get into a stupid fight when she’s entirely in the wrong but her name’s on the lease. And she gets the “you lack work ethic” speech from her dad, Troy skipped out on a job there because again, principles. There are some parallels with Martin Donovan’s character in Trust, he’s too smart to do menial shit, but Troy likes eating McDonald’s. Lelaina pumps gas only she uses the gas card to get tips (I think, the girl in the gas station seems to think she’s a shifty bitch). She and Troy have a screaming match over his wasted potential and him being a loser, he’s freeloading and a mess and Vickie’s shocked she hasn’t boned him yet. She discusses lesbianism with Lelaina, Vickie’s the one who’s dumping before she’s dumped, she’s decided she has AIDS with no diagnosis, I get it, it’s fucking scary to wait for that information, it’s easy to be so dismal. Lelaina finally apologises for being a bitch which is more I did at her age. Melrose Place reference jump scare. Lelaina thinks she’s made it with Michael’s way too in love with her and she’s more in love with him doing this shit for her until he ruins it. It’s hard to explain what we were like before cell phones, Micheal has a useless one he uses in a phone booth.

Vickie gets a clean bill of health, meanwhile our gay Sammy has to come out to his parents. These two are so much more entertaining as a B plot. We don’t see the coming out scene, only the aftermath. Lelaina edits the film like she has any say in how it’s received once it’s shown to the supposedly infatuated producers Micheal told her about. This movie doesn’t absolutely suck, Troy’s call Lelaina a doily with her lacy dress, Michael gets all pissed about Troy’s negging, she gets stuck in the middle. Troy is an elitist dickbag despite having nothing to his name, his brain is his value, and again that means nothing to capitalism but capitalism betrays her anyway and ruins her vision. She’s let people take her art out of her hands to butcher it. It’s not Michael’s fault necessarily but he’s dumb about how it would be taken. I don’t know how many people wanted to work with MTV back then but I’m sure nobody does now. They kinda “Real World” the shit out of the video. But maybe her version sucked more. But it was real and this is awful and gross and she’s reasonably angry and I can relate, when someone takes your thing and makes a mockery of it you get mad. All this does is give Ben Stiller a moment to be Ben Stiller jumping around like a goof and it’s annoying as fuck. But as a director he’s done a decent job, he somehow had a lot of pull back then only we’ll never see Heat Vision and Jack now.

Once again, our heroine is dejected and rejected and Troy’s there to swoop in and comfort her and be an actual friend. Something about being 23 in the 90s was super important the way it’s not now. 25 is considered too young and underdeveloped. They end up in bed of course but he freaks out and runs away, it’s more comical than dramatic the way he looks at her. She has to panic about “ruining the friendship” like she said they would. Michael has to come in and make it worse. This movie’s on crack it actually goes pretty fast. I can’t find Ben Stiller funny enough to see him as a romantic interest. I see so many shades of Singles in this as well I forgot it predates it. Troy’s all “I made love with someone I love but I’ll fuck up all the time but I’m the best you’ll get”. She walks out anyway and Michael thinks he’s won her over but Troy has to be all Violent Femmes in her face about it. I’m sorry, Stiller is so fucking one note in a serious role. Ethan Hawke has awful teeth by the by. I like Great Expectations but I don’t at the same time. I get why he was popular but why he can seem odious at the same time. This also came out when I loved all the U2 singles but didn’t own them, so shows and movies overused the same three songs. And someone told Wynona she wasn’t pretty enough for movies like who the fuck was that person? Like who do we lynch? She already had terrible self-esteem. Justice for Wynona the robbery shit was so not even close to Lindsay’s BS and she got slapped so much harder.

Troy supposedly runs off to Chicago and she has to hurriedly pack and get a cab that doesn’t wait for her weirdly enough. But he’s there in a suit going on about arcane glimpses of the universe and he loves her and she’s all, I went to go check on you, you’re a mess. They kiss and make up and move out. Tony Robbins jump scare and a fake TV show based on their romance as some dumb meta narrative then I finally get the song. That wasn’t so bad, I wasn’t rolling my eyes but I’m also not a film student who had to really bust their guts to be taken seriously on YouTube as film critic. I think she was also trashing Rent more than this movie.

Good? Will Hunting. Not a Big Fan…

I just finished watching Big Fan which is a great movie, but then I threw on Good Will Hunting and I don’t think they compare.

Dan Harmon was right to pick this shit apart, and when you realise in its infancy it’s an entirely different movie, like Borne Identity levels of intrigue, what Van Sant allegedly does with it, turning it into a heartfelt drama with too much orchestral manipulation, it’s kinda flowery and pompous to be honest. Until Nolan decided to just overuse a score, I never realised how many movies used stings and refrains to tell you how to feel. I think the Afflecks have (or had, I guess) too much pull after this, I get Ben and Matt had to prove they “wrote” the screenplay, but I can also see the reason for the vitriol from better writers at the time who were peeved about the Oscar win. It’s so hard to hear shit get praise when you know it’s so fucking flawed. The “brain off” in the bar is so silly. I do love Minnie Driver, I adore her to be honest, I defend Grosse Pointe Blank a lot.

Oh, and Will’s AUTISTIC AS FUCK, BRAH. Sorry. I mean, he’s “wicked smhart” with his, let’s eat beans rather than drink coffee bullshit. I get this is a blatant attack on the pitfalls of intellectual elitism, and I didn’t realise it’s also capturing the Irish Catholic vs. Protestant tension was encapsulated in South Boston, the blonde intellectual in the bar is a WASP effectively. And I never actually noticed how coddled and infantilised Will is by the professor, no fucking wonder Will snaps in the end. One of the psychiatrists Will fucks around with was in Little Man Tate as a pompous TV presenter. Making gay jokes is still homophobic you can’t hide behind, “I ain’t got no problem with it” bullshit, it’s such a Ben Affleck response to gayness. (I don’t think he’s matured, and if he’s gone back to and left J-Lo again that confirms a lot). I also think it’s kind of silly they insist on Will getting therapy to rope Robin William’s character into it. He really is the best part of the film. He plays off Damon very well, I never said Matty was a bad actor. He’s had some terrible takes, he and Benny were actually extremely out of touch with their generation in the end.

You could argue Skyler is a watered-down Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but she’s too sane and grounded to be considered manic, she just has pixie, childlike qualities and a sweet sense of humour but she plays the drama part much better. I wish I could tell the joke she does in the bar. She and Williams, I feel anyway, were the more accomplished and mature actors in this Skarsgard’s Jerry is obnoxious on purpose, I like he gets ripped into later. Ugh, Casey Affleck’s obnoxious in this. I kinda like Ben’s in the background except for the interview scene. And only an autistic guy would tell a joke in the first person because “it sounds better”.

And maybe my copy is really bad but there are a lot of very shoddy, out of focus shots in this. Oh, and greyhound rescuers would hate it.

I’m relating too fucking hard to Will being pushed by Jerry into doing “more” and Sean saying his not ready. I’m fundamentally at the end of my rope of people trying to convince me I’m hiding all my confidence and just need a little shove or a kick up the butt or whatever. I get Will, I think it’s why I still give this movie a pass. When I got diagnosed, you may as well have sent Robin Williams to my house to give me a giant, fatherly bear-hug and repeatedly tell me it’s not my fault. And to be fair, 20 somethings madly in love in college are incredibly dramatic, I’ve heard dorm room fights, I’ve had them and they suck. It’s a relatively honest movie if nothing else. Dog-piling on Will for ditching the job interview isn’t fair either. Like nobody’s asking the fucker what he wants, Skyler offers to take him away, he freaks out, but Jerry pushes and pushes, he expects perfection. And Will’s like “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life explaining shit to people”. PREACH. I also suspect the “NSA speech” is from the original script. But I don’t think it’s fair to put that shit on a kid, like it doesn’t matter what you know by then, you’re still fucking terrified of the future and pushing a smart kid isn’t fair. It’s bullying, if you’re so threatened by the potential of a wasted potential, think about how that kid feels, how daunting it is to carry that and have everyone be so mean and envious and pushy about it. Let them breathe, at least. Don’t give them shit about what they have to offer, don’t parse it as being for their own good and you’re looking out for them. Fuck off. I get you can’t glamourise the Southy lifestyle. Chucky talks him out of that. Sean and Jerry have it out in the end. Then Will and Sean hug it out, it’s all neatly tied up.

I really don’t have a lot to add to this. Kevin Smith being involved and having ties to Weinstein at the time gave him a lot of pulling power for an indie director. If you decided to boycott Miramax movies because of Harvey, I’m sorry most of your favourite movies are unwatchable by that logic. People don’t get how distribution works, horrible people have left their fingerprints on a lot of art. I don’t hate this movie but I think people were willing to admit its predictability. I don’t think it’s worth hurling insults at in retrospect.

I do like apples but Dan’s right, it is a goofy as fuck line. I brought up Big Fan, which is such an interesting script and so cleverly made for how low budget it looks. I love there’s a rat running across the ground of the parking garage where Patton works, I love he’s a man-baby conflicted with protecting his team and its best player over accepting his victimhood. It’s such an interesting character study, Patton brings a lot of anger and resentment to the role, he’s fine with his shitty, dead-end job and having no wife and kids, he has a best buddy who’s insufferable but absolutely idolises him. He has a douchey bottom-feeder ambulance chasing lawyer for a brother, the rest of his family have a false sense of superiority, his mother’s a nightmare but he refuses to leave home, he refuses to be different, he pities the banality of everyone around him, he finds his own importance on the radio call-in show as the prime Giants fan. I hate Michael Rapaport now, he’s as big a douche as he plays (I thought his son was in Higher Learning, no, it was him with no beard, he needs a beard he barely has a chin, he looks twenty years older in Beautiful Girls, which was the following year) so he’s perfect as the rival ran Paul has to compete with. It’s such a fantastic portrayal of toxic fandom gone too far. It’s clever and careful with the dramatic moments, it’s genuinely a better indie film than Good Will Hunting. Even Paul and his buddy sitting outside with the TV hooked up to the car battery being such a great compensation for not having access to a busy stadium, that’s how massive a fan these guys are, they show up like they’re lucky talismans rooting for their team and when Paul’s not there and his attacker isn’t out on the field, everything goes to shit. The biggest critique you could lob at it is the QB character is a black guy who goes to a shitty suburb for drugs and hangs out in strip club, I feel like they went that way rather than them idolising a white player, who by their logic may not have beaten a fan up or been as aloof, but I’m sure Paul’s simpering and tailing could’ve pissed off a white guy just as bad. Paul’s so childishly naive about why the QB’s hanging out in the slums but we’re fully aware. He’s not being a total nuisance, he makes a totally innocent blunder and is overly punished for it. But the QB and his buddies don’t go after Paul later, and Paul doesn’t lie to the cops about not remembering shit to protect himself from thugs. It’s all for the team. Maybe if Patton hadn’t been in it I’d have ignored it, (actually absolutely I would have) but I don’t know who else could do the role justice anyway. I love Kevin Corrigan too, he’s a good character actor, he and Patton have a good buddy chemistry, they play off each other’s childishness until Paul’s too depressed to be nice to the guy. I also didn’t realise the game playing in the bar is the Giants/Eagles final showdown, so when the Giants lose, Paul’s triggered. I figured he would attack Phil based on him outing Paul for being the beating victim.

It’s worth a watch, if you really want to support indie movies.