Eighth Grade. Wanted to relate but couldn't

I'd wanted to see Bo Burnham's directorial debut based on the trailer, but from the get-go I was pretty sure I wouldn't totally relate to the main character. Kayla Day isn't entirely cookie cutter, and she's played by the gorgeous Elsie Fisher, in a zits and all portrayal of a girl about to enter high school. There were darker turns in this I was moved by, but the dialogue overall wasn't incredibly convincing between the father character and Kayla. The film's representation of current teenage life couldn't be relatable to someone like me who was spared the disaster of social media in high school. Most people my age are grateful the advent of smartphones was well past our high school graduation. Owning a computer wasn't even a priority for most families and hardly anyone in my senior year was that computer literate compared to eighteen year olds now. The internet was still a novelty when I was leaving school, and I had my own struggles with it, but when Kayla was lost in her social media world, the haunting tones of Enya's Orinoco Flow playing over her screen time, I clicked with her. At twelve I genuinely wished I had an Enya song playing in my life all the time, and I lived in music and my own stories, ignoring other kids and failing to make connections, and wishing I was someone else. But then I left Kayla and it was harder to be engaged with her struggle. I did get panicky before going out to socialise, not that I suffered genuine panic attacks. I just wasn't desperate for friends. I was desperate to be left alone. I made no real effort to make connections I was either spoken to or ignored or ridiculed. I was pretty much branded a freak from my behaviour anyway. Kayla doesn't earn much ridicule for being super quiet, but some of her actions would've actually gotten her teased back in the day, like giving the snobby Kennedy a thank you letter after her party than deriding her at the end of the film for the inevitable snubbing. I would have longed to have the level of indifference Kayla received from her peers. People didn't like her but they left her alone. My weirdness didn't go unpunished by any means. And if I'd had a smartphone with Facebook, I'd have had the assholes in my face outside of school. I already had someone faceless making my life miserable by the end of school, so it was hard enough having so-called friends giving me as much shit in person.

Case in point, I found a lot of letters from school from people who were mad at me or desperate to be my friend again and I remembered how much of an asshole I was to others. Those letters ended up in the trash. I heard a recommendation that you go through those letters to explore who you are now, but I'm sure the people who wrote them to me don't think about me anymore. I honestly hope they don't. I have clearer memories now of my shitty behaviour than I do of the shitty reactions I received. But finding people I knew had it worse and seeing they had much better lives, and weren't destroyed by the treatment they received, made me happy for them. I would hate to be remembered for anything horrible I did, but I sure someone does. Consider this a formal apology to them.

Eighth Grade offers such a refreshing portrayal of teenage life with genuine teens in it, something everyone longs for but struggles to really accept when presented, because we're not ready for the realness we crave from our media. The casting is on point, but I wasn't engaged with this as I wished I could be. It's not something I want to go back to, and some of the soundtrack was loud and distracting, intended to evoke tension but going past the point of annoying. I wouldn't take this review as gospel. Please go and see it because it's genuinely very good. The only other thing I found less believable was the kid jerkin' it during sex ed. This could very well have happened, if you go to Harmontown you'll realise the lengths some boys went to just to get rid of some pent up urges, but kids at my school must've been markedly repressed by comparison, meaning we didn't do this in public. Again, this is me not finding much common ground with the film, not a slight on the film itself. I'm disappointed with myself for not loving it, not with the movie.

High Expectations: My Friend Dahmer and The Favourite

Both of these films have been on my list in the last year, The Favourite at the top. The trailer had tantalised me for so long and the idea of a strange examination of Queen Anne's sapphic's relations with two women from the director of the Lobster just appealed to me. The cinematography was probably more unusual than I'd assumed, the fish-eye lens only one main characteristic. Since I'm alright with Lynch's approach to filmmaking, I could tolerate it in the way others may have found annoying. Olivia Coleman earned her Oscar. Rachel Weiss was brilliant and Emma Stone is my fucking hero. Easily her best performance. It wasn't a perfect film, even if I'd tolerated the cinematic approach, I did find it probably too much by the end. Otherwise it's an enjoyable romp and there's so much to love that I can't wait to see it again. Bear in mind, I did have to go searching outside of paid services to watch this because Netflix takes too long to gain the rights to their films and I was sick of waiting, but I'd probably buy this on DVD. I've been increasingly infuriated with streaming services failing to really capitalise on the popularity of a movie and move to grab it before another service might, however they've been fixated on original content that not everyone will want to see, and it appears to be at the cost of acquiring these sorts of films. I thought since they'd gotten the Lobster, the Favourite would surely make it there. Unless it's only gone to the US, and since our cinema releases aren't always in time with the US, we have to wait longer for shit to drop on streaming services, too.

My Friend Dahmer has been out for a lot longer, and could've easily been bought by one streaming service but sadly I did have to go looking elsewhere. This is a slow burn of a film, and don't expect anything graphic. The examination of Dahmer's descent into madness was probably more interesting than what he went on to do, which becomes the epilogue of the film. There are teasing moments of tension but for the most part this didn't really have me as engaged as I'd hoped from the trailer. There were scenes that could've been shaved back without losing anything, but it illustrated that unlike some of his contemporaries, Dahmer was more someone starved of love and understanding in a time that frowned upon his certain desires, and his inability to form healthy bonds with people most likely drove him to murder. I've found him more fascinating as a murderer than most case studies, I did see one documentary some time ago. I believe the confessions came from a want to end his turmoil and he was prepared to be killed in prison. Ross Lynch delivers. If you're not feeling some degree of sympathy for Dahmer by the end of this, I'd be surprised. Alex Wolff, who've I've seen in other things and notably starred in the Hereditary (which I'm meaning to watch but waiting for an evening I can stomach the content - someone's review of the Suspiria remake put me off going down that road when I'd been keen to see it), gives a great, sympathetic portrayal of Jeffery's close friend. I didn't know anything about this friend of course, so I wasn't sure what his fate would be as others may have been. This was based on the graphic novel of the same name. Again, if you're waiting for something really grotesque from this, you're not going to see much. Still a pretty great film and one I'd probably watch again and enjoy.