Firstly if you’re here because you’re a tech ethicist and people have been complaining, or if you’ve suddenly come to reading this on your non-preferred smartphone device and then you’re called to prepare for your uneven bars routine in the Olympic trials and you haven’t done a gymnastics since the age of seven when you mostly just halfheartedly did the stretches and looked around, waiting until you could jump into the foam block pit, let me kindly direct you to the About page.
Something huge is that my dear friend, expat, and queerplatonic life partner has flown into These United States and has been visiting this week, just in time for #Pride month and the most sweltering span of days all year. We have not seen each other since the summer of 2019, but we’ve cried on the phone and reacted to our own iMessages in our chat thread since then enough times to last a decade. We identity as childhood friends even though we arguably met in 2016 and didn’t touch until early 2018. We’ve done a lot of laughing this week, the way that you laugh when someone squints and it articulates a fully fleshed diatribe, or lifts their eyebrows to silently play out a remark in three acts. Even though she maintains that she is someone who doesn’t watch films, I guilted her into watching one the other night (“my MUBI subscription is going to end 🥺 ”), and then we talked about it for an hour afterward, because even if you don’t love movies you can still appreciate a Text. Three things we’ve learned since she arrived (among what are surely too many to enumerate here) are that some of the pride flags for certain queer denominations could afford to do a rebrand, Trader Joe’s sells a vegan chickpea tikka masala dip (don’t repeat that), and we are bad at taking pictures now and I hate that.
Snowpiercer
dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2013
I found this social commentary movie to be a whole lot of fun, in large part thanks to Tilda’s dentures for what I might venture to call a Steampunk Thatcher look. Then, when I rewatched it with my family, I was significantly less impressed. This tends to work the other way, where I locate some further enjoyment when I rewatch something— although it’s important to note that I am only likely to watch something again if I know I already like it, thereby creating a closed loop of enjoyment that builds momentum as it cycles, like a centrifuge. And to continue with this metaphor, which is losing steam (to bring in a train pun so early in the sentence…), the enjoyable bits get separated out from the less enjoyable ones with each revolution, so the best moments stand out when you think about it; sometimes this can reveal just how much else there is, too. To conclude the musing, this movie is worth the watch if you like uprisings on trains, and if you actually think I’d write this much and not mention Jamie Bell, you’re a comedian.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
dirs. David Hand, Wilfred Jackson, Perce Pearce, Larry Morey, Ben Sharpsteen, William Cottrell, 1938
If you remember all the way back to last week’s Sleeping Beauty entry, I like to imagine we’ve traversed the consent discourse bridge enough times—but then again, people still love that photo of the nurse being sexually assaulted on V-J Day. Anyway, I was not attracted to Prince Charming in this quite so much, maybe because he was never tied up.
The Social Dilemma
dir. Jeff Orlowski, 2020
So, so bad, unless maybe you’ve never heard of advertising or acting.
The Social Network
dir. David Fincher, 2010
A great film if you can pretend it’s not a biopic that humanizes, even in its critiques—yes, this is how idolatry works—someone who I don’t think has earned that humanization treatment. Rooney Mara is so good at playing the vindicated girlfriend who has to do tons of emotional labor for her stupid boyfriend (this, Her, Lion, A Ghost Story, Mary Magdalene, the list goes on).
Soft Fiction
dir. Chick Strand, 1979
Saw this in a screening during undergrad and went on to not really know who Chick Strand was until a couple years ago.
So I Married an Axe Murderer
dir. Thomas Schlamme, 1993
Watched with my neighbors. My dad loves the “head is like an orange on a toothpick” insult. I don’t remember a lot. Anthony LaPaglia is in this, and my family is convinced we are distantly related to that Australian side.
Solo: A Star Wars Story
dir. Ron Howard, 2018
Classically watched this supine on my bed with my head propped up by a pillow and my McAir on my stomach, but I couldn’t tell you what happens in a single scene. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover were friends before this shoot, or no? Now they are friends? Introducing the other at BAFTAs. Doing Mr. & Mrs. Smith remake, yes? Ok.
Songs My Brother Taught Me
dir. Chloé Zhao, 2015
I didn’t get around to seeing this until this past year. Didn’t like it as much as The Rider, but all the tenderness was there, as were the landscapes.
Son of Saul
dir. László Nemes, 2015
Watched this because I was making my way through Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (née Best Foreign Language Film) nominees in one of the many years that are said to have come after 2015. I was in bed and might have dozed? Yikes.
Sorry Angel
dir. László Nemes, 2018
Pierre Deladonchamps of course locked in a quiet, understated duel with Félix Maritaud for the title of France’s favorite gay indie lead (again, are they queer? I am afraid to goog). There is a scene on a bridge in this, and another on a couch. I wish I retained more but radical self-acceptance is telling me that I absorb what I need and leave the rest to behind to drift more buoyantly along the currents of life. Watched this on Netflix.
Sorry to Bother You
dir. Boots Riley, 2018
Marvelous in its acerbity and its absurdity. Tessa Thompson is a standout, and A***e H****r is doing himself no favors with this one. This was being released in the time I was working in marketing and listening to NPR most of the day, and they couldn’t stop talking about it, and playing the clip of LaKeith Standfield’s (is it hot in here?) “white voice.”
Sound of Metal
dir. Darius Marder, 2019
Once, before I even owned an mp3 player, my mom told me earbuds were making kids go deaf. Still think about this.
The Souvenir
dir. Joanna Hogg, 2019
Took a bus to the Brattle to see this among a surprisingly sparse audience, but then again it was probably a weeknight. Got a little hungry and ate a chia bar during the screening. I found the depiction of film school to be like how I imagined film school to be before I was in it, and yes this takes place in ‘90s Northeast England. Tilda, again, and this time with her real-life daughter. I walked the one hour home in a light drizzle that stopped.
Spaceballs
dir. Mel Brooks, 1987
Is this a classic? I don’t remember anything other than “ludicrous speed”—surely there was more. It is good to laugh!
Space Jam
dir. Joe Pytka, 1996
I watched this in school, but even before that I had the poster framed in my bedroom. Now that I think about it, why did I have the poster framed in my bedroom? I didn’t even know who Michael Jordan was, and I was never all that into basketball aside from a youth league or two at nearby churches and a sand-weighted hoop in my family driveway that never seemed to want the ball in it.
Spa Night
dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016
A slow-burn coming-of-gay film, a genre I will call a queeper (queer creeper), not to be confused with a queepy (queer weepy). This genre distinction is pleasantly muddied by the protagonist’s Korean-American identity, which Andrew Ahn navigates with such sympathetic depth. Kanopy.
A Special Day
dir. Ettore Scola, 1977
I will never escape the deeply mortal ennui of un-glammed Sophia Loren.
Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, & Spider-Man 3
dir. Sam Raimi, 2002; 2004; 2007
Huge for me to see Spider-Man in live-action in 2002, although, in a way I can’t articulate because I haven’t had any caffeine, it was so much less magical. Still a great series of films. I was horrified by the scene where Aunt May is interrupted in her prayers by the wall being blown open by an unhinged Willem Dafoe (perfect casting), and I did not appreciate Kirsten Dunst enough— the only thing that could keep me, a comic-book fan more interested in lore, threads of origin stories, and shifting alliances and romances, from identifying with a charismatic starlet and former child star is the superhero genre in which she is flattened as damsel/romantic interest.
Spider-Man: Homecoming & Spider-Man: Far From Home
dir. Jon Watts, 2017; 2019
Watched the first one with my family, and the second one alone on my McAir just to stare intently at Jake Gyllenhaal’s (weird casting) beard. These feel more like animation than the previous live-actions (the Raimis and the Webbs), in a way I think is on the right track? I’m tired.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
dirs. Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, Bob Persichetti, 2018
The best of them. Harkened to my love of the animated series, and the coloring books, and the activity book I would trace and make my own stories out of. Once, I was bored at my grandfather’s house and made my dad drive home to retrieve the aforementioned book so I could peruse it at the checkered kiddie table in the basement— the drive was less than ten minutes, and I am probably more grateful now than I was then to be handed the book.
Spirited Away
dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2011
I’m not at all reveling in contrarianism when I say I genuinely wanted to like this more. This was the source of the first and only fight I’ve had with my lover, who has never seen a film but has seen this.
Split
dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2016
Someone spoiled this for me before I saw it, but I watched in anyway and found that knowing the ending didn’t make it all that much better. Just saw the trailer for the new M. Night Shyamalan movie the other day and I’m not convinced he’s going to nail it.
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
dirs. Stephen Hillenburg, Mark Osborne, 2004
Owned this on VHS, having purchased it from some discount bin, and it was maybe one of the last VHS tapes I acquired. This movie was a lot of fun, I recall, so good job to everyone involved, I guess. I have seen a lot of episodes of the show, but never actively—they would be on when I got home from school and would AIM and/or Yahoo! Email my friends, or write stories in the basement.
Spotlight
dir. Tom McCarthy, 2015
Saw this at the ODEON Covent Garden in London with my friend, who is also a confirmed Catholic. Since this was released, there was a referendum or retreat or something where church officials discussed the child sexual abuse problem, so now it’s fixed, which is great. Boston…
Spy
dir. Paul Feig, 2015
Watched this with the same friend that saw Spotlight with me. I had just been asked to do the handwriting on someone’s graduation card, which didn’t make sense to me because my handwriting is bordering on illegible and is famously all caps, which my seventh grade teacher, via printout, told me means I’m guarded.
Spy Kids & Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams
dir. Robert Rodriguez, 2001; 2002
I was a boy with an older sister and a dark-haired, vaguely Mediterranean family, so I could also be a spy kid. Maybe I could even grow up to marry Meghan Trainor, but also maybe not. I don’t think I ever saw Spy Kids 3-D??
The Square
dir. Ruben Östlund, 2017
Screened this via McAir Thunderbolt-to-HDMI hookup on my family’s TV while my sister was in the other room studying(?). I remember this taking on Art with a certain amount of playful derision, and that, to me, felt like Art— wow!
The Squid and the Whale
dir. Noah Baumbach, 2005
As up its own ass as this film is, I nonetheless cried— I am a child of divorce, after all, and that is something you are born with.
The Stanford Prison Experiment
dir. Kyle Patrick Alvarez, 2015
Watched this one night because sometimes you want to see a cinematic depiction of an experiment you already know everything about. When I watched it, I didn’t yet know about how deeply the flaws of Zimbardo’s experiment—and history with “science”—ran. A lot of my artwork has dealt with the application of mid-century psychology in a personal and contemporary context, but there is nothing about this experiment that makes me want to make art about it, primarily because it is so present in the cultural imagination already, and is misguided in—or guided to—all of its conclusions. Ezra Miller is in this, and he choked a woman in Iceland.
PLEASE share your own experiences with any of this week’s films in a comment—I’ll include my favorite in next week’s email for my millions of beautiful fans* to enjoy.
*Data pending
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To this day I cannot look at the wicked witch from Snow White without having a mild panic attack.