Boy Kills World (2024)

Bill Skarsgard gives an expressive physical performance. His character in the film was formed with two core memories, he wants revenge for his loss of his family at the hands of a paranoid lady dictator and he is particularly haunted by the memory of his fearless younger sister.

Also, his character can neither speak nor hear, so Boy relies on reading lips and his internal monologue is narrated by a arcade fighting game announcer. He constantly trains in the jungle with a lean Asian guy in his 50's called "Shaman," who alternately spars with Boy and blows smoke in his face while laughing. Boy's world is small and limited in the forest, and he hallucinates his younger sister as a child who talks to him and gives commentary on his life and circumstances.

The circumstances could be bleak, but the film's two commentaries of internal announcer narration and sweet childish defiance provide lightness in contrast.

On a trip to the dictators' city, the annual Culling event's preparations are happening, where the streets are raided by the dictatress's foot soldiers to find pockets of unrest and keep the family in power. The dictatress's family is also going slightly insane in their own ways as there has not been serious opposition in years. Hilda is the dictatress matriarch of the family, but her paranoia has caused her to be a hermit in a bunker within her compound, so she is an unstable figurehead. Hilda's younger sister, Melanie, is a marketing obsessive who is having to spin the family's continued justification narrative to the masses and engage in brand partnerships to the Culling, a gladiatorial exhibition televised like a Hunger Games media capital event. Melanie married a photogenic pretty man, Glen, to mold into the face of her marketing announcements to the masses. Hilda & Melanie's brother, Gideon, is a man built like a boxer, but with the soul of a thespian, and Melanie tries to humor his aspirations to keep him in line for his enforcer and interrogation duties for the family. Also, there is a younger woman who is an elite soldier for the family, who wears a daft punk helmet and is dispatched to forcefully pacify of larger groups of unrest.

Boy decides that today he is ready to have his revenge and sneaks into the family compound in the trunk of Glen and Gideon's car after they fumble the public square announcement for why they are taking 12 people from the streets for "crimes against the peace" and therefore deserve to be executed on television.

The action in the movie's fight sequences is fluid and outrageous in its overkill, with many looking like elaborate Mortal Kombat fatality sequences. Boy's fighting skills are tempered by his general anxiety and hyperawareness of having to navigate a hostile environment of his own aggression while deaf. Also, having insane hallucinations of his eight year old sister who is fearless and appears to wander through this environment with fearless abandon like a giant adventure.

I rather enjoyed this movie for leaning into its instability and leaving the audience off balance as to how Boy's simple quest for revenge will be resolved. I especially liked the reminders that he is relying on his vision for his awareness. There are scenes in which he cannot successfully read another character's lips and is "hearing" all kinds of gibberish and imagining what a "guitar robot time dance with a hill farmer" means in an elaborate infiltration plan.

It was goofy, it was gory, it was tragic, it was heartfelt. Bill Skarsgard does an excellent job of portraying naive, traumatized, and determined. He is trapped in being a boy, with idealistic dreams of absolutes and simple love of family being everything. Anything in his way is an obstacle which must be overcome.

Don't say much do ya?

Body communicates pain

From Boy to his world.

Challengers (2024)

Very short review as I just finished watching this in the theater on a discounted ticket promotion. It was very funny to see this movie in a nearly empty theater. When I stood up to leave, I learned that the only two other people were a couple in the top row, the woman of which noticed the other two audience members other than me ditch the movie before the end. The guy and I were too focused on the screen to see that exodus and we both had the same reaction to the film's effective point.

I had a great time watching a tennis version of "ball is life, life is ball." And how, at a level of competition, the participators in the sport see it as duel and dance, transcendent in the flow and the externalities become interwoven into the thread of the moment as fuel.

The framing of the film was other than I expected from the marketing, but it was effective in showing off the style and flair of the subject. The soundtrack and cinematography really sell the substance and excitement of the film's pacing and stakes.

Break point setting up

The advantage of seeing Love

All passion and pride

The Beast (2023)

This movie haunted me.

Yesterday I learned a friend was interested in seeing this French film at a local independent theater. It was a nice day outside, so I took a walk through the neighboring area. Outside the theater there was a local culinary street fare with small plates. I went to a local bakery instead and bought two croissants, a cinnamon roll one for myself and a chocolate one for my friend when he arrived.

I knew very little about the film itself, but my friend is extremely good company to watch a film. He is very excited about details, themes, motifs and even the legacy for how a director tends to execute his or her vision.

I didn't even remember from the trailer that the movie was French. The logline about a woman in the future cleansing her DNA of trauma didn't clarify either

The movie begins with a woman set in a green screen to the left, being given directions for how to block her steps for the later post production. The camera follows as she centers in the space, then gradually focuses on her face, getting intimately close to it, but the score is not alarmed, so the audience is not signaled to find this uncomfortable. But the direction off screen tells her that eventually she will notice a Beast to her right and to react to it when she realizes it has been there, waiting.

The scene switches to a different setting. The actress is wearing fancy clothes from a much older period where etiquette was armor. This shot tracks her through a cocktail party, looking for her husband and instead finding a stranger she met once while abroad, in whom she confided. This confidence was with the freedom of believing that she would likely never meet him again, and her secret would be like telling the wind. There are times where it is easier to tell a stranger something than a friend, for the stranger is a blank slate upon which you can plead your case for human sanity and they do not have a vested long term interest to hold you accountable to it later. Except this stranger has reencountered her and has follow up questions as to why she felt trapped since childhood with a sense of impending doom and desolation not only for herself, but for all whom she loves. How it will come in one fell swooping stroke and only then will her fears become realized into reality.

The rest of the film proceeds in much the same manner, as details of the woman's life and motifs are told over time and space. The audience too is waiting to see if her fears will be proven true. And the film's score heightens the anticipation. You wonder if you can truly trust it to signal you for the event or leave you to figure it out yourself visually without accompaniment.

Eventually, the logline of the movie comes into play. There is a technology to cleanse people's DNA of generational trauma. The process gradually neutralizes triggering effects of irrational and unstable emotional twitch instincts. Maybe this will be the answer to our heroine's dilemma. Whether it will vaccinate her from living with the burden of dread or even allow her to react more decisively when the key moment comes rather than be frozen and helpless in the face of fate.

The movie being primarily in French made me reflect on a passage in the science fiction Culture novel "Master of Games" by Iain M. Banks. How language makes certain frameworks of understanding and thought processes. It is not only an organizational method of concepts, but influences how to think about things. Our relationships to objects and emotions can be nuanced by what paths we know for how to think about them and how much they are given consideration in the language for variations on the theme. And from the French movies I have seen, the translation is not only of the language, but the concepts underlying and overlaying it. I think Iain's series is well named, because his books often wrestle with the inevitable clash of philosophies and cultural traditions which are rigid and flexible in incongruous ways. And how one of them will find others to be intolerable and feel the need to fix the other by diplomacy or force, because if that other school of thought is allowed to survive, it is a danger to the continuance of their tradition.

This film made me confront the question in my mind. What if my anxieties could be cured? Would I be willing to pay the cost? Even if it advantaged me to be divorced from my worries and stress, would I feel the loss of those traits like the removal of my wisdom teeth? Or would it be a deeper ache like I have lost my soul and the ability to truly enjoy the success, like Captain Barbossa with his apples in "Curse of the Black Pearl"?

And what if I seek the wisdom of the scientists and mystics, and their best efforts are not enough to correct what is within me? Is it better to live in the dread of the unknown, or be trapped in the confirmation that there is no salvation on earth for that which ails me?

Paralysis weight

An anticipation waits

Music of Tom Waits

Asteroid City/Drive My Car

 It has been a couple of evenings of watching films for the first time by directors known for their unique vision. I am slightly tired, so this is likely to be short.

Asteroid City is the recently released Wes Anderson film. And my friends have really enjoyed seeing his movies. So there was a ready audience of friends available to see this film in an independent theatre for someone's birthday celebration. Admittedly, this is the first Anderson film I caught in a theatre. And maybe that is an element. But truly, this was the most enjoyable experience I have had watching his films. The movie engaged me from start to finish with its playwright structure and it's playfulness with the actors being actors being dolls and I occasionally asking for a larger motivation. It made me genuinely cackle at some points.

I guess I am guilty of being an over thinker when it comes to certain experiences. So Anderson has missed me at times because I saw the design and attention to detail and dialogue, but my appreciation got to the craftfulness of the construction rather than being part of the delivery of the joke. And this was fun. 

But tonight I watched "Drive My Car", a 2021 foreign film directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. I had vaguely seen advertisements in theatres for this film coming out and the title fascinated me for its simplicity. So I borrowed the Criterion collection version of this film, which added a layer of interest for its recognition already for a special release in their canon.

I watched it, knowing nothing more than that title and that stamp of approval. And was absolutely rooted by its patience and tranquility. It is full of quiet moments and physical presence in performance. The movie follows a playwright whose theme is multilingual performances of classic plays, with a stage screen projector backdrop subtitling the dialogue in multiple languages for the audience.

There is an audition scene midway through the film that changes gears so powerfully from standstill to full throttle intention that I had to rewatch it again. This film does many things in showing a life unfolding like a slow blooming rosebush with moments of beauty and pain.

 

Excellent movies

Emotional ignition

Quiet engines hum

From Dusk til Dawn

 Last night I watched this movie for the second time, this time with friends. My first viewing was on streaming because I saw Quentin Tarantino was starring as an actor and I was curious.

It is directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Tarantino. And I think it an excellent example of their intersection and creative vision. It is a hot, sweaty, sticky film. In the way that you can almost feel the dry heat in the screen and the blissfulness of shade and air conditioning. It also stars young George Clooney, Danny Trejo, and Salma Hayek. And Clooney carries the emotional center of the movie, as a charming, but tested ex-convict trying to make his escape across the border to Mexico. He was aided in his escape by his younger brother (played by Tarantino), who is unsettling and unstable. Together, they robbed a bank, took a hostage and headed south. But Clooney's character is having to watch out for his brother's tendency to react violently and draw attention to their current location.

The movie starts as a desperate and tense ongoing squabble between the two brothers as they strive to achieve their objective of starting a new life in Mexico, paid by a 30% cut of their bank heist to a crime boss across the border. They improvise and hijack an RV owned by widower preacher who lost his faith along with his wife's life. He was running away from his church with his two kids along for the ride while he processes his grief.

The brothers use the family and their vehicle as a cover to make it across the border to Mexico. They have one last hurdle to clear before they start their new life, and make it to a rendezvous point in the middle of nowhere. A massive biker/truck stop bar "open from dusk til dawn" with cheap booze and women. The crime boss will meet them by morning.

Something happens within that bar, that shifts the mood to hostile and transforms the scope and drama of the movie. And it is so unexpected, that the rest of the film tests the audience's expectations for how it can unfold and what new elements can be introduced and made to fit.

One of the great delights of the movie is Tom Savini, who is primarily known as a make up artist in his career. But in a movie with George Clooney and Danny Trejo looking as young and fresh as I have ever seen them, Savini somehow manages to be more casually interesting and captivating as a character. And the absolute patience to allow his character to show through action rather than words, make his delivery that much more effective.

It is a grimy and gritty film, and the performances pay off the setting to great effect. It is a movie where Rodriguez and Tarantino demonstrate the storyteller's ability to frame a tale that is unique to their voice and style to carry.

 

Gross calculation

144 added

Zero sum survival

The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon

 What could cause me to break a long streak of silence here in this blog? Perhaps the legacy of an author whose legend has overshadowed my experience. People who I admire speak in hushed tones about Pynchon, his reclusiveness and functionality of: "He is known by his books." Not his face on dust covers, not through interviews on himself or his books. He is mentioned in Rian Johnson's "Knives Out" film through his book "Gravity's Rainbow", which the character insists is a great title for a book hardly anyone reads, but believes in owning.

I think it a good rule of thumb for me in that I should not expect to immediately appreciate an author's voice. It takes an adjustment period for a new reader to enter new waters and acclimate to how information is conveyed. Some authors are more eager to welcome a reader, and offer a gradual wading pool of entry.

A friend loves Pynchon and wanted me to appreciate him, therefore, the title of this post. I had previously started this book due to Joseph Fink, one of the creators of the pioneer fiction podcast "Welcome to Night Vale", in which a story arc of the desert community radio setting was entitled "The Buying of Lot 49."

But this time, as last time, this 152 page novel opens like a beautifully engineered fire hose. Information presented in a comprehensive, multi-layered dimensional picture of setting and time, memories filtering through the mind of Oedipa Mass as she discovers that she has been named the co-executor of a rich and eccentric ex- boyfriends' estate. She is married and her husband is a man whose career options have chafed his sense of self-awareness to a fine grain of thin and sensitive skin. I had to pause and ask my friend, "How much of this information I needing to retain. Because I am drowning here in an unfamiliar atmospheric presentation of information, and I might need to catch my breath and get my bearings on where this is going." I was assured that the journey was the object of the book's experience and not to get too hung up on the details. So I persevered and found it was easier to read it as a flow in single settings. Any time I put it down, the spell was broken and I felt lost coming back and restarting. There are not many chapter breaks and the flow feels like a dream stream of consciousness. Characters have inventive names and more inventive professions and hobbies. Obsession in minutiae and history and alternate detailed fixations around which they build their existences.

By the end, I was fatigued and slightly irritated. I suspected that this short novel would lend itself to multiple readings to glean and understand the full construction and interweaving of information presented. And I was running out of pages to reach the conclusion to a built mystery. I feel like there was a greater theme of "The answer is in the past. The book's end is not its death, but only its termination of linear information." The book will live on in my head and I expect it will give up more of its hold on me in some ways when I read the used copy I picked up from a secondhand book shop, which I scanned through and discovered had been annotated in penned notes by a previous owner. (The version I read this first time through was a library book, which was clean. I thought it was only fair that I don't rush to see what another person thought before I formed my own opinion on a cold pass.)

But in other ways, my friend's enthusiasm was not dimmed in their rereading of the novel. So maybe I am just going to be pulled in deeper in exploring the author through this journey and his other published works.

Thomas hit a nerve

I don't appreciate it

Pynchon sensitive

Vertebrae - Christine Fellows

Once again, a song will not leave my mind alone so I want to write about it. I usually have other plans and intents. I hope to get around to them as I actually have an idea as to something I want to do on this web log.

But first, this song. I found it, as I do most things lately, on a podcast. An episode of the Spotify podcast Duet, with guest hosts Jack Antonoff of Bleachers and John Darnielle of the Mountain goats ("tMg") They were choosing songs that affected them, and one that John chose was this track. 

I have become increasingly fond of John Darnielle. First mention was on a vlogbrothers video when John (Green) was nerding out about sharing an event with John (Darnielle). It didn't stick for me. One of my other friends got into some of tMg music along with They Might Be Giants ("TMBG") music, both hardworking indie darling artists who had strong DIY energy. I listened a bit more as this friend had more of a direct connection than a parasocial recommendation. But it took Joseph Fink, co-writer of the narrative podcast "Welcome to Night Vale", hosting a podcast with John Darnielle called "I Only Listen to the Mountain goats" to really seal it for me. John was a very aware host and was honest about the odd position of co-hosting a show all about his own band's greatness and impact. He was gracious, kind, and honest - he feels more of a fan of other artists than viewing himself that way.

I am giving you context for my experience, because it frames things. Rarely is something only itself, but everything that thing touches and the angle by which I arrive. Yours will be different with your assumptions and experiences.

But the song. It was recorded at her home studio. And it is a song about the process of sustained mourning, before the greater drop of grief. The experience of knowing a loved one is dying slowly in a hospital. Knowing the loss is not yet. But is coming. It is the downbeat of a fragile wing trying to keep the narrator aloft to witness the winds of death coming. The song is not about the person dying really, but the stress and experience of small things the narrator is doing and not doing to cope with this great helplessness. Small details like not knowing how they got to the room with flowers, going out to make coffee no one will drink, gestures that try to do something supportive and helpful because you can't do a thing about the bigger issue.

The details in the song frame the shape of something through the edges where the narrator is avoiding talking about the elephant in the room. The distress and discomfort of maneuvering around it. You see the weight through the gravity of the narrator's pull towards the upcoming experience of death and their struggles against it.

This is not an experience I have had much personal experience with living through, but Fellows communicates a vivid message through the snapshots of moments of lucidity in the midst of dazed autopilot.

It is a song that makes me care through empathy and try to mentally comprehend an incomprehensible part of life in that it will someday end. Not only for me, but for those I love. It is emotional practice and exposure so that I might remember it for later, knowing that I am not alone in going through it when it inevitably happens. Not now, hopefully no time soon, but in the case it does, that I have some context. Sometimes I like just viewing things through another's eyes and wondering how I would handle the situation if presented to me. Books are helpful for this experience and exposure. Not that I long for those events to happen in reality, but that I try to understand that there are people who are going through such things and have empathy for them rather than ignorance.

Habits die hard deaths

I decided to haiku

Weird streak to keep up.