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Summer 2022 - Weeks 12/13, Fall 2022 - Weeks 1/2
Back at work and SICK OF IT ALREADY. I think a big part of it is that I'm gonna be back in Toronto this time next week anyway, so this feels less like getting back to my life and more like a big 80-hour chore I have to get through before finishing up my vacation times? Also my grandmother's sisters are coming to town for the weekend and Thanksgiving and I'm pre-emptively exhausted by them and it was cold and frosty and foggy this morning, just a bit of sun rising in the distance and crunchy white grass and I'm so not ready to settle in for this long winter nightmare just yet.
Next week. Next week, once everything is done, then I'll get ready. Until then, I shall whine.
FILMS
Barbarian (2022): SCAWY. I'm so glad I didn't see the full trailer for this until well after I'd seen the movie, it was an absolute RIDE going in fairly blind. I'd seen the teaser once or twice, which really only gave you 'there's maybe a creepy tunnel at some point?' which was PLENTY. I think my top ten this year is gonna be more horror-heavy than usual, it's been a good 'un.
Black Widow (1954): Can't figure out which was stupider, this guy's insistence on always assuming everyone around him is lying over the extremely obvious reality (that one person was lying to a lot of people who had no reason to disbelieve her), or his threatening one of them with bodily harm while trying to convince her that he's being set up. Either way, Ginger Rogers did nothing wrong. MORE COLOUR NOIRS, PLEASE.
Bros (2022): Funny, charming, sweet, kinda just a perfect romcom, even if it was set up to fail. If you like them, you'll like it. If you don't, you might anyway! It's pretty funny, and the R rating helps a lot! Considering how much was made of how ~progressive~ it is, I also like that it's a pretty fundamentally gay story, and not something generic that you could just run a find-and-replace on half of the pronouns and have it still work.
Train à grande vitesse (2022): I finally got to see a dubbed Hollywood movie in a theatre, hahaha yesssss! I think this would have been a good one for it even if I hadn't seen it before, because while the plot is very convoluted, it really holds your hand through it all. It's weird that Tangerine is Mandarine in French!!
Fall (2022): Paper-thin characters, ridiculous dialogue, an idiotic twist, lame injected drama, every single thing the characters do being both coincidentally and painfully obviously relevant at some point, and baffling decisions throughout, but the premise is so simple and viscerally thrilling that none of those things are able to fuck it up. Pretty much a ninety-minute cinematic panic attack, good shit.
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022): So goddamn sweet and earnest, I was helpless in the face of it. Also I saw it in an adorable little nostalgic boutique theatre, adding to the gentle charm and whimsy a thousandfold. Also Jason Isaacs going full Oirish made me feel... things. It's just a nice movie about nice things happening to a nice person! It's real nice!!!
Palm Springs (2020): A couple years late to the party, but very happy to be here.
Pearl (2022): An absolute goddamn candy-coloured tour de force that I kinda want to model my entire life around now. I'm obsessed?
Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022): I don't think I was wholly on board for... most of the things it was trying to say, about story and romance and... technology and modernity, I guess? All the deeper themes felt rather shallow to me, and also it got into some real Lord of the Rings 'okay now THIS must be the ending, oh, okay, nope there's more' territory near the end. But also it was all so beautiful in the telling, I didn't care all that much! Really wish our theatre had gotten this one.
Raging Bull (1980): Sometimes you just want to curl up on the couch in your expensive Toronto condo upon starting your first vacation in years and watch something familiar. :3
See How They Run (2022): Made for a very... tonally interesting double feature with Pearl.
The Servant (1963): Extremely British psychosexual excellence. That one bitch really had me ready to throw hands at her for not knowing what a poncho was. Brilliant use of shadows.
Smile (2022): :) I like that it never tries to pretend that it's not simply a pastiche of better movies, it just focuses on being that as well as it can! :) Which is pretty darn good! :) Way too reliant on cheap jump scares for my poor, tender heart, and the interesting things it has to say are undermined somewhat by how characters will just stand around and say the theme out loud just to make sure we all got it, but it's a good scary time! :)
The Woman King (2022): A little on the 'too long' side, but if that helps cement its place in the 'big dumb historical action epic' pantheon, I'll take it. This kicked seventeen different kinda of ass, and at least 13 of them involved Lashana Lynch's nails.
SHORTS
Y todo el cielo cupo en el ojo de la vaca muerta (2016): Darkly atmospheric, even with all the sunny tableaus and birdsong constantly filling the air. Tragic and beautiful fantasy... thing.
Civic (2022): Had a lot of trouble holding my attention, but I think that was probably a me problem. The locked perspective definitely added a lot. I'll just wait in the car, I guess: The Movie.
The Diary of an African Nun (1977): You can hear the quotation marks around every other word this woman says. I rewatched it immediately; a proper visual poem.
Het bijzondere leven van Rocky de Vlaeminck (2010): Seems so much older than it is??? In a good way.
First Person Plural (2000): Families are complicated. Some even more so than others. I hope this was cathartic for her, it couldn't have been easy for anyone involved.
Después también (2018): Heartfelt and melancholy, but with a quiet undercurrent of hope that keeps it from being a total downer. Finding out that both of the filmmaker's parents died of AIDS really adds an extra punch to it. Things have gotten better, though! Words can be as viral as biology!
Jean-Luc Godard on the Dick Cavett Show (1980): Not technically a film, short or otherwise, just two old episodes of a talk show strung together, but fuck it, I do what I want! This did absolutely nothing to change my mind off of my spiciest film take; that Godard was a decent filmmaker with a deep love and passion for the art form and absolutely nothing of worth or interest to say with it. Remember that time he made Agnes Varda cry? Rest in piss.
TELEVISION
Floor is Lava 3x02: What an excellently stupid show, lol. I WAS JUST HERE FOR MY BEST FRIEND BLORBOS.
Fuller House 5x07-5x10: I can't tell if I've just watched so much of this shit that I've lost all sense of reality, but this final season seems... shockingly well-assembled to me? Like, take the big horrible flashmob proposal episode; because I know this world, I completely accepted the fact that they would build an entire episode around Fernando proposing to Kimmy even though they've already been engaged for like the entire show's run. Similarly, I totally accepted Kimmy throwing off her cast and randomly being able to walk just fine because that's the sort of shit this show just does, but this time around it's all actually meant to be nuts and a swerve??? They actually successfully misdirected away from the obvious outcome (since we KNEW Steve was gonna propose) until the last minute and it was just shockingly well done??? And Jimmy and Stephanie didn't get re-engaged for no reason either?? What the FUCK. Similarly, they really didn't need to have any particular reason for Joey to walk Kimmy down the aisle, we have three girls and three uncles and an upcoming triple wedding, it was just fucking obvious that they'd all pair off because that's how things work in this world and they've never bothered caring about things like logistics before, but all of a sudden we get a whole-ass episode dedicated to establishing that the Gibblers are awful deadbeat parents who have never even met their grandkids so they'll definitely bail on both of their kids getting married at once and so THAT'S why Joey specifically goes and asks Kimmy since they're both the unrelated outsiders who just kinda got adopted into the family because they were always there and I'm not used to this level of baseline competent storytelling from the Full House universe??? IT'S FUCKING ME UP A BIT. WHAT DO YOU MEAN KIMMY AND JIMMY AREN'T ACTUALLY JUST PLAYING THEIR OWN PARENTS WITH NO MAKEUP AND IT WAS AN ACTUAL IN-CHARACTER GOOF, I THOUGHT THIS WAS THE SAME HOUSE THAT GAVE US FUCKING STAVROS?? Now I wonder if Danny's gonna go with DJ or Stephanie, though; Danny/DJ and Jesse/Stephanie clearly map better in terms of their roles in the family and character arcs, but Danny's presumably already walked DJ down the aisle once before, so you'd think he'd want to go with daughter #2 this time. I'm actually... looking forward to finding out??? GROSS.
Grace and Frankie 6x07-6x10: fuck, I just wrote like 400 broadly complementary words about goddamn Fuller House, give me a minute
Harley Quinn 2x08-2x13: Okay, I think I'm okay now. Made the mistake of watching parts of this in the living room and my mom got SUPER into it, so now I'm not allowed to watch season three without her, lol.
Heels 1x04-1x07: On the one hand, YASSSS JACK YOU STEAL YOUR SHITTY BROTHER'S POP, FUCK HIM UPPPPPP. On the other hand, that was definitely assault, my guy. Hyped as hell to be finishing this right before season 2 starts!! It did a really good job of starting with a fairly bland cast of tropey characters and peeling away the layers at a really leisurely pace, so they end up much more interesting but without ever getting that awkward early HERE'S WHAT EVERYONE'S DEAL IS infodump that so many shows will hit you with (unless they're trying to keep things ~mysterious~ and drag them out forever, which was decidedly not the case here). It's just like real people!! Also Mick Foley showed up!!!
Orange is the New Black 7x08-7x11: Man, I'm gonna be glad to finally finish this. Not that it's bad or anything, but OOF we getting deep into the depressing weeds, didn't this show used to be kind of a comedy, too??
Rick and Morty 6x02-6x05: At some point I got really invested in Jerry and Beth's marriage IF THEY CAN WEATHER BETH CHEATING ON HIM WITH HER OWN CLONE, THEY CAN WEATHER ANYTHING. I feel like there's a real lesson somewhere in here about loving the people you choose to love and be with, especially after the reveal that Jerry got swapped out for a different one in season 2???
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law 1x04-1x07: I DON'T TRUST ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE THIS SHOW, FULL STOP. The CGI still looks wonky to me a lot of the time, but in a more modern 'we are going to accept that Lou Ferrigno painted green is the Hulk' kind of a way that I can get over. THERE IS A REASON SITCOMS DON'T TYPICALLY HAVE NINE-EPISODE SEASONS, THIS IS NOT ENOUGH SHE-HULK.
Star Trek: Lower Decks 3x03-3x06: MMMMMMM THAT'S SOME GOOD DS9 FANSERVICE. Also surprise character backstories! Justice for shitty young Rutherford!!
Wrestling
AEW Dark 4x39-4x42
AEW Dark: Elevation 2x39-2x42
AEW Dynamite 4x36-4x39
AEW Rampage 2x36-2x39
Before the IMPACT 2x36-2x39
Countdown to Victory Road 2022
IMPACT Victory Road 2022
IMPACT! Wrestling 19x36-19x39
NJPW on AXS 6x28-6x31
NJPW Strong 3x35-3x38
NJPW XTRA 2x34
NWA Powerrr 10x02-10x04
NWA PowerrrSurge 10x01
NWA USA 4x02-4x05
We are STARDOM!! 3x36-3x39
Mmm, okay, that almost got me to lunchtime. Six and a half more days of this to go!
Next week. Next week, once everything is done, then I'll get ready. Until then, I shall whine.
FILMS
Barbarian (2022): SCAWY. I'm so glad I didn't see the full trailer for this until well after I'd seen the movie, it was an absolute RIDE going in fairly blind. I'd seen the teaser once or twice, which really only gave you 'there's maybe a creepy tunnel at some point?' which was PLENTY. I think my top ten this year is gonna be more horror-heavy than usual, it's been a good 'un.
Black Widow (1954): Can't figure out which was stupider, this guy's insistence on always assuming everyone around him is lying over the extremely obvious reality (that one person was lying to a lot of people who had no reason to disbelieve her), or his threatening one of them with bodily harm while trying to convince her that he's being set up. Either way, Ginger Rogers did nothing wrong. MORE COLOUR NOIRS, PLEASE.
Bros (2022): Funny, charming, sweet, kinda just a perfect romcom, even if it was set up to fail. If you like them, you'll like it. If you don't, you might anyway! It's pretty funny, and the R rating helps a lot! Considering how much was made of how ~progressive~ it is, I also like that it's a pretty fundamentally gay story, and not something generic that you could just run a find-and-replace on half of the pronouns and have it still work.
Train à grande vitesse (2022): I finally got to see a dubbed Hollywood movie in a theatre, hahaha yesssss! I think this would have been a good one for it even if I hadn't seen it before, because while the plot is very convoluted, it really holds your hand through it all. It's weird that Tangerine is Mandarine in French!!
Fall (2022): Paper-thin characters, ridiculous dialogue, an idiotic twist, lame injected drama, every single thing the characters do being both coincidentally and painfully obviously relevant at some point, and baffling decisions throughout, but the premise is so simple and viscerally thrilling that none of those things are able to fuck it up. Pretty much a ninety-minute cinematic panic attack, good shit.
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022): So goddamn sweet and earnest, I was helpless in the face of it. Also I saw it in an adorable little nostalgic boutique theatre, adding to the gentle charm and whimsy a thousandfold. Also Jason Isaacs going full Oirish made me feel... things. It's just a nice movie about nice things happening to a nice person! It's real nice!!!
Palm Springs (2020): A couple years late to the party, but very happy to be here.
Pearl (2022): An absolute goddamn candy-coloured tour de force that I kinda want to model my entire life around now. I'm obsessed?
Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022): I don't think I was wholly on board for... most of the things it was trying to say, about story and romance and... technology and modernity, I guess? All the deeper themes felt rather shallow to me, and also it got into some real Lord of the Rings 'okay now THIS must be the ending, oh, okay, nope there's more' territory near the end. But also it was all so beautiful in the telling, I didn't care all that much! Really wish our theatre had gotten this one.
Raging Bull (1980): Sometimes you just want to curl up on the couch in your expensive Toronto condo upon starting your first vacation in years and watch something familiar. :3
See How They Run (2022): Made for a very... tonally interesting double feature with Pearl.
The Servant (1963): Extremely British psychosexual excellence. That one bitch really had me ready to throw hands at her for not knowing what a poncho was. Brilliant use of shadows.
Smile (2022): :) I like that it never tries to pretend that it's not simply a pastiche of better movies, it just focuses on being that as well as it can! :) Which is pretty darn good! :) Way too reliant on cheap jump scares for my poor, tender heart, and the interesting things it has to say are undermined somewhat by how characters will just stand around and say the theme out loud just to make sure we all got it, but it's a good scary time! :)
The Woman King (2022): A little on the 'too long' side, but if that helps cement its place in the 'big dumb historical action epic' pantheon, I'll take it. This kicked seventeen different kinda of ass, and at least 13 of them involved Lashana Lynch's nails.
SHORTS
Y todo el cielo cupo en el ojo de la vaca muerta (2016): Darkly atmospheric, even with all the sunny tableaus and birdsong constantly filling the air. Tragic and beautiful fantasy... thing.
Civic (2022): Had a lot of trouble holding my attention, but I think that was probably a me problem. The locked perspective definitely added a lot. I'll just wait in the car, I guess: The Movie.
The Diary of an African Nun (1977): You can hear the quotation marks around every other word this woman says. I rewatched it immediately; a proper visual poem.
Het bijzondere leven van Rocky de Vlaeminck (2010): Seems so much older than it is??? In a good way.
First Person Plural (2000): Families are complicated. Some even more so than others. I hope this was cathartic for her, it couldn't have been easy for anyone involved.
Después también (2018): Heartfelt and melancholy, but with a quiet undercurrent of hope that keeps it from being a total downer. Finding out that both of the filmmaker's parents died of AIDS really adds an extra punch to it. Things have gotten better, though! Words can be as viral as biology!
Jean-Luc Godard on the Dick Cavett Show (1980): Not technically a film, short or otherwise, just two old episodes of a talk show strung together, but fuck it, I do what I want! This did absolutely nothing to change my mind off of my spiciest film take; that Godard was a decent filmmaker with a deep love and passion for the art form and absolutely nothing of worth or interest to say with it. Remember that time he made Agnes Varda cry? Rest in piss.
TELEVISION
Floor is Lava 3x02: What an excellently stupid show, lol. I WAS JUST HERE FOR MY BEST FRIEND BLORBOS.
Fuller House 5x07-5x10: I can't tell if I've just watched so much of this shit that I've lost all sense of reality, but this final season seems... shockingly well-assembled to me? Like, take the big horrible flashmob proposal episode; because I know this world, I completely accepted the fact that they would build an entire episode around Fernando proposing to Kimmy even though they've already been engaged for like the entire show's run. Similarly, I totally accepted Kimmy throwing off her cast and randomly being able to walk just fine because that's the sort of shit this show just does, but this time around it's all actually meant to be nuts and a swerve??? They actually successfully misdirected away from the obvious outcome (since we KNEW Steve was gonna propose) until the last minute and it was just shockingly well done??? And Jimmy and Stephanie didn't get re-engaged for no reason either?? What the FUCK. Similarly, they really didn't need to have any particular reason for Joey to walk Kimmy down the aisle, we have three girls and three uncles and an upcoming triple wedding, it was just fucking obvious that they'd all pair off because that's how things work in this world and they've never bothered caring about things like logistics before, but all of a sudden we get a whole-ass episode dedicated to establishing that the Gibblers are awful deadbeat parents who have never even met their grandkids so they'll definitely bail on both of their kids getting married at once and so THAT'S why Joey specifically goes and asks Kimmy since they're both the unrelated outsiders who just kinda got adopted into the family because they were always there and I'm not used to this level of baseline competent storytelling from the Full House universe??? IT'S FUCKING ME UP A BIT. WHAT DO YOU MEAN KIMMY AND JIMMY AREN'T ACTUALLY JUST PLAYING THEIR OWN PARENTS WITH NO MAKEUP AND IT WAS AN ACTUAL IN-CHARACTER GOOF, I THOUGHT THIS WAS THE SAME HOUSE THAT GAVE US FUCKING STAVROS?? Now I wonder if Danny's gonna go with DJ or Stephanie, though; Danny/DJ and Jesse/Stephanie clearly map better in terms of their roles in the family and character arcs, but Danny's presumably already walked DJ down the aisle once before, so you'd think he'd want to go with daughter #2 this time. I'm actually... looking forward to finding out??? GROSS.
Grace and Frankie 6x07-6x10: fuck, I just wrote like 400 broadly complementary words about goddamn Fuller House, give me a minute
Harley Quinn 2x08-2x13: Okay, I think I'm okay now. Made the mistake of watching parts of this in the living room and my mom got SUPER into it, so now I'm not allowed to watch season three without her, lol.
Heels 1x04-1x07: On the one hand, YASSSS JACK YOU STEAL YOUR SHITTY BROTHER'S POP, FUCK HIM UPPPPPP. On the other hand, that was definitely assault, my guy. Hyped as hell to be finishing this right before season 2 starts!! It did a really good job of starting with a fairly bland cast of tropey characters and peeling away the layers at a really leisurely pace, so they end up much more interesting but without ever getting that awkward early HERE'S WHAT EVERYONE'S DEAL IS infodump that so many shows will hit you with (unless they're trying to keep things ~mysterious~ and drag them out forever, which was decidedly not the case here). It's just like real people!! Also Mick Foley showed up!!!
Orange is the New Black 7x08-7x11: Man, I'm gonna be glad to finally finish this. Not that it's bad or anything, but OOF we getting deep into the depressing weeds, didn't this show used to be kind of a comedy, too??
Rick and Morty 6x02-6x05: At some point I got really invested in Jerry and Beth's marriage IF THEY CAN WEATHER BETH CHEATING ON HIM WITH HER OWN CLONE, THEY CAN WEATHER ANYTHING. I feel like there's a real lesson somewhere in here about loving the people you choose to love and be with, especially after the reveal that Jerry got swapped out for a different one in season 2???
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law 1x04-1x07: I DON'T TRUST ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE THIS SHOW, FULL STOP. The CGI still looks wonky to me a lot of the time, but in a more modern 'we are going to accept that Lou Ferrigno painted green is the Hulk' kind of a way that I can get over. THERE IS A REASON SITCOMS DON'T TYPICALLY HAVE NINE-EPISODE SEASONS, THIS IS NOT ENOUGH SHE-HULK.
Star Trek: Lower Decks 3x03-3x06: MMMMMMM THAT'S SOME GOOD DS9 FANSERVICE. Also surprise character backstories! Justice for shitty young Rutherford!!
Wrestling
AEW Dark 4x39-4x42
AEW Dark: Elevation 2x39-2x42
AEW Dynamite 4x36-4x39
AEW Rampage 2x36-2x39
Before the IMPACT 2x36-2x39
Countdown to Victory Road 2022
IMPACT Victory Road 2022
IMPACT! Wrestling 19x36-19x39
NJPW on AXS 6x28-6x31
NJPW Strong 3x35-3x38
NJPW XTRA 2x34
NWA Powerrr 10x02-10x04
NWA PowerrrSurge 10x01
NWA USA 4x02-4x05
We are STARDOM!! 3x36-3x39
Mmm, okay, that almost got me to lunchtime. Six and a half more days of this to go!