The Oscar Nominees: The Ones I Liked Less

Well, it can’t all be great. As good as this year’s Oscars slate is in comparison to say, 2021, it still isn’t quite able to escape the inadequacies or odd choices befitting any body of wealthy West Coast liberals and reactionary octogenarians. There isn’t a Green Book this year, or any other film whose victory might call into question the value of the exercise itself, but (unless you suffer from the same brand of brain rot as me) watching all the nominees is never a necessity to cover the best of this year in movies. Here are the ones you can skip: 

The Holdovers 

I hate to be the curmudgeon unable to find much of the joy in this film about a curmudgeonly old man finding joy, but — alas — The Holdovers was not for me. I’m incredibly sympathetic to its warm nostalgia for ’70s aesthetics, even if the specific genre its cribbing from has never particularly appealed to me.

Modern Film Flaws: Feminism is Not One Size Fits All

Feminism: Misunderstood, misused and undeniably important. Feminism is, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.” And, despite centuries of effort, somehow the sexes are still not treated equally and feminism is still very much needed. While it may not be a revolutionary idea that sexism still exists in the world, it somehow always shocks me when the continued discrepancy between genders is publicly revealed, for instance, through films. Recent films and media have pulled this continuing sexism into the spotlight, and they have also brought attention to another issue: The misuse of feminism. Recently, people have been taking things too far, using feminism to turn beautiful concepts into things that are considered “bad” or “weak.” I think the continuation of these tropes would be incredibly dangerous for the next generation of young women. First, let us look at the recent Barbie Oscar snub, where Greta Gerwig, who created one of the most talked about and critically acclaimed movies of the year, was left out of the Best Directors Category, and Margot Robbie, the star and a critical producer of the film, was left out of Best Actress.

The Ugly Truth: Lessons In Perfectionism

Upon viewing the rather uncensored Saltburn, as Rosamund Pike proclaimed her “complete and utter horror of ugliness,” I couldn’t help but reflect on my own musings of perfectionism. Though rooted in external aesthetics, Pike’s aversion served as a gateway into a broader, more insidious struggle — one that transcends the surface and subsists across various aspects of our lives. Beyond the glitz of Hollywood, this pervasive dilemma infiltrates the minutiae of daily routines, casts a shadow over academic pursuits and propels us into the relentless pursuit of a self-constructed ideal of success. As I grapple with my journey as a recovering perfectionist, Pike’s revelation resonates deeply. It speaks to the relentless pursuit of unattainable standards — chasing straight A’s, maintaining a buzzing social life, fitting into size two jeans and securing an impressive work position for my age.

‘The Zone of Interest’ and Creeping Desensitization

Content Warning: Genocide

Adapted from a Martin Amis novel, Jonathon Glazer’s The Zone of Interest follows the inner lives of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolph Höss and his wife Hedwig, focusing its attention on family strife and workplace politics rather than the unspeakable horrors happening on the opposite side of the camp’s walls. Constantly breaking the 180-degree rule, diverting into avant-garde infrared sequences and displaying long, would-be boring depictions of domestic life, the film sets out to put off its own audience, confronting both the ability of cinema to narrativize evil and the startling comfort of an audience in engaging with it. Nearly every scene is set against a vomit-inducing soundscape that combines the machinery of death with the human reactions that it inspires (and the subsequent gunfire and dog barks part and parcel to the repression). It’s one of last years’ most difficult films but also one of its most essential, a treatise on the ease with which horror is tuned out just as its modern analogue is more visible than ever. 

The obvious comparator text for The Zone of Interest is Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, possibly the definitive visual document of the Holocaust and a film most notable for its refusal to show a second of archival footage. Glazer, who isn’t painting with a documentary canvas, must represent Auschwitz as an operating camp, but he too restrains his camera from ever actually depicting images either of genocide or those doomed to it.

I LOVE IT | Ode to Long Movies

Not every film can be enjoyed in a single evening. As you get into cinephilia, downloading Letterboxd and looking at their Top 250 (or perhaps those of Sight and Sound or AFI), you may come across those select few movies with runtimes that look like mistakes: Jesus Christ, how many hours even is 317 minutes? Some people end up shutting those movies out, excluding them from any potential watchlist for the obscene commitment they ask of audiences. Others, like me, set them aside as projects on a bucket list… I knew I couldn’t avoid Jacques Rivette my whole life. Earlier this month, I made that bucket list a whole lot shorter, watching a dozen or so of these ultralong “project” movies over break.

Movies to Get Through a Breakup

Alright. You’ve read the headline. You get what’s happening here: I went through a breakup; I watch a lot of movies; now, I’m looking back and attempting to confer upon them some sort of rhyme and reason to distinguish the ones that helped from the ones that hurt and all that jazz. Movies are a super cool window into universal experience, and there’s a lot that they can do in helping you take steps towards feeling better. But even the most hardcore cinephile will tell you that there are limits to the healing powers of movies.

Fantasy Favorites: A Review of Crescent City Books 1 and 2

As a fantasy connoisseur and Sarah J. Maas fan, I am super excited to review the first two books in her Crescent City series, House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath. These two books are big, both over 800 pages. However, they were well worth the time. The first book, House of Earth and Blood, follows the half-human and half-fae main character Bryce Quinlan. I love Bryce, as she feels like a real person with real issues.

Substance in the Small Details of ‘Saltburn’

Many dismissed Emerald Fennell’s second film Saltburn as being “boring” and “empty.” My response to these comments: If this was your take on Saltburn, I don’t think you were paying close enough attention. Saltburn is filled with precise details, many of which I didn’t even appreciate until I had watched the movie a second time. Fennell first takes us to Oxford University in the early 2000s. Oliver Quick (played by Barry Keoghan) is a new student at Oxford at the time, struggling to fit in with his peers. Felix Catton (played by Jacob Elordi) becomes the object of Oliver’s attention, and the object of the film’s eye.

The Blood-Curdling Sadness of All of Us Strangers

I took my mom to see All of Us Strangers over the break, after American Fiction had sold out and Poor Things had seemed a bit explicit for a family viewing. She liked the movie but noted that the conclusion had confused her: Why wasn’t Adam sadder in the end? After all, the final “twist” of the film is unambiguously devastating, and he does seem to take it fairly well. I found it less frustrating from a narrative perspective, but nonetheless troubling for the film’s conclusion. Sold as this year’s  “most likely to make you cry” film, All of Us Strangers does not simply tug at the heartstrings or offer a moment of cathartic melancholy, but rather renders in its viewer a sense of unshakeable loneliness, as necessary to the human condition as is its denial to a peaceful existence.