Will Give Movie Recommendations For Donations
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What?!? Even more recommendations? Such incredible value for money! All this wealth of pop culture expertise is coming to you in recognition of what I’m sure have already been record donations to LGM’s regular running. If not (or if you’d like to donate again!) please consider doing so at the following links:
And now, a few films I’ve watched and enjoyed recently. To forestall the obvious questions, the reason Furiosa is not on this list is because various life issues have kept me from seeing Furiosa, though hopefully that omission will be corrected very soon. In the meantime, here are some movies that do not feature to-the-death drag races across the post-apocalyptic desert, but are quite good nonetheless.
All of Us Strangers (dir. Andrew Haigh) – Last year’s Oscar also-ran is a weird, sad romantic fantasy about a writer who lives in a nearly-empty London high-rise (Andrew Scott) who forms a romantic connection with a young neighbor (Paul Mescal). At the same time, he begins “visiting” a couple in the suburbs (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy), who turn out to be his parents, who died in a car accident when he was twelve. During his visits, he fills them in on the events of his life–including his gayness–and tries to understand them as adults. It’s a fantasy that a lot of people who have lost loved ones will have had, but in this movie it also reflects on the particular challenges of coming of age as a gay person in the last few decades, arriving at an adulthood where homosexuality is almost entirely normalized, while still carrying the weight of a childhood where it was all-but unthinkable. There are some incredibly sweet and tender scenes between Scott and his parents, but his romance with Mescal is also very affecting, and some gorgeous musical interludes play up the film’s dreamlike, unreal quality. There’s a twist at the end that I’m not sure I cared for (I wonder, in fact, whether it isn’t the reason for the film’s relative awards shut-out), but it doesn’t undermine the achingly sad and romantic quality of the film as a whole.
Challengers (dir. Luca Guadagnino) – From its very first trailers, the most interesting thing about this movie was how persuasively it argued that it was a movie, something exciting and compelling enough to justify leaving the house and spending two hours with strangers in a darkened theater. All the more so because the story it presented–a love triangle-slash-professional rivalry between two tennis players (Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor) and the woman they both love, a former phenom sidelined by injury (Zendaya)–was so small-scale. But it turns out you don’t need superheroes or world-destroying scientists if you’ve just got a compelling hook, and “do these people want to beat each other or sleep together?” does the trick. The actual execution leaves a bit to be desired–the script is underbaked, often leaving us in the dark about a characters’ feelings or motivations, and in other cases revealing them through bald monologues. But the dynamism of the central trio, and the energy of the direction, editing, and soundtrack around them, are enough to carry you over any difficulties in the plot, and the ending is simply unassailable, tying together the love story and sports story in a way that may not make real-world sense, but is entirely emotionally satisfying.
Problemista (dir. Julio Torres) – Torres was the co-creator of the bizarre, unique HBO series Los Espookys, a show I once saw described as “Scooby Doo as told by Borges”. His directorial debut is unsurprisingly no less full of surreal imagery and ideas–logging onto Craigslist brings you face to face with a husky cherub who reads out ads for “cleaning boy fantasy” in a seductive voice. But the core of its story is both darker and wilder. Torres plays a wannabe toy designer from El Salvador whose US visa is in danger, and who takes a job as an assistant to an art critic who is trying to curate an exhibition of her late husband’s paintings (Tilda Swinton). The moment Swinton comes on screen, any expectation that Problemista will offer the same sort of gentle, bizarre fun as Los Espookys flies out the window. Her character is both a nightmare and a savior, steamrolling any opposition with a nonstop verbal barrage of complaints, demands, and irrelevant observations (she’s particularly annoyed that nobody can synchronize her gallery database using FileMaker Pro), and forcing Torres to work his way around her narcissism and live up to her expectations. It’s a tour de force performance that can make the surrounding film feel a little irrelevant, but by the time the character it’s shuffled off screen, it’s hard not to feel, as Torres does, that something incredible has been lost.
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