is your heart a sponge or a fist?

Media from November and December! I forgot how to read again! 

Video Games

Dead Cells (2018)

I have owned and played this game on switch for several years; it routinely is updated and has multiple DLC’s. Dead Cells is a rouge-like dungeon-crawler with delightfully brisk combat and (at times) truly outrageous weaponry. Every couple months Dead Cells calls to me and I get addicted to it for 30 days straight before getting my life together again, and the cycle continues. I am awful at all video games, so I have only ever gotten as far as the clock tower, and only recently began unlocking certain aspects of the game. Mainly ridiculous weapons such as Electric Whip That Kills You If You Use It Too Much and Inexplicably Powerful Crowbar. 

Cozy Grove (2021)

Saw this game on sale for 8 dollars and picked it up on a whim. Very Animal-Crossing-esque except all the villagers are ghosts of bears. You do tasks for the ghosts so that they may become real again and add color to the map you play on! This game has a very chill Where’s-Waldo/I Spy book aspect wherein your assignment is to locate small objects across the cluttered and ever-changing landscape. It also only allows a certain amount of quests to be given in a day, so you play it over a long time instead of binging it endlessly at once. I enjoy it, but for someone else it may be nothing special!

Apex Legends (2019)

Everyone but me in my social circle is chronically addicted to Apex. Recently my boyfriend forced me to just try the game out via the built in ‘training center’ aspect of the game in which you have access to every weapon, infinite ammo, and dummies that won’t shoot you back. Sadly, what ensued was a disaster of epic proportions. I’m talking less than 25% aim accuracy. Forgetting how to switch guns. My insistence that there should be a controller sensitivity setting between 2 and 3. Hand cramps. But even this has not deterred my loved ones from asking me to play this game with them. Don’t you guys care about your ranks at all!!!!!!!!??? Can’t we just play Titanfall 2 instead???????!!!!!!

Movies

Saltburn (2023)

I had fun watching this movie! No one else in my theater seemed to be laughing but I found the whole thing to be pretty deeply funny. Rosamund Pike was killing me. However, this movie is definitely not as transgressive as it thinks it is, or as transgressive as I expected it to be based on the general public’s reaction. Everyone was screaming and crying and throwing up over Barry Keoghan drinking Jacob Elordi’s cum-laced bathwater, but that is barely an abstraction of one of the most common and vanilla sex acts out there. Like why is everyone insisting they have to kill themselves after seeing it! I saw fifteen million tweets about the bath scene, and yet no one mentioned the part where Barry Keoghan strips down in the rain and fucks the freshly laid dirt over Jacob Elordi’s grave. Like OK now we’re getting somewhere…The only other sex scenes in this movie involve BK giving a woman head while she’s on her period, and BK giving JE’s cousin the world’s driest handjob while telling him to behave. Two things that can only be shocking to someone that has never had sex before. I also saw many people argue that the class politics of this movie demonize the middle class, but the main character is literally revealed to be wealthy, just not old money wealthy. Also in my opinion the film quite literally has nothing to say about class politics. There is almost a complete and utter lack of thematic meaning in this movie, a quality which is marginally rebuffed by some parts being mildly sexy in several directions. Anyways. I walked back to my car in the movie theater parking lot, inexplicably unable to stop thinking about how much funnier this movie would be if the main character was played by Skyler Gisondo instead.

Priscilla (2023)

Saw this earlier in November and found it ultimately kind of blah and forgettable. Costuming/makeup/hair department come get your prize though, that shit was fabulous! Jacob Elordi is off-putting as Elvis, though it's possible I still have residual Nate Jacobs of Euphoria fame based fear of him. Cailee Spaeny is somewhat formidable, but this script gives her nothing to do. Priscilla is hardly fleshed out as a real person. I’ve seen some reviews say that this is the point; Priscilla Presley’s life was squandered by Elvis, and she was barred from any autonomy that would have allowed her to develop as an individual. But what are we doing then! And I felt that the movie went pretty easy on Elvis anyway. I don’t know. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s not all that great either. I expected a bit more out of Sofia Coppola I suppose.

May December (2023)

This movie is so sharp with its criticism of the culture/world we live in…I enjoyed it as I watched it and then enjoyed thinking about it for several days afterwards. As many people have been saying, Charles Melton is outstanding in this. He somehow convinces you as the viewer that he is younger than his own teenage son in the most heartbreaking way possible. The movie first truly comes into focus when Portman’s character, a C-list actor come to town to study the subjects her new role is based on, answers a Q&A from a teenage boy about filming sex scenes: Portman’s character explains that sometimes you are uncomfortable but pretending to be aroused, and sometimes you are aroused pretending to be uncomfortable. You see throughout the runtime how Portman’s character tries to mine and dig into the subjects of this awful story, all under the guise of research, so that the film she is making can be ‘truthful’ and really mean something. Just asking questions. But it's clear she is getting a dirty sort of satisfaction out of digging into the tabloid story she remembers: an affair between a 36 year old woman and a seventh grader. Melton carries the weight of reality around until he is ultimately forced to confront it, shattering whatever thing was still holding him together. In return, Julianne Moore says he was the one who pursued her. Melton watches his children with Moore graduate from highschool and weeps behind a chain link fence. They’ll go on to adulthood in a way he never could, or never can--freely. The movie has a sick sense of humor to top all its excellence off; at the very end, Portman’s movie is revealed to be nothing more than your average piece of shit, poorly lit Lifetime drivel that will never bother to say the true thing. Magnificent!!!!

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Genuinely one of the greatest movies of the year I’m not even joking. I saw this in a theater by myself then dragged four of my friends a week later to go see it again so I would have someone to talk about it with. This Godzilla movie returns to the original era of Godzilla; post WW2 Japan. And it does so because it has shit to say!! At the surface, it has many criticisms of WW2 Japan’s devaluation of life, through allying with Germany or through the use of kamikaze pilots, the needless death of the era. It even takes some deserved shots at the US and the Soviets. But beneath all that…it's about forgiveness, it's about second chances, it's about family, it's about survival, it's about justice. It's about pride in and love for your community that exists outside of nationalism. That exists outside of government. IF YOU EVEN FUCKING CARE!!!!! The film is sort of weirdly paced for the first 15-20 minutes, but once main character Shikishima gets a job retrieving mines in the sea from the war, it hits a perfect stride. Some of the people in this movie feel like such loving portrayals of classic Japanese character archetypes; the chummy, loud, and paternal boat captain…the buttoned-up but friendly scientist…the whiny twenty year old with a little growing up to do. If you see the movie you know exactly what I mean. Additionally, the practical Godzilla work looks excellent, and the score absolutely rips. Go listen to Godzilla Suite II right now. You are going to start punching holes in your walls and crushing soda cans against your forehead I’m not fucking joking. 

The Boy and The Heron (2023)

Guys does Hayao Miyazaki fucking hate birds or is he lovingly obsessed with them? Hard to say. When this movie ended I just sat in my seat scratching my head but by the time I got home I had gathered my thoughts and felt so deeply moved somehow. To me, this movie is about letting things come to an end because they must, and also about how there is actually no one Miyazaki can pass the legacy of Studio Ghibli onto. Which is so painful and bittersweet. My friends and I saw the dub because we needed to hear RPatz heron voice which is so insane you would literally never know it was him without the credits. Florence Pugh’s character was also an unexpected favorite. Sexy butch fisherwoman in a fantasy world save me….Anyways. This movie is visually stunning as expected, the score is excellent as is expected, go see it just as a gift to your eyes, if nothing else. Also I need 500 of those little Wara-Wara guys living in my house right fucking now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Past Lives (2023)

Wow wow wow wow wow. I didn’t know a single thing about this movie when I decided to watch it alone in bed on a Wednesday and it frankly blew my face off. Emotionally. Like I still don’t even know what to say. Past Lives is an excellent movie about the inexplicable forces of life that can bring people together or push them apart, regardless of how much we try to go in the opposite direction. The script and screenwriting is so kind to the three characters. A review I enjoyed of this movie said it best: The extraordinary thing about Celine Song’s Past Lives is how it’s able to pose so many questions, but none that have any definitive answers. Should they be together? Should they not? What if this, or what if that? If you are a sentimental fool with a weakness for first love/second love tropes, watch this movie. Not important side note: Teo Yoo is extremely handsome.

Poor Things (2023)

I quite literally saw this last night so I don’t really have fully formed thoughts yet, but I enjoyed this a lot. Emma Stone is excellent. Willem Dafoe is excellent. Mark Ruffalo is hilarious. Ramy Youssef plays an excellent straight man. Hair, makeup, production/set design, costuming, music, all delightful and imbued with a Wes-Anderson-esque meticulous detailed-ness. A lot of criticism re: this film’s approach to sexuality + liberation really reminds me of that tweet that's like Is [pop star] a feminist? Is MasterCard a queer ally? Is this tv show my friend? I think we all would be better served by viewing feminism as something you can do rather than something anything can be. But whatever! I’m sure it will invite 5000 years of born sexy yesterday discourse I don’t give a shit about. This movie is unabashedly horny and weird and dedicated to letting its main character be/do whatever she wants regardless of whoever may find it offensive/repulsive/impolite. It rules…to me……and guess what. There is a dance scene :)