Do two overlapping shadows become darker?

Perfect Days — 4/5

I think not only is life fragile, as stories like to remind us, but also our view on life is fragile. We create routines, our perfect days, and once something disrupts that, the control you've inserted onto your life in terms of personal narratives is set on fire. O, your life might be better. O, your life might be worse. To the left and right of you, as inconsistencies set in, is a more perfect day, or a lesser one. Over here is judgement; over there is connection. (Both carry potential to be the same thing.) Do you choose a consistent life, or a more curious one? They both carry light and shadow, and we get to choose how much of each we want in our life, but we don't get to choose either's absence. I see myself in Hirayama's chosen life; beautiful, until it's skewed by those forces beyond our control, and from there, we must find our way back to center, and whatever new routine is waiting on the other side.

Strange trails, hidden paths.

Train Dreams — 3/5

Joel Edgerton stars as A Decent, Hard-Working Man Whose Love Was Pure And Whose Life Was Marked By Loss. It aims to be be Pretty™, and achieves it, sure, even if the result is just one large dead girlfriend montage. But as a resonant, emotional movie, it fails on its two recurring themes. "Does this act of innocent ignorance curse my life?" haunts him until it disappears totally. "Does this man's life in totality have meaning?" is only really brought up by the narrator, who gives the movie a feeling that it wants to be more whimsical than it is. Where it succeeds, though, is operating at that place between "this is the old world" and "this is the new world." Old tools, hard times become new tools, easier times, in a blink. You could have told me this movie was based in the 1850s until suddenly we're in the 1920s. It's that feeling of "gradually, and then suddenly." You're in a forest, and then the forest is gone, and you were too busy chopping down all the trees to notice. And in the way the movie moves you through that forest, you can understand how people get lost in the world. Take your eyes off of it for a second, and it's gone.

The places I would be

if I wasn’t me.

— I Wanna Feel Pretty by Greg Mendez 

What is given may be taken away at any time.

Hamnet — 3/5

Shit, guys, I went a full fucking year of questioning this movie's title without anyone telling me that Hamnet's the name of the fucking kid. I guess I should have watched the trailer? And now I know, and a weight has been removed from my shoulders. Life blooms. 

The last 45 minutes is a good movie. The power of narrative to process powerful emotions? Putting ourselves into our art as a way to let go? A good story as pathway to immortality? Bro, sign me up, let's fucking go. And then the first hour and 15 minutes is a love story between a manic playwright dream boy and a... (re-reads notes)... a witch? Okay, she's a witch. It's a weird fucking love story, bros. Willy Shakespeare doesn't come across as tortured so much as flighty, a flirt, a flake, until the end when he's, uh, placed his emotions into this play. Had this been 'a story of a man who can't express himself except in his art,' I'd be like "good on you." But no, this is a story about the wife who's left behind, who barely knows what's inside her husband other than that he accepts her, who was strong until love's attachment weakened her, and then he gets forgiven because he's placed all the things he could not give her into a powerful work. The movie feels like a forgiveness of a wayward partner because they are an artist, which I can buy, except the portrayal of him for much of the runtime is kind of just "shitty guy."

And now we're off on another journey.

Man on the Run — 2.5/5

Given a fairly new interest in Paul McCartney [cough cough, looks at Alex], I watched this. It feels like the attempt of this movie is to reframe Paul McCartney as not the soft boi that he very much superficially appears to be. Behind those puppy dog eyes: He disappeared! He disagreed! He dissolved the legal entity known as The Beatles! If that was the movie's attempt, I guess it successfully does that. So while this movie feels like a movie licensed and approved by the official estate of Paul McCartney, a chance to raise the idea of Wings in anyone who might view them disparagingly, I'm also not really sure I understand why he'd like to come across as very talented, and also a bit cold and oblivious. I think the movie, in its way, showcases very clearly what he was and wasn't without the three other people whose names will always be connected with him: very talented, preternaturally so when given the right box.

And gatekeepers, and norms.

Bugonia — 3.5/5

Do I like this? I think it's interesting. I think for 4/5s of its running time, it accurately captures the faith of knowing without not quite knowing; trying to hold on tight to a barely graspable idea. I think the ending is much bolder and less ambiguous than most people might have gone for; I think others would have chosen an easier way out. I think it proves that Yorgos Lanthimos is always a compelling director worthy of being watched. But also I'm not sure what to think. It reminds me of when I watched 'Poor Things,' where there was this feeling that there should be something bigger here, a larger analysis to be gleaned, a thing to take out of the theater into conversations. But it all felt like it was right there on the page? They both are movies that makes not obvious choices while also feeling obvious. 

Also the alien spaceship was shaped like a jellyfish and I saw a jellyfish, bro, it was in my dream, bro, we saw the same thing, bro, the collective consciousness, bro.