The Internet Personified: Very Short Movie Reviews By Someone Who Has Just Begun Watching All The Movies
Hi!
I've just finished the first draft of my next book. Once again, it came along after much weeping and wailing and woe is me, how did I ever write a book before, I have clearly forgotten how this goes, why did I ever think I was going to be a writer etc etc. The last few bursts on a book are glorious, you hunch over your keyboard and tap away, you see the light at the end of the tunnel and finally, it's done. I always know my last lines when I type them. I don't know them in advance but once they're down on the page, I'm like ah, that's it, that's where my book ends. It's like falling in love, when you know, you know.
Anyhow, all this meant I have two weeks in front of me with nothing to do, because I like to take a little break from the book, take some distance because at this point, as always, I have no idea if my book is amazing or the worst piece of literature ever to be written, and distance helps with these sorts of things. (I have not yet SOLD this book, so I can't tell you very much else about it, except that it's a murder mystery set amongst Delhi millennials.)
What to do with two weeks? I could read, but then I'm always reading. To fill two weeks with binge watching television also seemed like a shocking waste of my time. Then it occurred to me: what was the one thing I regretted not knowing about? [Well, OKAY, I regret not knowing many things. Off the top of my head: better mental maths skills so I don't have to count on my fingers, stuff about finance (why is the subject so boring when money is so interesting?), a better idea of a map of the world so I'm not just blobbing all the countries in together and first aid. I'd like to learn first aid. Oh, also sign language.] The one thing, my friends, the creative outlet that has never scratched my brain itch, the creative medium that I'm just not that interested in, is, oddly enough, cinema.
I don't know when I decided movies weren't for me, but I'm not obsessed with them, I haven't seen many not even That Famous One or That Other Famous One, or yes, even Surely, That One That Gets Quoted Everywhere? I haven't, and for many years, I have worn my ignorance with pride. Keep your movies, I say grandly, I like to read books. Now, funnily enough, this is not something against the visual medium, because god knows I have watched every single TV show that has ever made a best of list, it's just movies somehow triggered a mind block. Maybe it was the investment--but what is two hours to us binge watchers? Maybe it was not knowing what I was getting into, but then I read like a Reading Machine, and I never know what books are going to be like, I just go by the backs, and page 1 and page 99. (An old trick I learned from The Guardian.) So I decided to watch films in my two week break, a way of forcing myself to get into this most popular of all the art forms. That started Friday, the day I finished the draft, cracked open a bottle of red wine and sat back with a movie. From there, I started to make a list in a notebook, invariably, like reading around a subject, one movie triggers another in the same or similar genre. Did you know that happens? My list began to be broken down by subject, some headings are
Movies About Meet-Cutes
OR
Movies about teen girls
OR
Detective movies
You get the gist of it. Sometimes a movie about teen girls will intersect with movies about high school or movies about intense mothers. I keep adding to the list, even as I'm checking them off. I'll probably never watch all the movies. I haven't even got to the Indian cinema section of my list yet! But I'm trying, and here's what I've seen so far. (SPOILERS ABOUND, except for like the movies that would be RUINED if I tell you what happens in the end, SO those movies have NO spoilers, you can read at ease.)
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Four Weddings and a Funeral: Rewatched, and I think my only rewatch but it totally counts as a movie that I've seen for the first time because I didn't remember any of it. Not Andie McDowell standing in the rain, not Hugh Grant saying fuck-a-doodle-do, none of it. I think because when I first saw it I was very young, in my teens or thereabouts and 4WAAF does not that have that rom com payoff that oh, Ten Things I Hate About You does. It's very slow, very Britishly awkward. A guy actually DIES and then his male partner recites that DEVASTATING Auden poem about death, and all their friends realise for the first time after being friends for a zillion years that they WERE, in fact, gay and it's even sadder. People get divorced after having just gotten married. Like, as far as rom coms go, it's not very com, is it? Hmm. It's famously Hugh Grant's least favourite of all his films, but I loved it, actually. (And same director so not surprising.)
Best In Show: Have I ever told you that one of my few talents is being able to identify a dog breed? Like, one of my proudest moments was sitting at Dr Rana's office and this woman comes up with her dog and I'm like, "Oh Rhodesian Ridgeback" as you do when you see a Rhodesian Ridgeback and she was SO HAPPY. "Do you have a Rhodie?" she asked and I laughed modestly and said, no I did not, I just knew what her dog was and she said, "You know, no one ever knows what he is, they think he's some Indian mongrel type but there are a few of us in Delhi who all have them." Indian mongrel types being terrible associations for someone who has actually spent money on a breed pet etc, as you know. For me, I get great pride when people ask what breed our cats are, because then I'm all Make In India about it. Anyhow, Best In Show is a mockumentary about a dog show and I added many new breeds to my list of breeds to identify from a distance because of it.
Dumplin': Was also a nice YA book which I read, so the story of the fat girl wanting to enter a beauty pagent to stick two fingers up in the face of our obsession with perfect bodies was familiar to me, but no less heartwarming for all that. Very sweet. Jennifer Aniston is in it, and we all still love Rachel, no?
Booksmart: Cute, but I've seen a version of it before. Two nerdy high schoolers decide to party it up the last day of school. TWIST: THIS TIME IT'S GIRLS. Always nice seeing female friendship extolled on screen.
Lady Bird: More female friendship, but I looooooooved this movie. Deeper than Booksmart definitely. A poor girl with a controlling mother tries to figure out where she fits in at her convent school amongst all her rich classmates and at home, where she wants to rebel against her mother constantly. I was reminded of my own terrible teen years. Plus Saoirse Ronan, the lead actress, is going to be playing JO MARCH. And, so much did I love the movie that I actually think she'll be a good Jo, and you know I do not say that lightly. (Timothee Chalmawhatsit in this gif below is going to be playing Laurie, and I am much more disapproving about him.)
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Dazed And Confused: Another Last Day At High School movie, but set in the 70s amongst lots of drugs. Two younger teens (fourteen) go out with two groups of seniors, boys and girls. The evening unfolds in various ways, like one of those boxes that expands when you press a button. It was harder work to watch than Booksmart, I'll give you that, but nice soundtrack and in some ways, a little more teen-y than the other movie which seemed a little bit like an adult idea of bookish teens.
Donnie Darko: One of K's favourite films of all time. This movie was WEIRD. I can't tell you more, because I barely understand it myself. But... weird.
Se7en: I think watching detective shows and reading murder mysteries have left me slightly inured to violence on screen now. Like, a lot of people told me Se7en was scary back in the day, but I didn't find it that terrifying. It was more twisty than violent, and the end is sad but again, not super gory. I really liked it and have added Silence of the Lambs therefore, to my list.
Marty: Did not think I would enjoy this movie from 1955 so much, but it was seriously timeless. Everyone keeps telling Marty, a 34 year old butcher with a pug face that he should get married, but he's having a hard time meeting women until one night he meets a lady who also has a hard time meeting men because people say she's ugly (which: she's really not but they gave her an unflattering hairstyle and her face sort of drooped, so okay, I'll buy it) and they have a wonderful evening just talking to each other about various things all night long. It's black and white and charming all over.
In The Heat of the Night: Again, old movie, from the 70s, won the Academy Award for Best Picture, as did Marty. Sidney Portier, man, could that man act. Without saying a word, his face is just so expressive. While the mystery of this murder mystery was a bit lame, Sidney being a black cop in a small town that hated black people is just really well done.
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Quiz Show: About a quiz show from the 50s (think this movie is from the 90s) that cheated to make certain contestants win. I love a good expose film. It's got a bunch of famous people in it and it's very quiet and underrated for a film so good.
Man Up: Aw, very sweet rom com about mistaken identities and loneliness and running through London.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: TYRION IS IN IT! Also I like Woody Harrelson's face. And Frances McDormand's. She manages to convey so much, just looking grumpy. Sadly, Tyrion's role isn't very big. I was hoping for more, but that's the only sore point.
Missing Link: Gorgeous stop motion animation about an explorer and a sasquatch, and with scenes so meticulously pretty, does it matter that the story was a little trite? It does not.
Phew. Okay, there's my list so far. I'm going to send this off to you and begin on the Indian cinema list with Dangal. Send me movie suggestions! I DO NOT LIKE films with a) lots of shooting and guns and things, b) drug heists so boring c) war, but that falls under guns and d) less than two female protagonists. I like women on screen. They make me feel more like I'm into the movie instead of just watching men do manly things.
Links!
If you're not watching a movie, you're probably watching Friends for the zillionth time.
Social media is an addiction as bad as gambling. (So I'm trying to do it less.)
Face blindness is a thing, you guys.
Have a great week!
xx
m
Where am I? The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.
Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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