Sara Watches Stuff

It's the end of the year, and the film snobs of the world are reflecting on their years in pop culture. As one of the gang - now with my very own bogus DMCA notice! - I figured I would jump on in. Of course, there are lots of caveats to that. I live in Australia, where several of the last quarter films with award potential have their wide release withheld til the next year. I don't go to previews, with the exception of the occasional rubbish horror movie, and I am not drawn to a lot of wide release movies. Dunkirk ? More like...um... done-urgh . A lot of it is to do with my exhaustion with male narratives and a lot of the industry's treatment of women and anything non white or heterosexual, both real and in fiction. I love the art form, but it's been a tough year for trying to avoid content that would make me extremely angry in a very real way. As mentioned previously, I haven't seen any new releases - it's been the busiest time of the year in my sector - so

It's that magical time of year...where Love Actually plays on television at least once a week.  There is nothing to be said about Richard Curtis' personal masterwork on the magic of love that someone on the internet hasn't already said. I'm partial to the Christmas countdown of daily Love Actually watches by Courtney Enlow at Pajiba , personally. Christopher Orr at The Atlantic offers what came to be a pretty standard modern response to the movie, in that it is a piece of junk depiction of romance. Lindy West at Jezebel broke it down. On the 10th anniversary of Love Actually , the world learned to hate it. Michael Koziol penned an interesting piece in defence of the movie at The Gaurdian; also at Pajiba, Joe Starr with one of my favourite hot takes entitled " Love Actually is a problematic movie and ugh who f*cking cares?" .  Let's focus on the more important things, people! Were we really all still wearing turtlenecks in 2003? There is not nearly e

As someone with no interest in being heterosexual, sometimes I just look at a movie poster and think "that's definitely going to be gay". Such was the case with the French 2002 black comedy musical murder mystery  8 Women (or 8 Femmes , obviously in its original French). It's a special extra sense you get in the LGBT+ community - an ability to detect content from a mile off. From the opening of the movie, it was as if I was being specifically catered to: the 50s high femme aesthetic, pastel colour scheme, great lipstick, commitment to saucy plot twists and lighthearted approach to murder mystery felt like a blend of Clue with everything I would want in a movie. Pandering to me aside, this movie has a lot going for it. It was written and directed by   François Ozon as an adaptation of the 1958 play by Robert Thomas, and recreates that theatrical vibe effortlessly with its singular setting and small scale drama but never feels claustrophobic. Most critics write about

I read The Glass Castle , Jeanette Walls' memoir, back when my mother read it for her book club in 2008. I thought it was appropriately affecting, and the writing was fine, but it wasn't my favourite book - even though I don't mind media that dwells in its misery, but this particular book didn't strike the balance for me. All that considered, the movie adaptation was...faithful. It was well acted and well executed and a near completely faithful retelling of Walls' novelization of her youth. Whether or not that's a good thing depends on how much you enjoy this kind of story. I'll cop to having a low tolerance for the kind of story that spans a lifetime, focusing in on moments of woe to show the extraordinariness of one person. I wish more focus had been given to the adult characters of Walls' siblings, so it felt perhaps less self-indulgent. Alternatively, I would have enjoyed it much more if the jumps between past and past-present hadn't been so ab

I have not seen The Lobster; I have not seen Dogtooth . The off-kilter world of The Killing of a Sacred Deer served as my complete introduction to the work of Yorgos Lanthimos, and to say I was hesitant would be an understatement. Nicole Kidman has called this one of her strangest projects yet, and I sat through Strangerland . I had read the spoiler-free reviews that critiqued Lanthimos' employment of a singular acting style, wherein every character is emotionless and near-robotic, and that the allegories were a little far reaching with too little grounding. I think that there is merit to those ideas - and would have to have more experience with the Lanthimos canon to make my own judgement - but on a personal level, this movie really clicked. The Killing of a Sacred Deer , a reference to the myth of Iphigenia which I was in no way familiar with but that does illuminate a whole lot, starts off with an extended shot of close up open heart surgery set to a near-deafening operatic so

This movie came to me with rave reviews as a part of a curated selection of films. The critic who spoke to me about it - an actual movie critic - talked about the movie's much celebrated subversion of romantic comedy tropes and Rebecca Miller's directorial dedication to the honest, messy depiction of adulthood and romance. They also talked about Miller almost entirely in terms of who her father is and who her husband is, so I wasn't taking the greatest stock in his view of the movie from a critical feminist angle. The story had potential: a woman plans to have a kid on her own, but it's complicated when she falls for a fucking loser of a professor at the university she works for who also happens to be married with kids. While I appreciated those two things - the movie is unwavering in its commitment to the messiness of romantic and familial entanglements, and it is both romantic and a comedy without falling into the rom-com class - I also found the frustration I felt

I wrote fairly recently about my favourite horror movies and my twisted love affair with the Saw  franchise. When the movies were still getting released, I never got the chance to share in the Halloween tradition of horror releases, because no one else I knew cared at all. And so at 9:30pm on Halloween this year, I donned a bunch of fake blood and some hastily drawn jigsaw pieces and watched a new goddamn   Saw movie. Upfront and honest: Jigsaw  is not a good movie. It does not stand alone, and you will not enjoy it if you do not enjoy the movies as a whole. There was an obvious attempt made at creating an independent piece that stood apart from the seven films prior but still tied into the mythos, and while the game plan is clear, I wouldn't call it successful because it doesn't really make sense when viewed as a part of the series as a whole. As a reboot, it's just average; as a sequel (an octquel?) it's sub-par.  Jigsaw  is obsessed with creating a mytholog

The world is pretty hard on for clown movies, right? I remember how excited people were  getting for this on horror websites back when Eli Roth's involvement was announced, and then I swear I didn't hear a single thing about it until it popped up on to my Netflix feed recently. I think it only really released to VOD last year, to add to all of the clown movies the world can't get enough of. Man - so many clown horror movies. I know clowns are freaky, but they're not that freaky. Clown is about a Normal Horror Movie Dad who finds a clown costume for his son's birthday party and then finds himself unable to take it off but rather possessed by the demon of the costume that has a specific hunger for children.  I wish I had something interesting to say about this movie, but it was pretty generic. Peter Stormare was a bright spot as someone who had gone through the demon clown experience before, because he's never afraid to ham it up. Other than that, I found th

On a superficial, deeply gay level, the reason I watched Byzantium is that Gemma Arterton is out of this world gorgeous and she spends chunk of this movie wearing lingerie and killing people (not necessarily at the same time).  The movie itself is a softer, quieter take on the traditional vampire story. Two vampire sisters tackle the world together, attempting to remain undiscovered. Neil Jordan, who directed it, also adapted Interview with a Vampire and while I haven’t seen that one, I’ve heard they share a lot of the same DNA. It’s beautifully shot, and the balance between period segments and the modern day is nicely done so that it isn’t overwhelmingly a period drama. All that said, there are times when it feels overwhelmingly like something else: a teenage melodrama. It’s definitely not a byproduct of the story’s feminine energy, but rather of how the material is handled - centuries old characters act, at times, like fifteen year olds and their views of romance are dr

Now, I've seen my fair share of Stephen King adaptations. As far as they go, this isn't quite Kubrick's The Shining in terms of cinematography, and it isn't half as terrifying as 1408 (that movie is sincerely underrated in the scare stakes). It does what the most successful of King's short story adaptations do, which is emphasizing the small scale and focusing on the psychological rather than trying to create spooky specters - a matter of preference, of course.  Gerald's Game is all about a woman torturing herself. Well: it's about a couple whose misguided foray into bondage is derailed by the man's heart attack, leaving his wife handcuffed to the bed with no escape route in sight. Jessie, the woman in question, is played by Carla Gugino, and her portrayal of the character's withdrawal from reality is easily what makes this movie worth watching. You get hooked in with the "this could really happen" 127 Hours type premise, but you stay f

October horror madness continues with something from 2013. Ah, 2013. The year I graduated, and the height of the unnecessarily 3D movie. Texas Chainsaw 3D is the epitome of that redundancy - there is literally no reason for this movie to be in 3D. There is some blood that flies and at one point someone throws a chainsaw. That's the quality of 3D movie we were pumping out in 2013. For all its flaws, I love the original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's a great example of the Big Fucked Up Family movie. For some reason, I was under the impression that this Alexandra Daddario led movie was the remake, rather than a direct sequel. If you ignore the fact that none of it makes sense temporally, it's a pretty interesting way of doing the usual "same idea but this time 3D" sequel. Daddario plays Heather, who as a baby was taken from the Sawyer household as the town's citizens set upon them in vengeance for their penchant for murder (Leatherface, most notoriously)

I know I've mentioned before my personal affinity for Big Fucked Up Family Movies, but I hate how often they neglect the exploration of the actual family dynamics and instead try to pile shock on shock. It's very much Alexandre Aja's modus operandi - he directed this remake along with 2003's  High Tension  - as he seems to thrive on creating movies that push the limits of "too far", but does so with choices that are often hard to track. As a big horror fan, I like to see people in movies get confronted with impossible situations. I want characters' limits tested. Aja's take on Wes Craven's 1977 movie follows the same story, where a family traveling through the desert find themselves stranded and under attack from a family of (sigh) mutant cannibals. I haven't seen Craven's movie, though it is generally agreed that the remake is superior; my issues with this movie come more from the carnival of horrors way the antagonists are deployed, not

Sometimes I watch a movie and a joke is made in the first few minutes that lets me know that there's going to be a sense of humour present that will just not gel with me. In this particular Netflix original, it was probably the excess of jokes about "taking it out the butt" and calling the main character a pussy. For all of the times when we might not agree about what "funny" is, there are flashes of something special in The Babysitter . It makes the other stuff even worse. Oh, horror comedy, you tricky little nut of a genre. The Babysitter  follows a kid as he learns that his super hot babysitter is also a super devout devil worshipper who might be sacrificing people after he's gone to bed. Fun plot, generally well executed. Samara Weaving is great as the titular babysitter, and the teenage actors are remarkably un-painful. In fact, once the movie gets over how great it thinks it is, it ends up being pretty good.  I've mentioned that I like my horro

Let's Be Evil is the cinematographic embodiment of a downward spiral. I was lured in by interesting visuals and then everything from there was a mess. But while I'm on a horror movie review kick for October, let's nut this one out! The premise deserves credit for trying to use creepy kids in a different way. A top secret operation employs three cash hungry twenty somethings to be caretakers for a bunch of genius kids in an augmented reality brain training facility, but complications unsurprisingly result in a plot that is focused on trying to look cool and be different rather than tell a human story.  The major issue I had with Let's Be Evil was that so much of the plot and the character emotions are told through outright dialogue, rather than shown through action. It’s stuff that your screenwriting teacher would have rolled their eyes at - characters straight up saying “It’s a puzzle. Like that one from earlier.” Give your audience some credit. The visual medium

Happy Friday the 13th! Apparently people talk about horror movies in October? It's about Halloween, right? I'm Australian, and I'm honestly unfamiliar with the whole tradition. We aren't big on Halloween. We do like binge drinking and ignoring our deep systemic issues, so that's kind of the same thing.  What I am a big fan of is the horror genre. It started with my fascination and terror over The Ring , which I was first exposed to through its parody in Scary Movie 3 at a sleepover when I was much too young. All the while an avid reader of the Goosebumps books, this visual embodiment of fear was something new to me, and something I found absolutely petrifying. The idea of a ghost girl climbing out of the VCR had me sleepless for weeks. I hid my scariest Goosebumps books in boxes buried under clothes in the back of my wardrobe so that whatever monsters might ostensibly climb out would at least have to battle through a few layers of cotton. At some point, my fixati

I'm pretty sure everyone who watched the trailer for this movie got the gist of the plot: it's Groundhog Day , but with murder. Of course, our lead - played by the film's absolute standout actor, Jessica Rothe - has never seen Groundhog Day  and has apparently never heard of it, because it takes her an absurdly long time to try to be a better person. Instead, she spends a long time trying to solve her own murder by a weird person in a creepy baby mask. So her own murder happens again and again and again. Happy Death Day  definitely has flashes of greatness. As a murder mystery, it is far more effective than as a horror movie. You really want to know whodunnit. They really do set up everyone as a suspect, and they do so in a way that actually kept me guessing. I kept reading real answers as red herrings and misleads as the real deal. The final resolve ended up being quite disappointing, but I think that's because as a movie lover, I kept wanting the killer to be bigger

The internet will tell you that we're amidst the golden age of peak television. There is good shit everywhere . I can tell you about so many good television shows that I don't even watch - guys, apparently Julie Louis Dreyfuss is really good on Veep . Modern Family isn't even winning Emmys anymore! It's a good time to be a fan of television. I am a big fan of TV, even though I've only really discussed reality television on this blog. I did my duty as a television fan this year. I watched and loved The Handmaid's Tale ! The only episode of Black Mirror really, really worth watching - San Junipero - won a bunch of awards! Mac came out for real in season 12 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia ! Good stuff. Good, really gay stuff.  If you're also into any form of media, you might have noticed the equivalence of intellectualism with seriousness/darkness and pop culture being "intellectual" as being proper pop culture. The majority of Televisi

I get recommended a lot of terrible, terrible horror movies, so I've learned to take any recommendations from the internet with a grain of salt. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the relatively small film, Spring . It was directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead, and while I own Resolution on DVD, I've never actually watched it? How did it get there? Is it any good? I should probably watch Resolution , right? I should definitely watch Resolution , because if Spring is any proof of what Benson and Moorhead can do together, they're a great team. I was actually shocked that this was recommended to me on horror forums, because it's such a non-horror movie. I'd actually call Spring a romance first a foremost, with monster movie leanings. Think Colossal , but less sophisticated and about love instead of people systemically destroying each other , and really the only similarity is the monster thing. Apparently I just like monster movies that are di