#thisisarec

[sleepynegress]

On One Battle After Another...

Since I could hardly find any Black woman opinions... I'll be that!!

So, it's loosely adapted from Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, a writer known for playing fast and loose with "people and places" in a way that is purposely satifical outsized myth... but at the same time, the second half feels very human and "dad and daughter" in a warm funny way; with a tense investment in outcome, in the climax. ...I feel like aspects of PTA's new film are in conversation with and extending aspects of Frank Mackie's part of MAGNOLIA; a very shiny mirror with heavy maginifcation settings revealing more of the blemishes in a certain form of white "manhood" being asserted right now. Just dropping a quick reminder of what I mean:

This particular white manhood is rendered like every cartoonishly badly supresssed cope for insecurity hidden beneath resentment and aggression as a character enitity similar in drive to Chigurh in No Country for Old Men... which this also feels like there are shades of a lighter version of here.

I also feel like BW are mostly seated in outside gazes & not enough of their own. Which to me is a kind of built-in limit for many white male filmmakers with few exceptions (The Color Purple I think is the biggest one. Spielburg did manage to walk the audience in a Black woman's shoes, in Celie IMO).

My honest reading is three and a half stars out of five... This is a rec, but not the best movie ever kinda outsized hype it's been getting. It feels like a throwback to eccentric characters and dialogue, but with timely undercurrent subject matter. Still, it has a similar issue to what I had with Lost In Translation's use of Japan or Wes Anderson's use of India in Darjeeling Limiited. #ThisIsARec ...but temper those expectations!! EVERYONE is good but IMO, none of the Black actresses get enough to do, to get award nods... ...Then again Dame Densch did win for Shake(es)peare In Love.🤷🏾‍♀️

P.S. I also don't trust claims of who will be made "a star" especially when it comes to women and BIPOC, because all-too-often they don't cast them in anything after that star-making performance. That said...both Regina and Chase did well with what they had. Teyana, I feel played more with a gaze than a character... and you'll see what I mean when you watch. She comes off like character hearsay, which makes absolute sense within the context of the movie. Still, that is where I feel a ball was left bouncing without a dribbler.

[sleepynegress]

So, the movie SURROUNDED deserves its own post...

Letitia Wright's SURROUNDED got slept-on when it dropped in 2023, TBH...

She also acted her ass off.

As I have said, it deals with a similar theme to SINNERS...just within a Western setting instead of a southern juke joint. Basically, it's a one location thriller wherein the heroine Mo, played by Tish, has to navigate when a criminal gang encumbers her journey on a stagecoach. Anyway. it's on PRIME. WATCH IT. SUPPORT IT. Letitia Wright is a producer and it is unheard of for a Black woman that young to produce and star in a movie like this. I literally cannot name another western starring a Black woman and if you trust/know my taste, I'm saying it's a decent watch. ...And Jamie Bell basically plays in a similar pool as Remmick. If you are looking for a similarly themed movie to SINNERS, just a different genre and sans blues music... SURROUNDED is pretty much that. BUT and THIS IS KEY, because it's from the perspective of a Black woman... that status means the lack of trust expands a bit because of the greater danger to her. In fact, I think it's interesting to compare her approach to her situation to how the people in that juke joint handled theirs.

#THISISAREC I may come back to this post to expand on that comparison, actually, under a cut, of course, after a rewatch. Because the similarities and differences are interesting.

[sleepynegress]

So, I Just Watched Netflix's DAMSEL...

...And I'm wiping tears?? ...Because I loved this movie and the allegory and it was the perfect girl movie for International Women's Day which was yesterday??? This movie got a 58% Rotten Tomatoes score and I'm honestly confused! It was a beautiful perfectly original fairytale. In the good old days, this would have either been a sleeper hit in the theatres or a beloved classic discovery in the VHS rental market and likely overplayed at odd times on HBO like The Neverending Story. It for me is on tier with The Seabeast and Predator for excellent modern "girl-power" films, that should have been released in the theaters. It subverts so many fairytale tropes, and while it's predictable, I'm an old soul who still can cast myself back to girlhood and for me, again, the allegory touched me. Much in a similar way that Maleficent did, with its origin for the title character as a metaphor for the loss of trust and innocence after a violation, "a sexual assault" with loss of wings. It 100% wasn't intentionally this deep, but this for me was about the price of colonization; of adhered-to ancestral memory that the "winners" who write history carry, sacrificing 'the other" for generations destroying their own souls.... Until the convenient lies are finally faced. Ugh, I loved what they did with the dragon, with all the supporting characters, with the amount of harrow, and some consequential violence, enough to genuinely scare but not enough to scar. It felt very old school in that way. -Like a good solid 80's style fantasy, except for some of the non-practical effects. IDK, maybe it's just about my soft heart, but again...

This movie made me cry. I honestly and truly adored this fairytale.

#THISISAREC --For the fairytale girlies... The ones who like dragons, Grimm teas, and girls bloodied and determined.

[sleepynegress]

Currently binging Duster...

So, this is a decent little light 70s crime show. I'm worried about Arwan... Fingers crossed he makes it through season 1, but I'm loving the music, our intrepid FBI agent with backstory, and this whole thing. I DO NOT ship her with Sawyer (sorry, that's who he is forever for me lol) because he looks like STDs encased in lightly cured jerky. Too old, too much baggage, as well. ...I'm more invested in that other kind of love story he has with the qt person with dimples. But yeah, just enough stakes and deaths, survivals, and hits for me to keep watching. I just hope they subvert the trope they seem to be prepping for Arwan.

If you know that old 70s comfort show feeling, multiplied by authentic inclusion and just a dash of HBO edge?? That's Duster. And so far (I'm at the end of ep 3)... #ThisIsARec

[sleepynegress]

Just Watched The Pilot of Blue-Eye Samurai

What a fantastic animated show...

It's an old trope with a few twists. A lone skilled warrior honed by factors seen as hindrances is on a vengeance quest. It's also a change to see a common tropey element (blue eyes on an East Asian ethnicity) not fetishized, as it so often is by western writers. *cough* Memoirs of a Geisha*cough* There is a great song that honestly feels out of place in a needle drop in this, but otherwise...I'm digging it so far.

It's a decent watch. I've been burned recently by giving that #thisisarec before finishing the media (pacing and lackluster ending for FNAF) but the pilot is good.

And it's free on youtube, for now...

[sleepynegress]

I Just Watched Hulu’s PREY (the latest Predator sequel)... YALL #THIS IS A REC

*whew!!!*

So, a little tidbit about me. Around 20 years ago, I worked on a rez.  They had a community center with a TV and a DVD player with popular movies the people liked.  Like any other people in America they had a collection of all the genres, including action blockbusters. But... there were only two or three actual Indigenous culture-based movies.  The rest were mostly Latine (I think owing to the fact of Latine cultures having a lot of Indigenous blood/culture within them). I remember at the time, it struck me, that even as a black woman, I was privileged in this.  NO PEOPLES have less representation in pop culture than the 1st Nations peoples... You hear me? And you can forget just a regular-egular Hollywood blockbuster movie. #PREY should have been that big Hollywood blockbuster sleeper 2022 summer movie theater hit, yall. It is now, my FAVORITE movie that has come out this summer. It gave EVERYTHING. Indigenous folks finally have a big great quality action sci-fi movie. 

And a Native WOMAN gets to be that badass (I tell u, I reverted to a kid cheering them big 80′s muscley yt men action stars from back in the day) It’s not gimmicky, quippy, or overly-faux-reverant of the culture in that cringey way yt media does with that ~wise magical NDN~ garbage...No they are just people living their lives.

It just does what it’s supposed to.  It patiently builds enough character so you care what happens to them. It gives that meaningful character journey, heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat and badass-bloody action, and a satisfying ending.

Which is all you want in a action film. And even tho I’m not Native, the fact that it’s also in genre (sci-fi) something I know some yt folks don’t think marginalized peoples have a leading place in (i.e. woke/forced b.s.), just gave me chills and made me happy in that way BP did, -that another marginalized group is getting space at the table too (long overdue tho it is). Naru is THEE SHIT. SEE THIS FUCKING MOVIE YALL, espec. if you are an action movie stan, like myself and/or a Predator fan who has been waiting for the good quality sequel to the OG movie, and like believeable action woman leads. Just for the record, I like Predator 2 and Predators and don’t acknowledge the existence of any other sequels, except for that part where Sanaa and the Predator got along (I’m sorry yall, Predators are the Negroes of aliens in space, I don’t make the rules....They only gave trophies and ritual to the two black leads) But PREY????

...MUTHAFCCIN PREY??? It rivals the OG Predator, I KID YOU NOT. If you are planning to have an action movie night this weekend??? 

Cue this sucker up and get your popcorn. SEE IT!!

[sleepynegress]

I feel like I mentioned it in passing and this is a bit late, but I'mma go harder for Fellow Travelers...

Yall know I am a big romance girlie. And a big advocate of a return to unabashed SEX scenes for romantic couples. Well, leave it to the Alphabets to get it right. Fellow Travelers is VERY HOT. Both emotionally and SEX scene-wise. Kudos to the players and the intimacy coordinator. It's messy, and imperfect, as it's a love spanning a time of more masks, casualities of the masking, and a big disease with a little name. It's Bomer and Bailey yall... If it weren't about gay men, I think there would be pop articles galore about it being a return to sexuality in romance.

The end was tougher for me because I did lose someone in that era...but I feel it's a necessary watch, for the love, the hotness, the emotional rollercoaster, all of it. #ThisIsARec especially for the sexy messy passionate love fans.

[sleepynegress]

About that last post... The way I'd love to chat about how that institution is such a paradoxical space when it comes to both being shelter and condemnation for "deviants"; both the harmful and harmless kind.