Seriously, how long has the month of March been? Has it been 6 months long? 1 year long? 5 years? Any of those feel more correct than the actual answer.
And yet, with all of that theoretical time on my hands, I don’t have a lot to show for it this week. Blame the pandemic. And Animal Crossing. And my inability to watch anything when I’m living at home with my parents and my mom calls for me every 10 minutes to come see something.
Honorable mention (AKA things I watched this week that I haven’t finished the season for and therefore cannot yet review): Bob’s Burgers (season 10), The Masked Singer (season 3), Rick & Morty (season 4) yes I am a trash person I am aware of that, and Tiger King.
Tiger King is the only one on that list that will soon be receiving a review, as it’s fully contained, complete, and available to binge at a moments notice. And boy, is that review going to be a wild time. Tigers! Maulings! Murders! Blackmail! Country musician! Polyamory! Cults! It truly has everything. Someone compared it to a car crash that you can’t look away from, and that feels very apt, because I literally cannot stop watching it. It will be finished within the next 24 hours, and you will read even more about it from me next week.
I also watched a lot of YouTube. Like, a lot of YouTube. Including a weird passion project by Markiplier and his friend Ethan called Unus Annus. Latin for “one year”, the concept is that they will publish one video every day for a year, and then delete the entire channel after that one year is up. A lot of the videos have to do with the inevitability of death, but are also some of the dumbest shit I have ever seen. (Case in point: Recreating the Miracle of Childbirth & Ethan Gives Mark a Viking Funeral). Just trust me. If you ever want to have trouble breathing because you’re laughing too hard or like to see pure chaos uninterrupted, this is the channel for you.
In terms of movies, I rewatched Frozen II (2019), this time with my mom (she wasn’t a fan, and called it “too violent” for children). Then I watched The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), a found footage-style mockumentary about 800-some VHS tapes uncovered by the FBI that were shot by a serial killer, still at large. There are a couple gruesome scenes, but for the most part, everything is alluded to, and for a film that had its distribution pulled for TEN YEARS after it was first advertised ( it premiered at film festivals in 2007, and was given a public release, including a full ad campaign, before it disappeared almost completely from the public eye until 2017), I was expecting some crazy shit, and it didn’t exactly live up. Still definitely not for the faint of heart, but I’m too desensitized to care.
I finished up the week with a modern creature feature, Sweetheart (2019). If being called “sweetheart” by a random guy has ever made your skin crawl, you’d love/hate this movie. It’s about a woman who washes ashore a deserted island, and has to survive against this giant bipedal carnivorous sea monster-thing. Related to the title, and the underlying themes of the film, here’s a quote from the lead actress,
[The director] wouldn’t have made it without a Black woman being the lead role. It also plays into those themes of Black female hysteria and people not believing Black women or people of color when we say that we’re in danger, or that something is violent to us. It’s that constant feeling of like, instead of fighting against the thing that’s violent, we’re fighting other people to be heard or to be believed.
Kiersey Clemons
HIGHLY recommend if you’re looking for a creature feature, or a movie focused on a powerful woman, or just a plain ole good movie.
Unofficial Ratings
The Poughkeepsie Tapes
Really, REALLY good mix of documentary-style and found footage (coming from someone who watches a lot of documentaries), but began to feel a little repetitive, content-wise
Sweetheart
Fuck her shitty boyfriend, Kiersey Clemons as Jenn should date ME
Film Student Watchlist 