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Summer Movie Round-Up

I'm not a massive movie fan, I mean I like movies, duh, but its not a hobby. Not a "film buff." But since Rue and I stopped engaging with a lot of media this year, everything we do consume feels much more deliberate. We aren't streaming every night. We aren't binging (except Black Mirror...). In the last month I think the only TV we watched was like 4 episodes of Survivor: Outback.

Then we watched American Beauty. I'd never seen it before. HOW? I remember seeing the poster when I was a kid with the "naked lady and the rose". It kinda felt like my entire aesthetic personality and existential style. "THE BAG SCENE!" I said, and Rue laughed knowingly -- because everyone's seen the bag scene, its old news! But its new to me, and wow, I loved that. I put a still from it on the back of my July zine.

A few weeks later, we watched Office Space. We were looking for something kind of light, and I knew Rue hadn't seen what I considered a definitive film. My Dad was obsessed with this one, and quoted Milton and the stapler bit all the time. My Dad's humor and sense of culture was formative to me, so I probably would have liked this movie just because he did (and The Smiths, Battlestar Galactica, Monty Python...) It's not American Beauty, of course, but actually watching them back to back was really cool, because their plots are super similar. The spell of ultimate defeat and boredom from the middle America grind nightmare is broken (by dead hypnotist or PYT) and a guy is existentially free to do whatever he really wants.

I had made a list after watching American Beauty of "art house" films cos I guess that's perhaps maybe the style I like? But knowing Rue leans more toward Barbie than Oppenheimer, when we sat down to watch a movie after a long day I chose what seemed the least weird/serious on my list: Punch-Drunk Love. I mean, it has Adam Sandler, right. But it was deliciously weird, funny in ways it probably shouldn't be, and made want to start to study film. The long shots, the crazy-drum score that creates anxiety stretched out to madness, the non-sequitor plot (air miles, pudding, the fucking harmonium). The HARMONIUM! I don't think I want to admit this to anyone but my therapist, but here I will say it on a blog in cyber-space oblivion: I've never felt as seen/connected to a character as Barry Egan. Ouch.