Blind Vaysha (2016)/4.1 Miles (2016)

  Here's a couple more shorts.  

First up is Blind Vaysha, an eight and a half minute long animated film based on a short story of a girl whose left eye can only see the past and whose right eye can only see the future.  She can never experience happiness because she has no present.  

I found it overly moralizing and not nearly as clever or provocative as it thought it was being.  Would rather read the folklore, honestly.

  4.1 Miles is a documentary short produced by The New York Times.  It follows a Greek Coast Guard captain who rescues Afghani refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in overcrowded crafts not designed for the journey.  

I want you to open another tab on your browser and pull up a map.  Find Afghanistan.  Now find Greece.  Consider the level of desperation you have to have to consider crossing that amount of distance with absolutely nothing but a backpack.    

There was a different doc short called Lifeboat from 2018 that covered the exact same thing, except they were a German non-profit.  It was a whole-ass humanitarian crisis and I have no idea if it is still happening because there have been like 20 other whole-ass humanitarian crises since then.  I'm so tired, y'all.

Both films are available on YouTube.

Divines (2016)

  This is a super cute female friendship movie right up until the Trauma.  Content warning:  sexual assault, violence

Dounia (Oulaya Amamra) and Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena) are best friends in the Paris projects.  They idolize Rebecca (Jisca Kalvanda), a hardcore girlboss drug dealer, for her flashy lifestyle and badass demeanor.  Dounia especially sees Rebecca as a stand-in maternal figure and becomes ever more desperate for her approval.  

I have straight up not been having a good time this month so the whole time I was watching this, I kept anticipating something bad happening to one or both girls but I didn't guess the specific thing which still sucker punched me.  I'm not going to do spoilers but FYI, not a happy ending.  It definitely lessened my enjoyment of the film, which sucks because the three actresses were phenomenal.  Kalvanda was menacing and charismatic and Lukumuena's face was so expressive.  I hope both have incredible careers ahead.  But this was Amamra's movie and she took every scene.  A tiny powerhouse.  

So if you're in the mood for a depressing, feel-bad character drama, Divines is streaming on Netflix.

Do the Right Thing (1989)

  Summer is officially* over.  Let's think fondly of the warm times as we head into the long dark night of winter.  Content warning:  racist slurs, police violence 

Mookie (Spike Lee) delivers pizzas for Sal (Danny Aiello) in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Bedford-Styuvesant in Brooklyn.  Sal has been in this location for decades but his son, Pino (John Tuturro), wants him to move to a more ethnically Italian neighborhood.  Over the course of one extremely hot day, tempers flare and buried resentments turn into declarations of war.  

If you updated some of the slang and the clothes, you could make this exact same movie today.  Nothing has changed since 1989 and if that doesn't make you sad, you haven't been paying attention.

This was Spike Lee's debut and he came out swinging.  It fully captures a moment and uses the neighborhood itself as a character to establish place, time, and personality.  It also helps that the cast is absolutely stacked to the rafters with talent.  Samuel L. Jackson, Ossie Davis, Giancarlo Esposito, Miguel Sandoval, Bill Nunn, Rosie Perez, Ruby Dee, and a bunch of others you'll recognize by sight if not by name.  

It's a massively important film and still depressingly relevant, as I said previously.  It is not a fun watch, however.  Be prepared to feel some kind of way after.  Give yourself some time to process it.  It's currently streaming on Peacock.

*It's not official.  It's just dropped below 80 here and I'm mad about it.

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2009)

  Since no-fault divorce is back in the news, let's revisit exactly why it's a great idea that should never be rescinded by looking at what happens when you don't have it.

Viviane (Ronit Elkabetz) wants a divorce from Elisha (Simon Abkarian) after 20 years of marriage.  But they live in Israel which means their court is a tribunal of rabbis and the entire thing hinges on Elisha giving permission.  Viviane has no grounds with which to compel Elisha.  He doesn't beat her or sleep around.  He simply quietly terrorizes her with his silences and his petty malice.  She just wants to be free and even though he doesn't want her, he can't stand the thought of her being with someone else.

This would actually make a good double-feature with Possession.   Like seeing one divorce through the perspectives of the husband and the wife.  Of course, as a woman, this movie is infuriating to the point of physical illness.  I started wondering if the song "Goodbye Earl" did numbers over there or what.  Because you know what you get when you force women into marriages they can't leave?  Dead women. Suicides, murder, and intimate parter violence all go down when women have legal alternatives.  The only reason you don't care about those stats is if you don't think of women as people, just things to be owned and used.

This is streaming on Kanopy.  Vote in your local elections.  It matters.

Voyage of the Damned (1976)

  Based on the title, I thought this was a horror movie so I started watching it in October only to discover it was Real Life Horror, not Fun Fictional Horror.  Content warning:  suicide, anti-Semitism, Nazi imagery

In May 1939, a cruise ship is allowed to leave Hamburg, Germany with 937 Jewish passengers bound for Havana, Cuba.  En route, Captain Schroeder (Max von Sydow) is informed that the passengers will not be allowed to disembark once they reach their destination.  Nazi propagandists organized the stunt to demonstrate that Jews were unwanted anywhere and therefore the world could raise no moral objection to Germany's treatment of them, making every nation that refused them as refugees complicit in the Holocaust.  With very few options available and running out of time before they will have to return to Germany, Schroeder and Morris Troper (Ben Gazzara), a Jewish activist, work to keep the increasingly desperate passengers from panicking while exhausting every diplomatic channel to find them a sympathetic port.

This is based on a true story.  The MS St. Louis was turned away from multiple ports, including the United States, because of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and fears of provoking Hitler.  Sixty years later, people apologized so I guess that's okay.  

Really wish this didn't feel quite so prescient.  

Anyway, the movie stars a whole lot of famous people including Malcom McDowell, Faye Dunaway, Orson Welles, Jose Ferrer, James Mason, Katherine Ross, and was the debut of Jonathan Pryce.  It's relentlessly depressing but serves as a timely reminder that it's always moral to punch Nazis in the face.  It's streaming on Amazon or the Roku Channel with ads.  Don't watch it with ads.  It is extremely jarring to go from passengers grappling with the terror of an uncertain future to an ad about dog chews.

20 Days in Mariupol (2023)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Content warning:  war violence, graphic injury, dead bodies, dead children (including infants), and dead animals (cat)

An Associated Press journalism team embeds with local military group inside a hospital for 20 days to witness the siege of Mariupol, Ukraine, by Russian forces.  

If you've been following the on-going war in Ukraine, you likely saw some of the footage uploaded to news sites.  It is a graphic witness to war crimes committed, including the bombing of indiscriminate civilian targets, that will likely go unpunished for years, if not forever.  But the record remains.  

Since this is going up on Monday, you already know this won in its category.  I'm not mad at it.  It's an extremely professional documentary and important evidence.  I am a little annoyed that this exact playbook happened already in Syria and nobody gave a damn about it.  Vladimir Putin used the Middle East as a test run for re-colonization and nobody in the wider international community put a stop to it.

20 Days in Mariupol is streaming for free on YouTube on the PBS page as part of their Frontline series.

The Eternal Memory (2023)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Did you like No but wish it had a sub-plot like Amour?  You are a crazy person but here's a movie for you anyway.

Augusto Góngora was the reporter of record during the tumultuous regime change from dictator Pinochet to democratic elections.  He covered the disappearances, the murders, the daily terror of the citizens, shining a spotlight on the atrocities and refusing to let them be continued in darkness and ignorance.  He and his wife, Paulina, have had a twenty-year love affair, building their lives out of the chaos and uncertainty that surrounded them.  In one of God's little ironies, the man responsible for crafting the national memory of Chile has Alzheimer's and his beloved wife and partner has to watch chunks of his personality be eaten away until he doesn't even know her face.

This movie is just designed to make you feel bad.  That's all I got out of it.  Augusto and Pauli are the kind of cute old couple that give you hope that love is real and then show you the consequences of that love.  

Man, I can't even be funny about this.  This is the third depressing-ass documentary I've watched in like two days.  At this point, I don't know who is going to win because they're all absolutely tragic.  It's currently streaming on Paramount+ if you enjoy crying.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature, and Best Sound    Content warning:  Holocaust imagery

Over three years, Rudolf (Christian Friedel) and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) have built an idyllic oasis of a home for themselves and their five children.  But when Rudolf is promoted, it means a transfer and leaving it all behind.  Hedwig is adamant about not giving up their home and urges Rudolf to talk to his leadership so he can remain Commandant of Auschwitz.

This movie is a lot.  It has been getting so much buzz and critical acclaim and it's easy to see why but Jesus Hopscotching Christ is it a hard watch.

When I first started hearing about it, people said "oh the sound design is integral.  You gotta pay attention to the sound" and I thought well, that's fucking ableist but don't worry, Deaf community, there's plenty of visual horrors as well.  The other thing I heard a lot was "this is about the banality of evil" and yes.  It definitely is.  Which you would think that would mean boring, but again, saved by the horrors.  Of which there are many.  Almost every scene has something to rot your soul.  Accomplishment??  I guess??

Look, I'm trying to be funny here because it's the internet and this is primarily an entertainment blog.  I am so deadly serious right now when I say don't watch this if you are feeling down or depressed in any way.  Save it for maybe when you get a promotion or your kid wins that soccer tournament and you're feeling like celebrating.  Then watch this and it will even you out.  It took me three installments to finish it. The good news is that it's the only Oscar nominee so far under two hours.

The weight of this movie crushed me into paste and smeared me across the pavement.  At least Schindler's List gave you some kind of catharsis.  If you're going to watch them back-to-back (for God's sake, don't do this), watch Schindler's List second.  It's currently only available to rent VOD but it may still be in some theaters.  I will never watch this again.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Original Song, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, and Best Film Editing    Content warning:  murder, dead dog, 

The Osage Nation had been pushed from their ancestral lands by the U.S. government and forcibly resettled on land in Oklahoma that was widely considered to be worthless.  But karma is a bitch and the Osage struck oil, turning them overnight into the richest people per capita on planet Earth.  Naturally, white people couldn't allow that to stand and began to systematically murder the Osage heirs.  Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns home from the Great War and is recruited by his uncle, King Hale (Robert De Niro) to woo Mollie (Lily Gladstone), one of the richest heiresses.  Mollie sees what is happening all around her but her ability to affect change is curtailed by her race and gender.  She can't even access her own money without a white husband.  And yet, she persists, hiring private investigators and petitioning the Bureau of Indian Affairs to do something about the blatant robbery and murder.

This movie took me three days to get through.  I would watch about 20 minutes, get overwhelmed by rage/disgust/sorrow, and turn it off to watch something happier and more life-affirming, like True Detective.  

Martin Scorsese is 80-years-old and is considered one of the greatest living filmmakers.  My personal theory is that he is completely tired of people missing the whole-ass point of Goodfellas for 40 years and has decided to just do away completely with subtlety.  Between this and The Irishman, the message is clear.  These are garbage people doing despicable things that they don't really even profit from.  Killers of the Flower Moon beats you over the head with it, just in case you don't really get it.  It tells you verbally about the atrocities, then shows you, just so you can't claim you didn't understand.  It's the 10th grade book report thesis statement of movies.

That being said, this is probably the best work De Niro has turned in in decades.  People keep saying DiCaprio got snubbed but I don't think he did.  He basically played the same character from The Revenant only with worse teeth and Vito Corleone jowls. Cinematography is great but editing is where this movie really shines.  Gladstone rightfully is up for Best Actress and is the odds-on favorite but I wouldn't call it a lock yet.  Production design, costumes, and score are fine.  Nothing we haven't seen before.  I would love it if "Wazhazhe" won Best Original Song, though.  It's currently streaming on Apple+.

Land of Mine (2017)

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans!  Be grateful you're not clearing a beach full of land mines!  Content warning:  amputations, blood, some gore, dead animal (dog), hazing/bullying

In 1945 Denmark, German prisoners of war are assigned to clear the thousands of landmines they laid on beaches.  Sgt. Rasmussen (Roland Møller) is given a squad of ten POWs, all of them teenaged boys.  

Yeah, this movie is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.  Schoolboys conscripted when Germany knew it had already lost, left behind to bear the brunt of the ire of the invaded.  It's, uh, not a fun watch but it is really engrossing.

Don't actually watch this on Thanksgiving.  Maybe give yourself a couple of days.  Or do.  Fuck it, I don't know your life.  It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

Beasts of No Nation (2015)

  I tried to watch this at the start of the pandemic and couldn't do it.  I finally made it, but it took a judicious use of the fast-forward button.  Content Warning:  war violence, dead children, moderate gore, child sexual abuse (off-screen)

Agu (Abraham Attah) was a normal kid until a civil war destroyed his family and he was press-ganged into being a child soldier for the PNF, a guerrilla group led by the Commandant (Idris Elba).  Initially, Agu believed the propaganda that they were fighting to regain their homes but after witnessing and participating in atrocity after atrocity, he realizes that there is no moral high ground in war.

There are movies that are hard to watch, and then there's Beasts of No Nation.  Cary Joji Fukunaga wrote and directed this based on the novel by Uzodinma Iweala, an Ivy League-educated doctor.  I know that at least one actual child soldier turned his experience into a book but it was not Dr. Iweala, who was born in Washington, D.C.  Fiction or not, the story is a powerful look at the cost of war on the most vulnerable in society.  

Elba is incredible here as the charismatic Commandant, but Attah is the real star, and his performance carries the film.  Not a fun watch, not an easy watch, but so far, the leading contender for Best Anti-War Movie.  It is currently streaming on Netflix.

Son of Saul (2015)

  This uplifting weekend continues with Son of Saul, a Holocaust drama from Hungary.  Content warning:  Holocaust imagery, war violence, mass murder

Saul (Röhrig Géza - Hungarian names are surname firstname), a prisoner in Auschwitz, risks everything during the final days of the war to get a proper burial for his son.

Half this movie is out of focus and it's the kindest cinematography decision that could have been made.  That being said, the horror of this movie cannot be overstated.  It is a brutal watch.  Most of the camera work stays very tightly focused on Saul, claustrophobically so, which adds to the tension and skin-crawling discomfort.  

I know why these stories are necessary.  They are not made to be "enjoyed" but to inform and provide a record for the voiceless.  It's important.  So if you need a reminder that Nazis are bad, that othering people different than you is bad, that treating people like things is bad, Son of Saul is available on Starz.  And then watch some cartoons.  Maybe hug a pet. 

Grey Gardens (1976)

  The Cinema Club pick of the week was Grey Gardens.  I had already reviewed the 2009 movie, and thought it would prepare me for the documentary.  I was wrong.

In the early 70s, Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, made the papers when their East Hamptons mansion, Grey Gardens, was revealed to be a crumbling wreck filled with garbage, stray cats, and wildlife.  The press shamed their famous relative, Jackie Kennedy, into organizing a clean-up, getting the house into at least a livable state and paying for a caretaker.  Documentarians Albert and David Maysles followed the news clippings and planned a video follow-up, discovering that there was more under the surface of neglect amongst the upper class.

A movie is one thing.  You expect a little artistic license, some embellishment for the sake of drama.  A documentary is uncompromising, actual, observable truth.  And it's so much worse than the movie.  Big Edie and Little Edie each have their version of events, which they pronounce at full volume over each other, neither having much relation with reality.  The casual cruelty is astonishing, but the willful dismissal of their surroundings is horrifying.  The house is filled with trash, feral cats, and local wildlife, and remember this is AFTER the major clean-up, which can be seen mostly by its absences.  Gone are the antiques, the furniture, the glassware, the carpets, the wall hangings, presumably sold to pay debts or "rescued" from their imminent destruction.   But the Edies don't seem to notice or care, gamely continuing to play hostess to the documentary crew and whatever local handymen come around.

This is a camp classic.  Little Edie's DIY fashion and need for dramatic expression speak to a lot of people.  There's something unutterably sad and yet somehow admirable in the Beales' ability to soldier on, despite their (self-inflicted) circumstances.  They are clearly co-dependent and most likely mentally ill, which makes the movie feel a little exploitative, but the Maysels aren't filming for shock value (well, at least not for that shock) or to be cruel.  If anything, they are neutral leaning towards sympathetic.

Also, and this just occurred to me, if I was a grieving widow of an assassinated president and my asshole relatives got me dragged in the press and publicly shamed, I would never fucking speak to them again, much less pay for their upkeep.  Holy shit.

Grey Gardens is streaming on Criterion Channel and (sigh) Max.

Paris, Texas (1984)

  Never has my sympathy for a main character evaporated as quickly as it did during the last 15 minutes of this movie.  My God.  This is why I don't review things unless I've finished them!  Sometimes they'll turn on you!  Content warning:  verbal descriptions of intimate partner violence (IPV).

Walt (Dean Stockwell) discovers his brother, Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), has been found after disappearing four years earlier.  Travis has been wandering the American Southwest on an obscure personal quest that he won't reveal, even to Walt.  After some coaxing, Travis agrees to go to his brother's house to see the son (Hunter Carson) he abandoned.  The boy barely remembers his biological father, having been raised to think of his uncle and Aunt Ann (Aurore Clément) as his parents.  Ann is terrified Travis will want to take Hunter away, but does tell him where he can begin looking for his estranged wife, Jane (Nastassja Kinski), who is technically the one who dropped Hunter off at their doorstep four years ago.  Jane hasn't been back but she has been depositing money every month into an account for Hunter, which Travis uses to trace her to a peep show where she works.  (For the younger crowd, this was the precursor to Cam Girls.)  With the safety of one-way glass, Travis finally shares the inciting incident of this film.

This is not going to be a film for everyone.  It was barely a film for me.  Wim Wenders directs with such a sympathetic eye, the resulting betrayal is that much deeper.  Stanton and Stockwell are consummate professionals, as always, but I was pleasantly surprised by how good Kinski's Southern accent was.  I wasn't expecting it.  Only two years prior, she was in Cat People with zero accent.  An underrated actress.  

It is a movie that deals in trauma and psychological scars, but also in finding a way back and making amends.  If that sounds like something you're interested in, it is currently streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel.

Women Talking (2022)

Nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay    This was a hard watch.  It's very good, but woof, that subject matter.  Content warning:  domestic violence (off-screen), sexual assault (off-screen but discussed), sexual assault of minors (off-screen but discussed)

A religious community is rocked to its core when a group of men are discovered to be drugging and raping the women and children of the group.  While the men are in the city arranging bail for the accused, the women must decide what they will do:  Nothing, Stay and Fight, or Leave.  The heads of the oldest families gather to discuss their options.  

This is based on a true story that happened in 2010.  

Sarah Polley is an excellent filmmaker and this is a very sensitively shot film that nonetheless doesn't shy away from the violence perpetuated against these women.  The assault is never shown, only the aftermath in flashbacks but it is incredibly effective.  It's not an easy watch but it is very good.  It's one of those Important films that is likely to get dismissed because people won't look past the title.

Stylistically, it did remind me of 12 Angry Men.  It's confined to mostly one location and is moved almost exclusively by dialogue.  Instead of the fate of one man being decided, however, it's the future of an entire community.  If anything was going to upset EEAAO's chances at Best Picture, it would probably be this one.  I don't think it will, there's too much momentum now after the SAG awards, but it should definitely win Adapted Screenplay.  The only other challenger there is Glass Onion, which I loved, but Women Talking is a better film.

It is currently only available in theaters but it should be hitting Hulu in the next week I think.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Sound, Best Costume, Best Hair and Makeup, Best Original Score, Best Visual Effects, and Best Adapted Screenplay   I don't know why we have to re-learn every year that War Is Bad but here we are.

Paul ( Felix Kammerer) is excited to join the Prussian Empire's army with his school friends.  They are promised honor and glory on the front line in France but are soon overwhelmed by the misery and terror of the trenches.

It took me six days to get through this movie, partly because of the subject matter and partly because it is over two and a half hours long.  Every single Best Picture nominee has been over two hours and I swear it has taken months off my life.

Did this movie need to be made?  Probably not.  It's interesting to see how the Germans viewed one of their major losses.  And obviously, you could double feature this with 1917 to see the victors' side.  I don't know why you'd do that to yourself but you could.

Best Picture is obviously on the table.  The Academy loves a war film that makes them feel bad.  They get to pretend to be all virtuous.  Cinematography was excellent.  Production Design, Hair and Makeup, Costumes, Sound, and Visual Effects are all related to the WWI setting but I think they'll get overlooked.  It's now my frontrunner for Original Score, though.  The drums fucked me up and that doesn't happen to me often.  Adapted Screenplay?  Ehhh.  It's definitely famous but I don't know if it was the best interpretation of the novel.

It's currently streaming on Netflix.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

  Content warning:  suicide, war violence, domestic violence, animal death (deer), homophobic slurs, Russian roulette, compound fracture

Three small town friends, Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Steve (John Savage) are excited and happy to serve their country in Vietnam.  One comes back with a chest full of medals, one comes back with one working limb, and one comes back in a metal box.  

So here's what we're not going to do:  we're not going to do a think piece about the horrors of war, the particular willful blindness of patriotic jingoism, or PTSD.  This movie has been out for over 40 years and smarter, better people than I have written those pieces.

What we are going to talk about is Christopher Walken.  He won an Oscar for this and it was probably the most well-deserved Oscar for a film role in history.  He out-acted Meryl fucking Streep.  Do you know how hard that is?  Now, if you're like me and you've mostly ever seen him as the villain or as a dancer or comedian in silly, supporting roles, this movie may well come as a shock to you.  (I mean, most of the movie is designed to shock and appall you.  Look at those content tags.)  Walken is the beating heart of this film.  

We can also talk about Michael Cimino's direction here.  The symmetry, the foreshadowing, the nature-as-religion overtones of Heaven and Hell.  Beautiful.  He also won an Oscar.  

Is this, as the original film poster says, "one of the most important and powerful films of all time"?  Mmmm.  Powerful, certainly.  Important?  Ehhhhh.  I think the documentaries of the time, the news footage, and the historical background and global context are probably more important.  But this is an incredibly well-made, harrowing film that I personally will never watch again.  Images from this film are seared into my brain now.  I can't fix that.  

But you can join me in viewing those images!  The Deer Hunter is currently streaming on Peacock, but only at their Premium level.

The Club (2015)

  Content warning:  suicide, description of child molestation, animal death

This is a dark one, folks.

Four defrocked priests live essentially under house arrest in a small Argentinian town, placed there by the Catholic church to hide its shame.  Father Ortega (Alejandro Goic) kidnapped babies and sold them to foster parents, Father Silva (Jaime Vadell) is a straight-up war criminal, Father Ramirez (Alejandro Sieveking) has been there so long nobody even remembers why, and Father Vidal (Alfredo Castro) is just gay.  They live in relative peace, training their greyhound and following the rules.  But when a new priest (José Soza) shows up, is confronted by one of his molestation victims (Roberto Farías), and kills himself on the lawn, an investigation must be made.  Father Garcia (Marcelo Alonso) is dispatched from the Vatican to make problems go away.  The four ex-priests and their ex-nun jailer/accomplice (Antonia Zegers) must figure out how to get rid of Father Garcia before he shuts them down.

This would be an excellent double feature with Spotlight, but you're going to want something a lot lighter as a chaser.  It's listed as "darkly comic" and maybe.  If you consider the litany of Church abuses on display as a highlight reel.  

Pablo Larraín is going to be one of those directors with an entire film course devoted to him in twenty years.  The man is an incredible filmmaker.  As hideously uncomfortable as The Club is to watch, it's a great movie.  Not a fun movie, but extremely well-done.  It's currently streaming on Kanopy.

The Normal Heart (2014)

  This only took me four days to get through!  It is absolutely devastating to watch, though, so buyer beware.

Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo) has looked for love his entire life, from his brother (Alfred Molina) to a string of lovers but his internalized self-loathing for being gay has sabotaged everything.  Then he meets Felix (Matt Bomer), a handsome self-assured fashion reporter for the New York Times and it's everything Ned could have dreamed of.  Except gay men are starting to die.  A mysterious disease, first thought to be a rare cancer, is affecting predominantly homosexual men.  Only one doctor (Julia Roberts) is sounding the alarm, herself a polio survivor, that this could be something more, something dangerous.  As the AIDS pandemic grows and spreads, Ned grows increasingly desperate to get someone, anyone to listen and to care.

Yeah, so this was a hard watch.  For a lot of reasons.  It makes a great corollary to How to Survive a Plague but I don't know that I could recommend watching both in the same day.  Be kind to yourself.

In addition to the "life in a pandemic" narrative, I also really identified with Ned's personality struggles.  Too abrasive, too loud, too confrontational, too smart (but not in a good way), and too angry.  Too close to home.

It is a very good movie.  Taylor Kitsch in particular gives probably the performance of his career.  Roberts goes against type and plays a brittle, borderline unlikeable woman.  Bomer and Ruffalo are great together.  Really just excellent casting all around.  It's based on a stage play by Larry Kramer, who also adapted the screenplay if I remember correctly.  The Normal Heart is currently streaming on HBO Max.

The Boys in the Band (1970)

  This is the most uncomfortable house party since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  Content warning:  homophobic slurs, racial slurs

Michael (Kenneth Nelson) is hosting a birthday party for Harold (Leonard Frey) when he gets an out-of-the-blue call from Alan (Peter White), a college friend, that sends him into a self-destructive spiral.  Michael is gay.  All his friends are gay.  Alan is straight and homophobic.  Old resentments and bigotry surface, dragging every attendee into their riptide.  

This is one of those Important Films that everyone should watch but it is not a fun movie.  There is a lot of self-loathing and recriminations, portrayals that were groundbreaking at the time but now seem like harmful stereotypes, and a depressing pall of inevitability hanging over the whole thing.  

It is still stunningly relevant to today which is why Jim Parsons remade it in 2020.  I didn't see that version so I don't know if anything was changed to reflect modern sensibilities, but the 1970 film is incredibly hard to find so I mention it anyway.  I watched it on the Criterion Channel but before last month, it was in my queue for something like nine years.