Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

I thought it was quite good. A somber story, but not just deluging you with tragedy to the point that it makes you numb to what is happening.

You mean your peers or pedos?
Maybe, but two caveats:

• What are those male standards of beauty? Are they uniform for all men?
• Why are most men fine with a certain pretty woman's looks but for her she still doesn't look good enough? If she were to abide by some men's standard of beauty, she'd already reached them, according to most of those men.

So... you kinda of wanted to look like Barbie? Just not made of plastic but of a person?

Everything you said applies to looks except for "a woman with an amazing career." But this is a good goal to have, isn't it?

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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

The latter.


Obviously sexual tastes vary widely, but I heard a lot of the same comments both in media and in person from boys my age. "Legs that go all the way up", praise of big boobs, shaming of women who were "fat", etc.

While my female peers definitely policed elements of how I looked (and how my other female peers looked), their focus was more on hairstyles, outfits, etc. The remarks I heard about bodies came far more from male peers (and men on TV/movies).

Yeah, you know: tall, thin, big chest, tiny waist, long legs, flowing hair, attractive facial features, etc.

I don't think it's a good "goal" to have big breasts, a super petite waist, long legs, etc because those are things that are not in your control for the most part. I was an athlete growing up and I have been incredibly fit at different points in my life, but never ever, even at my lowest weight, could I attain anything close to the hip/waist/breast ratio that you see in a Barbie. If you mean that having an amazing career is a good goal, I mean, sort of. But it's not about the career it's about being the total package. Barbie isn't popular because she's a doctor. She's popular because she's a HOT doctor. Barbie weaves body attractiveness into the idea of success so thoroughly that they can't be unbound. You don't find yourself thinking, "Well, I don't have the boobs, the butt, the waist, or the legs, but at least I have a solid salary and medical benefits!". (I mean, I think that now in my middle age, but not in my younger years).

Faces Places, 2017

This documentary follows filmmaker Agnes Varda and French artist JR as they travel the French countryside creating art installations, interviewing locals, and bonding over their shared passion for capturing the stories and faces of everyday people.

Full of stunning imagery and one of the most endearing odd-couple friendships I’ve ever seen on screen, this documentary is moving and brimming with heart.

I did a mini-dive into Varda’s filmography a few years back, and I decided that I really liked her energy as both a person and a filmmaker. In this film her personality absolutely sings on screen. She is one part grandma, one part rebel, one part artist-to-the-core. She is matched very well by the calm energy of JR, an artist I was not familiar with before this film. At first the ever-present hat and sunglasses were a bit off-putting to me, but his lovely friendship with Varda and some moments of genuine tenderness between the two of them soon endeared me to him.

The two of them travel the country, staging various art installations that range from longer-lasting to some that last only a half a day. In several sequences, they show up to different locations with a truck that functions as a giant polaroid camera, taking a photo-booth type picture but printing it out feet long and complete with adhesive. Other times they place portraits of different people on the sides of buildings. In a shipping container yard they post enormous photos of the wives of the workers there. In a small French town, a waitress is selected to adorn the side of a building. Finding an old German cement building that has tumbled from a coastal cliff onto the beach below, they create an image to paste on the side, knowing that it will shortly be reclaimed by the rising tide. For me, these art installations were interesting, joyous, and I really enjoyed seeing the process behind them. There is something very empathetic in the approach to their subjects. JR and Varda seem able to find beauty and interest in all sorts of people. When JR teases Varda that she likes images of nude men, she retorts that male bodies and female bodies are beautiful, and you can tell she genuinely means it.

A frequent refrain in the film is that Varda is losing her sight. I couldn’t help but think of the harrowing account of encroaching blindness in Derek Jarman’s Blue. While for the most parts the tone in this film is lighter, it is hard to see someone whose career is defined by images begin to lose that connection to the world. Creating these large murals feels like a nod to someone losing their sight, and the specter of that lost sight makes the road trip carry some extra weight.

Next to the art itself, the real star of the film is the friendship and banter between Varda and JR. While some of the dialogue is scripted (and doesn’t seem interested in hiding that fact), the genuine tenderness between the two of them doesn’t feel at all faked. Varda notes partway through the film that JR is very good with older people, something that he attributes to the close relationship he has with his own grandmother. They pay a visit to JR’s nana, where Varda jokingly asks if he ever takes off his sunglasses when he’s with her. Later in the film, Varda and JR take a road trip to visit Jean-Luc Godard in Switzerland, but when they arrive he refuses to see them, something he communicates in a letter that also references the death of a mutual friend of theirs and which clearly offends and hurts Varda’s feelings. JR puts his arm around her, and the feeling of solidarity is palpable.

I really love it when you see collaboration across generations of artists. I think that there’s something fantastic about a combination of an older artist willing to share their wisdom and a younger artist who is willing to learn and share their own way of thinking. There is an ease between Varda and JR that is very appealing and makes this film a breeze to watch. Heck, even when they sat silently together I was captivated.

The only negative I can think of is that some of the dialogue does sound contrived, but that’s such a minor quibble. I thought that this was such a sweet film, and if you’re having a down day and need something uplifting, I’d point you this way.

Faces Places is great. Perhaps my favorite of Varda's documentaries.

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IMDb
Letterboxd

It was such a delight! I'm surprised it hadn't been at all on my radar. I saw the cover on JustWatch in my recommended section and added it on a whim. Hopefully more people check it out! (Or maybe everyone else has and I'm just late to the party, LOL).

Yeah, the other day I read something similar about the experience of underaged girls meeting pedos in cars who asked them for directions. And when the little girl approached the car... I'm not going to go into details, but it's disturbing.

It's kind of expected to hear all that from young boys. LOL. I know they shouldn't be saying this and "boys will be boys" is a wrong notion, though. Also, there's a huge difference between saying all that in general and saying all that to a certain person. Also, the context matters, I think. If you go to a pub, you will hear some really crazy stuff but is it really to be taken seriously? Also, if you saw my private conversations with @Swan, you'd get a heart attack. :yes:

Yeah because it's mostly men who are attracted to women. Most remarks about the male body I heard came from females, too. Hell, I even heard remarks about MY body from girls but never from boys. Looks like the opposite sexes love to comment on each other's bodies.

Interesting. I wonder if boys see Superman and want to have this kind of jaw and body disproportions, too. I never had this sort of thought.

Oh no, I meant to say it's a good goal to have a good career.

The question is, did you actively think that you should? Barbie's body proportions are unnatural, agreed.

Actors of both sexes are mostly popular because they're hot, too. And sometimes because they're weirdly not hot.

I think this sort of acceptance is a sign of maturity, yes, but I also think that you can change many things about your body naturally through hard work. Not to the extent you might want, maybe, but you can improve it, anyway. For example, do 1000 squats every day for 3 years and you'll master that ass. You can't naturally grow your boobs, though, (without growing your whole body and becoming a fatso), so there's a visible limit to what you can do.

Well, way to be properly sensitive/tactful about this, yo...

Tactfulness often covers the truth. Do you think the shredded male models you see on TV got there by just looking at Arnold Schwarzenegger's poster hanging over their bed while eating pizzas and Doritos OR by having a strict diet, hitting the gym daily, and working their asses off? Sure, some people are born beautiful, but if you stop working out and let yourself get fat, you can say bye-bye to your health and good looks. Conversely, even if your face isn't the best, you can master your body through diet and exercise and that will dramatically improve your looks. Trust me. I was a fat f*ck and I'm still one. But I lost 20+ kg and I look so much better now. Even my face changed, it's leaner and more attractive. And while I still look like a quarter-wit male flapper, both my health and looks have improved.

inb4: Sure, some people have health conditions or take drugs that make them gain weight faster. But the vast majority of people are fat because they neglect their bodies. And the majority of people within the usual BMI range can also improve their bodies this way or another via exercise. And the main reason they don't is because they're layabouts. Just like I was a f*cking lazy piece of sh*t so that I let my body deteriorate to the state it was in.

It might be expected, but being surrounded by men openly voicing a very narrow definition of what makes someone attractive (and even more loudly voicing their thoughts on what makes someone unattractive) had some pretty terrible effects on my self-esteem and the self-esteem of many of my female peers.

I'm not disputing this. You asked who came up with the beauty standards, and I told you that I only really heard about them from men.

For a ridiculously, shamefully long time, yes. I thought that if I ate the right diet, and through some other unspecified magic, I could attain something like her proportions.

Agreed. But my point was that Barbie's career was not her major selling point.

I got into fantastic shape about 8 years ago, but something that it really brought to light for me (and something I should have known from my college days), is that the way that I look when I have a good amount of muscle and flexibility just isn't hourglass. The "good" versions of my body---or at least what I look like when I feel good and am strong/toned---doesn't fit that particular model. There's a range of how I can look, but none of them are Barbie. Oh, well.

Obviously anyone can improve their physical wellbeing and can make moderate degrees of change to their body shape, but there are limits. And the problem isn't the limits! The problem is that people are made to feel that they've "failed" if they can't achieve perfection.

I can believe that. What I'm hinting at is asking what we do with it. We cannot really change humans, how they think, and how they speak without enforcing stringent censorship.

Ah, fair enough.

I guess we should educate people more! Or something along these lines. I'm just not sure all attempts at that I see in the West are good.

Thank God:



Is this the problem with Barbie or with people's thinking?

Being thoughtful about how you speak about the bodies of other people (or just about bodies in general) isn't so much censorship as it is common courtesy.

A person might think that brown hair is really attractive and blonde hair is really gross. They are welcome to that thought! But do they need to say out loud, "Aw, yeah. Brown hair is so hot. But, ugh, the other day this woman came into the office to talk to me and she was blonde. Barf." And especially if they're saying this within earshot of a blonde person.

Barbie is one ingredient in the stew that is "aspiration culture."

Agreed when it's about a certain person. And ESPECIALLY when this person is around. But let's not pretend people don't do it or don't talk behind our backs. I heard some comments about my body that I wasn't supposed to hear. And I didn't pay much attention to them. I don't think we can change people so easily. If totalitarian regimes couldn't and people in those countries just kept doing things clandestinely, then maybe certain things just can't be changed.

...but I disagree with this if we're talking about bodies in general. "Hey, I love women with big breasts and thin waist. Oh, and by the way, fat people are off-putting, not to mention they're unhealthy and will get a stroke at 40" - I don't think it's WRONG to say something like that. It MIGHT be insensitive to say something like that when fat people are around, though. The first part is a simple preference - anybody can have one, no matter how hard it is to achieve for others. Hell, it might be IMPOSSIBLE to achieve for others but preferences are naturally discriminative and it's not wrong to be discriminative in this field, e.g., if you only want to date white men and don't want to date black men, you're not racist. Maybe you're shallow, superficial, narrow-minded... but it's not wrong to have preferences. Now, the second part of that quote is a simple scientific fact. Fat people are so much more prone to develop diseases or die of a heart attack, stroke, etc.

I'm not aware of this term. Mind elaborating?

Everyone is welcome to their preferences, whatever they are. It's about how you express those preferences. People, especially people who in any way don't fit into the cultural consensus of attractiveness, are frequently given direct and indirect messages that they aren't worthy/attractive/valuable/etc.

And those out loud thoughts might be okay in a world where people get equal amounts of positive and negative feedback, but that's just not how it is.

Also, people will use words like "fat" to describe someone who is just an average weight, or whose weight is distributed differently. I once watched a guy in a car call someone "fat". The person being called fat was a size 2. Making people feel crappy about themselves is just a not nice thing to do. There are ways to express your personal preferences without putting people outside of those preferences down.

If you aren't attracted to someone, you don't even need to vocalize that. Just . . . don't date them? Just honestly tell them "I don't really feel a special connection here".

I'm referring to the mix of "lifestyle" Instagram influencers, celebrities, and other people who supposedly present the "template" that people should be following. For a lot of people, these lives are unattainable. They require a level of independent wealth, financial support, privileged living situations, or other elements that are largely out of the control of most people. There's a woman who has an Instagram that my sister looks at sometimes, and it all looks great . . . until you start to realize, "Oh, this person isn't actually working a job." It's a wealthy couple who has a little farm. All the pictures are like, drinking tea and hanging out with goats. Romping in the wildflowers. Cool. I have a pretty good job and a decent salary, but I do not have the flexibility to spend my weekdays romping in wildflowers. And when you throw in the appearance stuff on top of it---yeesh! I cannot afford to have my hair and nails done every week, buy premium clothing, and do an hour-long skin care regimen at the beginning and end of each day.

And if you're wondering how young this starts, I've had more than one girl (these are 9 or 10 year olds) tell me "Yeah, I'm trying to cut down on carbs so I can, you know" and then touch a perfectly healthy sized stomach. Or in a unit on how living things survive, I'll start saying "It's important for kids to eat a healthy diet so that you can--" and before I can say "Get the fuel and nutrients you need," a child will cut in with "lose weight."

Related observations:
It’s been my experience in dating that women are far more likely to look past a guys looks and appearance, especially as they get older, than a guy is.

Women look for so much more. Guys i work with ask one question, and I hear this so often it isn’t even funny.

“Is she hot?”

Note I’m not disputing a person shouldn’t be attracted to each other, although that differs from person to person. I know I need to be physically attracted to someone to date them. However, looks merely open the door. It doesn’t keep it open. If there isn’t anything connecting us beyond the physical, it won’t work.

One reason I barely have any straight male friends anymore.


There is nothing on earth as frequently predictable and boring than the kind of talk straight men engage in.


No, not all. But alot....most.

The Parts You Lose, 2019

An unnamed, injured man (Aaron Paul) is on the run from the police and ends up hiding in the barn belonging to the family of a little boy named Wesley (Danny Murphy). Wesley is deaf, and suffers abuse at the hands of his classmates and his alcoholic father, Ronnie (Scoot McNairy). Wesley forms a bond with the stranger, but their tentative friendship is clearly on borrowed time as the police close in.

Yeah, it’s not good.

I just wrote a review of another movie that was totally unengaging, and I feel as if I used up all of my energy stores for describing in tepid terms a film that isn’t bad, per se, but also has no real redeeming qualities.

There are plenty of elements of this film that can make for a perfectly passable thriller. You’ve got your mysterious criminal who also seems to have a heart of gold. You’ve got a bullied character whose relationship with a rough-and-tumble dude helps them to gain some edge and learn to stand up for themselves. You’ve got a police investigation/pursuit. The ingredients are all fine. In theory.

The problem here is that everything is handled in the most superficial way. It almost feels more like an outline of a movie than an actual movie. We learn very little about our characters, and the character we learn the most about, Wesley, follows an arc that is so predictable that it’s hard to engage with him.

The actors in this film are fine, but the material is so thin. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, playing Wesley’s mother, is mostly reduced to sighing and pretending she doesn’t notice her husband has been beating their child. Paul’s scenes with his young co-star are pretty much these one-note sequences of tough love.

There was one scene that stood out to me in a positive way. After the stranger coaches Wesley in a very violent way to handle his bullies---a bag of coins to the face, that could really hurt someone--Wesley goes to school and decides to stand up to one of them. Suspense builds as the two boys look at each other . . . and then the other kid backs off. Just for a moment, I thought that the film might be interested in investigating the idea of proportional response. It didn’t, but the short scene itself is alright.

On the flip side, I found myself totally confused about a subplot where the police are looking for the stranger. One of them gives this big intimidating speech to Wesley about how dangerous the man is, and how it’s wrong to befriend a wild animal because it will hurt you, blah, blah, blah. So why is it, if the police are so convinced that Wesley is hiding this wanted criminal, they don’t think to look inside THE HUGE BARN looming behind them?!

This is one of those movies that is just good enough that its paltry momentum can carry you along from beginning to end. But it’s hard to recommend as anything other than something you put on in the background while you vacuum.

Jesus Camp, 2006

This documentary follows several children as they attend an evangelical summer camp run by Becky Fischer, a woman who sees children as the future army of God. From speaking in tongues to leading prayers, to protesting against abortion, the children are called to action to constantly demonstrate their status as true believers.

Walking a thin line between funny and tragic, the earnestness of the featured children makes this a moving film even in its seemingly absurd moments.

I think that it can be too easy to make fun of someone’s religion, because from an outside perspective a lot of elements of faith---especially in the more literal details--can seem silly if you aren’t part of that world. But unfortunately for the main adult at the center of this film, Miss Fischer, my willingness to extend an open mind to her teachings did not survive the first ten minutes of the movie. In fact, I can tell you the exact moment that my emotional dial turned to contempt, and that would be during an interview where Fischer speaks with an undisguised jealousy of the children (trained by “the enemy”) who grow up to be suicide bombers. Wishing that American children could show such initiative, she refers to the children in her ministry as “usable.” “They are so usable.”

I think that, in some ways, it’s a shame that many of the more memorable moments just make Fischer and her allies seem kooky but not necessarily harmful. The movie got a deep and unexpected laugh out of me when Fischer and her co-workers lay hands on their laptops and ask God to bless their Powerpoints because you know how Satan loves to play tricks by messing up their slideshows. I’ve had tech malfunctions, but I never realized they were the behest of evil powers. Fully aware of her audience--both in person and behind the camera--Fischer announces that she has something to say about Harry Potter, going on to condemn the celebration of Warlocks. “Warlocks are not heroes!!!” she bellows to a seemingly slightly baffled crowd of children.

Those are the moments that make it into the trailer version of this film. These are the easy laughs. But there’s a lot here that really isn’t a laughing matter. I know that abuse is a strong word to use, but that’s honestly how I felt watching Fischer and the other adults put the weight of the world on the tiny shoulders of their charges, letting them know that the guilt of not saving their peers must hang over them, and that God sees and makes note of every little slip up that they make. The kids are rewarded with attention and praise when they denounce themselves as sinners and make a show of confessing. In a moment that is both funny and disturbing, they are asked to speak in tongues to bless a cardboard cutout of President Bush. There is an unsettling awareness that these children are not being taught an inner spirituality, but rather the performance of spirituality. Before going in front of the children to denounce them for their worldly interests, Fischer covers herself in make-up, nail polish, and hairspray, launching the camp by demanding that the whole audience clap for how she looks. The children attend a rousing sermon by Ted Haggard, and if you can’t quite place that name, he’s the evangelist who shortly after this film came out was revealed to have had a sexual relationship with his male massage therapist and purchased some meth from the guy. So.

Then there’s the overtly twisted political nature of what happens at home and at the camp. In one sequence, a very sincere young man named Levi shows just what kind of education he’s been receiving when he tells the camera that he thinks that “Galileo was right to give up science for Christ.” Yeah, that’s . . . not what happened, Levi. Levi’s mother tries to present including Creationism in a science curriculum as some sort of even-handed thing. When she rhetorically asks Levi how he’d feel if he went to a school where people told him that he was stupid and wrong for believing in evolution, Levi answers honestly that he’d love that. “Oh, you’d . . . like that?” his mother stumbles, realizing that she hasn’t yet taught her child the art of false equivalencies as a tactic. We later watch Levi’s mother coach him about how to refute climate change.

I have to say, boy did I love the kids in this film. Levi, Rachel, and little Victoria are really engaging, cool people. They all made me think, in one way or another, of students I’ve had over the years. I don’t think that being intensely religious makes them bad people, but it does turn them into the kind of person who will walk up to a group of old men just trying to enjoy their afternoon and ask them where they think they will go when they die. Religion and how one expresses their religious belief is obviously a highly personal decision, but I hated watching the sincerity and good hearts of these kids being turned to memorizing the fact that the world’s average temperature has gone up by “only” 0.6 of a degree.

The only thing I really didn’t like about this film was a frequent framing device of a radio host who rants against Fischer and generally about evangelism’s intrusion into democracy. It’s an unnecessary counterpoint to what we’re seeing, and would have been better delivered either by having an interviewer raise these points to Fischer or just trusting that the film’s viewers can tell that the ranting against secularization of American society is inherently undemocratic.

An unforgettable glimpse into a particular brand of indoctrination.

Crumb, 1994

This documentary takes a look at the career and personal life of cartoonist Robert Crumb. As we learn about the origins and evolution of his work, we also see that the factors that shaped his outlooks and proclivities have also had deep and devastating effects on his family, particularly his two brothers.

This is a fascinating, funny, frustrating, tragic, hilarious look inside a very unique mind.

I have been stalled out on writing reviews for over a week now, hung up on trying to figure out what to say about this movie, and even still trying to figure out how I feel about it. I’m used to writing about movies before I fully process them, but every time I think about this film I’m gripped with a very different emotion. Yes, I think that’s ultimately an endorsement, and like many great films about art and artists, this movie forces the viewer to make some decisions about how they feel about art and the people who make that art.

I’ll start by saying that Crumb’s work is not something I’m familiar with. It was certainly not something I encountered as a child or growing up, and I don’t feel as if it’s something that I’ve been very culturally aware of. (Probably the extent of my awareness is that I know about the adaptation of Fritz the Cat, but have not seen it). It was very interesting to learn about his background and his rise in the “adult” comics world.

And maybe it’s because I was not familiar with his work, but to me the art was not the star of the show, but rather a catalyst to explore maybe the most interesting cases of “nature vs nurture” I’ve ever seen.

A fair amount of the film is taken up with interviews with Robert and his brother Charles, and with Robert and his other brother, Maxon. The real shock of the film is realizing that Robert is probably the best adjusted of his siblings, or at least seems to have found the healthiest outlet for a brutal mix of sexual anxieties, childhood traumas, and a sense of social alienation.

Crumb is a character, with his anachronistic style of dress and his willingness to seemingly be totally open about his neuroses, sexual desires, and view of the contemporary world. There’s a jarring contrast between his soft-spoken presentation and the extremely graphic and taboo images and scenarios he creates in his work.

I very much appreciated the film’s interviews with Dierdre English, who gives what I felt was the most nuanced and thoughtful take on Crumb’s work. She is able to explain why one can look at his art and at once admire some of the concepts and yet be repulsed by certain other elements at play. I found myself strongly agreeing with her that a comic that depicted a father forcing his adolescent daughter to perform oral sex on him is disturbing not because it is a parody of “family values” types, but because there is a sense that this scenario is simultaneously functioning as a fantasy for its creator (something that seems more obvious in another subplot of the comic where a boy is pulled into sex with is mother, who is dressed as a dominatrix). The film does at some point seem to dance a bit around the question of what it means for such self-expression to be made public and widespread. Some women express a kind of gratitude for Crumb portraying larger women as desirable, while other women express feeling disturbed by his frequent portrayals of violence---especially sexual violence---against women. One interview subject points out that these violent acts are expressions of a person who feels sexually intimidated, and I don’t disagree. But in a world where men who experience sexual anxiety and rejection sometimes kill those women, it feels a bit more loaded than someone merely expressing themselves.

All in all, whether I agreed with the interview subjects or not, I thought that the conversations were thought-provoking and interesting. (I did think it was very interesting that the film seemed much more hesitant to address the issue of the racial caricatures in his work. While there are loads of women ready to stand up for Crumb on the sex stuff--including his current and past wives--the lack of any non-white interview subjects during the discussion about race is an unforgivable omission.)

But the brothers, oof, the brothers! Like I said, the more incredible revelation from this film is that Robert is maybe the most well-adjusted of his siblings. Again, I think there’s some heady mix of genetics and childhood trauma at play in terms of the way that these men turned out as adults. Charles, who has tried to take his life and now lives a desireless existence due to medication, is open and likable in his interviews. When we later learn about his (sexual?) obsession with a child character from their youth . . . yikes. Maxon lives a life pursuing enlightenment, spending hours on a bed of nails and periodically swallowing a string that he allows to pass all the way through his body. Of all the things we see in the film, the most upsetting for me was a conversation between Maxon and Robert where they seem to be mainly amused at recounting a period of time when Maxon was really into sexually harassing Asian women on the subway, later moving on to physical assaults such as pulling down a woman’s shorts in a store. It’s one thing to talk about the fictional sexual violence in Robert’s cartoons, but quite another to act as though those real victims of sexual attacks are just funny anecdotes. It’s a genuinely dehumanizing moment in the movie that made me think less of everyone involved.

This is undoubtedly a must-see documentary due to the openness of everyone involved and the examination of the intersection between the artist, self-expression, and mass-produced media.

Like, wow, what a weight off my shoulders. I've been mentally writing my review of this movie for almost two weeks (mostly in the car on the way to and from work), and it just hasn't felt like I'm correctly expressing my feelings about it. I'm not sure this review does, exactly, but close enough!

Honestly, watching a feature length film about a man who partly expresses his own anxieties via portrayals of sexual violence toward women was kind of harrowing!