#also at some point we all need to play sleepaway again. but that’s a very different process to put together.

[dmramblings]

Oh boy, I sure do love running two campaigns in two different systems (weekly DnD and monthly Monster of the Week) and having about 11ish ideas for my next campaign. It sure is great when I’m not even halfway through DnD and am hardly into the MOTW one. /s.

Genuinely, I do plan on pitching 3-5 of my more developed ideas (and tbf two are modules I’d like to run) when it’s time for a new campaign to be planned and having my players rank them so it’s not all on me to choose. But still having these ideas is weird/hard cause I feel the need to start something new and accidentally overwhelm myself again lol.

[irrevocably-delicious]

A Brief History of LGBT+ Characters and Why the Death of Adam in Voltron is Worth Being Upset About

So uh.... Good morning.

So I think it’s pretty obvious by now that the reception to season 7 has been less than... good. The fan base has been shattered. People are upset, angry, and abandoning this series in droves (I’ve lost over 50 followers as I write this, just from people no longer wanting anything to do with this show) and have been incredibly vocal as to the reason why.

They killed Adam. 

After two weeks of receiving praise for the relationship that was revealed at San Diego Comic Con, fans discovered on Friday night that Adam’s existence would be short lived, further contributing to this popular “Bury Your Gays” trope. 

And I’ve seen people confused at this outcry. They don’t understand why people are so upset at this tiny side character’s death. What’s the big deal, right? It’s war! There’s supposed to be casualties!

And to that kind of response I have to narrow my eyes and go:

“Oh.... maybe you understand the history of this.”

Because it is a history. A rich one. “Bury your gays” isn’t a trope in the same why that “Fake dating” is a trope. It’s not popular out of coincidence and I feel like many people are ignorant of that, which is FAIR! Because most voltron fans are young, most tumblr users are young, so I don’t expect you to be watching documentaries on LGBT+ cinema in between studying for your chemistry exams. 

So that’s where I come in. Buckle in children as I take you on a journey on why the “Bury your gays” trope exists, and the harmful ramifications that it has had on the LGBT+ community since its inception.

So lets go back. Way back to the 1920′s when homosexuality, or at least homosexuality adjacent themes were seen on screen. 

A time where a bro could kiss his bro, and it was seen as heart wrenching and realistic (Wings, 1927). A time where Marlene Dietrich could wear a suit better than a man, and flirt and kiss a lady just because she fucking could (Morocco, 1930). A time where gender roles were a bit looser, and there wouldn’t be an outcry over such imagery.

But as the great depression continued, and film producers became desperate to get butts in seats at the cinema, these LGBT+ themes became outright explicit. Raunchy even. Used for titillation and shock value. 

“Have you seen that new picture, Doris? The one where the roman emperor has the hot male sex slave?? Mmmmm scandalous!”

But with this rise of LGBT+ characters and interactions used for shock value, also came the rise of public outcry. The catholic church (those debbie downers) started boycotting films. This lead to the formation of the PRODUCTION CODE, which is a fancy way to say THE CODE THAT WILL NOW CENSOR THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR FILMS in 1934.

Backed by catholic activists, the code made it impossible for LGBT+ representation to exist on film. 

But did they?? See, this is actually were we start to see the development of “Queer coding”. Where actors and directors got savvy, and let you know a character was gay, whilst never explicitly stating so. It was subtle enough that it got past censors, but clear enough that audience members, especially LGBT+ people, got clued in.

Yeah Peter Lorre, you put that phallus shaped object next to your mouth a lot. They’ll get what your implying, don’t you worry. 

Oh, I’m sorry.... did i say you couldn’t have LGBT+ characters?? My mistake, you totally fucking could. Explicitly even.... if they were the villain. Religious people were totally cool if the villain in your film was LGBT+, because to them, that’s what LGBT+ people were.... villains. 

Film’s like Rebecca, Dracula’s Daughter, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope all centre around truly horrifying and despicable villains... who are all gay. LGBT+ villains became such a staple in horror films during this time that it lead to a whole near character archetype! We have the damsel in distress, the heroic soldier, the wise old man, now welcome the rise of the: 

PSYCHO QUEER.

Yikes. 

But why I’m talking about this so much is because this popularity in LGBT+ villains is what creates the “Bury your Gays” trope. 

Because the villains.... always die. 

It’s their comeuppance. Their karma. Of course bad people will die and the heroes will go one to live a happy life! But what crime are we punishing these villains for? 

The message these movies gets across to their audiences is that “If you are gay, you are a bad person... and bad people deserve to die”. Because Gay and villain were so synonymous with each other, they become one in the same, and as we all know by now REPRESENTATION MATTERS.

This influences how society views LGBT+ people, so that in 1952, when the PRODUCTION CODE of YOU BETTER NOT CONDONE ANYTHING SINFUL IN HERE BECAUSE JESUS DOESN’T LIKE THAT is torn down, things still don’t get much better for LGBT+ representation. 

LGBT+ characters no longer have to be villains, but society is still not super cool with LGBT+ people, so now we get a new archetype: The self hating tragic gay character. And often? These characters kill themselves, such as in 1961′s The Children’s Hour. Because this is palatable to audiences who do not condone homosexuality in any way, but watching an LGBT+ struggle with themselves? Watching them become overwhelmed by guilt and hatred until they decide that death is the only way out? How tragic! How cursed they are! How pitiful! How... marketable. 

But to see LGBT+ characters end up happy? Audiences at this time would not have stomached it, because to them, being LGBT was immoral and these characters were not deserving of happiness. A good analogy might be how modern audiences would view a film with a drug addict character in it. The addict either succumbs to their addiction and dies tragically, or they “Go straight” and have a happy ending. For these audiences in the 50s and 60s the only happy ending was a straight ending. 

Then in 1969 we get the Stonewall Riots, and in the 1970s things actually look alright.

That is until the 1980s and society finds a new reason to hate, fear and vilify LGBT+ people. The AIDS crisis wipes out lives and almost all positive representation in the media. This fear is echoed in film as LGBT+ people become villains again. Sleepaway Camp and Cruising are such examples. 

The 90′s are better. Whilst mainstream cinema is still vilifying LGBT+ in the 80s, more positive independent films still exist, and the success of the 1991 documentary Paris is Burning prompts Hollywood to go “Hey... maybe we can get some money if we pander to these LGBT+ folks”.

There is a brief period in the 90s where gay comedies like The Birdcage, In and Out, and To Wong Foo are allowed to exist. They’re comedies. The stereotypes are played for laughs, but there is a level of joy and care with these movies where even though these characters are making us laugh... for once we’re not laughing at them. We love these characters. We want them to succeed. No. One. Dies. 

It smells like progress. Finally.

Or at least it would. Because these films also exist in the same decade that Philadelphia wins Oscars and the musical Rent is winning Tonys. Both of these deal with the tragedy of the AIDS crisis and have main characters die from the disease. Am I going to point out that Rent has four characters suffering from AIDS, but the only one to die is the Trans-coded poc gay man? Yes. Yes I am. Meanwhile the heterosexual couple suffering from AIDS gets a happy ending.

Interesting. 

I hate you Rent. I hate you so goddamned much.

Also the 90s sees a good return to queer-coding villains. It’s always been there. It’s never really gone away, but I need to talk about the queer coding of 90′s villains because I’m sure all of you will actually recognise them.

Ah. There They are. Queer coding and Disney have a very rich history, which MANY articles have been written on. One might even say that it’s a... tale as old as time.

Mmmm no thank you. 

But why it is so rampant, particularly in animated films, is because the films have a limited run time. 

“We need to convince the audience that these characters are villains IMMEDIATELY. We don’t really have the time to waste on developing them and showing all their evil actions. We need audiences to believe when we tell them that these characters are bad. how do we do that?”

“.... make them kinda gay??”

That’s not actually how the conversation went in the board room, I’m sure, but it’s a very reduced down version. Because of the history of LGBT+ villains in the early years of cinema, animation relies on the stereotypes of villainous characters... well unfortunately those villains of old were LGBT+, so now we have LGBT+ stereotypes being passed on to new villains. 

Anyway, my point is that almost all Disney villains die. Sorry that’s where I was going with this. Most of them die. The “Bury your Gays” trope is repeated here because of the villain’s queer coding. It’s not obvious, but the subtext is “Hey, if you’re a bit effeminate or do things outside of your strict gender role? Mmmmmm you deserve to die.”

“Bury your Gays” continues in modern media. Despite the importance of Brokeback Mountain, which explicitly shows a romance and intimacy between two men... Jake Gyllenhaal’s character still dies, and it’s implied that it may be due to a hate crime. 

We see it in television. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Downton Abbey, Arrow, there was a massive outcry over the trope in The 100 when a female character, after just entering an intimate relationship with another female character, is killed off seemingly senselessly. 

The LGBT+ community is tired of only seeing themselves killed for shock value, character growth, or tragedy. Even Ru Paul’s Drag Race has come under fire in recent years for seemingly exploiting its contestants traumatic histories for ratings. 

This is why this year’s Love, Simon was so important. The film portrays an adolescent gay character as he struggles with being open with his sexuality and finding a meaningful relationship. Simon is portrayed as a sympathetic character. He’s the hero.

And he gets a happy ending.

This is why Korrasami, a same-sex relationship in children’s media, is so important. It shows two girls achieving their happy ending together.

It’s why in the same year that Steven Universe portrays a same sex wedding, Adam’s death feels like such a step backwards. 

The producers have stated that Adam’s death was supposed to raise the stakes of the season, it was supposed to make viewers realise the severity of the situation and overcome them with a feeling of loss, but Adam’s death doesn’t just fail the LGBT+ fans... it fails to effect viewers emotionally.

Because audiences can’t mourn a character that they have no connection with.

Most of Adam’s character was developed in interviews and not in the show, where he only spoke for one scene. The creators talked about the deep relationship between Adam and Shiro, but none of that is actually visible in the series. Taking the season at face value, Adam is just some guy who’s connected to Shiro that is killed off unceremoniously. He wasn’t even given the dignity of  hero’s death, taking out even one enemy before he died. That’s what hurts the most.

His death is meaningless. It does nothing. It’s pointless.

But of course “There’s still Shiro, right?”, which is true. Shiro still exists and is confirmed a mlm, which is important, but it’s understandable why fans may not be satisfied with this. Let’s take a closer look at Shiro.

I often joke with my friends that Voltron should be renamed Shiro Suffers: The Series, because out of all the characters in the show, Shiro has definitely endured and been subjected to the worst (you could argue that Allura has, but Shiro has the joy of being tortured emotionally and physically, so I feel he wins). 

The writers have tried to kill him numerous times, with only toy sales saving him. He’s been beaten, tortured, terminally ill, killed, revived, possessed and used... it’s a lot. In the old days, I used to ship shallura, not really out of feeling a real romantic connection between the characters, but just because I wanted Shiro to have someone. Someone to help support him. Someone he could open up about his struggles with. The paladins mean a lot to Shiro, but because he is their surrogate guardian, he cannot open up to them like this. He cannot show the paladins weakness, and we see this in how he keeps his disease a secret from Keith, because he does not want to burden Keith with his struggle. 

The introduction of Adam wasn’t just exciting because of the potential of seeing a caring LGBT+ relationship, but because it gave fans hope that Shiro would have someone. There was the potential that Shiro might finally gain some kind of supportive relationship outside of his strict roles of “leader” and “guardian”.

Adam’s death removes that possibility. Despite how caring, generous, strong, intelligent, kind, patient and capable Shiro is written... his life is fucking awful. It’s very telling that in the final scene of the season, when every other paladin is in the hospital surrounded by their family and loved ones, Shiro is alone. He’s on a stage, giving a rousing speech to a crowd, still trapped in this role as an inspirational leader.

God, they don’t even let Shiro mourn Adam. Does he feel guilty that he was the one who supposed to die, whilst Adam lived, but now their roles are reversed?We’ll never know. Adam’s death doesn’t even give some insight into Shiro’s character. It’s truly pointless.

Season 7 of Voltron has made it clear that this is not a kids show.  This is a serious show with dark themes. The writers want it to be taken more seriously.

Then I will critique it more seriously.

While I strongly doubt it was intentional, season 7 perpetuates the age old message “If you are LGBT+, you will not achieve a happy ending.” The “Bury your Gays” trope is steeped in a history of oppression, censorship, and vilification. When Adam dies, you’re not just seeing a character die, but you’re seeing the series make a conscious decision to participate in this oppressive trope. And it stings even more because the series sets two heterosexual relationships to potentially end in happiness, whilst the LGBT+ relationships have already ended in tragedy.

Why Adam? Why not literally anyone else? We had no connection to him, so it’s not like they could have used a handful of other characters for the same effect. (Kill James. Fuck that guy. And he’s young so it really would have hurt.)

And that’s what you have to question. This is why fans are upset.

I’m not writing this to convince anyone to boycott the show, or plead with you to stop watching. That’s up to you and your own belief system. I definitely do not condone harassing the writers or voice actors.

I just want people to understand why fans are so upset over season 7, and that they have every right to be. To state that the outcry is just because “fans didn’t see their ships become canon” is dismissive and cruel. Adam and Shiro’s relationship was heavily used in marketing by Netflix, so much so that you could call it queer-baiting. It was hyped at SDCC and explained as this deep and meaningful relationship, whilst the producers knew what Adam’s fate would be the whole time. 

I know producers have to answer to higher ups. I know the crew were largely on edge about what would get approved and what would not. 

But the point remains... they still made this conscious choice. Fans don’t have to be happy about it. They shouldn’t be. 

I have no idea what season 8 will bring, and at this point I feel like it might be a mess. But I encourage fans to support each other and be vocal about why you’re upset. You can’t change this show, but there’s hope that another series could learn from this. 

History repeats. Until we don’t let it. 

[madameinsomnia]

Why Jordan Peele is One of the Most Important Directors of our Generation

Intro:

Before the horror-comedy sensation Get Out was released in 2017, I’d never heard the name Jordan Peele before. Now, after seeing his most recent success, Us, I can’t see myself not perking up at reading his name in the credits.

Peele didn’t just appear magically out of thin air as a gift from the filmmaking gods, even though it seems like so. His career actually kickstarted in 2003 when he joined the cast of Mad TV in its ninth season. I’m not here to give you an entire biography of Jordan Peele’s life, but this does give some insight to just how long he’s been working in the industry. 

Get Out was Peele’s first job as a solo director, but with the amount of professionalism and mastery put into it, you’d never know it was his debut. Might I also add he was the sole writer as well?

Thrilling, with a premise as outlandish as The Stepford Wives, but with so many silly and satirical moments, Get Out feels very much like real life because of this perfect mix. As a screenwriter (wannabe), I must gush a bit about how well his characters are written and how natural their behavior feels given the situation. The protagonist of Get Out, Chris (played wonderfully by Daniel Kaluuya) feels like someone you could meet at a bus stop or in line at the coffee shop, point being he’s an everyman. Not every lead character has to overtly stand out to be noticable; we just have to be able to fit in their shoes.

But what really made Get Out work is how Peele wrote it as a horror movie, without the need of all those cliche horror tropes that our generation is so accustomed to. About to go off topic for a bit, but I assure you, it’ll all make sense as to why I made this article about Jordan Peele.

What is Horror and What WAS Horror?

Horror is, perhaps, one of the most enigmatic genres there is because what can be defined as scary or unsettling is entirely subjective. There are very few things that people are universally afraid of. Things that only seem more common today but really have always been around... what makes today different from then is that everyone talks about it.

Imagine it’s the 1960s, you live in a cookie-cutter neighborhood where everyone knows everyone. Everywhere you look is a friendly face. Then suddenly, down the road, there is a break-in. The parents left the baby with a sitter and she was brutally attacked. Well, the only way you’re bound to know is through the newspaper or word-of-mouth, but after a while, is anyone going to talk about it or want to? Not a chance. You’ll always hear: These things just don’t happen around here. Not in our town. When really, they do. They happen everywhere. Then of course this is how urban legends start. The Hook Killer on Lover’s Lane, the Boogeyman that creeps at night.

A documentary that goes more in depth on this idea is Joshua Zeman’s Killer Legends. He explains how the real-life stories that inspire these legends are far more scarier than the films they create... and that’s how it all started.

Let me explain: the ‘Horror’ genre was meant to showcase just what people didn’t want to talk about what was happening down the road or across town. There’s a man that lures people into his hotel to kill them? Our neighbor killed his wife in cold blood and is trying to hide it? My upstairs neighbors might be psycho Satan worshippers?! Nah. Let’s just ignore it and hope it goes away.

A lot of people think if we don’t talk about it, these issues will vanish. But Horror films reminded us that such terrors exist in the real world, and can only be stopped if we acknowledge that they’re there. That’s why such films like Psycho or Rosemary’s Baby were so revolutionary--the idea that the scariest things are not even supernatural (Peele understands this greatly, but I’m getting there).

Horror worked well as a unique genre for the creative minds of Alfred Hitchcock, Wes Craven, and Tobe Hooper. Then this happened:  

The Slasher Era:

HOLD UP. I’m NOT undermining the effect that these films have. Halloween is a classic, and there are plenty of other ‘semi-modern’ thrillers that work like this, but... 

They unintentionally got the ball rolling for marketing genius and filmmaking disaster. Halloween was far more effective in 1978, when it was released, than it probably would be had it been made today (No, we’re not talking about 2018′s Halloween. Now stop distracting me). With horror, timing is everything... as in, ‘what’s going on in the world’ timing. Babysitting late nights was far more common then than it was now, and teenagers didn’t have modern conveniences they do now should anything happen. Back then, they actually had to WATCH the children, ensure their safety as well as their own, not give them an iPad and watch TV for an hour or two.

On top of this, as much as we take it for granted, 911 wasn’t always around. Until 1968, US citizens had no way of getting in immediate contact with the police until they got the operator on the phone to connect you to them. So Halloween recreates that idea of what if the babysitter got into a terrible situation with no way of getting immediate help? But they also decided to make things a little edgier... better said, bloodier. Cue Friday the 13th.

Teenagers go to sleepaway camp all the time (No, we’re not talking about that movie either, so hush), so what would parents be like seeing this film about kids going to a sleepaway camp where there’s a murderer hanging around? A brilliant idea that sold tickets back in 1980 to young adults and grown-ups alike. That’s because these ideas were new and horrifyingly relevant and real. They’re reminded of the threats that are out there.

But here’s the catch that ruined everything: it sold tickets. Sure, it scared some people for a good while, but they didn’t always leave with the idea lingering in their heads. But the producers and writers don’t always care about the latter, once they realized how easily money can be made by movie-goers wanting a good scare and a ‘fun time,’ the Slasher genre skyrocketed, and the brilliance of horror got dumbed down... and down... and down over the years with few exceptions. Let’s not mention, marketing blew up with Slasher films. Did anyone ask for four Halloween sequels or seventeen more Jason films? Nope. Did it make money anyway? Yup. It’s all in the name, not in the art...

Come On In, Get Out!

(See what I did there?)

Repeating myself at the intro, for those who forgot that this is really about Jordan Peele, I’d never heard of him before I saw Get Out. Even then, I only really knew about the movie through everyone talking about its 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. I went into the movie blind, a little confused to what made it considered a ‘horror’ when it looked like perhaps a Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? type film.

When I saw it for the first time, I was sinking back into my seat whenever I felt Chris’ (the lead’s) discomfort. Again, it’s because we all fit into his situation seamlessly, being somewhere you’re not sure you’re welcome (hence the clever title). The audience was cheering by the end, eager that our in-movie buddy had made it out safe (Spoilers, I guess, but c’mon. If you haven’t seen it yet, get out :D).

But what made Get Out stand out from other modern-day thriller films is that when I went back, I caught things I’d missed my first time through; small hints and cues that clue you into what’s really going on. Did they have to be there to make it more enjoyable, probably not... but Jordan Peele wrote them in anyway, combining it with his perfect set-ups and shots so that the more cerebral movie-goers can have those ‘ah-ha’ moments! It’s a horror film where, for once, you feel like a genius for getting those little hints and figuring out what’s going to happen next (We are all Rod, who pretty much kept a running commentary of the movie-watcher’s thoughts).

Again, all not required, but very necessary if your film is going to be effective. While Peele deservedly won Best Original Screenplay, I say he was next up for Best Director from the perfect pauses in dialogue, to the little awkward looks in the camera by the hypnotized victims.

Why was it so successful among audiences everywhere, of all nationalities and ages?

Intelligent Horror:

Jordan Peele himself stated that Get Out was from ‘an effort to master fear.’ Us, I think, is an extension of that idea. What made these two films so effective wasn’t that they were filled with scary moments now and then and called itself ‘horror.’

They were smart films.

Get Out has very real fears we as people have; being out of place, uncomfortably watched by people, being abducted and never heard from again which horrifyingly happens far too often here in the States.

Us offers similar real-life horrors. A home invasion, being separated from your kids (and in return, kids being separated from their parents, their source of protection since day one). There always seems to be something supernatural or paranormal at play here, but there’s nothing of such going on. In Peele’s writing, it’s all real-life. After all, is the real world not a scary place?

The only difference I noticed in Us is that Peele maintains his effective dialogue with subtle clues of what’s going on, while visually he kept some of his trademarks (the wide shot of a figure walking towards the camera, looking right into it with wide, terrified eyes) but with a lot less visual hints than Get Out (to me, at least, but I’ve only seen Us once and will definitely be watching again).

While Get Out’s message leaned more towards the race issues in the US (and the world by proxy), Us is more muddled in what the audience is meant to take from it... and that’s perfectly fine. Jordan Peele’s horror is that you might not necessarily leave the theater scared to turn your light off at night, but you’re up late thinking about it and what it all means. And those are the kinds of films that stay on Hollywood’s radar for generations to come and not just as Halloween-time fun. Heck, Get Out came out in February, 2017. Us came out in March, 2019. Normally we expect cheesy rom-coms this time of year; so when a movie claiming to be a thriller shows up on the ‘coming soon’ list, you bet people are going to raise their brows and see what’s going on.

Peele understands how to entice people, to make them feel comfortable with his characters and then worry for their safety, while at the same time being far too fascinated by what’s going to happen to even think about taking their eyes off the screen to check their phones while waiting for the next jump scare.

He knows how to bring out the actors’ most unsettling parts of themselves, actors we may be familiar with and are used to seeing them as friendly faces (Lupita Nyong’o managed to creep me out while being an amazing spectacle on camera)! Daniel Kaluuya became an Oscar Nominee from his performance as a man being held captive going into full survival mode.

Don’t we all worry about what we’d do if we were in the situations those people were in? Wouldn’t we hope to have the smarts or guts to fight our way out just as they did? That’s the idea of what horror really is meant to be. Not be that one idiot character that goes into the scary house that’s known to be haunted while your friends tell you no (or film you for snapchat, I dunno).

No, in Peele’s movie, you’re going somewhere that’s supposed to be safe, where something unexpected that you were unprepared for happens... and that’s scarier than any ghost story I’ve seen.

[harryandmolly]

i could write it better than you ever felt it - one

A/N: I’m dedicating this fic to the author of the first fics I fell in love with as a curious middle schooler on Quizilla, soxlongxjimmy. Thanks for the memories.

Warnings: Language, miscreants being miscreants

Word count: 3.2k

Val rolls over, blindly scrabbles for the cherry red Sidekick blaring “Miss Murder” under her tufted black PB Teen comforter.

“Raf Calling”

Val stifles a knowing smile, though she’s alone in her bedroom. She answers, lifts the phone to her ear.

“How much do you love me?” he asks, a self-deprecating chuckle in his voice.

Val giggles back. “Enough.”

+

Rafael and Valentina Moreno were born at 6:43 and 7:04 (respectively) on the morning of April 22, 1985. From then on, it was chaos.

Two was quite enough children for ambitious professors Miguel and Fernanda Moreno. They were scholars, children of knowledge, who wanted a small, quiet family. They envisioned docile walks on the beach, Saturday trips to museums, maybe the occasional University of Miami football game.

They got Raf and Val instead. The twins were at each other’s throats nearly from the time they were born – Miguel tells a story every holiday season of placing both babies in the same crib to bond when they were a few months old. The new parents turned around for a minute and looked back to see Val rolling on top of Raf trying to smush his face into the cushions.

From then on, separate cribs.

But the twins, despite their ongoing hostilities, couldn’t be separated. It was as though their energies thrived on one another. One summer when they were 12, Raf left for sleepaway soccer camp. A few days in, Val woke her mother up in the middle of the night in tears begging them to bring her brother home. He came back at the end of the summer and two days later she threw an ice cream cone in his face.

Miguel and Fernanda were faced with a new reality – noise. Their kids were loud before they even picked up their respective instruments. The Morenos thought music lessons would be a good outlet for their wild children, so they had them classically trained from a young age. Once again, their good intentions wrought chaos. Valentina was a menace on the drums – though a very talented, well trained menace. And Rafael was a gifted guitar player.

It wasn’t until they were 14 and started sharing practice space in the Morenos’ garage that they could be in the same room without ripping each other’s heads off.

And then, against all odds, they joined forces. The Moreno twins finally discovered they were stronger together than apart. That’s not to say they didn’t still fight like cats and dogs, but they loved each other just as viciously as they bickered. Miguel and Fernanda could live with that. They had to.

Streets of Gold was a stupid pet project, it wasn’t supposed to be anything. Until it was.

Val was original music buff of the family. She used to sit in her closet with the door shut and the lights off listening to her dad’s record collection. It made her feel cool, listening to old vinyl. But she didn’t really get it until she got around to hearing The Ramones’ “Rocket to Russia” for the first time. Everything changed then for the Morenos.

Raf was hesitant at first – could he really let himself like something Val discovered, something Val thought was cool? But he couldn’t hold out long. Because it was cool. It was really cool.

Valentina became the Encyclopedia Brown of pop-punk. You could name a song and she could tell you what band, what album, what year it dropped, whether or not it was a single, and what label released it. She was a goddamn savant. Raf started using her like she was a walking party trick with his friends, some of whom also started to think pop-punk was cool.

Streets of Gold started, as many shitty garage bands do, as a blink-182 cover band. They played birthday parties, then house parties, then veteran halls, then underground Miami clubs. They were signed by Stuck in the Suburbs Records in 2002 and struck out on their first supporting tour. They’ve barely been home since.

Everything changed once again for the Moreno family when Val took a step back. She loved the band, loved the music, even loved touring, but there was a piece of her that was more like her parents than she ever realized or wanted to admit. She craved learning and missed academia after she finished her GED. She secretly applied to the University of Miami and sought out her replacement for the band, gearing up for a fight.

Raf lost it, at first. They had the worst knock-down, drag-out sibling fight of their entire lives. It ended in tears with Raf holding Val against his chest as they sobbed. They started training her replacement Naveen the next day.

Among Val’s fondest memories of drumming in Streets of Gold are the two years she spent with the band on Warped Tour. Warped was every scene kid’s wet dream, every garage band’s Woodstock. It was the be all, end all of pop-punk music. Warped is a fickle mistress – it makes and it breaks, it gives and it takes and it’s not for the faint of heart.

They call it rock band summer camp, and it is. It’s day after day of heat and sweat and drugs and sex and music, so much fucking music. But the showers are scarce and sleeping in a van with five guys, driving through the night to reach the next stop, it wears on you.

But it’s all about the kids. They come in droves, self-professed outcasts in girls’ skinny jeans, hair Manic Panic-ed and razored past the point of recognition, the uniform of kids without a cause. They gather like the Island of Misfit Toys for a chance at community, to throw themselves into a world they recognize, a world they’ve created for themselves. It reflects them, it accepts them, it inspires them, and Warped Tour is where it truly comes alive.

The kids wait for hours in the heat, withstand insane conditions to see their favorite bands. They go hard, they leave it all out on the fields, in the amphitheaters, screaming their lungs out as thanks for giving them somewhere to belong. It’s a chorus of angst and otherness and, somehow, hope. It’s Valentina’s favorite song. And she misses it.

Raf dropped the hint two weeks ago that there might be a chance at return for Val. Things are different now – Streets of Gold is starting and finishing the 2007 Vans Warped Tour on the main Lucky Stage, a far cry from their humble beginnings playing to a handful or a dozen curious onlookers from Hot Topic Kevin Says. They have a bus now with a shower and actual air conditioning and, holy shit, they have actual bunks.

And their merch guy Jamie, Raf told her casually, has to step away from the tour due to a family financial situation. Can’t be avoided. They’re checking their network for replacements, but, if they can’t find someone in time, could he beg her to come along? One last summer on the Warped Tour before she leaves for the UK in the fall?

Val played it cool – “I’m exhausted,” she reminded him, “After everything this year…” (And she doesn’t need to elaborate, because he knows all too well) “And I just graduated…”

But the truth is, Val found herself wondering about it. She hasn’t been on tour in three full years. She’s gotten her fixes visiting their shows, bobbing her head from side stage singing the words she still writes for the band with her brother, but it’s not the same. It’ll never be the same.

After only a few days, Val wasn’t just wondering – she was hoping. She had it wrapped around her heart now, this idea of returning to something that always brought her hope and comfort when she needed it. And like she told Raf, after the year she’s had…

She got the call four days before the first stop in Pomona. Raf needed her. She’d better start packing.

She couldn’t wait for the summer at the Warped Tour, she remembers the first time that she saw him there.

+

“Oh, thank fucking Christ!”

Shawn rolls his eyes and throws the lurching white van into park. It scuttles to a stop.

“Shut the fuck up, dude,” Shawn mumbles, wrenching his rusty door open and stepping out onto the grass to survey the area.

Francis’s head pops up over the roof of the van wearing a disapproving glare.

“All in favor of banning Shawn from driving for the rest of the tour, say aye!” Francis crows.

A chorus of ayes fall out of the sliding doors of the 15-passenger van as they open and pour smelly 20-somethings out. Shawn sighs and plants his hands on his hips.

“I got us here an hour before we were supposed to be, I deserve credit for that,” he whines, sliding his Ray Bans up into his dark curls.

Francis looks unimpressed. “You nearly killed us all at least four times. You don’t get shit.”

“Maybe this was his strategy,” Bobby offers with an eyebrow lifted conspiratorially, “Maybe he pretends to be a shitty driver so he can get out of driving the van between stops.”

Shawn smirks. “I’ve been a shitty driver since I was 15. That’s a long con.”

“Alright, assholes, time to start unloading,” calls a voice from near the trunk. Shawn groans and licks his lips, flicking at the black enameled ring he got pierced there a couple months ago.

He ambles back to where the truck has pulled up beside their rickety van. Andrew climbs out and runs a hand through his hair. “Shawn, man, you’re fucking impossible to follow. You were doing 85 on the freeway, you know that?”

Shawn opens his mouth to defend himself when the rest of his band starts choking on laughter. He holds up his hands in surrender. “Fine, fuckers. Drive yourselves.”

Shawn turns and looks around at the Pomona Fairgrounds. He’s never seen anything more beautiful in his life. There are stages going up left and right, tents and skate ramps and those inflatable floating human-shaped things that flop around and wave at car dealerships. It’s mania, and he’s so fucking excited about it.

Warped Tour has always been the dream. It’s always been a reality just out of reach. Always a spectator, never the spectated.

He’s been nomadic for the past few years since he first picked up a guitar and started playing old The Starting Line and Jimmy Eat World covers. He’s been in at least eight different bands, all of which showed promise at the start and ended in various states of the decay of teenage boredom. No one wanted to go the distance with him, not until he met Francis, Bobby and Seth through friends of friends of friends. Then suddenly, Warped Tour wasn’t just within reaching distance, it was fucking happening.

Shawn’s a sentimental sap so he’s standing on the hill overlooking the manifestation of his dreams. Seth, the band’s fan-anointed “quiet one,” claps a hand on his shoulder.

“We fuckin’ made it, man,” he reminds Shawn breathlessly. Shawn chokes on an emotional inhale and nods.

They’ve gotten good at load-in now. Everyone has their assigned tasks and Andrew’s a seasoned enough tour manager to be able to wrangle them into efficiency. Or, near efficiency. They’re a little distracted today, overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all.

They’re quieter, too. They’ve felt big in their britches for awhile, having been invited out on tour supporting bands like Valencia, My American Heart and All Time Low. But this is a new ballgame. They’re very much little fish in a giant fucking pond, a very intimidating pond.

They stare at the buses of pop-punk legends as they wade past with amps and instruments and risers in hand, feeling like it’s the first day of kindergarten and the eighth graders are all settled in and looking cooler than anyone ever has ever. Shawn actually, embarrassingly enough, nods in reverence at Streets of Gold’s bus. He’s glad none of his band and crew notice and razz him for it.

Being new and not a huge crowd draw, they’re one of the first bands of the day on their designated Smartpunk stage. Shawn doesn’t so much mind playing Smartpunk. It’s a small stage but plenty of amazing bands have gotten started there. He’s just happy to be on the tour. And if they impress and end up drawing in some attention and wind up spending a couple of tour dates on Hurley.com or even, dare he dream it, the Hurley stage, he’ll be a happy kid.

But at 19, with his best friends at his side and their sophomore album release date coming up in only a month, Shawn feels like he’s at the edge of the world looking at the start of something he can’t quite make out yet, but it feels so fucking good.

+

Val is already sweating her balls off, no surprise there.

She’s had some merch girl experience, naturally, having been with the band since its infancy, a time where everyone wears a lot of hats. But now that Streets is a bona fide Warped Tour Band, a destination, a band people make the trip to see, it’s a new ballgame.

She unloads box after box of shirts, hats, hoodies, wristbands, CDs, booty shorts, whatever else they can hawk at an upcharge. Raf and Naveen eagerly help her and she suspects they’re trying to play nice because they know she didn’t have to come on tour and help them. Val doesn’t want to get used to it – in about a week, they’ll be a lot less eager to haul boxes around and will make themselves scarce.

As she’s setting up the tent above the table, she looks around with a smile.

Returning to Warped feels a little like coming home. It’s a dry, hot, smelly home with sun-scorched grass underfoot and an overabundance of men in women’s jeans but there’s just something about it—

“BABYYYYYY!” cries a voice that belongs to a woman who soon careens straight into Val’s side.

“Oh my fucking god!” Val squeals, throwing her arms around the violet haired cling on. She bounces back and forth as they laugh and babble incoherently.

Finally, she pulls away and Val holds her by the shoulders to look at her.

“Why, Bea Easton, look at you!” Val giggles.

Bea, all four-foot-eleven inches of her, strikes a pose complete with duck face and popped hips in her low-slung Bullhead skinnies. She breaks into a laugh, shaking her head.

“Miss me, Moreno?”

“So much that I’m back on tour with these hooligans again,” Val sighs, angling her head at her bus where her tourmates are arguing over the Xbox.

Bea chuckles. “Thank god. It was getting dull in the scene without you.”

Val shoots her a suspiciously amused glance. Bea makes an exasperated noise, throwing her hands up.

“Well the scene is never fucking dull, that’s kind of the point, but I missed you, kid! You’re not so easily replaced, you know.”

Val scrunches her face and pulls Bea into a proper hug, tucking her face into her freshly-dyed hair and rubbing her back. “Ditto, dude. College was cool but… I couldn’t really resist one last shot at all this.”

Bea stands back and loops her arm around Val’s waist as they observe. After a moment, Bea pinches Val’s side gently.

“Hey, how are you?”

Val’s body tightens instinctively. She knows Bea feels it. Bea only asked a question everyone’s been asking her for months. And Val’s still shit at pretending it doesn’t bug the fuck out of her.

“I’m fine. Really. I went to the doctor recently and he did some tests and confirmed that I’m human and not a big walking china doll.”

Bea’s bleached eyebrows lift as she smirks. “Point taken. Have you started checking out the talent, then?”

Val scoffs. “You and your locker room talk.”

“This is what equality looks like, bitch. But seriously, tell me that’s not half the reason you’re here. A little palette cleanser.”

Val runs her tongue across her lower lip. Bea knows her oh so well.

She elbows Bea gently. “Stop that, I already have a reputation,” she hisses teasingly.

“Mmm, that’s right,” Bea replies, playing along, “The biggest slut in the scene is back on Warped Tour. Better start lining up for a taste.”

Val laughs heartily, shaking her head. “I swear to god, Bea, you—”

She stops dead in her sentence, words have failed her. Her brain fritzes out. She stares straight ahead, exhales in a loud puff. Bea notices and turns to look at what, or who, Val has spotted.

He’s tall. That’s probably the first thing anybody ever notices about him. He’s really fucking tall. He’s also not as scrawny as the rest of the twiggy white boys that populate the scene these days. He’s built – broad in the shoulders and the thighs. He’s wearing the uniform black skinnies, though, so he’s probably a band member rather than a volunteer. And he’s got the presence, somehow, of a frontman. Maybe it’s because Val’s pretty well versed in scene guys, but she can just tell he’s a lead singer.

His dark curls are tucked under a backwards Blue Jays hat and his eyes are unreadable under black Wayfarers. His facial structure is sinfully architected, marred only by the black lip ring that’s pierced through his full lower lip.

His hands are tucked in the pockets of his impossibly tight jeans as he cruises easily on a skateboard through hordes of bands and crew prepping for the day. He seems unbothered by the hard work going on around him, content to observe and take it all in. It gives him an ethereal sort of glow, that he’s untouched by reality.

Val swallows like a fucking cartoon character and watches his mighty leg strike the ground, black leather high top Chucks kicking up a cloud of fairground dust as he propels himself past the tent without a glance. She feels like a ninth grader who’s caught her first glance at the senior quarterback. She sniffs. It’s been a while since she’s felt like that at all.

Bea elbows her again. “Holy damn.”

“Say it again, sister,” Val chuckles, watching the back pockets of his jeans stretch over his very fine ass as he launches himself down the sidewalk, weaving and bobbing through the crowd.

“HOLY DAMN!” Bea crows, throwing an arm around Val’s shoulders and shaking her. Val sniggers and peels her eyes away, nibbling on her pillowy lower lip.

“I’ll do some recon, find out who he is,” Bea offers, smirking. Val isn’t about to turn that down. Bea’s the most well-connected merch girl on the tour, being as seasoned as she is, having toured with New Found Glory since ’97. She nods her thanks and waves goodbye as Bea rushes off to check on the status of her own merch tent.

Val turns back to her table, fumbling through price tags and pushpins. Her mind is elsewhere. Specifically, it’s somewhere in the back pocket of that skateboarding guy. She can smell trouble on him from here.

She doesn’t mind. She could use a little trouble.

Boys, raise your glasses/Girls, shake those, go, go, go/We're the party, you're the people/Let's make this night a classic

Taglist: I literally don’t know who my taglist is anymore so lmk if you want to be added but for now here @smallerinfinities @the-claire-bitch-project @stillinskislydia @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn​ @alone-in-madness​ @alone-in-madness @singanddreamanyway @accioalena

[iamcinema]

IAC Reviews #005: Await Further Instructions (2018)

I've been on the prowl for a film that gives me vibes like Would You Rather or Cube again. There's something about the isolation, paranoia, and mistrust that can make for a quality watch. So going into this, I was expecting a type of game to be played at the expense of someone else suffering in the process and the title alone made think about something you'd see on Adult Swim.

So how did our time waiting for instructions go?

Await Further Instructions in One Gif:

Okay. Let's take things back a bit.

Have you ever hated a pack of characters that were so unlikable that you got excited over the prospect of them dying? I'm not even saying that in the sense of having genuinely good villains that brought you blissful satisfaction over them getting their comeuppance either. I mean truly god awful characters that are just so annoying, meanspirited, and hateful that seeing them get written off make up the only enjoyable scenes period - like, that's how much they fucking suck.

Aside from Nick and Annji, nobody is likable or even remotely pleasant; not even in the way, as I referenced with Would You Rather, where you had deplorable scumbags either enacting terrible things onto others or having no real shame, remorse, or second thoughts about what they're about to inflict on the other person. There, you could at least have some fun with characters that you loved to hate. Here, you just have characters you hate and just about any scene that isn't focused on the two of them alone is one of constant stress.

Usually, for me, when it comes to movies with characters who sole purpose just seems to infuriate you, the tipping point takes a while for that to show. It's a true labor love to culminate that one character that feels like a cosmic punishment, and it's not very often that just them breathing or the first sentence that comes out of their mouth proves that first impressions really are everything.

To be brief, Nick's family likes to lay it on super thick about their beliefs and aren't shy to tell Nick that he's the problem, as he hasn't come home in years, or make it clear Annji isn't welcome in their house. Yeah, they're that perky charming bunch. I was hoping that with one of them, they'd be that kind of person with some sort of secondary trait to them, even if it's negative; like that hateful bigot who happens to be uncomfortably charismatic or the sleazy womanizer who is just the perfect amount of being an arrogant monster that makes you want to hate and love him.

A good example here would be Kate, Nick's younger sister. She's written as the clichéd, bigoted bitchy type of character who stirs the pot the most and starts much of the conflict with Annji (next to Granddad, who seems to take joy in it). Her only other real defining characteristic is that she's expecting, which you think would give her more depth or sympathetic... but it doesn't - even when the stakes are drastically raised. It just leaves you feeling like "Okay...and?", and not much else. Perhaps if there was a tipping point where she had a change of heart or did something admirable that she'd garner anything resembling a pat on the back, but still no.

This ends up being the case for the rest of Nick's family as things progress. There's no character development, their motives are confused as shit, and there's never really a true point where you see any of them make a solid path forward. You'll see a nudge in the right direction where you think you'll see someone do anything remotely productive or helpful to the cause of the group...and yet...take a guess.

A telling moment comes in the form of Kate needing help after shit goes down. Nick makes it very clear that Annji is the only one that can help save her since she works at a hospital - as Scott, her [Kate's] own husband, who also has medical experience, refuses to do anything. Even when it's made explicitly clear that she will die if Annji can't help, they refuse to budge. It's like this whole family has a fucking listening problem, and when the obvious happens, they still refuse to do anything productive to help give them the slightest chance of surviving the night. It's so exhausting to see the only two characters you want to root for who give a genuine shit about what's going on keep getting the run around, only to go through all of that for what?

I hate that I have to keep focusing on characterization here, but it makes up the bulk of the problem I have with this movie. I've rooted for the killer(s) before when it came to this very issue, with characters like Tony from Blood Lake or Alan from Return to Sleepaway Camp being so annoying or irritating that they made finishing the film feel like a chore. But I have never endured a movie so frustrating that I hated five of your seven characters. I don't know if that was the intention or not either. It's one thing to have genuinely unlikable characters due to their actions or motives, but at least give the viewer something about them that at least makes their screen presence one of tolerance or even apathy - not wishing for sweet release that doesn't involve only turning it off.

If it wasn't for this one big fucking problem, then I'd have more interest in the plot and what's going on.

Honestly, if you just focus on the bare bones concept, it's not that bad and is one we've seen variations of before; which is that of a family being trapped in their house on Christmas Eve with no means of escaping or making contact with the outside world as they're receiving ominous instructions and messages of impending death from their television if they don't comply. With that alone, there's many ways you can drive the story and it could be interesting - but this all goes out the window because of the characters. Even with movies like Cube, you have characters that clash and obvious tension there due to their situation and how one of them poses a serious threat to their survival - but that didn't halt the plot or made it feel like pulling teeth to have everyone get their shit together.

Outside that, the only other thing you have to look at would be the special effects. They really aren't that anything too remarkable, at least to me when it's directly in relation to features that are keeping them trapped in the house or what happens if someone tries to escape. The effects in the third act when we get the "big reveal" about whose behind the happenings are just barely that much better. But I'm not sure how much of me feeling underwhelmed is due to being burnt out due to the sheer amount of fuckery we had to out up with to get this far.

Writing this has been a long, exhausting task, and now I'm ready to call it quits here. This was more of a rant than a review, but I feel this is one of those films worthy of such a treatment. It's been a long while since I've felt this tired over a film, and I'm almost offended by how disappointing it was. For the first time in years, I'm giving a single star to each of the only tolerable characters and half a star for the half-way decent idea that got thrown away. Now, I'm off to bed as means to apologize to myself for what I just endured.

Rating 2.5/10

[russetm]

20 facts! I was tagged by @sl-walker

1. I pace, like a lot, I probably spend at least an hour everyday pacing back and forth in my room. I put on music and claim I’m “dancing” but srsly, I’m just pacing, I have done this my entire life.

2. I went to a Quaker sleepaway Summer camp for many years as a child called Friends Camp in South China Maine. It was probably the high point of my New Hampshire years, (it was less of a magical retreat during the Cape years as I had like actual friends I could see but it was still great). On a funny and related note I meet another UU years latter who went to a different Quaker summer camp and I’m now curious if this is a thing of UU’s going to Quaker camp.

3. I was a vegetarian from the ages of like 12 until maybe 15? 16? I only stopped because my mother said she wasn’t going to cook me separate meals any more and “No M. just mashed potatoes does not a dinner make you have to have something else as well.” and h.s. me wasn’t going to make her own meals so I just stopped. (I was also a never super serious about it anyways, like if we were out to eat and I didn’t like the veg. options I’d just order meat, and I have never been able to turn down baked kibbeh or kababs from Ed Hyder’s)

4. I went to 3 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 1 highschool.

5. I’ve been on staff for the same anime con for 15 years, even though I’m mostly out of anime and for the most part am not that interested in anime any more I just keep going back, I’ve made a lot of friends there, and I still like it even if I find a lot of it overwhelming and frustrating.

6. I have on more than one occasion hitch hicked around Worcester.

7. I was at Bill Clinton’s second inauguration, I was 13 at the time and its probably the thing I least remember from that trip, it was a flurry of excitement, I got to travel alone from MA to DC to spent time with my cool Aunt, and her cool boyfriend, and my super cool arty Great Aunt, and we got to go out to cool museums and do all sorts of neat things so a boring parade and what to a 13 year old me was just a bunch of boring adult speeches really didn’t stick much in my mind compared to all the other stuff. I also seem to recall the day being miserable cold for just standing around.

8. I was heavily involved in Piping Plover and Herring Conservation when I was in late elementary school and middle school.

9. I was tricked into seeing Titanic in the theater and I have never truly or fully forgiven the people involved.

10. from the age of 11 until I left the Cape I volunteered at the Cape Cod Natural History Museum and it was a lot of fun, its where I met my best friend. (we’re still pals, not counting family she’s the person I’ve known the longest.)

11. I once almost drowned in an undertow as a child (not a rip tide I know the difference) I was a slight and small child, and we were on a rocky ocean side beach and as I was getting out of the ocean a large wave broke over me causing my to loose my footing and go under, and then I got tumbled by the undertow, couldn’t get my feet under me because the rocks kept shifting, my parents had to come and fish me out of the surf.

12. I haven’t shaved in 11 years and even before that I only shaved twice a year, for my ex’s birthday and Christmas as he liked it and it was something I could do for with minimal effort, he really didn’t like it that I hated shaving.

13.  I have, and I will again watched and read things that I know will irritate me for just that reason. Sometimes I just like to have something nice and harmless to focus my irritation on.

14. I have never had poison ivy and seeing as the cape is covered in the stuff and I spent a lot of time running around in those woods that is an impressive feat (or I’m just not allergic to it, but either way)

15. I’ve only had 2 cups of coffee in my life, the first cup I thought was pretty ok, but I was also exhausted and hungry so I’m sure that anything would have tasted good then (it was a regular dunks, a friend bought it for me because he thought I could use a pick me up) the second was from Starbucks and I did not like it and nothing I did to it over at the stuff to put in coffee bar made it any better. I have also only ever made 2 pots of coffee, the first was an unmitigated disaster (sorry) the second one came out ok and it was for my Besties bridal shower.

16. I enjoy collecting things, I always have, when I was a girl it was neat looking rocks, sea shells, animal figures, post cards, model horses (I still have a bunch of my Breyer horses floating around by my old MLP’s are long gone) and what ever else caught my fancy at any given moment. Now its tea cups, I love my beautiful and lovely little tea cups that are all different from each other, I use a different one every day (tea pots I’d less say I collect and just happen to have a few) and yarn craft supplies, I have a fair assortment of different knitting needles and crochet hooks. (and sorta books and movies/tv shows, or a figure of some kind that has caught my fancy) (also I want to get rid of all of our dishes and slowly rebuild a collection of mismatched dishes so I can have a more of a collection of beautiful and practical things in my life, but it would drive Boyfriend to distraction having everything being that not matching)

17. Sometimes I get argumentatively irritated with how people talk about Cape Cod, espesh P-town. People seem fundamentally unable to understand what a tourist economy does to a place, particularly a tourist economy that is only on for half the year and that huge swatch of the cape enforce a quaint and rural look. I haven’t lived there full time in like 20 years and I still get riled up over the tourists and stuff.

18.  I technically learned how to knit when I was a young girl, but it didn’t stick, partially because my mother thought it would be a good idea for one of my first projects to be mittens made on dpn’s and I just found the whole thing to be confusing and gave it up and never really thought about it again other than “damn my mom makes some really cool stuff” but I picked it up in earnest in my very late teens or very early 20’s (I know for sure I was knitting by 22), and I taught myself to crochet shortly there after. Other crafts have come and gone over the years but playing with yarn has been a good companion to me.

19. As much as I can be super pretentious about tea some times (“Oh, I drink loose leaf tea and I have special little things for it ah-blahblahblah(I’m aware of how I sometimes come off)) I’m actually not that fussy about it, bag tea, loose tea, cheap tea, fancy tea, pellet tea, I don’t care, I’m just happy as long as it is tea. And I’m not one to whip out the thermometer going “oh for this style of tea the water must to only be heated to a blahblah temperature and one one degree more and only steeped for exactly 2.34 minutes or you’ll ruuuuuuiiiiiiin it” what ever, put the tea in the hot water, it’ll be fine, if the tea should in theory have less hot water wait a bit before putting tea in. it isn’t rocket science, we don’t need exact precision its going to be fine, and then I’m going to steep my tea again, because that shit can be expensive and you can get more than one use out of your leaves.

20. I don’t enjoy playing most video games but I’m usually pretty happy to watch someone play a video game.

so I’m tagging anyone who wants to do this.

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: Screen Week: Favorite 30 Films of 2016

Just as it’s difficult to pinpoint what truly defined 2016 overall, the same goes for film. In 2013, as we pointed out, shit got real. So, one year later, we escaped. Thus, the social outsider grew. And the social outsider didn’t go away. Shit got real again, but this time, perceptions in reality clashed with another. Citizens escaped into validating takes and talking points. Divisions widened. Murderers, as ever, came with smiles. The social outsider’s definition became elastic. Depending on where you stood, you may have been that social outsider and were judged harshly for it. All the while, tests getting put out for agility, strategy, and luck. If you survived them, if you made the right moves, you were powerful enough to survive anything. And if there’s a common thread through 2016, particularly our own list of 30 films, it’s just that: survival. Unless you’re in a cultural elitist bubble like myself, cinema must be pretty boring. Very few of the films on our list were met with dump trucks full of cash, but let their inclusion serve as a reminder that the mainstream does reward intelligence. There’s a lot of good shit on our own screens at home. People want something different — they’re just not required to get it themselves. So it goes. Luckily, some studios continue to be as reliable as record labels — the A24s and Drafthouses offered dazzling singular experiences that didn’t waste their meager budgets. Amazon could offer you auteurs after you order kitty litter and Ecto Cooler. Even as budgets shrank, the best films of the year knew how to play, often in ways that were flat-out absurd. Be it a nudist awakening and a set of teeth in Toni Erdmann or delusions of an introvert’s lost life scored by farts in Swiss Army Man, the worlds presented were just as unfair as our own. But they were also, in a way, strangely optimistic in how to deal. As though lit up by what was at stake, filmmakers stopped taking it for granted, and the reliable auteurs — Villeneuve, Verhoeven, Refn — brought their A-game. As the mainstream order remained largely conservative and derivative, chaos and confusion prospered. The old guard fought the new wave. In this context, the world was unarguably better for it. One film that didn’t make the cut, Jake Paltrow and Noah Baumbach’s ode De Palma, reminds viewers how vastly different cinema has become in the latter half of its century-long existence. It takes an outsider, for sure, but we learned this year that the approach of the social outsider doesn’t need to be one of nihilism and terror. As you’ll see in our top 5, the notion that the marginalized can prosper, even in the smallest of triumphs, took our collective breath away. Respect was dealt and earned. Hell, even if your nerdy ass never dug jocks, Everybody Wants Some!! made it possible for at least two hours. Women of the year, through different centuries and some of the nasty persuasion, grabbed back. Companionship was found in the most bizarre and wonderful ways. Even if our personal or political narratives didn’t succeed the same way, we could still be fired up; we know plenty of radical-leaning people inspired by something as half-baked as Rogue One. We’ll take what we can get. –Snacks Kyburz --- 30 Paterson Dir. Jim Jarmusch [Amazon Studios] In Jim Jarmusch’s film Paterson, a man named Paterson who drives buses in the city of Paterson, NJ, writes poetry in his spare time and is obliquely inspired by the book-length poem by William Carlos Williams called Paterson. This Patersounds like a very bad Pateridea. At least it might to those unfamiliar with William Carlos Williams’s poem: despite being inspired by Ulysses and Pound’s Cantos, his ode to Paterson, NJ is accessible, ordinary, and nearly prosaic save some lingering moments of illuminated mundanity. Jarmusch’s film, the same. Paterson captures the work of creating poetry, work that is — for many — markedly unpoetic. Adam Driver’s Paterson (his most subtle performance — not like there’s competition) is content, not troubled; we see him observing his own blue-collar work routines and tranquil family life with his affectionate wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), who flits from hobby to hobby, and his dog Marvin (Nellie), who he walks every evening as an excuse to secretly (his wife knows, and he knows she knows) have one beer alone at his neighborhood bar. As a sort of trantricly muted climax, Marvin eats Paterson’s only copy of his work. Then, he starts writing again. The most famous line from Williams’s Paterson is, “No ideas but in things.” Jarmusch’s film is full of such concreteness, using a literal, unadorned filmic language. Presently, this straightforwardness seemed important. Paterson kept going, without a struggle. –Benjamin Pearson --- 29 The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers Dir. Ben Rivers [Artangel] Wherein UK multimedia artist Ben Rivers delivered another obtuse, slow-motion triptych even more expansive and hypnotic than his last obtuse, slow-motion triptych (the 2014 Ben Russell collab A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness). This time, Rivers paid tribute to a vision of Morocco that has historically resided mostly in the mind’s eye of legendary polymath/(relatively) benign colonialist Paul Bowles, even going so far as to dedicate one third of the film to a freewheeling update of the classic Bowles story “A Distant Episode.” Hazy and heavy-loping, it was the sort of film in which one could easily get fully lost, a time-bending jeep ride through unfamiliar terrain. In other words, it was trippy as fuck, but leave the hallucinogens in your mom’s underwear drawer: Rivers had you covered sans controlled substances and managed as much with nary a stock “psychedelic” trope in sight. –Dustin Krcatovich --- 28 The Pearl Button Dir. Patricio Guzmán [Atacama] Since the beginning of the modern state, the relationship between politics and metaphysics has become increasingly contentious. Unanswerable questions are too often seen as suspect. Suspects, meanwhile, are too often seen as guilty. In the end, suspect questions — and people — are silenced, vanished. Virtually every tyranny of the 20th century bore witness to this reality. For example, in 1970, Chileans elected a man who would dare to question the evil of economic imperialism. In the United States, economists and analysts would then ask, “But how, now, might we develop Chile into a malleable state?” The unspeakably painful answer would become the subject of nearly all of Patricio Guzmán’s astounding films. Following Nostalgia for the Light, The Pearl Button continues to call out, like Job, the question of pain — and of reconciliation — into the seemingly infinite. On the one hand, there is no answer. On the other, it is not at all infinite. Along the world’s longest coastline, a remnant was discovered — a button. From a remnant unravelled the story of a people. The present spoke to the past, and the past to the present. In so much space, the disappeared reappeared. Beyond the stripped-down facts of the modern state’s brutality is a glimmer of hope in the water. A question rediscovered. –Max Power --- 27 Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World Dir. Werner Herzog [Magnolia] “Because the internet” is a sort of trembling, isn’t it? We often hide our existential overwhelm about infinite screen permutations of information and mis-information (which now reveals, or informs on, itself with a nihilistic shrug). We dismiss and diminish with pithy appraisals, momentarily reducing the vast phenomenon into a sort of eye-roll-inducing gimmick. With characteristic wanderlust, Herzog considered our increasingly complex, module-based existence with a refreshing disregard for the mundaneness of adaptive ambivalence. Whether a chapter explored people online trying to cure cancer or traumatizing a family with vicious trolling, Lo and Behold was neither damning nor cold nor distant, as the director’s work is often mischaracterized. With his unmatched mix of stoicism and honest, unforced emotional asides, things were allowed to happen outside of the Q&A rhythm, be they awkward or endearing (or both). It’s sprawlingness may’ve been intimidating, but it was a film for grappling, not elucidating, and Herzog’s instincts are still sharp enough for a hearty wander. The ubiquitousness of the internet casts a vast shadow over our dismissive objectification of it, and Lo proved a novel place to reckon with this. –Willcoma --- 26 The Alchemist Cookbook Dir. Joel Potrykus [Oscilloscope Laboratories] A lesson from 2016: Don’t try to predict Michigan (my adopted state). Director Joel Potrykus blew us away with 2014’s Buzzard, a film with such a perfectly idiosyncratic kind of dirtbag comedic sensibility, I thought that I had the grimy genre that Michigander Potrykus had carved out for himself pegged. Then, this year, The Alchemist Cookbook came out: a refined piece of cult horror that observed trailer-dwelling Sean’s (Ty Hickson) isolation (there’s also a cat and one other character) in the Michigan woods as he tries to make gold out of batteries and shit. This film should not really exist (neither should Anti-Birth, the other unclassifiable film set — but not, like this one, also filmed — in Michigan this year). Played for both realism and humor are the Michigan touches we saw in Buzzard — Doritos and pop — but also a pivotal reference to Sleepaway Camp I think and the conjuring of Satan. Despite that thematic matter, though, the look nearly convinced me I was watching Michael Haneke’s follow-up to Caché. Was it a parable about how entrenched American materialism’s tentacles are on our alt-iest of citizens? A dismantling of myths of rugged self-sufficiency? Just terrifying horror done weird? Even Nate Silver doesn’t know, but I heard that he predicts with overwhelming odds that Potrykus will continue to meet our expectation to be defied. –Benjamin Pearson --- 25 Tickled Dir. David Farrier & Dylan Reeve [A Ticklish Tale] Tickled was not an exposé on any sort of large-scale conspiracy. Cheese pizza and the supernatural were not involved. Instead, Tickled revealed a more common form of abuse, what Joe South might have called “The Games People Play.” One man, not the Illuminati, playing games, small games, but big enough to make life difficult for its participants, their innocence exploited, not for profit, not for kink, but for small-scale power, for psychological kicks. It took very little to cause damage. Although it was hard not to laugh, it was torture — harassment, abuse, extortion, tickling — not at the inquisition level, but at the domestic level, behind closed doors and blinds; domestic terror, green alert. Which got us thinking: if the strange yet seemingly innocent world of competitive tickling was not what it seems, what else is not what it seems? What’s actually going down at that skeet competition? Or in the basement of that pizza shop? At that quilt festival? And what about that chili cookoff down in Terlingua? –Weaver --- 24 Knight of Cups Dir. Terrence Malick [Broad Green] Terrence Malick has now released as many films in the past five years as he did in the previous forty, and our relationship with the enigmatic director has shifted. His motifs, often inscrutable but instantly recognizable, are now a yearly occurrence, as present as the litany of car and phone commercials aping his style. With this in mind, Knight of Cups, already a semi-autobiographical piece, comments on itself and its creator. As Christian Bale’s Rick stumbles half-dazed through the beauty and luxury of Los Angeles, of his partners, of pensive moments, the viewer wonders how their version of the protagonist’s journey would be different. What would we feel in his life; could we possibly be so jaded? The tarot card chapter headings invoke fate, though the narration seems to be recalling, as if divining one’s own past. A dreamy state where direction is unclear and rhythm is everything. Malick’s world, and we’re deep into it. Are we being pummeled by navel gazing and gorgeous imagery, or are we boring toward the core of the artist’s vision? With time, we’ll see the shape of this stage in the oeuvre more clearly, but for now, Knight of Cups remains an exploratory work, rich with thoughtfulness and mystery. –Jake Marcks --- 23 Kubo and the Two Strings Dir. Travis Knight [Laika] When you get past Charlize Theron voicing a monkey, you stop acting like the dumb adult you are. When it comes to yearly animation strongholds, Zootopia and Moana made me experience wonderment through an adult lens. Kubo and the Two Strings made me feel like a child watching a memory maker in a special time and place, outside of myself. There is no suspension of belief needed when one-eyed Kubo plays his shamisen, making origami come to life in vivid storytelling. The magical world of Kubo is child logic. It’s pure imagination without the expected Pizza Planet easter egg or pop culture reference or Justin Timberlake dance number. Laika once again proves they are the humbled and inspired underdog. Kubo’s journey is at its core a child looking to be reunited with his family. The animation is so dreamlike and wavy that you feel closer to the action and emotion that Kubo experiences. Kubo may lose out to the mouse when it comes to the gold man, but this is the type of film that truly digs deeper into your heart and psyche. Oh, and Matthew McConaughey voice a beetle. Alright, alright, alright. –Emceegreg --- 22 A Bigger Splash Dir. Luca Guadagnino [Fox Searchlight] A quartet of brave, masterful performances anchored this sumptuous and tense portrait of ennui and rage among the beautiful people. Comparisons to Antonioni were inevitable, but we were also reminded of Paolo Sorrentino’s studies of aging, jealousy, and soulless debauchery. Unlike The Great Beauty and Youth, however, A Bigger Splash didn’t buckle under its pretensions, turn maudlin, or succumb to awkward fits of magical realism — it was also a hell of a lot more fun. Ralph Fiennes stole the show with his spastic Jagger-like dance moves and his leering, predatory gregariousness (the polar opposite of his other great supporting role this year in Hail, Caesar!) and Tilda Swinton perfectly balanced radiance and exhaustion, strength and dependence as a Bowie-esque superstar taking an extended sabbatical following vocal cord surgery. Guadagnino’s direction was smart and nuanced, shifting gears between fluid and jumpy, flashy and restrained, always holding just a little something back. The high wore off in the final act, however, as the real world — the world of death and consequences — finally encroached upon their charmed, cloistered idyll. And unlike the snakes and geckos that trespass upon their impossibly gorgeous Italian villa, those problems cannot be blithely discarded. An unexpectedly affecting and sometimes chilling love square, intelligent and unvarnished while remaining carnal and raw. Beauty has rarely been so ugly, and vice versa. –Christopher Bruno --- 21 Weiner Dir. Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg [Sundance Selects] Despite the rubbernecking quality of this doc of unprecedented access (and it is undeniably a hoot in this regard), what really stunned about this film was how effortlessly engrossing it was as drama. The filmmakers and their subject seemed to be struggling for tone together, and the way that things spun out was palpably tragic, even as Huma’s gameness about the experiment falls away and her side of things becomes harder to know. Our protagonist was eminently watchable: an unpredictably malfunctioning blender of affability, braggadocio, soul-searchingness, hokey humor, and infectious urgency. His libido and the decision making around it was something, even in his open contrition, that remained a confounding mystery. In the end, as we saw him seeing us seeing him, his raw limo outburst felt like a “how’s this for an ending?” answer to that awareness. Having witnessed key moments in the breakup of his family and the disastrous end of his political career, Antony Weiner’s battle-torn narcissism was the last lingering filament of possible redemption. And watching it snap, we couldn’t help but sigh with him. –Willcoma [pagebreak] --- 20 Love & Friendship Dir. Whit Stillman [Amazon Studios] In Whit Stillman’s first film (1990’s Metropolitan), the chronicler of the American urban haute bourgeoisie directly mentioned Jane Austen in such a way to make it readily apparent how much influence the author would have on his career. The cherished British novelist was something of a throughline in the four films that preceded this one, and nearly two decades ago, Stillman expressed an abiding desire to adapt one of Austen’s lesser-known works. This year, we finally got to see what he’d do with source material from one of the most overdone authors in cinematic history. A lofty undertaking to be sure, what really floored us about Love & Friendship (adapted from an epistolary novella of Austen’s called Lady Susan) was its energetic humor, pacing, and irreverence, particularly on display in the gut-busting performance of Tom Bennett as a blithering suitor to both Kate Beckinsale and her daughter. Stillman’s directorial choices and Austen’s witty sensibilities regarding social mores dovetailed so seamlessly that the resulting film felt like neither a period piece nor an adaptation — it captured the joy and playfulness that are usually the very first things to go when production commences on one of the countless adaptations of her work. Who knew Austen could be so fun? –Paul Bower --- 19 The Neon Demon Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn [Amazon Studios] Only one luminous, musically-textured ode to Hollywood warmed my heart in 2016, and Gosling’s piano-acting was nowhere to be found. Call it a perfume commercial à la Argento, a Vogue issue edited by Bret Easton Ellis, whatever — The Neon Demon chomps hard at “fresh off the bus” apocrypha. Although not novel — Elle Fanning, bloodied and glittery like a Nihilisa Frank nightmare, seems doomed from the start — Refn’s candy-flipping slasher actually bothers to flesh out warnings spouted to all showbiz hopefuls. You’ve heard of models being vampiric, of fetishizing ghosts, of chewing up and spitting back out: it’s here, and it doesn’t hold back. Following the visually tasty nihilism of Only God Forgives, Refn only cranks the empathy a smidge. His objective here is sick glee; with its dedicated camp (he’s finally attempting the likeness of Andy Milligan/Paul Morrissey), it’s his funniest film in years. And when mortuary cosmetologist Jena Malone spits on a cadaver’s tongue during a passionate sex scene, I stood up and cheered. –Snacks Kyburz --- 18 Swiss Army Man Dir. Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert [A24] Swiss Army Man was easily misconstrued and dismissed as “that farting corpse movie with Harry Potter.” On the surface, yes there are lots of farts, and boners, and similar “low brow” type elements; however, they were all in service of painting a rich tapestry about finding companionship and revealing our intimate selves to each other. A touching story that straddles the line between the platonic and the romantic, between madness and inspiration, between the juvenile and the profound, the Daniels crafted a film about accepting oneself despite all of the things that make us feel weird or gross or alone. Powerful performances by Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe propelled this story of two souls finding each other in a sea of trouble and loneliness and rediscovering what it means to be human and to be loved. It was easy to neglect the film because of its absurd premise, but viewers who took the plunge were rewarded with an inspired look into the power of creativity, the nature of life, and the emancipating honesty that comes with true friendship. –Neurotic Monkey --- 17 High-Rise Dir. Ben Wheatley [HanWay] Brutalist council estate flats birthed punk rock and dystopian futurism in 1970s Britain, shaping a counterculture whose sensibility Ben Wheatley has drank from. Perhaps the defining document of such breeding grounds, J.G. Ballard’s novel High-Rise has finally made it to the screen thanks to Wheatley’s elegantly decadent and darkly funny take on the material. If the novel’s many complexities meant it failed to be adapted despite several attempts over the decades, Wheatley tackles the problem by streamlining the narrative to its most essential (and contemporarily relevant) elements; namely, violent class struggle. Hence, the director presents the story exclusively through ellipsis, first to emphasize the primary urges that the titular building’s amenities seek to satisfy (the main character, played by Tom Hiddleston, moves into his luxury flat in a montage that’s quasi-advertorial in nature) and later to court the hallucinatory (non-metaphoric class conflict regularly takes place in the complex’s supermarket). The implication being that the building merely triggers some of the lurking, darker impulses of its occupants. While this design might prove harder for audiences to stomach than the depravity or grisly violence on display, Wheatley’s vision is strong enough to grip the viewers through 120 minutes of strange, albeit quite recognizable in their naked proximity — and thus Ballardian — deranged fun, clever social critique, and kitschy retro-futuristic decor. –jrodriguez6 --- 16 Cemetery of Splendor Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul [Kick the Machine] Its opening shots established a contemporary story of the world unearthed by state mechanisms, even as the rest of its running time blended the setting into a world of contemporaneity: jungle floors and ancient kingdoms, hospital bedside and a childhood bomb shelter. Cemetery of Splendor was not an elaboration of events, but a series of enfolding moments, like a field recording, that dwelled on rehabilitation. Weerasethakul centered the little movements of the movie in bodily functions and the motion of simple machines. As always, his direction makes a true and gentle medium of film, translating the affective charge of scenes into an open window, an ambient showing. The camera is almost always fixed at a static eye-level, an inviting witness to the unhurried mystery of the sleeping soldiers at the story’s center. The dialogue between the soldiers and their nurses is hushed and matter-of-fact. At this decibel, small talk sounds profound without meaning to. If you listen closely, from the innermost whisper of the heart to the furthest extension of microbes in the sky, Cemetery of Splendor is a program to honor the quiet confusion of being awake for the dreams of life and the march in place toward the certain smile of death. This is a good place to sleep. –Pat Beane --- 15 Hell or High Water Dir. David Mackenzie [Sidney Kimmel Entertainment] A bona fide barnburner, Hell or High Water never let up. From the initial heist in a dry and desolate town to a staredown between cold-blooded adversaries, nary a minute of our time was wasted. Watching Chris Pine and Ben Foster knock over banks on a mad but noble dash was like watching a pair of manic whirling dervishes with pistols and shotguns. With jolts of violence and gut-ripping humor, the story refused to sit still. Call it an anti-Western, a black comedy, or just a damn fine chase flick, the film insisted on defying categorization and exceeding expectations. Yet as fun as these delinquents were, they had to share the stage with a scene-stealing lawman spitting casual racism and his stoic partner who shoved it right back (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham). There was love there, but there was reality too. Rules of propriety don’t always apply in West Texas. If you needed proof that an explosive and exhilarating action flick doesn’t need a billion-dollar budget or a complete CGI makeover, Hell or High Water was Exhibit A. –Ryan Patrick Mooney --- 14 Elle Dir. Paul Verhoeven [SBS] In a central moment in Elle, Michèle (masterfully played by Isabelle Huppert) removes her rapist’s ski mask to reveal him as her handsome, mild-mannered neighbor, Patrick. Complicating matters, Michèle spends the first half of the film flirting with him and even masturbates while watching him set up a life-sized nativity scene with his wife (one example of the film’s sly wit). After the revelation, she continues to see him, though her motives for doing so remain troublingly opaque. As she discovers, he is incapable of consensual sex with her. “It has to be like before,” he says. Wearing a mask allows Patrick to play a role he can step out of when it no longer suits him, but Michèle cannot easily separate the man she was attracted to from the man who raped her. Like many of Verhoeven’s films, this one was at risk of being dismissed as exploitative pulp, but it raised some crucial questions about the representation of rape on screen. Elle refused to place people into categories: Victimhood doesn’t always eliminate agency or inspire revenge, and too often, monsters wear the faces of neighbors and friends. We contain multitudes, and we carry our monstrosity within us, just waiting to be unmasked. –Kate Blair --- 13 Embrace of the Serpent Dir. Ciro Guerra [Oscilloscope Laboratories] The “white guy going through an intense, eye-opening journey in the jungle” storyline has been done to death, but no matter how sympathetic or well-intentioned, it’s still usually told from the perspective of said white guy, with natives serving as scenery or, at best, “Noble Savages.” With Embrace of the Serpent, Colombian filmmaker Guerra upended the trope, and unlike his Eurocentric precursors, he did so without denying sympathy to the film’s ostensible antagonists. As the guide Karamakate, both Antonio Bolívar Salvador and Nilbio Torres (as the elderly and young version of the character, respectively) infused the film with resilience and fury in the face of imperialism, making for one of the most intriguing, deeply felt characters in recent memory. The film’s turns from grotesque violence to pervasive stillness were jarring, but resembled shifts of scenery in a dream: as with the two explorers who voyage down the Amazon through the film’s dual timelines, one found themselves too deep into the world of the film to not accept its twists. –Dustin Krcatovich --- 12 American Honey Dir. Andrea Arnold [A24] Where would we be without the promise of the fresh start, the open road? Andrea Arnold’s winding, visually resplendent ode to the American Dream positioned us as witnesses to the reckless journey of Star, an 18-year-old Muskogee runaway who finds a new home for herself on a van full of acne-laden misfits, bumping E-40 as they tear across the country selling bullshit magazines. From the moment the film opened with a passing car bearing the bumper sticker “God Is Coming,” American Honey led us on a mythic trek across the Midwestern United States, with trials and temptations and fleeting moments of love folded in between the suburban desolation and languor. Finding a kindred balance between the desert romance of Badlands and the destructive dreaming of Spring Breakers, American Honey unlocked a rare human sympathy: an understanding of our own common indecency, our basest needs to both be wanted and to be free. As Star slowly finds herself tangled up in the same hustle as the rest of us, a wage slave even in the drift of the endless interstate, American Honey revealed the greater pattern of our lives — always leaping from one trap to the next, caught in a moment just as it begins to fade. –Sam Goldner --- 11 Zootopia Dir. Byron Howard, Rich Moore [Walt Disney] Zootopia’s real clincher is that it isn’t a perfect allegory. It isn’t a parable either. It’s too complex and too incomplete for either of those. Zootopia itself is too big a place. Zootopia’s narrative whirlwind of convoluted, deeply political stories doesn’t remotely represent Zootopia in its entirety, and its creators know this. Zootopia is messy because Zootopia is messy; its characters, its inhabitants (protagonists and antagonists alike) make snap judgments about those who look or act different, create biological narratives that systematically oppress minorities, deviate from norms, and face persecution while taking intersectionality for granted. Zootopia succeeds not because it depicts triumphs, but because it focuses our imaginations on how inequality structures all of our interactions within our REAL communities. That it explores this in so many complex ways is impressive. That it does so while remaining entertaining and hilarious even more so. That its main characters are a talking bunny rabbit cop and a hustling fox couldn’t matter less. –Jackson Scott [pagebreak] --- 10 Toni Erdmann Dir. Maren Ade [Sony Pictures Classics] The cliché is true: watching Toni Erdmann, I laughed and I cried. The tale of an oil industry consultant and the uncomfortable adventure she has with her prankster father during a trip to Bucharest, Maren Ade’s third feature is packed with everything: family melodrama, business intrigue, Whitney Houston karaoke, nudity, Austin Powers fake teeth. At heart, though, this sprawling film is about the simple struggle of communicating with the people you are closest to. Folding together the mundane, the grotesque, the high and the low, Toni Erdmann never loses sight of an almost old-fashioned desire to entertain that keeps the film from slowing down, even as it nears the three-hour mark. It is true magic to see a movie that not only takes seriously adult family relationships, the social gymnastics of being a woman in a male-dominated business, and the cultural displacement of the aging, but also manages to land a great fart gag. You can almost hear a Hollywood remake already being developed for Robert De Niro or whoever, but Ade’s epic family comedy is that rarest of works: indulgent and giving in equal measure, an entire universe of feeling that deserves to be cherished. –Dylan Pasture --- 09 Green Room Dir. Jeremy Saulnier [A24] Jeremy Saulnier’s debut feature Blue Ruin was a year-end-listable beast of a film, but even it couldn’t prepare us for the taut, stately carnage of Green Room. This tense, bloody tale of The Ain’t Rights, a hapless touring band forced to fight their way out of an isolated neo-nazi club, was at once a siege movie to end all siege movies and a love letter to the DIY punk scene. While Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, and Alia Shawkat all delivered standout performances, it was Patrick Stewart who stole the show, playing against type as the sinister Darcy, club-proprietor with a velvet voice and ice-cold blood in his veins. Following the results of the 2016 election, the film has taken on a grim new timeliness. A resurgent white nationalist movement has gained new visibility, bolstered by what they see (correctly or incorrectly) as an ally in the White House. Ideas long thought taboo are gaining fresh currency, threatening to infect right-wing policy as a whole. In 2017, we are all The Ain’t Rights. May we fight as bravely and live to see a brighter morning. –Joe Hemmerling --- 08 Wiener-Dog Dir. Todd Solondz [Amazon Studios/IFC Films] A long trail of dog diarrhea, captured in a long, slow-tracking shot, summarized the ethos of Wiener-Dog, in which Todd Solondz turned the nihilistic rage and bitterness up to 11 for another grimacing comedy of human suffering. Solondz’s career seemed to be in a cul de sac circa Palindromes, but then he roared back to life, experimenting with form and somehow cranking up the contrast even further on his particular point of view. The canine connection between the four segments in Weiner-Dog was nicely abstract and got surreal in the film’s “dog around the world” intermission. Name actors got a chance to play in the darkness: Julie Delpy as a mom who damages her son with spiritual misinformation; Greta Gerwig as a grown-up, utterly self-esteemless Dawn Wiener; Danny DeVito as a stand-in for Solondz, a depessed film professor in a losing battle with soulless students; Ellen Burstyn as a defeated woman who doles out cash and rancor to her codependent granddaughter (Zosia Mamet). Solondz still coats his bitter medicine with a sweet shell of playfulness, but his films have lost the goofy baby fat of Welcome to the Dollhouse, revealing the skeletal souls of his guileless perpetrators and agonized victims. –water --- 07 Certain Women Dir. Kelly Reichardt [IFC Films] Kelly Reichardt has made a career out of mining the subtleties of life on the fringe of society, her characters’ existences marginalized, if not entirely ignored, by corporate America and failed by both private and governmental institutions. With Certain Women, Reichardt returns to the open plains of Montana that she captured so effectively in her feminist Western, Meek’s Cutoff, which are now sparsely populated by chain restaurants and stores serving only to heighten the sense of economic anxiety dominating a community whose way of life has little worth within our current model of late capitalism. Adapting three Maile Meloy short stories for the screen, Reichardt deals explicitly with resolute females whose unflappable tenacity clashes with the various forces aligned to keep them in check. Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, and Kristen Stewart each exceptionally embody a feminine resiliency and fortitude that acts as a corrective to Hollywood’s singularly musclebound vision of female strength. But it is Lily Gladstone’s breakthrough performance, gracefully conveying a quiet dignity in her nascent desire and emotional isolation against Stewart’s icy demeanor in the film’s final segment, that acts as both a unifying coda and a tender, heartbreaking portrait of unrequited love, elevating Certain Women to the level of something truly special. –Derek Smith --- 06 Everybody Wants Some!! Dir. Richard Linklater [Paramount] PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be latched to the centerfield wall and pelted with horsehides, because jesus, freshman, figure it out. It’s the American Dream as sweet-swing college preen, two (!!) exclamations of wisdom and vulgarity matriculating invincible in the lost weekend before classes or life. Is it possible to slice a fastball in half with an axe? Does it matter if it’s not? No plan, no problem; persons attempting to find a moral will be assailed with unrequested advice that only means as much as the meaningfulness you give it (also, I don’t know: too much of this smells like cat piss). Persons looking for a plot just get pop-up as pop song, a frontier fraternity for Mark Twain and John Belushi. There’s self and passion in the tangents between framework, and there’s a real stereo democracy when every voice gets a verse, from the black to the white, the red to the brown, the purple to the yellow. Everybody Wants Some!!, freshman, but maybe nobody gets any if we don’t play this game the right way. Practice is mandatory. Everyone impacts the outcome. Shake your groove thing. Come for a good time, not for a long time. The rest is F-L-Y. –Frank Falisi --- 05 Arrival Dir. Dennis Villeneuve [Paramount] “Abbot is death process.” This four-word sentence alone should be enough for Arrival to earn a place on every critic’s year-end list and at every awards show. It’s amazing on so many levels: (1) screenwriter Eric Heisserer presumably typed that into the script with a straight face; (2) it stayed in the film; (3) in its immediate context, that is, uttered in squid-alien language and translated for us onscreen (in subtitles, if memory serves), its seemingly hokey technicality keeps the film honest to genre, but; (4) it does so while also speaking directly to and illuminating the brainy twist that gives the film its heart and soul. All great sci-fi reveals that the barrier between supposed “high” and “low” art is bullshit; this film arrives at that point with such finesse that you might miss it if you aren’t paying close attention. But then, like the film’s title, this says more about humanity than anything else. “Abbott is death process.” –Samuel Diamond --- 04 The Handmaiden Dir. Chan-wook Park [Magnolia/Amazon Studios] The Handmaiden wasn’t just a daring, prurient thriller. More importantly, this story of two women’s sexual awakening was one of the most tender and moving romances to grace the screen this year or any other. In the beginning, Lady Sideko and Sook-He are separate pawns in a long, twisted con orchestrated by the thief, Count Fujiwara. By the end, the two women have taken control of the narrative and rewritten the ending. The Handmaiden demonstrated the power of stories and imagination, even pornography, to empower and transform our experiences. In one of the film’s central metaphors, an idea gleaned through a pornographic story becomes a catalyst to transformation. Thus, a set of bells, first used as an instrument to abuse the young Lady Sideko, becomes the soundtrack to a joyful erotic coupling. Love, too, performs a kind of magic, allowing inner and outer worlds to collide through the body, in a touch, glance, or embrace. This movie has a lot more to offer than the already slick, glittering veneer it presents. Its undercurrents are far subtler than even most of the positive reviews gave it credit for, and it earned a rightful place in Chan-wook Park’s oeuvre of masterworks. –Kate Blair --- 03 Manchester by the Sea Dir. Kenneth Lonergan [Roadside Attractions/Amazon Studios] Manchester by the Sea imparts a narrative, not so much of family, but of anti-family. Trailers, whispers of the mouth, and other various year-end reviewers could all tell you that the film is a melancholy picture. It has no clear denouement, nor a happy ending, nor is it, of itself, an uplifting experience to be party to. But it is so much more than just a sad story, a simple bildungsroman à clef. A character study of the deeply-wounded men and boys of our past, its immediate shifts in temporality beget a protagonist’s wayward memory and sense of self; it is a detachment and brokenness so profound that it is hard to overcome bearing. It betrays more than its formality, its distinctly New England space-time, and the approaches of its characters, though its mise-en-scène are masterfully clear. Although presenting a rather quaint space, it touches the coward and the stalwart internal and international, beyond the trappings and sentiments of the white working class, beyond those of the outsider. It is a painful portrait, a crying-out of the spirit that never seems to shut off. –S. David --- 02 Moonlight Dir. Barry Jenkins [A24] At this point, is there more to say about Moonlight? In a fractured era, Barry Jenkins’s second feature film received nearly universal acclaim from pretty much everyone who’s seen it (and it’s on this list, which means you should see it). Per some media sources, 2016 was in fact a discordant year that polarized around identity issues of class, race, and sexuality. Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s story of a young black boy’s journey into manhood gracefully danced over these topics, as it charged full speed past the obvious labels and stereotypes that might otherwise define Little/Chiron/Black. The destination: a greater understanding of the human threads that not only connect us to other people, but also to ourselves as complex individuals who construct our own identities over the course of our lives. As complete fucking film snobs, we’ve obviously read about the overwhelming reaction viewers had to Francois Truffaut’s classic 1959 coming-of-age film The 400 Blows, but we’ve perhaps never experienced something close or even equivalent to this in our own lifetimes. Thanks for something, 2016. –Jafarkas --- 01 The Witch Dir. Robert Eggers [A24] Plenty of classic films touch upon witches or witchcraft (Häxan, Rosemary’s Baby, Paradise Lost, The Blair Witch Project), but it wasn’t until The Witch hit screens this year that cinema finally had a quintessential film about witchcraft in the early modern period. Writer-director Robert Eggers relied on folklore archetypes and historical documents to craft a film in which a deeply religious family is beset by the dark forces of witchcraft in 17th-century New England. The film was subtitled “A New England Folktale,” but as Eggers repeatedly stated, period contemporaries would see no difference between the fairy tale world and the real world. They would not consider the idea of witches, curses, and possession fanciful, but instead the very real causes of daily tribulations. So when their crop fails and their youngest disappears while in the care of their oldest (newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy), it’s not a huge leap for the film’s characters to go from blaming a wolf to blaming a witch. From here, you can probably guess what happens next: family trust quickly unravels, crises of faith are had, and increasing paranoia plagues the family until they are (literally) at each other’s throats. The Witch placed its faith in the pre-existing particulars of the folklore (a goat, a hare, the forest, sabbats), with the hope that none of their terror has been dulled in the last 500 years. And first-time director Eggers succeeded by not only relying on these aspects, but also reinforcing them. Eggers, a veteran of the theater, demonstrated an impressive command of film technique and aesthetics. This was made especially clear during a sequence in which he attempted to imbue the forest with evil intentions, beginning with a few establishing shots (accompanied by the atonal score) of the woods that evoked a foreboding quality. It was followed by a sequence used during the vanishing of baby Sam that implicated the forest in his kidnapping, establishing a shot-reverse shot pattern between Thomasin and Sam as they played peek-a-boo, with the sequence’s final shot of the blankets where Sam lay moments ago, which then pans up to reveal the woods in the distance. It is the camera move itself that damns and points at the woods. (The sequence is so great that its on full display in the film’s trailer). And of course, these are the same woods in which Caleb, the purest soul in the family, finds the hovel of the maiden witch and later where Thomasin, after everything has fallen apart, looks for salvation. In fact, execution was nearly perfect across the board. The shot composition and framing showed enough to frighten us, but it also left plenty in the shadows so that we had to fill in the blanks with our nightmares. The color palette, aided mostly by natural light, ensured the film looked as bleak as it felt. The performances (and I’m including Black Phillip’s shallow breathing, scene-stealing rearing among them) made us believe it. And director Eggers produced those performances from a young lead in her first credited role, several child actors, and a God-damned goat. Maybe it was because The Witch was confident enough to avoid deliberate ambiguity or retreating behind a Shyamalan twist. Maybe it was because it’s a feminist parable or an allegory about how society, shouting “Guilty until proven innocent!,” turns us into the monsters it accused us of being. Or maybe The Witch was our favorite film of the year for its ability to weave the disparate strands of a historical film and a genre film into a tight tapestry of folklore and terror that never ripped from the strain. The Witch was not just a great genre movie or an exceptional period piece, but also a nearly flawless film. It was the quintessential witchcraft film we didn’t know we were missing. Sign your name in its book. We did. –Jeff Miller http://j.mp/2kbl7lj