#nathan lister

[tsarisfanfiction]

Family Reunion

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family Characters: Apollo, Lee, Will, Michael, Cabin Seven Apollo-as-Lester wakes up for the first time in Cabin Seven. Having children older than him is just plain wrong, thanks. TOApril day 11 - First Meeting! This is set in the aftermath of an AU of mine that I haven't yet written, and for the sake of avoiding spoiling the whole premise of that AU before I do write and post it, there is a distinct lack of explanation hanging around, oops.

Apollo jerked awake, his breathing shallow and rapid while his weak, mortal body trembled and sweated in a broadcast of distress to anyone in the vicinity – and any hope that his immediate vicinity was, in fact, vacant of company was immediately dashed into tiny pieces by the gentle touch on his forehead.

It was cool, which meant that either they ran cold or Apollo was running hot (and yes, Apollo was always hot, in both senses of the word, but Lester was not, a fact he was still struggling to come to terms with).  Apollo did not consider that a good sign, although the gentleness of the touch at least suggested it was no-one meaning immediate harm.

“Can you open your eyes?” they asked – a familiar voice, and while the identity of the owner currently escaped Apollo (an alarming fact, given Apollo wasn’t used to forgetting sounds, or anything at all), he was reasonably confident that it belonged to a male.  “Blink once for yes.”

There was a wryness to the voice, a thread that might be light-hearted at the joke.

“What if I cannot?” he asked, cringing at the raspy slur that came out of his mouth.

“Well, you can always just tell me that,” his companion pointed out, and Apollo might feel half-deaf but he could still tell there was a new note to the voice – one associated with relief.  “But given I know you’re awake, I’d rather you at least tried before giving up.”

Rather annoyingly, he had a point – and Apollo was also getting rather fed up with not being able to place the owner of the voice by aural clues alone.  He knew he knew that voice.

His eyes resisted opening, perhaps basking in the chance to be lazy for the first time since crash landing in a dumpster and becoming the servant of one Meg McCaffrey, but his companion had more or less asked nicely, so Apollo persevered until his eyelids cracked open and he could make some sense of his surroundings.

The elegant ceiling was the first thing to catch his attention, simple but homely.  It was also vaguely familiar, a feeling that increased as more of the cabin – because that was clearly what he was in – came into focus.  Plain white walls, simple wooden bunk beds, and wide windows with heart-achingly familiar yellow flowers blooming along the sills.

“Curse of Delos,” he rasped, digging a clumsy elbow into the soft material beneath him until he could force his unwilling sack of mortal flesh into something resembling a sitting position, although perhaps a pathetic recline would be a more accurate description.

“Your flowers,” his companion agreed.  “They’ve grown here for as long as I can remember.”

Finally, Apollo’s sight landed on the companion in question.  A young man, tragically older than Lester’s body by a couple of years, with short, honey blond hair and eyes closer to green than blue was perched on the edge of the cot he had awoken in.  His face was thin and drawn, a little too much to be strictly healthy, and there was dark shading around his eyes as though his eyelids had forgotten how not to have bags.

It was a sight that made Apollo’s already aching body ache a little bit more, because it was wrong.  So much of it was wrong, more wrong than right, although he’d seen those eyes before, set into the face of a first chair violinist in the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

“Lee,” he said, the name escaping him in as a breath.  His son – and the fact that his body was physically younger than that of his son’s was one of the things that was so, so, wrong – gave him a glimmer of a smile, tired and weary but a twitch of the corner of his mouth nonetheless.

“Hi, Dad,” he said.  “It’s good to see you again.”

Apollo couldn’t help the scoff that wrestled its way out of his choked up throat, because how could anything be nice about his current situation.  “Is it?” he asked despondently.

“Yes,” Lee said without hesitation.  “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great that you’re mortal now, but I’ll take that over not knowing.”

He didn’t specify what he didn’t what to not know, but even Apollo’s patchy mortal memory could put together enough of the pieces that he couldn’t really argue that point.

Or perhaps more importantly, that arguing that point would only drag Lee’s mental state down further, and his son didn’t need to suffer any more.

He pushed himself up further, internally grumbling at his reluctant body as it begrudgingly obeyed.  Lee’s hand dropped from his forehead, but settled on his arm instead, a cool touch to Apollo’s forearm.  His son had thick, soft wrist warmers on each wrist, the flicker of gold barely visible beneath the long sleeves of his hoodie.  Had he always liked those?  Apollo couldn’t remember.

Instead of letting on just how many holes his memory seemed to have, enough to make his mind a fully functional sieve, no doubt, he turned his thoughts elsewhere.  “Where’s Meg?”

The smile that crept across Lee’s face was fond.  “Making friends,” he said.  “Connor’s going to need an eyepatch for a few days, and Sherman’s going to be walking with a limp for a while after that kick to the crotch.”  He sounded amused.

Apollo couldn’t say he was surprised, given his brief but intense crash course in the consequences of spending time in the personal space of Meg McCaffrey, but he had to ask.  “Making friends?”

Lee’s smile grew.  “Michael was the same when he was her age,” he said.  “And she’s Kayla’s age.  Either those three are going to tear each other to pieces, or become a gremlin trio.  They’ll be fine.”

He seemed wholly unconcerned at the prospect of Meg potentially tearing apart other demigods – or other demigods tearing Meg apart.  Then again, the necklace around his neck was laden with beads, reminding Apollo that Lee was as close as an expert to camp dynamics as any demigod.

The cabin door crept open and quiet feet pattered across the floor, accelerating the closer they got to him until there was another blond young man in his eyeline, this one still a teenager, although still too close to Apollo’s mortal age for comfort.  “You’re awake!” he said, his hands immediately reaching for Apollo’s head.  “How are you feeling?  I tried to heal you, but-”

“Take a breath, Will,” Lee interrupted him gently, the hand that wasn’t still resting on Apollo’s arm coming to wrap around his younger brother’s shoulders.  “He can’t answer you if you’re still talking.”  Will – his hair had the exact same curl around the ears that that Texan country singer had had, this was her son – obediently silenced, and Apollo found himself the recipient of twin expectant looks.

If he hadn’t already known the two of them were brothers, he would’ve realised then.  Lee’s eyes were greener than Will’s pure blue, and of course he was about five years older, but the look was identical.

“I ache,” he admitted, his voice whining pathetically.  “I have acne and flab.”

“Welcome to mortal teenagerhood,” Lee said wryly, as Will gaped.  “Will, want to give him the rundown?”

“Swollen nose but not broken,” Apollo’s younger son – and Olympus he was not going to be getting used to this teenage son being a similar age to his body, let alone the son that looked to be more or less out of his teenager years and into full adulthood being obviously older – reported.  “Your ribs were cracked but are healing well, and your vital signs are all good for a mortal.”  His voice broke on the last word, and to Apollo’s alarm, his eyes started to dampen.  “I gave you nectar,” he admitted, his voice shaking.  “I didn’t know- your lips started smoking-”

Lee tugged him closer, rubbing his hand along Will’s arm.  “We didn’t know,” he assured him quietly, but that didn’t stop Will’s lip from quivering.  “It’s not your fault.”

Apollo distantly hoped that that explained his fire-and-brimstone-esque nightmare.

“I take it Meg didn’t think to tell you,” he said instead, and got a fond head shake from Lee.

“I think she was too busy screeching at us to remember to give medical critical information,” he said.  “Connor and Sherman winding her up didn’t help.”

“She’s waiting outside,” Will added.  “Along with everyone else.”

As if on cue, the door slammed open, the person responsible clearly not particularly caring that Apollo might have still been passed out.  It was exactly the sort of behaviour Apollo thought Meg would be capable of, but while the height of the figure was about right, the black hair was too long, and there was a distinct lack of glinty rhinestone glasses.

They were also, unmistakably, another boy.

In his wake trailed several other figures, all taller but something told Apollo they were all younger, too.  It might have been the impressive collection of beads around his neck, or – and Apollo was going to persuade himself it was the second option – his memory wasn’t so terrible that he didn’t recognise more of his children, even if some of the newcomers were also the same age or older than his Lester-body.

It took him longer than he liked to put names to faces, but at least they did come, before he had to face the awkwardness of admitting he’d forgotten any of his children.  The two African-American boys, both in their early teens and blessedly younger than Apollo’s current state still, were Elias and Austin – Elias with the long locs, and Austin with the intricate cornrows – while the third boy, the one with a permanent limp and a strangely-dangling jacket sleeve, to say nothing of the trio of slashing scars across one side of his face, was Nathan.  The older girl, liberally freckled with her hair dangling in brown bunches, was Joy, and he was pretty certain the youngest of the group with hair the colour of Greek fire was Kayla.

Then there was the oldest teenager at the head of the pack, striding forwards with all the confidence of someone that was going to get his answers, regardless of anyone else’s wishes – or Apollo’s injuries.

Michael came to a stop next to Will, flanking his younger brother and just about in arm’s reach of Lee if the young man chose to reach out any further, and Apollo found himself fixed with an unimpressed look.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

[esqueletosgays]

BEAU IS AFRAID (2023)

Director: Ari Aster Cinematography: Pawel Pogorzelski

[purpletrashcans]

(excluding Nick, Charlie and Tori because i want the others to have a chance too, but i obviously love them)

[ruleof3bobby]

BEAU IS AFRAID (2023) Grade: C-

The good; Phenomenal cinematography. The bad; it mostly 3 hours of rambling. It's visually stimulating but has a disappointing ending.

[brokehorrorfan]

Beau Is Afraid will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 11 via Lionsgate. The 2023 surrealist horror-comedy-drama is available on Digital via A24.

Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) writes and directs. Joaquin Phoenix stars with Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Parker Posey, Kylie Rogers, Hayley Squires, Michael Gandolfini, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Richard Kind.

Special features are listed below.

Special features:

Finally Home: Making Beau Is Afraid

A paranoid man embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother in this bold and ingeniously depraved new film from writer/director Ari Aster.

Pre-order Beau Is Afraid.

[letterboxd-loggd]

Beau Is Afraid (2023) Ari Aster

June 17th 2023

[laserpinksteam]

Film after film: Beau Is Afraid (dir. Ari Aster, 2023)

Another masterpiece by Aster, who shifts gears, fascinatingly, with every film. This one comes after massively popular and liked two films, and, for some reason, there's absolute clarity around it not ever approaching these levels. It's not a pop song anymore, though it plays plenty of catchy tunes. As usual, Aster has an amazing cast, led by predictably (which is not a bad thing) charismatic Phoenix, whose strained and exhausted fragility nicely bounces off of his softer and emotionally intense takes in Her and C'mon C'mon. So it's thanks to his take on Beau that the film offers this possibly frustrating but incredibly fascinating chasm: everyone around him does different shades of comedy. Posey, always my favorite player, of whom I cannot turn my eyes away, starts in the immediate soft emotional cadence to eventually turns master-whacky-comic. Ryan and Lane are beautifully hysterical, threatening, emotionally generous, and clueless to what they, as characters, do to Beau, whom they technically want take care of. Kind and particularly Lupone are bolts of dead seriousness, which, due to its pathos, quickly becomes and stops being funny. Lupone should land dozens of similarly rich roles, she's amazing. This film is very rich, it has a beautiful animated sequence in the middle, it's touching, tiring, stifling, and beautiful. I remember craving exactly this from Aronofsky's mother!, but instead I got post-traumatic goosebumps.

[screenzealots]

"Beau is Afraid"

A wonderfully weird, polarizing film that stretches the outer limits of neurotic self-indulgence. It's both too abstract yet packed with clunky metaphors and overt symbolism, but it strikes gold and finds success more often than not.

Artists often use their work as an outlet to wrestle with their personal demons and the more haunted corners of their psyche, and “Beau is Afraid” is like a long, distressing therapy session for writer-director Ari Aster. His film about a fortysomething paranoid man named Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) who embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother (Patti LuPone) is self-indulgent to a fault.…

[twenty-words-or-less]

Beau Is Afraid

Summary: Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix) does everything he can to make his way to his mother's (Patti LuPone) funeral after her apparent death.

Aster’s Babylon in terms of scope, length, departure from previous style(s), and difficult commercial appeal. Nice break from fire, though.

Rating: 3.25/5

Photo credit: Vanity Fair

[ramascreen]

Watch This Official Trailer For Ari Aster’s BEAU IS AFRAID Starring Joaquin Phoenix

Watch This Official Trailer For Ari Aster’s BEAU IS AFRAID Starring Joaquin Phoenix

Ari Aster’s highly anticipated return, BEAU IS AFRAID starring Academy Award Winner Joaquin Phoenix, is here. From the mind that brought you HEREDITARY and MIDSOMMAR, comes an epic new odyssey also starring Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Parker Posey, and Patti LuPone. Watch the first trailer below. — ONLY IN THEATERS APRIL 21 —   A paranoid man embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother in…

[tsarisfanfiction]

Remembrance

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort Characters: Kayla, Apollo, Michael Human memories fade, and details get forgotten. Godly memories don't, and Apollo will always help his children, if they ask. TOApril Day 30 - Fading Memories. Longest fic of the month to round this TOApril up! Once again it took me a while to work out what I wanted to do with this one, but I definitely need more Apollo&Kayla and also more Kayla&Michael content in my life, so that's where this ended up. There's also a few easter eggs in here for some of my other fics, for the observant/readers with good memories!

Kayla huffed, dragging the box out from underneath the bench.  Damn musicians, shoving all their stuff in the area that was supposed to be her nook, and especially damn the musicians that were also head counsellors that had enabled it.

Also Will, because Will hadn’t been a musician but he’d still let it happen (and Michael, but Kayla would always forgive Michael anything).  No more.  Kayla was head counsellor now, and even if it was only for her final year in camp, this nook at the back of the cabin was going to at least have space for her to stuff all the annoying things like chore schedules.

She wasn’t Austin, or Alice, or Will (or Michael).  She wasn’t having that stuff in her personal part of the cabin, stressing her out with duty­-based things in her safe, stress-free bunk.  Not a chance.  It could get banished to the back of the cabin like she knew other cabins did, for her to pick up when she had to and ignore when she didn’t.

Well, Kayla was realistic.  She wasn’t going to get all of the instruments out of there; there was an entire orchestra’s worth, at least, and several of them were large and heavy, or otherwise not easily moveable – she sent the harp and the full sized drum kits a half-hearted glare, knowing full well that she was never going to win a fight with those particular sisters over the placement of their main instruments.  Still, she could at least clear the flutes that hadn’t been used in years – Kayla didn’t think she’d ever seen any of them come out – off of the desk and find a different cranny to stow them in.

The same went for the crates worth of sheet music stowed under the desk, which was what she was currently trying to wrangle.  For being simple sheets of music, they got heavy when there was a lot of them, rather like a whole pile of target faces all at once, and it took more than a bit of pulling and shoving before she got them moved over enough that she could pull a chair up and sit in it without her legs being crammed against crates.

Well, almost.  She growled as her feet kicked against another one, and ducked back down under the desk to see if she could push that one further back, outside of accidental kicking range.

It refused to, so with another grumble she started to yank it forwards instead, not quite sure where she was going to move it to but determined that it wasn’t going to stay in too-close kicking reach.  Kayla wasn’t tall like Austin or Jerry but she also wasn’t short like Yan and needed some leg room while she was doing head counsellor things.

When it finally came out, it was covered in dust, enough to make her nose itch.  It also wasn’t sheet music, like she’d expected.  Nor was it spare archery targets, which she would’ve been delighted to find – they were forever running out of those.

It was full of photographs.

Curious, she picked one up, puffing until the dust shifted.  There were two boys in the photo – one young and gap-toothed, and the other… well, still young, but maybe at least a teenager.  He had a lot of beads for someone Kayla guessed might be thirteen or so, but the younger kid – and he was really young, definitely nowhere near double digits – didn’t have a camp necklace at all.  He had familiar blond waves and blue eyes, though, and Kayla realised it had to be Will, back when he’d been the baby of the cabin.  The older boy must have been one of their siblings, with his own blond hair and darker blue-green eyes, but Kayla didn’t recognise him.

She set that one down and picked up another, wiping the dust off against her sleeve.  This time, the faces were more familiar, more blond kids, but ones she knew she’d seen before.  Their names didn’t come to her, but she was pretty certain that if she read through the names on the first bead of her necklace, she’d make the connections again.  Unlike baby Will and the unnamed boy, these two were more rough and tumble, with the girl having the boy in a headlock while he clearly fought to get out of it.  Both of them were laughing, though, and the camera was held at an angle, as if the photographer had been laughing too hard to keep it steady, too.

The third photograph made her freeze when the dust came off.

It was her, from behind.  Her hair had been freshly dyed, with no sign of her natural colour at all, and Kayla had only dyed her hair like that for a short time before deciding she preferred to keep the crown of her head visibly ginger.  She was at the archery range, bow in one hand and  gesturing wildly with the other.  Next to her, also with their back to the camera, was someone with black hair in a short pony tail, more or less the same height as eleven year old Kayla – gods, this had been taken six years ago – and gesturing back at her.

She didn’t recognise them.  Not really.  She knew who it was – of course she did, it was Michael, and she was sure she’d always remember the way he kept his hair tied back like that – but what she recognised was his bow, the beautiful horn horse bow that now lived in the attic of the Big House.

Staring at the photograph, she was suddenly hit with the realisation that she didn’t remember his face.  She didn’t remember his voice, either.  She remembered him being her big brother, that he’d spent hours and hours with her at the range, better than any of the Olympic archers Da had coached but completely disinterested in competition shooting, but she couldn’t remember his face.

Kayla had no idea what colour his eyes had been.  If he’d had bangs or if his hair was all swept back into the ponytail.  Details that felt like they should never be forgotten, but she couldn’t remember them.

Logically, she knew she’d only known Michael for a few months, which was basically no time at all compared to the length of time she’d since spent at camp, but with how often his name still flittered through her thoughts, it felt like she ought to remember him better than that.

It hurt, to realise that she didn’t.

Kayla dived back into the box, trying to find more photographs of him.  There were a lot where there was a blur of black hair in the corner, or turning away, or with his back to the camera.  She even found one with a younger-looking Alice braiding his hair, but Michael hadn’t been looking at the camera then, either.  He’d been looking back at Alice as best he could without turning his head.

Still, it was the clearest one she’d found so far, and she cleared away more streaks of dust with her fingers until it was clean.

Seeing Michael with Alice reminded her that she was the only camper left in their cabin, now that Austin had left, that had met Michael.  Raphael and Emma had arrived the next summer, and everyone else was even later than that.  There was no-one else to show the photograph to and reminisce with, or try to remember with.

Okay, maybe she could go to Chiron, but as great as Chiron was, it didn’t feel right.  Chiron hadn’t been any closer to Michael than he was to any other camper, she didn’t think.  She didn’t know how he could have been.  It wasn’t like he was family, really, although she was pretty sure he and Apollo-

Apollo.  Dad.

Her dad, Michael’s dad.

She didn’t even finish thinking it through before she called him, startled when her voice sounded thick, like she’d been crying.  She didn’t think she’d been crying.

The instant appearance of her dad, and the way he immediately wiped tears from her face, told her that she had been.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her, sitting cross-legged in the small patch of floor that wasn’t covered in photographs or musician things.  It put him right in her personal space, but Kayla never minded that with her dad.  Either of them, actually.

“I found these,” she said, waving photographs in his face.  One of them was the first one she’d found, with her and Michael.  Another was the one with Alice.  “And I don’t… I don’t remember him, Dad.”  A sob erupted from her throat.  “I’ve always said he was my favourite brother, but I don’t… I don’t remember him!”

Part of her waited for him to poke her in the chest and tell her that actually, she did remember him.  That he was in her heart, her favourite brother, and it didn’t matter if she couldn’t remember the exact shade of his eyes, or whether he usually had bangs.  That was the sort of sappy thing people usually said, after all.

But he didn’t.  He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her against his side, tucked under his arm like she was younger than she was, like she wasn’t now the most senior Apollo kid in camp.

“Do you want me to talk about him?” he offered, and her head snapped to look at him.

“Yes,” she said, latching onto the offer like it was a lifeboat.  “Yes, Dad.”

He chuckled, quietly enough that it didn’t feel like he was laughing at her.  “Okay,” he said, and plucked the photo of her and Michael from her fingers.  She barely felt it go.  “Michael was a fighter.  And I don’t just mean because of the war, or his arguments with Clarisse – and he got into a lot of those with her.  He was a fighter because he had something to fight for.”  Kayla felt Apollo squeeze her shoulders.  “You.”

The noise that escaped her was both unladylike – not that she cared – and very startled.  “Me?”

Apollo gave a one shouldered shrug.  “Well, his siblings.  All of you,” he admitted.  “Michael was always one for loving deeply, when he let someone in.  He had a reputation for being harsh and prickly, especially with other campers, but beneath the thorns was a massive heart with so much love to give out, if they could make him believe they were worth it.”

“I don’t remember him being prickly,” Kayla admitted.  “Except for the arguments with Clarisse.”

Apollo gave another chuckle.  “He was always arguing with Clarisse,” he said, sounding fond.  “That started his first day at camp and never stopped.  Then again, I probably didn’t help matters,” he added, and that sounded sheepish.

Kayla twisted in his grip to look at him, astonished.  “What did you do?” she demanded.  Apollo’s smile definitely twisted into something sheepish.

“I claimed him,” he said, and Kayla frowned, because of course he did.

“How-?”

“I claimed him because he shot her in the thigh,” he clarified, and she felt her jaw drop.  “It was the first time they’d met, and both of them were very volatile back when they were that age, more so than by the time you got here.  They got into a fight, and well.  It was the first time Michael had ever held a bow, and it was a beautiful shot.  How could I not claim him for it?”

“You claimed him… because he shot Clarisse?” Kayla repeated slowly, trying to wrap her head around that.  In some ways, it made sense.  In other ways, it really didn’t.  Then she registered the other thing he’d said.  “Wait.  He’d never held a bow before camp?  Really?”

The one thing she definitely did remember was how amazing an archer Michael had been.  It was the sort of skill that came from being an archer from the moment he was old enough to hold a bow – Kayla should know, she had the same skill – not from being a preteen, or maybe even a teenager, before ever touching one.  Actually… “how old was he?”

“He was nine, at the time.”  There was a story there, Kayla could tell, but Apollo didn’t show any signs of expanding on it, and she decided it wasn’t worth asking.

Demigods didn’t turn up at camp that young without a reason, and the reason was never a good one.  Kayla didn’t need to know what Michael’s was.  She didn’t want to know.

“He was amazing at archery,” she said, instead, and Apollo smiled fondly.

“That he was,” he agreed.  “He could out shoot some of my sister’s Hunters.  They hated him for it.”  Kayla could imagine that – Thalia and Reyna were chill, but some of the Hunters were definitely snobbish over their perceived archer superiority.  It was one of the reasons Kayla kept rejecting their recruitment pitches; they didn’t like being challenged by an archer who didn’t wear Artemis’ silver colours.  She bet it was even worse with a boy.

“Serves them right,” she muttered, and leant back against her dad’s side again, reclaiming the photo of Michael and Alice.  “I remember him being an amazing archer,” she admitted.  “And his arguments with Clarisse.  I just…  I wish his face hadn’t faded.”  She tapped at the photograph with a chipped nail.  “The photographs aren’t clear enough.”

“I can make them clearer, if you want,” Apollo offered, and Kayla didn’t know how but she wasn’t going to turn down a chance to re-memorise Michael’s face.  Properly, this time.  She nodded.

Apollo held up a hand in front of them, palm up and loosely cupped, and hummed lightly.

Whatever Kayla had expected, it wasn’t for a ball of light to convalesce in front of them, swirling and shifting until Michael appeared in front of them, perching on the box full of dusty and abandoned photographs.

Kayla had forgotten how short he was.

She’d seen it in the photograph, how a sixteen year old Michael had been the same height as an eleven year old Kayla, but being seventeen herself now – gods, she was older than Michael when he’d died – and more or less fully grown it was stark, seeing him in front of her and realising that he really had been tiny.

He didn’t say anything, probably because he wasn’t real, just Apollo manipulating the light until it showed her her big brother again.  Still, there was life in the way he looked like he was sitting, one leg straight down and the other knee raised up, foot on the edge of the box he was perched on, with one elbow resting on the knee.  He wasn’t looking directly at them, but he was focused on something that only the apparition could see, and it was good enough for Kayla to finally, finally, remember the exact shade of brown his eyes had been.

He didn’t have bangs, either.  There were some loose hairs that didn’t quite reach back into his ponytail that stuck out a little, but no bangs.  He did have earrings, though, a single golden stud in the ear lobe.

Kayla had forgotten he’d had those.  She wasn’t sure if she’d ever noticed them when he was alive and she’d taken his presence for granted, unlike the way she was drinking every detail in now, because this felt like a last chance.

Mortals weren’t supposed to dwell in the past.

Something warm dripped onto her cheek and she glanced up on instinct to see silent tears rolling slowly down her father’s face as he looked at the apparition he’d created.  It was a comfort, to know that she wasn’t the only one affected by it.

Still, her eyes were drawn back to Michael, the ephemeral sight that wouldn’t last forever.  His mouth was twisted into a slight smirk, confidence pouring off of him from his expression to his pose, and even though he looked small and young in a way Kayla knew he hadn’t when he’d still been alive and she’d been five years younger than him, rather than a year older, it felt right.  Familiar.  She was sure she’d seen that expression on that face many times before.

Apollo gave a shuddering breath, and raised his hand towards Michael again.  His fingertips dipped into the illusion, and it rippled slightly.  Kayla knew what was coming, and refused to look away as, slowly, Michael faded from sight again.

“It’s good to remember,” Apollo said hoarsely as her brother disappeared.  Kayla wondered if she was supposed to feel worse, losing him again, but instead she thought it felt more like closure.  “But don’t get trapped in the past.  Keep looking forwards.”  He squeezed her arm.  “You’ve got a future ahead of you, and if he was still with us, Michael would be the first to tell you that you’ve got that Olympic gold in the bag next summer.”

Kayla remembered archery lessons with him, being pushed past anything Da had ever tried with her, because he’d known she could keep up, even back then.  “He would,” she agreed.  “I miss him, Dad.  I know I only knew him for a few months, but… I miss him.”

“I know,” Apollo said.  “So do I.”  He reached out and picked up some of the other photos, of familiar and semi-familiar and unfamiliar faces.  “I miss all of them.”

Kayla plucked another one from the floor – the one with the two blonds wrestling.  Both of them had died in Manhattan, she was more certain of that, now.  Siblings she’d known but not for long enough, although with her mind in reminiscing mode she found names finally climbing to the front of her memory.  Nathan and Robyn.  She didn’t think she’d ever seen one without the other.

Looking at them, with their semi-familiar faces, and the other photos still strewn around from her frantic hunt for pictures of Michael’s face, she found an idea forming in the back of her mind, and she barely let it finish before she spoke.

“Dad?”

He hummed, turning his head towards her.

“Help me put these up on the walls?”  She gestured to the box.  It wasn’t like it was doing anything except getting in her way under the desk, and photographs deserved to be looked at.  Her siblings deserved to be remembered, not stashed away and forgotten.

He stared at her for a moment, clearly not expecting the request, before his whole body softened.

“I’d love to.”

[movienized-com]

Beau Is Afraid (2023)

Jahr: 2023 (April) Genre: Comedy / Drama / Horror Regie: Ari Aster Hauptrollen: Joaquin Phoenix, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zoe Lister-Jones, Armen Nahapetian, Parker Posey, Patti LuPone… Filmbeschreibung: Beau (Joaquin Pheonix) ist erfolgreicher Unternehmer und leidet zugleich an einer schweren Paranoia, die nicht zuletzt sehr wahrscheinlich im Zusammenhang mit seiner…

[cinemacentral666]

Beau is Afraid (2023)

Movie #1,172 • SPOOKY MONTH 2023

Listen to my "podcast" review that I recorded on my phone driving home from Philadelphia immediately after seeing this in the theater on Thursday, June the 8th...

I think this movie is an excellent exercise in being able to accept a piece of art as both an indulgent, sloppy mess and uncompromising masterpiece; these things feel part and parcel in this case. All of the elements, and especially the most insane scenes/choices, feel crucial to the greater point: the unknowable and weird bigness inherent in the mystery of the child-mother relationship.

On the one hand, the themes are bludgeoning you to the death, but there also seems to be a layered puzzle lurking in the background. It feels almost too obvious to say this is begging you to pick through the background, to find clues hidden in the various threads/settings, either to figure out 'what's really going on' or to expand on the motifs and messaging; a single glance at Reddit will show you comment threads within comments threads that seem to go on forever. This level of attention to detail, regardless of how much is window dressing and/or dead ends, is remarkably admirable and clearly part of Ari Aster's intentions (imo! I can totally see how this would be off-putting/pretentious as well). I would go as far to say that I wish ALL movies were made with this much care and love and psychotic precision (even if the latter is, in part, something of a mirage).

But you know what? Despite it screaming at you to examine it, to discuss it endlessly, I found it to be genuinely entertaining and funny throughout. Some lines of dialogues and abrupt moments/cuts almost come off like non-sequiturs or Tim and Eric level absurdism. So in this sense, there seems like a real danger/futility in over-analyzing it. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a bait and switch — I love digging into a film with repeat viewings — but it also seems like one could (and maybe should) try submitting to the craziness and just enjoying the ride.

(Ed. Note: Because I've added the quarter-star system to this new scoring system, I think it's fitting/funny to give this a 9.75 but I think it's spiritually a 10. Jeffy Too Tens strikes again!)

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¾

[rickchung]

Beau Is Afraid (dir. Ari Aster).

Joaquin Phoenix stars in a three-hour-long nightmare fuelled fever dream of middle-aged anxieties unfolding as a series of existential crises steeped in maternal Jewish neuroses. It's an artfully thoughtful and the ultimate definition of a tough watch. Aster's surrealist vision of upsetting tragicomedy is a disorienting experience.

[watchingalotofmovies]

Beau Is Afraid

Beau Is Afraid    [trailer]

Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic, Kafkaesque odyssey back home.

Great trailer, and the movie, a never ending nightmare, has some wonderfully bizarre moments. But the story stretched to three hours is rather self-indulgent, after a while it just feels like more of the same. It's funny at times, but if I want to see a film with a story line in a similar vein I very much prefer the much funnier and a lot shorter A Serious Man from the Coen Brothers.

It made me also think of Iñárritu's recent Bardo. Virtuoso film-making, but I think it would be better if there's someone to tell them when to stop.