#this is all followed by the world's worst and most crunchy curry

[heretherebedork]

I have been thinking about this all weekend.

About Segasaki constantly controlling himself in front of everyone... except for Yoh.

Controlling himself constantly, always wearing a mask, always pretending to be not just fine but happy and not just happy but to be their friend and not just their friend but to trust them and yet there was none of that.

Segasaki has spent his entire life controlling himself and wearing a mask and pretending to be who he is not but he has been trying not to do that with Yoh.

And what to him is taking off a mask and being himself is, to Yoh, proof that he cares more about everyone else in his life than Yoh because he is nice to them, he smiles for them, he talks to them, he seems to share so much more with them than with Yoh.

But it's all mask. A lie. Meticulous control at every moment.

And that's the problem.

Segasaki is constantly covering up his feelings and thoughts and controlling every aspect of himself... except with Yoh.

He isn't just covering up his emotions, he's hiding that he's sick enough to need support getting home. His weakness, his feelings, his true self, everything is locked behind a mask the moment he walks out the door or sees someone besides Yoh.

(We always see it in the show because Segasaki away from Yoh is so, so different. But Yoh wants that version of him because he doesn't understand that he's getting the real version and everyone else gets the mask. Because Yoh thinks he's getting the cruel version and everyone else is getting the better version because he doesn't understand. Because he's never been told and he's got his own issues with anxiety and depression and masks.)

Yoh might have fallen at first sight but it was Segasaki who fell much, much harder. Because Yoh found someone beautiful and captivated him but Segasaki found someone who let him take off his mask and be himself.

Now he just has to convince Yoh that who he is when they're together isn't the angrier or more hurtful version of the person he sees with everyone else but rather the real version of himself made of love and freedom and the need to care for Yoh and to be cared for in return, to be given a safe place for both of them to be vulnerable and themselves.

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Aquaman

My first film of 2019 and oh boy is it a doozy. Here’s the thing - I know it's gonna be bad when people keep telling me, "I can't wait for your review for this one." That does not inspire confidence in quality filmmaking because, I think we can all agree, the reviews are most beloved when I am being a petty bitch. So it’s time for 2018′s last big tentpole superhero adventure, DC’s solo Aquaman movie, starring Human Sex God Jason Momoa and Amber Heard doing shockingly bad Little Mermaid cosplay. See, Momoa plays Arthur Curry, the son of the queen of Atlantis and a mere mortal lighthouse keeper, so he has the heritage and the birthright to take the throne of Atlantis from his scheming brother (Patrick Wilson) and unite the land and the sea, if he wants to that is (he doesn’t.) There’s a lot going on here that could be wildly entertaining if handled right, so the real question is does this movie, ahem, sink or swim? Well...

It’s a tangled mess of yes and no, but honestly the problems DC has making a movie of the caliber we KNOW superhero movies are capable of sinks this whole ship. Call the Heartbreakers, cause I’m about to get Tom Petty up in this bitch.

Our story begins with a voiceover about the hero’s parents because that’s always a good sign. The Queen of Atlantis, Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) washes up on shore and enjoys some light Stockholm Syndrome with Tom, a lighthouse keeper in Maine (Temuera Morrison), leading to the birth of Arthur Curry, aka our main Aqua type Dude (Jason Momoa). Some Atlantisians - Atlantians? That just sounds like they’re from Atlanta. Some sea people come to forcibly take Nicole Kidman home after at least 2 years, like wow are these people bad at tracking their queen, but then suddenly they just know where she is? And she’s like “I have to go back, they will always find me” um well not for at least 2 years they won’t, ma’am. Anyway so she heads back into the sea and Tom is left to raise baby Arthur alone until he’s probably 8 or 9 and then the sea people’s vizier (Willem Defoe) comes to land and starts training Arthur how to do sea people stuff because he’s heir to the throne. But it’s pretty clear Nicole Kidman is no longer in Atlantis and he’s not allowed to see her...and everyone’s really mad at her for having a “half-breed” son with a land-dweller. So why is Willem Defoe here training him like a half-melted wax figurine of Mr. Miyagi? HANDWAVEY DISTRACTION so anyway, now Arthur’s all grown up doing Aquaman shit but like on the DL, cause he doesn’t want to be all obvious about it. His forced love interest Mera (Amber Heard) comes to Maine to tell him that his half-brother King Orm is planning a huge war against the land-dwellers in order to become Ocean Master and the only way to stop him is to find this Sacred Trident and take his rightful place as king. Honestly a bunch of other shit happens too but if you’re as hung up as I am on the Ocean Master thing, I think we can all agree we have enough info to proceed. 

Some thoughts and also questions because this movie demands questions:

As I’m sure you can guess, the script is just....it’s just so bad. Within the first 15 minutes, we got to hear the following exchange - Nicole Kidman, crying and marveling at the wetness on her face: "Our tears are always taken by the sea." Tom: "Not here. Here we feel them." This is meant to be a scene in which a woman is leaving the love of her life and her infant child, presumably forever. And we got sea tears. 

The gravity with which the phrases "ocean master" and "sacred trident" are spoken is just something I was not emotionally prepared to deal with. This makes it sound like I can’t handle Maguffins in comic book movies which I absolutely can! But it helps if they at least sound otherworldly or mysterious. Ocean Master sounds like a game of I Spy you made up at SeaWorld to get your little nephew Caydlen to stop trying to crawl into the touch tank.

Every location is SOMEWHERE IN THE ____ SEA. I understand that the ocean is vast and contains multitudes. But you can’t be any more specific than that? You can’t be any more specific than that ten times?

I like how, at one point, there is scientist on cable news talking about the existence of Atlantis, and he is being depicted as SO crazy that the audience is meant to think he's ridiculous when we literally know he's telling the truth. The conspiracy theories he’s touting are the exact thing that is going on in the movie, but he comes across as a fool because...we’re....meant to feel foolish? For believing in Atlantis? Does no one work in marketing at DC or Warner Brothers? I’m legitimately asking whose choice this was.

This is all coming across as very negative, so let’s focus on some good. 1) Jason Momoa. The man is basically a human god, so the casting is excellent - he’s funny, he’s disarming, he’s cool, he’s the bad boy you wanna take home to mom. He plays the part excellently and even manages to make some of the world’s clunkiest dialogue sound kind of ok. 

2) Some sequences really, really work - the trench sequence was a particular fave, and I think speaks mostly to director James Wan’s horror movie street cred. It was visually rich, atmospheric, and terrifying. 

That’s pretty much it for the positives.

Why the fuck is Dolph Lundgren here?

I don’t think I mentioned this above, but more movies need to have viziers. 

There’s a literal octopus playing the drums during a fight to the death like the filmmakers expected us NOT to immediately mentally sing “Under the Sea”?? During the first climactic battle between our hero and his main nemesis??? Like what tone is this even going for? Is it supposed to be silly? It takes itself too seriously. Is it supposed to be a 60s era Saturday morning cartoon? There’s too much “the land-dwellers are poisoning our oceans and killing our people so we need to start a holy war” for that. Is it supposed to be a wayward manchild finds his raison d’etre origin story? Did you read the thing about the octopus. 

And what the fuck is going on with this soundtrack. The crunchy NUH-NUH-NUHHH guitar chord every time Momoa tosses off a horrible one-liner in his first scene. The techno-battle music that’s aping the far superior Daft Punk soundtrack to Tron: Legacy during a high-speed foot chase in fucking SICILY. And then Pitbull shows up to perform the audio equivalent of a used condom found in the back of a 2003 Hummer, a bafflingly ill-conceived cover of Toto’s “Africa.” Do you know how bad a song has to be for it to be the worst cover of “Africa” in a year where WEEZER covered “Africa”???

I literally don’t even have time to get into the out-of-nowhere secondary villain, Black Manta, who could have had potential if he weren’t playing his scenes like he’s in a 1988 Steven Seagal movie. I’m all for “this is kinda stupid but I’m still having fun” movies. I genuinely enjoyed last year’s The Predator and The Hurricane Heist! But the only person who seems to be having any fun here is Momoa, and even then it’s amidst a bloated, overstuffed mess of a script. I’m not going to say I had a bad time watching this movie, but I certainly don’t think it’s for the reasons any of the filmmakers were intending.