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Ingrid Goes West

Most articles about Ingrid Goes West will focus on Instagram. They will focus on the vanity of millennials and how caught up we are in social media.

To be fair, the movie is about that, but it isn’t just about that. Or at the very least they are missing a crucial aspect of how these social media sites can amplify the emotions we already feel.

This is a movie about Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza), a social media stalker. Ingrid follows the pages of Instagram celebrities like Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) and tries to be more like them. However, Ingrid does not do thissolely  because she is creepy, but because she is lonely.

The very first scene of the movie features Ingrid showing up to one of her “friend’s” weddings furious that she was not invited. How did she know about the wedding? Everyone was taking pictures on Instagram...without her.

One of the parts of the film that rings most true is that while social media can bring us closer to strangers, it can also make it feel like there is a cavernous distance between those who we actually know. Ingrid actually knew the girl having the wedding and whereas in the past people might have simply not known such a wedding occurred, now it is thrown in their faces with every selfie posted.

So in order to feel less lonely, we try to find friends in those we do not really know.

Ingrid decides to try to befriend Taylor just because she has some stylish posts. She knows nothing about who she really is and yet it is comforting for her to know that she can even attempt to talk to her online.

Ingrid’s odyssey to the West and her transformation to try to integrate herself into Taylor’s life including aping her style serves as an apt metaphor for how we put on a false face on social media. We make sure every post is perfect right down to the letter because it says something about us. If we want to have approval from the Taylors of the world, we cannot be who we are.

Who cares if we are not because it is worse to be a nobody than to be somebody else.

It is in our attempts to quell our need to have friends to be less alone in this world that we can miss the people right next to us that would fix our problems.

Dan Pinto (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.) is that person for Ingrid. He is her landlord and her boyfriend (when it suits her) and stands in for the real world and people who would be our real friends. 

Throughout the film, Dan sacrifices for Ingrid and tries to listen to her and find out who she really is. He even asks of Ingrid why she hangs out with Taylor because it doesn’t even seem like she likes them. Taylor, Dan’s foil only seems to care about Ingrid when Ingrid can be of use to her. She tosses Ingrid aside as soon as she finds a friend with more clout about halfway through the movie.

Social media (Taylor) can serve as a quick fix to satisfy our need for human interaction but those celebrities and those “friends” just out of our reach will never care about us as much as we care about them. There are people like Dan who are there if we can just be true to who we actually are.

Ingrid Goes West works as a film because it does not condescend. It does not mock Ingrid for trying to be less lonely by being more online. It understands her need to do so. It empathizes with her. It simply suggests there is a better way. 

You can still use Instagram, but make posts for you and with your real friends, not for someone else.There is nothing wrong with social media as long as you find the people who are really there for you. If you do that, everything else will fall into place.

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SUMMER RECAP

The point of this blog was to make posts soon after watching movies to note my thoughts and feelings in the immediacy of the first watch.

HOWEVER, I was occupied with a boring insurance job so I am gonna recap a few of them to the best of my ability right quick.

BABY DRIVER

B-A-B-Y. BABY.

Even just that iconic line from the movie has a sort of rhythm to it. Everything in Baby Driver moves to a beat. I love the way that even the gunshots move along with the beat set up by the soundtrack.

Everything is meticulously arranged from the symmetry of the camera shots like the one above to the way Baby’s cassette collection is sorted in his room.

It is all so slick and stylish. It is a movie that has a lot of fun and it is a ton of fun to watch.

Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, and Jamie Foxx all give great supporting turns as the thieves that Baby chauffeurs. 

It is a movie that takes you for a ride and doesn’t do much more.

It was a movie that feels like what all summer blockbusters should be.

DUNKIRK

Dunkirk on the other hand is not meant to be merely watched but to be felt.

Everything Nolan does is meant to transport you into the midst of World War II. It is intimate chaos.

The sound design lends to the feeling of being within a battle zone. Bullets ring out left and right rattling in your ears as you try to find your bearings in the film. 

Nolan received a lot of flack for the way the film’s chronology was arranged. Basically, he starts three stories at the beginning of the film all relating to the rescue at Dunkirk staggered so that sometimes you see the same event three different times.

It can be disorienting and unsettling, but, then again, so is war itself.

Not since The Hurt Locker have I felt so close to the events on screen. There is a realism and a weight to the actions and the deaths that makes you recognize how brave it was for those ships to try to rescue the soldiers, but also why those soldiers were so desperate to be rescued.

Every one of the soldiers would have rather been home. The bravest ones are the ones who help them get there. 

Dunkirk wants us to do just that.

WONDER WOMAN

The concept of superheroes is somewhat inherently silly. It is people with special gifts who vanquish evil in their underwear.

Given that, it is frustrating that the DC movies under the direction of Zack Snyder focused on the grim-dark aesthetic. They took themselves way more seriously than they needed.

Wonder Woman is a departure from that which is what helps it to succeed. Wonder Woman strikes the balance between not taking itself too seriously (there are some legitimately funny jokes!) while also incorporating the best of what superheroes can do. 

Wonder Woman shows that you can  treat the original material with respect without being too serious. Wonder Woman tells its viewers that the superheroes are not always right like when Diana pegs the wrong man as Ares and that you do not need to be super to be heroic as Steve Trevor does at the very end.

It does so while having some fun. That’s all I ask of these movies.

It delivered.

________________________________________________________________

That was my summer at the movies! (Besides August which will be getting individual recaps)

Based on watchability, they would be ranked

1. Baby Driver

2. Wonder Woman

3. Dunkirk

Based on quality:

1. Dunkirk

2. Wonder Woman

3. Baby Driver

For what it’s worth, Spider-Man: Homecoming would be 4th in each of these. 

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Spider-Man: Homecoming

I will admit this one is a little delayed. I saw this maybe two weeks ago or so.

Anyway, it is hard to describe how I feel about this movie. It just did not click with me.

Individually, there were some things that were phenomenal. The side characters including M.J. and Ned are all fun and well written. Michael Keaton is probably the best written villain in the MCU (even though taking the role slightly undermines Birdman but that is not this film’s fault.) And that scene with Peter and Toomes driving to the prom is superb. However, on the whole the movie felt like it was lacking...something.

For one, Holland’s Peter Parker is written as a little asshole, to be frank. That would be fine considering he is only supposed to be 14 in the movie if they gave him some redeeming qualities. Almost every decision he makes seems somewhat selfish? 

He blows off the school quiz bowl team to maybe get a call from Stark only to tell them he is coming back when it suits his investigation into Toomes knowing that it is not his priority. That is fine I mean the stuff with Toomes was much more important but it seemed like he never really cared all that much that he was jerking around people were counting on him.

In addition, Peter does not see the value in helping average everyday people as opposed to just going on big missions with the Avengers. Tony Stark even asks him “Can’t you just be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?” Even when he decides to help it seems as if it is only in the service of impressing Stark to try to get on the Avengers. 

He gets excited at a bank robbery that ends in his local deli getting blown to bits and Peter does not seem fazed by this at all just two scenes later. He goes and tracks the Vulture’s criminal operation to the ferry which results in the near deaths of hundreds of people. However, Peter does not seem to care about that, only that Iron Man had to bail him out again. Many people could have died and Peter does not show any concern over this. He is an immature 14-year-old but it still feels like he should recognize the weight of his actions a bit more.

The problem is that this Peter Parker does not do good things for the sake of doing good things. He does them to try to become an Avenger. It is hard to relate to a character who is willing to put almost anyone in danger to meet that goal. In fact, after Ned finds out his identity, his reason for keeping it from Aunt May is not even that it will put her in danger. It is that she won’t let him keep doing it.

Perhaps a more generous reading is that it is not about becoming an Avenger but impressing Stark who serves as his father figure. However, Peter is so dogmatically fixed on joining the team at the expense of everyone else that this seems less likely. Occam’s Razor and all that.

Peter Parker is typically such a great character because he is resourceful and does not have the advantages that other heroes have. He is not a billionaire like Tony Stark. He is a working class superhero that aims to do right by anyone no matter how small. This Peter is none of that. He says over and over that he feels like he could be doing something more important. He actually thinks he is too good to just be helping average people. His ego can only be fulfilled if he is fighting some huge battle with ten heroes. 

All that is to say that this film has an Avengers problem. The main villain turns to evil because of the Avengers, Peter wants to be an Avenger, Peter would have died on multiple occasions without Avenger Tony Stark saving him and Peter’s main act of heroism is stopping the theft of some technology from, you guessed it, The Avengers.

Marvel has put the Avengers in almost every film it has made recently (with the notable exception of the fantastic Guardians movies). It has done so to the detriment of these characters. Peter himself tells us how pointless this day to day stuff is and that attitude permeates the film. He could be speaking for the company himself. Everything has to be in service of the Avengers and if not, Marvel feels like we are just wasting time. If Peter does not care, why should we?

There is so much you can do with a character like Spiderman that it is just disappointing that this movie amounts to: “Here is what Peter does while he is waiting for the next Avengers mission.” The thing that is backwards is that for all these heroes The Avengers is supposed to be the side-gig, not the other way around.

Marvel has crafted this formula where it does not challenge its heroes or its audience. They are basically just multicolored action figures lacking any depth or humanity. They will not try to make something more challenging than good guy fights bad guy. It is the movie equivalent of Marvel ordering the same thing on the menu over and over again. We do it because it’s safe and fine, but maybe there is something out there that is better. These movies are fine, but it is hard not to wish that they were something more than that.

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Guacamelee

You can tell that the studio that made Guacamelee, Drinkbox Studios, loved making Guacamelee.

Every inch of its map is covered with secrets to find and references to games, movies, and internet memes. Posters for upcoming wrestling matches turn Link into “El Hero,” Castle Crashers into “Casa Crashers,” and even Wreck-It Ralph into “Bust-It Bill.” Heck, the statues where Juan gets his upgrades from are literally the same Chozo statues where Samus first got hers decades ago.  It is a video game that truly loves being a video game. 

That’s something that can actually be a little refreshing in today’s gaming landscape. In media interviews and at shows like E3, there are so many games that present themselves as “cinematic” and “serious.” There is nothing wrong with that, but It is almost as if they are apologizing for being video games by assuring people that “we’re not like those games.” There are a lot of video games made that can feel like they really wish they were something else. Guacamelee is not one of those games.

It does not have a deep story (it is just another damsel-in-distress plot line) and the characters are shallow (points for having a non-white lead though) but you can tell it just wants to take the player on a good ride. Guacamelee wants its players to have as much fun as it is having itself. The gameplay is incredibly refined and the dialogue pokes fun at itself so that it is just funny enough to not be grating. These are relatively minor quibbles  though and they aren’t enough to ruin this master class in game design.

Guacamelee truly feels like a game out of time. It is like playing an HD remaster of an old classic from the Super Nintendo. (That’s sort of what you are doing seeing as how Guacamelee is just Luchador Metroid, but I digress.)

It is so well made and so finely tuned as to make every button press and every area satisfying and fun that it feels like if Guacamelee had come out 30 years ago, Juan would be almost as beloved as Samus Aran herself. 

It is a love letter to gaming and if you like games, especially Metroidvanias, then you owe it to yourself to play this one. It will help you remember why you started loving games.

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BoJack Horseman Season 1

I’ve always been of the mind that the best art, the pieces we love the most, are those that can express something that we can’t express ourselves.

That feeling of something being able to show exactly how you’re feeling lets you know that you’re not the only one who thinks or feels that way. It lets you know you’re not alone.

BoJack Horseman let me know that I’m not alone.

It is a show that is about feeling lost. It is about those moments when you don’t know how you even managed to make it this far. BoJack Horseman captures that special type of isolation that only makes you feel more alone when you are around others. 

They all seem well adjusted and happy. Why can’t I be? What’s wrong with me?

It is about that anxiety that you can feel when you are just wondering what you have to do to be content like everyone else is. It is about how you reach and you reach for things to fill your time so you don’t have to be alone with your own thoughts.

This is what other people do for fun. Why can’t I just have fun?

It also tells the story of how sometimes having these thoughts is narcissistic. BoJack hurts the people that try to help him because he is so consumed with his own self-pity. He is selfish and self-destructive all because he wants to feel like people like him. The irony is that his desire is what drives him into the actions that force others away. Some people do like and care for him, but he can’t see that through his own belief that no one does.

They don’t really care if I’m around or not.

I’ve felt all these things before, but it was hard to express them. A cartoon starring a washed-up TV horse actor did just that. 

I was probably destined anyway to like a show that features Keith Olbermann as a news whale and features “A Ryan Seacrest Type” as the anchor of “Excess Hollywoo” but the what makes this show special, even beautiful, is show is the portrait it paints of feeling like you should have more than a life that seems devoid of meaning.

The tragedy of BoJack is the things he does because of that feeling make it the only type of life he deserves. 

BoJack Horseman shows you that you’re not the only one that feels like BoJack. (In fact this might help dispel the narcissism that viewers might share with BoJack in believing that they are the only ones that feel that way.) It also says: don’t be like BoJack. See the people around that are trying to help you. Find your Dianes and your Todds because they’re looking out for you even if you don’t realize it. Don’t take out your loneliness on them because deep down a part of you wants to be alone to justify your sadness.

We sympathize with BoJack and with his sadness, but feeling lonely and sad and being intelligent doesn’t make BoJack a good person. He’s just a sad person who does shitty things. He’s not a hero.

Unless you do good things and stop hurting the ones who are about you, you’re not one either. 

P.S. I’m definitely a Zoe.

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Uncharted 4

I really don’t know where to begin with this game. I finished Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End today and it’s been a long time coming.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune came out in November 2007. That was so long ago that President Obama wouldn’t be elected for another year. In fact, I remember watching the review of the game on X-Play, a show that aired on G4, a network that doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s been a while.

As a middle schooler who loved the Indiana Jones movies, Uncharted looked like it might let me live out those fantasies. In December 2007, our family got a PS3 and I got Uncharted not long after that. I had to.

That was the start of a decade with the character of Nathan Drake for me. In Uncharted, I joined him on his search for El Dorado. In 2009′s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, we traveled through the Himalayas to find Shambhala. 2011′s Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception took us through the Middle East to the lost city of Ubar. 

Since the first time I took cover as Nate before taking down a swarm of grunts, I have graduated Middle School, High School, and College and I have begun Law School. I earned my Eagle Scout badge. I even became a vegetarian in that time! I’ve had romances, watched countless movies, read books, and yet I still return to the world of Uncharted.

So despite Uncharted 4 having set pieces like escaping a Panamanian Jail, jumping between motorcycles in a high speed chase, and diving in between marooned pirate ships during a firefight, it was the intimate moments of the game that I loved the most. It was the looks of disappointment and disbelief from Nate’s partner and father figure, Sully, when he learned Nate didn’t tell his wife about how he was putting his life on the line yet again. It was Nate trying to explain to his brother, Sam, that he wanted something different out of life now besides all the action and adventure. It was the conversations with Nate’s wife, Elena about how they were stuck together for better or worse. More than any other studio, Naughty Dog captures human emotion, those feelings of relief, anxiety, and joy. It makes you feel like you are going through all of this with the characters in the game and not just controlling them. 

So in a way I’ve grown up with Nate, Elena, and Sully making it was only fitting that this last game was about Nate growing up himself. By the end of the series, Nate has gotten out of more close calls than one can count. In a lot of other series, you would want Nate to hop right back in there and go on another adventure, but Uncharted makes you care about the characters so much that you actually want Nate to hang ‘em up. 

You have gone through so much with him that you want him to be able to have a little happiness without his life being on the line. You don’t want to ever have to see what Elena and Sully’s reactions would be if they came across Nate’s body. After four games over the span of a decade, they’re like old friends. 

That’s what makes the final scene of the game so meaningful. It takes place on a beach. Not a beach with explosions or pirate ships, just a normal beach. Nate and Elena are happily retired from all the gunfighting and cliff jumping that you’ve done for four games. It’s over and you’re just happy it is - happy for them because they seem genuinely content themselves. 

That’s what makes these games special. Nothing about Uncharted’s gameplay or its stories or its archetypes are anything revolutionary. With any other studio, this might just be your run-of-the-mill 3rd-person action game, but Naughty Dog cares about the little things. Those moments are worth the price of admission.

That’s what I’ll remember the most. 

Thanks, Naughty Dog. So long, Nate.

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12 Angry Men - “A love letter to democracy”

What’s he watching?

12 Angry Men

Is it the first time? 

Yeah I’ve somehow never seen this movie before.

Who’s in it? 

Henry Fonda is the lead. You probably haven’t heard of anyone else.

What’s it about? 

At its base level, it is a movie about a jury. The eponymous 12 men are jurors. At the start of the movie 11 of the men think a teenage boy is guilty of murder. Henry Fonda does not.

Going a little deeper, 12 Angry Men is a movie about justice. It is about being willing to stand up for something that might be unpopular because you know it is what’s right. Henry Fonda’s character surely felt the pressure to go along with everyone else when he was the only juror to vote “not guilty” at the outset. However, he stood up to those pressures and made his case because he believed that the justice system and the defendant himself deserved more than five minutes of deliberation. 

It is a film that makes the case that there are some things that are more important than what we as individuals might be doing on any given day. It recognizes that we all need to sacrifice a little to uphold the ideals of our nation, our justice system, and our own morality.

Why’d he watch it?

Well I had actually planned on watching Eraserhead or Blue Velvet because I have had David Lynch on my mind since the return of Twin Peaks. To that end, I dragged my younger brother 40 minutes to the county library to check out one of those films only to realize that I needed my township library card to take things from the county.

At least I got to drive in the rain. :/ 

Anyway, I went back home and got a library card from my local library for the next time. I was determined to watch a movie though so I figured I’d watch a classic. (It also doesn’t hurt that I’m in law school right now!) Lo and behold, my local library had it and here we are. 

What did he think?

I loved it (with a few caveats).

Those who know me well know that despite my cynicism about many of the actors in our government and the founding fathers themselves, I really love the idealized version of our...well...ideals. I get teary eyed whenever anyone talks about the ideals of equality or liberty.

This is a film that makes you want to go out and make a difference in the world. It makes you want to stand up for the little guy. It is a movie where we get a monologue about the role of a jury weighing judgment on a man they do not know and how that makes our democracy great. That is a speech delivered by an immigrant no less! 

We get a moment where nearly all of the other men of the jury stand up and literally turn their backs on a man who is giving a prejudiced monologue about how some people are just born to be criminals. That’s just how they are. 

These are moments that would not feel out of place in an Aaron Sorkin show.

However, part of the reason why I appreciate these love letters to democracy is because it shows us what we want to see and what we want ourselves to be.

It is an escapist fantasy. An enjoyable one and one we should strive for, but it is hard to see it as much more. We like these films because they allow us to believe that this is what we’re really like. We haven’t gotten there yet.

It is striking that a film from 1957 shows a version of a jury that would still be a rarity in this day and age. In an era where we are more aware of police abuse than ever, we also see that a badge and uniform can stand to exonerate even the most blatant killings by officers. Juries seem all too willing to give police officers every benefit of the doubt at the expense of the citizens who will never take another breath because of them. Sadly, it seems as though we have very few Henry Fondas, very few dissenters willing to go against the testimony of the police. 60 years on, 12 Angry Men is still just fiction.

Best Scene

“Prejudice”

I picked this scene because it still feels so relevant and powerful today. It is amazing that a movie released seven years before the Civil Rights Act was passed contains dialogue analyzing how one’s prejudices can shade their judgments and the decisions they make.

Again, I wish we were living up to the ideals of this film, but the speech made by the man that the rest of the men ignore would not feel out of place if compared to the rhetoric about black Americans or about undocumented immigrants. This scene could be re-filmed using much of the same dialogue and seem like it was referencing anything in the news in the past few years.

They say those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We’ve still got a lot to learn.

Does he recommend it?

Without a doubt! 

It would be especially up your alley if you are a fan of The West Wing or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. 

You should also watch it if you want to see some great acting. In a film that takes place mostly in a single room, the filmmakers did a great job giving each character space and enough personality to differentiate themselves.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  - I give 12 Angry Men 5 bleeding hearts out of 5. Just know that                           it is basically gratuitous, unrealistic idealism.

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Intro

Hey everyone!

I am probably just talking to myself and maybe some friends I show this in the future, but hey anyway.

The main reason I am writing this blog is because I watch a lot of media.

I usually don’t have anyone I can talk with about the things I watch but I always have lots of thoughts.

This is a blog for those thoughts.