No. 71 - November Wrap-Up
Where have I been all November? What have I been watching? This issue will tell all!
This November had a lot going on. I went on a big trip, I saw lots of friends, and I got prescribed cholesterol medication. Instead of weak weekly updates, one large update seemed ideal.
The Adventure
Earlier this year, I went on a big road trip where I made a stop in Salem, Massachusetts where my then-girlfriend and I explored every single witchy shop in town. After the first couple, it became clear to me that all of these shops would have more or less the same merchandise. Even so, my then-girlfriend wanted to go see every single shop. I joked about what city I would insist on doing the same and the only one I could think of was Roswell, New Mexico because of the infamous alien spacecraft recovered there in 1947. Ultimately, it led to a benign “Salem, Massachusetts gf and Roswell, New Mexico bf” bit which inspired me to finally take a trip to that extraterrestrial infested state.
I made this expedition with Alex Reinke, someone who I’ve known since middle school. We bonded initially over our mutual love of video games, cryptozoology, and, you guessed it, aliens. It has become a sort of tradition to try to make an annual trip together and this year it was decided that we check out Roswell and the other sights in New Mexico over the course of five days.
Our day in Roswell was filled with odd coincidences, as if the hand of fate was guiding us to an inevitable conclusion.
Our day started with the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art where we were told the history of their artist residency program. The program was established to bring artists and culture to Roswell and, since 1967, it has brought incredible artists from around the world. Their art on display at the museum was so impressive. The walls were borderline salon style with how much art the museum had collected from their storied history of resident artists.
Next was all the tacky alien stuff. We started with the International UFO Museum and Research Center and Gift Shop where we saw the story of the Roswell Incident chronicled in lengthy detail, sculptures depicting our friends from outer space, and a reference library filled with UFO/alien related news clippings, declassified government documents, and fringe magazines. Much like Salem, there were dozens of gift shops capitalizing on that one historic moment in the city’s past. Store after store offered t-shirts with different versions of an alien grinning at the viewer and a handful of stores offered shirts that playfully referenced aliens’ fixation with anal probes (“Ask me about my butthole.”) As we roamed these shops looking for the right souvenirs, a man with a recording device and a microphone approached us. He introduced himself as David Farrier, a New Zealand podcaster, and asked if we’d mind being interviewed for his podcast. We obliged and talked to him about what drew us here, what we thought about the kitschiness of the alien shops, and our general love of that very kitsch. It was a very pleasant conversation and at the end of it Farrier invited us to join him for a movie screening that night. He explained that he had been making this film, Mr. Organ, for six years and this was the last screening of it before it hit digital. After handing us a illustrated flyer for the event we parted ways.
Our next stop was where the universe’s plan for us started to dawn on us. Breaking up the alien stuff, we decided to head to The Roswell Museum and Art Center. Its collection included art from a large span of time, historical objects, and a space for local artists to sell their work. Seeing the lives of the indigenous cultures in the area behind glass next to weapons of those who colonized them was a shocking and upsetting display and it really gave context as to how brutal that history is. We also spied work from an artist that was part of the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art’s residency program, Jess Johnson. While her work was mesmerizing, intricate, and bizarre, what took us by surprise was that her work resembled the illustrated flyer for Farrier’s movie screening. Looking through her exhibit we saw that she was also from New Zealand. We confirmed via Instagram that she and David Farrier were indeed friends. We knew then that we must go to the screening that night.
David Farrier was very excited to see us at the screening and it was particularly nice that recognized us from earlier. After Farrier offered us free snacks to have during the movie, we explained how everything we participated in today had a connection to the film tonight and joked about how it felt like “lazy writing on the universe’s part.” We were briefly introduced to Jess Johnson before we sat down for the screening of Farrier’s documentary film, Mr. Organ (2022). Farrier is a journalist and sometimes his subjects end up being interesting enough to become documentary films, such as his first film Tickled (2016) and Mr. Organ. Mr. Organ refers to Michael Organ, an enigmatic and distressingly annoying individual who Farrier becomes fascinated by. At first, Farrier finds Organ to be a strange litigious figure clamping cars for an antique store parking lot, but the more he digs the more bizarre his story becomes. Organ has tried to steal a boat and claimed to be a prince, but he now has his sights set on ruining Farrier’s life. Initially, Organ is an amusing nuisance, but he very quickly become a draining and malignant demonic presence. Ultimately, he became the reason Farrier has fled to the United States. It is an unusual documentary film as the subject so often dodges any concrete backstory, but is so willing to talk for hours on end about nothing in particular. After the film, we commended Farrier for his work and lamented how Organ has affected his life. “New Zealand’s state bird is a small round flightless bird that avoids conflict” Farrier explained, “A lot of us in New Zealand are like that.”
Roswell wasn’t the only stop on our trip. We visited the Very Large Array where radio waves are collected from space via massive satellite dishes for imaging. The Montezuma Hot Springs was a fun stop where we could relax in the natural hot springs of Las Vegas, New Mexico. We saw the adobes of Taos and the glorious dunes of White Sands. Many jokes were had at the world’s largest pistachio and we felt a grim chill come over us when we saw recreations of the nukes that ended WWII in Los Alamos. A highlight was the Georgia O’Keefe museum in Sante Fe because it was an incredible opportunity to get a broader context of her work.
The whole trip though was very non-stop as there was hardly a moment where we weren’t heading to the next thing. Fortunately, once the trip was over and we parted ways, I had planned for a four day weekend following it so I could rest and relax after my vacation.
The Films
Fingernails (2023)
In the world of Greek director Christos Nikou’s Fingernails, the scientific code to love has been cracked. Through The Love Institute, couples can get tested to see if they are truly in love. The test is simple, technicians tear off a fingernail from each couple and place it in a machine for computation. The results are irrefutable and final: either you are both in love, one of you is in love, or neither of you are in love.
Much like our world, where nearly every human experience, every work of art, and every interaction, can be quantified and measured, this love test doesn’t make everyone happy. Anna (Jesse Buckley) and Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) took the love test years ago and they were a match, but seeing them interact doesn’t make it seem as much. Ryan has little interest in maintaining the romance, comfortable settling into routine, whereas Anna is seeking more adventure and excitement. She lies to Ryan constantly, but a big lie she tells is that she has accepted a job at The Love Institute to continue the institute’s research in finding out what helps love grow. There she meets Amir (Riz Ahmed), one of the star technicians, and the two of them form an immediate flirty connection.
The film does a great job of creating this reality-adjacent world that seems to be perpetually stuck in 90s era technology while also figuring out the science to an invisible and hard to define human experience. It doesn’t feel like the future, especially since the world is so dirty and grimy. Strangely, the lived in quality breeds a certain familiarity and fondness for the space. Its sort of like how one may love the sight of the dirt a crush may have tracked into the foyer or how a coffee ring on a napkin signifies they were near.
At one point in the film, while Anna tries to rekindle the magic between her and Ryan, the couple go to a couple’s pottery night. Ryan complains about how messy and sticky it is and questions why they are even there.
So much of our world is now facilitated by algorithms and apps. Its exciting to feel something that transcends all the numbers and science. Fingernails makes it feel like that is possible.
Fingernails (2023) is available to stream on Apple TV+
The Killer (2023)
Director David Fincher always has an air about him like he’s playfully judging everyone. Most of his films have a cultural critique that is almost self-effacing. It’s the kind of smirk one has catching someone being a hypocrite. That sense of irony is in full force in The Killer, his latest film for Netflix.
The Killer follows a nameless assassin played by Michael Fassbender who tells us about his process through American Psycho-esque self-aggrandizing narration. Unlike Patrick Bateman of American Psycho, the killer doesn’t have a taste for the finer things in life. In fact, he is more obsessed with is work than Bateman ever was. The killer insists how his methods make him the most effective, most clever, and most efficient assassin. His narration resembles the internet bile known as “hustle culture” or a “sigma grindset”, where one prioritizings working over every other aspect in their life and develops a superiority complex over it. Hearing his inane ego go on and on is hilarious, especially, when it comes time for him to actually kill someone and he botches the job. This sets off the plot of the movie where he has to reconcile this mistake through a global network of hitmen.
Throughout the film he uses various name brand services (Amazon, WeWork, McDonalds) to make his job of sneaking into buildings, murdering people, and leaving undetected easier. Many of these services do not even require face-to-face meetings and, as such, facilitate the life of a sociopath like the killer much easier.
Not only is the film an effective dark comedy, but it works as a thriller and social commentary. I found myself thinking of the film regularly in the weeks that followed watching it.
The Killer is available to stream on Netflix
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
In a previous issue, I wrote how biting the social commentary in The Hunger Games series is, so it filled me with some trepidation going into the latest entry into the series, a late prequel titled The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023). I am happy to report that what I loved most about the series is present in this prequel.
Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes follows a young Coriolanus Snow (played here by Tom Blyth) during a critical point in his youth when he first becomes involved with the barbaric annual ritual known as The Hunger Games. For those unfamiliar, The Hunger Games exists in a dystopia where, once a year, the country of Panem randomly chooses two children from it’s 12 districts (save for the wealthy capital) and those children are made to fight to the death for the entertainment of all of the country. In the original series, Snow is president of Panem and devises plans to undermine the growing revolution against him and The Capital. In Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, he is a teenager at a wealthy school in The Capital, clawing his way to power.
The film acts as a character study of a man who grows up in an unfair system, but instead of joining friends who wish to try to change it to help everyone, he chooses time and time again to leverage the system in his favor. Snow starts the film telling himself and others that he lies, cheats, and even kills for some honorable reason, be it love, altruism, or duty to his family. As he continues to do more monstrous and monstrous things, he slowly sheds that skin revealing the cold blooded fascist beneath. In a time like ours where fascism and racism enter the news regularly, it doesn’t seem coincidental that for a long stretch of the film Snow is cop with a buzzcut. With both Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer also coming out this year, films about white men trying to deny their implicit involvement in the destruction of so many lives, its interesting to see a film like Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes where its protagonist willingly and enthusiastically becomes part of an evil fascist machine.
The film fits nicely into the Hunger Games franchise, not only because of how it connects to the history of the films, but primarily because of its thematic elements. Even on a surface level, the film delivers thrills, humor, and shocking brutality that one would expect from a Hunger Games film. In some ways, it feels even more brutal with it’s amoral protagonist and gruesome violence.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is in theaters now.
Perfect Days (2023)
Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho) lives in a small apartment with a collection of music on cassette, paperback books, and the potted plants that he collects from parks. He is very ritualistic as he prepares for his day the same way every day. He dons his blue uniform and gets into his little blue van, after grabbing a drink from the vending machine outside his apartment. He listens to 70s and 80s American rock music as he begins driving to his first stop, a public toilet. Hirayama is a toilet cleaner for The Tokyo Toilet. He spends his days methodically cleaning public toilets in Tokyo, but he never complains, never lets out an expression of disgust, and always does his job right. At the end of his day, he goes to a bathhouse to clean himself and then to a small restaurant to feed himself. He reads a book by lamplight before going to bed. Throughout his day, Hirayama hardly says a word.
Perfect Days, directed by German director Wim Wenders, spends a great deal of its time following Hirayama about his routine. It might seem banal, but initially there is something aspiring about watching Hirayama work. He is not a soulless drone. He spends time on his lunch break collecting plants, regarding the beauty of nature, and taking photos on his point-and-shoot film camera. He appears wise, intellectual, and noble compared to the young loud-mouthed Takashi (Tokio Emoto), a fellow toilet cleaner.
As the film goes on, one gets the opportunity to see glimpses into other aspects of his life. When his niece visits you see him show genuine love and care for someone, but you also learn about the strained life he left behind. Seeing little moments like a shared drink at a bar or a shared love of photography brought me to tears because it is then you see how isolated Hirayama’s life has been. In this increasingly digital world we live in, Hirayama lives an explicitly tangible and real one. His cassette tapes bring people together, despite how much it seems he pushes people out. He is a generous soul, but spends most of his time alone.
Its a beautiful film that really devastated me from beginning to end.
Perfect Days is expected to hit US theaters sometime in 2024
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Stray Observations
There were so many other things that I just simply wasn’t able to include in this issue, the excellent sci-fi horror solar-punk animated series Scavenger’s Reign (2023), Todd Haynes’ latest great drama May December (2023), a totally frank look at casual sexism in Carnal Knowledge (1971) starring Jack Nicholson, and I even read a short story collection by one of my favorite authors, Homesick for Another World (2017) by Ottessa Moshfegh. I even considered including pieces about Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (2023), the great animated take on the familiar story, and the terrible “non-fiction” book Communion (1987). As everyone knows, there just isn’t enough time for everything.
Henry Kissinger died at 100 this week. The man is notable for the sheer amount of death on his hands because of his bloodthirsty foreign policy. One really great obituary that goes over his crimes against humanity is this Rolling Stone article titled “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies”
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