"Accomplishments"
In theaters: We've had COVID films before, but they're often using metaphor - characters isolated from others, etc., often because the production itself was working under lockdown rules - but Ari Aster's Eddington is actually set during Lockdown America, when we were just figuring things out and it was frustrating freedom-worshipping 'mericans. In this ruthless satire, Joaquin Phoenix plays a small town sheriff who is consistently on the wrong side of history and pays the price for it - he refuses to mask up because there's no COVID in Eddington (yet), is opposed to Black Lives Matter because there's no police violence in Eddington (yet), and so on. But when a transient carrier walks into town, things quickly spiral out of control, as if the virus wasn't so much COVID, but hatred and violence, a virus that is still spreading, and more effectively than ol' number 19. Ultimately, it's a Coen Brothers-style fiasco about the danger of denial, whether it's ignoring health protocols, movements happening around the country or past trauma. As usual, Aster has too much to say and is perhaps indulgent in the way he deploys his ideas. The in-your-face stuff will ruffle some feathers (such as the parody of activists resisting white privilege from a place of privilege), but there's a lot of truth in the more subtle call-outs (look at the social media timelines of different characters, for example, and how we are led down different realities that inform our actions and misunderstandings). Aster manages to capture the stir-crazy lockdown era in all its absurdity and chaos. There's probably someone like you in Eddington, whether you like it or not.
At home: It's the 1950s, so the ladies in Carol have to carry on their romance in secret, courting without ever saying it out loud, which means any declaration of love acts as a climactic event. It's really an acting showcase, and Cate Blanchett comes out of it the winner, if only because Rooney Mara's character is purposefully written to be disconnected from her feelings. The two women (three if we count Sarah Paulson as Carol's ex) are at different points in their lives, and facing different issues, though both have (or have had) been living a lie re: relationships with men. It's a good, and sensitively told, relationship story, but one on a slow burn. I wish Todd Haynes had done more with it directorially. There are artful moments, like the salesman not having anything to sell them, they transcend to the metaphorical, but I think they could have done more with the train set idea, for example. As is, it feels too much like an "important" "issue film".
In the wake of his partner's death, A Single Man's George Falconer (Colin Firth) shows all the hallmarks of this being his last day on Earth. If it were yours, what would you think is important to do, to feel, to linger on? Director Tom Ford shows us his distractedness through sound design, and his intermittent hope through color saturation, and haunts George with flashbacks of his lost love. It's set during the Cuban Missile Crisis, à propos of nothing except that it has the potential to be the end of the world. And he is gay in 1960, not so much because it exacerbates the situation (for example, denying him all rights to the proper shows of grief), but because someone suffering from mental health issues, someone contemplating suicide, is just as much of an "invisible minority". But as the members of the secret gay community recognize each other in the film, could one recognize the signs of depression and save the soul in crisis? I could have done without the final irony, but enjoyed this poignant film very much.
Nothing like Amy Holden Jones' Sumber Party Massacre - except for the prurient and frequent nudity, I suppose, Corman gotta Corman here - Love Letters is a strangely oblique romance starring Jamie Lee Curtis as a radio jockey who finds old love letters in her mother's papers after her death, and not from her dad, either. At the same time, she meets a rich (but married) man and has a torrid affair with him. But though she acts like she's in Love and, indeed, sacrifices for him, one gets the sense that she's letting the letters do a lot of the emotional work, conflating two lovers into a full package - which James Keach's character is not. Or we might simply take the letters as a contrast to her actual relationship, something that fills a gap, but that she still aspires to. There's a pleasant ambiguity there, but overall, the film didn't really get a rise from me.
They didn't know it would come out during the pandemic, but Little Fish acts as a kind of pandemic film as people all over the world fall prey to a virus that makes them lose their memories (Alzheimer's for all ages), either in drips and drabs, or suddenly. Olivia Cooke is seeing the love of her life slip away in this world, and through mnemonic exercises, we dig deeper into the relationship's history. Sweet and specific, it makes us invest in the doomed couple and the film's play on memory - what do we remember, even without the conceit of a science-fiction plague, of the most important person in our lives? what have we distorted? and how important are those memories to us and the continued survival of the relationship? The pandemic world is well-drawn, and I really liked the bittersweet ending.
A classic Paul Schrader film in which a man spirals into obsession and madness, First Reformed stars Ethan Hawke as a reverend who grows more and more despondent about climate change after one of his flock commits suicide over it. Of course, he's already very much on the edge due to personal tragedy and health issues, but his focus is redirected, sharpened, until a new tragedy looms. The idea that religion should be taking a harder look at climate change, but is compromised by politics and "donors" is interesting, but the environmental content in the film is way too on the nose - characters expositing on statistics, pollution in HD resolution, corporate guys with evil messaging. You're preaching to the choir here, man, or perhaps shouting at those who don't want to get the message regardless. But ultimately, this is a film about despair and hope, and climate collapse is only today's context for it. Now, if you want to take the ending literally, that's fine, but I have a hard time believing grumpy old Schrader is siding with hope, so I choose the darker interpretation (which isn't entirely without hope, some tragedy is averted, etc.), thanks.
[Burundi] Burundi's first film, Gito the Ungrateful, is a light comedy in which the title character returns to his home town with a French diploma, fully expecting to become a Big Deal(TM) on his return. Not too surprisingly, things don't work out as well as he'd have liked, as he's hoisted on his own hubristic petard at every turn. At its most interesting, Gito is the portrait of a Europeanized African, in part ashamed of his origins and acting the part of the "Ugly Colonial" (and treated as such). Then, the movie loses its way as it embraces the romantic triangle between Gito, his ex in Burundi, and his French girlfriend, something that eventually (and unconvincingly) rounds back to his arc about tempering his attitude and ambition. If the film's intention was to humiliate its lead as a proxy for all ex-pats who came home as "foreigners", I suppose it succeeded.
[Uganda] Advertised as Uganda's first action film, Who Killed Captain Alex? is BONKERS. First, it apologizes for its soft transfer because the director erased the original file from his computer so he could make another film and didn't expect anyone outside his village to ever see it. It's certainly a local production, with a mix of gunplay and martial arts, a disjointed narrative about cops fighting organized crime, and slapdash CG effects. That's not why it's bonkers. No, it's bonkers because it lathers on the voice of "V.J. Emmie", who sometimes explains the plot, puts new dialog in people's mouths, mocks the characters as if he were doing RiffTrax, hypes the film and others yet to come, makes satirical comments about Uganda, or just randomly shouts "Movie!". It's completely insane and I laughed my ass off as a result. Expect the unexpectable!
RPGs: Our Call of Cthulhu characters are coming back from Egypt on a big steam ship in a session that had all the hallmarks of our Keeper laying in a bunch of subplots, some of which might resolve into a full adventure. But he surprised us, I think, because it was all connected. My character finds a short spellbook in his things. The cowboy (who my NPC cousin has taken a hilarious shine to) and the gravedigger are following wet footsteps around the ship and helping a lady sailor dressed as a man. Objects are found upside down. A weird man who knows too much accosts me in the dining area... And then the ship is sailing through the Dreamlands (I don't know that, nor much about that Mythos-adjacent stuff, but based on the weird descriptions, I've decided to call it that for now), upside down, and the wet footprints are leading to the suspicious man's room, and yeah, it's all of a piece. From there, things go pear-shaped. I've been having incredible luck all year with my rolls, keeping Mr. Phelps alive and sane almost supernaturally. It's probably just a coincidence that in a session where I've embraced the "magical" more than usual (after sessions and sessions of obstinate disbelief), my rolls were terrible and I lost both Sanity and Health after finding the sus guy dead at the hands of snake-like cultists (he gets better, or at least rises, in the cliffhanger). Not sure how we get back to our home dimension.
Again part of my 50th Session Anniversary, this week's Torg Eternity had the PCs return to southern Mexico where they had left one of their own - the Leopard Warrior - with rebel fighter Lupe. Well, these crazy kids surprised everyone by moving the statue of Kukulkan (important in the previous adventure here) to the pyramid at Palenque, which has magically restored the old Meso-American empires into something that calls itself Azteca. (Old Torg fans may remember how this new Core Earth-adjacent cosm played a part in the official campaign's endgame, but I mostly pulled from an Infiniverse product called The Paraverse, which uses Azteca, GURPS Aztecs and an indie quick game called Macuahuitl.) Old friends or not, their mage-priests have been kidnapping people no the other side of the border to sacrifice en masse lest hell be unleashed for 52 years, and it's gotta be done before noon on January 1st. Can the PCs find a suitable alternative?
A local astrologer tells them there is one: The Heart if Ixtli, an artifact reputed to be the true heart of a goddess, would make easily take the place of the 250 sacrifices and she knows where her tomb is. So the players engaged in some light jungle travel (as prankster spirits called Chaneque dogged their steps), tomb raiding and Aztec mummy fighting, as we - I had to admit - spent a lot of time debugging the new versions of Foundry and its compatible Torg module. The Frankenstein sat on a Winged Serpent card because it would have eaten up a lot of time, which is too bad in a way, but the right decision given we lost 40 minutes at the top of the session. The scenario ended successfully, but nearly didn't - that final Dramatic Skill Resolution might have ended with a character losing a hand (hey, it's a world with cybernetics) and only succeeded because someone had a card that manipulated the deck. Phew! And so 5 zones of Azteca are on the map, all stolen from the Living Land (Baruk Kaah won't be happy) and I plan to return there some day.
Best bits: The Realm Runner's refusal to give an offering to the Chaneque was pretty funny, and after failing a Survival roll trying to make camp, he got lost in the jungle and surrounded by the angry spirits. He got help from his friends on coms, but we realized the all plum forgot to equip the new guy - the Deadlands Preacher - with such a device, so he didn't join them. The next morning, they woke up without their pants and the Frankenstein said enough was enough and made a food offering (pants were returned, once we got past the sniggling). The Monster Hunter has been having the worst die rolls, as if I'd coded his sentient crossbow with a curse, and after much frustration, he disconnected from his reality, then had a Mishap on the reconnection roll. So now, less than 4 sessions after transforming from Orrorsh to Aysle, he's transformed AGAIN. And to a makeshift reality that doesn't have a full ruleset! So we get to invent a bunch of things before the next session, don't we? Generally, the players said they liked the atmosphere of Azteca (I particularly pushed the astrological aspect with stars always visible even during the day, and we had fun with the spirit world encroaching, good lore, etc.) and there's always something exciting about knowing you're straying off the official campaign.
Comments