Miscellaneous Movie Moments LVII (February 2021)

The Cinderella project took up so much time!

Sundance Film Festival Shorts, 01-03 February 2021, streamed via Sundance
So most of the film passes were sold out once I realized they, y’know, existed. I snagged an “Explorer Pass,” though, which meant I could watch the shorts, the indie series, and New Frontier, which is basically the performance art category. Ish. Anyway, I can’t write full blurbs for all fifty of the short films I watched (yikes). And I only saw half of the program! So here’s, uh, very quick reactions to what I managed.
Shorts Program 1

• BJ’s Mobile Gift Shop: My man Byung-jun, wandering around Chicago with a suitcase full of whatever someone might need at the last minute and is freaking out because they don’t have it. (This one’s my favorite.)
• Five Tiger: Just one woman trying to support her husband and daughter via the world’s oldest profession. With, uh, her pastor. Not gritty; super sad.
• Yoruga: The world’s almost out of animals, and one gentleman opts to spend his savings to hang out with a tortoise once in a while. This is poignant but also I, too, would spend money to chill with my buddy a tortoise.
• Bruiser: Hey, look how damaging toxic masculinity is to tween boys!
• Flex: Hey, look how damaging toxic masculinity is to the way men relate to their bodies!
• Bambirak: An adorable kid stows away in her dad’s truck as he begins a job in deliveries in a new country. Also, there is racism.
• Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma: A set of educational flashcards was developed specifically for Black students in the 1970s, establishing a “Black alphabet.” This film takes those 26 cards and updates the language and/or imagery to match current times. It’s a pretty cool exploration of education AND culture have shifted over time.

Shorts Program 2

• White Wedding: What would happen if you mashed-up Get Out and Father of the Bride?
• LATA: A day in the life of a housemaid in Mumbai.
• In the Air Tonight: I am unsure how a half-second shot of dueling penii is wholly necessary to an interpretive dreamscape set to a Phil Collins song, but okay?
• Mountain Cat: Kind of like the kumiho episode of Lovecraft Country, except without the kumiho stuff.
• The Affected: Based on a true story, wherein a woman refuses to sit on the airplane in order to prevent the deportation of another passenger.
• Raspberry: During family farewells, a son (hilariously but lovingly) gives his recently deceased father a raspberry while the undertakers awkwardly stand around waiting for the signal to move in.
• Unliveable: A woman desperately searches for her disappeared trans daughter Roberta.

Shorts Program 3

• Wiggle Room: The insurance industry is built to stymie folks who actually need it, but most especially this woman trying to keep hold of her wheelchair ramp.
• The Longest Dream I Remember: Do you disappear when you leave your hometown? What if you’re looking for someone who did the same?
• Ava From My Class: A bunch of youngsters in a drama workshop is exactly as fun as you expect them to be, but also there is a tiny adorable drama moppet giving off distinct SWF vibes.
• Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss: OMG some of this is in Tagalog! Or, what if Superstore but all Sandra?
• Forever: A film about how the insurance industry (and its use of algorithms) makes an applicant question his reality. Deja vu, man.
• Black Bodies: I would hope that the murder of Black folks by police is pretty well known by now, but this is a pretty straightforward invocation. It’s written and performed like spoken word poetry, which is haunting.
• We’re Not Animals: No good can come from following your ex on Instagram. It’s just gonna mess you up, my dudes. (Especially if she gets involved in sex positive activism. Paranoia is inevitable.)
• Lizard: An adorable girl can sense danger, and discovers there is danger everywhere, including her church and its surroundings. Also, there is a lizard.

Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, 06 February 2021, streamed via Disney+
The last three episodes of Clone Wars overlap with Episode III, so I could hardly NOT rewatch, right? (Watching that final season of Clone Wars was harrowing, having developed so much affection for so many of the individual clones, but haunted by the knowledge they’re all going to turn by the end of things.) Also, given the now kinda outdated level of CGI for this movie and the phenomenal animation of Clone Wars, I think I’d have some trouble distinguishing between the two if you handed me a bunch of screenshots.



Anyway, damn if Clone Wars didn’t do its job! Somehow I now believe that Anakin and Padme are in love! The ruin of the Jedi is no longer a shock because they are THE WORST. Yoda’s incredibly bad advice to Anakin makes sense in light of his Force ghost trials! Obi-wan’s weird detached amusement about almost everything seems natural! Anakin is an actual tragic figure whose slide into the dark side makes perfect sense! (Would he have turned if the Council hadn’t expelled Ahsoka? Probably not so easily, at least.)

Meanwhile, Grievous has some of his droids wearing capes and I can’t, guys. I can’t.

Yeah, Order 66 was just surprisingly sad before. Now it’s like, excuse me, I need to go sob in a corner for a few days, please give me all the blankets you have. NOT YOU TOO, CODY. But Anakin taking out the temple first is illogical--had his first move been to execute all the Separatist leaders, I’d probably have bought the heel turn more. But Yoda and Obi-wan got things so totally, completely wrong, it’s no wonder the two of them ended up as weirdo hermits in their respective wastelands.

Watching this movie and those last four FANTASTIC episodes of Clone Wars only makes stark how unskilled those lightsaber battles in the sequel trilogy are. They’re fun, but there’s not a lot of artistry going on there. (Do I make fun of my beloved Rey’s slash-and-flail technique in every fic I write about her? YUP. And while you can kind of see some excellent moves when Kylo Ren’s fighting, he’s strong enough that he can overpower most of his opponents with brute force. Sigh.)

Time to watch Rebels!

Mary Shelley, 20 February 2021, streamed via Hulu
“Without an audience, ideas remain mere words on a page,” Percy Shelley opines to young Mary Shelley before taking the stage at a political philosopher’s salon. No wonder Mary fell under his spell before the revelation of his true self, poetic fuckboy. Then we meet Lord Byron, and I’m like, oh. Okay, Shelley, maybe I was unfair to you. (Don’t fall in love with a poet! According to this movie, those dudes are traaaaaash.) To be fair to Shelley, it’s always 100% clear that he loves Mary and her writing--he’s just a shit husband.



Mary, daughter of philosophers and lover of gothic tales, is always portrayed as a writer. While she spends a good amount of time writing, however, it’s only in the last chunk of the film that she gets fed up with everything and is like, To hell with it, and writes Frankenstein. “And you dare to question a woman’s ability to experience loss, death, betrayal,” she spits at a publisher who implies her husband wrote the novel. I wish more of the movie focused on Mary Shelley the author, rather than Mary Shelley, beloved of a trash husband, but here we are.

Minari, 21 February 2021, streamed via A24’s screening room
A Korean American family moves to rural Arkansas to start their own small farm, and I’m already like, Oh nooooooo. The parents, Jacob and Monica, work at a chicken hatchery sorting chicks, which is both too real and completely absurd. (At one point Jacob is like, I don’t want to stare at chicken butts for the rest of my life!) They have two kids: Anne, who is around 11 or 12, and David, who is 7. David also has a weak heart. Then Monica’s mother Soonja comes from Korea to help watch over the kids, and there’s a good thirty minutes of David haplessly trying to wage war on his not-a-proper-grandma grandmother.



There’s a beautiful juxtaposition, with Jacob desperately trying to live out the American dream and Monica feeling super-isolated and homesick. (This is, as you can imagine, putting a strain on their marriage. At one point, the kids make paper airplanes with “Don’t Fight!” written on them and try sailing them into the room.) The majority of the movie is in Korean and the kids are realistically bilingual. I spent most of the film all, Oh my heaaaaaaart. They get rural Arkansas beautifully (even though I think they didn’t actually film here), and the depiction of a multigenerational immigrant family is PERFECT.

Is this movie also perfect? Possibly.

She Makes Comics, 23 February 2021, streamed via Tubi
This documentary is about an hour and change, but it covers a wiiiiide range of things. Obvs it centers on women in comics, but that includes creators, characters, publishing history, cultural context, gender roles and expectations, genres that draw female readers, the retail experience, and how cosplay interacts with text. And so, so, so many folks have been interviewed. It’s delightful.



I love comics, y’all. I mean, not the women in refrigerators trope, etc, but you know what I mean.