Relationships grow and change. I've been working in recent years on accepting (and grieving) that one of the natural outcomes of a relationship is that people leave my life without leaving my memories. The relationship I have to keep renewing, have to keep pushing for is with myself.
What story do I tell about myself? What does that story help me do? Jane Schoenbrun and co. suggest that the most liberating question to ask pushes further: Who can I tell my stories with?
I got into Letterboxd originally in December 2021. I was depressed, and was distracting myself by revisiting the various Spider-Man franchises before Far From Home dropped. I was lonely, counting down the days until I could take off on a long road trip (that would grow narrower and narrower as COVID's omicron variant spread). I had leaned on a special interest in Marvel comics lore through rough patches since I was a teenager, and had certainly rode the popular wave…
I appreciate the further efforts here by Kelsey Mann and co. to find evocative ways to convey internal conflict and emotional processes. I was skeptical of the release of Inside Out 2 last year as part of Disney's aversion to new creative risks in the past few years, but one benefit to a sequel is refinement. The plot here is snappier but more ambitious. The cast has more than doubled and yet there's little difficulty following their ups and downs.…
Chris Appelhans, Maggie Chang, & co. don't arrive at K-Pop Demon Hunters without a lot of love for K-pop's lightsticks. I haven't found the time this week to convey the detail, love, and sense of place that the filmmakers use here to conjure a musical supernatural Seoul, but I am grateful I got to visit it here. I wish I had an easy way to transmit what it was like to live there a decade ago, and what it's like to see the city done up for a Disney Josie and the Pussycats now. I've never seen animated characters look so specifically Korean before, what a delight!
I am so grateful to be alive while George Miller and co. made Fury Road and Furiosa. I haven't been able to find my words yet to describe why this film succeeds in so many ways as a furthering of Miller's ethos as a filmmaker, blending his obsession with storying back into his decadently pungent diesel oil paintings about our sun-scorched future.
If I see something better than Furiosa in theatres this year then we'll all be on a road historic.
