Alls Well When Read (and Watched) #6: Happy Holidays!
Can y'all believe we basically made it through 2022?!
Happy holidays from everyone here behind the newsletter (my 2 cats, a husband, a mom, and me, but 99% just me)!
Before we get into the movies and all the other fun stuff, I wanted to say that 2022 has been another roller coaster of a year and we all managed to make it through to this point! Because of this, I want to wish you all happiness, fun, and safety these holidays no matter what you’re doing or who you’re spending your time with.
Now, let’s get on with it!
Movies I Watched
Babylon
TBH, I’m still going back and forth with Babylon. I really wanted to love it and its insane decadence but I was so overwhelmed by the high-strungness of everything I didn’t get a chance to really digest the characters and plot as much as I wanted to. And, maybe this was intentional from Damien Chazelle: keep the focus away from the mediocre character transformation by turning up the repulsiveness to a 20?? Who knows. While others may think this is award-season material, I’m still not convinced of it so I’m going to let it simmer, maybe see it again, and we’ll visit this at a later time.
A Wounded Fawn
As much as I liked A Wounded Fawn overall, I couldn’t help but to feel it ended up like one of my college essays: strong at the beginning with a lot of potential, only to be a bit ridiculous at the end from trying to do so much. But yet, it all works! The film, which is a giant mix of 70s arthouse, mythology, and serial killing, is all about raging a violent war against shitty ass men. Specifically, raging a war against chauvinistic men who think it’s okay to lure vulnerable women along and murder them for pleasure.
If you’re going into this thinking it will be cut and dried, don’t. By the time it’s finished, A Wounded Fawn will have you feeling every burn, cut, scream, and scare deep inside your bones and the pain will stick with you for days.
Also, keep an eye out for that Manfred Mann track because it’s killer!
Blood Relatives
Blood Relatives, which is Noah Segan’s feature debut as a writer/director, is a goodhearted, charming, and funny take on the usual vampire films we’ve been getting recently. He obviously has a preference for dad jokes over gory horror, and his talents shine through the film’s unlikely father and daughter duo. If you’re looking for something savage and bloody, you’re not going to get that with this one but it’s still enough of a wild ride on its own that it will keep you entertained to the end.
Shows I Watched
Killer Sally
Bodybuilding, drugs, smut films, and death. What more could one want from a show?! No really, Killer Sally provides audiences with such an in-depth look at Sally and Ray McNeil’s lives and the world of bodybuilding that it gets addicting to watch very quickly.
The 3-part true crime series focuses on Sally and her rocky relationship with Ray. We see that on the outside, they looked like a beautiful, fit, happy couple but behind doors, they had a volatile marriage full of violence and abuse which ended up in Sally shooting Ray on Valentine’s Day in 1996.
Because there are so many accounts from different people, the truth about the motivation of the shooting gets murky. Things quickly turn into whether Sally was actually abused, or was an abuser. So, keep an open mind as you’re watching this and don’t be so quick to judge!
Brand New Cherry Flavor
I don’t know why it has taken me so long to check out Brand New Cherry Flavor but I’m SO GLAD I finally did! The entire series is hallucinatory and chaotic, choosing to overstimulate us with many shocking and grotesque moments instead of smoothing out the plot or answering questions (at least the questions I had because dumb).
But this is what kept the story so thrilling! I had no idea what to pop up next (especially with that ONE stomach scene #iykyk) and this made up for the somewhat unfulfilled feeling that came at the end.
Unsolved Mysteries
The new season of Unsolved Mysteries still has the same eeriness that the old episodes featuring Robert Stack do. At one point while binging through them late on a Friday night, I found myself reverting back to my youth, covering myself in a blanket and being too afraid to go by myself through my dark hallway to the bathroom.
The main thing that felt different was that this season was more about the realistic and less about the paranormal. Yes, there is stuff about UFOs, hauntings, poltergeists, etc., but they definitely take a backseat to keep cold cases and deaths at the front. So, if you were looking forward to hearing more about weird creatures and such, you might be a bit disappointed this time around.
Honorable Mentions
The Addiction
The Addiction (1995) stars Lili Taylor as a doctoral student who becomes disillusioned with human philosophy after getting bit by a vampire and having to navigate her new addiction to bloodlust.
At its core, The Addiction is simple with a few different themes: man will never stop sinning, good versus evil, self-destruction and realization, and disarray of moral order. The gist of the film isn’t hard to understand but is overcomplicated with allegory and a narrative that almost comes off as pedantic. Basically, if you’re not in the mood for something like it, it will seem like it was made by a young film student who decided to throw every 50-cent word they learned in school into one script.