Recent Movies

[osprey_archer]

As another piece of my plan to Make Life More Interesting 2023, my friends and I have trooped to many movies. Upon sitting down to write reviews I realized that almost all these cinema trips were rewatches of beloved favorites: The Princess Bride, Spirited Away, Arsenic and Old Lace, etc. etc. Which was lots of fun! But I don’t have much to say about most of them.

However, we did see a couple new movies, including Everything Everywhere All at Once. I appear to be the only person on the entire internet who felt that this movie was merely fine. It’s just a little too zany for me, I guess. (I also found the people with the hotdog hands exceedingly gross, which really undermined the love story between hotdog hands Evelyn and Deirdre.) I did laugh when Alpha Waymond explains to Evelyn that she can access a huge number of powers from her alternate universe selves because she is currently living the worst possible version of her life. What a reason to be a superhero!

Also Labyrinth! Somehow I made it through my entire childhood and adolescence without ever seeing this movie, and since they were showing it at the Artcraft OF COURSE I had to see it on the big screen. There were at least three Jareths in attendance, and the audience SCREAMED when Jareth first came on screen.

Now I think one has to see this movie at more or less the onset of puberty to get the full effect, but I did very much enjoy it. Magic! Muppets! The amazing visuals: the rotating pyramids of crystal balls, the ballroom dream sequence with Sarah in that amazing dress with the tremendous cloud of hair, Sarah’s bedroom (WHAT a fantastic bedroom), the Escher staircase sequence where Sarah runs up stairs that turn into upside-down stairs as she tries to reach her baby brother…

Long before I ever saw this movie, I peripherally glimpsed some fandom wank about whether Sarah is a brat for not wanting to babysit her little brother. Now that I have seen it, (1) who among us was never a brat at the age of sixteen?, and (2) complaining that the characters are not moral paragons seems like the most boring possible way to engage with this movie. Indeed, with almost any movie, and I hate that this has become such a common form of fandom engagement, although let’s be real, there have always been people whose preferred mode of fandom engagement is “everyone but my fave is so morally compromised.”

Comments

[threeplusfire]

I also was a little underwhelmed by Everything Everywhere. I thought the multiple lives bit was fascinating and cool, but the mother/daughter relationship, family stuff just doesn't hit for me. I did see Labyrinth as a teen though and my god. I would have traded my sibling in a heartbeat, no question! Hell I'll trade the whole family!

[oracne]

YES LABYRINTH. I saw it in the theater when it came out because I was and am a muppet fanatic; I would love to see it on a big screen again.

[asakiyume]

ME TOO ME TOO ME TOO! That was my feeling exactly about Everything Everywhere.... It was very Okay. Some of the things that people appear to have loved best I thought were just done in an Okay fashion, and I too found it a little too zany.

I loved Labyrinth; I loved the adventure of it, all the twists and turns, the fabulous set and character designs, and definitely Jareth, who was magnificent. With Sarah, I objected more to her way of delivering her lines, which to me felt too mannered--like when you ask an American kid to imitate a British person--but I put up with it for the sake of the adventure she was experiencing.

[tei]

Yeah, I really loved EEAAO, but I agree with the "too zany" assessment-- I think it went a bit too far into the "haha, this is so silly!" stuff in a way that undermined the emotional content. The "have to do something unexpected to jump worlds" thing was funny and intriguing particularly while it remained somewhat mysterious, but then around the point that a whole bunch of characters that just showed up and don't have any relationship to the plot show up and are all trying to jump on the butt-plug-shaped trophy for like, a lot of screentime, I was like-- I get it, I get it, it's very Silly, PLEASE move on!

[osprey_archer]

I hope it comes to a big screen near you someday soon!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, the family stuff also didn't quite hit for me. It just seemed a little disproportionate for the entire multiverse to be collapsing to repair Evelyn's relationship with Joy.

Hahaha, thank you for this important data point about The Experience of Seeing Labyrinth As a Teen.

[osprey_archer]

YES, the trophy scene went on SO long, and it's so - it's not gross the way the hot dog fingers are gross, but it also feels like a teenage boy got loose in the drafting process and no one reined him back in.

[osprey_archer]

I've noticed that the internet will sometimes decide there is a Correct Reaction to a movie, so that it feels vaguely illicit and probably contrary to Social Justice to feel differently. Like, I remember when the girl!Ghostbusters came out, and the Correct Reaction was to be rapturous in defiance of the dudebros who hated the very concept of girl ghostbusters, and it's like, it was fine? It was a fun popcorn flick? I did like it! Why do I feel vaguely traitorous for merely liking it! And I felt that way about Everything Everywhere All at Once too.

Re: Sarah, yes, the way she says her lines is very mannered, and it does detract. The dream sequence ball where she's in the giant dress dancing with Jareth is one of the best in the film partly because no one's talking! It's puzzling that they didn't find an actress with a more natural delivery style. But ultimately there's so much else to enjoy that I felt this was only a quibble.

[skygiants]

I always found Sarah's mannerisms kind of a features rather than a bug, tbh -- it felt like it matched with her character as a very Theatrical kid who is constantly writing the version of herself that's making her way through an epic romance inside her own mind. Sarah would be the type of child who trains herself into speaking with a slightly fake-sounding accent rather than talking like someone from Long Island or Charlottesville or wherever she's actually from.

[annavere]

I just stumbled over your journal and hope you don't mind strangers commenting? I adored Labyrinth as a teenager and enjoyed reading your first impressions. The film had incredible style (M.C. Escher and the Pre-Raphaelites were and are some of my favorite artists) and I appreciate your defense of Sarah. I loved her because she had flaws and made mistakes and learned from them - indeed I always thought that was the point of the story.

[kore]

Long before I ever saw this movie, I peripherally glimpsed some fandom wank about whether Sarah is a brat for not wanting to babysit her little brother

LOLwha. My assumption about this criticism is people like this have never had siblings. My eldest half-sister tried to feed CASCADE (i.e. the DISHWASHING POWDER) to our middle half-sister when she was like four or five. My dad had a whole party piece about it.

I am SO JELLY you got to see that movie on the big screen, altho honestly I always preferred Labyrinth //HIPSTER Hmmm imagine a crossover with Tim Curry and David Bowie....

I once read a really good fic where grown-up Sarah goes back and has some mild BDSM hijinks with David Bowie, but was never able to find it again. I think it was one of the first fanfics I ever read! On one of those personal websites with spinning graphics.

[kore]

LOL, this reminds me of people who went on and on about how terrible Thor was to Loki and I was like, "IDK, that seems like kind of a normal sibling relationship...." (Altho neither of my sisters ever turned into a snake and tried to bite me.)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I do think that's the point of the story! She gives her little brother to the goblins, realizes she's made a terrible mistake, and does her darndest to undo it. How many of us would be as stalwart as Sarah as we tried to battle our way past bizarre obstacles in a world with rules that keep changing all the time?

But I've noticed that sometimes intense fandom engagement leads directly to missing the overarching themes of a work: people get intent on their favorite character that they can't see the forest for the trees, as it were.

[osprey_archer]

Never had siblings, or were the youngest sibling and thought their older siblings ought to have been overjoyed to be tagged after, or felt that when THEY got annoyed at THEIR younger siblings it was TOTALLY DIFFERENT than Sarah giving Toby to the goblins! Never underestimate people's ability to point out the mote in a fictional character's eye while ignoring the plank in their own.

I think you must have meant that you preferred some other movie to Labyrinth in your second paragraph?

Ahaha in my mind's eye I can SEE that fanfic website with the spinning graphics. Oh the Geocities era...

[osprey_archer]

Oh, that's an interesting take! And yes, given the amount of effort she has clearly put into making her room reflect her vision of herself as a the heroine of a fantasy epic, I could definitely see her training her voice to what she thinks is an Appropriately Epic Accent too.

[kore]

Never underestimate people's ability to point out the mote in a fictional character's eye while ignoring the plank in their own.

Sadly true!

I think you must have meant that you preferred some other movie to Labyrinth in your second paragraph?

asdfjasdfj Yes I meant LEGEND not Labyrinth and I have not had enough coffee and the people with fireworks started up lats night, ugh.

I had a Geocities account! I thought it was super spiffy because it had BLACK backgrounds and the text on the different pages was all in different colours: BRIGHT red, SEARING yellow, GLARING green, &c &c. It probably burned retinas. -- One thing that was nice about Geocities were those self-sorting neighbourhoods -- Athens for arts or philosophy, Hollywood for film, whatever -- it wasn't a strict thing, but it was a fun way to find other like-minded people. I don't think I've seen anything quite like that again.

[threeplusfire]

Right? Ahahah! I did tie my sister to a tree once and told her to pretend to be a sheep, so I could escape and go ride my bike.

[kore]

LOL, YES. Also my husband is the eldest of FIVE boys and there was no question of hiring outside help or whatever (solidly suburban Midwest middle-class family), so he had babysitting duties until he left for college. Siblings are often just There, which is why the bond can be so aggravating but strong, and why it can be so devastating when that bond breaks (see again, Thor and Loki).

[osprey_archer]

I haven't seen Legend (or The Dark Crystal, for that matter). Someday!

[silverusagi]

I appear to be the only person on the entire internet who felt that this movie was merely fine

There are two of us!

And, ah, Labyrinth. I do love this movie. I don't remember when I first saw it, but it was *cough* probably when I was first downloading stuff, so it might have been college. I still loved it for all the fantastical things, and weird dynamics, and I read fic here and there for it for a while. Only two really stick out in my mind years later, and I have revisited them from time to time.

I also want Sarah's room (I'm convinced set dressers have the best jobs, and are just living out their own fantasies when they get to design cool houses/rooms), and to live in a big Victorian house, and to have a picturesque park I can easily walk to.

[genarti]

Same -- I tend to take it as Sarah being a kid who's very conscious of being The Protagonist Of The Story, or rather of acting as if she is to convince everyone around her of that, even before she is the protagonist of a fantasy story (but extra then, because you've got to do it right! how shameful it would be to get the chance and NOT come across as The Protagonist!).

[osprey_archer]

A lot of people who felt Everything Everywhere All At Once was merely fine have come out of the woodwork on this entry. Maybe the internet chorus of rapture drowned us all out earlier.

Yes, Sarah's regular life also looks fantastic! That gorgeous room in that gorgeous house close to that amazing park... Toby is a fly in the ointment, but hey, there's always something.