October 2021 Viewing Diary

I really didn’t watch all that much, numerically, during October, for various reasons.
1. I was on the move. I think I spent, all told, about 7 days at home over the course of the month. Including one unexpected stay in a dank motel across state lines. I literally just moved into this apartment and I have barely been there.
2. I was a juror for Indie Memphis and had a lot of viewing to do for that (only five feature-length films, though, the rest were shorts).
3. The #1 main reason why this list is relatively short is because Ted Lasso crashed into my life – late, as ever, to the party – and I am just now coming out of the first wave of obsession. The stress I’ve been under over the past two months has been extreme and my living situation and life in general is in a state of truly upsetting and prolonged upheaval – a bad situation for anyone, but perilous for someone of my temperament/challenges. One of the ways I dealt with it is by retreating into an obsession, where I could be lost to the world. The series, too, is so good-hearted – I now can see why everyone went crazy over it and why people kept saying “this is what we need right now” – a statement I despise and mostly ignore. Don’t include me in your “we” – how do YOU know what I need? But now I can see why people were saying that. I think it was in Jason Sudeikis’ SNL monologue where he said he couldn’t believe Americans had taken to the show “because it’s about two things Americans hate: soccer and kindness.” lol Anyway, I’m hooked. It’s irritating to have to interrogate myself about my obsessions and keep track of how deeply into it I go, but I’m used to it by now. Allison was the one who basically forced me to watch it – she’s the one who has introduced me to so many things I now find indispensable. And hopefully vice versa!! We spent a week in a house in Connecticut, the two of us working during the day (remotely) and then convening at night, with glasses of wine, for Ted Lasso marathons. The following week I was down in New York for five days (see what I mean? I was home for two days before I was off again) and I stayed with Allison and we finished up Season 2. I am so into it. I cannot WAIT for Season 3. Season 2 ended with a Shakespearean level cliffhanger. These people – i.e. Jason and his writers – REALLY know what they’re doing.

Let’s get to it.

The Wire, Season 2 (2003)
My Wire re-watch was derailed when Ted Lasso arrived, but I’m getting back to it now. Finished up Season 2 a couple nights ago. This series, man … my God. It’s mind-blowing, to be honest. I don’t even know how you would begin to even have a CONCEPT of how to pull this off.

South of Heaven (2021; d. Aharon Keshales)
A tired thriller starring Jason Sudeikis. Disappointing! I reviewed for Ebert.

WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (2021; d. Jed Rothstein)
Speaking of how much I dislike “we” – how much my spirit and soul buck against it as though it is literal chains … this documentary, indeed this whole debacle, was created to irritate me. I followed this whole trainwreck in real time. In general, I am fascinated by such stories – grandiose “visionaries” (con artists, grifters) get a bunch of smart rich people to bankroll them … and then utter ruination follows as the fraud is exposed. I barely understand the economics involved but I’m interested in it because of the cult-like atmosphere the con artist encourages (demands) and how … through the looking glass such corporate cultures can be. Places like Enron. Or Bernie Madoff. Or, on a smaller scale, the Fyre Festival. Or low-voiced phony-baloney sociopath Elizabeth Holmes. We Work fell at a spectacularly rapid rate. Blink and you miss it. A couple of times when I was a guest on this or that podcast, we would record at a studio in a We Work space. They were fun playhouse type atmospheres, with coffee bars and neon and comfy couches, but to be totally honest – I worked for a startup during the very start of the Internet Speculative Bubble. The startup was acquired by New Line. The atmosphere in those offices was also playhouse-like, with beanbag chairs and dart boards, and free beer on Fridays. Granted, we weren’t co-working or whatever the hell We Work branded themselves as championing, but it was the same “let’s make working a fun and playful place” vibe – not entirely a bad thing. We worked our ASSES off at that startup. A little free beer on Fridays was appreciated. But still. I wasn’t blown away or anything by walking into the We Work space. Maybe it’s because I’m Gen X, and I do not mean this as a diss on the idealistic millennials who got sucked into this We Work thing. Gen X is generally skeptical and “over it” (slackers aren’t gonna get all worked up about comfy couches and a coffee bar, in other words). Clearly though, We Work tapped into something extremely real to the people who got sucked into it, a generation (if I may speak broadly) who has been worked to the bone from the moment they entered kindergarten – who were already depleted by all the pressure – as well as parental over-involvement – by the time they reached college. So of course this “collective” would appeal to people whose relationships to “work” were fraught and anxiety-provoking. I mean, they were fraught and anxiety-provoking to Gen X too – we were born into a world of gas lines, inflation, and overall “malaise”. But – and this is a big but – we were mainly left alone by the grownups around us. We weren’t ridden like show ponies until we dropped. We played. We had free time. I’m not judging millennials! I am hugely sympathetic. I don’t like inter-generational warfare. Every generation has good sides/bad sides. The world looks different depending on where you’re standing. It’s hard for me to see We Work’s appeal. We Work was – let’s be honest – a glorified real estate company. I don’t care how much you blather on about collectivity and “we” and working together and … changing the world … you’re still just renting office space to people. Smoke and mirrors! I am fascinated by charismatic leaders too – “charismatic” only in that “well, I guess you had to be there” kind of charisma.

People said Keith Raneire was charismatic, magnetic. Okay, if you say so. Another interesting We Work thing: a really good friend of mine, a big wig in the financial sector, was recruited by We Work – or, they really tried to hire her, basically saying “whatever you want, we really need it”. She’s used to Wall Street, so her stories of the series of interviews she did at the We Work offices in Chelsea were hilarious. They offered her the MOON, which she demanded – but there was something so disarmingly – and inappropriately – chill about it – like, the interviews took place standing up in hallways, people stopping by to say “hi” to her, etc. Everyone was young and had that shine. She realized that “Oh. Okay. They’re hiring me to be the grownup in the room. No thank you.” Ultimately, she didn’t take it – and literally a month later came the spectacular crash. It was that close in time.

Allison and I watched this one during our sojourn in the woods, as we kept a fire going and wore cozy socks as the leaves turned orange outside. We kept pausing to discuss. Like the Fyre Festival, the We Work thing exposes some nasty truths. It’s not just the story of a startup collapse. Just like Enron was not just about one company imploding. These stories REVEAL things.

It’s a good documentary. This piece in The New Yorker about the doc is very good. I like her point that one of the reason We Work fell apart, and why the media frenzy was so extreme, was that there was a desire for reality to “reassert itself”.

LuLaRich (2021; d. Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason)
I watched this docuseries last month. After Allison and I finished We Work, we moved on to LuLaRich. Allison had somehow missed the whole LuLaRoe thing so it was so fun to watch her discover it. One shot of a bunch of women wearing LuLaRoe leggings, jumping up and down onstage at some corporate event: Allison took it all in and said, “Those clothes are hideous.” She’s not wrong.

Ted Lasso, seasons 1 and 2
I love it so much. I’m all in. The actors are SO good. And I’ve always been into Jason Sudeikis – back from the SNL days, and I’m really loving what he’s bringing to the table here. It’s deceptively simple. The whole thing is a joke, really: American football coach who doesn’t understand soccer is hired to coach a professional “football” team in England. It started as a joke on those NBC commercials a while ago. So it could have been a one-joke kind of thing. Clearly Sudeikis started with the joke and then immediately – with every episode, every moment – began unpacking it, unpacking every character, allowing for the humor in the situation – he REALLY doesn’t understand soccer – but also providing space for each character to have an arc, to seem like a “type” at first – chilly boss bitch lady, grumpy old-timer, cheeky sexy “It Girl”, eager newbie, etc. – and then, with every passing moment, that type is deconstructed in really beautiful ways. You can only pull this off if you have really really good actors. Hannah Waddingham is brilliant. But really, they all are. I watched the series maybe 3 times this month. Couldn’t get enough.

The French Dispatch (2021; d. Wes Anderson)
Really loved it and was slightly overwhelmed by it. There’s so much happening onscreen, the edits, the asides, the music, the sweep of it … I need to see it again so I can absorb even more. I did my best to absorb as much as possible because I reviewed for Ebert.

Operation Hyacinth (2021; d. Piotr Domalewski)
I REALLY liked this Polish film about the militia detail in the mid-late 80s tasked with arresting as many homosexuals as possible. The operation was called “Operation Hyacinth” (hyacinth being a slur along the lines of pansy). Terrific acting, dark moody atmosphere, the period evoked without fetishizing it … Tomasz Ziętek as a detective, who gets tossed into a case investigating the deaths of a couple of gay men (young men). It’s already illegal to be doing what they’re doing, the homophobia they face is a claustrophobic atmosphere, and they face constant harassment, interrogation, torture, etc. To get anyone to investigate someone killing them is hard enough. The detective has increasingly ambivalent feelings about what he’s doing – for both professional and personal reasons – he is fantastic, and the gorgeous Hubert Milkowski is terrific as the gay boy who becomes a police informer. It’s very dark, twisty, and occasionally very frightening. Streaming on Netflix. I saw it because of my pal Odie’s review on Ebert.

What’s Up Doc? (1972; d. Peter Bogdanovich)
An O’Malley favorite. We were raised on it. My parents let my brother and me stay up past our bedtime to see two movies: The Sting and What’s Up, Doc?. We have now passed it on to the younger generation. My nieces and nephews are all obsessed. My 12 year old niece was Eunice Burns for Halloween. The kids can recite the whole thing and – crucially – they can keep track of the bags. I don’t know anyone who can keep track of the bags. Even Bogdanovich lost track of the bags during filming. The kids never get sick of it, so I’ve seen that movie twice this past month alone.

As I mentioned, Indie Memphis screenings took up a lot of time. I wrote a small round-up of the winners we chose in the three categories, but thought it would be fun to list the films here, even the ones that didn’t win, because there were so many good films to choose from. Some of these actually have Vimeo links where you can view the films, and I highly suggest clicking on through. I love getting to see what new talented filmmakers are up to.

Killer (2021; d. A.D. Smith)
An entertaining horror movie, showing a party game gone very very wrong. Covid-era horror: when a bunch of good friends quarantine together, shit gets bloody.

The Lucky Eleven (2021; d. George Tillman)
Feature-length documentary about 11 Memphis kids, star football players locally, who went on to the NFL.

A Ballet Season (2021; d. David Goodman, Steven J. Ross)
A documentary about a “season in the life” of Ballet Memphis. I really loved this one. Memphis is known for a couple of things – music, Fed Ex, Elvis … but there’s so much else going on in the city, and Ballet Memphis is an institution. (I have a soft spot for dance documentaries so this was right up my alley.) The Ballet Memphis building is so striking, and sits right across the street from the Playhouse Theatre – aka Circuit – a performance space, once a movie theatre, and where I did my talk on Elvis’ movie career. I took a picture of Ballet Memphis across the way, glowing in the sunset light.

Life Ain’t Like the Movies (2021; d. Robert Butler)
A coming-of-age story about a bullied teen, whose father struggles to know how to help him. Loved the father-son aspect of this.

Reel Rock: Black Ice (2021; d. Zachary Barr, Peter Mortimer) ** Winner **
As good as some of the other features were, Black Ice was the one where we as jurors achieved a unanimous result, a clear winner. I wish I had a link to provide here. Will provide updates on the film as it moves its way towards distribution.

Hot Singles (2021; d. Laura-Jean Hocking)
So this was exciting, and shows a fun byproduct of having a “relationship” with a particular film festival, as I do with Indie Memphis. Back in the spring, I was on the judging committee for the Indie Memphis Women’s Short Film Grant. The grant was $5,000. People had to submit treatments, scripts, mood books, former work, etc. The grant was to go towards making a specific film, a specific project, laid out in advance, which had to be completed within 150 days (something like that) of receiving the money. These were smart parameters and it weeded out a lot of people. You get $5,000 and you have to complete a film within a limited amount of time, you best have your ducks in a row. So that was part of our mindset in how we judged applications. Is this piece even do-able for $5,000? Are they over-shooting themselves? Do they understand budgeting? Anyway, it was a really fun process. And we chose Laura-Jean Hocking’s project Hot Singles. We liked her previous work, she clearly knows what she’s doing, and her proposal for Hot Singles was excellent. The script was excellent. You could SEE the film when you read the script (always a good sign). So here we are, half a year later, and Hot Singles has been completed, exactly as she laid it out in her script. Amazing. And it’s just as good as her treatment was. Hot Singles didn’t win, but Hocking is going to be just fine. She’s a very talented filmmaker. Very good.

The Nest (2021; d. Jean Jackson)
I really liked this, and it was one of my top contenders. I liked the simplicity of Jackson’s approach, but also her sense of drama and creativity. It’s not a story so much as it is a mood piece, and a celebration of independence and joy – but she found a creative way to show that. I loved the production design too! Everything was on point! You can view it here.

In a Bad Way (2021; d. Kyle Taubken)
I thought this was a very good dramatic short, about a man (Keith Lamont Johnson) drowning in gambling debts. He is in big trouble. And it’s Christmas. There are all these presents for his kids in the trunk of the car. He faces a moral dilemma. Very good acting.

Beale Street Blues (2021; d. Daniel R Ferrell)
This project won the “Proof of Concept” grant. For the eventual and hoped-for feature, a short film is made, to demonstrate what the feature will be, and hopefully attract backers, funding, etc. The story of a dirty cop in Memphis. Keith Lamont Johnson stars in this one too! You can view the film here.

Main Street (2021; d. Joshua Woodcock) ** Special Jury Mention **
This movie touched my SOUL. I wrote about it in the Indie Memphis roundup so I won’t say anything else except you should definitely watch it.

Main Street from Joshua Woodcock on Vimeo.

The Devil Will Run (2021; d. Noah Glenn) ** Winner **
A really fun film about a little boy who is convinced a hole in his backyard is the gate to hell. We all loved it. You can watch it here.

Chocolate Galaxy (2021; d. Blake Heimbach, Ryan Peel, David Parks)
I’m not sure what exactly is happening here but it’s fantastic! The production design is crazy. Very ambitious and stylish and I enjoyed it.

Watch (2021 d. Mars McKay)
The second I started watching Watch, I had a bolt of deja vu and knew I had seen it before. When I was judging the Short Film Grant, applicants had to submit links to their previous work. McKay was one of the applicants, and Watch was her previous work. We flipped OUT over how good it was. In our collective opinion, it was the best “previous work” of the bunch. She ended up not winning the grant, but the short really stayed with me. It was fun to re-visit it. Enjoy. It’s really really good.

WATCH – 2020 Short Film from Mars Lee Mckay on Vimeo.

Toxic Behavior: The Fight for Environmental and Racial Justice (2021; d. Aisha Raison)
A short documentary showing the protests of a proposed pipeline, which would cut right through some of the poorest neighborhoods in Memphis, displacing people, polluting the water, etc. The protests worked.

Toxic Behavior: The Fight For Environmental and Racial Justice from Aisha Raison on Vimeo.

MCB: Always Working (2021; d. Lauren Ready, Jon Quinn)
I really dug this short about a championship boxer. Very confident filmmaking. Listen, it’s hard to make a short film. It’s hard to make a film PERIOD. Shorts are even more challenging than features in a way because there’s less margin for error. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more.

Own the Land (2021; d. Erin Cole)
I had seen this before, also in connection with the Short Film Grant. Cole was an applicant and this was submitted as an example of her previous work. It’s about the food deserts in Memphis, and how some Memphians have taken matters into their own hands, creating community gardens in the (many) vacant lots, and distributing the food – fresh vegetables, etc. – to the people in the neighborhood. This was commissioned by the Community Redevelopment Agency, and therefore its format and structure is information-based, but it’s very well done.

Finding My Roots: Tale of Two Carries (2021; d. Carrie Bernans)
Director Carrie Bernans takes her mother (also named Carrie) on a drive through the Mississippi (I think?) town where her grandmother was born and raised, a sharecropper. I’m sorry I don’t have a link to this one.

A Homecoming I’ll Remember (2021; d. Jasmine Rene’ McCaskill)
We really liked this one as well, about a girl’s quest to become the first Black Homecoming queen at her school. But it’s more than that. It’s also about the pioneers in beauty pageants, some of whom are interviewed, which gives great context.

Nuestra (2021; d. Aaron Baggett) ** Winner **
I can’t say enough good stuff about this film. It’s haunting and the images have really stayed with me.

Letter to My Son (2021; d. Brittany Butler, Joshua Woodcock) ** Special Jury Mention **
A very strong contender, so much so we had to give it a Special Jury Mention. Beautifully done. Emotional and powerful.

Letter To My Son – Short Film Documentary from Joshua Woodcock on Vimeo.

The Souvenir Part II (2021; d. Joanna Hogg)
I love this whole project and I can’t even believe it’s been allowed to exist. AND that it’s as good as it is. Like … wow, sometimes things do really work out, don’t they. I reviewed for Ebert, and I wrote the Film Comment cover story on the first installment.