Francesco Amato’s 18 Presents could have dived right in to movie cliches* but ventures off in a different direction to create a movie that had me intermittently verklempt. The charm comes from the independent** natures of the mother (Vittoria Puccini) and daughter (Benedetta Porcaroli.) While a little too sad to be a Sunday Afternoon Film,*** this is a pleasant way to spend a few hours.
Cost: Netflix monthly charge ($8.99)
Where watched: at home
*After all, the setup (Pregnant woman learns she has terminal cancer; plans 18 birthday presents for her unborn daughter) had me thinking I knew how this would go down.
**And feisty.
***A low-stress film that doesn’t demand much brainpower and leaves you with a good feeling. One last breath of weekend fresh air before you launch into prep for the week ahead.
I had a bunch of leftover peas and I’ve been planting them since mid-March. The first round is ready to harvest.
I do love fresh peas!
Just over the roof of the house behind me you can barely see it here. But if I zoom in…
Here comes the second story.
This is the new place that’s going up where the blue house on Watts Street once was.
Christopher Nolan’s Inception is a movie with a highly original concept that makes the choice to go just a few levels too deep.* It remains as visually stunning as it was in 2010,** and I enjoy the commitment everyone has to their sometimes bananas dialog.*** It did wear on me that Ellen Paige’s character existed only to ask questions so the audience could be informed, but this was balanced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s focused work in zero gravity.****
Cost: Neflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home
*I enjoy puzzling through things while watching movies, but the layers after the snowbound assault are too much. Though props for finding a way to include a James Bond-esque action sequence that reminds me why I don’t watch James Bond movies. How in the world am I supposed to tell who is who when they are all wearing the same outfit?
**It was more of a marvel then—I mean, we’ve all seen Thanos snap his fingers and have half of the universe’s population blow away—but it still looks good ten years on.
***Example: You’re waiting for a train. A train that’ll take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you. But you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter. Now, tell me why?
****If there is one thing I’ve learned from my Nolan oeuvre-view, it’s that I need more JGL in my movie-going life. That voiceover work he did for Knives Out didn’t cut it.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, writer, producer, and director Christopher Nolan explained that he based roles of the Inception team on filmmaking roles. Cobb is the director, Arthur is the producer, Ariadne is the production designer, Eames is the actor, Saito is the studio, and Fischer is the audience. “In trying to write a team-based creative process, I wrote the one I know,” said Nolan.
Another SKS postcard she sent her students and I got in on. Sara reports that sometimes the students display the postcards she sends them in the background during their Zoom meetings. Pandemic fun!
Just Mercy is a solid courtroom procedural, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, that draws attention to the faulty mechanisms of justice, specifically concerning prisoners on death row.* Michael B. Jordan brings his best intense focus** to assist Jamie Foxx’s Walter McMillan in his quest to clear his conviction for murdering a woman he had zero contact with. While this movie is slightly too long, it does a lot, not only with plot, but also by giving example after example of how the scales of justice are more equal for some than others.***
Cost: Cost: $1.425 due to Redbox promos, but actually free because I used a gift card.
Where watched: at home
*It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie dealing with the courts, which was a welcome change.
**He is so good at intense focus!
***And this, not really equal at all.
In one scene, Bryan and Eva sit on the banks of the Alabama River and watch a recreation of a nineteenth-century riverboat sail by. Bryan says to Eva, “Nobody wants to remember that this is where thousands of enslaved people were shipped in and paraded up the street to be sold. Ten miles from here, black people were pulled from their homes and lynched and nobody talks about it. ”
This is a nod to the fact that years after this movie takes place, Stevenson’s organization the Equal Justice Initiative expanded its mission. Although it continues to provide legal defense and advocacy for prisoners on death row, children in adult prisons, people who have been wrongfully convicted, and others in need of defense, they also started to memorialize the history of slavery and lynching in America.
In April 2018, EJI opened two new facilities. One was the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, a museum located in a former warehouse where black people were enslaved in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. The other was National Memorial for Peace and Justice, dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people and people terrorized and murdered by lynching. EJI also works with communities to install historical markers that acknowledge lynchings in those cities’ pasts.
Recently, Fred Meyer revamped their check stands in a way I find ridiculous. The checkers can no longer bag at their stations. Instead they must put everything on the conveyor belt to the end. This would be fine if 100% of the time there was a bagger, but in reality 95% of the time I’m in the store, there is no bagger.
In that case, the checker must walk around to the end and bag all the items. (I just bag my own, but not everyone does that.) Then they must walk back to their area. It’s a stupid, inefficient waste of time and clearly no one asked the people working what would make sense for them.
They also made it so the back half of the check stand is open, where once it was not. This also turns out to be dumb because: global pandemic. And so now we have these plexiglass structures.
Stella Meghie’s The Photograph is a slow buffet of pleasure that is delightful for the person in the mood for not much happening, and probably tedious for everyone else.* It’s also a movie that hinges on the back and forth of conversations, rather than actions.** I’m here to champion love stories in two eras, Louisiana and New York City, the gorgeous faces of the leads, because if we can make the same action film forty-two times a year, surely we can find room for a languid romance.
Cost: $1.425 due to Redbox promos, but actually free because I used a gift card.
Where watched: at home
(When I first introduced it, who could have imagined this category would have a long period of redundancy.)
*I was quite happy: I’d had some wine, enjoy love stories, LaKeith Stanfield, and was interested to catch up with Issa Rae. (I don’t have HBO, so haven’t seen Insecure.)
**The other film directed by Meghie, The Weekend, was similarly slow and conversation based. Oh wait, she also did Everything Everything. That had a little more action, but it also was adapted from a novel.
The one there isn’t good enough to be a favorite, so instead read this interview with director Stella Meghie.
May 2022. This is a post from the beginning of the pandemic. It’s been sitting in my draft folder for more than two years now. I am publishing it without revising, so please excuse its first-draft form.
There were technical difficulties (at one point I think they had two streams going and there was much discussion about the donate button. But it was fun to hear the album.
I for sure can’t listen to music while I’m working anymore. Especially music I want to sing along to. My brain feels split and if I keep going I’m going to get a headache.
