Ticket Stubs
a/o 6.26.24
Hello friends and welcome to… whatever this is. It’s part personal entertainment newsletter and part a place to talk about media that is either too short to be anything, in particular, or that somebody else already covered at my publication MovieJawn. At any rate, my aim is to deliver something to your inbox once a week. I do work in script television post production and we’re very much in the process of finishing a show, so we’ll see how this goes!
First up, and likely the vibe of every other week, is what I’m calling “Ticket Stubs.” I’m a person who has kept a running list, with various details, about every piece of major media I consume (books, tv episodes, and films). I’ve done this since high school, where I used my LiveJournal as the base, before moving onto Tumblr, and finally landing on a Google Sheet that is, in no way, a public document. Not that anybody was looking at those pages before, when they were much more public, but still.
That being said, “Ticket Stubs” as the bi-weekly part of this is more the “newsletter” bit. I wanna talk about my stats because I can’t just keep talking to my best friend about them. I also figured it would be a good place to talk about the movies I want to talk about, but don’t have a full piece in me, for whatever reason. Anyway, this will likely be less intense in the future, but we have a full half a year to catch up on, so let’s go!
The first film I watched this year was Man of Steel. My husband and I watched the new Aquaman in theaters in December (it was very bad, but a little bit funny in the way James Wan can often be… aka goofy). I confessed that I’d never seen the first DCEU film and Pierce was adamant that it was “actually pretty good.” And you know what? Yeah, it was pretty good. I don’t love it or anything, but it was a good time and a much-needed palate cleanser after whatever was happening in Atlantis.
That month I also finally watched Hellraiser, a film I’d been dying to see for a while. I finished reading Clive Barker’s novella and really loved it, so I had my (hellbound) heart set on marathon watching all the flicks. I haven’t done that yet, but I still really want to—so it seems like a probable October event.
Leading up to the Oscars this year, I made it my mission to watch all the films that had nominees in the major categories. Which I succeeded at, mostly because I watched nearly everything in 2023. I watched American Fiction before the nominations came out (and was shocked, but very excited, to see it get so many noms). Zone of Interest, Nyad, The Color Purple, and Rustin I watched post-nomination announcement, but pre-Oscars. I had a real mixed result with those. The Netflix films just did not do it for me. Like, I keep thinking about how much I really, actively, disliked Nyad. Woof.
In March I did a double feature (maybe my favorite since the one I did of Theater Camp and Talk to Me) of Love Lies Bleeding and Problemista. Both were incredible and I will never, in my life, stop laughing about how Tilda Swinton’s character in Problemista always has the flashlight app on her phone absolutely blasting anytime you see it.
April was, shockingly, a big horror month. Pierce and I watched the first two Strangers flicks in anticipation of The Strangers: Chapter 1. The first one is truly the only good one—it’s terrifying and I’m obsessed with it. The second one is… bad. It’s pretty awful and has nothing interesting to say. It just becomes a slasher, rather than a slow-burn, terrifying home invasion. The newest one was also quite bad, but I actually (controversially) like it more than Strangers: Prey at Night. Not by a lot, but still.
I think the new film has two fatal flaws. First, the town basically knows about this nonsense? The line change from “because you were home” to “because you were here” highlights this nicely. Second, and more crucially to me, is that the couple in this flick are totally happy. Like, the thing that’s so brutal about the first film is that they’re two people on the precipice of totally ending their relationship and now they have to die together in this horrific way. It’s such a crucial part of the original film to me and I think the change really hurts the narrative.
Plus, The First Omen came out, which I went and saw. I absolutely loved it and have been thinking about some of the images that Arkasha Stevenson and her cinematographer, Aaron Morton, created for months. Additionally, an editor and assistant editor that I worked with on Love & Death worked on the film! Amy E. Duddleston and Samuel James Bellamy were part of the amazing post team on my first non-Ryan Murphy show (because idk if people know this, but I tend to work on RMTV stuff), which was an Elizabeth Olsen and Jesse Plemons series made for HBO Max. It was a really wonderful show to work on, and I’m so happy to see my colleagues do such great work!
My brain also completely fell out of my brain at the end of April when I saw Luca Guadagnino’s newest film, Challengers. It’s been my most anticipated film in the last few years, if I’m being honest, and it didn’t disappoint. I went to an early screening at American Cinematheque, my favorite Los Angeles film staple, and then proceeded to see it twice more in IMAX at my AMC within the week. I’ve seen it twice more since then, before it left all the LA AMCs near me. Suffice to say, it’s my favorite film of the year. Next week is gonna be all about the sexy, polyamorous, tennis movie, so gird your loins for how absolutely annoying I’m gonna be!
Last month I finally saw the light when I drove to the Grove and saw Jane Schoenbrun’s newest feature, I Saw the TV Glow. Their command over isolation and very specific horror (in this case, the horror of knowing yourself but being too afraid to do anything about it) made me need to stare at the wall for several business days. I saw Challengers again and then said, “I need more Josh O’Connor,” so I finally watched God’s Own Country. It was good… but literally what are people on about? It’s kind of boring to a nearly unforgivable degree and clearly trying to do Brokeback Mountain, but skipping all the things that make that film interesting and heartbreaking. The cast is good, but if you want more queer Josh O’Connor, I highly recommend Hide and Seek (aka Amorous). I watched it earlier this month and absolutely fell in love with it. It’s especially good if you want some more polyam bisexual vibes.
At the end of May I went to a Beyond Fest secret screening for “the most anticipated horror film of the year.” I had an idea of what I thought it was, which I ended up being correct about when we had to sign releases for NEON because the audience was being filmed. Longlegs baby!!!! The guy from NEON and Osgood Perkins assured us that we were the first audience to see the film in its final form and boy howdy did it fucking rule. Everybody was buzzing and, other than that first Challengers screening at the same theater a month before, it was probably my favorite theater audience experience.
One of my favorite creators, Blue Ghosts (who I usually watch on TikTok, but you should follow her everywhere because she’s the coolest), called it demonic Silence of the Lambs and she was so real for that. Longlegs is terrifying, but also stupidly funny. Truly, I was flabbergasted by how utterly hilarious the film was. Perkins has a masterful control of tone, and he uses it to brutal and horrifying ends. While Silence of the Lambs is pretty occupied with Clarice Starling’s status as a woman in the FBI, Longlegs recognizes that it’s part of the fabric of this kind of story but has many other things to say about Lee Harker and her life. You can imagine Harker and Starling passing each other in the hallowed halls of Quantico before being sent into the field, but Harker’s demons are much more literal in the context of the story. And while there’s not quite a Hannibal Lecter figure, not in the same way, it’s really interesting and imaginative how Perkins plays with this general concept, since it’s clear he knows it’s somewhat expected. Honestly, I can’t wait to watch this one again with my partner!
Earlier this month I watched The Dead Don’t Hurt, a Viggo Mortensen joint that he wrote, directed, and starred in. It’s pretty good, but it made Pierce and I have a conversation about the Mortensen/Cronenberg collabs we watched together earlier this year. He found it wild that I preferred Eastern Promises over A History of Violence. What else can I say but that I was truly not surprised. I liked both, obviously, but Eastern Promises is much more my speed.
I finally watched Emma Seligman’s debut feature Shiva Baby and let me tell you something: as a bisexual woman, I’m so fucking annoyed that the only thing anyone ever talks about is how she’s at a shiva with her ex-girlfriend. Excuse me! There are so many other things going on here and I love messy polysexual people. Also, Hit Man was perfectly fine? I dunno, y’all. This was not as compelling and fun as I wanted it to be.
Now, let’s talk about The Bikeriders. Unfortunately, something broke in my brain this year and I’ve been Austin Butler pilled. I’m not mad about it—he’s so incredibly hot that I think I might combust. Actually, everybody in this film is. Even when they try to ugly up people like Boyd Holbrook and Norman Reedus with rotted out teeth… yeah. Those guys are still hot as fuck. Motorcycles are also very cool. Though they’re terrible in equal measures and I never wanna get on one. However, like smoking, sometimes people just look too hot to handle while engaging with something like this and you just have to go with the flow. Additionally, I think the way the film handles masculinity is really interesting and subtle. It’s by no means a perfect flick, but it has a lot to say about this era of Americana. It has the kind of “end of an era” vibe as The Wild Bunch does. As the bike clubs become actual gangs, something truly intimate and eternal is lost—at least that feels like what Jeff Nichols is trying to get at. It’s not entirely successful at living in that, not the whole way through, but sometimes it really hits the nail on the head.
Anyway, that’s it for now! Here are some stats up to the time this comes out. I’ll see you next week for some wildly annoying and detailed conversation about Challengers, a film that I’m going to dream about until I die.
New Films Watched: 92
Rewatches: 11
Total Films Watched: 104
New Episodes of TV Watched: 268
Books/Comics/Novellas Read: 22
Additionally, I keep track of my AMC A-List and how much money my month subscription makes each film cost because of course I do. So, here’s what it looks like prior to me seeing at least two more movies at my local AMC this month.
It might be a little clunky (aka the 42 repeated in all the months that haven’t happened yet), but I was so incredibly happy when I put this together and got it to work. Thank god for being able to look at TV show post budgets and grabbing some coding to modify.
See you next week!
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