“A Collection of My Thoughts on Different Movies & TV Shows: Volume I”:
“Sincerity Sans Key Context - My Brief Thoughts on The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’s Short-Film Adaptation”
Warning(s) for: spoilers.
(These thoughts were originally posted elsewhere on 10/22/2024.)
Summary
(ALT: In an open, snow-covered area that has a couple of leafy trees and a flowing river, tracks left in said snow by, seemingly, the eponymous fox are shown to form a heart with the use of an aerial shot.)
Enough emotion to last a lifetime’s in this version of the story in question, owing to common sayings akin to, “Love yourself,” and, “You’re enough,” being spoken with so much heart to a lost boy seeking a home of his own that they make me feel loved.
Logic, however, isn’t present in this edition in as much abundance as its emotion. How did the boy get lost in the wild, and why’s it not possible for the animals he befriends to live with him in the village he finds? (An “impossibility” that leads to him choosing to live with them in nature.)
Without answers to these crucial questions, a believable big-picture foundation upon which to have heart-to-hearts is left undeveloped, resulting in the aforementioned impact of this short film’s voice-lines on me being weakened.
“Pump-Kind of Soul-Sucking - My Brief Thoughts on It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”
Warning(s) for: spoilers.
(These thoughts were originally posted elsewhere on 10/31/2024.)
Summary
Spread out amongst sometimes funny and sometimes outdated violence-normalizing scenes where young characters live in the moment are others in which one child, Linus, hopes and waits for his titular, thought-up entity to appear in a pumpkin patch, going so far as to be there until early morning the next day.
For both celebrating a holiday in his own - admittedly excessive - way and daring to have beliefs, Linus is constantly ridiculed by his peers. Such mockery sends a depressing antithetical-to-holiday-specials message: individuality and imagination deserve to be stamped out, not supportively guided.
“There Is No Hope Without Joy - My Thoughts on Over the Garden Wall”
Warning(s) for: spoilers.
(These thoughts were originally posted elsewhere on 11/17/2024.)
Summary
In Over the Garden Wall, brothers Wirt and Greg, and Greg’s frog whose name Greg can’t decide on, all stuck between life and death, enter The Unknown, a predominantly forested area where fantastical happenings tend to occur. Among these happenings are a family transforming into sapient bluebirds following one of its members’s decision to throw a rock at a member of that species, as well as a malevolent spirit controlled by a magical bell possessing an innocent girl until said bell, which is eaten by Greg’s amphibian, is rung and prompted to glow by shaking his pet to wish away the evil entity within her.
Once their journey in The Unknown ends proceeding many such happenings, the trio awakens in a hospital. While Greg is explaining to those who came to visit them the adventure his trio went on, a scene in a concluding montage shows him shaking his frog… and their belly glowing.
The nature of the purgatory known as The Unknown, or, really, if it even is just that, is guessable, but not knowable. There are those such as Beatrice, a bluebird who accompanied the trio preceding the success found on her quest to break her family’s curse, who is alive and well, still in its confines.
Mystique of this ilk produces a joy that’s fueled by the truth that wonders, be they self-made or from the world around us, can be found in our lives no matter what. During a time when the worst, and only the worst, seems likely to pass, despite the best of efforts to malleate the future, it is the reminders of this truth which keep hope alive when necessity, spite, and righteous fury all inevitably fade away.
“Enviable Imagination - My Thoughts on La La Land”
Warning(s) for: topics pertaining to internalized ableism, language, and spoilers.
(These thoughts were originally posted on 11/18/2024.)
Summary
“I hate the fact that I’m disabled,” is a saying uttered by me which signifies the incompletely-truthful start of an often-repeated cycle of internalized ableism, one involving multiple disabilities: A congenital heart defect that prevents me from performing strenuous actions for more than very brief periods of time and low-intensity ones for very long without getting winded and/or experiencing pain. Depression, which severely lessens the amount of energy I can muster. PTSD, which limits my worldview, logically and emotionally speaking. Anxiety, which treats my fears and doubts as gospel. And, OCD, which interrupts my progress on anything with fixations on useless details and “life-saving” habits.
Having all this in mind, watching the main duo of La La Land plan out and achieve their individual dreams of becoming a famed actress and an owner of a jazz club through relationship troubles and financial hardships shouldn’t motivate me to do the same. But, it does, only for that feeling to be corrupted by mid-cycle resentment that’s both directed toward others for not being saddled me with all the promise-killing shit that I am and life itself for allowing them to exist disability-free.
“Though, blaming others for not having to deal with such difficulties, as well as abstractions, in general, is fruitless,” I then tell myself, pretending any part of this cycle is productive. Whenever that realization kicks in, I repeat an unrejected phrase, the acceptance of which has barred me from moving past this cycle and fighting for inclusivity where I can with full confidence for far too long: “I hate myself for letting myself become, and remain, disabled.”
“I’d Make All the Bad in My Life Good, if I Could - My Thoughts on Skydance Animation’s Luck”
Warning(s) for: language and spoilers.
(These thoughts were originally posted elsewhere on 11/20/2024.)
Summary
Skydance Animation’s Luck posits the idea that good and bad luck each holds value - good luck, inherently so, and bad luck through effort. After watching its coherently mythological, thematically relatable expression of that idea, I nevertheless admit that I’d want to undo every bad thing from my life in a heartbeat, assuming I’d been given a chance to.
Bad luck has had no value for me, and good luck has been nigh non-existent throughout my life. Though I’ve tried to create opportunities from the bad luck surrounding me, the abuse I’ve endured because of it and the good people I’ve negatively impacted due to that abuse’s effects on me ultimately outweigh any of its possible benefits.
I only keep attempting to make gold out of shit since the thought of potentially having nothing without this life, and the thought of others having nothing during their lives, are too much for me to bear. Still, if I had a magical button or something that could improve the things that I could’ve done better and the circumstances that could’ve been better for me, then I would use it, in the end. While well-put, Luck’s message isn’t enough to convince me otherwise.
“Self-Indulgent Rubbish - My Brief Thoughts on Alien: Romulus”
Warning(s) for: violence, blood, and spoilers.
(These thoughts were originally posted on 11/21/2024.)
Summary
Imagine an archer preparing to shoot three personally significant arrows crafted from the finest of materials at a person standing still with an apple on their head. Upon shooting their arrows, the archer misses that apple and instead hits the person with all three arrows, causing them to slump over and blood to start dripping from where the arrows hit them. Then, the archer walks up to the person, rips out all of the arrows from their body, tosses those arrows aside, and watches as blood sprays out of the openings they left in the person’s flesh. That’s Alien: Romulus.