A Sobriety Essay

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Deciding not to drink was one of the scariest decisions I’ve ever made in my life, and it’s so dumb, because it’s a completely internalized fear.  Quitting smoking was technically harder for me to do, but making the decision itself was easy.  No one wants you to die of lung cancer.  Quitting smoking isn’t some failure on your part… it’s the best possible decision you could be making for yourself, or for your health.

Quitting drinking, though, is an admission of having a problem, and no one wants to do that.  The reason I don’t drink alcohol anymore isn’t because I think it’s stupid—I have a problem with alcohol, and the problem isn’t that I have a moral qualm with it, it’s that I can’t have just one drink.  My own relationship to it was unhealthy and we had to break up.

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2019 Oscar Picks and Predictions

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Best Picture

What will probably win: Roma

What I would choose:  The Favourite

Best Director

Who will probably win:  Alfonso Cuaron

Who I would choose:  Alfonso Cuaron

Best Actress

Who will probably win:  Glenn Close

Who I would choose:  Olivia Colman

Best Actor

Who will probably win:  Bradley Cooper

Who I would choose:  Willem Dafoe

Best Supporting Actress

Who will probably win:  Marina de Tavira

Who I would choose:  Rachel Weisz 

Best Supporting Actor

Who will probably win:  Mahershala Ali

Who I would choose:  Sam Elliott

Best Original Screenplay

Who will probably win:  Roma

Who I would choose:  The Favourite

Best Adapted Screenplay

Who will probably win:  A Star is Born

Who I would choose:  A Star is Born

Best Cinematography

Who will probably win:  Alfonso Cuaron

Who I would choose:  Alfonso Cuaron

Best Animated Feature

What will probably win: Spider-Man:  Into the Spider-Verse

What I would choose:  Spider-Man:  Into the Spider-Verse

Best Foreign Language Film

What will probably win: Roma

What I would choose:  Roma

Best Visual Effects

What will probably win:  First Man

What I would choose:  Avengers: Infinity War

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The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

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The 2018 version of The Haunting of Hill House reminds me, in many ways, of another favorite ghost story of mine, Lake Mungo.  I wouldn’t dare spoil the similarities they share in common, but suffice it to say that both have a scare that affected me in a deep way.  It wasn’t a simple scare.  It was something much more than that.  It hit me right in the bottom of the soul.

And that’s the best way to be scary, I think.  Any idiot can jump out of a dark corner and yell “BOO!”  But it takes a sophistication and a nuance to make your audience ponder the implications of life and death and be troubled by it in an existential way.  If you really want to scare an audience, make them remember that we’re all afraid of death and, much more than that, we’re afraid of what might (or might not) be waiting for us.

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The Predator (2018)

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The Predator movies and I go way back.  I was really young when I saw the first one, probably way too young to be watching it, but my parents were always letting me watch hard-R type stuff with severed limbs and blood.  Naturally, I loved Predator.  One of my favorite memories of being a kid is asking my mom after the finish of the movie if there was a Predator 2, and she said yes, but it just finished filming and it wouldn’t come out for a long time.  I was disappointed, but I understood.  But then she said, “Just kidding!  It came out on video today and we’re watching it next!”

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Hereditary (2018)

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NOTE: This review will contain some mild spoilers.  This, I feel, will be a place where I can explore some of the themes of the film without spoiling any of its surprises.  I want this to be a review specifically for people who are curious about the film and are weighing the decision as to whether or not to actually go see it.

There’s a scene in the Dudley Moore film Crazy People where the main character comes up with a tagline for a horror movie that promises, “This movie won’t just scare you, it will fuck you up for life,” and based on that tagline alone, people come out to see it in droves, setting record box office records.  In a way, that’s how I feel about a lot of horror movies these days, whether it be The BabadookIt Follows or The VVitch and even, yes, Hereditary.  With each of these movies, critics have promised film-goers and experience unlike anything they’ll ever see, an experience in terror so grueling and unforgiving that grown adults might need to sleep with the light on.  With Hereditary in particular, the critical scuttlebutt was that buying a ticket was some sort of Faustian bargain with audiences that might have dire consequences–that going in simply for a good time, you might be buying much, much more than you bargained for.

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Munich (2005)

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Munich is the anti-James Bond movie.  It has a classic set-up for espionage, intrigue and globetrotting assassinations, and then quickly eschews those tropes to show the viewer an uncompromised vision of what revenge truly looks like:  It looks like complete and utter madness, with no end in sight.  The moral, if the film has one, is uncharacteristically cynical, offering no real glimpse at hope or progress, but rather tells us that the situation in the Middle East is in need of a remedy that at this point does not yet exist.

In 1972 during the Summer Olympics in Munich, Palestinian terrorist group Black September kidnapped eleven Jewish athletes from Israel and then murdered them.  In retaliation, Israel sent a team of Mossad agents to find and kill the people responsible for the massacre.

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Annihilation (2018)

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Annihilation is far from being a perfect movie, but goddammit is it good.  It’s derivative as all hell (imagine if Aliens had a baby with The Thing and that baby married Tarkovsky’s Stalker), but never in an ostentatious way.  This isn’t a film-lover’s masturbation fantasy of references.  It’s a story-lover’s genuine affection for the craft, lovingly cherishing details, even cliches, and archetypes and running wild with them instead of having to subvert every expectation.  Sometimes allowing a story to reach logical conclusions unto itself is satisfying enough without having to show off how clever you are.

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The Best of 2017

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Best Movies of 2017:

Lucky
Columbus
Three Billboards
Logan
It Comes at Night
Get Out
Dunkirk
Blade Runner 2049
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The Little Hours
Wonder Woman
Girls Trip
Thor: Ragnarok
Spider-Man Homecoming

Best TV of 2017:

Feud
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Mindhunter
Twin Peaks the Return
Better Call Saul
GLOW
American Vandal
Alias Grace
Handmaid’s Tale

At Home With Amy Sedaris

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Lake Mungo (2008)

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As a horror fan, I have to admit that, despite myself, I’m a bit jaded.  I don’t want to be, but it just sort of happens.  You can only see so many zombies get disemboweled before the fear you once had, watching something like Night of the Living Dead for the first time just isn’t what it used to be.

So, along came Lake Mungo, a movie that put a genuine fear into me I haven’t had in literal years.  I felt like a kid again.  I was giddy from the fear that it gave me.  It affected me on such a deep level.  It turns out that for me to get scared these days, what I need is a soft, quiet film that explores death and how people cope with loss.

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