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I struggled a bit over the weekend with my movie watch/review scheduling, largely because I can't quite decide when to venture back out to a movie theater again, in terms of what movie might be playing that would truly make it worth doing so. Even though
Nobody, which I went to the Regal Meridian last Wednesday to see, was far from a masterpiece, it was kind of the perfect kind of movie to return to theaters for. The real problem now is that nothing else that's actually playing in theaters is worth the effort or the risk—and I say that recognizing that both the effort
and the risk are minimal at this point. What this really illustrates is the sad slate of movies in theaters to choose from.
Now, there
is the currently-released Disney animated feature,
Raya and the Last Dragon, which might be the most critically acclaimed of the films in theaters right now that I have not already seen. (It has a 75 rating on MetaCritic, and I heard good things about it some weeks ago on podcasts.) I've kind of gone back and forth as to whether to go see that one on Wednesday, which like last week, is the one day Shobhit is working a late shift until 8:30 pm, giving me plenty of time to go to a movie
and get back home to write the review.
But!
Raya and the Last Dragon will become part of the no-further-cost roster of films available on Disney+ on Friday, June 4. The film has already been out since early March, so it's not like there's any pressing need to review it as a "new release" at this point. Waiting another month isn't any big deal, really.
Still, I very nearly decided I would go see it this Wednesday anyway, for really one reason: I do think it will be better enjoyed in a theater, and I just loved being back in a theater so much. And then? This morning I got a SIFF invite to a virtual advance screening of some romance movie called
Finding You, which actually sounds decent enough and I wouldn't have to pay for it. It's happening online on Wednesday evening, so that solves that dilemma for me. Until next week, anyway; but maybe something more exciting will have been released anew by then.
Because that's the still-odd thing about moviegoing right now: in the Before Times, May would be packed with tentpole releases, which remains scaled back significantly right now, even with restrictions easing, because so many were long-ago either postponed until later in the year or pivoted to VOD or streaming platforms.
I was talking to Alexia about this on Saturday, how even though I went back to a movie theater on Wednesday last week, and I
really loved it, I get the feeling that I will still have a much more hybrid approach to moviegoing, movie watching, and movie reviewing for the indefinite future, maybe just from now on. If studios keep releasing films simultaneously in theaters and VOD, I may choose still to watch and review some at home, depending on the type of movie, how vital it seems to be to see it in a theater (most documentaries, for instance, do not command theater viewing), and what the VOD cost is. In virtually every case of tentpole release, I will still see it in a theater if I went to get a review written the week of its release, because those will cost $20 VOD and I won't pay that.
So anyway, I reviewed two movies over the weekend, and both of them were viewed at home. Both of them were also streaming on Netflix, I'm just now realizing. On Friday, good reviews convinced me to watch
The Mitchells vs the Machines, a Sony Animated Pictures feature about a robot apocalypse, which was fun but I found myself kind of overthinking in my response. And then yesterday, I watched the Indian film
The Disciple, which a lot of critics are calling "brilliant." And even though I totally get why, I still found the film somewhat dull, at least for home viewing—that one I actually kind of wished I could have seen in a theater, but with that film it wasn't even an option (even though the filmmakers initially certainly wanted it to be; it won awards at places like the Venice Film Festival).
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Otherwise, I spent my weekend watching TV: a few episodes that I finally started in on, of my library DVD copy of the second season of
Star Trek Discovery; and, with Shobhit, we closed out the fourth season of
The Larry Sanders Show on HBO Max. I actually really want to start the third season of
The Expanse on Prime Video, but Shobhit keeps wanting to put it off, because he knows he will get so sucked into it he won't want to stop watching, and he has other things to do, particularly for his Project Management Class. (Never mind the fact that we watched a bunch of episodes of another show, but a) those are half-hour episodes; and b) those are much easier to stop and take a break from.)
The one bit of genuine socializing I did was on Saturday, when I asked my neighbor Alexia if she wanted to talk with me downtown to the library and to Target, and she accepted. We both wore our masks for several blocks after leaving the condo building, but when I brought up the new CDC guideline that you're good to take off the mask if you're outside and it's not crowded, we kind of tiptoed around each other a bit. She and I are both fully vaccinated now, but she still said she would only take off her mask if I were comfortable with it—which I genuinely appreciated it. I said I was good with it if she was, and she said "Let's do it!" And we then walked most of the rest of the way to Target mask-less, my first time doing that in months. It felt a little weird, but also liberating.
By the time we were deeper into downtown and about a block away from Target, though, the sidewalks were falling just short of teeming with people. So we put our masks back on then, which we needed to do before going back indoors anywhere again anyway, and this was right before going into Target. When we were done with our shopping—she found a Mother's Day card for her mother, who she was to be visiting the next day (she actually discouraged Bram, her son, from joining them as usual, just because he is still in between shots right now). Once we finished shopping and were several blocks to the east and out of more crowded areas, we took our masks off again and had a far easier time of walking back up Capitol Hill than we've had in ages.
After that, on Saturday, I actually did watch another movie that day as well—just one I had reviewed already:
Tenet. One of my favorite podcasts,
The Big Picture, released an episode last week that was a commentary watch-along, so I watched while listening to the podcast, an experience I have mixed feelings about, mostly because the movie is confusing (if also wildly entertaining) and I had only seen it once before. I should really watch it again without commentary just so I can actually pay more attention. I think Shobhit would enjoy it and keep thinking about watching it with him.
The weather was also quite nice over the weekend, and I considered seeing if Tracy wanted to come by and finally play some ping pong with me at the public table over by the Bullitt Center, but I decided that, after being so busy the previous two weekends in a row (and all days in between for my Birth Week), I would just take it easy this weekend. So: maybe next weekend. Besides, yesterday was Mother's Day, and I bet anything she had gone to see her mom.
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Speaking of which, I already
posted this yesterday but want to mention it here: as a Mother's Day gift for Sherri, in lieu of the standard handmade card sent in the mail, I made her a video tribute to
her mother, Grandma Rhoda, who passed away ten years ago this month.
I had the video done probably in early April, or mostly done anyway. I left the project, still not exported as a finalized file, in iMovie for a few weeks so I could come back to it later to review for any needed tweaks. I did that last week, and was glad I did that waiting grace period, as I did find at least one minor fix I wanted to make. The video, which collects together every clip I could find of Grandma Rhoda from old home videos that were worth watching, clocks in at an easily manageable 9 minutes.
I posted it to Sherri's Facebook page early yesterday morning, and then called to wish her a Happy Mother's Day later yesterday morning. Several others had already seen it on Facebook, but she had clearly just seen it recently: "I'm still crying," she said, evidently so moved by it. I was really happy she was, as I am pretty proud of the finished product. It even warmed my own heart every time I re-watched it, and given that I put it together, as you can imagine, I have seen it many times over. I can hardly believe it's been a full decade now since she passed.
I had no issues whatsoever with it being my first Mother's Day without Mom, incidentally. If she were still alive, it still would have come and gone with a single phone call to her, though depending on our mood and what we had to talk about, it may still have been a longer phone call. In any event, the fact that it
was Mother's Day didn't make me sad at all—probably because I still have my Bonus Mom, to be honest. That said, I do have my May rotating desktop slide show of photos of myself with Mom (intermingled with photos of myself with Sherri, as has always been the case) on my work computer, and logging on this morning and seeing those photos again—that did give me a little pang of sadness.
Dealing with the loss of a parent is weird, especially when the relationship was complicated. Ironically, I have found her death to be pretty uncomplicated; it was the relationship in life that was complicated. I do often think I would still benefit from therapy, and unpacking some of those complications in a professional setting and context, but, I never feel a nagging urge for it. In any case, she's the first of my parents to go, and I expect will ultimately prove to be the one loss of a parent that was the least difficult to grieve. I have no doubt whatsoever that losing Dad and Sherri will be much more difficult. Thankfully I remain hopeful that we won't get to that for a good many years to come.
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[posted 12:32 pm]
