My Own Little World

It’s rare when I have a cinematic experience that truly shocks me to my core because of a film being outside of the box. That shouldn’t be the case, but often the movies I prioritize seeing are made for the sake of making money and not to primarily send a message to its audience. This film, however, is something completely different. Boots Riley’s directorial debut Sorry to Bother You is a wild, wild ride that aims to be a protest of the systemic oppression of the fundamental truths of capitalism, albeit taken to extreme places. Its allegorical nature makes it bold and forward with its message, but its method of getting that message across is highly effective. What will make or break this film for somebody watching it is how they handle its extremely literal nature. Sorry to Bother You makes no efforts to hide its message; in the naming of its characters, the parts they will eventually play in the story are often revealed (the pro-union character is named Squeeze, the pro...

I grew up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood more mornings than not. My mom probably remembers it better than I do, but from what I can recall I loved the show in my early childhood. In retrospect, Fred Rogers’s demeanor was probably a big part of that; the man was warm, compassionate, and more sophisticated than many of the other main characters of the other shows I watched alongside his. One of the questions that has sat in my mind about Rogers, though, is whether he was like the man on the show. To have that kind of demeanor in everyday life would completely shock me in the cynical, jaded world in which we live. The documentary on Rogers’s life Won’t You Be My Neighbor? answers this question of many with a resounding “yes.” This film is overwhelmingly optimistic yet not without a sense of grounded realism that Rogers himself possessed. It feels exactly like Fred Rogers the character which, it asserts quite confidently, was Fred Rogers the man. Instead of focusing ...

Lean on Pete is somehow bleak yet beautiful. I was taken aback by how brutal this film is to its protagonist. Charley’s life as shown in the film does not start too great, and when life begins to hit him with blow after blow, taking one thing he loves after another away from him, it begins to become almost depressing. By the end of the film, Charley has almost nothing to continue living for – and the fact that he is just fifteen years old and has seen more life than most middle-aged adults I know makes that all the more heartbreaking. He finds a companion in the titular Pete for a while, becoming attached to this aging racehorse; and when he takes Pete’s future into his own hands and runs away with him, it is done with such poeticism and such little dialogue that makes it resonate incredibly well. As good as the film continues to be after that moment, Lean on Pete begins to show its flaws not long after. As events transpire on Charley and Pete’s journey, everything starts...