Finishing and Catching Up on Movies

I’ve been using an affirmation lately, writing it 25x as I do.

I use what I have before buying more.

So when I decided to start paper journaling again, I went through my stack of notebooks to find the one I’d left off with last. And I found it, which was good.

And apparently it applies to movies as well in my head, because I started watching movies I’d started and are on my Continue Watching list on Netflix.

It started yesterday with The Social Dilemma. I had started and gotten about 15 minutes in several weeks ago, and then got completely horrified and ready to delete all my social media, so stopped watching it. (I haven’t actually deleted all my social media, but I am deleting some.)

There was also Yes, God, Yes which I had started and I don’t know why I only made it about three minutes in before stopping.

So yesterday I decided to finish those. I watched a few minutes of YGY, then a few minute of TSD, and back and forth for a while.

YGY was fabulously cringe-worthy. It’s about a teen in Catholic school (Alice) discovering her sexuality in the early 2000’s. The film is full of AO-Hell chats, awkward cyber sex attempts, and religious prudity. (Maybe prudity isn’t a word, but hopefully you know what I mean.) It was so awkward, I had to stop watching it several times to compose myself. I remember so much of what she was going through, although about seven years earlier.

But then it was amazing. While the rest of the characters are stumbling through and playing up to the popular kids, our Alice is making actual discoveries about herself. It ends on a wonderful note, where Alice has things figured out a heck of a lot more than anyone else, including the adults.

So I would absolutely recommend Yes, God, Yes.

And then I finished TSD. It was pretty much as bad as you would expect in terms of the things it’s telling you are things you know but maybe don’t want to think about. Facing those things was helpful, and as pessimistic as the entire film was, it ended on a higher note than I expected. I came away with several things I want to research more about, and some habit changes I intend on figuring out how to make.

Again, I would absolutely recommend The Social Dilemma. And if anyone has suggestions on further reading, I’d be interested.

That was all yesterday during the day. In the evening, I moved on to My List in Netflix.

I read an article recently about Dave Bautista not wanting to do any more Guardians movies, so when I saw he was in a trending zombie flick, I decided to give that a shot. Army of the Dead was gory. Like, gratuitous violence, needless blood splatters, and not great special effects. And, which I am not used to, there were levels of zombies. Master zombies, Alpha zombies, and the regular version (they called them shufflers or something, I can’t remember). There were more plot twists than were strictly necessary, there was a zombie tiger that paraded around, and there were some very predictable moments.

But it was fun. It was a zombie movie, so maybe I’m biased (I love zombie movies). I’d probably watch it again, and I don’t think it was a waste of time.

And finally (yes, I essentially watched 4 movies on Sunday) I watched The Wrong Missy. I had started it because I hoped it would be fun in a similar way to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but it was actually more like There’s Something About Mary. And that’s not a positive thing.

I was clued in to how this was going to go when I saw in the opening credits that it was a Happy Madison Production. The film was problematic. There was some non-consensual sex (you can’t give consent to sex when one of the parties is asleep), lots of pretty foul language, Missy is pretty obnoxious most of the time, and Tim is an asshole. I’m sure there’s more, but I was drinking, so.

Ultimately, there’s an audience for The Wrong Missy, I’m just not it. The message at the end was kind of sweet, that Missy was just trying to help Tim live his best life, and that wasn’t going to be accomplished trying to be something he wasn’t at a company that didn’t care about him. And when Tim realized that, he went back to her to beg forgiveness.

But ugh. I would be interested to see the same plot in a less vulgar film.

So that’s it! Movie reviews by someone who doesn’t necessarily pay enough attention to be a good reviewer.

What movies have you seen lately? I’m especially interested in Prime, Netflix, Hulu, and Disney options, since I have those subscriptions. I don’t usually toss money towards new releases on streaming services, choosing instead to wait for them to release elsewhere for free, or on sale. So…what do you have?