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elyvorg · 4 years

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Wandersong character rambles 1 of 3: Kiwi

Wandersong is so incredibly good that I need to get all my Thoughts about it off my chest by writing a series of rambles analysing its three most important characters. There will be spoilers, obviously. Plus, this’ll probably be kind of hard to follow anyway for people who haven’t played the game. Go play Wandersong! You won’t regret it.

(For anyone unaware, Kiwi is the bard’s canon name. It doesn’t feel right at all just calling them “the bard” for this; it makes them seem like just a simple caricature and not a complex and fully-rounded person with issues. Since part of their issues are specifically about wanting to be seen as more than just a silly happy bard, I want to do right by them and call them by an actual name. I was tempted to use “Lute”, the name given to them by the Let’s Play that introduced me to this game, which I still kind of think of them as, but I really should use the name that others reading this post are more likely to be familiar with. So, they’re Kiwi.)

2 of 3: Miriam

3 of 3: Audrey

Hero issues

Kiwi spends a lot of the story being bothered by the feeling of not being a hero like they so badly wish they could be. Although they hide it and keep being their usual cheerful self on the surface most of the time, the few times they end up talking about this, they lament how they’re not a hero at all, they’re nobody, nothing they do matters. Which is heartbreaking to see – because, really, it’s so obvious the whole time to everyone except Kiwi themselves that, even without the Earthsong, they’re already every bit the hero they want to be.

They may not be your typical action hero with cool powers like Audrey, and Miriam may also have powers and be better at the logistical side of things in terms of flying them places and knowing where to go next. But those aren’t the only things that matter! Kiwi is a different kind of hero who focuses on people, on understanding and helping and inspiring them. They make at least a small difference to so many people’s lives, just through talking and singing and caring about everyone!

During Act 3, after getting super excited at the idea of going on this heroic quest and being the destined hero who would bring back the mermaids, Kiwi ended up being really disappointed when they realised they weren’t going to bring the mermaids back and be that great hero after all. But ultimately, they did the right thing and respected the mermaids’ wishes rather than shallowly trying to make themselves look cool. They put others’ feelings above their own – which was the far more meaningfully heroic thing to do in that situation. (And I imagine that Audrey would have done the exact opposite.)

And don’t even get me started on the BUGS, which were the absolute perfect way to show just how instinctively Kiwi cares about everyone and everything, no matter how seemingly insignificant. With all the reminders that the Earthsong has never ever worked before, it’d be easy for Kiwi saving the world in the end to feel cheap and unearned. But the narrative does a great job of building up, through so many little things, that if anyone is capable of actually bringing the world together in harmony through music and connecting with everyone like they need to for the song to work, it’s Kiwi. They get it more than anyone else does. (And, well, technically it wasn’t the Earthsong they sung in the end, but the Wandersong succeeded in saving everyone because of the exact same principle.)

Another obviously-heroic thing about Kiwi is how determined they are, even when things seem almost hopeless. The only point at which they ever truly gave up on their quest was very briefly after the Queen of Chaos died, since they believed collecting the Earthsong had just become completely impossible. But as soon as Miriam reminded them that they can talk to ghosts and therefore there’s still at least a tiny chance, Kiwi got right back up and kept trying, and they never stopped again, no matter how small and overwhelmed and unheroic they felt. Which just makes them even more amazing – there’s nothing truly impressive about heroic feats if the “hero” finds them easy.

I grew more and more attached to Kiwi throughout their adventure for all of these reasons and more. They’re just so good! I was so, so invested in seeing them finally realise how much of a hero they were and become as proud of themselves as they deserved to be.

And, well… that part of the story ended up being a lot more understated than I was expecting. It’s only in their final speech trying to get through to Audrey that Kiwi expresses something to this effect: the notion that her being “the Hero” is just a meaningless title, and that if she worked with them to try and actually save the world and do the right thing, that’s what would make her a real hero.

It was probably spending so much time being jealous of Audrey’s powers and chosen-ness, yet frustrated about the way she insistently did the opposite of saving the world despite this, that led Kiwi to realise that the kind of person who shoots lightning first and asks questions later is, in fact, not at all the kind of “Hero” that truly counts as one. That really, it’s way more important to actually try and do the right thing, even if you’re just an ordinary person without goddess-given cool powers.

This is all directed at Audrey, though; Kiwi never applies those ideas to themselves. Still, the fact that they’re able to say that at all proves that they have finally figured out what really, meaningfully makes someone a hero, so presumably they’re not going to be feeling insignificant over not being one any more, even aside from the part where they really did end up saving the world.

But maybe it’s appropriate that Kiwi never quite has that explicit realisation moment of “I guess this means I really am a hero after all”. Because this isn’t about them. Being a real hero means making things about everyone other than yourself. And since Kiwi genuinely is this kind of hero, they wouldn’t make things about themselves like that. So even though this wasn’t quite how I was expecting things to go, maybe it’s how it always should have gone after all.

…Or, perhaps, it’s because Kiwi is too selfless, and they just don’t think their own feelings about wishing they were a hero are important enough to bring up and address at all. Not in this moment, or in any moment in general.

Too selfless

That’s the other aspect of Kiwi’s issues. They share their happiness and good feelings all the time because it helps people, which is a lot of why they’re able to be such a good hero! But they’re so selflessly focused on helping others that it begins to be kind of unhealthy towards themselves. Sharing their bad feelings doesn’t help anyone (or so they assume), so they just… don’t.

Kiwi didn’t truly get over their moping about not being the hero for several acts. Rather, in their own admission, they just stopped thinking about it. They started focusing instead on the things they could be happy about, like having managed to help Miriam and the people of Chismest. But they didn’t ever deal with their own problem; they pushed it aside and ignored it. That’s… not actually a healthy coping mechanism.

Miriam comments in the dancing conversation that Kiwi makes it look like it’s so easy to just be happy, and they unthinkingly respond with, “It is!”. And then it’s only after some more prodding from her that they admit… maybe it isn’t; maybe they actually have to try really hard to ignore the things that make them feel sad. But they’re so used to suppressing their bad feelings, so stuck on the thought that they should just be happy all the time, that they’ve even suppressed the fact that it’s hard for them to do that.

In particular, Kiwi calls their bad feelings “not important” – even though they readily acknowledge that Miriam’s bad feelings, and everyone else’s, obviously are important and worth talking about, because it’ll help them! But apparently, their own bad feelings are the sole exception to that. Kiwi is the one person who doesn’t need to be helped, according to Kiwi themselves. They exist to help other people feel happy, and their own bad feelings won’t do that, so those feelings don’t matter.

When Kiwi empathised with the bugs being small and insignificant, it read a lot to me like that came so naturally to them because part of them feels the same way sometimes. Not necessarily about their singing and their happiness, since they recognise the value of that. Rather, it’s as if the part of them that feels bad things has been horribly suppressed and smothered and treated as unimportant by the rest of them for their whole life. Which is incredibly sad and not okay!

After sort of confronting some of this during their conversation with Miriam near the end, Kiwi admits, “I’m the crazy one”. And perhaps they’re not precisely wrong to say this – turns out they’re pretty messed up, actually. These kind of issues could simply be put down to “because they really are just that painfully selfless” – and, I mean, Kiwi is – but in their case, there’s actually a little more to it.

Parent issues

The short of it all is that this is Kiwi’s parents’ fault.

Recall the beginning of Act 4. Kiwi has just been laid up in bed for probably a day or two because they were struck by lightning and seriously injured. Even though they’re finally well enough to walk around again, they’re obviously still feeling very down about something. Yet their own mother doesn’t ask how they’re doing, doesn’t wonder what’s wrong, doesn’t offer to listen if they want to talk about it. All she says to them is, “don’t go out looking like that; you’d look cuter if you smiled”.

Which, when you stop and think about it, is really rather messed up. Especially knowing from later parts of the game that Kiwi has issues with expressing their negative emotions and feels like all they should ever be doing is spreading happiness for everyone else’s sake.

(Their mom is perfectly satisfied with their obviously-forced smile, too, apparently not registering that if they can’t even muster a real smile right now then things must be seriously bad. As a neat detail, Kiwi will only put up the forced smile in their mom’s house, dropping it as soon as they’re not looking at her and putting it back up only if they turn to face her. Seems like they fully expect to be nagged by her all over again if they dare to not smile in her presence.)

I found this family interaction vaguely odd and questionable already during my first time seeing Act 4. What really clinched things for me, though, was the casual reveal during the credits that, oh, hey, the Baron from the factory – you know, the guy who was trying to force artificial happiness upon the whole town and only making everyone more miserable in the process – was actually Kiwi’s dad.

So, that Happy Kid toy he was making, which was (in theory) supposed to be a fountain of pure joy that would bring happiness to everyone who owned one? All those sales pitches for it sure hit different when you know that its creator is Kiwi’s father, who was almost certainly basing the toy off of his own literal happy kid. Happy Kid exists to make everyone happy! Everyone loves Happy Kid! Every family wants a Happy Kid! (And nobody cares about how Happy Kid actually feels inside. That’s not important.)

When they were little, Kiwi probably was genuinely quite a cheerful kid in the first place, someone who could make others smile just by being around them. Which apparently inspired their father to disappear and devote his life to spreading an embodiment of that joy to even more people, in theory creating happiness for everyone… except Kiwi themselves.

Little Kiwi was probably pretty sad about it at first. Their dad just up and disappeared one day, after all! But it seems like their mom agreed with her husband’s philosophy of how their kid should just be nothing but a wonderful fountain of happiness for others, so she encouraged Kiwi to suppress that sadness and all but forget they were ever upset about anything. When commenting in the ending that they don’t even remember what their dad looks like, Kiwi doesn’t seem sad about it at all. They don’t even seem to realise that not remembering one’s own father is objectively kind of a sad thing, even though they’re perfectly capable of recognising that Miriam being straight-up abandoned by her parents is sad.

I don’t think it would be wrong to say that Kiwi’s parents genuinely love their child, in some sense of the word. But my god, making things about everyone except Kiwi themselves was precisely the wrong way to express that, and Kiwi grew up pretty messed up as a direct result of this.

At some point seemingly a decent while before the beginning of the game, Kiwi moved out of their mom’s house and got their own place near Langtree. And I don’t think Kiwi quite consciously realises why they wanted to move out. That would require them to be able to acknowledge negative thoughts involving awkwardness and discontent with their family that they’ve been conditioned for a lifetime to suppress. In the credits, when their mom wishes they would come back and live with her (and their dad) again, Kiwi just says “No,” with no elaboration as to why not. They don’t mention that they feel really at home in Langtree, and they certainly don’t express the idea that maybe they kinda don’t like it in Chismest. There’s so much not being said about how weird and awkward and not-okay their whole family situation is, because Kiwi has unconsciously learned to not think about any of it at all.

The climax of Act 4’s mini-story, the scene in the factory where everyone confronts the Baron with the sentiment of, “hey, your forced attempt to make people happy is actually just making us all way more miserable beneath it, please stop”… there’s no way that’s not also a metaphor for exactly the kind of thing Kiwi themselves should be confronting their parents about. The Baron says after accepting his mistake that he’s got a lot he needs to think about – and he sure does. Not just regarding his town, but regarding his kid. The real one. Hopefully he can figure this out himself, and maybe share that revelation with his wife. But still, I worry that this bizarre couple might need someone to tell them this… and Kiwi, on their own, doesn’t seem likely to do that.

Miriam is the best

Good thing Kiwi has Miriam! She is the absolute perfect person to gradually become their best friend over the course of their adventure. And this isn’t just because the two of them can relate to each other over feeling inferior hero-wise, or being outsiders, or having difficulty opening up about certain feelings.

More than any of that, it’s because Miriam just so happens to be someone who is only helped and inspired by Kiwi once she becomes aware that they’re not perfect. In order to help her, like they always want to do, they have to actually talk about their not-so-positive feelings for once.

I cannot overstate how much I absolutely love this. It is exactly what Kiwi needed to stop being quite so painfully selfless and finally begin to become more comfortable with opening up about their own bad feelings.

For the first three acts, Miriam will get mad if you sing within earshot of her. She stops doing this from Act 4 onwards (except for a single screen in Act 5 when she’s upset about her broom having just been blown up). So it’s not that she has a problem with Kiwi’s singing in and of itself. I think what really frustrates her about it is that it’s Kiwi being so loudly and obviously happy around her. It must feel like they’re just rubbing it in how easy it is for them to be perfectly happy all the time. That’s bound to sting when being happy isn’t remotely that easy for Miriam – so naturally, she responds by getting angry, which is her go-to way of covering up her painful feelings.

It’s only in Act 4 once she sees first-hand that Kiwi doesn’t always find it so easy to be happy that Miriam appears to realise that their singing isn’t them trying to be obnoxious about it at all. Now that she knows they’re not perfect, it’s easier for her to understand that they’re genuinely doing it to try and help people rather than just to show off. (Perhaps sometimes Kiwi even needs to sing like that to help themselves feel happy in the first place.)

During their conversation in Act 4 as Kiwi convinces Miriam to help take down the factory, Miriam initially refuses out of bitterness. She feels inferior and useless next to Kiwi, who’s been going around seemingly-effortlessly getting all these Overseer songs and Earthsong pieces and generally just being way better at this than her (and why are they even moping about anything when they’re obviously so good at this?). It’s only once Kiwi admits that they feel similarly inferior after having seen that Audrey’s the real Hero that Miriam reluctantly agrees to help. Maybe Kiwi isn’t quite as frustratingly perfect as she’d thought; maybe the two of them have a little in common after all. From this point on, the pair finally start to feel like genuine comrades who are in this together and can gradually begin to become friends.

In the dancing scene in Mohabumi, Miriam manages to admit that she admires Kiwi for how they never stop trying. But as part of this, she makes a point that this is despite them being in way over their head with all this saving the world stuff, and that’s what’s really inspiring about them. Knowing that Kiwi isn’t perfect and is struggling with stuff makes them more inspiring to Miriam, not less! (…Almost like a hero? Like maybe they’re actually a much better hero than someone like Audrey, who really is apparently perfect? (She’s not, of course, but that’s a matter for another post.))

Then there’s their conversation in Langtree just before the end, in which Kiwi eventually admits (after quite some prodding) that they find it hard to share their feelings just like Miriam does, at least if they’re bad ones. They assume sharing their bad feelings won’t help anyone – and I adore Miriam immediately countering that it would help *her*. It only exacerbates her inferiority complex to be around someone who appears so perfect all the time, making her feel even more useless and broken by comparison. Seeing that actually Kiwi is also just a human being with flaws and struggles – that’s what Miriam needs, to know that she’s not so alone with her problems, and that if her friend can keep trying their hardest to overcome them anyway, maybe she can, too.

Miriam is the best, and this kind of thing is exactly what a too-selfless hero like Kiwi who hides their problems too much for the sake of others deserves to hear. I very much hope that this is the beginning of Kiwi making an effort to express more than just happiness more often, because they need that. Even if they feel at first that they’re doing it more for Miriam’s sake than their own, at least they’re doing it at all.

I strongly headcanon that at some point after the ending, while hanging out together being friends and occasionally talking about heavier stuff such as their family situations, Kiwi and Miriam figure out between them why Kiwi is so bad at talking about their negative feelings – that there’s a tangible reason for them being kind of messed up like this. And then Miriam encourages them to embrace those painful, complicated feelings about their parents and lean in to the frustration, because they have a right to be angry about all this. (She’s bad at expressing her feelings, too, but at least she seems to have experience with the idea that getting angry and frustrated can be a helpful way to vent about things that upset you. Being at least a little more like that might be healthy for Kiwi as they get to grips with expressing things that aren’t happiness.)

So Miriam flies Kiwi over to Chismest so that they can finally confront their parents and be all, “hey, it’s your fault I’m kind of messed up and I’m not happy about it, and I just wanted you to know that”. Then hopefully their parents can reflect on that and maybe try and learn to actually put their kid’s feelings first for once. And Kiwi… still won’t necessarily quite feel better, because things don’t just magically become happy like that, but at least they’ll have let out their feelings about all this at last, and that’s good.

Kiwi’s name?

…Okay, so this last part here is some wilder theorising that I’m much less sure is likely to be what the writer intended. But I still find it interesting to think about.

One bit of dev commentary mentions that no two characters in the game address the bard the same way, which I guess is a fun detail in terms of the wide variety of nicknames that different characters use for them. But what it also incidentally means, and I don’t know if the effect of this is deliberate or not, is that Miriam is the only person who uses Kiwi’s actual name.

This kind of feels appropriate at a glance, what with how Miriam is the only person who really gets to know Kiwi as a person and comes to understand their deeper insecurities, while everyone else just sees the cheerful, carefree bard they appear to be on the surface.

But it’s also a little strange, because you’d think certain people other than Miriam should know Kiwi’s name. The people of Langtree should, surely, if Kiwi’s been living with them for a while and is considered part of the town by now? The villagers all address each other by name, for the most part, so why should Kiwi be an exception? Then there’s Kiwi’s own mother, who, sure, has a pet name for them, but it also reads as slightly odd that she never uses their actual name even once. It just adds a little more to the pile of weird awkwardness that this family already is.

So, here’s the wild theory: Kiwi’s name wasn’t even Kiwi until they were asked by Miriam and Saphy to give their name. They have a birth name that their mother gave them, but due to all the unspoken awkwardness with their family situation, they didn’t really want to bring that name with them to Langtree when they moved out. It’s effectively a deadname (…not that I think they’d quite word it that way to themselves, because that’d require openly acknowledging the bad feelings involved). They just never gave a name to the villagers in Langtree when introducing themselves, and said villagers never asked, either. Both parties were happy to simply use variations on “the bard”.

Then, when Miriam and Saphy actually did outright ask the bard for their name, because they didn’t want to give their deadname, they had to literally make up a new name on the spot.

The way in which the game makes you name the bard is really unique. It doesn’t give you freedom over a full keyboard of letters, so the naming process is a lot more haphazard and improvised than naming a player character usually is. You’re likely to initially land on a name that sounds silly and not right, then have to reject it and try a few more times until you get something you’re happy with, something that seems to fit for the character you’ve spent a whole act with by now.

Assuming you do take multiple tries, Miriam even has a line of dialogue commenting on how strange it is that the bard needed several tries just to say their own name. Then there’s her “Welcome to the ‘team’, ‘Kiwi’,” with quotation marks on not just the “team” (because Miriam is not happy about working with them), but also on the name, as if she’s extremely sceptical over whether that’s even their real name at all. Like it sounds like they just made it up on the spot – and this happens even if you do come up with it in one try.

Again, I’m not sure whether this is writer-intended; it could be just a coincidental side effect of the way the character-naming system is creatively integrated with the note wheel. But take the player out of the equation and view that scene at face value as something that really happened that way in-universe, and suddenly it reads a lot like the bard is coming up with a name for themselves off the top of their head!

The only other in-universe explanation is that Kiwi is just being silly and giving random letter-smushes as their supposed name before telling the truth, as… a joke? But that’s not even a great joke, not to mention just kind of rude to these people who are asking to work together with them. It doesn’t quite seem in character for Kiwi to do that.

…Mind you, they probably wanted Miriam and Saphy to think that the failed names were just some kind of weird joke. Actually admitting to any hint of the awkwardness with their family would never have crossed their mind as an option, because they’re supposed to be perfect and happy all the time, right? So, no, um, it’s actually totally normal to make several fake joking suggestions before telling someone your own name, and also to have a name that maybe possibly just came from you randomly picking your favourite fruit or something. It’s fine, they’re Kiwi now (they guess…?), and they don’t have any problems whatsoever. They want to help these new friends of theirs save the world, and having problems of their own would just get in the way of that.

Miriam probably did write it off as weird joking, but if we read this scene in a completely in-universe way, I think Saphy might have actually figured out what was really going on here. She’s the one who asks to confirm each time if this really is the bard’s name, which gives them the opportunity to back out and pick a different one if they’re not happy with this one. It reads like she knows exactly what they’re doing and is being understanding and patient, while also not prying into why they’re coming up with a new name here when they obviously don’t want to talk about it. Then, once the bard settles on something, she says, “What a wonderful name!”, like she wants to help them feel comfortable in the name they just picked for themselves. Saphy is good.

After the ending, as Kiwi has grown more comfortable with talking about their issues to Miriam, I imagine they’d confess to this at some point – but I’m sure they’d also decide that they’ve come to be quite happy with their new name by now. It’s what their best friend Miriam knows them as, after all, and that’s what’s most important.

#wandersong #the bard #miriam #ramble #character analysis #friends #oh hey looks like someone else has hero issues this time #see how much i love wandersong?#eight pages of rambling about just its main character much - and i'm not even done

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being-worthy · 4 years

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Saturday Home Cinema: Mulan (2020) - A very honest review!

I just had to write this review because Mulan is one of my heroes and I’m a huge fan of the original Disney Mulan (1998). I saw the movie for the first time as a kid when I had trouble feeling integrated and was daily bullied at school. I re-watched it again and again and again until I was able to learn by heart the script and all the songs in German (and later on, even in English). I just saw so much of myself in Mulan (maybe except for the fact that I’m not as beautiful or witty as she is). I too always felt out of place and I couldn’t be my true self and I was never very ladylike either. I also looked up at her and saw her as a role model. Sometimes I thought that if I stared long enough at my reflection in the mirror, it’d show me my true self - and I’m still waiting to this day… Disney’s 1998 version of Mulan was and still is my favourite Disney movie.

> SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!! <

The best thing about this movie is the soundtrack, especially at the end. Christina Aguilera was the right choice to sing Reflection and Loyal Brave True. The goosebumps her voice gives, I can’t even describe how extraordinary her voice is. In the end credits, you can listen to the English version of Reflection as well as the Chinese version (sadly sung by Liu Yifei ¬¬). It’s worth to watch the end credits and listen to the songs.

*My suggestion: Stop whatever you’re doing. Put on some headphones (even better if they’re noise-cancelling), close your eyes, play the song Reflection song (and Loyal Brave True if you feel like it) by Christina Aguilera, no distractions no interruptions, forget about everything and everyone, let the song flow through your ears, mind, heart, body, and soul, and you will feel like you’re Mulan, especially when the drumming gets louder, it’s epically epic! (Sorry for the redundancy but it IS a remarkable song!)

I welcome the idea of wanting to take a classic and do something new, something fresh with it but humanity could’ve gone without this movie and they shouldn’t ask for $35 to watch it on Disney+ and sometimes a classical doesn’t need to be redone. Additionally, I can’t entirely understand what’s going on these past years not only with Disney but Hollywood and all other big movie production companies. It’s either remake of this classic or a 2nd/3rd sequel of a movie that doesn’t actually require a sequel but it’s still done anyway. Why even bother wasting big amounts of money to create a disaster? You’re better of donating that money to charity (or to me lol). The main thing that Disney has been doing lately are remakes of many of our childhood movies Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, The Jungle Book, The Lion King, among others, and now Mulan. Some have a few good parts in them but they still can’t and never will compare to the original. Why is there no originality and innovation anymore? Have they run out of ideas? Furthermore, let’s be honest people will always compare the remake (either consciously or unconsciously) with the original because there are less than a dozen movies where the remake either was (almost) as good as the original much less better than the original. The movie Mulan (2020) had a massive budget and is the most expensive film made by a female director (Niki Caro), yet how they made it, the battle sequences and CGI effects, etc. they’re all crappy.

Budgets of all Mulan interpretations:

Mulan (1998) - $90 million > Directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. Made $304.3 million in the box office

Hua Mulan (2009) - $12 million > Directed by Jingle Ma. Sadly, made only $1.8 million in the box office. It deserved more love!

Mulan (2020) - $200 million(!!) > All that budget was a waste!

I’ve seen all three versions. The 1998 version is for everybody and it’s funny and you feel with the characters and the film. Let’s be honest, the granny is one of the best characters, most of us have or had a granny like that in our lives. The 2nd one is a 2-hour long movie, a more mature adaption which illustrates the ugly harsh truth about war and the loss and death it brings with it and that there’s nothing funny or cool about it. This one is not suitable for children. You feel with the characters and their sacrifices and they also develop along the movie. I can only recommend to watch this version if you haven’t. And the latest one is a disgrace.

I’m a bit confused as to what the message of the movie is. On one hand, it tells you shouldn’t hide your inner beauty, you shouldn’t hide who you are, you shouldn’t hide your abilities, you shouldn’t try to hide who you truly are in order to conform to what the world/society wants you to be or who you should be, let your true self shine and be yourself and don’t allow anyone to tell you that you’re inferior just because they think/say you are. This is something powerful and admirable but, on the other hand, at the same time, it tells you that you can only do that if you are the chosen one. Let me explain... In the beginning, we see Mulan as a little girl chasing a chicken up to the roofs of the houses at the village where she lives. Basically, she’s born as a one-woman army (almost deus ex machina) and doesn’t require any further training which is total and utter rubbish. She has all the skills because of her powerful chi (vital life force energy) but has to underplay them because it’s not very ladylike to behave like she wants to and she still underplays them when she trains with the soldiers so as to keep a low profile. Her being so powerful from the beginning makes me feel alienated from her and I can’t empathise with her. It’s also not very realistic, nobody is born with their abilities fully developed. For example, even Bruce Lee had to train hard to get where he got and he wasn’t the only one.

The original version shows us a regular girl, at times clumsy (which is a cliché but we still liked it) and when she’s confronted with new situations, she analyses them and finds a quick canny solution to them. She also has to train her body and mind to get to the peak of her potential and accomplish what nobody else could in her time, and here the character is done from the start of the movie and the only thing she has to do is choose not to hide her chi anymore. This tells us that you don’t have to work hard to achieve your dreams whereas in reality you actually do have to work your butt off!

I’m not a fan of the leading actress they chose for Mulan, aka Liu Yifei, not only because she’s a police brutality supporter according to her controversial tweets a while back - this already makes her unworthy to portray Mulan who is the complete opposite - but also because she didn’t do a good job at depicting this great role. Mulan is a role model for every girl and woman and it’s a massive contradiction if a woman who agrees to the atrocious police methods impersonates her role. What message do we send out to every girl out in the world? In her acting she’s this blank and hollow person through the movie and transmits no emotion whatsoever - not even when she cries. This also makes it difficult for me to identify myself with her. She’s this wooden plank, she is and stays a blank canvas through the whole movie with no growth in her character and it’s frustrating having to see this because the character of Mulan isn’t at all like this. Mulan experiences many emotions from the moment where she makes the decision to enlist so her father doesn’t have to or when she experiences the loss of her comrades or has to kill someone for the first time, etc. she suffers along her journey and all this changes her but you see nothing of it in Liu Yifei’s Mulan.

In the Disney version, there are some crucial moments that are missing in the new one. For instance, the most crucial one is the moment where Mulan decides to go to war. If you remember the animation one, she’s sitting in the rain by the dragon statue and at that moment makes a decision that could kill her or worse bring dishonour to herself and her entire family (including ancestors) which was far worse than death during that time! She gets up, marches to the altar of her ancestors, takes her father’s sword and cuts her hair (I know men had long hair back then too but still), puts on the armour and goes to war. All this while being accompanied by an epic song written by Jerry Goldsmith called Haircut. This is one of the most intense and dramatic moments in the movie and in all Disney movies! You can understand and feel the importance of this decision for the character and you feel the weight of it! In the 2020 one, she takes the sword and the next shot presents her already with the armour on - there’s zero dramatic impact here. That was a great missed opportunity!! By omitting important scenes and their dramatic impacts like this one that are essential to the story and to the characters, to their development and their journey throughout the story and you really need to rely on the original from 1998 to have this context.

The battle scenes are like many modern movies: lots of action, lots of moving (too fast-moving), a few amazing fighting moves and fights but not showed entirely. I at least expected some similar quality, like we’ve seen in films such as Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Tiger & Dragon (2020) to name a few. Sadly, these movies had better fight scenes quality than Mulan which were filmed in high frame rate but over-edited with action that is negatively frenetic and have artificial CGI effects (even the CGI effects in Independence Day were better - I’m watching the movie while writing this). We’re in the 21st century with great advances in technology and movies are given big budgets (particularly Hollywood films), yet despite all this, most movies end up with CGI effects from another era. How come this happens over and over? In this one, we see people running too fast, horses running too fast, and they’re all like a big mass of headless chickens and you don’t know exactly what is happening where. All this fast running, the constant cut and paste of scenes looks all too modern and doesn’t fit the current time period of the movie and it surely doesn’t transmit the way of fighting of that period.

Moreover, we get lots of flashback-lesson learning scenes throughout the movie. This is another fashion in movies lately, playing the film in the present time while at the same time jumping back and forth between flashbacks. It spends a good portion of the movie with these flashbacks. This is not a big issue and admirable per se but when these scenes are insignificant because they’re glossed over and transmitted without zilch emotion, then why even bother to include them in the first instance?

As a last comment, I like the fact that they hired Chinese actors and actresses for the movie (although I don’t know why it had to be in English, I’d have preferred it to be in Chinese, it’s not like we’re allergic to subtitles - unless they’re not done properly), some of them of renewed name, like Gong Li, Rosalind Chao (I loved her in The Joy Luck Club), Jet Li, Donnie Yen (legendary Ip Man), Jason Scott Lee (saw him in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story), Tzi Ma but they won’t be able to save the movie even with a great cast like this one.

#disney mulan #disney mulan 2020 #mulan live action #saturday home cinema #boycott mulan #don't watch it #don't watch mulan #don't watch mulan 2020 #disney should be ashamed #honest review #a very honest review #film night #movie night

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algernoninwonderland · 3 years

Text

“Porter sur toi un nouveau regard”: basic outlines and preparatory notes

What better way to celebrate a fic being completed than me releasing some of the basic notes I took while planning it? Here they are, with a few additions.

It all started as a prompt I got on Discord, the very simple “love at first sight” and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it at first, but the idea of sight stuck with me. Are your first impressions the right ones? Can you learn to see someone a certain way or another? It’s ultimately a story about learning to see other people and yourself, isn’t it?

Which meant I had to take a certain point of view, because an omniscient floating eye is emotionally detached. Character POV may have a limited scope, but that may help empathise with them. This is a story about Kagami, so it was only fair for Kagami to be the centre of it.

Chapter 1:

“How does Kagami truly feel about Marinette before Ikari Gozen”?

While Marinette sees the two of them as rivals, that rivalry is one-sided, and Kagami wouldn’t take that girl seriously. She’s simply annoying.

Kagami is a lonely character, who genuinely wants to make friends, still, and she’s anything but cool or smooth. She doesn’t know the other characters the way the audience does, at all.

Tomoe Tsurugi sucks.

Switching from “Dupain-Cheng” to “Marinette Dupain-Cheng” to “Marinette” would be a nice way to keep the reader hooked. Lots of tiny details that’ll come back later on!

Comphet.

Lots of comphet already. What you “should” like, a calculated, conscious choice.

A few jabs at the show because why not.

Chapter 2:

Filling gaps in characterisation and timeline to make sure that everything hurts later on! Including pre-Adrigami. People thought the paperwork between Tomoe and Gabriel was a marriage contract, not quite, but an arranged relationship? Definitely from Tomoe’s side.

Are Kagami and Marinette already going on dates when they visit the city together all on their own? Isn’t that the true sapphic experience.

Also, the promise of them going to the terrace rooftop on sunny days! It’ll come back later on.

The Bike Motive. Marinette driving her forward.

“Your hair is beautiful” but make it much gayer.

I hate the André scene in the finale, it sucks and it’s awful for everyone. It should be awful for both Marinette and Kagami. Comphet. So much comphet.

Kagami’s impression of brokenness is something we’ll come back to over and over again.

Adrien doesn’t notice because he’s Adrien. The kiss. Nothing.

“K-Kagami!” End with a cliffhanger for more suffering.

As a side note, I made myself cry writing this chapter.

Chapter 3:

Everything hurts. Everything. Hurts.

Identity reveals don’t solve anything, they still fail, and Marinette still isn’t willing to show herself to Kagami, still hiding behind a facade.

Just because Marinette understands things a little better doesn’t mean it hurts any less

They are both lying to each other and themselves and they don’t even realise it.

“Fixing the brokenness” through comphet.

Nothing is solved at all.

Falling asleep on a chaise longue plus blanket

Chapter 4:

Life as a socialite in Paris, concerts and restaurants, wearing clothes she hasn’t chosen

The Adrien routine, pulling chairs and flowers

It’s all miserable still, lots of “shoulds”

Fencing competition, fencing competition ahead. Tomoe is a terrible parent and a terrible coach.

Text conversations with Marinette, overdoes joy with emojis

The Bike Motive Returns, with more feelings, Marinette’s almost desperate gestures

(Kagami as the only person she can fully confide in, but still won’t)

An early birthday present… But Kagami is born in November, Marinette is a mess and so is her room.

Hug and first hint of reciprocated Marigami? Just the happiness of having someone like Kagami who admires her work as Marinette.

Falling asleep on a chaise longue plus blanket, part deux.

KAGAMI IN A SUIT!!!

Kisses on the cheek are really common in France, not Japan. A heavy kiss.

Dress or suit?

Marinette is a mess, texts at night. Difference between Adrien and Marinette’s texts, Adrien’s more self-centred.

No sense of space in Tokyo, jet lag and closed house. Closed spaces.

Chapter 5:

I’m going to write a full chapter about sabre fencing and people will love it

Lots of sneaky (or not so sneaky) GL and Yuri manga/anime references. Make Juri Arisugawa part of the Jury.

All the locations are real

Marinette overdoes it again, Kagami can’t tell.

Kagami’s technique dissecting her opponents. She is a champion already.

Teach the readers about fencing whilst describing it. Have opponents be challenging in specific, understandable ways.

She chooses the suit. What even is subtlety.

As a side note: it was a really fun one to write.

Chapter 6:

Marinette internship phone call, Nathalie’s plan. No way Gabriel would accept to work with a kid. Flirting, Kagami as a muse?

The Foucault chapter. Everything is a prison. Restaurant, vertical stripes on wall as prison bars, the relationship, the self-locking car. This is no Utena car.

Everything is wrong, including the food

Adrigami friendship, much better than Adrigami romance. Rose/Chair. She doesn’t hate him at all, she just doesn’t love him… It wouldn’t work, she’s gay and he’s a liar.

Self-imposed gestures of affection.

Do not describe the kisses, they’re just a thing she has to do

Marinette is a mess, Ladybug is a mess, hell imagery, falling down a hole, almost dying. We are in the car with Kagami and we want to do something, anything, and we can’t.

Chapter 7:

The first step to things being alright again is to admit that they aren’t alright now

Nighttime conversation, Kagami letting Ladybug in

Marinette finally showing herself bare to Kagami but still tries not to until the dam breaks. Being a hero is miserable. Being the Guardian when you are a child with no guidance or support is miserable. Kagami as the only person she can trust.

Botched Lukanette date?

“I’m just so tired.”

“You are not a failure, you are so courageous, a genius fashion designer and my best friend”

(Additional note: I cried writing that passage)

Sharing the burden: help in more than just words.

“I hate that you have to see me like that.”

But showing your vulnerability and still being accepted as true love

Kagami truly sees Marinette now.

“Tutorship” and Tomoe being awful but excuse works. Help is material, homework, tidying up the room together.

“Stop feeling guilty about letting other people help you.”

Flirting hidden behind jokes, Kagami lying to herself. Way to ruin the mood.

Marigami baking.

Harlem 88, postal workers, acab

Watching television on the same couch, or rather watching Marinette watch television.

Umbrella scene with polka dots.

Kagami fully aware of her feeling and afraid of them, afraid that Marinette might feel the same

Chapter 8:

more fencing, Kagami absolutely rules

Worrying about Marinette alone with Gabriel, rightfully so, but can’t say that out loud

Stereotypical outdated Japanese-ness, Kagami can’t conform, doesn’t know how to put on her houmongi on her own. Tomoe and paradoxes, her daughter is both weak and “too muscular” at the same time.

The Palais Royal. The Buren columns are very climbable.

Gabriel, “quite miraculous”. Testing the waters, Kagami doesn’t notice.

Jealousy when Adrien speaks of Marinette?

Ratatouille reference! Tatou.

Tomoe playing the role of the exotic Japanese to be accepted.

Drunk parents, drunk on power and self-satisfaction.

Adrien’s kiss, forced to return it.

Fear that Adrien might become Marinette’s muse

The bike motive once more

Barkk’s power is tracking magical signatures, each is different from the other

Marinette taking control over her own life, making plans to stop Hawk Moth instead of passively waiting for each attack,

“She was never broken. She is in love with another girl.”

Marinette is in love with her too, but is ready to wait.

Chapter 9:

Adrien IS Chat Noir, up to the entitlement and his way of being physically affectionate. Stay true to canon and canon implications.

Adrigami/DJWifi double date, Alya means well but doesn’t know everything

Wordbuilding: of course the Ladyblog isn’t the only website ever, bad rival, Daily Bugle pun.

Not hating someone doesn’t mean you should be with them.

Hints of Adrigami friendship again, relief at avoiding romance.

Food at Kagami’s, cooker, formally perfect but not personal

Marinette and Barkk, closer to their goal

The Turtle Pearl bracelet: a shield, a great way to show feeling of danger, symbol of love

Kagami is the one to kiss Marinette on the cheek this time

Chapter 10:

Tomoe is a bad instructor episode 100

In which Adrien proves himself to truly be also Chat Noir, i.e. unable to understand personal barriers and entitlement. Still Kagami’s POV. He doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong, insistence≠playfulness. certainly won’t apologise

The bike motive again. Scenic road and conversation

Going to Orsay, definitely a date!

Chat Noir was moody during akuma crisis because of course he was.

Chapter 11:

Adrigami “break”, Adrien sucks at admitting that he’s anything but perfect and being confronted with that.

Kagami bluntness.

Adrigami isn’t about Adrigami, it’s about the Tsurugi family’s status and Tomoe terrified of consequences. Attacking the room instead of Kagami herself.

The Turtle Pearl glows when wearer feels endangered or imminent danger

The museum pictures, the two of them together

Aquarium date?

“Voice of reason” isn’t the voice of reason at all.

Barkk is in the bag, smells everything

Chapter 12:

Kagami as Tomoe’s messenger

Agreste mansion as a mausoleum, setting up the geography, security cameras, cold. Painting of Émilie, goal is near

Nathalie being extremely good at pretending she didn’t just knock that kid unconscious months ago, she’s awful and it’s great.

Marinette internship, Gabriel wears a bowtie… Resembles a butterfly.

Barkk in the bag, smells everything.

Stressful phone call, feels feverish, it’s him and that’s undeniable.

Marinette the detective.

“Thanks for being there for me”

“Thank you for trusting me so much”

Having dinner with Hawk Moth, it’s awful and stressful

No more chair/rose

Adrien is miserable but not aggressive. Building up to final fight

Chapter 13:

Meet the Dupain-Chengs, short, awkward, sweet moment

Marinette’s room, perfectly clean

From creepy stalker to detective, without downplaying the former or overplaying the latter

The two are complementary, very concrete things,

The plan: catch Hawk Moth red-handed, take it outside and expose him to the world

How the Kwami Pearls work: just like the Miraculouses themselves, feeding off the host, only more brutal. Marinette trying to reassure Kagami

Re-explain Turtle Pearl and other powers, illusion, thunder, time-rewind and portal

Gabriel owns original Degas painting since they are both assholes

Adrien/Chat still not great at all

Ice-cream but no biphobia/lesbophobia this time, just a regular shop suggested by Juleka.

The Pont des Arts, no more locks, just like in real life.

The confession, the kiss: consent and everything is right, but also desperate. Marinette really wants to do it well.

Longg is back, also, hype

Side note: I cried writing this one.

Chapters 14-15

Ryuko infiltrating the mansion, all in the details

I hate that Hawk Moth’s lair is an actual real physical space in the show, but if this needs to be material, then so be it. He was allowed to turn his house into that because he got help from the Mayor/Audrey.

Chat Noir can’t fight, near breakdown.

Nathalie knew. Remake of first fight, only Ryuko has clear upper hand.

Having missiles in your house isn’t a good idea.

The Turtle Pearl serves its purpose at last,

Gabriel mostly defeats himself on his own, hubris, the whole extent of his power dynamic with Nathalie

Going back to the Champ de Mars,

Teamwork, taking the butterfly down. Chat Noir rejects his father entirely, cataclysm-ed akuma.

The mansion again, entirely destroyed, paintings of Émilie burning. Spell book and tablet recovered.

Chapter 16:

Taking the big bad down is useless if you don’t take down the power structures that allowed him to strive in the first place. Killing Voldemort only solves that much.

Discovering it all on a phone screen, shut-in

ACAB no matter your gender

They are just following orders and happy to do so, and Gabriel still has some power over them

Tomoe plays by the rules, even though these rules are awful

Kagami’s anger

Chapter 17:

Aquarium date, aquarium date! Fish facts

Kagami’s anger still, doesn’t die out, render it through environment and senses

Water as a healing motive, fish facts

Hot outside - cold inside, ice-cream

Kagami nearly blows out because of kids after being slightly soothed

The power of love is strong but it can’t solve everything.

Additional note: someone in the comments asked me if Kagami had ASD, and the answer is, I don’t know, you tell me! If you think she is on the spectrum, then she is!

Addressing Kagami being closeted, because there’s simply no other way. This isn’t good. Having to live hidden out of fear isn’t good..

The bike motive, + ice cream

Kagami uses the word “lesbian” for the first time to describe her own experience.

Chapter 18:

Tomoe has feelings and these feelings suck. Under the guise of rules, abuse.

Kagami fighting back.

Power is material, through connections and money, nothing that can’t be bought

Kagami’s first demonstration, don’t make it too violent but still ACAB

Nino and Alya as reporters, Julerose and Luka seasoned protestors

The Palais de Justice’s gilded gates are closed vs the crowd

Marinette using her powers for something other than Hawk Moth, strong stance but also still a 15 yo kid’s understanding of the situation

Chapters 19-20:

No tanabata because Tomoe is terrible

The rooftop terrace at last, more Marigami wholesomeness

Dupain-Cheng house vs Tsurugi house, the furniture and dishes, the meal, more Tom and Sabine

Marinette has been cut from her Chinese heritage, exploring that (callback to Mandarin app, chapter 1) and bitterness of it

Adrien moving on in England, still Plagg with him, he’ll become a rich prep boy

Marinette as a Guardians, her own spell book

Duusuu is devouring Émilie’s soul and neither Marinette nor Kagami knows

Françoise Dupont at night, fencing classes, Marinette moves like Ladybug

The future: it is bright but bittersweet, let’s talk about it together

And there was only one bed

Oh, to cuddle with your girlfriend in her bed for the first time

Watching the sun rise together, calm breakfast

Side note: I also cried writing this one.

Chapter 21, epilogue

A new beginning

Kagami turning her back on her mother almost entirely

The bike motive, but Kagami no longer needs Marinette to show her the way now

New school, familiar faces but not only

An ordinary bracelet for Marinette, but proof of love despite everything

End on their hands.

#miraculous #ml #marigami #kagaminette #ao3fic #mine

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oimeunacosa · 3 years

Text

Canciones pequeñas, grandes antiheroínas - nuestros brazos son todo lo que tenemos / Little songs, big antiheroines - our arms are all we’ve got

Fotografía/Photograph: Julia Russo Martínez

eng ↓

Lavo los platos de anoche, la mano derecha agarra el detergente ala amarillo, la mano izquierda sostiene la esponja, abajo en la bacha los platos me esperan, de fondo suena:

What can I give that is all for you? My heart's no good 'cause it's split in two What can I give that is all for you? These arms are all I have *

Y la verdad que la tengo dando vueltas hace unas semanas ya. Estos brazos son todo lo que tengo. Desde el amor hasta el trabajo, la frase aplica a todo. Porque una puede besar, tocar, acompañar, compartir con y a mucha gente, pero ¿entregar los brazos? Eso no es tan sencillo, mi ciela. Y no hablo sólo del amor romántico, porque como dije antes, lo pienso en relación al trabajo y 'estos brazos son todo lo que tengo' me dispara una catarata de ideas que no me alcanzarían los caracteres para desglosar.

En febrero en un hostel en el que trabajaba conocí a una de mis actuales amigas, y las primeras cosas que me dijo fue que ella no es de abrazar. El otro día (ya estamos en agosto) vino a mi cuarto sólo para abrazarme. “hace mil no nos abrazamos, boluda” y se fue. De esto hablo. My heart is no good 'cause it's split in two, entonces me quedan estos brazos, son todo lo que tengo.

Reescucho la canción en loop. Ya son las seis y media y salí a caminar, la cocina quedó impecable después de que -con estos brazos- haya refregado un rato largo. Cómo me gusta que este tema tenga tan pocos versos, que esté tan concentrada la información. Necesito caminar y escuchar, concentrarme en esas dos acciones. La síntesis me ayuda a no distraerme. But I'll hold you like I do love you y pensé dos traducciones: 'Pero te voy a sostener tanto como lo que te amo' es una, y me armé una que me gusta más a mí, que no es exactamente la que dice la canción, pero yo quiero que la canción diga esto: 'Pero te voy a sostener como si de verdad te amara'. Porque otra cosa que me hace pensar es en esa vez que salí con este pibe de tinder, y le conté mi vida, y me contó la suya, y a las 2 a.m. en Bustillo y Furman nos despedimos con un abrazo de esos que le das el peso de tu cuerpo a la otra persona y la otra persona hace lo mismo con vos entonces se equilibra. Y la verdad que no lo amo a este pibe - de hecho no lo vi nunca más - pero lo sostuve como si lo amara... qué se yo.

Vuelvo a pensar en la arquitectura del tema, y esto no es ningún tipo de información demasiado objetiva, sino lisa y llanamente gusto. Me liquida la economía de recursos. Si todo esto estuviese acompañado de una bandaza no sería tan potente el mensaje. Lxs que me conocen saben que soy fan de los temas a guitarra y voz (mi hermano da fe de eso) y pienso en un colador: una vez que se larga toda la información, es necesario colar y que quede lo sólido. Claramente el colador acá fue preciso y precioso: la canción es una patada en el pecho que se agradece.

Venir sola a otra provincia, empezar de cero sin casa ni amigues, y construir con lo poco que se tiene un plan que entusiasme. Mi corazón no sirve porque está partido en dos. De a poco abrir los brazos, darlos , que otras personas te den los suyos. La continuación del heroico “quién dijo que todo esta perdido? Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón”**¿Qué pasa cuando ese corazón está partido en dos? ¿Cuando ese corazón no sirve? Acá te doy mis brazos, y te voy a sostener tan fuerte como lo que te quiero, como si de verdad te quisiera, seas mi mejor amiga o uno de tinder que recién conozco.

Canciones: Arms – The paper kites (2018) – Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón – Fito Páez (1985)

Si te gustó esta nota, podés invitarme un cafecito en www.cafecito.app/agoslesz

*¿Qué podría darte que signifique todo para vos? / Mi corazón ya no sirve porque está partido en dos/ ¿qué podría darte que sea todo para vos? / estos brazos son todo lo que tengo **El tema de Fito es mucho más heroico, y creo, por eso trasciende generaciones. Hay un punto en donde me cuesta identificarme con eso tan grande “Y hablo de países y de esperanzas / hablo por la vida, hablo por la nada /hablo por cambiar esta, nuestra casa “ Ahora pienso que me faltan años de vida para entender esta canción. Quizás sea lo que las nuevas generaciones vengamos a darle al repertorio de los clásicos: canciones no heroicas. El cansancio, la frustración y el intento constante y claramente fallido de alcanzar esos ideales tan grandes ¿nos estará haciendo entrenar la economía de recursos? ¿Las canciones pequeñas serán el legado que dejemos a las generaciones venideras, en caso de que no explote el mundo antes? ¿Derribaremos la figura del héroe a fuerza de canciones pequeñas?

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I wash last night's dishes, my right hand grabs the yellow ala detergent, the left hand holds the sponge, below in the sink, the plates await for me while a melody plays in the background:

What can I give that is all for you? My heart's no good 'cause it's split in two What can I give that is all for you? These arms are all I have

And, to be honest, I can't stop thinking about it since a couple of weeks ago. These arms are all I have, from love to work, this phrase can be used for anything. Because we may kiss, touch, escort and share moments with a lot of people but, to give our arms? Is not that easy, baby. And I'm not only speaking about romantic love, because, as I've said before, If I think about it related to work, the phrase 'these arms are all I have' triggers me a bunch of ideas that this document's characters would never be enough to elaborate.

Last February, while I was working in a hostel, I met one of my current best friends and one of the first thigs that she told me was that she's not that kind of person who likes to hug people here and there. Some days ago (we're already in July) she came to my room just to hug me: “It's been a long time since we last hug each other, boluda” and she left. This is what I'm talking about, My heart is no good 'cause it's split in two, so these arms are really all I have.

I listen again to the song in a never-ending loop. It's half past six and the kitchen is now spotless after – with my arms – I've scrubbed for a while. How I like that this song has just a few verses, that the information is super condensed. I just need to walk and listen, just to stay focused in these two actions. The syntesis helps me not to get distracted. “But I'll hold you like I do love you” and I thought of two possible Spanish translations: 'Pero te voy a sostener tanto como lo que te amo' is the first one, and I've made another one that I like better, that's not exactly what the song really says, but, who cares? This is my blog. I really want the song to say this: 'Pero te voy a sostener como si de verdad te amara'*, because another thing that came to my mind was that time that I went on a date with that tinder guy who told me everything about his life and I told him everything about mine, and at 2 a.m. In the corner of Bustillo and Furman avenue we said goodbye with a hug, with that kind of hug in which you let your body weight to the other person, and the other person do the same, so you both reach a sort of body balance. And I don't really love this guy – in fact, I've never seen him again – but that night I held him as if I truly loved him.

I'm still thinking about the song's architecture, and this is not a particular kind of objective analysis, just my taste: The lack of elements thrills me. If the song had been played by a grand band, the message wouldn't have been that powerful. Those who really know me already know that I'm a big fan of guitar-and-voice- songs (my brother vouch for that) and I can only think of a strainer: once that the information was freed, it's necesary to strain and keep the solid part. The strainer here was clearly precised and precious: The song is a kick in the chest that we are thanked for.

Coming to a new provice alone and starting from scratch without a house or friends was a risk taken just to build with the few things that one's got a thrilling plan. My heart is no good 'cause it's split in two. Bit by bit, I've started to open my arms, to give them, and to recieve other people's arms. The follow-up of the heroic “quién dijo que todo esta perdido? Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón” **** What happens when that heart is split in two? When that heart is now useless? Here you have my arms, and I'll hold you like I do love you, as if I really love you, even though you're my best friend or a random tinder guy that I've just met.

Songs: Arms – the paper kites (2018) – Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón – Fito Páez (1985)

***But I'll hold you as if I truly love you

****Who said that everything's lost? I've came here to offer you my heart. Fito Paez's song is much more heroic than The paper kites' song, that's why it goes beyond generations. Somehow it's difficult for me to empathise with such a big deal. “Y hablo de países y de esperanzas / hablo por la vida, hablo por la nada /hablo por cambiar esta, nuestra casa“* now I think that I don't have enough years lived to understand this song. Maybe that's what we -new generations- will contribute to classic's repertoire: non-heroic songs. Are tiredness, frustration and the constant -and clearly failed- attempt to reach those big ideals training us in saving resources? Will little songs be the legacy that we are leaving to coming generations, if the world do not explode before? Will we tear down the hero's figure by dint of little songs?

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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The Not-So-Amazing Mary Jane Part 23: MJ’s odds of dealing with Mysterio are VERY uncertain

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Last time I proved that, whilst not impossible, the likelihood that Mary Jane could protect herself and others from most anything Mysterio (and his crew did) was extremely uncertain. This time out I’m going to break down what MJ could try against Beck (on his own) and whether they would work.

One could argue that super hero comics are needlessly dominated by an attitude that prioritises physical might as the only options to resolve conflicts in stories, or at least conflicts with villains.

I don’t exactly agree with this but that’s a whole other debate.*

Smarts can be a superpower (just look at Reed Richards or Doctor Who). However, their usefulness as a super power varies greatly depending upon the situation. It is most certainly not innately better than any given power. In fact MOST abilities of any kind (super or not) are not innately superior to any other ability. The majority of the time it’s about how you use your talent.

However, for the sake of argument let’s take this POV as our starting point and consider the more cerebral ways MJ could deal with Beck.

Well for starters she could try to manipulate him.

In order to keep Beck under control or to give herself an opening to attack or escape MJ could always manipulate him.

She is smart, a great read of people and has some psychology training. She could empathise with him, or at least convince him she is empathising with him. Or, she could trick him into underestimating her somehow. Or she could always just use her ‘womanly wiles’ on him.

Well why not? MJ does have a certain amount of experience with wrapping men around her finger right? She could use her charming personality, beauty, etc. to manipulate him.**

But then again…he did literally say such things wouldn’t work on him in AMJ didn’t he.

But hey, maybe he’s lying or overconfident. Maybe he’s not actually beyond such things. The problem is that ‘womanly wiles’ really aren’t guaranteed to work at all. It rather depends upon MJ being Beck’s type and she has no evidence of that beyond his insistence that she have the role of his real life would-be lover. But even if she was his type, manipulating him in such a way has absolutely no guarantee of working. It’s a complete shot in the dark. In fact it’s so unreliable that most of the time Mary Jane has never utilized her ‘womanly wiles’ to escape or diffuse dangerous situations. Noticeably I never mentioned them in part 20.

More importantly we are talking about an incredibly adept manipulator who’s very good at getting inside people’s heads here. Whilst the old saying ‘You can’t trick a trickster…’ isn’t 100% true it is true that it’s rarely easy. In this case Mysterio is far more experienced at manipulating people and has done so on much deeper levels than her.

And yet in AMJ #1 there is no indication that MJ has even considered that Beck is, or could, manipulate her. In fact there isn’t even an implication that she is or (will be) trying to manipulate him, to keep him under control.

What I’m saying is MJ would have the sense to not presume she can out manipulate a master manipulator. Maybe she could. But it’s very possible that she couldn’t and the consequences could be disastrous for her and others. It’s far too much of a risk, even if we are charitable and say her chances are 50/50.

How about something else?

Could she outsmart him? Let’s say she tries to outsmart him into exposing himself or sets a trap to ensnare/subdue him. Would that work?

Well it rather amounts to the same thing as trying to manipulate him. Mysterio specialises in setting traps and the nature of his skills means it’s possible that MJ setting a trap for him could in fact be a part of a wider trap he��s set for her. Remember he fooled the Avengers, Guardians and Daredevil’s hyper senses in ASM #1; a fact MJ would likely be aware of.

And no matter what all this is heavily reliant upon MJ happening to have the time, freedom and resources to pull any of this off.

She can’t guarantee ay of that or even make it a strong possibility; especially not if Mysterio were to hypothetically employ his staff against her.

I should also mention that according to official Marvel handbook entries Mysterio is more intelligent than MJ. According to The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Spider-Man editions 2004-2005 MJ’s official intelligence statistic is a 2/7 and Mysterio’s is a 4/7.

Obviously that doesn’t definitively prove anything. There are different forms of intelligence and it’s entirely possible to outsmart someone more intelligent than your self for various reasons.

In MJ’s case she is most definitely a superior improviser than Mysterio, who’s really much more of a planner and strategist. So if they wind up going up against each other out of the blue MJ would be in a better position to protect her self and possibly win.

It’s far from impossible for her to outsmart him basically. But it is also a big, big, big risk. It’s not something that she could honestly rely upon and she would know that due to her various combat experiences.

Now I’ve dispensed with MJ’s more cerebral options, let’s get more physical.

Now obviously if Beck had his criminal crew and/or his robots gang up on MJ it’d be over, but if both she and Beck were unarmed and had no protective gear then it could go either way. MJ has slugged people to the ground before but Beck (using trickery) has landed blows that have felled Spider-Man.

Plus Beck does have a natural height and weight advantage over MJ if you check the official stats.

If MJ had a gun or a baseball bat when Beck didn’t well then she’d probably win. But were the tables turned he’d very probably win, provided there weren’t nearby resources MJ could draw upon to help her.

If both were armed I’d actually give the advantage to MJ as she’s much more used defending herself with basic weapons than Beck is.

If MJ had her web shooters, her gun AND a baseball bat handy and Beck just had his standard Mysterio gear then he would win unless MJ got very lucky. He’s used to tangling with super powered people many of whom have sensory abilities that can (at least somewhat) mitigate his tricks. MJ not only lacks these powers but also has little-no experience fighting someone with Beck’s skills.

Over all in a one-on-one fair fight MJ stands a reasonable chance of beating Beck.

But of course…Beck’s forte is fighting unfairly.

Unless he was very unlucky or forced to he would never bother fighting without a strength enhancing suit like the one he used in ‘Guardian Devil’.

Or the assistance of one of his robots, like the ones he used in ASM Annual #1, versions of which he literally showed Mary Jane in AMJ #1.

Or with any his myriad of tricks, like his optical illusions and holograms, the kind he also showed MJ in the issue.

Without enhanced strength, speed, durability or sensory abilities MJ is just not going to survive (let alone defeat) anything Mysterio throws at her. Put his abilities of manipulating people aside, the guy can literally make Mary Jane see and hear things that aren’t there. He can do this even without using hallucinogenic drugs of any kind, although he does have stuff like that.

When you look at Beck’s combat history, even against civilians, he always employs his tricks. He rarely just attacks directly. A great example of this can be found in Symbiote Spider-Man #1 where Beck tries to rob a bank and uses trickery to deal with the security guard.

With this in mind even if he does underestimate Mary Jane it’s very unlikely he isn’t going to employ his tricks meaning MJ (without the fates on her side) is going to get hurt or be unable to prevent him harming others.

And that’s what these last several instalments have boiled down to.

Within the premise of Amazing Mary Jane, MJ on her own simply cannot guarantee anyone’s safety at all. She can’t even be reasonably sure she could.

And that would be fine and dandy if the situation forced her to try regardless of the odds. If she and others were trapped in a burning building and the only way out was fighting Mysterio or another villain she would more than likely try rather than wait for someone to show up and save her.

But the premise we’re given in AMJ #1 doesn’t imply anything like that. There is no hint that it’s ultimately necessary for MJ to risk herself or others. No need to try/hope she can keep him and his crew under control, handle them if they get out of hand or minimize the risk of them breaking the law once the film has finished up.

And that’s why I denounce MJ taking the risk at all (let alone justifying it on her win over Chameleon) as utter out of character nonsense.

Next time we examine MJ’s failure to alert anyone to Beck’s presence.

*I personally adore Doctor Who (even more than Spider-Man in fact) and he/she is a character that routinely resolves conflicts without throwing a single punch…Although they do often associate with people who do that for them. Or rig up a machine to blow up the threat. Or…basically the Doctor is the most famous ‘non-violent’ hero in modern sci-fi/fantasy and yet they typically directly/indirectly diffuse dangerous situations through violence; they just don’t do it through their own physical might.

I feel this is rather proof of how from a truly practical POV physical might and/or at some form of violence/ the threat of violence is usually necessary to diffuse violent situations.

**I’m not even talking about seduction by the way. Sometimes for some men the attentions and (perceived) kindnesses of an attractive woman can make them double check their actions or more open to suggestion.

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#Leah Williams #Mysterio #Amazing Mary Jane #Quentin Beck #MJ Watson #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #Spider-Man #Peter Parker

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misscrawfords · 4 years

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The Rise of Skywalker: Part One

I have lots of thoughts and feelings about TROS. Most of them negative. For three days I’ve been alternating between raging and crying. Finally, I’ve felt able to start writing.

This is a negative review. If you loved the film then this might not be the post for you. I am very sensitive to what happened after TLJ. And I want to reassure anyone reading that I would never turn criticism for a film (which is absolutely a valid response to seeing something that you disliked and are trying to understand) into personal attacks against the actors or creators involved or, worse still, fans who liked it. If you liked TROS, can’t bear to hear any criticism of it, and still choose to read my posts about it, then that is on you. (I really shouldn’t have to say this but this is a hellsite.)

This post contains spoilers for TROS... and Jumanji 2. Go figure.

Things I liked:

· C-3PO and everything he did. This droid is the character I identify with most in the entire SW series (which probably says some uncomfortable things about me but this is not the time!) and he had such a big and important role and his quips were genuinely great and funny and I loved everything he did. Apart from – but more on that later.

· Ben Solo. Uh, other people have talked about his little shrug and his “ow” and his smile – oh god, his smile. Ben Solo is amazing. It’s a shame that – but more on that later.

· I didn’t hate Rey Palpatine. I mean, I literally wrote this story when I was 13 when I made Hermione Voldemort’s daughter as a way of explaining her inner darkness and had her team up with Harry (with whom she had a telepathic bond) to destroy him. (You can read the story here if you really want to.) So it would be pretty hypocritical of me to hate this plotline. I enjoyed seeing angry, feral Rey on screen, I enjoyed seeing a female hero confronting her capacity for destruction and darkness. I was okay with the idea of a final face-off between a Palpatine and a Skywalker and how this is a way of bringing final balance to the Force. This was pretty interesting and I’d be up for this. I much prefer Rey Nobody but as a concept I’m not actually against it. Unfortunately the execution – but more on that later.

· I really enjoyed more of Finn and Poe. I love both of them as characters. I mean I can’t think of a single bit of dialogue that was meaningful between them or what they accomplished in particular for they had some fun moments.

· Finn and Jannah’s conversation about being ex-stormtroopers was a lovely scene, a moment of much-needed quiet and reflection and bonding in a film that was far too hectic and crowded. Shame it went nowhere.

· Reylo kiss? I mean, that was cool.

· Unironically, I loved Hux. He was snarky and his revelation of being the spy because he just hated Kylo that much got the biggest reaction in the cinema of the entire showing. Admittedly it was derisive laughter as we all realised what a clusterfuck of bad writing this film was, but still. It crossed over into so-bad-it’s-good territory. Hux gave me considerable pleasure in a film that otherwise made me very angry.

· My favourite scene in the film was when Rey and Kylo fought on Pasaana over the transport ship with Chewie (apparently) on and Rey blows it up. The cinematography was amazing, it was a visual representation of both balance and building on the lightsaber breaking scene in TLJ while upping the stakes considerably and Rey’s reaction of visceral horror when she realised what she had done was truly shocking and unexpected. To have Chewie killed off so suddenly like this for no reason except that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the stakes are high and this is a desperate war with casualties – genius. A perfect way to make Rey and Ben even more similar – both having killed father figures – and have Rey confront her dark side as she wrestles with what she has done and the consequences of having a non-unified relationship with Ben while also being in a position to truly empathise with him – this was exactly the content I had signed up for. But it was the moment that it was revealed that Chewie was still alive that I realised what I’d only suspected before then: that this film was terrible and I would not be able to trust any emotion it was inviting me to feel.

Fundamentally, I think that this film is incredibly poorly written and emotionally dishonest. It is telling that I saw Jumanji 2 earlier in the day and out of the two films, the only point at which I cried was when Milo decided to stay in Jumanji as a horse. Why did I cry? Because Milo and Grandpa’s relationship had been gradually built up over the course of a film that was not afraid of quiet moments and building a narrative of a relationship that revealed what it needed over the course of several meaningful scenes. It allowed Milo’s decision to stay to be both a tragic loss but also a happy ending for him. Truly bittersweet and in a way that everyone can relate to. The loss of a dear friend to illness is a horrible but human thing to contemplate. To be able to set this friend free through a metaphor of a beautiful death and afterlife is genuinely moving and hopeful. Unfortunately TROS did not manage to give me any such emotions or elicit a single tear.

At least not till afterwards. I’ve subsequently cried a lot, some of it over the tragedy of Ben and Rey in a film that promised hope, but mainly for myself and the other (mainly) young female fans who have poured all their knowledge and intelligence into analysis of TFA and TLJ and who seemed to understand the story that was being told and who had been promised more of this story in the interviews and trailers released prior to this film – and who are now feeling like absolute garbage as this film throws out its own mythology for an incoherent, self-serving mess that in many ways defies analysis. The only thing I feel really capable of analysing is how much it doesn’t work, as opposed to what the film is trying to do. Where is the symbolism? Where is the metaphor? Where is the hero’s journey? Where is the heroine’s journey? Where is nuance? Where is everything that was set up in both TFA and TLJ? IDK, I can’t see it. It’s a kick in the teeth.

So, no matter how many individual things I was able to enjoy at the time when watching TROS, they end up being meaningless because the entire film was so bad. I can’t feel pleasure thinking about the good bits because they were mired in context (or lack of it). I can’t feel genuine sorrow about the fate of Rey and Ben because the execution of that fate was so poorly done. I don’t even mind that Ben died. It was always an option and the story of redemption followed by death is a very common story, a very Christian story. Though the death of Christ to save us from our sins, is crucially followed by resurrection. I mean, literally everyone can and does die. That doesn’t make you special. If you’re going for a Christ metaphor, you kind of need resurrection too. But I’m not sure that was exactly what they were going for with it; it was a mess and the execution made little internal consistency.

It may be that if I watched the film again, my problems would be lessened and I would see new things in them and they would make sense. I’ve read some twitter threads of people who are making connections and finding explanations on a second or third viewing. But the problem is that I shouldn’t need to see a film more than once to fundamentally understand it. I don’t mean picking up on new and interesting features and subtext which a good film, like a good book, rewards you with on multiple viewings. TLJ does that. But you should be able to follow what the ultimate meaning of a film is when you see it first.

If that is the case, then the ultimate meaning of TROS is that the good are good, the bad are bad, change is rewarded with death, a character who was once alone ends up alone again, plot coherency is sacrificed for whatever explosion or cool backwards-reference is needed at the time, death is not the end except when it is, there is no cosistency and consequently no emotional impact. And apparently it is a happy and hopeful ending? The tonal disconnect with the story being told and the way it was shot and the music being played and the clear intention of the people making the film is utterly jarring.

To famously quote Macbeth:

It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

This post is already too long so I will go into my criticisms in more detail in a further post. Stay tuned!

Read Part Two here.

#tros #tros spoilers #star wars #the rise of skywalker #anti-tros

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badontheoutside · 5 years

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In Defense of Kylo Ren

Kylo Ren - Ben Solo - like his grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, Ben was already a tool of the force even before he was born. As Luke describes, there were veins of darkness in him from day one. His purpose, to represent the Dark Side in the Force’s quest to balance itself.

These veins poisoned Ben from a young age. His uncle was the great Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master and saviour of the galaxy. His Mother, the Resistance War Hero and Princess, his Father the fastest, luckiest pilot in the galaxy... so much expectation on him, such a heavy weight.

Ben, like people in the real world, is not just Dark or Light, he is both. We even see him in TFA confessing to Darth Vader’s mask that he can “feel it again, the call to the light.” He is not a man who is set on a path. He doesn’t know where he’s headed, who he’s meant to be, and all he has are powerful legends on either side telling him what he should be.

He became Kylo because he felt that he had no place among the Jedi, nor his family, nor friends. A teenage boy so full of doubt and self-loathing would be so easy to manipulate. ‘Kill them all, take up the mantle of your Grandfather, become the heir to Lord Vader’..

In that respect, Kylo Ren is a character born out of this frustration. Ben believes he has to become someone else in order to feel comfortable in his own skin, but instead hides behind a mask hoping the sight of it alone will bring fear to those who see it. When he killed Snoke, I think Kylo (who didn’t mind being called Ben by Rey at all) truly believed he had broken the cycle. The masters of old were gone, irrelevant; now there was only him - his true self - and Rey, the only person I think he’s ever cared about. It cut him deep when he realized that, despite what he had achieved, Rey still wanted to “hold on” to the traditional Jedi view; that any and all darkness should be destroyed and resisted, rather than accepted as part of life. He found himself at the end of the film lost again, now the leader of the First Order and for what?

I think it’ll be very interesting to see what becomes of Kylo Ren in the upcoming film. I really do feel sorry for Kylo, and for Ben, as I empathise utterly with his struggle for identity, his lack of comfort with either 100% light or dark and his desire to become who he wants to be, not who others want him to be. For me this makes him the most interesting character out of them all in the new trilogy, for he really feels honest and true emotions and does what he thinks is right for him regardless of how others see it. Rey thinks he’s a monster, but I think Kylo realised long ago that the real monster is the hero.

#star wars #kylo ren #jedi #sith #adam driver #the force awakens #the last jedi #the rise of skywalker #the dark side #the light side #spoilers

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theatreakasuna-store · 5 years

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⊰ “ I literally read all your discourse stuff in the tags and OMG... I couldn't agree with you more. The making Sasori into an emotionless person is one that particularly gets on my nerves. And when they make him seem worse than he really is. I don't know if there is a term for that. Like doing the opposite of woob. But it's just really nice to see someone else on the same wavelength.” ⊱

I’m gonna put this under a read more bc boy I never shut up !

Thanks anon I’m glad you agree its always nice to open the IB to an anon whos not tying to have beef KGKDKGJdG. I mean yeah Sasori’s totally a stoic but the thing is thats all he is. Its a facade. A very good one which was ingrained into him by the teachings of his village & his own pain but its just an ‘act’ so to speak.

Sasori is VERY capable of emotion & very much experiences emotion. He may not express it openly or even deny it but its absolutely a thing. He is not emotionless. He is not unable to truly feel. ( Hes not even unable to form connections with others. Sasori’s loneliness up to a point was NOT his own doing. Its made clear Sasori wasn’t a ‘loner’ because of being an edgy little prick or anything like that. He was a loner because of his Prodigy status & his reputation. He was not even ten years old & he was already renowned & infamous throughout the war, they were calling him Sasori of the red sand. Suna’s enemies out of fear & suna itself out of lionising his proficiency as their solider & weapon. It was claimed he soaked the desert sands red in blood hence the moniker. Its not that he wanted that. He just did what he was trained to do. Its not that he wanted to be alone. His loneliness & desire for human affection is.... a big part of him. ) Its really sad actually because Sasori himself doesn’t seem to fully understand his own trauma ( I dont expect him to of course, like. . . theres a lot ) & not only that but it was... Idealised to him.

He ‘feels numb”. Its a heavy result of his obvious depression which started when he was only 5 & lost his parents. But he explains it as being like a puppet & embraces it as such because not only is Sasoris literal coping method puppets & this is his way of comforting himself but this “numbness” was taught to him as ideal by his village. So instead of understanding an issue he can work on & improve just thinks its how shinobi are suppose to be.

THOUGH AT THE SAME TIME.... Sasori’s incredibly intelligent ( Scarily so, hes literally a high-level genius ) & I’m pretty sure one of the many key elements of his story was his own realisation that his villages teachings were flawed & they were using him & other shihobi as mere instruments of this flawed idea which was wildly inhumane & unfair, particularly when they came to try & blame him for the death of his only friend ( noted as the only person who treated him as a person ) when he was actually trying to help said friend. Sasori fashioned himself entirely as a big old fuck you to his village surrounded by & using the only happy place he knew. The only things he found reliable & safe. Relating humans & puppets became so easy for him, idealising puppets in place of people was second nature especially due to his village treating people as puppets.

That said Sasori knows what hes doing. While theres a break in reality there for sure Sasori knows the whole human puppet thing is morbid per se. He knows its going against ‘morality’ & ‘humanity’ & all that kinda thing but thats one of the appeals of it. Hes making a statement in that way. shinobi dont like to admit it but Sasori emphasises that theyre all just puppets. Toy soldiers. However by making them human puppets Sasori in a way thinks hes improved them as well, helped them, preserved them, because now they’re eternal. Like this is definitely not a one dimensional thing. Its extremely compound.

SO YEAH!! Big time agree with you I know people seem to take pointing out the tragic nature of any villain is woobifying but... Its not. Its not when A) its canon facts, its what the character is SUPPOSE to be & B) pointing out these facts are not being used as absolute excuses for the ‘bad things’ the character has done / is doing or being used to demonise any other character to make that character look better. ( Huge example being the Loki vs Thor situation in the marvel fandom back in the day )

The reverse-woobifying thing is definitely something I’ve encountered multiple times & it annoys me too, just as much as woobifing itself does. It seems in general tumblr has an issue with moderation because I guess people hate dimension & also like. Your villain doesn’t need the Most Tragic of backstories to be a good one. I personally believe ALL villains have a reason to be what they are but they don’t have to be particularly traumatic like some people seem to think. Nuance is nice. Its good to have some villains that are relatable but not because their stories are overwhelmingly sad. Because the thing is... Pain & suffering doesnt come in one shade & what someone else might overcome another person might not & so on . .. Plus its also good to have villains who just arent really sympathetic at all. But like like... as a whole tumblrs not as big into diversity as it always claims in ANY way. I DIGRESS tho. In particular I’ve found characters who are either explicitly LGBT confirmed or HUGELY LGBT coded are a huuuge target for the reverse-woobie & thats a.... massive problem which was largely why I was being feral in my tags gjkdkgkkdg.

The fact that still the only characters who are LGBT & particularly dimensional that we get are typically villains is a problem to start with but thats another topic. Its fine to love & support lgbt villains but... Definitely something wrong with the reverse-woobie being so predominate when it comes to them. The reverse-woobie in this instance is so replusive for me bc it enforces the idea that LGBT people are not sympathetic or relatable & when they ARE then its ok to pretend theyre not LGBT & effectively erase that part of them. Like I have had people in another fandom explain to me that their reason for erasing a characters sexuality as gay was because they found him to be relatable & sympathetic to them & they were not gay so they preferred to see him as bi or het more like themselves all the while trying to claim hetero or biphobia if you attempted to explain how wrong & inherently homophobic that is. ( lol @ “”Heterophobia”” in general tho ) This character was also a HUGE target for reverse woobifying from the fandom despite the fact he was the FURTHEST thing from a candidate for that imaginable. He was in fact canonly more an anti-hero than an outright villain. The fandom also liked to ‘harass’ people who they deemed were ‘woobifying’ him which essentially related to like... Liking the character & defending him from droves of homophobes in any way. Which was major awkward because theyd throw explicit tantrums about people calling him a “gay icon” in any way but weirdly enough this “anti-woobie” thing with him ONLY came into existence when he was confirmed gay. Prior all the straight fangirls making him their extra deluxe perfect lover boy husbando for their reader x him fanfics were never bothered about ‘woobifying’ in any way.

Dont get me wrong I think some people have genuine good intentions in mind for the reverse -woobie in fandom in regard to this, an idea of pointing out that lgbt ppl are capable of being horrendously evil too ect, which is fine & all but it’ll always leave a bad taste in my mouth if the villain in question is literally a canonically tragic one. Especially when the justification is playing on tropes particularly used to demonise lgbt people. Like I mentioned as an example for Sasori treating him as an entirely emotionless monster while simultaneously empathises hes a-spec or whatever given emotionless / unfeeling / inhuman ect are huge tropes used against a-spec people to dehumanise & demonise us.

Its every bit as awkward, & in fact I would argue far more awkward than people trying to woobify villains who lack “proper” motive. I wish people would be more careful about what characters they’re reverse-woobing n why.

#⊰ ° ⧗◞ OOC ⊱#seeing ur character done wrong no matter what way is always bad but #it feels extra bad when it seems like theres a layer of personal prejudice behind it #which is seems to be the case with most my favs like i cant catch a break huh GKKDKGKDKG #anyways if ur an rper its always dangerous to look at the tags or anything bc... thats how it be.#discourse for ts #long post

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notquitejiraiya · 5 years

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Chess [7] - {ShikaTema AU}

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE HERE IS A WARNING:

This chapter contains reference to (though not in detail and there never will there be further detail than what is given here) attempted suicide by overdose.

I said that this story would get deeper, and genuinely mention harsh topics that people may be sensitive to, and this one is the first that does this. This is one of the only few that will directly confront suicide, but others will mention it as it is integral to the character arc and backstory. I’m sorry if this is distressing for you, and if it is 1) I’m very sorry, and 2) I suggest you maybe steer clear from this chapter.

I’m sorry to spring this upon everyone, but given you read the first chapter if you’re here, I’m sure you understand. Still, I thought it inappropriate not to properly address the subject at the beginning here. I know I personally would’ve wanted to know beforehand if I were the reader, especially a few years ago.

I love you all, and I hope you all love yourselves, too!

CHAPTER SEVEN

She took some solace in the thought she’d instilled a little hope into the troubled soul that sat before her, and while she had no idea the root of the evil that he dwelled upon, she wholeheartedly believed that if they worked, they could do it; fix him. It didn’t matter who he was or where he’d come from, or even whether he’d gone out of his way to piss her off two weeks ago, he was a human being, and a kind one at that. Irritating or not, that was all she needed to know how important this was.

For a moment she’d let her mind wander as she stared at him, agape, but as she felt slightly rougher skin absentmindedly trace across the back of her hand, she remembered that she’d never actually let go. And now, embarrassed as she was to have onto the comforting gesture far too long, it wasn’t nearly as intense a feeling as the conflicting she felt when it dawned on her that the thumb that was mindlessly caressing her hand, hand broken free from her grip to do so. One of his hands, colder and bonier than hers, sat atop Temari’s own, resting. Why exactly this change had come she was unsure, but she wasn’t nearly as bothered about that as she should’ve been.

“So,” she started, changing the heavy subject slightly, “you said you wanted to be a teacher, but since you’re wearing wacky shirts and selling flowers all day, so…” She cleared her throat, covering her mouth with her one spare hand, anxious to move the other from him. “I guess what I’m asking is why you didn’t go for it and become one.”

Shikamaru, with his eyes firmly shut, ran his thumb across her knuckles, tucked away in his own little world for a moment. He let out a soft chuckle. “It isn’t your turn to ask questions yet.”

A shiver flew across her shoulders. It was so haunting to watch him; so captivating yet so numbing. He instilled in Temari a feeling she’d never known before, and with everything in her she couldn’t decide if she actually liked him or not. It certainly wasn’t like her friends, for starters—while they could infuriate her, as he often did in such a short space of time, they never made her want to punch them in the face; something he had caused her to feel a couple of times now.

But Shikamaru? She went through minute long periods of loathing him, followed immediately by periods of pure fascination, then from wanting to smack him upside the head to wanting to throw her arms around him and not let go.

She felt sorry for so many of her clients—it was a given whens he knew they’d all suffered, one way or another—but Shikamaru made her feel different. It wasn’t sorry, as such, with him. More than anything, Temari empathised with him, even though she knew so little of him and his life.

Although she’d had her brothers for company always, she, too, had few friends growing up. She’d felt small and as though she was the only person she could trust on many an occasion. Temari couldn’t relate to many of the people who stepped into that room, but what she knew of him, she could personally understand, and it was enough for her to feel some sort of connection to him.

In him she somewhat saw her little brother, Gaara, and all of his struggles, and at first she’d wondered if that’s how it was: a brotherly feeling. But then, all she had to do was think of Kankuro—yes, she hated him and went through periods of wanting to punch him, or even going ahead and doing it, but she loved him for the sake of it. She was in no way bound to Shikamaru, and yet she felt stronger for him after two hours of conversation than she felt for her brothers. No, no—not stronger. That wasn’t right. Just differently. So freaking differently.

No, he shone—he stuck out in a very different way. She felt herself drawn to him in a foreign way, into his eyes and the smile that flashed like a shooting star every once in a while. It was so unprofessional, and in the moment it hit her she knew what she ought to have done: got up and told him to go and see somebody else—the man in the office next door or, if that was still too close to her, another practice…

But she couldn’t. her hand was too glued to his, too happily sat resting there, and her warmth too balanced by his cooling touch.

No, there was no chance in hell she was letting him go. She had been told, been trained, to set aside her emotions so they wouldn’t interfere, and that was just something she would have to do if it meant he got to stay. But she wouldn’t, not under any circumstances, give up the greatest joy of her career so far, the most intriguing and important patient to her, if she could set aside those emotions.

Yeah, fuck professionalism, she concluded, staring straight ahead at the man. If I can help him feel better, that’s better than nothing, and it’s better than shovelling him off onto someone else to make him more unhappy.

“It isn’t my turn,” she agreed after a long pause. “But, humour me. I’m interested.”

Finally, his eyes fluttered open, settling on the bundle of hands in his lap. As he forced himself to move them, so slowly, it felt to him like ripping a plaster that had glued to his skin. “I didn’t ‘go for it’ because I never got the qualifications, that’s all.”

“Why not?” She retracted her hand and, flushing red, fumbled behind her for her notepad. “You’re clearly really smart. Surely you passed everything. Surely you could’ve got into university.” She rolled her eyes with a slight smile. “Or did you not try?”

He chuckled. “I did, in the end, enough. I passed. I was ready to go—I did go—it’s just the actual degree bit never came to pass, you know.”

“What? Why not?”

“I did go to uni,” he sighed. “I went for a week and a half, and then, since it was September and it was my birthday, and I went back home to see my parents and Choji. They wanted me to.”

Temari nodded, tapping her fingers on her notepad and finally hoisting it into her lap. “Okay.”

“When I got there and had been welcomed and all that jazz, I went out for a smoke and my Dad followed me.” His gaze lifted and set on Temari, finally. As cold and dark as he felt in his head at that moment, the determination in her eyes made it feel a tiny bit brighter. “Anyway, he hates that I smoke—even though my mum’s told me he used to before I was born, and frequently has the odd one nowadays—so, despite his insane hypocrisy, he always looms when I do, knowing it’ll make me finish my cigarette as quick as possible.

“You see, usually he’ll say something about my smoking—Nara’s are the definition passive aggressive when we’re pissed off,” he chuckled, raising his eyebrows, but he didn’t seem to find his own comment funny. “Yeah, I was just sat on the doorstep and he stood in front of me, staring at the sky, and I knew he was going to give me a talk. Like, a proper talk.

“He said, ‘You know, Shikamaru, for six generations, Nara men have joined the forces. In some way, shape or form, they’ve contributed—they’ve helped. But you,’ he told me. ‘You’re sitting there doing calculations. Quite the shift, eh? Who’d have thought it?’ Then, as expected, he told me I should quit smoking, but it didn’t matter. I could see his point; the damage was done.” Shikamaru sighed and rubbed his eyes, desperately trying to stop the itching behind them; not allowing Temari to see how he truly felt as the memory surfaced. “I’d let him down. By wanting to be an academic, I’d done the opposite of what I was suppose to do. I’d stopped this inter-generational pattern, and even somewhere in me that was upsetting. I couldn’t imagine how it felt to him.”

“So you just gave up?”

He nodded. “I gave up. Or gave in, at least. I quit smoking and enlisted, like I thought I should’ve, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stomach it, so after a week I ran; I came home, bought packet upon packet of cigarettes, and cried my eyes out.” His Adam’s apple shifted as he gulped. “So I started working in the flower shop, so I didn’t feel like a waster.”

Temari was blown away by the way he spoke. His voice, while so calm and consistent for the most part, was a complete mismatch for the look on his face. She could tell how desperately the man was trying to hide his feelings; disappointment, shame or whatever destructive feelings they were, but she could see his eyes. Rubbing them didn’t change anything; it didn’t take away the soul behind them that was hungry for something better—desperate not to feel like he did in that moment.

“Don’t be embarrassed for being scared,” she mumbled, fully aware the pressure of her notepad brought to some people and placing it down. “Everyone gets scared.”

“I wasn’t scared I just didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want to hurt, or even save. I don’t want to be anyone’s hero, you know? All I wanted to do was help out kids; especially kids like I was, ones who struggle to connect with things.” Shikamaru tapped his knee before, at long last, letting his knight hop over the pawns in front of it. “But enlisting…it just made me sad.”

Temari reached out to the chess board and made her next move. “You should just go back and get your degree Shikamaru; nobody’s stopping you, and it’s your choice.”

“I know that,” he sighed. “I mean, what’s especially shit is that Dad didn’t actually care. He was impressed that was at uni, he just had a dumb way of showing it. And so now I know I’ve thrown that away because I couldn’t properly interpret one conversation.” A loud groan erupted from him. “Fat lot of good an IQ over two-hundred is, eh?”

Her eyes widened at the number, but she tried her best to stay on topic. “You might’ve known if—“

“If Id talked to my mum. Yeah I know.” His shoulders drooped. “But I’m not good at that. I’d rather just stick with the way things are.”

“But things can get better if they change.”

He didn’t respond, instead taking to his feet. Sluggishly he fumbled over towards the one window her office provided, his hands lifelessly hanging in the pockets of his jeans. The shuffling of his boots across the floor was driving Temari mad—how many damn pairs of boots did he get through a year walking like that?—but she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

From behind, with light flooding from the windows and creating his silhouette, he looked like something from a movie scene. Not the fancy man walks into the bar kind of movie scene—Temari wasn’t that deluded by his mere presence, yet—more the, see a shadowy figure sipping whiskey in the corner up against the wall kind of movie scene. Despite the way she’d seen him break his veil of cool, it would be a lie to call it a rouse. Shikamaru certainly was cool, and he seemed to realise that to some vague extent, too.

But he didn’t. Even further than that, he didn’t care. As he dragged his feet across the wood, his eyes set on the sky like a predator to it’s prey. Envy rushed through his veins and sent tingles up the back of his neck, feeding his brain with exactly what it didn’t need. However, as much as he tried to stop it, he couldn’t stop staring up, and as his shoulder collided with the wall and his leaning began, he couldn’t help but think aloud.

“You know, I was telling Choji the other day about how great it would be...”

“To be a teacher?”

“No,” he batted back, blunt and simple. “How great it would be to be a cloud. Clouds don’t have responsibilities. Clouds just float along, going with it all, and then they just get to disappear into the atmosphere, forgotten.”

Temari found herself growing hot, and her palms becoming clammy again.“You don’t want to disappear and be forgotten, Shikamaru. Trust me.”

“Choji said something similar. You two would get on.” He paused for a moment, and started to run his fingers along the window. “Actually, I’m not sure. You might think he was a pain. He kinda is. He’s not as us. He’s with it and his heart is so big, yeah, but he can just ramble on and on…”

“Shikamaru—“

“Anyway, if I were a cloud, I wouldn’t have to work, or even have a brain.” He chuckled. “And nobody would care what I was doing of if I was aliv—“

“How on earth do you do that?” Her voice was growing angry, and she hauled herself to her feet, adjusting her blouse.

“Do what?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know, buddy,” she snapped. “You talk constantly, and almost passionately, too, but you don’t care. You don’t put any effort into it, and yet you thwart what I’m saying.”

His eyes stayed glued to the blue sky outside. “I don’t ‘not care’ I just...well it’s hardly riveting conversation, is it?”

He didn’t have to turn. The gentle tap of her boots across the floor were warning enough that she was sneaking up behind him. It almost made him turn, but where he was leaning provided something stable. He needed stability, not shaky legs.

“Shikamaru, what you’re saying is worrying.” Temari’s voice was low and calm. “Come on, please sit down again.”

He stayed put. “I’m alright thanks. We can talk like this.”

“Stop being difficult.”

He chuckled. “I’m not. You’re just not handling it properly.”

“I want to punch you in the face, you know that?” She had laugh to stop herself balling her fists. “I want to help you more than I want to do that, but gee, you can be an ass.”

“You barely know me, yet.”

She blushed. “And I’m almost grateful for that. Come on, please. Sit down and stop saying you want to float away and disappear from everyone’s lives.��

“Tell me something,” he muttered, out of the blue. “What did my file say?”

Temari froze. “I’m sorry?”

“I want to know what she put in there.” His shoulders fell as he began itching the back of his neck. “I want to know if she had the stomach to say it.”

“To say what?”

Shikamaru shook his head at first, but began nodding slowly, continuing as if she didn’t exist, which of course drove her insane. “Nah, she won’t have. She hates to admit it to anyone.”

“I’m sorry, Shikamaru,” Temari interrupted with a heavy groan. “I’m not following you.”

“Word for word, what does it say? Look for me.”

She frowned.

Finally he looked her in the eye, false smile plastered and eyebrows raised expectantly. It was as if he was trying, once again, to rile her up. “Please,” he sighed.

“I don’t need to look, it’s not extensive.” Temari crossed her arms, unamused but undoubtedly interested. “It just said ‘highly depressed and will not take medication’.”

He nodded slowly. “As expected.”

“What?”

In the exact way Temari hated most, the young man turn around and blanked her again, picking mindlessly at the chipped paint on he windowsill. “I wanna go on the record that I have no problem with taking medication. I’m just not allowed. She won’t say it to any of you guys, but I’m not…trusted with it anymore.”

Temari knew instantly what was coming next, and she didn’t want to ask. Despite her job and her desire to help him, she couldn’t help but feel unprepared to tackle this. So she simply let her silence do the talking and fell back into her chair, knees so weak with the shakes she could barely stand.

“Three times.” His eyes squeezed shut. “Three times...”

“I’m so—“

“No, I wasn’t allowed to be sorry about your mother. You’re not allowed to apologise for something that’s my fault.”

“But it isn’t!” she insisted, thoroughly upset and trying her best to hold back. “Don’t say that. You know it isn’t, really.”

“Three times. It’s just the fact that the first failed go wasn’t enough to stop me trying the exact same thing a second time.” She could see him pulling at his own hair. “And then a third. Somewhere along the lines my will just gave in, to the point that my natural instinct that’s whole purpose is to make me want to live fucked me over.” Shikamaru bit down on his lip and finally turned to face her again, it quivering between his teeth before he spoke. “I was meant to die, Temari. For twenty seconds body almost let me go.”

Temari couldn’t help how she felt in that moment. It took every ounce of her being not to let the flood gates open and rush down her cheeks, and each syllable she tried to voice got hitched in her throat as she struggled for the right ones. But more than the sadness, more than the confusion, she felt disappointed in herself. It wasn’t just how unprepared she was for this moment, but the fact she felt uncomfortable—something that she knew was so unnecessary. She’d felt the same with Gaara back then, knowing he was suffering but herself feeling discomfort both in knowing that, and in thinking about such ordeals.

It was her job, she knew that, and she had to pull herself together. But she couldn’t lie, she knew that one thing right now.

Before she even opened her mouth, she stood up and edged closer to him , trying her best to ignore the whirlwind in her head, and the storm surely inside of his. Finally, once again, she reached out to him.

Carefully she threaded her fingers underneath his, drawing him away from the peeling pain and holding his hand tightly. “I’m going to be really honest with you, because I haven’t had to do this for real before, and I’m scared. Not of you,” she clarified, “don’t ever think I mean of you. I’m just scared of being insensitive, accidentally.”

Shikamaru turned to her, eyes brimming with tears and forced a smile. “I get it. No big deal.”

“It is, Shikamaru,” she forced out, though her throat was almost closed as she fought back tears.

“So I’m your ‘suicide guinea pig’?”

Temari felt her knees go weak and her stomach churn, and she squeezed his hand so tight. “No, don’t say that. Please, please don’t freaking say that.”

“Why? I don’t care that it’s true. I’m your first patient like this, right?”

Weakly, she nodded. This was the first time she’d felt so insignificant in this room; and the first time she’d start to discover the real extent of his pain. “You’re so casual about it, I don’t...I just don’t...”

“I can imagine it’s unsettling,” he whimpered. “Listen, I don’t mean to sound so blunt and I don’t mean to sound so careless. It’s just hard to think about it in any way other than from a distance. I try to talk about it as if it wasn’t me. It makes me feel like it isn’t my problem.” His hand squeezed hers back for a second. “But I can’t do that here, and bluntly is the only way I can do it.”

“Well, I don’t want to dwell on it, either,” she began. “The action itself needn’t be mentioned in this room more than in passing, okay? What we need to talk about it why you felt the desire or the need to and uncover what that is that caused that. Because finding the root of it all and tackling it will help you get better. But before that, I need to know two things. Just quick.”

Silently he nodded.

“I assume you, um...”

He coughed, uncomfortable. “Overdosed, yeah.”

Her gut wrenched. “And when...”

“Eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-two.”

Temari had to stop herself pulling him into her arms, but she pushed it down and tried to be professional. “There could be many things going on, but I’ve got two main ideas. It might be that your brain produces less serotonin than average and so your emotions are constantly unbalanced. That would need to be combatted in such ways as with external joys, and methods to cope with…” She took a deep breath. “With those overwhelming feelings of depression, given that you aren’t going to be able to have antidepressants.

“However, it could always be the case that you aren’t ‘wired’, as you said, in a certain way, but rather you’ve habitually got into a destructive thinking pattern over time.” Temari regretfully let go of his hand and rested her palm on his back, looking up into his dark eyes. “Either way, Shikamaru, I won’t let you feel that way again.”

“You definitely know what you’re talking about, don’t you?” He smiled, genuinely this time, and Temari felt warmth flutter through her body. “But nobody else spotted any destructive ways of thinking.”

“Have faith, Shikamaru,” she mumbled. “Just have faith in me, okay?”

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frumfrumfroo · 6 years

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I know that everyone who wants to see a Kylo redemption are interpreting with their own biases as well, but it seems to me like some people just want the character to be evil and extrapolate from their own lack of sympathy towards him that he’s irredeemable. Personally I don’t see the merit in a IX movie that’s the Crait meltdown dragged out for two hours, or which depicts him becoming a darker, more determined villain that the heroine must defeat. It would feel like the waste of an arc to me.

Absolutely. Honestly, some of what’s said about him is just absurd. You don’t have to like the character or sympathise with him, but not recognising that the narrative intends for him to be sympathetic is wilful blindness at this point. It really does remind me of the Loki Discourse post-AA and how people would act like he was this truly beyond the pale villain- but honestly tally up the things he actually did and it’s peanuts for the genre. The only thing he did in the first movie that Thor didn’t do was let hostiles into Asgard as part of his plan- and yet no one says Thor didn’t deserve redemption or that his character growth was a bad message. Ben is the same. His actual crimes are a drop in the bucket compared to any other SW villain, but people take for granted that he’s some unprecedented next level evil worse than Vader because assumptions are more important than text for them.

The truth is that, for many people, the only reason they don’t have the same problem with Vader’s redemption is hindsight. They already know he will be redeemed and accept that as a given so they read him in light of that, but they don’t want Ben to be redeemed, so somehow Vader has to be different and not as bad. Which is objectively ridiculous. When Vader was redeemed he had no tragic backstory, no Freudian excuse, he was never portrayed as feeling guilty or conflicted until the last five minutes of his arc. He was a deeply entrenched, committed bad guy who had been slaughtering innocents in service of the Empire for decades without suffering over it one bit. The only mitigating things we knew about him were that he was once a good man and he’d rather not murder Luke if he could get him to turn.

Compare this to the overwhelming landslide of mitigating factors we know about Ben and the investment we’re set up to have in him even before we get to know him as a person or how he ended up pushed to this extreme. He’s conflicted from his first appearance and constantly suffers for every bad thing he does almost every moment he’s on screen.

I love Vader’s redemption and I think it’s beautiful, but this is the difference between setting up a character for a redemption arc and the sudden death bed conversion which was really part of Luke’s arc rather than grounded in any psychological realism for Anakin as a character. Vader was conceived as a straight villain, ESB made him something more complicated but still not anyone we’re expected to empathise with- our empathy is with Luke and how the revelation challenges him- and RotJ is ultimately about Luke’s victory in saving his father by choosing faith and compassion. Vader’s POV doesn’t enter into it. The prequels were an attempt to add his POV and create the arc after the fact, and you can see the obvious similarities in what they tried to accomplish and what has been done with Ben. We are expected to empathise with Ben, we do get his POV.

And I agree totally that it would be utterly pointless and a complete waste of screentime and narrative energy if all of this leads to him becoming less complicated and the conflict more simple. There is no purpose to spending most of the protagonist’s middle chapter creating emotional investment and tension between her and the relatable, sympathetic antagonist if ultimately it will change nothing. If Luke was going to just righteously slay Vader in a lightsabre fight in RotJ, we wouldn’t have the twist in ESB that makes their relationship complicated; the fact that we do is the exact reason he doesn’t. People who die unrepentant and unmourned in child-friendly stories are not humanised. Villains who get killed by the heroes with the approval of the narrative are faceless, masked or cartoonishly evil and this is very intentional. The morality of SW is black and white, it is a fairy tale. Ben’s mask came off, first literally and then figuratively, to show Rey (and the audience) that he is not a monster.

To me it is thematically unthinkable for Star Wars that the message be ‘yes Ben is a victim, yes he loved his family and they loved him, yes he has a soft compassionate heart he’s fighting against to gain power out of fear rather than avarice, yes Rey and he are alike and connected and complementary, yes he’s lonely and sad and she’s lonely and sad and they reached across lightyears to comfort each other but hey: some people can’t be saved’. His death would also render the struggles and sacrifices of the OT heroes pointless, suggest that maybe things would have been better if a) Luke had murdered him in his sleep or b) Anakin had died a slave on Tatooine, and completely contradict the themes of the previous six films.

Like, it would be a total dealbreaker. This is a story about the triumph of hope, that love is always stronger than hate, that it’s never too late and the fact that anyone wants it to end with the last Skywalker dying young in darkness having never known joy is just baffling to me. The climax of the OT is three people talking in a room and the hero throwing down his sword- that’s the pedigree of this story, but people say it now has to end with blood like that’s obligatory. And I didn’t even get into how sad and cynical it would make Rey’s story as the protagonist of the ST if she found her belonging only to kill it, her lesson then becoming that she was wrong to keep hoping that the unconditional love she longed to receive and wanted to give was possible.

#redemption #ben solo #kylo ren #star wars #reylo #the legacy #luke

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jezfletcher · 6 years

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Oscars 2018

Can you believe that this year I managed to see every single Oscar-nominated film? I'm actually kind of impressed with myself. It's no small undertaking, especially because due to schedules of a toddler-related nature, in 2017 I had much less opportunity to watch films regularly. I did get out every now and again, and I took time off work to attend the Sydney Film Festival, which was a helpful event, in the end, with regards to my Oscars viewing. But mostly, these 44 feature films and 15 shorts were watched in the past month or so. Anyway, for the first time ever, here's my writeup of all the Oscar-nominated films of the past year, in order from my favourite to least favourite:

1. On Body & Soul (A Teströl és Lélekröl)

Directed by Ildikó Enyedi

Leading the pack this Oscars year is perhaps something of an unexpected entry. This is Hungary's submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, which I happened to see at the Sydney Film Festival earlier in the year. At that festival, it both took out my own personal Film Of The Festival, and was awarded the top competition award, the Sydney Film Prize. And there's a strong reason for that, because this is a wonderful, haunting film. It tells the story of two emotionally lost, and perhaps incomplete individuals, who connect when they discover that they've been sharing dreams at night. It's an odd premise, made odder by the unconventional nature of the characters, but it's utterly endearing and compelling at the same time. A lot of this is to do with director Ildikó Enyedi's style. She manages to make the film seem both ephemeral and engaging—I was drawn into the world with a kind of unforgiving compulsion, and yet when I was there it was alien, pushing me away. And so I revelled in it. The cinematography helps here too, with DP Máté Herbai finding beauty in both the dreamscape of the snowy forests where the two protagonists meet, and in the industrial brutalism of the slaughterhouse where they work. Overall, I found it a truly quite brilliant film, and it holds a very worth place at the top of this list. It might be a bit outside the tastes of the Academy voters, but for me I think it would be an excellent winner of the Foreign Language Oscar.

2. Lady Bird

Directed by Greta Gerwig

This had so many promising elements to me, and it was with something of a sigh of relief that I finally saw it and enjoyed it as much as I did. This is indeed a great film made of great parts, and there's much to be said about how good it is in its depth. The eponymous Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan, an actress I always love on screen), is a high school senior, looking to escape from Sacramento when she goes to college next year. But she faces the fact that this is a less financially viable option than going to nearby UC Davis, and incredible pressure from her borderline abusive mother (Laurie Metcalf). There's so much to unpack in what could easily be a mediocre coming-of-age story. The layers in the family dynamics are rich, as is the development of the school world around Lady Bird. Her on-screen relationships, with first Danny (Lucas Hedges) and then Kyle (Timothée Chalamet) are achingly real, and touched with nostalgic regret. It feels like Greta Gerwig has put something really personal up on screen. Whether or not that's true is beside the point—she has managed to craft something that feels so real anyway. Nothing is out of place, and the characterisation is so believable that you feel following any one of these people would result in a fine film. That's honestly such a sign of quality for me. So yeah: I loved it. I'm aware it's the kind of film (black comic family drama, anyone?) that I'm kind of destined to love. But the fact that it ended up so good is wonderful—it really beat my expectations.

3. Get Out

Directed by Jordan Peele

I was so pleased when this got a nod for Best Picture at the Oscars this year. It's the kind of cult hit that could very easily be overlooked. Perhaps not without some consternation from fans; but it's the kind of thing that could happen and it would fit neatly into the Academy's narrative. If you don't know the story, I won't say much except that it starts off with a young black man (Daniel Kaluuya) travelling to meet his girlfriend's parents for the first time (played brilliantly by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener). It's a satire of race relations in a really quite astoundingly way, unpredictable to some extent because, oh yes, it's a horror movie too. This is the kind of film that you feel breaks down some kind of invisible barrier in filmmaking—something that's been there and has stopped films like this being made before, just because you didn't realise there could be a film like this. Now to be fair, what I probably call an "invisible" barrier is probably very apparent to someone with a different cultural background. Which is why we need films from diverse directors, and Jordan Peele's first effort here is genuinely, genuinely brilliant. (Just as an aside, I notice that my top three films this year are from two women and a person of colour—so it's not just that I feel like diversity should be improved for its own sake, although it should, it's just that I really, really like films like these. What else are we missing out on for the sake of another reboot of King Kong?) Anyway, long story short: this is a fabulous film, and one that you really just need to see to experience. It was probably one of the most clever things I've seen on screen this year, or in several years, and it's well worth your time.

4. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Directed by Martin McDonagh

I feel like the top four films have each been brilliant in their own inimitable way—like they're very much the top contender each in a different category. The way that they've ended up sorted is more about the intrinsic value in each category than comparing like-for-like films. Three Billboards probably falls into something like the "fun" category, which to anyone who's seen the film might consider an odd choice, since it deals with the aftermath of a murder, and explores themes of racism, grief and anger. But there's so much to enjoy here in Martin McDonagh's brilliant screenplay, which I feel is easily the equal to his previous hit In Bruges, a film that was one of my very favourite films the year it came out. It not only establishes a complex interaction of characters in this small town, but it provides a brilliant vessel for his stars to shine. Frances McDormand is rightly considered the frontrunner for Best Actress this year, and she gives an uncompromising performance as a woman driven by grief-fuelled vengeance. Sam Rockwell is also extremely good, oozing into his character with a charm that's compelling and disturbing. It feels like he's having a really good time with this character, which is equally enjoyable and worrying. This is not to mention amusing digressions from the likes of Peter Dinklage, John Hawkes and Caleb Landry Jones. Most importantly though, there's an arc to the tale here which manages to swing around the attitudes and motivations of these characters, while never letting them be anything other than anti-heroes. The character development is undeniable, but even as you empathise with them onscreen, you're constantly aware that they are still at heart horrible people. Compelling, undoubtedly, which is what makes the film so enjoyable, but morally corrupt in some way or another. This is true almost up until the very end of the film, when just a sliver of something human is tantalised. Yeah, I really, loved this film. Apparently, it's seen a fair bit of backlash since its release—I've read some of the critiques of it, and I just have to say I disagree. But that's the good thing about movies right? I'm going to love some, you're going to love others. For me, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a treat.

5. The Insult (L'insulte)

Directed by Ziad Doueiri

It was a good year for the Foreign Language oscar this year, and in another iteration, a film like this could well be on top. It tells the tale of two men, one a Lebanese Christian, deeply into fundamentalist and nationalistic politics, and the other a Palestinian refugee living in Beirut. After a minor incident involving one of them splashing water on the other, a series of escalating encounters pushes them into the courts, and finally onto the national stage. It's almost a comic film. It's certainly some kind of dark satire at least, which allows you to forgive the almost ridiculous ways in which it progresses, eventually becoming a lightning rod for simmering racial tensions in Lebanon. It's almost requisite of films coming out of the Middle East that they deal with tensions such as these, but often they are not done nearly as well as in Doueiri's work here. Moreover, for a film that's mostly set in a courtroom, it manages to plumb great emotional and narrative depths. It launches into politics, history and racism. It feels like an educational as well as an entertaining experience. This is only possible because it's always grounded in a kind of empathetic portrayal. While one of our players is clearly the Good Guy, and the other the Bad Guy—there's always enough light let in to the performances such that you can at least see the Bad Guy's point of view, which makes the redemption of sorts towards the end seem like a possibility. Overall, this was a really well crafted and very engaging film. As I said, it's up against some stiff competition this year, but overall, it was a thoroughly worthwhile experience, even if it's not going to get my nod in its category.

6. The Big Sick

Directed by Michael Showalter

A fine film, with a really sparkling script taken right out of the lives of the two screenwriters, Emily Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani (who stars, effectively, as himself in the film). Kumail is a stand-up comedian who meets Emily (Zoe Kazan) after a set, and the two embark on a torrid relationship. But when Emily is forced into a medically-induced coma, Kumail has to deal with his emotions regarding what could have just been a fling. Add to the mix Kumail's efforts in avoiding his traditional Pakistani family's attempt to find him an arranged bride, and his wavering relationship with Emily's parents and you have a fine film. Emily's parents, by the way, who he meets for the first time at Emily's hospital bedside while she's comatose, are genuinely wonderfully portrayed on screen by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano. It's an unusual kind of romantic comedy, which is stronger for the fact that it's based in such a true and fertile emotional place. They can layer on the comedy as much as they like, because there's such a perfect tragic core at its heart. It's never going to be seen as flippant. And this allows for those wonderful moments where scenes turn on a dime—one minute you're laughing uproariously, the next you're wincing in pain. It's a fine film to be able to do all of this, and I very much appreciate the skill with which this is executed. This is one of the films that I'd be very happy to get a surprise nod for screenplay, notwithstanding I probably have other films above it that I liked more overall.

7. Blade Runner 2049

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

I was extremely impressed with this film. It's a fine film in its own right, but more impressively, it was a film that managed to survive the weight of expectations from being the sequel to a science fiction classic. This is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to the work of the always fine Denis Villeneuve, who is a director I will follow into battle nowadays. He's doing such interesting work, and conducting an ensemble like this is no mean feat. He has excellent assistance, of course, and there's a reason why this is nominated in categories like Production Design and Cinematography. It manages to be both a coherent part of the original film's ethos, but also a bolkd new step. In many ways, I actually found this to be a more enjoyable film than the original. And this is despite the fact that close to three hours in length, this film is undoubtedly slow in places. But you forgive it. You wallow in this world. You wallow in the characters and the andante-paced story. This is a better filmn for its world-building than for its plot (much, I might add, like the Phillip K. Dick source material). I enjoyed it a great deal in any case, and I was perhaps a little awed at how they managed to so pull off something like this. I feel like I'm deeply skeptical of the recent Hollywood tradition of launching remakes, reboots, sequels and spin-offs. But a film like this shows that occasionally, maybe it works. I just hope that they see that as a testament to the crew involved in this film, and not the intrinsic quality of just reheating the old.

8. Coco

Directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina

I think this is the best Pixar film in some time, and as always when a Pixar film is good, it's due to its emotional depth. This tells the story of a young boy who wants to be a musician, and is accidentally sent to the land of the dead right before Diá de los Muertos. He has to find a way to return to the land of the living before the celebration. It's a fine film, and one that feels like it respects and embraces the Mexican traditions of the festival. Indeed, it has a depth that, to me as an outsider, felt like it was honouring these traditions, in a way that allowed me to understand them better. It manages to do this with a family-friendly story, and plenty of style, drawing on the skeletal folk traditions of the festival. It's also an emotional film, and by the end, you feel as though it's been building up everything for the emotional sucker punch. This is something that Pixar can do extremely well when the elements are right. A fine return to form after a few films that I don't think I even saw, and by all accounts were not very good. Pixar is a long way from the time when everything they produced was a hit, but with films like Coco, they show that they've still got it in them when they want it.

9. I, Tonya

Directed by Craig Gillespie

The story of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan is one that I vaguely remember from my childhood. It was a big news story at the time, but one that just got morphed and twisted over time. I, Tonya is the film that plays very much on the mythology of the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, providing a fractured but painfully sympathetic portrayal of its title character. I honestly found this film quite distressing in a bunch of ways. This is the second film on this list with an abusive mother-daughter relationship, but this is significantly more challenging, especially thanks to the powerhouse performance of Allison Janney as Harding's mother. This relationship is brutal, but so is Harding's co-dependent relationship on her violent husband Jeff (played by an unrecognisable Sebastian Stan). Margot Robbie too is extremely good in the lead role, although she makes the (perfectly valid) choice to make Harding less than ideally sympathetic. It's the right choice for the film, but it does add more of a grind to watching it. But it's a better portrayal, you feel, for who Harding was. When I first came out of this film, I wasn't actually sure if I'd liked it or hated it. But it's stuck with me to such a degree that I can't help but elevate it to a position like this in the list. I think, in the end, it's a very clever film, and manages to portray Tonya Harding in a way that might be very difficult to do in a more traditional milieu.

10. A Fantastic Woman

Directed by Sebastián Lelio

A really quite wonderful film, A Fantastic Woman tells the story of an aspiring singer (Daniela Vega), who struggles with the death of her partner, 30 years her senior, and the suspicion with which she is viewed by her partner's family after his death. In many ways, it's a fairly straight down the line drama. It uses the conflict between Marina and her partner's family as the backdrop to explore some issues, especially around transgender identity, but it's not shoving messages down your throat. Instead, it takes Vega's performance as Daniela in a very staid and understated way. This is all very intentional of course. It emphasises the fact that all Marina wants to do is to live her life. To be able to grieve over the death of her partner. To be not treated with suspicion, or subjected to brutality and degradation. She's just normal, but that makes her fantastic. Overall, I very much enjoyed this film. It was extremely well made, and fills out the field in an already packed and genuinely very good Foreign Language category this year. Again, this could have done well in another year.

11. The Florida Project

Directed by Sean Baker

I quite enjoyed Sean Baker's debut film Tangerine, but this film is a broadening of his artistic style, and ends up being a much better film for it. It once again focuses on a group on the edges of society, this time a community of people who live in gaudy motels on a highway strip just outside of Disneyworld in Florida. It's largely told through the eyes of the children who live here, in particular Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), who are left to explore their surroundings without much in the way of supervision—providing a surprisingly raw look at where a child's imagination will take them without boundaries. Supporting are the characters of Moonee's mother (Bria Vinai) and the manager of the motel in which they live (Willem Dafoe, who rightly earned his Oscar nomination for this film). It's in turns depressing and uplifting, as we see the struggle of the parents (who are by no means the sugar-coated ideal of noble poverty), and the ways in which the children learn to survive and to flourish. It does have the same kind of jerky cinematography that characterised Tangerine, although that was filmed on iPhones, but here there's still a sense of weird, garish beauty to the uber-kitsch motels and strip-malls of Florida. Somehow it works. It's a really interesting film, and certainly one that I feel as though I can recommend wholeheartedly—something I couldn't necessarily do with Tangerine. Sean Baker has certainly shown with this film at least that he's a director to watch in the future, and I'll certainly be doing that.

12. Loveless

Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev

This was the very last film I saw for the Oscars this year, so had the honour if wrapping up all the feature films. Like Zvyagintsev's other films, it's a chilly, minimalist affair, but like all of his previous ones it has an emotional impact that you'd not expect from its spare production. In this film, a family is undergoing a divorce. Both husband and wife have new partners waiting for them—one pregnant, one rich, aloof and used to their life as it is right now. Custody of their son would be a burden on either of them, and neither of them wants to accept him. Then, the son disappears. What follows is a typically emotionally bare and brutal undertaking from the director. It's almost merciless in its depiction of characters without warmth of spirit, and the consequences this eventually brings upon them. It's eerily beautiful too, set in the starkness of Moscow highrises and long snowy banks. Like the emotions it conjures, there's a bleakness to it, ably assisted by a minimalist soundtrack. I think this is maybe not as good as Zvyagintsev's pervious film Leviathan, because I enjoyed the more overt political overtones there. This is still a political film, without a doubt, but its politics are more cached in the environment that creates characters like this. That is, it's one level removed from an explicit exploration of societal corruption. But it's still an excellent film, and a film which shows the Foreign Language award this year as an extremely strong category. Whichever film ends up winning, it's had to take on some impressive competition.

13. The Post

Directed by Steven Spielberg

I won't spend a lot of time on this film, but suffice it to say that I found it an enjoyable, by-the-numbers outing from Spielberg, helped by the always competent performances from Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. I feel like Meryl Streep has a common thread running through her performances, and yet in every one I've seen she seems unlike all the others. Here, her performance as the insecure publisher of a major newspaper manages to tap into that sense of inner strength she always has, but layers it with a timorous quality which is surprisingly engaging on screen. It helps as well that there's a good story to tell here—it's not the story of the breaking news of the Pentagon papers, but more how it was specifically dealt with within the Washington Post. This is more entertaining than it would have been to see how the story was originally broken open (the Post was not the paper to originally get the story). But yeah, it's a fine film, very enjoyable and very by the numbers. With a cast of such established actors, and an old-hand director like Spielberg at the reins, it was unlikely to be anything else.

14. Call Me By Your Name

Directed by Luca Guadagnino

This was a fine, very stylistic film, which used its setting to great effect, and tells a tentative love story in an oblique way. Timothée Chalamet is Elio, the son of a classics professor (Michael Stuhlbarg). Over the summer, a student of his (Armie Hammer) comes to work at their Italian villa, and a romance ensues between Elio and the much older student. It's set as a love story, and it mostly manages to avoid the questionable nature of the relationship by showing it in a very sympathetic and delicate light. Elio pursues Oliver, not the other way around. Oliver and Elio embrace consent at every step of the way. And they have the tacit approval of Elio's parents. Indeed, the absolute highlight of the film is Stuhlbarg's speech to his son towards the end of the film, where he shows wisdom and compassion that made me hope that I could one day be as good a father as he is. The fact that Stuhlbarg is not nominated for an Oscar for supporting actor, for that speech alone, is a travesty. Overall, it's a fine film, if not one that rocketed to the top of my list, which I feel a very similar film in style, tone and content could have. But a very worthy film nonetheless.

15. Mudbound

Directed by Dee Rees

This was a quite beautiful film, surrounding two families, one white, one black, in rural Mississippi after World War II. It's a well-crafted portrayal of racial segragation, but also of surprising friendship in the younger generation. This is, of course, contrasted with the older tensions, especially the savage portrayal of the elderly patriarch of the McAllan family from Jonathan Banks. The film doesn't shy away from the harsh truths of this world. It's also exquisitely shot, with broad vistas of the rural landscape, and claustrophobic interiors, used to great thematic purpose. It's no wonder that this managed a nomination for Best Cinematography. Overall, I enjoyed it a great deal. It was a very skillfully crafted piece of cinema that is very much worth your time.

16. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Directed by Rian Johnson

Undoubtedly more divisive that the film that came before it, The Last Jedi is also a film that I found myself embracing less wholeheartedly than I did The Force Awakens. But it's one of those films that you most likely have to let percolate. A film that you should probably watch a second time and appreciate more than the first. Like its predecessor, it does follow a lot of the same storyline as the original trilogy. Rey, separated from her friends, and seeking the ways of the Jedi with an old master. But also like The Empire Strikes Back, this seeks to break new ground, and it certainly manages to do that. Much has been said about the humour in this film, especially about whether it detracts from the mood of the franchise. But this is just one of the ways in which this film succeeds. More than anything, it needed to break from The Force Awakens. TFA was the film it needed to be. It needed to soothe nerves after the prequels. It needed to get back to the traditional lore. And it did this in a very safe way—too safe in some ways, in that it almost copied the exact storyline of A New Hope. The Last Jedi manages to avoid that. It is at least the first steps into doing something different, and that is what was needed from this film. Rian Johnson may be facing some backlash now, but I think in the course of history, this will be seen as a necessary and pivotal film in the franchise.

17. Marshall

Directed by Reginald Hudlin

This was just good old-fashioned filmmaking, and I genuinely enjoyed it a good deal. A courtroom drama, set in the civil rights era, it focuses on one of the early cases of Thurgood Marshall, who goes on to become the first African-American Supreme Court Judge. It's a serviceable but predictable kind of plot, but it's told with style and charm, and pulled off with good performances from Chadwick Boseman and Josh Gad. The production design is also quite lush—it pulls together a sense of period in a kind of effortless way, more like the films released in the 90s and 00s than the fussier style of today. I enjoyed it a good deal. It's not a truly great film, but it's certainly one which entertained me for its length. And honestly, there are a great number of films, like many of these below, which fail to do that.

18. The Shape Of Water

Directed by Guillermo del Toro

This is a very odd film to be getting the kind of reception it has. Let me say straight off the bad that it's an exceptionally well-crafted film. It has an amazing ensemble cast. del Toro has an excellent sense of style, and an undeniable eye for the unusual. But I did find myself equivocal about the film overall. To some extent, this comes down to the plot, which is a little like a cross between a 50's sci-fi B-movie and Oh No, Willy Didn't Make It And He Crushed Our Boy. But this is hidden behind layers and layers of production design, and of del Toro's sense of fantastical whimsy. Disappointingly, I like all of the actors who are up for Oscar nominations for this film, but I didn't particularly like them all that much in this particular film. Sally Hawkins is perhaps more of the exception, as she manages to put together a remarkable performance without speaking a word. Still, I think that if this film does take out Best Picture, I'll be scratching my head a bit. It's not only that it's not the pick that I would have chosen, I feel as though it's really not the pick that the Academy would have chosen. So, who knows, maybe that's a good thing.

19. Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Directed by Dan Gilroy

OK, speaking of odd films, here's a corker. Directed by Dan Gilroy as a follow to his excellent debut Nightcrawler, this is something of a vessel for Denzel Washington to show his range. He plays the titular Israel, a socially awkward man, but a brilliant lawyer, who struggles to find a place for himself after the death of his legal partner. It's a weird film, but one that I found myself enjoying in spite of myself. Partially, this is due to watching Denzel Washington. He's a fine actor in any role, but in one with such neuroses to play with, it's something of a master class. But the film surrounding this performance is in some senses not worthy of it. You get the feeling that without Denzel Washington, this film would have just been a stinker. Plot-wise it's somewhat pedestrian, and it kind of meanders only as much as it needs to to create new situations for this character to react to. It's nowhere near as plot driven or engaging as Gilroy's previous outing. But that's what it's here at the Oscars for, right? For Denzel Washington, as always. And here, at least, I'm very happy to see him. This is indeed a fine performance from him—indeed, despite everything, it might be one of his better performances. And he does carry this film enough to get it this high in my list. Despite its flaws, I did like it.

20. Strong Island

Directed by Yance Ford

So here, finally, we have the first documentary feature. And it's a fine film, and a deeply personal one, surrounding the investigation of the murder of a young black man, who, it turns out, was the filmmaker's brother. Usually, I'm less likely to enjoy documentaries that don't have a sense of journalistic detachment to them. But here, the pain and the intimacy with which we are told this story through Ford's eyes, and the eyes of his family, more than makes up for the lack of perspective. This is an emotional journey, but it's one that's told with a firm hand on the tiller. Ford never relinquishes that sense of objective filmmaking in order to editorialise. He's well aware that the story itself is evocative enough. In the end, it's a good documentary. It's not one of the best documentaries I've seen in recent years, but it's certainly the best of this year's bunch.

21. Victoria & Abdul

Directed by Stephen Frears

I enjoyed this film a great deal. It's a surprisingly charming film about the relationship between an elderly Queen Victoria and a young Indian Muslim whom she takes on to teach her Urdu and about Islam. It's a sweet film in many ways, and lavishly produced, with good performances from Judi Dench and Ali Fazal in the title roles. It paints a rather sympathetic portrayal of Victoria as well—as someone who is fascinated by the Indian subcontinent, which she is Empress of, but of which she is largely ignorant. In this, there's a touch of cultural imperialism though. We see the favour with which Victoria treats her Indian friend without seeing the implications of the British Raj on the people of India. It's very much a film for a white audience, that chooses not to engage very much with the more difficult topic. But as a piece of fluff disconnected with these things, it's quite enjoyable. It was a film I saw on a plane, and it's just the right kind of film for me in that situation. It doesn't require a lot of attention, and it's somewhere between light-hearted and truly emotional. In the end, it is what it is, and that was fine.

22. Dunkirk

Directed by Christopher Nolan

It's undeniable that this was a fairly impressive outing from Nolan. But to me this was a technical achievement more than it was a great film. Telling a sequence of only peripherally related tales surrounding the British evacuation of Dunkirk, it very much manages to illustrate the epic scope of the operation. But that's pretty much all it is. I really didn't much at all get the sense of compelling narrative in this. I mean, it's there, in each of the individual threads, and to some extent you do care about these characters. But it's all done with such an eye for the broader scope that none of the individual stories seem to matter all that much. To some extent, that's probably the idea, or at least the inevitable end result of such a film. It is about the larger picture much more than it is about the individual stories, even though the tapestry is woven from those stories. Sadly, it failed a little as an engaging picture for me, even though the visuals and the technical expertise required to put a film like this on the screen is quite extraordinary. So I'll continue to respect Nolan as a director. He definitely has the skills to pull off difficult things. But I'm kind of hopeful that this trend of his to the wider and wider epic won't mean that he's given up on the more engaging, intimate and plot-driven films of his early career. We'll wait and see.

23. The Square

Directed by Ruben Östlund

An interesting but ultimately overly precious film, about the curator of a major Swedish art museum as he prepares for a new installation, while also trying to track down his stolen wallet and phone. It has a number of different threads, and there's a bunch of rather bombastic pretention thrown into the mix, including an extended scene at an art fundraiser where a man acting like a Bonobo ape is let loose on the crowd as a piece of performance art. These are all stylistic choices that Östland makes which imbue the film with a sense of added pretense. All of this makes the film less immediately engaging than it might be. It deliberately obfuscates at times, becoming more like the art you feel it's satirising than it does a coherent picture itself. But there's still things to enjoy in it. Overall, I found it relatively engaging. I feel some of the choices were made for the wrong reasons though, and it ended up being a worse film than it might have been.

24. Loving Vincent (animated)

Directed by Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman

Another impressive technical achievement, this is a gorgeous film, with every frame of animation a separate oil painting, painted by one of a massive team of artists. It tells the aftermath of Vincent Van Gogh's death, as investigated by the son of one of Van Gogh's friends. The narrative is pretty much not the point of the film—they do manage to craft something that is enough to keep things plodding along, but really you can enjoy this film just by looking at it. Interestingly, the film had to be produced pretty much twice, because the action is performed first by live actors (the likes of Douglas Booth, Saoirse Ronan, Aidan Turner and Chris O'Dowd), was then printed on canvas, and overpainted with oils, all in the style of Van Gogh. It's a mind-boggling effort. In some respects it's not a film that should ever have been made—the fact that it has been, no matter what the half-baked plot was, is the really interesting story here.

25. The Breadwinner

Directed by Nora Twomey

This was another quite beautiful film, traditionally animated in beautiful form from the same studio that did The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, both of which were also nominated in the Best Animated Feature category. This film is set in Afghanistan, between the war with Russia and the US invasion, when the country is under Taliban control. Parvana is a young girl who has a gift for telling stories, one of which runs through the film in pieces. When her father is arrested by the Taliban, she disguises herself as a boy so as to be able to perform work and support her family. It's a sad film in many ways, but it shows a great deal of what's good in life as well, even in pretty dark circumstances. Parvana's gift of story is an illustration of the way such tales can invigorate, and sooth. The animation is good, as it has been in all this studios films, traditionally animated, or at least animated in a 2D style. And the story here is both more mature and engaging than in their previous efforts that I've seen. Overall a good film. My limited engagement with animated films drops this as low as it is, but honestly, there are many animated films that would not do nearly as well as this has.

26. Phantom Thread

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

I was quite disappointed with how low this has ended up, but it's a position that it warrants, despite the fact that it has much of Paul Thomas Anderson's charm and craft all over it. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a prominent but eccentric fashion designer who lives in a difficult co-dependent relationship with his sister (Lesley Manville). When he begins a relationship with a waitress, Alma (Vicky Krieps), she has to adapt to his eccentricies, the rancour of his sister, and life in the tortured world of fashion. It's an elaborately crafted film, and to some extent feels like an academic exercise that PTA has given himself. It's fussy in its production, in a way that matches well the personality of its leading man. The music is a highlight from Johnny Greenwood, and stands apart as one of the films greatest strengths. The other strength of course is the presence of Daniel Day-Lewis. He's a chameleonic actor, to the extent that I honestly don't at all know what a base-level Daniel Day-Lewis performance is like. He completely reinvents himself for every role, and this one—a difficult one, no doubt—is performed with that same complexity and grace. It's disappointing in some ways that it so failed to connect with me. There were lots of good elements, but they did not combine into something holistically interesting. It was, altogether, too particular, too pleased with itself, or too exacting of its audience for me to embrace.

27. Wonder

Directed by Stephen Chbosky

Wonder tells the tale of a young boy with facial deformities (Jacob Tremblay) as he makes the transition from home schooling to being integrated into a traditional middle school. It looked like absolute shchmaltz. But in fact, there was a surprising amount of depth and heart to the film, and a sophistication of thought that made it rise above its shonky premise. There's something surprisingly human about the whole thing, not due to the pathos, but due to the combination of pathos and humour. It is rather optimistic throughout, but it steers away from melodrama and sentimentality. In some senses it rides above its premise, to provide more of a straight family drama. This is accentuated by good performances from Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson, and in particular from Jacob Tremblay and Izabela Vidovic as his sister. The focus on other members of the family, and the wider ensemble helps to promote this. Indeed, the film ends up bearing some resemblance to Chbosky's previous film, the excellent The Perks of Being A Wallflower. It doesn't have the same depth, or the same fluency of character, but Chbosky obviously knows what he's doing in this domain. So it's a surprising effort for a film I expected to dislike a great deal. It's a better outing than it sounds, and ends up, while still not an excellent film, quite good at delivering on its premise.

28. Icarus

Directed by Bryan Fogel

This is a very, very odd film. It's a documentary that starts out with the filmmaker, Bryan Fogel, trying a social experiment to see if he can get away with using performance enhancing drugs for an amateur road cycling race. In pursuit of this, he meets Grigory Rodchenkov, a Russian scientist in charge of his country's anti-doping agency, and the two devise a doping schedule for the director. But the director doesn't know what he's found, because in the middle of filming, Russia's anti-doping scheme is revealed, and Rodchenkov is unveiled as the mastermind behind it. From that point, the documentary pivots and becomes the first-hand story of Rodchenkov turning whistle-blower against his former colleagues, and the revelations of the conspiracy which seem to go to the very top of the Russian government. Fogel is thrown in the deep end to this one. This is not the documentary he was going to make, and neither is he the right director for it—he's hanging on for dear life as the story unravels in front of him. To his credit, he manages to ride it out, and we get a credible and quite engaging story out of it. But there are places where it's quite dicey. He does have the unfortunate habit of trying to put himself too squarely into the middle of the action, a fault that seems common in mediocre documentarians, but given the initial premise of the film, we can at least see why he does it. In the end, there's a really very compelling story in this documentary. The fact that it's told the way it is is the result of luck more than skill on the part of the filmmakers. But it's also luck for us—we get to see the story unfold in a way that we would have missed otherwise. And that's worth something.

29. The Disaster Artist

Directed by James Franco

I'd seen The Room several years ago, and if you haven't it's worth the hype. It is truly a masterpiece of appallingly bad cinema. So I was quite intrigued to see the story behind it, however it was filtered by James Franco. And it is a rather interesting, if quite silly story. The main event here is the characterisation of the star of The Room, Tommy Wiseau. He's a man steeped in mystery—somehow exceptionally wealthy, destined to be an actor, but with very little talent, and zero sense of self-awareness. Somehow though, Franco manages to make him a sympathetic character—the central figure in a tragedy perhaps. It's a soft touch, and easily the best thing about the film. The rest, however, is serviceable but never inspired. The script is only mediocre as far as I'm concerned, despite its nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and only manages to provide the main beats of the plot without a great deal of humour or panache. In the end, it's an okay film. I certainly had some fun with it, but it's hard to recognise it as much of a sterling piece of cinematic history. That honour remains solely with The Room.

30. The Boss Baby

Directed by Tom McGrath

By any account, this should have been the worst film of the Oscars. This is surely one of the most awful premises for a movie ever, right? Secretly, our protagonist Tim's new baby brother is a business executive, sent on a secret mission to infiltrate his family, and steal secret plans on a new kind of puppy. Can you hear me gagging already? So how does this manages to twist itself into a heartwarming parable about family, and in particular brotherly love? I suspect this is because it draws on the source material, a picture book by Marla Frazee, a medium not suited to convoluted backstory of the kind that sickened me in this film. But the emotions it evokes are relatable. A new child is brought into the family, which disrupts the status quo in a way that the existing child resists and resents. But over time, almost without realising it, they grow to love one another. The way this tale is framed within the film is almost inconsequential. Yeah, there's some silly plot involving stealing secret plans from PuppyCo. And there are a number of set pieces surrounding the chase and execution of this plot. But that's certainly not what got me. In the end, admittedly, this is still something of a silly film, and its position here isn't great. But for a film that should have been a Giant Novelty Shoe-in for worst film of the Oscars, it endeared itself to me in a way I really wasn't prepared for.

31. Faces Places (Visages, Villages)

Directed by Agnès Varda & JR

A fairly interesting but also perplexing documentary about the surprising friendship that arises between veteran French director Agnès Varda and young photographer JR, whose shtick is pasting massive versions of his photography on forgotten architecture. Together, the two of them travel around France, finding unusual places to exhibit JRs next piece of artwork, which Varda muses on her life, and reflects on her many triumphs and regrets. Largely the film revolves around the friendship that blooms between the two co-directors. But it's a very understated piece, with little in the way of conflict, or even much that's revelatory. The only real human emotion which sneaks in is saved until near the end of the piece, when Varda takes JR to meet her old friend Jean-Luc Godard. The rest is staid, and a little perplexing, but never unbeautiful. It's more a pictorial of JR's art though than anything really resembling a story. And that makes it a harder film to swallow than it really should be. As a result, this is languishing towards the back end of the list, and honestly, that's a bit of a shame.

32. Logan

Directed by James Mangold

People kind of raved about this film, calling it an impressive departure from the regular superhero storyline. While it's true that it is a departure from the regular superhero fare, it doesn't necessarily follow that it hence deserves a rave. The world has changed from the X-Men universe we know. The mutations which caused superhero powers have seemingly stopped, Professor Xavier is now crippled by his mental powers, and is cared for in a bunker by a bitter, resentful Wolverine. But of course, their life is not destined to just peter out without a sound, and they get dragged into a conspiracy that requires their intervention once again. Don't get me wrong: this is significantly more interesting than most of the superhero films that are trotted out year after year. But after the unusual set-up, and some bleaker than normal cinematography, this really does become a lot like another superhero film. At its core, it can't escape that, and when it devolves into long tracts of choreographed fight sequences, I'm much less interested. So yeah, I can perhaps see why this was regarded with critical interest. But at the same time, it didn't do much for me.

33. Beauty and the Beast

Directed by

Not a great film, admittedly, and to some extent warranted some of the criticism thrown at it. It is, after all, not far from a shot-for-shot live-action remake of Disney's classic animated version—a version which is rightfully regarded as a triumph. But because it's based on such solid material, there is a good deal of charm to it. Emma Watson's Belle is engaging in her role, although as people have said, she's not an incredible singer, meaning that her songs are only so good. The rest of the cast (which is surprisingly good), do a serviceable job, but at every moment you're comparing them to the animated versions of themselves, and the comparison is rarely favorable. Perhaps the exception is Luke Evans as Gaston, who manages to be suitably and consistently smarmy, and Josh Gad as LeFou, who manages to elicit some sympathy from the audience. In the end, it was better than it might have been. And it's not as good as the original. While you might look at it and say "it didn't fail in its attempt", you might equally ask "why was the attempt made in the first place?".

34. Darkest Hour

Directed by Joe Wright

I had a bunch of problems with this film. Telling the days of the early turbulent reign of Winston Churchill's prime-ministership, it focuses on the difficult future facing Britain in WWII, when victory was so far from assured that a Nazi invasion seemed inevitable. Notwithstanding Gary Oldman's believable mimickry of Churchill, the film concerned me in a bunch of different ways. It sought to give insight into the difficult decisions of government—which in this case involved outright lying to the people of the country, and nationalist propaganda designed to help the war effort at the cost of transparency. But in so doing, the film seemed to canonise such efforts. This is the cost of winning a war, it stated, and the ends justify the means. Worse is the fact that the seeming pivotal moment when Churchill seeks the approval of the common man (a sappy sequence set on the London Underground) is played off as the moral basis of the film. Everyone, it seems, approves of the job Churchill is doing. They support the war effort. They support the need for austerity. They are optimistic about Britain's chances, because Britons have the backbone to win a fight, jolly what. The film portrays Churchill as buoyed by this, despite the fact that in the narrative of the film these people only think this due to the propaganda Churchil himself is spouting. The whole sequence made me very cynical, and it underlined all of the thematic issues with the film elsewhere. If it were a better made film overall, I'd perhaps even consider it dangerous to some extent. But I think that it might only be remembered as a vessel for Gary Oldman, who's apparently one of the favourites to take out the Best Actor nod. And maybe that's fine as its legacy.

35. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail

Directed by Steve James

This wasn't a terrible documentary, but it was one that was drawn out for too long. It tells the story of the Abacus bank, a small American operation set up to appeal to the Chinese community in that country. Unlike any of the other banks which were caught up in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, Abacus was the only bank whose directors and management were charged with crimes. The documentary follows the trials, and tells the story of the how they ended up in the situation they did. It focuses less on the impact of the GFC on all the other banks, and I think misses an opportunity to take more of a swing at the big players. Instead, it focuses on how unfair it is that Abacus was targeted, rather than how unfair it is that Abacus was the only bank targeted. The other issue I have with the film is that the middle section is severely over-extended. To be fair, if it were not, the film itself would be much shorter—and it's not an overly long film as it is, so it may have not even been classified as a feature film if it were not extended in this way. But there's a great deal of time spent focusing on the family's and directors musing on what's going to happen in the trial, without much in the way of narrative thrust. In the end, it's only so good. I liked the concept behind it, but the delivery and execution meant that this fell a long way down the list.

36. Baby Driver

Directed by Edgar Wright

A rather silly film, directed with panache and a sense of style, but ultimately one which really just had me giving a bunch of sideeye. Let's talk about the good bits. The music, which provides almost the rhythmic thrust of the film, is universally excellent. It's an eclectic mix of any number of pieces, usually drawn from the lesser-known back catalogues. And there's a kind of anti-establishment style to the film, especially the driving sequences, which are, in turn aided by the pumping soundtrack. But the story is weak, and the characterisation is even more so. These folks are comic-book cutouts—which, you feel, would fit the style of the movie—but instead it just creates a sense of detachment which means that I personally never felt involved in the world. I just didn't care about anyone. It's also not aided by the performances of the leads. Kevin Spacey phones in a "look, I'm Kevin Spacey" doddle, and Ansel Elgort is just numbingly bland in the title role. Some pleasingly uncharacteristic menace comes from John Hamm and Jamie Foxx, but they're not the main focus of the film, so their presence is only sporadically helpful. I ended up just feeling alienated from the film. It didn't do anything to really draw me in at all, and as a result, I ended up not caring. Worse, the stylistic embellishments ended up feeling a bit like an ego trip for Edgar Wright—the film hadn't earnt them, and given it had fundamental problems, it came across as wank.

37. Last Men in Aleppo (doc)

Directed by Feras Fayyad

This film suffered a lot from the fact that I'd seen The White Helmets the year before, which covered the same group of Syrian volunteers whose job is to rescue survivors from bombed buildings. The two films were produced by different people, so there's not necessarily the sense that one is just a richer adaptation of the other. This one, however, does have the advantage of being able to delve more deeply into the lives of the people around the White Helmets. In particular, there's a fair amount of time spent looking at the children who are rescued, often finding themselves orphaned, and their ongoing relationship with the people who rescued them. But I'll admit my attention was wavering at points through the film, largely because I felt like I'd heard about this before. This probably means that I was missing out on a deeper experience than I got from The White Helmets. That's probably a shame.

38. War for the Planet of the Apes

Directed by Matt Reeves

I've really enjoyed this film series. I particularly liked the original, which had a really wonderful exploration of the worldbuilding in the first Planet of the Apes film. And I was then very pleasantly surprised by the follow up Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, for adding an interesting moral ambiguity into the inevitable conflict between the apes and the humans. But this film I found to be easily the weakest of the lot. In some ways, that's not unsurprising. The trilogy needed a cap at the end of it, and it was trying to wrap things up in a way that was meaningful. But that, to some extent, came at the expense of this particular film—it may have helped the series as a whole, but not this specific episode in it. It's also much less a film that's interested in exploring the ethos of the world, or even necessarily the development of the relationship between the humans and the apes. It's a war film, by necessity, and that has a limited appeal to me. There are good parts, as there have been throughout the series, including the visual effects, and Serkis's performance as Caesar. But there's only so much that can help. This is not one of the big picks for me.

39. The Greatest Showman

Directed by Michael Gracey

This is this year's La La Land, the high concept musical (with songs from the La La Land team, no less), that ends up being very silly at times. And while it would be very easy to eviscerate this for all that's wrong with it, there were enough good parts to it that I'm infiriatingly feeling the need to defend it. Really, in broad strokes, this is not good. The concept and script are very poor, and so obvious in places that I thought I was going to do damage to my optic nerve by rolling my eyes so much. Hugh Jackman is predictable, and Michelle Williams is actively bad in this. But whereas La La Land rode or fell (it definitely fell) on the performances of its two leads, this is much more of an ensemble piece, and parts of the ensemble save it. In particular in this film, the subplot surrounding the romance between Zac Efron and Zendaya is told with an emotion and subtlety that has no place in a film like this. These two actors are easily the best thing about the film, and they really provide some heart to a film that's otherwise lacking it. It's also true that the set pieces and the musical numbers are put on the screen with a style that other recent musicals have severely lacked. That's not to say it survives its overall crumminess, but there are a lot of people (not including the leads) who are working very hard to make this film a success. And apparently, it is indeed a success. This has been a surprising hit at the box office, despite the panning it's got critically. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's definitely a place for films like this, and musicals in general. And who knows, perhaps if they keep making them, eventually we'll get one that's actually good.

40. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Directed by James Gunn

I really don't much see the appeal of this film franchise. I think partially it's due to missing the appeal of the now blandly handsome Chris Pratt. He used to have a kind of schlubby charm in the days of Parks & Recreation and Her. But now he's just conformed to the mould of vague action-hero leading man. This is particularly true in this volume of Guardians of the Galaxy, which I found much more lacking in the humour that at least set the first episode apart. It's possible that this is just due to the fact that the first episode was different from the other standard comic-book films being churned out, and this is not significantly different from Vol. 1. But still, it matters because our expectations were somewhere for this film, and the end result is something that's just not that innovative any more. I still think that the best part of both of these films is Dave Bautista's Drax, who this time has an amusing relationship with an empathic alien. The dynamics between the rest of the group is less interesting this time—there's manufactured tension, but very little of the natural friction you got when this rag tag bunch were thrown together. And the story? Was there much of a story? Yes and no. Yes, there was a story. No, I didn't care about it, and to be honest, the story is not what this film franchise's strength is. The fact that they tried to ratchet up the plot to impossible levels with excessively high stakes is testament to the fact that they kind of know it too. So yeah, I didn't much like this, and to be honest, I'm actually going to groan if I have to watch the third instalment. There's definitely going to be a third instalment, but if possible, I'm going to give it a miss.

41. Ferdinand

Directed by Carlos Saldanha

You know what was bad? Ferdinand was bad. It's also the kind of film that I'm really skeptical about. Despite the fact that it's built on an apparently beloved children's book, it has all the hallmarks of a film that was designed by a committee. It tells the tale of a bull who decides he doesn't want to fight in the arena, despite the fact that that's what he's been bred to do. Yeah. And it kind of does that. I guess. But it's really quite bad in everything perhaps that kind of idea. There are just so many parts that stand out as the handiwork of some producer who said "we haven't had anything funny in a while, could we maybe add a dance competition for no reason at all?". The animation is also halfway between the beautiful and the comic, but it's neither one nor the other. As a result, it feels as though it's just half-baked. I understand the desire to have a slightly less realistic vibe to a cartoon, but it gels poorly with the backgrounds, for instance. The best part of the film is the characterisation and performance from Kate McKinnon's neurotic goat Lupe, who is genuinely quite amusing and endearing in equal measures. But having a bright spot like this just kind of makes things like the trio of stereotyped Swedish horses stick out as awkward all the more. Yeah, not a big film. This is the kind of animated film that for quite a while made the entire category my least anticipated section to sit through. But films like Coco, Loving Vincent and even god-forbid The Boss Baby have shown that the kind of film like Ferdinand really shouldn't cut it any more.

42. All the Money in the World

Directed by Ridley Scott

What a disappointing film. It's a disappointing film because it's so unconscionably dull. Telling the story of the kidnapping of the grandson of J.P. Getty (Christopher Plummer, taking over the role that had been completed by Kevin Spacey), and Getty's refusal to pay the ransom, I'm kind of bored just thinking back on it, to be honest. Once again, we have Michelle Williams in a role that's just yawningly pedestrian. She fails to breathe any life into it at all aside from doing her vague stony-faced monologuing. And across from her is Mark Wahlberg who at least inhabits his role—but it's a role he's done so many times before that we don't really care about seeing him do it again. But mostly, I just found this film chilly, cold and overly boring. It's unpleasant in other ways too—it has that feeling of ennui that envelops me when watching the excessively wealthy. I just don't care. Moreover, it's the kind of indulgent thing that people like Ridley Scott probably thinks people like me want to watch. Which I think just means the producers of films like this are out of touch. Mostly, this feels like it only even got a nod for an Oscar as a giant Fuck You to Kevin Spacy. Plummer is fine in the role that earns him his Best Supporting Actor nomination, but not better than a bunch of other people that could have taken his place (Michael Stuhlbarg in Call Me By Your Name should be kicking some walls watching this performance). And had it not been for that I probably never would have watched this. I suspect I would have been the better for it.

43. Kong: Skull Island

Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Now we're into the serious garbage. Second bottom film of this year's Oscars is this mess from director Jordan Vogt-Roberts. You know him, right? He's exhibit 12 on Hollywood's parade of let's give a major Hollywood franchise to some white male director who's had one successful indie film, while women with illustrious careers are still seen as too much of a risk. He's the next version of Colin Trevorrow in other words, which should strike fear into your heart. Also stacked against this is the fact that it's a(nother) reboot of King Kong, just focusing on the attempts to investigate his home of Skull Island. Like many reboots of classic action films, it misses all of the moral questions of the original, and instead puts on screen a story which is a loosely connected selection of Things Blowing Up Sampler Pack, Vol. 12. The plot? It almost doesn't matter. A bunch of shit happens on Skull Island. Kong is an enemy, but then not an enemy. John C. Reilly pulls out an inappropriate Dewey Cox impersonation, while the story devolves into worse than B-movie territory. OK, to be fair, this is only nominated for visual effects. And these are indeed good. But that's like saying that this is a beautifully decorated cake made of dogshit. All of the pretty piping work in the world doesn't make you want to consume it. Worst is that this was apparently both a commercial and critical success, and is feted to launch yet another shared-universe franchise. That's kind of awful, because I don't want to have to watch another film like Kong: Skull Island.

44. Molly's Game

Directed by Aaron Sorkin

Bottom of the pile this year is a film that's probably not technically the worst film I've seen (Kong: Skull Island owns that), but the one that just pissed me off the most. And it was Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut Molly's Game. It was awful. In fact, it got more awful the more I thought about it. It is almost completely, 100%, unrelatable in any way shape or form. Telling the true story of a young woman (Molly Bloom, played by a lacklustre Jessica Chastain), who starts a high-stakes poker game for the rich and famous, and is subsequently indicted for it. I mean, are we meant to have sympathy for this character? Are we meant to identify with the group of soulless people she surrounds herself with, in particular the callous movie star played by Michael Cera, who's supposedly based on Tobey Maguire. They're all completely unpleasant in one way or another. But the worst part of this train wreck of a film is the fact that you can sense Sorkin's fawning admiration for Molly Bloom. Sorkin has shown himself to be kind of a nasty character in real life, and the fact that he picked this as his directorial debut is telling. And the way he puts in on screen just emphasises all of the ways in which I found the story deeply unpleasant. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if in real life, a slimed-up Sorkin found himself a regular at Molly's table. It would then make this whole films something of an ego-trip (or moreso than it is already), and that very much fits in with my impression of Sorkin nowadays. Yeah: I hated this film. It's the kind of hatred that can only really mature and develop over time. It's a rich and full-bodied kind of hatred, that has had the benefit of reflection and deep thought. It's the kind of hatred that easily beats out the kind of knee-jerk hate I have for films like Kong: Skull Island. It's kind of beautiful in a way. Well, there you have it. A full rundown of all the feature films at the Oscars. But we're not done yet. We also have the truly wonderful short films to look at. I'm not going to write these up individually, but here they are in order from my favourite to least favourite:

DeKalb Elementary (live action)

The Silent Child (live action)

Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (documentary)

Watu Wote (live action)

The 11 O'Clock (live action)

Garden Party (animated)

Traffic Stop (documentary)

Revolting Rhymes (animated)

Lou (animated)

Heroin(e) (documentary)

My Nephew Emmett (live action)

Negative Space (animated)

Knife Skills (documentary)

Edith & Eddie (documentary)

Dear Basketball (animated)

As always, these were excellent, and a set of films which are honestly worthy of as much time as the Best Picture nominees. I highly recommend watching the Short Film categories at the Oscars every year, but this year's were particularly good. The top film, DeKalb Elementary, is honestly the most affecting piece of cinema I've seen at this year's Oscars, in either the short or long form. And of course, it wouldn't be my write-up without me giving my hot tips for the winners. I say hot tips, but don't rely on these for predictions. These are how I would vote if the Academy would answer my damn phonecalls and give me a ballot for the awards. As always, I've limited my votes to just the nominees in each category, so while I would like to vote for Ferdinand for Best Foreign Language Film, I can't. Best Picture: Lady Bird Best Director: Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) Best Actress: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards) Best Actor: Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney (I, Tonya) Best Supporting Actor: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards) Best Original Screenplay: Lady Bird Best Adapted Screenplay: Mudbound Best Animated Feature: Coco Best Foreign Language Film: On Body and Soul Best Documentary Feature: Strong Island Best Documentary Short: Heaven Is A Traffic Jam on the 405 Best Live Action Short: Best Animated Short: Garden Party Best Original Score: Phantom Thread Best Original Song: "Mystery of Love" (Call Me By Your Name) Best Sound Editing: Blade Runner 2049 Best Sound Mixing: Dunkirk Best Production Design: The Shape of Water Best Cinematography: Blade Runner 2049 Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Wonder Best Costume Design: Phantom Thread Best Film Editing: Dunkirk Best Visual Effects: Blade Runner 2049

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