Oh yeah, I forgot that I could write something about the movie here… I was futzing around with the streaming setup and stuff. This movie is only available in the US, so I had to resort to nefarious means to watch it.

I like the general look of the movie — it moves slowly but in an assured way, and the actors are really good. But the basic plot here is very strange indeed — it seems like it’s happening in the … 70s? 90s?

I guess the time period is… “now, but forget about cell phones, because then the plot wouldn’t quite work, OK?”

I like the movie, but… It’s hard to get over how much that final sauna scene didn’t make much sense.

Spa Night. Andrew Ahn. 2016. ⚂

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.

Hey! It’s Finnish!

It’s kinda… washed out? It looks like an HDR movie not being displayed as an HDR movie? I’ve got HDR switched off on the Apple TV, but… I guess… the Youtube app didn’t get the memo?

I’m still not sure whether this is supposed to look like this — all super-desaturated and with a lousy black level… but I bought it on the Blockbuster app, too, and it looks the same there.

So… either it’s supposed to look like this, or the filmmakers uploaded the wrong version of the film to everybody.

I guess?

At least it’s not cropped on the left/right like the movie I just watched on Itunes Movies.

It’s ridiculously beige.

And then it turns out that they’re both on Grindr!

Oops!

It’s super awkward.

Awkward!

But funny. Very funny. The father’s priceless.

The general desaturation here gets even more extreme in the sauna scenes… so… perhaps… it’s an artistic choice?

I’m still guessing it’s a technical problem somewhere.

So much banding, too… pretty low framerate, I guess.

God I hate everything about streaming. Except the, you know, getting the movie immediately part. That part’s nice.

OK. That’s just what this movie is. There’s some really fun scenes, but there’s also a bunch of scenes that just seem like padding. Was this originally a short that was then expanded or something?

A Moment in the Reeds. Mikko Makela. 2017. ⚂

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.

I’ve seen this one before, of course, but it’s been decades and decades. I remember… thinking… it was really good?

I know, that’s a really controversial opinion, but I’m sticking by it!

Er.

Well, OK, I don’t know yet whether I am or not.

What a dump!

Fabulous!

My god! Taylor and Burton are so good!

And I love this set.

I had to look it up — Taylor is playing the old cougar, and Segal is playing the fresh meat… and… Taylor is 34 and Segal is 32. It’s the perfect storm: Hollywood hates using young guys, and hates (even more) using older women, so you end up with casting like this.

I mean, you can’t fault the Taylor casting, but they could have fixed it by using a younger guy for his role.

Oh! I just realised that Apple is doing this in the wrong aspect ratio? It’s a 1.85:1 movie, but it’s displayed in 16:9.

APPLE! WHY YOU DO THIS! I”M MISSING LIKE 15% OF THIS MOVIE!

I don’t know… I really expected to totally adore this… and… some scenes I do. But it just seems to lose all energy with annoying regularity? I might just be me. The way Nichols slathers romantic music behind some of the more sentimental scenes is also pretty cloying.

Taylor is flawless. The rest isn’t. It’s a cultural touch stone for sure…

It won all the Oscars, but not for best movie or best director. So passive aggressive of the Oscars people.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Mike Nichols. 1966. ⚃

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.