amber can walk

I've have had excruciating writer's block due to depression and just general exhaustion so I'm doing an easy post where I don't have to do research and just get to state my opinions. I want to talk about some films that have made me feel viscerally ill, have made me hide my head behind a pillow and have stuck with me hours after watching them, usually for a bad reason. Last year, I wanted to do a fully comprehensive piece on the appeal of disturbing cinema but it never really came together, despite my research and effort, and I was really disappointed because I do feel I have a lot to say about what I personally find disturbing and why I often like films in spite of this.   We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) No one does quiet brutality like Lynne Ramsey and her interpretation of the novel of the same name manages to unnerve me in a different way every time I watch it. On some watches, it's the deathly fear of motherhood or even worse, failing at said task and being...

Talking about the pandemic can be tiring. Watching movies where the pandemic is happening, or has happened can be exhausting. Much like Trump, it feels as though all that could be said has been said and that maybe we should just stop talking about it because it's a massive downer and no longer a problem. I've never been good at processing things on time. It always feels like I'm slightly behind emotionally which is a roundabout way of saying that I don't think I'm over that one thing that happened in March 2020. The world stopped and I was stuck in permanent state of panic for about a year. And then it ended (allegedly). Everyone around me stopped being cautious which made me feel insane. Where I was still keeping my distance from people and feeling increasingly isolated, many people had already returned to what they were doing before. I felt very alone and once again, unable to process what had happened. It feels incorrect to call it traumatic, not just because the...

I did not like Blonde (2022).  When the film was being announced and more and more critics I respected were talking about how bad it was, I really tried to have a measured response to it. I did my best to not participate in the discourse surrounding the film because I really don't have the space in my brain for hating films I haven't even watched. I scrolled past. I ignored. I gave a cursory glance at those praising Marilyn Monroe as an actor, and moved on. I knew I was going to watch it at some point but it wasn't going to be when everyone was talking about it with this much animosity. More and more, outrage sells. We've probably all had a celebrity we once respected saying or doing something outrageous (code for transphobic or racist), and I'm just cynical enough to believe that at least some of them enjoy the attention and the money that comes from it. Bad publicity is better than no publicity in the internet age and thus the hate-watch is solidified in our cult...

The population of Haida Gwaii were some of the first people to watch  Edge of the Knife (2018), a horror film set in the 19th century recounting the tale of a man changing into Gaagiixiid (a wildman figure common throughout their culture's folklore) after committing an accidental act of violence. This would be the first feature film to use only Haida as dialogue, a language with only 24 native speakers . Many of the actors in the film were not fluent themselves and had to attend a two week language boot camp where elders were invited to teach Haida to younger generations. Not only was this film a milestone in its own right, the production and distribution of the film became a way to prevent the language from being forgotten. As Adeana Young, one of the stars of the film, stated:  "Not long after the language is gone, the culture is gone [which] is scary, really scary." In her second documentary feature, Violet Du Feng, along with co-director Qing Zhao, present a sto...