Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Feb 1-8

Flight Risk :( and finishing Creation Lake :/

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Office view

Back when I live and worked in Chicago, I spent about a year with my desk facing out of a seventh floor window. It felt a little like being in time out; everyone else got to look at each other across an open-floor office plan like they were at a big dinner party while I was off to the side. There was always something to look at, though — people down below waiting for the train, or office workers across the street socializing up on the roof. I don’t get to go high up very often in New York, so I’ve spent the past few times I’ve been at the office just peering out the window. Sometimes I can see the helicopters take off from the little helipad off Wall Street — an awesome reminder that I never want to be in a helicopter for as long as I live.

On Thursday I was down all day with a horrible migraine. Usually when I have a migraine these days I can catch it early, medicate, sleep for a few hours, and basically reset within 4-6 hours of starting to feel bad. No luck this week. I woke up at six with the migraine, tried to medicate and go back to sleep, but hurled up my meds and then basically kept nothing done for the next 21 hours. I slept, I showered, I dry heaved. I microwaved a hot sock and put it over my eyes until I would fall asleep probably about ten or eleven times. Not ideal. On Friday I woke up at 3:30 in the morning, having slept most of the day before, suddenly eager and rearing to go. Also not ideal. Amidst all that, however, was this:

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I do not “care” about the Super Bowl in that I don’t follow the NFL, but I am “rooting” for Bradley Cooper’s Eagles. He needs this. I also do not “care” about the commercials, but this image has, as they say, lived in my head, rent-free:

Right.

I kind of care about Kendrick Lamar, or as my mom puts it, “the young man terrorizing Drake.” I always like the half-time show because I like hearing songs I already know played loud.

Flight Risk, Mel Gibson (2025)

Watched at Regal Essex. I like some good slop as much as the next person but this pissed me off like three minutes in and never got me back. Is anything in the movie as good as the moment in the trailer where Mark Wahlberg goes, “Y’all need a pilot?” Not really. I have no beef with Mel Gibson as a director but it felt like this was made for $8 and he had no clue how to allocate those funds. Ate popcorn at 11 in the morning and got heartburn — PASS!!!

Predators, David Osit (2025)

Watched on the Sundance app. “The docs at Sundance are so good this year,” “all the best stuff at Sundance is in the documentary section” — well, I only made time for one documentary this year, and it was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen, one of the longest 95 minute movies of all time. Osit’s documentary looks back at the heyday of NBC’s To Catch a Predator and Chris Hansen and all the the various copycats and spinoffs that emerged from turning ensnaring pedophiles into popular network programming. Very, very sad. Should speak to the effectiveness of this work that the most despicable person on screen is not a “sexual predator” but a Youtuber. I don’t think the form totally works, but I was very affected nonetheless. Hard to watch and not feel like that video of Katy Perry doing crocodile tears (my tears are real, though) on American Idol going “our country has fucking failed us!!!”

Kinda Pregnant, Tyler Spindel (2025)

Watched on Netflix. I wrote about how boring it is to see Amy Schumer do the same thing over and over again. I’ll give her this: casting Will Forte as “normal love interest” is yay to people who were teenagers in 2005, and I am always happy to see You’re The Worst’s Chris Geere.

Pictures of Ghosts, Kleber Mendonça Filho (2023)

Watched on Criterion Channel. I just like him and his whole deal. This is a nice movie to make — looking back at the architecture of your own filmmaking and filmgoing experiences — and a nice movie to watch after being awake since 3:30 in the morning after a migraine. Not thinking too hard about this one. I like Kleber, generally — he’s an interesting critic to go back and read (in rough translation, but still); I liked Bacarau and ought to make time for Aquarius. This film in particular also had me wanting to watch Neighboring Sounds. I also appreciate Kleber’s Instagram where he posts 3-5 times a day and his Letterboxd where he’s always reviewing some random kids’ movie and being like “my kids liked it :).”

Look Into My Eyes, Lana Wilson (2024)

Watched on screener. Lana Wilson — the three star and a heart queen. Everything I’ve seen of hers is giving “normal movie” and doesn’t piss me off, so I can chalk that up as a yay. A particularly strange doc to watch as I have familiarity with someone featured in the film — bizarre experience, to say the least, though certainly moving. I relate to the woman who asks the pet psychic if her Boston Terrier likes and respects her — the thing about having a Boston Terrier is that you’re always wondering if they like and respect you. They are deeply skeptical and perfect dogs.

Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach (2007)

Watched on Criterion Channel.

Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner (2024)

Don’t think the ending here really paid off. Probably the best thing I’ve read about the novel. Most reviewers, including its most public critic, took issue with the main character — a dumb, vapid operator in the process of perhaps discovering a conscience. I’m not really interested in debates over “likable” women or “reliable” protagonists; are we twelve? I take much less issue with the narrator — who I think Kushner wants us to find clownish — and more so the literal plotting, which is slow and patchy. It’s funny, in abstract, that this has functionally the same structure as Beautiful World, Where Are You? (eg. “what if a book was 60% emails?”). Anyway, I wish I liked this novel more. I need to read a Tana French soon and reset my ability to enjoy fiction.

Anyway, it snowed

it snowed

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How was your week? What are you watching or reading? How do you get out of a mid-winter rut when nothing feels appealing or compelling? Who will win this season of The Traitors? What’s on the menu tonight for “The Big Game”? Will Travis Kelce propose to Taylor Swift if the Chiefs win? (No.)