Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Oct. 15-21

Killers of the Flower Moon, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Birnam Wood, and having three headaches

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary for USUALLY for paid subscribers, but this one is free to give you a general sense for what goes on if you’ve never read it. The Sunday Dispatch details what I’m watching, reading, playing, and listening to. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or Letterboxd. Thank you for reading!

Headache week

We’ve officially entered the part of autumn where my alarm clock is my enemy. I’m mostly a morning person, but in late fall and early spring, when the daylight hours are minimal and wonky, I’m prone to hitting snooze once, twice, sometimes five or eight times to avoid being out of bed. In this sense, teaching at four in the afternoon has been good for me. In every other sense, however, it’s been bad. I was sorry to miss the mid-week post this week — it was a hell of a time, health-wise and otherwise, with three days of migraines and otherwise exhaustion. I’ve heard from a few other migraine-having friends that they’ve suffered recently too, which always makes me wonder if there’s some atmospheric/pressure thing happening. Or maybe all of our hormone cycles synced up, who knows.

Mostly the week has been about eating soups and stews. Here’s Phil’s ramen — a group effort, really — with broth and noodles from Tristan and Claire, and my chili.

There are not photos of it sadly but I did also make black currant tea ice cream, which mostly tastes like a berry-adjacent milk tea. Churned poorly but tastes great! Anyway…

The Exorcist, William Friedkin (1973)

I’d been told by a number of people that while the movie is certainly scary, it’s also basically a procedural, far more concerned with medical and religious red tape than it is relentless terror. I found the horror aspect affecting and tasteful — I was surprised the extent to which time passes over the course of the film. She is possessed by that demon for a long time! People will come back to the house and say something like, “how have the last few days been?” and it’s like, they’ve just been LEAVING Ellen Burstyn in there with her for days at a time? What are those days like…? As someone who spent a significant amount of time tied up in the world of medical bureaucracy and doctors not listening and/or doing something to make everything worse, I found this ultimately quite moving.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, John McNaughton (1986)

Obviously I love the nasty, gloomy, wet 1980s Chicago setting and I’ll never not think Michael Rooker is hot. This cultivates a miserable tone, and I’m not sure I found the central will they/won’t they all that compelling, but maybe it’s all just meant to feel inevitable and gross. Rooker plays the titular Henry, but he lives with the disgusting Otis (Tom Towles) and his sister Becky (Tracy Arnold — almost a more 80s name than “Becky”). Becky is normal, albeit a mess. Otis is perhaps more monstrous than Henry — PERHAPS. How will this roommate situation ever pan out? Well, probably — ultimately — better than most Wicker Park three-person roommate situations (I’m kidding).

Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese (2023)

Hard not to just be overwhelmingly moved by this, though I think that ferocity of feeling has obscured otherwise justified caveats. I hate when people talk about something being a spoiler or not a spoiler, but I do think people are prone to saying six things too many about a thing they’ve just seen. What I’ll contribute, which will ultimately say nothing, don’t worry, is that it was crazy to see Lily Gladstone get the Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street treatment, or even Sharon Stone in Casino, e.g. “this is simply the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen in your life.” Which I think we know, having seen her in things (one great movie, some Instagrams), is true. But it is a cinematic, visual choice to portray someone with that much adoration.

Cash Cow, Matt Barats (2023)

Harris told me the premise of this film maybe two years and I’d been anticipating it since. The end result is something perhaps a bit more muted than I expected, but this is also a movie a guy shot about himself while living in his car. Barats, who directs, plays a version of himself — an aspiring comedian and actor whose nationwide Domino’s commercial shot pre-COVID is delayed due to COVID and finds himself out on the open road, camping and wandering and growing obsessed with the history of Joseph Smith and the Mormon church. I mean, fundamentally, I would say that trying to “make it in comedy” is as delusion as “starting a church,” but I also say that as someone who more or less walked away from both organized comedy and organized religion. I haven’t actively done comedy in more than five years now, so everything I say can be taken with a grain of salt, but part of my overarching issue with a lot of the actual “funny” comedy that comes out is that it is too random and absurdist in a way that is at best tiresome and at worst ignorant. Not everyone can be Tim Robinson, and I think even Robinson’s shtick needs a dire refresh. But the not funny comedy is all too dramatic, too moralizing. Few things are funny (real) and evil (like comedy), but I do feel like Cash Cow is, in a way, both of them, exploring the futility of the pursuit of something like “alt comedy” (did we ever define this) while hinging life’s success onto something as mainstream as a pizza commercial. As a philosophical exercise and as a movie, I sort of think it ought to serve as the nail in the coffin for this era of comedy. I mean that with true praise.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, Jung Bum-shik (2018)

Every year around Halloween, Phil will put together a little list of horror movies for us to watch as a continued syllabus in my brave era. I apparently agreed to watch this at some point; Phil claims he said, “we should watch something actually scary,” and that I said, “sure.” This does sound like me, to be fair, but I think I didn’t realize what I was agreeing to. This was actually scary and I slept poorly because of it, refusing to get out of bed at 3:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom. Found footage feels scarier to me than most conceits for horror movies, because even when it’s not, like, actively scary, you are still staring into someone’s face as they have a meltdown about what they’re seeing — which is scary! And painful! I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m too much of an empath for found footage movies. You will not catch my ass watching The Blair Witch Project this year.

Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton (2023)

The competition is slim because I don’t keep up with a ton of new releases, but: probably the best book I read this whole year! Man oh man. I flew through the last two hundred pages in one sitting, riveted and bemused and horrified. I couldn’t recommend more. Like Killers of the Flower Moon (!), it distills a lot of complicated, violent themes into something that feels so expertly plotted and explained. It is not too tricky for anyone; in fact, it is wonderfully readable.

Worthy, Jada Pinkett Smith (2023)

I reviewed the book that no one can stop talking about for Vulture.

Sharp Objects, Jean-Marc Vallée, 2018

After watching Big Little Lies, I was like, “we should (re)watch Sharp Objects, which is Halloween adjacent” (I lied). In my opinion, this is one of the great dumbass HBO shows of our time — every choice perfect and deliberate for what it is. Maybe the last good Amy Adams performance before she went off the rails — don’t worry, Nightbitch will fix this (?) — and Patricia Clarkson is just off in her own corner doing Tennessee Williams. Phil’s overall impression was “[Amy Adams doing Joker voice] you wanna know how I got these scars?” I dunno, just one of the great shows about an insane woman who is going to be fucked up forever, and her sister who would want me to die.

I’m also rewatching Fleabag but I’ve done that too many times to have anything new to say about it

Sometimes it’s just one of those things you have to do, if you’re me… Moving on.

My NYFF coverage for Bright Wall/Dark Room

Massive labor of both love and actual labor every year. Consistently one of the trickier things to write up. Overall another wonderful year at the festival.

Richard Brody on the Eras Tour movie

I’m glad one person is taking this whole thing seriously. I think it’s in no way absurd to look at the art made about and around the most famous person on Earth and wonder if it’s making her look good or bad (both). Beyond that, I am behind on everything: seeing friends, answering emails, reading my other Substacks, grading, but I did make time for this because how can you not. I’ll be back next week — better read and better rested.