Disney and Pixar movies (as well as Disney Pixar movies, now) are universally beloved, and for good reason. Each one is thoughtful, generally well animated and accompanied by a soundtrack or score instantly recognized (if not committed to memory) by most Americans. These films get so much love and attention that I want to take this blog post to talk about and appreciate some of my favorite animated children’s movies that fall outside of the Disney Pixar realm.Not obscure by any means, but underrated in my opinion is the British series of claymation shorts and features Wallace and Gromit. Following the spacey, often stupid inventor Wallace and his mute but shrewd dog Gromit, the shorts always involve some kind of absurd hooliganism that the two must find their way out of. Evil penguins, were-rabbits and capitalist bulldogs are three of my favorite villains/obstacles the two encounter. Most often, Gromit must draw oblivious Wallace’s attention to some grave danger that they are both facing. It’s full of slapstick gags and silly jokes but manages to never feel cheap– just heartfelt and funny.Last month I watched for the first time a movie called Kubo and the Two Strings. A classic hero’s journey taking place in feudal Japan, Kubo is an origami-inspired stop motion masterpiece. It’s a thoughtful tale of grief and family and choosing your destiny, and while some aspects feel predictable it is never uninteresting, and surprises you where it is most important. Led by a voice cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Matthew McConaughey, George Takei and Charlize Theron, the film has garnered near universal acclaim and two academy award nominations. You can see a trailer here, and if you’re interested in special effects and stop motion I highly recommend watching this behind the scenes video about how the puppets in the film work.Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox is another visually stunning example of stop action. Based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name, Fantastic Mr. Fox tells the story of a family of foxes at war with three evil farmers that live nearby. The film is suitable for children but still handles complex themes. In classic Wes Anderson fashion the script is full of dry laugh out loud humor punctuated by very emotionally honest, melancholic beats. If you like this example of Anderson’s work, be sure to keep an eye out of Isle of Dogs, his second stop motion picture that should be arriving in the next year or so.

Because I’m heavily interested in interpersonal relationships and interactions, it’s characters that make or break a movie for me. No matter how thoughtful or stunning the visuals, or how tight the dialogue, I generally don’t enjoy movies if the characters are lackluster. This doesn’t mean I have to like the characters per say– just that they need to feel real and complex. Here are two (very different) characters that make their respective movies worth watching.

Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler is the story of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a fearless, sociopathic entrepreneur who breaks into the Los Angeles crime journalism industry. Though he is friendly to the people around him, there is an extreme coldness to all of his interactions. He is constantly measuring what he can get from other people and what he must give to get it. It’s clear early on that he has no feelings for anyone, and no capacity for empathy. Nothing about his job (which consists of him driving around at night, listening to radio scanners and racing to crime scenes for footage of dead bodies, house fires or deadly car crashes) fazes him. He is obsessed with order and success: he lies, sabotages, and abuses his employees to get ahead. As the movie goes on, he crosses more and more moral boundaries until his sociopathic nature is fully exposed. It’s shocking and absolutely riveting to watch. To me, it’s his formality that is the funniest (and also most disturbing) aspect of his personality. He takes himself and his business incredibly seriously despite its seedy and somewhat illegitimate nature: this scene is one of my favorites, and does a great job exemplifying his personality.

Frances Halladay in Frances Ha

Stories about broke white 20-somethings living in New York are so profuse that generally the genre feels pretty tired to me. Frances Ha is the exception, and I think this is because the titular character is such a thoughtfully constructed individual. She longs to be a professional dancer, but struggles to recognize that her aspirations don’t line up with her abilities, no matter how hard she works. She blinked and suddenly everyone around her is grown up– moving in with their partners, having credit cards, buying art, paying their rent easily– but she doesn’t want/isn’t ready to make that transition. She wants to live with her best friend and play games and pursuing her fantasy career. These traits really aren’t remarkably different from those of the other lost 20-somethings that populate TV and film, but Greta Gerwig really brings her to life as a multidimensional, achingly relatable character. Because of her performance, watching Frances grow throughout the movie is extremely cathartic and touching.  

 

Ever since I discovered YouTube as a kid, I’ve been obsessed with watching movie trailers. I’d lose hours of the day clicking on trailer after trailer, amazed by the sheer amount and variety that existed. There was something so exciting to me about watching a trailer for an upcoming movie: the fact that everything beyond the trailer is a mystery, and that it was impossible to know more until the movie was actually released. The funny part is that once the movies were actually released, 60% of the time I lost interest and didn’t even bother seeing the movie. Most of the excitement, I think, laid in the unknowable.

Since I started getting more into movies, my interest in trailers has maintained its intensity, but my knowledge of upcoming movies has expanded quite a bit. Now I pay pretty close attention to the festival circuits, getting excited for movies even before the trailer drops just based on the team working on it or the buzz from Sundance and Cannes and other festivals. This extra knowledge narrows down the list of movies that I’m really hyped for, so it’s much easier for me to actually follow through and watch the movies once they’re available to me. Here are some of the movies I’ve been thinking about for the last couple months that I’m extremely excited to get my hands on.

Landline actually came out this summer, but on limited release, so I still haven’t gotten a chance to see it. This is director Gillian Robespierre and actress Jenny Slate’s second project together– the first, Obvious Child is one of my favorite comedies/movies of all time. I feel confident that this collaboration will be just as sweet and thoughtful and funny and human as their last.

Another movie I’m amped to see is Sean Baker’s feature The Florida Project. Baker’s previous films include Starlet and Tangerine— the latter infamously shot on an iPhone and of great critical acclaim. His films take such a humanist, non-judgemental approach to their subjects in the most refreshing way, and each leave me feeling warm and happy. The Florida Project follows a poor child living with her young mother in a motel in the area surrounding Disney World. I love stories about childhood and the worlds that children create for themselves. If it’s half as good as critics say, it shouldn’t be missed.If I try to express how excited I am for this movie it’s just going to end in embarrassment, so I’m gonna keep it low-key. Based on a book of the same title, Call Me By Your Name is the story of a 17 year-old boy Elio who falls in love with his father’s grad student Oliver who is spending the summer with his family in Italy. The trailer is really one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. I’m obsessed with the visuals and the music (written by musician Sufjan Stevens), both of which evoke so well the nostalgia and magic of summertime. It has received near universal acclaim and is already being hailed as a classic. It’s going to limited release at the end of November, so hopefully I’ll be able to sneak away from my family’s Thanksgiving celebration in Brooklyn and make it to a showing.

The news is… really scary. Not that it’s ever been a great source of stress relief, but in the last year the news has become a wellspring of anxiety in my life. Every week (or hour, more like) brings to light some new disaster that seems more insurmountable than the one before. Climate change, imminent nuclear war, refugee and immigration crises, mass shootings, police brutality– there is no shortage of catastrophes that leave me feeling helpless and scared for the future. I’m certainly not alone in this. More than usual, this anxiety has been clouding my mind this week. It didn’t help that in my human geography class my professor lectured about demography within the context of the year 2050. I’ll spare you the details, but things look pretty bleak. Maybe it’s dramatic, but it’s hard not to feel like we’re very quickly approaching some kind of horrible dystopian future you’d read about in a book. Or watch in a movie.

In kind of a masochistic move, I decided to re-watch a movie that centers around the dystopian dread I’ve been feeling lately. Probably the greatest and most underrated sci-fi movie of the century, Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men takes place in Great Britain, year 2027. A fertility crisis points to the end of the human race– for the past 18 years, no children have been conceived. The world is in chaos, and Great Britain has devolved into a cruel dictatorship, currently fighting a rebellion.   In a frighteningly spot-on prediction by the author of the source material, the country has closed its borders and is undergoing an extreme refugee crisis fueled by xenophobia and jingoism. The world Cuaron creates is alarmingly real– dark and dirty and violent, a far cry from the shiny, high tech future we are used to seeing on screen. With beautiful handheld long takes (this one is amazing but spoiler heavy) and a naturalistic approach to lighting and blocking, the movie emulates documentary style film making. I cannot recommend it enough.

There’s a moment towards the beginning of the film when a radio DJ announces “And now one for all the nostalgics out there. A blast from the past all the way back from 2003, that beautiful time when people refused to accept that the future was just around the corner.” To me, that line is like the thesis statement of the movie. It also sums up my news-based fear/dread/anxiety pretty well. Powerful people are making decisions like the future isn’t coming. We are ignoring what scientists are telling us about our climate, population, and natural resources, digging ourselves into a deep deep hole that will take lifetimes to escape from. We have to understand and really believe that the future is now. Call your elected officials. Vote at every election (November 6 is coming!) Hold your government accountable. As long as babies are still being born it’s worth trying to fix this mess.

Growing up in any suburb, it gets boring– eventually you have to dig a little bit to find things to do that make life a little more interesting. Having spent a solid adolescence here digging for things to do, I sometimes feel like a pocket tourist guide for State College, with a little index of all of my town’s hidden gems. Delicious but overlooked restaurants, hikes besides Mt. Nittany, cool events offered by the library. I know what downtown festivals to avoid and which ones are worth catching, where to get free yoga classes and which parks are the best.

But since I’m a movie nut, my most prized gem of State College is the State Theatre’s Monday Movie Series. They show all kinds of films– a nice mix of indies from the last couple years and classics from decades ago. The best thing about their selection is that they’re all movies I otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to see on a big screen. I don’t mind watching movies on my laptop, or my family’s TV– it gets the job done, and I can enjoy a good movie no matter how I watch it– but there is something so exceptional and magical about watching a movie in a theater. And while State College has some great theaters, they’re expensive, and often leave something to be desired in terms of selection.

This movie series at the State Theatre is like a perfect antidote to the corporate, impersonal vibe of our bigger theaters. It’s small, located right downtown, and is actually a non-profit owned by the community. The fact that they typically only show one movie a week (and a unique one, at that) turns the viewing into much more of an event– it feels special to be there. Not very many people know (or care?) about the movie nights either, so the crowd is always relatively small. In these crowds, I always feel a strong sense of community. First, there is the feeling of closeness you get from experiencing a movie together– feeling the same emotions, laughing together and sometimes crying too. What I like most about it though, is how it feels like we’re all in on this secret of the treasure that is the Monday Movie Series– that we’ve all found and decided to support this special resource in our community.

I’ve been semi-regularly attending movies at the State Theatre for 2 or 3 years now, and I feel so lucky to have seen so many great films on the big screen. Movies like Ex Machina, Carol, Singing in the Rain, Amelie, Manchester by the Sea, and Mustang. Just this last Monday, I saw 20th Century Women, a movie from last year from director Mike Mills, which was such a treat. The lineup for the rest of the Fall looks great too, and I’ll be there every Monday I can be. If you’re interested, movies show at 7:30 and are just $4 with your Penn State ID. Here’s a list of upcoming movies I’m excited to see on the big screen (linked to their trailers):

10/9 The Salesman

10/16 Frances Ha (one of my favorite movies ever!)

11/6 Nocturnal Animals

11/20 The Sound of Music

12/11 Sing Street

You can find their full film program here.

Last week, I gushed about why I love soundtrack so much; this week I want to talk about some of my favorite examples of it. To narrow it down, I restricted myself to movies made after 2000, and (with one exception) used examples of non-diegetic music– music that the audience can recognize as being played outside of the story, not within it.

My first choice is one I actually talked about last week– the final scene in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 Lost in Translation.

This scene creates a really nice contrast with the opening of the movie: a montage of Bill Murray’s character Bob arriving in Tokyo, late at night. The neon signs and are hectic and overwhelming and in the dark you feel lost– it’s hard to get a bearing on what the city actually looks like. Now, at the end, Bob’s (and Charlotte’s) internal conflict has been solved and everything seems clear now: the city in the early evening light appears much more human and less intimidating. Jesus and the Mary Chain’s track “Just Like Honey” fleshes out the feelings in this scene perfectly. The lazy, dreamlike electric guitar is soothes the audience, but isn’t stuck in time. The bass drum creates forward motion; Bob and Charlotte are moving into the future, and into better versions of themselves.

The Royal Tenenbaums, “These Days”

Along with Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson is probably one of the modern directors most praised for their consistently amazing use of soundtrack. It was difficult to pick a favorite moment from all of his films, but I landed on a short but memorable scene from his third feature, The Royal Tenenbaums, set to Nico’s cover of “These Days.” This song, so filled with warmth and sadness and nostalgia is a perfect fit for the scene: a slow motion reunion of two characters with a history unknown to the audience. Both actors wear a poker-face, not giving any details about what the other could mean to them, but Nico’s crooning tells us all we need to know about the deep affection and sadness between these two.

Ex Machina, “Get Down Saturday Night”

Though diegetic, this soundtrack moment is too good for me to exclude. Up until this point, the film has been scored by quiet, ambient music designed to blend into the background but build tension at the same time. By the time this clip plays, Caleb and the audience have almost completely lost trust in his employer, Nathan, and the situation has begun to feel dangerous. Then out comes this incongruous, overwhelming dance scene set to Oliver Cheatham’s upbeat disco tune “Get Down Saturday Night.” This scene turns all expectation for the movie on its head. No one watching this film expects the sinister tech mogul to execute (amazingly, by the way) a disco routine with his maid. Like Caleb, the audience is left feeling shocked and almost horrified– along with a million other things. Every time I watch it, my mind scatters trying to figure out which way to feel: scared, uncomfortable, confused, nervous, amused? This overwhelming emotional dissonance snaps the viewer to attention. With this soundtrack selection, Garland doesn’t tell the audience how to feel: he challenges them to decide.

Soundtrack is one of my favorite tools of cinema. The first CD’s I ever owned for myself were soundtracks to movies I loved– sweet and silly ones like The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, and Ella Enchanted. I played those CD’s in my room on repeat, watching the movies in my head just by listening to the music. Once associated with a scene in a movie, the songs became the story to me. It’s likely that I could go ten years without seeing those movies and still be able to tell you what happens on screen as each song plays.

I think the fact that movie soundtracks were my first foray into independent music-listening has heavily influenced the way I interact with music now. Music became an accessory to my life not because I had a passion for music itself, but because of its role in movies and storytelling. Listening to a good song on the bus that matched with my mood could make a tedious day of middle school suddenly seem like something worth watching in a movie. A walk to the grocery store with the right tune could feel like the start of a quest. A sugary pop song transformed an afternoon of shopping into a fantasy makeover montage. My relationships with my friends were never dramatic, but with the right angsty song (this one was popular with my sixth-grade self) I could enter a world where I felt alone and misunderstood and I would revel in those (fake?) emotions just for the sake of feeling like a character on screen.

These listening habits carried over through high school and into present day. (I’d like to think they now manifest themselves in a much cooler, less self-obsessed way, but the fact that I’m writing this is a clue I would be wrong.) As I started paying closer attention to movies and the music they use, these fantasy soundtrack worlds I enter have become more specific. Listening to songs, all I care about is where they would belong in an imaginary movie. My friends and I will show each other songs and say specific things like “this song is walking down the street after you dump your boyfriend” or “this song is an amusement park montage” or “this song is eating turkey subs with the windows down on a road trip.”

I project a lot less now (no more pretend angst) and instead use the music of my favorite movie moments process the actual happenings in my life. Now I look for understanding and guidance by placing myself within the world of the movie, within a specific moment. Though the literal context of a scene will rarely mirror my situation, it’s not difficult to find emotional resonance and feel connected.

For instance, one of my favorite movie moments is this scene from Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. (Spoiler alert?) Though I’ve never had a profound, three-day friendship with a stranger in a foreign city, I know what it’s like feel grateful for something that was temporary, to be sad and happy at the same time, and to believe that something is going to be okay. And those are the moments that I listen to Just Like Honey.

Putting myself in these movie moments with my favorite characters and favorite stories is therapeutic. It helps me to process the way I’m feeling. It makes me feel known and grounded.

In conception, this blog post was going to be a list reflecting on some of my favorite soundtrack moments of this century. I got a little carried away with my introduction, so the actual list is going to have to wait for next time. Stay tuned y’all.