#saloum

Late but here! I've been tired as fuck so apologies but it probably will happen again. (*I came back to this after I finished writing everything I will never miss another media Monday blog post ever again if it's the one thing keeping me from having to write a whole 7k words that are meant to not only voice my opinion on something but also be coherent.) Anyway, two weeks worth of media to chat about and I have a lot to say about some of them so get cozy.

Sinners

Starting out with the one I have the most to say about. I'm sorry if this is absolute chaos because when I have a lot to say, I sort of lose track of myself and it becomes a bit incoherent but I am doing my best ... Alright, here we go. So, Sinners centers around three characters — Sammie, the son of a preacher who loves to play the blues, and his uncles, Smoke and Stack, who have just returned to town after some time away in Chicago to make them some money and are now looking to open up their own juke joint with those funds. I love how this movie starts. The actual opening scene is fine and all that. It works well to set the tone of the story, to warn us to strap in to acquire the missing pieces. But what I really mean by this is that I specifically love following these characters as they pull in more and more people to get involved with operations for Club Juke. I loved meeting Grace, Bo, Annie, Cornbread, Delta Slim, Pearline — all the chess pieces for the board. Learning about them, about their histories together, delving deeper into the brothers and their ambitions and what and who they hold dear. One of the standout scenes in this for me will forever be when Delta Slim is recounting the lynching of an old friend while riding in the car with Stack and Sammie. Delroy Lindo's performance is absolutely heart-wrenching as he bursts into song, a way to cope with the inescapable sorrow deep inside. Delta Slim was absolutely my favorite of all the characters, which sort of sours the later half for me — but we'll get to that in a bit. (Stack is a very close second, though.)

While Stack and Sammie do their work, Smoke pays a visit to his ex-wife, Annie. We learn that they lost a child and that Annie practices Hoodoo. They also gleefully tossed their name in the ring for 2025s Skip The Foreplay award when their affection for one another rekindles and they have some very, in my opinion, sexless sex. I deeply care about their relationship outside of that but I just find 90% of movie sex scenes extremely appalling most of the time for all of what happens here once they start smooching. At least it was refreshing to see a larger woman on-screen being actively desirable. Wunmi Mosaku is absolutely gorgeous and brings such a delightful balance of levity and humor to Annie.

So here we have our general line-up — Smoke and Stack as the owners, Annie running the kitchen, Sammi and Delta Slim as performers featuring Pearline, who is a married young woman who has a spectacular voice who is invited by a very smitten Sammie, Bo and Grace are shopkeepers that are brought on as suppliers for the grand opening, a fella named Cornbread who is just honestly kind of here to be a funny guy is the bouncer- Oh, and Mary. Mary is Stack's ex-girlfriend. She is white-passing and I think it's important to bring up for reasons in a bit. I think this more or less covers most of my very basic thoughts about the main protagonists, at least, so hopping over to the story.

The first third of the movie covers them all preparing for this event. The twins come into town, pick Sammie up and then split-up to coordinate the rest of the festivities. We meet most of our cast during this, get well-acquainted with their complicated, lengthy and over-lapping relationships. I love it so much. It's great.

The second third of the movie covers the opening event itself. As the sun sets, everyone puts on their fancy clothes and heads over to Club Juke for a fun night out. Nearby, we are set-up for the horror premise of the movie. A vampire, by the name of Remmick, finds shelter and safety from Native Vampire Hunters with a KKKouple he then turns and recruits to his noble cause — Liberalism.

It was insane to see Jack O'Connell again after all these years. I didn't even recognize him at first, though something about him was definitely familiar. Anyway, Remmick. He was so fun. I think he was just built to play the bad guy, honestly. An absolute delight. It was interesting how much people who had seen the movie were convinced the vampires represented right-wing conservatism only to watch the movie for myself and realize with amusement that they were just liberals. Which says volumes, I feel. The details where vampires use the faces of those you love and feel community with in order to make you feel complacent or comfortable enough to lower your guard. I felt my heart sink when turned-Mary weaponized Annie's earlier "We're family" when defending her earlier. Clever and devastating. I wish so deeply it stayed that way.

I do have to say the movie had me pondering vampire rules so much afterwards to the point where I was definitely being a nuisance about it. Like, if you need to be invited into a building in order to enter it, what if you build an addition to the building over say, a window, and around yourselves — would you then be permitted into the rest of the building? I can not help being a nuisance and I know it's not that serious nor does it matter, but this kind of stuff is very fascinating to me. That being said, IDK why they didn't at least try to coat the bullets with some of the pickled garlic juice and shoot the vampire with it. Would've been worth a shot, I think. And I also don't know why everyone had to eat a whole clove of garlic to prove that they hadn't yet been bitten. They witnessed with Stack that just touching the juice would've burned them, so they could've just stuck their hands in the juice to prove they were fine. That tension with threatening Pearline because she finds garlic disgusting to eat was unnecessary. 

Before I get to the finale, I just need to talk about how absolutely phenomenal the score for this movie is. I love the music in it so much. Every song hits different and it hits good. It brings me so much joy to read about how much of a collaborative effort it was and how much effort lead composer Ludwig Göransson. It really genuinely makes me so frustrated how much people miss just how much this movie is about how music has been a coping mechanism for humanity since we could fucking hum. I'm NGL, I was bawling during I Lied To You. It is not only a beautifully composed song, but the crossover of past, present and future and of the cultural exchange that is just co-existing. It really struck such a deep chord in me, and the fact that Remmick wants, more than anything, to utilize that extremely human feeling to build his community of death — something desperate and eternally unhealed and empty and angry and unyielding, beneath that smiling friendly disposition, that haunting voice. Many people have pointed this out so I'm just a voice in the crowd here but I love how much of an overlap there is with how mythological sirens utilize their voices to lure people to their doom. I don't know what else to say and the thing is that there is so much to say but I don't even know how to put the words to the feelings. Like, I genuinely can't remember the last time I've been this affected by the soundtrack of a movie. Miles Caton has one of the most amazing voices of this generation.

Just a couple more things in bullet point form because this is getting so long — 

I feel so stupid because I had no idea both Smoke and Stack were played by Michael B. Jordan. I was like, whoa they found a guy that looks just like him that's crazy ... He fuckin' delivered with these two. Played them both as total individuals, their own quirks, their own depth. At no point did it feel gimmicky like these "actors plays twins" situations tends to feel. It was phenomenally done.

I loved the special effects and lighting in this movie. It's hard to do the glowing vampire eyes without looking over-the-top cheesy but this movie knocks it out of the park. Their glow looks almost like their eyes are simply catching the light, an effect that makes you sort of second-guess what you saw, makes you shrug it off. The shadows that sort of cast over their faces lend so much to their untrustworthy disposition, using the night almost as a cloak to mask their true intentions. It's just *chef's kiss*.

I almost burst my bladder during this movie because I didn't want to miss a second. I ended up giving up and sprinting to the bathroom during the credits because I didn't want to miss the two post-credits scenes. Which, for the record, I am extremely against. As someone who worked at a movie theater, there is nothing more annoying than having to stand around and wait for a theater to clear before being able to start cleaning it and having a scene at the very end of the credits in addition to the middle-credits gives workers less time to clear theaters for the next showings. I'm sure some theaters take this into according with scheduling but my old one did NOT give a fuck.

Apparently Ro was tricked into thinking that this movie was a "Devil Went Down To Georgia" type movie by someone on the internet and spent the entire thing waiting for a music duel to happen.

The trailers for this movie was NOT GOOD! I saw a couple and I was really excited about it but so many of them give away who dies or gets turned into a vampire so it kind of just ... makes it a bit of a wet fart. Stack, specifically, I knew from the jump would turn into a vampire because some of the trailers have the "That's not your brother" scene. Maybe they thought we wouldn't know which of the brothers would get turned because they're twins but you can see their outfits and they both have very distinct ways of acting and speaking so anyone with a braincell would be able to tell it was Stack.

For a while, I grimaced a bit about the choice to make Remmick Irish because it felt a bit tone-deaf to ignore the experience of the Irish not just in their states but in Ireland but then I realized that the issue I took was with outside perspectives and the willful blindness when it came to Remmick and his relationship to the movie's themes about culture, loss and music. About viewing him entirely as an outsider and not someone who'd had everything taken from him, who in his search for connection — loses everything that made him human, everything that kept him connected in the first place.

The Native characters in this movie ... were very much just ... caricatures. They were in it for like two minutes and were nothing but like. A stereotype. Big bummer.

On to the third ... third of the movie. I feel like things just sort of unraveled when Grace finally let the vampires in. Everyone kept insisting that they just needed to make it until dawn but then what? Everyone has lives here, families, businesses, etc. The sun would come down again and what would protect them then? IDK, I'm not entirely opposed to just going to town on those MFers but I think they should've maybe ... strategized this a bit more. Anyway, the confrontation itself isn't an issue with me, just more about how it all plays out. So let's try to tackle this in a way where I make sense.

OKAY. My main complaint, and I actually went back and pulled up a bootleg of this movie to confirm this because I was second-guessing myself, is the fact that there are people inside the barn with our protagonists that are never named or acknowledged at all until the big battle once the vampires are let in by Grace. It is so insane to think about. I swear, go back and rewatch that scene closely. Like four random guys get attacked by the vampires and I'm just like ... who the fuck are these people? Where have they been the entire time? Why were they not made to eat the garlic clove but Pearline was threatened if she didn't eat one? I think they realized a bit too late that it didn't make sense to have so few people on the protagonists side and just threw in some random guys but it completely distracted me from the intensity of the moment because it made me be very confused about what the hell was going on and who actually was dying, how and when.

I haven't seen anyone else bring this up because I want to but I think it's very strange that literally the only woman that survived this movie was the white-passing one. As a heavily mixed white-passing person (as much as I'm willing to elaborate on public mediums lol), I was really happy to see a movie this big talk about feeling like you don't ever really belong when you don't look a certain type of way and how this feeling obviously isn't exclusive to being white-passing and how there is communion in that sentiment of not belonging anywhere else other than with each other. But I'm not going to sit here and turn a blind eye to the fact that both the dark skinned lead black women in this movie die. I could understand, narratively, why Annie did (to an extent but discussing unwieldy narrative uses of misogynoir and the historical refrigeration of women to fuel man-pain could be a whole ass separate post). But killing Pearline was stupid to me. Like many of the deaths in this end stretch, it's unceremonious and not given much attention or respect, in my opinion. I guess I understand that maybe the point was just kind of for Sammie to be the only survivor but ... I dunno. I think it would've been more meaningful for a vampire Pearline to reunite with Sammie decades later. We could've still gotten vampires Stack and Mary if hearts were set on that but ... I dunno. It didn't really hit for me.

I think that more or less covers my general sentiments for the movie. I could honestly just talk about it endlessly, I think so I need to stop myself. I loved Sinners a lot. I think it did a phenomenal job. I was hooked from start to finish and despite the criticisms I have about it, I think it did its story, its history, its cast, everything — justice. An ode to horror.

I have to say, I will never forgive Coogler for not using this as an opportunity to set up a franchise featuring Sammie as a vampire hunter that uses his music to lure vampires in and kill them. And we should've also gotten an actual Devil Went Down To Georgia moment.

Shn!p

Shn!p is a cute little puzzle game that reminded me of a mobile game I used to be obsessed with called Dots. Its gameplay is different but has a similar sort of vibe — appearance, some aspects of gameplay, etc. I like the sound effects a lot in the game, it made toying with it all the more enjoyable. There's not all that much to say about it, really. It's pretty to the point, something to pick at when you just kind of have some time to kill. Fun and short.

The Trolley

A game where you play as a man hired to take apart a small town's trolley. It's a game that wishes it had a lot to say, but doesn't really. It's part-walking simulator part ... visual novel, maybe? I don't know but the gameplay left a lot to be desired. As the character, you reminisce riding on the trolley, think about the impact getting rid of it will have on the community, suspect that there might be suspicious reasons behind the removal of the system. You can choose your dialogue options which leads to different forms of speculation but they all sort of fall a bit flat. They don't really ever have anything introspective to say.

There's a lot of asset reuse in the game, which is fine when you're not walking past the same drugstore with the same drugstore sign outside it twenty times. Would it have been too much work to change the name of the store? Or even just be rid of it entirely. It just extremely stood out as the only building with any sort of writing on it. Everything is unpolished as well, which I'm not necessarily opposed to but it kind of makes you wonder how much actual effort was put into the game. One part I did really like visually was when you are riding the trolley up the incline and you can see the city skyline. It's not some breathtaking sight or anything, but that's okay. It balances well the tone of the game and the wary future of the town it is set in.

The bland appearance of the game makes it a bit difficult to navigate once you receive your tasks for the day. It'll tell you to go to the office to do something but there will be three buildings that all look like offices. So most of the game time, you spend wandering around a bit aimlessly until you stumble onto where you were meant to go next.

A good little starter project with potential to be something deeper, something more thoughtful.

Mind Game

Trigger warning — I will be talking about a scene in this movie depicting a sexual assault in no explicit detail.

Man. I'm always like ... I love art. But then you go and watch something like Mindgame and go ... MAN, I LOVE ART!! I finished it and felt so full of life and inspiration and energy. Invigorating. The movie follows Nishi, who's an aspiring mangaka, as he dies trying to protect his childhood crush Myono from yakuza who are there to beat up Myono's dad for stealing one of their girlfriends. Also there, is Yan, Myono's sister and co-owner of the restaurant this all goes down in. After dying from getting shot in the butt, Nishi impresses what I can only describe as the most outstanding depiction of God in any piece of media ever with his outright refusal to die. He is given a second chance as he outruns God, who is charmed by his determination and also is late for a date anyway. Nishi returns to the plane of the living with the promise that he will live life with no regrets. He comes back to just moments before his death and manages to make away with both Myono and Yan, stealing the yakuza's car and taking off into the night. In the chaos of the pursuit, they are eaten by a whale. Yeah, I know. You're just gonna have to watch it. It rules.

While in this whale, they cross paths with Old Man Yaoi. He's actually not called this but he's called Old Man by the others and I can't not call anyone who is an old man Old Man Yaoi so it is what it is. As it turns out, he's been living in the whale for years now and has essentially established a life in there. The story follows this little group through coming to terms with their current fate and their eventual attempt to escape the whale. Which is great. It goes on forever but it feels like you are being sucked into an airplane turbine the entire time.

I don't know how to put into words how much this movie rules and I wish people liked it more. I think it's stupid whenever people use stupid thoughtless arguments to discredit art, especially when it's just to feed their own superiority complex. The number of times I read that this movie was bad because Myono had big boobs or because there was an attempted sexual assault on her was unbelievable. I won't bore you with my arguments about this again, because I've talked about what I think about this kind of stuff, especially when it comes to narratives about sexual assault, in the past — specifically in my Paprika and Crank reviews. But I will say, the thing that irritates me about people pointing out Myono's breasts in specific is that most everyone is naked or in their underwear in this movie for a while. We see Nishi's wiener so much, but it's only misogyny if we see boobs — I guess. Because boobs are inherently sexual. Of course. That makes sense. (No it doesn't, this is a stupid thing to think.) It just feels very much like big boobed women can't exist in things because their existence alone is an affront to women everywhere.

I'm not acting like the movie isn't a pervert movie. It's a movie by and for perverts, through and through. But like, whatever? I just think that when you completely center your opinion and make your every interaction with art be based entirely on whether or not it fits your criteria of "problematic", you are an extremely boring person with no understanding whatsoever of art and a lack of ability to process nuance. FWIW, this isn't me saying you can't critique art (fucking obviously, that is what I'm doing in these reviews lol) but there is a huge difference between entirely writing off a piece of media because there was a boob in it and engaging with why the boob was there in the first place, what purpose or meaning it carries, what it means to the characters and what it means to the creator and what it means to the audience.

Anyway, this movie has some phenomenal sequences of animation. It's genuinely hard to wrap your mind around some of it. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's so trippy and experimental and janky and crazy and refreshing and it's everything I love about art. You can really tell that everyone that worked on it was having a blast. The characters are all freaks and weirdos and so fun and full of life. It also has one of the most beautiful sex scenes in any piece of media ever. I don't even know what else to say. What can I say? Just go watch this fucking movie right now!

Interactive Portraits: Trans People In Japan

This was such a fun game in theory. It has a lot of issues when in practice, though. The crux of it is that the creator, Zoyander Street, had multiple conversations with trans people in Japan and then logged them into a game so that it could feel almost as if you were the one interviewing them. The responses are enlightening, albeit a bit odd at times. The problem lies majorly with the format. Sometimes the game bugs out and questions take you to the wrong responses, sometimes you get stuck in a loop of asking the same questions and getting the same answers. Something that bothered me is that every time you interview someone, they have something they say as a greeting. Most of the time, you don't have time to read all of it before it goes away. I don't know why we can't dismiss that ourselves by pressing Z like the rest of the dialogue?

The game is visually very fun! I love all the designs people got to represent them. I wish we could know more about how the project itself worked. Did they get to pick the little creature that represents them? Some of them have a lot of overlap in design which I thought was kind of lame. Some people's interviews enter this like, second stage where you get to dig into their thoughts a little deeper. It's a bit more interactive and fun and I'm not sure if it's meant to happen with everyone but it only happened with two interviewees with me. Sometimes the dialogue also feels a bit disjointed. Like there's stuff missing between the questions/answers that got cut out.

I do not like the sound in this game. There's no music or anything and there are no volume settings. I ended up just muting it in general at one point. It's an issue specifically with the noise that places when those being interviewed are giving their responses. It's droning and repetitive and annoying.

It was fun that there seemed to be a diverse range in people interviewed for this. All with different experiences. It was enlightening and sweet. The game is described as inspired by the visual novel genre and games like Tamagotchi. I didn't entirely see the Tamagotchi aspect. It would've been fun to maybe have them each pick an item they really like and have us drag it over to them and it unlocking dialogue they have about the thing they like. IDK, maybe leaning to that might feel gross in that it might frame trans people as pets or something because Tamagotchi's are virtual pets? But I just didn't really see or understand the Tamagotchi aspect at all.

Anyway, this is all to say that this game is a very pleasant and eye-opening experience when muted. It doesn't take very long to read through it all if you can get it to not bug out on you. Worth a look-over, in my opinion.

Saloum

Trigger warning — I will be talking about a scene in this movie which implies the sexual assault of a child in no explicit detail.

Saloum follows a group of mercenaries made up of Chaka, Rafa and Minuit, escaping Bissau to Dakar after rescuing a Mexican cartel leader they might've been hired to rescue. I'm honestly not entirely sure, tbh — which leads me to one of my complaints about the movie. But that'll be for the bullet points. During their escape via plane, they come to realize that their fuel tank had been sabotaged which lead them to have to land sooner and seek refuge at a conservationist camp in order to lie low and figure out their next moves. While their, hidden truths are very suddenly unveiled — which turn the action genre over on its head and spirals the movie into a full-on fantasy horror.

The big twist (or at least one of them) is that Chaka had been the one to sabotage the plane's fuel tank in order to get them to land the plane near the camp because he had a score to settle with Omar, the man who runs the camp. My question is, what if they ended having to switch plans and go in another direction? How was he able to calculate exactly how closely they would land to the camp? I know they end up having to walk a bunch and then even go the rest of the way on boats, but what if it ended up lasting them like days longer — to the point where it'd be senseless to go back the other way? I just think that it was an odd way to go about this. Could've had him listening in on a radio, intercepting frequencies, and lying about there being an attempt at a surprise attack up ahead which gets them to give up an aerial escape entirely? IDK, it was just a strange choice that worked out a bit too well for him.

There are other people staying in the camp. Two of them are a couple named Sephora and Youce. I don't know why they're in this movie at all. Their characters contribute nothing whatsoever to the storyline outside of making them expendables when the Horrors are unlocked later.

There is also a woman named Awa. She is woman who is deaf-mute and is so good at lip reading she doesn't even need to be looking at you to read your lips. I'm not gonna rib them too hard about this. It's not an extremely huge deal but it was funny. And admittedly despite the minor flubs there, it was very cool to see so three different languages utilized in this movie. An amazing combination of French, Wolof and Sign Language. I was very curious about what exact regional Sign Language was being utilized because I only know very extremely basic and random ASL signs and nothing else but the movie never really clarifies. It was very cool that the mercenaries also know Sign Language, though. Something that lends credence to the recon aspect of their work and fleshes them out a bit more. That being said, I would've loved to see Awa be more of a character. She is just very adamant about joining the mercenaries. I don't really know why because the movie never expands on it. It doesn't really seem to show much of any interest in her TBH which is a bummer. There are two more people who are like There but don't really matter, really. There's Salamane, who works for Omar at the camp and Captain Souleymane, who is Omar's OOMF and also a cop and happens to be visiting around the time the mercenaries are there, very coincidentally.

Okay, anyway — here's where things get a bit odd. We find out that the reason Chaka had sabotaged the plane with hopes of coming to this encampment was because he had, at one point, been a child soldier working under Omar (who at that point was operating under the name Colonel Remington, a nickname he got because of the gun he had which Chaka stole from him as a child during his escape). It didn't exactly end at child soldiering there and Chaka also strongly implies that Omar had also raped him during his captivity. When this big reveal is made, Chaka kills Omar which ... unleashes a curse. I'm NGL, around this point I got pretty lost. I'd really enjoyed everything until then honestly but it seemed like a lot of things were just ... not gelling with each other. Direction, genre, tone — everything just sort of got muddled up.

So historically speaking, there is a folk tale that originates in that area about King Gana Sira Bana (who existed in real life), who placed a curse onto his people and land (which is the folk tale part of this) after they all conspired to kill him (which is also real). Omar, apparently, was ... controlling this curse by performing rituals involving young boys he keeps locked up in a nearby village of cultists who also seem to worship (?) this curse. An important aspect of this curse is that it manifests itself as a swarm of shadowy insects. The Wikipedia page said it can only affect you through hearing but I could swear the movie (or the subtitles, at least) said it affected you through any sense. But given that we don't really see it attack anyone via any other sense, I'm gonna wager a guess that the subtitles were wrong.

Anyone not extremely plot-related dies as these bug monsters swarm and attack anyone that'll hear them out. Wait, actually — so those kids I mentioned earlier that Omar was utilizing in his rituals, so Chaka finds them during all this chaos and releases them from their imprisonment and then they just like ... run off? Into the wilderness, I guess. Just the whole lot of them. No food or resources or like anything at all. I guess they kill Salamane and enact a bit of vengeance but ... Anyway, the movie certainly refers to itself as a horror but there really isn't anything scary about it. I could agree there are horror-like aspects to it but ... IDK. I don't feel like it full committed to it, personally. Minuit (who is my favorite of the mercenaries) is a bwiti practitioner and manages to enter a trance-like state in which he manages to hold back the swarms in exchange for giving himself up to them. So that makes you go, oh okay — he sacrificed himself so they'll leave him and escape thanks to him since he's holding them back, right?

No, they mercy-kill him. What?? Why? Now those thangs are unleashed again and coming after them, so he died for nothing? That was so bizarre and irritating. Anyway, they all get on a boat and escapes — which is a big step for Chaka because he has horrible aquaphobia. But that's what this is all about, right? Confronting your personal demons and coming out the other side of it all stronger? Well, no to that too. Chaka gets attacked during the escape by Omar, who is essentially just an undead host for the curse now, and he's dragged into the water, which I still don't get what the fuck the thing's deal is. Like what is the point? What do you want, y'know? Chaka is now apparently meant to take Omar's place in satiating the demon, which is like. Yeah. Not great. The narrator awkwardly shuffles in while Awa and Rafa, our sole survivors, make their escape, to tell us about how revenge is bad and all that. Which like, I think a cautionary tale about the cycle of revenge is fine in concept but I do not think it really came full circle at all in this at all unfortunately.

The music in this movie is absolutely phenomenal and the costuming/wardrobe is amazing, especially when it comes to the main three. Minuit especially looks so so cool. I really like the way the movie is shot. There are a lot of very cool compositions and lighting set-ups. It was also just a great watch in general. Extremely fun with extremely likeable characters. Though I haven't been able to find exact numbers, the director confirmed the film was made on a very tight budget. And I can honestly promise that any of the nitpicks did not come from that. Every penny was used dutifully and you can see it in the quality of the film throughout. I just wish maybe the actual story, the hard details, had gone through just a few rewrites, edits, drafting, tweaks, etc as you will. 

Maurice

Okay, I have officially been working on this post for more than six hours. Let's make this quick. As much as I'd like to joke about this movie and how much it is just the average gay experience, something about it is just so ... tender. The movie centers Maurice and Clive, two men at the peak of their lives in 1910s England who are deeply in love with each other. While Maurice wants to shout it to the high heavens, Clive, after witnessing his college friend be jailed and lose everything for being outed as a gay man, hesitates. But he never says no and that is the crux of this tale. Both of them stuck in this merry-go-round neither want to be on but neither can bring themselves to jump off. At least not until Maurice, heartbroken as he watches Clive move on and marry a woman and bury himself deeper in the closet, meets Alec — and this leads me to bring up something I don't really see anyone at all bring up about this movie. Alec is a groundskeeper at Clive's estate. Which is to say, he's poor. Maurice and Clive both attended Cambridge, both are the heads of their very well-off families. So much of this movie, I wondered why they didn't just say fuck it, take their cut of the inheritance and fuck off to France or Italy or something.

I actually laughed when the doctor Maurice begins to see for conversion therapy just tells him to do exactly that, a fascinating suggestion from a person you'd least expect to hear it from. And thinking about Alec, it really puts it into perspective the class discrepancy. Just how much more leniency you are given when you have money. Even the friend Clive was so traumatized over ended up with only a six month jail sentence because of who he was and all that he would lose (his social status) being enough punishment in the judges eyes. So what happened to men who didn't have all that to lose? There's just something that settles in the pit of your stomach when Alec and Maurice are in one another's presence. A lot of people talk about how Maurice just wanted someone that loved him enough to give everything up for him and it's like, Alec doesn't really have anything to lose. And I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, I don't think it matters — but I think it's important to think about.

I'm not into that whole dark academia vibe or whatever so the movie was pretty okay to look at. I mostly liked any of the scenes with plants in them. There's a really good review I'll link here that talks about how nature is utilized in the movie. Everything else just sort of looked whatever. The fashion was also just okay. And the music was. There, probably. The movie's biggest crime was that it just went on for too long. Someone in another review pointed out that it was nice to see these moments of affection sort of slip in from the nothingness of mundanity. And I can agree with that to an extent but it's just kind of like, all the movie is. At least until we get closer towards the end, where things kick off and we get full-frontal, baby. The most common negative thing people had to say about this movie was that it's boring and like ... yeah, I have to agree. It wasn't like the end of the world or anything, though. It's okay to be a little bored sometimes.

As boring as it is at times, there are some parts I just can't get out of my head. I can't stop thinking about the scene when Maurice runs his hands through Clive's hair, or the scene where Clive and his wife watch themselves in the mirror — his wife's face slowly morphing from affection to a distressed puzzlement when she registers that Clive is not present in the moment with her, the scene where Maurice breaks into Clive's room to sneak him a kiss and confess his affections mirroring Alec sneaking into Maurice's room later and doing the very same.

I also can't stop thinking about Hugh Grant's evil, evil mustache.

To leave this all with an EM Forster quote another reviewer kindly shared that touched my heart,

“When I am with him, smoking or talking quietly ahead, or whatever it may be, I see, beyond my own happiness or intimacy, occasional glimpses of the happiness of thousands of others whose names I shall never hear, and know that there is a great unrecorded history.”