december: the movies
or, my month of watching things
Happy December!
Sorry that it’s been a while, and that I’m drafting this up fairly quickly, I just got caught up in the daily weight of academia and then took some time away from writing while I was visiting my boyfriend in Washington, DC. Regardless, I decided I’d spend this morning taking some time to write about something that’s brought me joy for the majority of my life.
Growing up, we had a lot of random days off from school here and there. I remember my dad used to take us to the theatre on these days, and I would always be excited to get the cookie dough bites. I also remember the one time in elementary school when I got lice and subsequently watched The Princess and the Frog (2009) three times back-to-back while a “nit fairy” picked lice out of my hair. And who could blame me? It objectively has one of the best soundtracks of a Disney movie. Fact.
In high school, I usually wound up at the movies with my friend Georgie, who now lives in Los Angeles and works in the industry. If I remember correctly, we had AMC A-list from fairly early on, and the two of us would get together on weekends to enjoy whatever happened to be playing. The summer after my sophomore year of online school, I remember distinctly seeing Zola (2021) in three different theaters in northern New Jersey just because I wouldn’t stop dragging along my friends.
During my junior year of college, I became a host on a podcast called District of Cinema through our school newspaper. My friends Tristan and Spenser and I sat around discussing our thoughts on movies, and the recordings of those sessions were made available on streaming platforms. At the time, I wasn’t very knowledgable about film history. I knew a scattered handful of movies well, and couldn’t speak extensively to the cultural impact they held. I credit the two of them greatly with beginning the cultivation of my love for cinema and a greater understanding of the art form, and subsequently introducing me to stories that would become wildly influential in my personal journey as a writer.
On that note, I am currently entering my last semester of school obtaining my MFA in Writing for Screen & TV from USC. I’ve spent the past year and a half writing — or trying to write — comedy movies that will potentially, maybe one day get made. A lot of my week-to-week involves watching films that fall into my genre of current interest and analyzing why they are or why they are not successful. This past semester, I was quite overloaded with classes, and had notably less time to do that kind of study. In preparation for my final semester, I decided to sit down and try to motor through some of the movies that had long been on the back shelves of my watch list.
One of the movies I was most looking forward to getting through was Saturday Night (2024). I’d been a long-time fan of SNL, and while I worked at The Groundlings in Los Angeles learned a great deal more about the history of the initial years of the TV Program and the people that built it. I felt that the movie was overall very exciting viewing, and made for a really fun date night. I also watched Juror #2 (2024), which I’d seen a handful of my friends log on Letterboxd. Though I don’t know how good I’d be at writing them myself, I personally love a thriller, and found this one uniquely satisfying.
While I enjoy the general flexibility that streaming services bring, I don’t think anything can quite beat a theatre screening experience. Likewise, I find these experiences most accessible and community-building during the holiday season, when droves of infrequent movie patrons grace their local AMCs for a chance to get out of the house. Last year in December, I accidentally brought one of my friends to Saltburn (2023) before researching anything about the movie beforehand. Whoops. I also convinced my now-boyfriend Skye, who I definitely had some budding crush on at the time, to sit through Wonka (2023) with me at, like, 10am on a Saturday.
This holiday season, I had the pleasure of completing the “A Complete Babyratu” challenge by seeing all three movies — A Complete Unknown, Babygirl, and Nosferatu — in theaters within the span of a couple of days. They are all wildly different, but I genuinely had pleasurable experiences watching each of them. The acting performances were all top notch — particularly Timothee in A Complete Unknown — and the visual experience of Nosferatu was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. When also considering Wicked, which I’ve already written about on here, and Gladiator II, I think it’s safe to say that this holiday season was a wonderful period for theatrical movies of all genres.
I hope you all are finding some fun movies to watch this winter, and let me know if I missed any that I should watch. And if you don’t feel like taking part in “A Complete Babyratu” or if none of my aforementioned movies are calling your name, just throw on Titanic (1997). I watch it at least once a month and it never disappoints.
SOME (!) film soundtrack songs and needledrops I love:
My Heart Will Go On (Dialogue Mix Version) — Titanic (1997)
Love Theme — Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Intro — Jackie (2016)
Lara’s Theme — Dr. Zhivago (1965)
Changes — Shrek 2 (2004)
I Will Always Love You — Priscilla (2023)
Challengers [MIXED] — Challengers (2024)
Epilogue — La La Land (2016)
I’m Almost There — Princess and the Frog (2009)