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airykah-white
Reviews
Hotaru no haka (1988)
Profoundly Disturbing
Started sobbing within the first 3 minutes. I powered through the whole movie because apparently I'm a sadist. I'm used to Studio Ghibli having beautiful and touching children's movies like Totoro and Spirited Away. DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN WATCH THIS unless you want to scar them for life. IN TOTORO STYLE ANIMATION, this movie shows WW2 air raids, towns burning, a mom covered in burns and bandages who succumbs to her injuries within two days and subsequently becomes a feast for maggots and gets thrown into a mass grave, this mother's death orphans her two children who unsuccessfully struggle to meet their basic needs while suffering PTSD. Within the first 10 minutes of the film, an early teen desperately does everything he can to look after his little sister. The loss of their mother and their home thrusts them into fending for themselves without the knowledge or resources to do so, which leads to the pair living inside an abandoned bomb shelter where they become dirty, starved, malnourished, and ultimately die. We see the little girl's heat rash morph into scabies and her ribs become prominent due to starvation, which leads to delirium and we see her die! And we see her preteen brother cremate her! I do not recommend anyone watch this movie - unless you want make time out of your life to process through trauma induced by a movie.
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)
Inspiring
This moving documentary did an incredible job at capturing a Vietnam veteran's harrowing experience as a MIA/POW. So many moments from this film will stay with me. Watching his PTSD activate when they tied his hands in the jungle to recreate his capture. Hearing him equate a bear following him to a symbol of death - where at the end of his journey toward freedom, his only friend that remained was death. The story he told of watching a man's finger get cut off because the man had stolen his wedding ring. The beheading of his fellow POW. Growing up in WW2 Germany, eating cooked wallpaper to survive.
After I watched the film, I learned that he killed himself just 4 years after the films release - after being diagnosed with ALS he rolled his wheelchair to the driveway of a nearby fire station and shot himself. The next time I'm in DC, I'm going to visit his grave in Arlington National Cemetery to pay my respects. All he really wanted was to fly.
BoJack Horseman (2014)
Disappointment
Depressing. It's like sitting in an unhealthy Al-Anon meeting where people blame everything else around them instead of taking accountability for their own behavior. I kept trying to like it because I love the cast, but i always felt yucky after watching it.
Midnight Mass (2021)
An anti-climatic/over-acted waste of time
It's long and drawn-out like a Sunday sermon in July inside a church with no AC. I kept waiting for it to pick up, and it never delivered. I wish I gave up sooner. And don't get me started on the dialogue! This limited series could have been 3 episodes if they had taken the time to cut out unnecessary dialogue. I've never seen so many overly contrived attempts at a deeply moving storyline. No thanks.
Midsommar (2019)
Dude, what?
...What did I just watch? Sound of music meets Manson family with Coachella flower crowns.