#35: Nominate Nosferatu for Best Comedy, you cowards

Death by Consumption

12/24/24 - 1/6/25

I did not expect this, but my biggest question so far in the new year is: should I watch Emilia Pérez? It sounded stupid and I had zero interest, but then it won a baffling amount of awards at the Golden Globes, after which I immediately saw this absolutely insane clip going viral. And now I have this sinking feeling that I'm about to waste 2 hours of my life watching Emilia Pérez, just so I can be a better-informed hater going into Oscar season.

That is all to say: we're back! Between going wild in London and the wilderness of Wales, followed by a week in Wisconsin with 11 family members who passed the norovirus around my parents' house (somehow Justin and I were the only ones who came out of the holidays not violently puking — another victory for childless gays!), it feels like I've been away from THE CULTURE for damn near a month. I'm honestly shocked I survived! Traveling the world, eating delicious food, seeing beautiful sights, spending time with friends and family... I'm sorry to my loved ones, but none of that compares to sitting in a dark movie theater and watching Nicole Kidman fingerbang herself on the floor.

This week, we're catching up on what I consumed over the last two weeks: the 2 big new movies that both feature women writhing on the floor, a beautiful film I've been trying to see for a year, the money-hungry pointlessness of Squid Game 2, and my new obsession with a 7th century saint.

Nosferatu (2024) — at Marcus Oshkosh Cinema

Nosferatu follows the same plot as Ingrid Goes West: a weirdo gets in a parasocial relationship with a hot girl, and moves west to ruin her life.

I also laughed at the film about as much as I did during Ingrid Goes West. It felt campy — it was so self-serious, and yet Count Orlok has, like, that ridiculous mustache, and he’s talking in the Count Chocula voice but reaaalllyy slowwwwwly, saying stuff like, “Now… we… will… sign… the… documents.” How could you not laugh! Look, we're never going to reach the iconography of The VVitch with a Robert Eggers film again, but I had a lot of fun watching Nosferatu, at least.

Everyone is basically doing their own thing in the film, but it all kind of worked for me. Lily-Rose Depp is maybe not a good actress, the jury is still out on that, but she’s certainly a committed one! I’m worried she did permanent damage to her spine filming this. Nicholas Hoult is good, as always, but there isn't much more to say there, sorry. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the worst actor by far in the film, but he’s extremely pretty so who cares? Every time he spoke I was like, whatever you say, gorgeous :) Mostly, I love that Robert Eggers makes movies with the sole purpose of letting Willem Dafoe be a goofy little freak and do whatever he wants. We need more directors to take as their muse a 60+ year old man.

Despite the guy next to me who literally yelled, “FUCKING QUEER!” at the screen when Nosferatu sucked a man’s blood (which, honestly, just added to the film's campiness for me), this was by far the least gay vampire movie I’ve ever seen. Which is fine! Vampires can be heterosexual, too, I guess, though it's never preferred.

Babygirl (2024) — at Nitehawk Prospect Park

Nicole!!!!!!! God, it's so nice to be scandalized in a theater again. I giggled my way through this whole movie, a perfect film I have 0 notes on, even though it didn't really have a plot for 80% of it. Who cares! It feels like people are trying too hard to have discourse about this movie, a film in which Nicole Kidman laps up a saucer of milk from the floor before getting fingered for nearly 5 minutes straight. Like, sure, we could wrap this brilliantly fun film up into the outrageously boring age gap discourse, but do we have to? Can we skip that part, please? We're in the dark days of winter now, and this movie is a bright little treat to get us through a bleak January, so let's not ruin this one by being like, But what does it say about #MeToo? Watch Babygirl, have some fun, and if you're nasty pair it with Birth, the 2004 film in which Nicole falls in love with a child she believes is her reincarnated husband. I am so thankful for Nicole Kidman and her insane career choices.

La Chimera (2023) — rented on Apple

For some reason, despite the fact that it ran at the West Village's IFC Center for 25 straight weeks last year, I was never able to see La Chimera in theaters. Every attempt or plan would get derailed, to the point where it became a recurring joke with friends: what would prevent me from seeing La Chimera this week? So when I heard it was finally streaming on Hulu, of all places, I told Justin, "We are finally watching La Chimera," not giving him a say in the matter, until I felt my heart drop when I discovered: 1) we only have the version of Hulu with ads, and 2) that meant they had put ad breaks in the middle of the movie. I cycled through the stages of grief — surely it's streaming elsewhere! they chopped the movie up?? maybe ads are fine, actually, and could even give me a moment to reflect on the film as it goes along! I can't believe I'm actually never going to see La Chimera — before discovering it was $3 to rent on Apple. A year's worth of drama about this damn movie, and with one quick iPhone scan of Justin's face, the movie was finally, finally in front of me.

Thankfully, it somehow held up to this stupid year-long fourplay. It stars Challengers' Josh O'Connor, going full puppydog-eyes, as a grave robber/archaeologist in Italy who's recently released from prison, and rejoins up with his grave robbing accomplices, while also half-searching for his missing love. It's a mysterious, dreamlike film, with a wackier tone than I expected, swinging wildly from deeply emotional and gorgeous scenes to, essentially, Marx Brothers slapstick routines. It's equally funny and devastating, and I now understand why it ran so long at IFC Center, as people returned to watch it again and again. This was the quietest movie I watched this week — in both the film's style and it's cultural impact — but I bet it's the one that sticks with me longest.

The Substance (2024) — purchased on Apple

I had the extreme pleasure of introducing my family to The Substance over the holidays, which was perfect timing as we all dive headfirst into Demi Moore's Extremely Deserved Awards Season. I loved hearing everyone guess where they thought the movie would go, knowing all the while that there was no possible way they'd be even close to accurate. I am pleased to report this movie is just as hilarious on a rewatch as it is the first time.

"Squid Game 2" — on Netflix

My complaints with Squid Game 2 are, surprise surprise, mostly complaints about Netflix. Did we need a sequel? (We didn't, but after the success of the first season those executives probably held the showrunner's entire family captive until he wrote more.) And if we did, did we really have to wait this long, especially for a 7-episode season that — spoiler alert — just ends halfway through the story? I know I sound like an ancient crone when I say this all the time, but how and why and when did we lose the formulas for making TV shows? Take, for example, LOST, which always ended a season on a frustratingly mysterious cliffhanger, but did it in a way that didn't feel completely like a "fuck you" to the audience. The end of Squid Game 2 is, to me, so infuriating that it pretty much invalidates the entire season. You're better off just waiting until season 3 — supposedly the final season — and watching both at the same time.

What's annoying is, once you get past the extreeeeemely slow start, the season is fine! Or better than expected, at least. The first couple episodes, however, are rough, as we're left with the few surviving characters from season 1, who also happen to be the least compelling characters from season 1, and we don't even have the Squid Game carnival-games-of-death drama to keep us engaged. It's just two episodes following a couple of dreary bros sulking around Seoul, making the kind of stupid decisions lazy writers need their characters to make so the plot can move forward. But once we get back to the Squid Game setting — I guess that might be a spoiler, but come on, we're all only tuning in under the agreement that we get to see more fucked-up games — the season finally takes off, and the series gets some much-needed life as we meet the new cast.

The new characters are just on the edge of feeling like the show is desperate to be involved in modern conversations, but they mostly work. There are multiple people in debt from losing money to crypto scams, which feels tragically accurate and timely, but there's also the crypto scammer himself, which feels wrong. Those guys almost never lose money on their scams! Hawk Tuah girl is doing just fine after hers, and yesterday Congress just certified a crypto scammer as our new president. A crypto scammer would not be involved in Squid Game, unless he was one of the guys betting on it. But, sure, I'll suspend disbelief in order to watch a bunch of annoying crypto bros fight to the death.

There's also a trans woman, who I expected to be a disaster of a character, especially since she's played by a cis man. But — besides a quick moment referring to her penis which was so insanely unnecessary to the plot — she's mostly handled respectfully. Don't get me wrong: her inclusion in the cast felt like total pandering to young people and social media. It very much feels like, as they were mapping out season 2, someone wrote "trans character???" on a post-it note and slapped it on the wall, and the room full of cis writers gasped. She's just kind of randomly trans, but if I want to get real stoner with my thinking: aren't all trans people randomly trans? Aren't I randomly cis? So, sure, there's a trans character in Squid Game 2, and why not. The more the merrier! Look, don't make me link to the Emilia Pérez clip again — if that's the standard we're working with, I'm going to take any positive trans representation I can get from Netflix.

Season 2 is definitely a retread of season 1, a classic "let's slightly raise the stakes!" move that will feel familiar to reality TV fans. If you liked the original Squid Game in which random people fought to the death for money, how about watching a MOTHER competing against her SON? How about a PREGNANT CONTESTANT? You can practically hear the Netflix executives looking at the audience like: Is this what you want? Please tell us! So, overall, the parts of season 2 that work are essentially the same parts that worked in season 1, and anything new is mostly uninteresting or too stupid to care about, which, you know, is fine. Maybe the final season will offer something new to say, some reason for this show to have continued, but I'm not betting on it.

Hild, by Nicola Griffith (2013) — paperback

Hild has been compared to Game of Thrones and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, but I think it's even more impressive than either of those. It tells the story of the early years of St. Hilda, a British saint who lived in the 600s, of whose life we know almost nothing about, except for a vague family tree, and the notable things she did: the communities she built, the kings she advised, and the general fact that she rose, seemingly by her own grit and intelligence in an extremely chaotic and violent age, from the unknown second daughter of a homeless widow, to one of the most powerful people in 7th century Europe. But, again, we know almost nothing about her. 600 pages later, though, I feel like I know her deeply — not just Hild, but the entire world of 7th century Britain, which Nicola Griffith has meticulously remade on the page in stunning detail.

The start of the book is destabilizing, to a level I've rarely experienced with a novel. You've got an extremely complex setting, a culture that's almost completely alien from our own, and every character's name looks like a cough. Here is a sample paragraph:

“As the weather improved, messages began to come in from all over the isle. Two, from Rheged and from Alt Clut, said the same thing: Eochaid Buide of the Dál Riata was sending an army to aid the Cenél Cruithen against Fiachnae mac Demmáin of the Dál Fiatach, and chief among the Dál Riatan war band were Idings-though the man from Rheged thought two, Oswald and Osric, called the Burnt, while the messenger from Alt Clut thought three, Oswald, Osric the Burnt, and the young Osbald.”

What’s funny is, I copied that paragraph down as I read it because I was like, HUH??? But looking back after finishing the book I’m like, wait, I know what she’s talking about now! I guess that’s how reading works, this isn't a groundbreaking concept, but it’s good to know the old mush-brain hasn’t been completely destroyed by the internet yet.

But that's also a key part of what makes this novel so stunning and, honestly, completely absorbing while you're in it. Nicola Griffith keeps you almost exclusively in Hild's perspective, which helps you learn about the world as she does. She starts the book a child, and I normally hate reading a book from a child's perspective (the beginning of My Brilliant Friend was like torture), but it's completely necessary here. You need to start the book with training wheels. As her mother cycles through names and kingdoms and political machinations, teaching Hild how to understand power and men so she can manipulate it all as she grows up, you learn the world alongside her.

And Hild's world — whether it's at all like the real 7th century is beside the point, but I hope it was like this — is a world where women can wield a surprising amount of power. The Catholic Church is still just a vague concept, something to do with Rome, and Jesus is just one of many gods people might worship, but only if he does something good for them first, so the Christian morals of our modern society aren't set in stone yet. There are still some clear gender roles, but women can carve out exceptions, and Hild does, making herself into the king's seer, the "light of the world," who can read the future and guide the king. Along the way, she starts gathering her own followers, and as the many kings of Britain battle for control of the island, as small kingdoms get swallowed by larger ones, we follow Hild as she tries to shape the world around her by pure willpower.

The book was a genuine experience, one I can't remember having in a long time. To be thrown into the deep end of a book's world and to have to struggle to even stay above water isn't necessarily something everyone wants. This is not a book you can read in short spurts — 12 pages on a subway ride were frequently wasted, because I'd have to circle back and re-read them at home, since not a word had stuck. But once I learned the world and how to read the dense, poetic prose, I was obsessed, in a way that genuinely made me feel like I did when I was a kid, maxing out my library card because I just wanted to read more more more. And, thankfully for me, a sequel was published just last year, so about twelve seconds after I closed Hild, I opened the next book.

Tequila Rose — at family Christmas

My brother-in-law drew my name in the family gift exchange, and he had the genius idea of getting me "things to consume," the first of which was my very own bottle of Tequila Rose. The entire family passed it around (everyone was sick with norovirus later in the week, but now I'm realizing Tequila Rose might be to blame...), and, unlike in the chaos of the first time I had it, I was really able to appreciate what it actually is, which is: strawberry cream liqueur, mixed with tequila. Okay! Yikes!

More than anything, I think Tequila Rose benefits from severely low expectations — hearing what it is, and seeing what it looks like, you plan for the worst, so when it ultimately tastes like mediocre candy, you're just happy to not be puking. I'm also now reconsidering the way we've been pronouncing it. We took the cue from our new, chaotic English friends, who pronounced it "rosé," like the wine, but I'm starting to feel like it's just "rose," like the flower, which feels... trashier, somehow. I'm sticking with "tequila rosé," sorry.

I sneakily left the bottle behind at my parents' house, but there's a UPS delivery arriving at my door tomorrow from Wisconsin and I suspect I know what's inside.