Deliver Us From Popcorn

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Tonight I went to the preview screening of the new horror movie Deliver Us From Evil. Just hours before then, I promised myself that I would get back on track with my health, which means that yes, I would have to endure watching the movie in a comfortable cinema chair without popcorn.

And it was a rather difficult task. I have no problem discontinuing the drinking of soda drinks, and I thought that I would be the same way with popcorn - yet in this situation, with the smell of butter coating freshly popped corn kernels and the sound of erratic munching due to the witnessing of horrific scenes, it proved a troublesome task. I did pull through, however, without eating one piece of popcorn. I merely watched my sister eat hers and listened to the rest of the cinema's audience munch on theirs.

It was also the first time for me doing another thing, that is bringing in an apple into the theatre. I held it as casually as I could walking through the shopping centre, held onto it whilst standing in the line collecting our tickets, for I was accompanied by some relatives as well as my sister, and I held it as I passed through the ticket inspection area. It followed me into our cinema, and it sat patiently in my hand through half the movie, at which point I could not handle the sound and smell of the popcorn. I then pulled my hand up to my face and took a gigantic bite of the apple, crunching over the sound of everyone's fatty snacks.

I suddenly felt great about myself. It was a snack that was not salty, it did not leave a greasy mess on my fingers, nor did pieces of it lodge into my teeth or cling to my chest. I did not feel like drinking anything because it was as equally drenched with juice as it was with flavour. However, there was one problem: as much as I enjoyed the taste and texture and smell of this healthy and natural food, it did not nearly last as long as everyone's popcorn did, so there I was again, sitting there with the core of a delicious apple, listening to and smelling everyone's popcorn. If only apples came in the sizes of combo boxes.

Another benefit of popcorn is, apart from the free Spongebob plush toy that my sister received with her popcorn combo, that one can, in the event of a scary scene in a scary movie, hide their face behind the popcorn box, and eventually peek out of the side to stare at the screen which would have a limited view, providing extra safety. The use of my hands to do this job in place of a popcorn box was a tiresome job, and it left my hands smelling like my face, which does not in the last smell bad, but left me smelling what my face smells like for the length of each scary scene.

It is difficult to be overweight in this world, particularly when the food that I need to avoid is the nectar to my bee, the honey to my Pooh Bear, the salmon to my real bear. It is the cough syrup to a sleepless ill child, the beer to Homer, and America to Abraham Lincoln - I cannot do without it. But tonight, I proved to myself that by not acquiring popcorn nor eating it during a scary movie and instead substituting it and other snacks for an apple, I am capable of ensuring my health be placed on track.

Orphan

One innocent day, a group of seemingly innocent people attended a cinema viewing of the movie Orphan, its mysterious movie poster beckoning this moment, luring in this particular group and many seemingly innocent others.

The groups in the movie theatre were unsuspecting of what sort of movie to expect, besides the fact that it is a horror movie - how scary will it be? Will my popcorn fly? Will I spend the movie laughing at others in fear or feel fear myself? There was only one way to find out, so the groups purchased their overpriced snacks and drinks, and progressed into the theatre and found their perfect viewing seats.

The movie poster showed a young girl, wearing old gothic style clothing, and on the bottom it said, "what is wrong with Esther?"Most people who were exposed to that poster wished to find out, even if it meant having to spend half of their life earnings to do so. Fools. I was one of those fools, and as I sit here years later watching Orphan on the television, I still am scarred from the viewing of it. I am reminiscing on my first viewing and how my very notions of possibly adopting a child in the future died off.

I never have grown out of fearing adoption due to Orphan. I still fear that if I bring an adopted child into my home, that they will secretly be a short adult, wearing false teeth to hide their eroded ones, and attempt to rape my spouse as a form of sexual pleasure, and to fulfil their strange fetish. I would be lucky to come home to my house still standing, seeing as they also might burn my house down. As unrealistic as this may seem, every movie idea is mainly based on some occurrence, it cannot just be entirely made up unless they are depicting world peace.

Yet I still am watching the movie, to this day. The twists contained within are so powerful, powerful enough to have me keep coming back wanting more and more. In fact, I have viewed the movie enough to recite most quotes, or note all scenes in order. And my fear has also grown, because nowadays we meet and befriend people without quite knowing everything about them. That is not to say that every person is Esther, rather they might be some strange form of a person, a beacon of utter disturbance. This is also not to say that you should not trust anybody. Just keep your distance, especially if they are named Esther.

I have Orphan to blame for my need for fertility. I will never again consider adoption, even if it means that I will expand even more than I am expanded now just to squeeze a melon out of my nostril. A living, breathing melon that is not Esther.

Blue is the Warmest Colour

Before viewing this film, I had expected a minor lesbian love story, viewed in a heterosexual perspective and I wondered what else they could add to the shallow at the time storyline. Then I viewed it, and my mental state was toppled.

Blue is the Warmest Colour follows two girls, one teenager and one young adult, as they fall in and out of steaming, hot love. It depicts several uncut sex scenes, in which heterosexual’s question “how do lesbians even have sex?” is answered, once, twice, thrice. I was wearing headphones whilst watching the movie, yet the moaning protruding from each actresses mouth had made me mute it for each entire sex scene. In all honesty, this movie felt like a pornography half the time. I was comforted to find out later that the actresses had some silicon shields placed over their genitals, seeing as they felt quite uncomfortable acting throughout these sometimes ten-day long sex scenes.

Its depiction of lesbian love was rather real, though. How explosive it is to be attracted to the same gender, how confusing it is, how repulsive the other gender becomes, and how one side of the relationship is accepting of the change whereas the other side is not.

I think that there is no need for the director, Abdellatif Kechiche to be deemed an ‘Arab persuading young French girls to take off their clothes’ – rather, he is a director who made the French girls work their ways up the ladder of exhaustion to bring the audience of the Cannes Film Festival a movie that is a deeper insight into the lesbian lifestyle than living through it themselves. Its intense scenes, whether it is fighting over cheating, fighting over accusations of lesbian love interests, the sex scenes or even the heartbreaking scene at the end in the art gallery, pulls the viewer by the earlobes and pulls them into a lifestyle that is followed by many.

I could see the exhaustion on the actress’ faces in most of the scenes. It was painful to see, and for the entirety of the three hours I was leaning on the edge of my computer seat, almost head-butting the screen, just to see whether things will or will not resolve between the main characters. Kechiche has captured something no heterosexual could ever capture as beautifully, and shaken the worlds of his audience.

Overall, Blue is the Warmest Colour is a must-see. It is an emotional rollercoaster, filled with love and hate and everything in between. It is the most accurate depiction of a love between two women and how fiery each experience may be, whether it is a good or bad one. Both Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos perform wonderfully in the film, and though they hated every second of the sex scenes, they made it look exceptionally real, to a point where it feels as though you are watching a lesbian couple making love in real life, while they are unaware of your existence.

The Necessity of Popcorn

Popcorn is the most ingenious invention introduced to mankind, from mankind. It is inevitable to view a movie without munching on some. 

It began with the Mexicans. They sacrificed it to their God as a form of delicious respect. Now, it has been adapted into our cinemas as a form of excessive money gain, and in our case, excessive money loss. Now, for almost the price of a movie ticket alone, you can indulge in a godly meal, accompanied by a nice watered down cola. And for a quarter of the price of these you can head down to the closest grocery store and buy a packet of preserved popcorn, assuming that the cinema ones are too preserved, and a cola. After this you can haul it in either secretly or openly and you can indulge in, instead of popcorn alone, the glares of onlookers as you crack open a noisy cheap packet of your rather ungodly pre-purchased of popcorn. And if you listen carefully you can hear their minds whispering about how horridly cheap you are. 

Despite the lengths one goes through for the successful acquisition of popped corn, and the amounts of money you spend, I deem it impossible to view a movie without constantly placing popcorn fragments in your mouth. I believe that people in the cinemas without popcorn spend most of their time imagining how much better their lives would be with popcorn while holding an image of those behind or in front of them eating popcorn instead of focussing on the movie itself. 

The next time you are watching a movie in the cinemas and you either choose not to buy popcorn because you ran out of time, ran out of money or did not feel as though you wanted to eat it, think of how unfortunate you feel about your decision not to purchase it. Popcorn is the best accompaniment to a movie viewing, and there you are, with no accompaniment beside a possible mere human which you cannot eat because cannibalism is illegal and does not provide you with the good crunch sensation that popcorn brings. 

Popcorn must be eaten for your movie experience to be better. Having said that, please eat and drink responsibly because popcorn can also be distracting to yourself or others. 

Prisoners

First of all, I must introduce a: 

********* SPOILER ALERT **********

If you have not yet seen the movie, leave this post and go see it, then come back and discuss with me your opinions. Otherwise, your viewing experience of the film will be quite unappealing if you read on. So, your choice. Impatience can ruin experience. Just keep that in mind.

The movie itself, after two viewings, was astounding and still very exciting and unpredictable, while filled with themes and symbolism, which is what I seek in thrilling movies. Movies which have a rare amount of plot twists are not at all thrilling, yet surprisingly there are many movies, deemed thrillers, with this problem, which leaves viewers feeling quite critical, in negative aspects. Prisoners, though, begs to differ. Containing many themes, Prisoners takes the viewer along with the characters on a crazed rollercoaster ride of emotions through the physical, mental, law and non-law abiding processes to do with kidnappings and potential suspects.

Parenthood, masculinity and survival are three major themes in this film, intertwined into the main character, Keller Dover. His need to abide by the social rules of parenthood in that one must take care of their child, becomes seemingly difficult when his daughter and the daughter of his family friends go missing. This is emphasised after the middle of the film, when Dover catches Loki stalking him, he enters Loki's car and says, "every day, she's wondering why I'm not there to f**king rescue her! Do you understand that? Me, not you! Not you, but me!" His masculinity is questioned by his wife, in that his role of a father and a protective individual cannot be fulfilled unless he finds his daughter, and these two themes clash with the main theme at the beginning of the film: Dover being a survivalist. He has thoroughly prepared himself and his son for the worst, "pray for the best, but prepare for the worst," yet nothing can prepare him in locating the whereabouts of his daughter. 

Another common theme was stereotyping - stereotypically, the priest at the beginning of the film is a pedophile. How common it is to mistake any priest for a child molester because of their reputation in the news nowadays. This misleads the viewer into thinking that the priest is at fault with the law, when in actuality the priest has killed off Holly Jones' husband because of his ill confession to the priest five years ago - how is it though, that the priest feels ill about the confession that Mr Jones has killed sixteen children and will continue, when the priest himself is a registered sex offender? Couldn't the priest have reported the man to the police, thus aiding them in unravelling the big case before Anna and Joy were kidnapped, let alone any other children? Not abiding the stereotype, though, is that the priest would break one of the ten commandments and allowed a man to die right underneath him - literally, which brings me to the next main theme in the film: religion.

At the beginning of the film, Keller is seen hunting a deer with his son, and chants the entirety of the 'Our Father' prayer before shooting it - but when punishing Alex by scalding him with hot water, he says the 'Our Father' and does not continue when the prayer says "forgive those who trespass against us" - the symbolism in this becomes interesting when it ties in with the meaning of the spirit totem of a deer, which could be part of the character of Keller. The spirit totem of the deer is associated with gentleness, the ability to move through life and its obstacles with grace, innocence and being in touch with their inner child, and sensitivity. The killing of the deer at the beginning by Keller's son could symbolize him letting go of these qualities, and leading his son on the same path. This could explain why he does not finish the 'Our Father' when punishing Alex, as well as not being able to forgive him, assuming of course that he is the kidnapper of his daughter. Tied in with the theme, Keller is shown letting go of his religious routes and morals in order to bring Alex to justice. 

Apart from themes, I found some slight faults in the storyline: firstly, after Alex is caught at the beginning and had his RV searched, Loki claims that they have found no evidence in the RV or on his aunt's property - had they undergone a thorough search, they would have easily found the gaping hole underneath a simple board of wood beneath an out-of-place Trans Am in her yard - why, too, did they not seize the Trans Am from the Jones' yard after both Joy and Anna were found and Alex returned to his original family? It is slack to begin excavating the yard when there is a muscle car still standing in their way. And where did Keller's car go after Holly Jones drove it off when he came to find Anna towards the end of the movie? Surely she would not have driven it off too far away because she had to have driven it a walking distance back to her house so that she could place Keller in the 'maze' before the liquid substance that he drank would have begun to wear off. Why didn't Keller call Loki on his way to the Jones' house to show him his sense of direction towards his innocence and Holly's guilt? Or why didn't Loki follow him in a car chase that would result in the finding of Anna and the safety of Keller? And finally, when Loki arrives at Holly's house to notify her that they have found Alex, he calls out quite loudly, "Mrs Jones, Mrs Jones?" How could she not have heard him, especially during the chaos that is having Anna out of the maze and attempting to drug her?

Apart from those faults, I found the movie quit exhilarating, in that it literally had kept me at the edge of my seat. It is sad that there are so many missing children cases in the real world - if only we had Detective Loki to assist us.