Thoughts

In Eddington, Mr. Aster takes the thrilling components of his horror efforts and reshapes them into a contemporary Western black comedy. A wild departure thematically from his other work, but it utilizes a lot of the tropes that he’s become famous for. The story surrounds the small town of Eddington, New Mexico, where a liberal mayor and a conservative sheriff go toe-to-toe over the political strife of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All this to say, I did start the week off strong with a viewing of each of Gregg Araki’s entries in his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy from the mid-to-late 90s. The trilogy includes Totally F***ed Up (1993), The Doom Generation(1995), and the conclusion to the saga, Nowhere (1997). The films are loosely connected by themes of queer alienation, rage against the establishment, and an inherent nihilistic perspective on life and the future.

The story follows Luke Wilson as a quite literal average Joe who gets roped into an army science experiment to be frozen, which, of course, goes wrong. He wakes up five hundred years later, as everyone has become insanely dumb through generations of inbreeding and bad traits passing down, he is the smartest man in the world.

Requiem for a Dream earns every ounce of respect and infamy it has earned over the years. This is not for the faint of heart whatsoever. The story follows an interconnected group of diverse characters in the slums of New York City in the 90s as they struggle through progressively worse addiction. Jared Leto leads the cast as a young son and boyfriend who comes across a “great idea” to start slinging the drugs he and his friends are so hopelessly addicted to.