girly film reviews. '23-10-10

no blog entry for another night. instead — 'girly' movie reviews with no spoilers. im not done with my coming to age girlhood movies streak (girlhood is my next film) but i feel like after watching the virgin suicides after literal years of putting it off, this is a great place to reflect.

Fat Girl (2001) - this movie is maybe 2/10. the main character suffers due to her weight and due to just growing up and being a girl. she thinks her older sister is beautiful, her sister agrees that she is, and therefore she has an obsession with being desired. once she is desired, the main character is jealous of her. she wants what she has... and the desirability aspect of the movie makes it all the more unsettling. 'fat girl' thinks she gets what she wants. ... pacing 3/10. characters 2/10. plot 4/10. cinemaphotography 0/10... had potential, lost it by being a very hard watch. realistic sibling dynamic is where my praise lives and dies with this film.

Thirteen (2003) - 10/10. characters 9/10. cinemaphotography 10/10. pacing 10/10. plot 10/10. why do i say all this? i have a personal bias, thats why. as i do and will continue to have through the rest of my life. the characters in this movie won't be easily understood unless you've known or been around the kind of situations they have. this movie is about a 13 year old girl wanting to fit in so bad with the cool girl at school that she becomes a troublemaker herself. once she's earned the respect of the cool girl, they start living together, sleeping with older guys, and doing a lot of drugs. you can see this as an anti-drug psa, but i see it as a reality even in modern society. rural areas of our big bad countries like usa and canada still have bad drug problems among youth, and the characters remind me of people ive met in such places, and even people i know among my family. this movie is perfect on all parts. soundtrack mayve needed improvements for the credits, but the first song they use will stick with you if you can find the beauty in this film. i personally wish to someday write something as impactful as this film. this is the saddest film ive ever seen, but be aware the sadness comes with big chunks of discomfort. the family dynamic in this movie is also well done in my opinion. the main characters issues had a large part in the circumstances she grew up in the 'cool girl's issues contrast it hugely, in a beautifully written ray of ash.

Eighth Grade (2018) - not what i was expecting at all from the white liberal who cried pandemic, but it was a surprisingly lovely, painful, and very close-to-home slice of life. you could even call it a love letter to youth in 2018, as the film is as 2018 as possible on purpose. not going to bother ranking any specifics, because if you were ever in the main characters shoes, you feel like the movie is a mere memory. id say everyone who was around the same age as the character in 2018 will feel differently about this film, from the dialogue to the way it's shot right down to the behaviour of characters who don't even seem to have faces. Eighth Grade is an ode to the kids with social anxiety, the kids fearing highschool and growing up, and even right where it hurts some the most, the kids without any close friends. the main character, Kayla, runs an advice channel on youtube where she tries to manifest her wishes into reality by telling the internet that she's already achieved it all. she ends all her videos with 'gucci', she knows what schezwan sauce is, she crushes on boys who are no good, she doesnt like being praised, she's the most narrow model for all the teenage experiences of the eighth grade, but i believe she is so important. she goes through a sort of depression in the end that made me want to relapse into harming myself, because the film is just too real, but with the way it picks itself right back up made me sob like a baby. oh to be optimistic again, to pen your future self love letters saying its okay if they got sad, because youre still you. if you werent somewhere around that narrow demographic of socially anxious About-To-Enter-HS Graders in 2018, you probably won't get it or won't appreciate the pop culture references/'cringe', you might even turn out thinking Kayla is a brat, but to me, this is a perfect movie. my one single gripe with it being a minor piece of dialogue from Kayla's father, but that's it. never thought id be cheering on Bo Burnham.

The Virgin Suicides (1999) - this movie? plot 5/10. cinemaphotography 5/10. characters 4.5/10. pacing 2/5. This movie is fucking creepy, and it doesn't even mean to be. it centres around a group of boys who are fascinated with this group of five sisters, the daughters of their math teacher. they find these girls attractive, and so does everyone else. they are not popular by any means, but they are a topic with their town. the movie starts when the youngest of the sisters attempts suicide. everyone is wondering why she did it, and this starts the boys' 'investigation' into her attempt, as she was so young. when she takes her life for real, you can start to see a line being painted across the world of the boys and the girls. these boys are haunted by these girls existing both before and after the littlest one ended her life, but they are so disconnected, they don't know what to think. they mostly focus on the fact that the girls are girls, and that they find them pretty, but they continue to gather information to see why the youngest would hurt herself so brutally. through this they enter the life of the oldest sibling, a more popular girl at school, especially with boys. they go through all her partners, and they all treat her horribly and don't care for her feelings. the one boyfriend who claimed to care for her feelings betrayed her the worst of all, and that is when the movie gets even more quiet. this movie a silent film with spoken dialogue. it's genre is closer to thriller even. throughout the film you will have so many questions about these girls and their lives, you will watch them almost the same way that the public does, and you will leave the film as clueless and romantic as all the boys. the boys had very still images of these girls no matter how human they appeared. they were deeply disconnected from them, but trying their best. the boys consume everything they consume, but they don't make efforts to see it through their eyes, they focus on 'imagine if she were looking at this with me, she'd probably look cute' (not a direct quote, but thats all they think about). there's two scenes in this movie that shows how porcelain these girls are to the world.. the part where a daughter is photographed pointing out a leak in the ceiling, and it's completely ignored by her father and the other daughters. then the part where the boys have just started their investigation onto them, the school does an assembly on suicide awareness, so they look for signs of them being suicidal. but they see the oldest daughter laughing, getting close with a boy, and the topic of suicide stays out of the movie for an eerily long time afterward. does this movie speak to me in any particular way? not at all. because even if im perceived by people as doll-like as these girls are, i still know what i'm feeling, i still have an idea of who i am. this movie creeps me out by disconnecting me with the characters i want to root for... maybe if you relate more to the boys who narrate the film, you won't feel creeped out like someone who can't relate does. but other than this, i really couldn't tell you what this film is trying to say. it's a good one, nonetheless.

this is not written nicely because i started it out as a bulletin, and finished it as one, but i transferred it here because i feel like talking about the virgin suicides is enough to make a whole blog update about. i really wanted to write one tonight, but i cant. the virgin suicides genuinely leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and a deep sense of discomfort. as if i know what they were doing with the film, but i can never describe it the way i want to. it feels like an out of body experience to finish that movie. its been over an hour now and i still feel as if i look up i can see myself being observed by my own spirit, admiring me admiring myself. smiling at me with pride. and slight shame that i don't.. get it.

i recommend all these films. not so much fat girl, but Highly for the rest if they seem to interest you.