I like a combination of New Years Resolutions that a) remove negative habits but also b) add postive goals. One of the positive goals I want to do this year is watch more movies. I mean the movies that are the “Oh you haven’t seen that yet?” tier of movie. There’s so many movies on my list so this year I’m going to make a commitment to watch them. The list is as follows:

1. Requiem for a Dream
2. The Departed
3. A Few Good Men
4. Apollo 13
5. Philedelphia
6. Ghost in the Shell
7. Paprika
8. Millenium Actress
9. Donnie Darko
10. Memories and Murder
11. Momento
12. 2001: Space Odyssey
13. Schindler’s List
14. Jojo Rabbit
15. Clue
16. The Thing
17. American History X
18. When Harry Met Sally
19. Black swan
20. La Haine
21. Seven Samurai
22. Alien
23. The Shining
24. Cast Away
25. Hateful eight
26. La La Land
27. Dead Poets Society
28. Contact
29. The Sixth Sense
30. Training DAy
31. The Green Room
32. Wild Robot
33. Sound of Music
34. Nightcrawler
35. Bridge on the River Kwai
36. Bugonia
37. V for Vendetta
38. Drunken Master
39. Tokyo Grandfathers
40. Look Back
41. Call me by your name
42. Fantastic Mr Fox
43. Grand Budapest Hotel
44. Trainspotting
45. Hyakuemu.
46. In the Mood for Love
47. Hard Boiled
48. Only Yesterday
49. The Cat Returns
50. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
51. When Marnie was There
52. From Up on Poppy Hill

I will be spinning a wheel to decide which movie to watch each week and then I will write a post about the movie. This also goes with my goal of consuming consciously and creating more. By writing a post about the movie, I hope to reflect on the movie in any way I want to. Now for the first movie:

Bugonia

Bugonia is a reality-questioning thriller like Shutter Island and 10 Cloverfield Lane. It has the audience questioning what is the truth and which character’s perspective of reality is correct. The story has 3 main characters, Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), a CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Teddy Gatz (Jessie Plemons), an employee of Fuller’s pharmaceutical company working in shipping, and Don (Aidan Delbis), Teddy’s cousin. Teddy is convinced that Michelle is an alien, here to destroy the earth. He and his cousin kidnap her and try to force her to take them to her mothership to fight against this. The movie starts as what you think is a psychological thriller about a lady trying to escape a lunatic man, and evolves into something more.

The casting was really well done! Emma Stone and Jessie Plemons are both great actors and had me engrossed in their characters. Speaking of casting, it surprised me how small this cast was. There were the 3 main characters, two side characters that get like less than 10 minutes of screen time and 3 more even smaller side characters that have even less screen time. My friend also pointed out that the number of settings is small, too. It allowed the viewers to really take in the details of each location.

The movie feels like an A24 movie. Some of the shots, as well as the sound design, were reminiscent of that studio. Turns out one of the producers is Ari Aster, which makes sense!

Thematically, I think this movie is about conspiracy theories and echo chambers, but also the faceless control of mass populations. The movie draws parallels between humans and bees. Bees work every day for their queen, doing what they think is right, but in reality, their home and their productivity are being used by someone else that they do not know. The product of their labour is not for the bees themselves but for the overlords who own them. In the same way, companies may have a public CEO and team, but there are private shareholders, anonymous donors and benefactors and people of influence that we’d never see. Who knows if we are truly being run by an alien species or a lizard society, and we’d probably never find out because, unfortunately, as much as we’d like to think the opposite, we aren’t in control.

Spoilers

The big twist of the movie was that she was an alien all along, and Teddy was right! There were definitely hints and signs, but I didn’t catch the twist until she started limping back to the office from the ambulance. I think it makes sense thematically as the movie is about faceless overlords and conspiracy theories. Looking back, there were other signs, like how she survived 400V through her brain. I was wondering how much a human could survive, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt that it was survivable. Overall, the shock of the reveal was well done.

However, if the movie had gone for more of an ambiguous ending like Inception, it would have been cool to end it at the ambulance with a hint that she may actually be an alien. Then the message of the movie would be different, so I understand why they went with the original direction.