Tag: Movies

The Long Walk: Marching Nowhere, Hoping Anyway

damionferrellLeave a comment

I just finished watching The Long Walk, and wow, bleak doesn’t even begin to cover it. I love a good “crush my spirit and leave me staring at the wall” film as much as the next emotionally unwell cinephile, but this one? This one is mean. I have so many curse words floating around my brain right now they’re bumping into each other like pinballs.

Some movies telegraph their emotional doom early. This one does it in the first ten minutes. The premise is brutally simple: in an alternate 20th-century America, after some unnamed war and economic collapse, a military regime decides to boost national morale by… forcing 50 teenage boys to walk hundreds of miles until only one survives. The winner gets a big check and one wish granted.

Why? Great question. I have no answers and neither does the film.

Read More »

Weapons: Overthinking, Blame, and Bosoms

damionferrellLeave a comment

I watched Weapons a third time, this time with my girlfriend. At this point, I’m certain I know what the movie is, aside from just being awesome. It’s about how we get weaponized against each other. Whether it’s harmful ideologies, media influences, family pressures, national politics, or addiction, there’s always something that sparks us to harm others.

But Weapons isn’t a single-theme movie. It tackles many things at once. I didn’t even consider one layer until my girlfriend shared something she read before we watched it: that the film exposes the darkness hidden in middle-American suburbs and how we never really know what goes on behind closed doors.

At first, my arrogant side scoffed at that. It seemed like a stretch. But… was it? Maybe not. The film’s bigger themes sit in plain sight, but it’s not unreasonable to walk away with that interpretation. After all, nobody in town had any clue what Alex lived through daily. How could they?

So yes — my girlfriend accepts that I’m a film junkie and an overthinker. Meaning that after a movie, TV episode, or even a random YouTube clip, I’ve got a brainful of thoughts I have to unload. After Weapons, I had way too much to get out of my system.

Read More »