SCREEN TIME WITH DEAD CHEF

This might not surprise you, but my greatest passion, right after eating and sleeping, is watching movies. (Yes, I really enjoy not moving.)

This week, I present you with ten mini-reviews of movies I watched recently. I'm a work-at-home mother, so forgive the single movie from the current year, but really, this is all I can do.

Please let me know what you think, and enjoy the new series' logo on the right created by Mr Bee himself!

UPSTREAM COLOR (2013)

The best romantic movie involving orchids, worms, pigs, and identity loss you will ever see. I'm completely obsessed with Shane Carruth's imaginative, haunting, and rigorous filmmaking, and you should be too (watch Primer, too, if you haven't already).

WATCH IT ON NETFLIX (BONUS IF YOU'RE PREGNANT LIKE I WAS WHEN I FIRST SAW THIS)

SAN ANDREAS: AN IMAX 3D EXPERIENCE (2015) 

Great to see The Rock in all of his 3D glory, but I really wished the producer had allotted at least $500 for a coherent script rather than filming straight from the preliminary text messages.

WATCH IT ON A PLANE TRIP, IF YOU REALLY REALLY HAVE TO

UNDER THE SKIN (2013)

Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who picks up men on the streets of Scotland for her mysterious alien purposes. Dreamlike, terrifying, and an unconventional and surprising meditation on gender. I get uncomfortable just thinking about it, and it's a good thing.

WATCH IT ON AMAZON WITH YOUR NEW DATE

FORCE MAJEURE (2014)

A family of four is enjoying a ski-vacation in the Alps, but an avalanche throws everything they know about each other and themselves in the air. The über-chill cinematography alone is worth a viewing, but the content is great, and there's some humor, too. Great if you enjoy post-movie discussions and re-evaluating your marriage.

WATCH IT WITH YOUR SPOUSE ON NETFLIX

THE GREAT BEAUTY (2013)

Paolo Sorrentino directs this bitter portrait of contemporary Italian decay in the hopes that the audience has never seen Fellini's La Dolce Vita. And he wins, considering the international acclaim. In my opinion, literally nothing in this self-congratulatory movie has not been said better and with much more depth by Fellini. What's the point?

WATCH LA DOLCE VITA INSTEAD

SNOWPIERCER (2013)

Planet Earth suffered a climatic apocalypse, and the only survivors are found in a self-sustaining train in a perennial circumnavigation of the world. Each wagon belongs to a social strata in the new society. The allegory may be be unsubtle, but it works, and the violence and plot-twists are bold and convincing. Total fun.

WATCH IT ON NETFLIX AND CALL ME WHEN YOU DO

SILENT RUNNING (1972)

I have a vivid memory of myself, elementary-school age, awe-struck and crying as an abandoned lamb at the end of this ecologist sci-fi film. I knew then this was definitely was the best movie I'd ever seen. I watched it again some 30+ years later, and I wished that had staid a memory. The acting, the script, the robots... My God. Never, ever watch again a movie you loved in your childhood without at least three glowing, professional reviews.

DON'T WATCH IT EVER AGAIN

THE LONG GOODBYE (1973)

Raymond Chandler is my spirit author, and Philip Marlowe is my epic hero. Altman does an impressive job in transposing the novel in the 70s while maintaining the romanticism and irony of the original. I loved everything about this movie except the out-of-character final scene that was not in the novel anyway. Oh, and there's Sterling Hayden, too, the best actor in the history of the world.

WATCH IT AFTER READING THE NOVEL

SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN (1954)

Film version of the Kawabata's novel (and one of my favorite books ever). It's about an aging patriarch in late-40s Japan who deals with the failing of his adult children and his conflicting emotions for his daughter-in-law. The movie is absorbing, but cannot bring itself to contemplate the abyss of fear of looming death that the novel breaks open. On a lighter note, this movie shows the most adorable (and gigantic) baby you will ever see on the screen and possibly in your life.

WATCH IT ON HULU PLUS, AND PLEASE PLEASE READ THE NOVEL

WAYNE'S WORLD (1992)

I'm treating every year since its release like the 50th anniversary, because that's how much I love this movie. A poignant tale of friendship against the pressure of independence, love, and ambition. Alice Cooper makes a cameo appereance. What can I say? They don't make movies like this anymore.

WATCH IT EVERY MONTH FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

ROSEMARY'S BABY: BEST PREGNANCY DOCUMENTARY

I know that look.

If you're reading this, it means I've just given birth to my second baby and that I'm therefore too busy/shocked/enraptured/panicked to write new content for the blog. Yes, this post is a rehash of an old one written for the Italian Dead Chef, edited just for you to let you know what I have learned about pregnancy now that I have done it twice.

The greatest revelation I had when I became a mother for the first time was that the horror in Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" does not lie in its hallucinatory and distorted representation of maternity, but in its extreme and unabashed realism. It should have been awarded an Oscar for Best Documentary. Dear future mothers, let's see how.

Rosemary's Paranoia 

Nausea, fiery and unstoppable heartburn, round ligament pain, insomnia... These are all horrendous symptoms that lead to a total sense of paranoia and hypocondria that you have to keep secret in order to conform to the stereotype of the blessed Earth Mother. The entire destiny of human civilization depends on this.

The Old Meddling Neighbors 

Immediately after you announce your pregnancy, parents and in-laws invade your life with completely unscientific and possibly life-threatening advice that is instead presented as completely valid. Castor oil? A full moon? A night of love to initiate labor?? Are you all out of your minds???

The Birth 

Surrounded by strangers who continually hail to your strength and courage with praise and sporting chants (I'm referring to the doctors, nurses, and midwives in the labor room), you can't help but wonder what their actual investment in the soon-to-be-born baby is. When you finally lay your eyes on your little screaming newborn disgustingly covered in various uterine debris, you realize you just gave birth to the Devil, but you love him/her nonetheless.

The First Days at Home 

After your first 48 hours at home with baby, you will wonder whether you will ever leave your bedroom or wear any clothing from your waist up. Your bedroom becomes a dark cave in which it is always night... the same night.

Your Partner 

As soon as you're home from the hospital, your partner receives a new career-defining project that requires late nights at work. Your family needs the money, but the truth is that your partner's soul is now ownership of Satan. Sorry.

The Cult 

In your case, the Cult is made up of friends who became parents before you. Before the birth, they reveal none of their secrets, only offering trite BS such as awesome post-partum exercises for your abs. But when you call them in tears asking them why breastfeeding is such an unbelievably painful torture, they will nonchalantly reveal to you that they went through the same thing and that for months after the birth of their baby they suffered from PTSD.

The General Atmosphere 

If you stop reading pregnancy and baby books even for a second, you realize your life feels like a Roman Polanski movie.


I'm sorry if this post is going to scare some future mothers-to-be. Please remember, pregnant readers, that this is ultimately only my personal experience.

...

Oh, whom am I kidding? You'll soon join the cult: The birth is only the initiation ritual. See you soon, my dears.


Read it in Italian: ROSEMARY'S BABY: E' tutto vero!