I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Director: Jane Schoenbrun

Cast: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Fred Durst

Have I Seen It Before: Nope. I’ve had a recent rash of catching all of the indie movies just as they are beginning to leave this year. I really need to get further ahead, although Circle’s smaller rooms do have their charms. I also need to eat less popcorn. It wouldn’t hurt to sleep more.

Did I Like It: And that should quality permeates the film, in a very strange way. The entire affair is positively Lynchian in its inability to be pinned down, and there’s at least one way to read the entire movie as if nothing other than watching some TV happened throughout the film, but for anyone who feels like the person living inside of them is different than the person everyone else sees, there’s plenty to chew on.

Normally, a film that threatens nothing happening is enough to make me turn my nose up at the whole affair, but this is different. The language the film uses is probably what interested me most. Nostalgia, and nostalgia subtly done permeates every inch of the film. From long, loving shots of a 1996 ballot (they may have only been long and loving in my own memory), high school décor blandly insisting students “carpe diem,” and VHS tapes as a way to connect with people*, this is speaking a language I understand, even if I am ultimately a guest in the conversation. This doesn’t even begin to dwell on the film’s fixation with a particular TV show languishing on the Young Adult Network, possessing an unearned reputation as “for girls,” and ultimately possessing a mythology far richer than it has any right to, without ever saying the name of the show they’re really hinting to.

*I was a little perturbed by this, as anyone knows you could have fit 6 hour-long episodes with commercials on a VHS tape, made all the worse by the realization that The Pink Opaque is a half-hour… I just now realized that the show may have been more akin to one of the Nickelodeon shows, given how cheesy it ended up being when characters sobered up and turned thirty.

Bill & Ted Face The Music (2020)

Director: Dean Parisot

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Samara Weaving, Brigette Lundy-Paine

Have I Seen it Before: No. Haven’t seen this Bill and Ted movie before. Feels nice to type that.

Did I Like It: As I type this, it’s been about two days since I watched the movie, and I can’t quite get it out of my head. That’s a good thing.

I could talk about flaws that any film might have. Some of the jokes and plot points are telegraphed. I had a feeling that Rufus’ great prophecy would have quite a bit to do with Bill (Winter) & Ted’s (Reeves) daughters after about twenty minutes. I figured Deacon (Beck Bennett) was going to be Missy’s new spouse after I heard the casting announcement.

But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the film took years to get off the ground, and I was pretty sure there for a while that it wasn’t going to happen. I love Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), and have since they were brand new. My affection for those films only grew as I did, when it became clear that the films (and their protagonists were way smarter than they first let on. This is the only film still standing in the 2020 release slate that I was looking forward to. I’m really glad that I got to watch it.

It’s genuinely, off-the-wall funny, perhaps just as much so as its predecessors. The robot charged with assassinating the great ones (played by Anthony Carrigan) is one of the nimbler comic creations in recent memory. I’d say more, but it would be ruining most of the fun for you. To not belabor the point, I’ve just mentioned the character’s name a couple of times since seeing the movie, my wife and I break out into laughter.

But this film is of a piece with the rest other films in the series in a far more profound way. I’ve always viewed the more harebrained time travel shenanigans were a metaphor for the writing process. Forgot to introduce the trash can before you needed it to get out of trouble? Just go back and put it in. Time travel is like that, and so is writing multiple drafts of something.

Here, the forward motion of the plot solidified something I knew about the creative process but puts it into stark relief. Billie and Thea try to help their Dads by going back in time and forming the greatest band in the universe to play the song that will put the universe back on track. Where to start? Jimi Hendrix (DazMann Still). Hendrix can only be convinced if his hero, Louis Armstrong (Jeremiah Craft) is brought into the mix. Armstrong brings in Mozart (Daniel Dorr). Mozart yearns to jam with Ling Lun (Sharon Gee), who ten imagines that rhythm began and end with Grom (Patty Anne Miller). The band is formed, but the Preston/Logan scions don’t think they are the genius behind the music. But they are the ones that can bring the greatest bass player in the universe, The Grim Reaper (William Sadler). They just like what they like, and they put together what worked.

But that’s all they ever needed to do. It’s all any creative person can do, really. As somebody who’s work has been dismissed a number of times as just fan fiction, I knew that, but it was nice to hear it.

I really love this movie. It is my favorite movie of 2020. Had we gotten the pleasure of a full slate of movies this year, I imagine I would still put it at number 1.