Unwindin: Life Update and Movie Reviews

I'm tempted to say I didn't get anything done this week, but that just isn't true. I finished a fair amount of tasks, but they weren’t the things I usually accomplish. Didn't get much reading done, but I had an interview last Wednesday. (I’ll keep you posted on that, here’s hoping.) I feel like I’m focusing in different directions and that isn't exactly a bad thing. After all, at the end of May I set some goals that were bound to push me out of my comfort zone. 

I really hope that means I’ll be able to read as much as I am. The book club I’m in is helping (his guys, if you read this) but I’ve recently found myself refocusing on watching movies. I attribute this to the workshop I’m taking with a friend on critical theory for film, television and (most importantly) literature. It’s early days in the shop yet, but I can feel my brain slowly rewiring to appreciate media in a new light. That’s why I’m taking the workshop after all, and I really. In the past couple of years I’ve felt my attention span drop precipitously, and I wanted to take this class as a way to combat the urge to second screen TV, or to grow my attention span for reading. I like audiobooks, but I really need to get back to reading books and e books on my own. 

So here’s to that. I’m getting back into movies with another friend, for similar reasons. I want to regain my appreciation for film that used to have. That’s honestly why I’m looking forward to watching The Odyssey next weekend. I love going to the movies. 

The last movie I saw in theaters was The Death of Robin Hood. Interesting movie; consider this a mini-review. I’ll start out by saying that this film had the worst marketing campaign for what it actually ended up being. Watching the trailers, you’d imagine that this film would be a action-heavy, John Wick-style thriller with a cynical edge. The trailers and posters boasted incredible violence and the tagline “HE WAS NO HERO” so I wasn’t expecting much. 

I was tricked. You see, I was informed by a friend that some of the original Robin Hood legends didn’t really have the folk heroism that is ubiquitously associated with the character now. I haven’t read them, I probably should. But that frame’s the movie’s take on Robin Hood less as cynical revisionism and more... depressingly real? 

The story starts with Robin Hood as an outlaw, and a particularly brutal one at that. After being nigh-mortally wounded while helping his friend John Little take revenge on the people who chased him from his farm, Robin is left in the care of a mysterious prioress at an isolated abbey, and must contend with his mortality and his violent past. Yeah, that premise isn’t as cynical as it seems. Honestly, it more resembles an Igmar Bergman movie than action thriller with it’s hallucinatory dream sequences, existentialist themes of death, redemption and forgiveness, and I don’t say that lightly. It’s less allegorical than an Igmar Bergman film, certainly paced like one, but there are a few interesting moments of symbolism. 

I say it’s paced like a Bergman film and that might be it’s biggest fault for some audiences. It’s seriously slow. That’s both good and bad to my mind. I appreciate the intensity behind the deliberate pace but sometimes you’d wish some scenes would move faster. For instance, the opening fight scenes are long takes, drawing out the blood and viscera in a really uncomfortable way. That works, it’s an effective way to Glue your audience to their seats. However, the pace of a second battle a short while later is so languid you almost don’t even know tension is building until the shocking climax. (Side note, this movie has the best hand-mangling scene ever filmed, for whatever THAT’S worth.) So when the story transitions the Abbey, it ends up feeling like it’s running at the same pace. That’s fine for the later half of the movie, building tension as several characters cross paths through blood feuds and the hand of fate. You might wish the climax would pick up the pace a little, but I thought it was appropriate. 

Ultimately, it’s a good movie to watch and mull over your own mortality (in a good way.) The cast is great; Bill Skarsgård, Murray Bartlett, Noah Jupe and Faith Delaney are an excellent supporting cast. Hugh Jackman is a decent Robin Hood, brimming with both simmering anger and weary regret. Jodie Comer delivers a wonderful exercise in restrained anger as the Abbey’s Prioress, Robin’s foil for most of the movie. 

I think The Death of Robin Hood is still in theaters somewhere. Highly recommend. 

Why Do I Write?

Didn't make a post last week, sorry. I had been working on this post for a while, and it just didn't come together in time. 

Anyways, this is the sequel to the post I made about George Orwell a few weeks back. Enjoy. 

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The one issue I have with questioning why I write is I feel almost too young to answer. 

If I were to track my development as a writer, I would reproduce a similar path to authors who discovered the magic of language while in school. The only significant difference is my parents decided that homeschooling was the best education for me and my siblings. In first grade we had memory / literacy exercises that consisted of hearing bible stories and then retelling them, with the goal being (I suppose) to improve memory, attention spans, diction and handwriting. But in these exercises I always found myself adding small creative sparks whenever the story I had heard didn’t seem complete. After all, Genesis doesn’t explain how long it took Noah to herd animals onto the ark, and Daniel needed to do something while he was in the lion’s den. These lacking details seemed grievous oversights to my young mind, and I filled in the gaps rather gleefully. 

My Mother swears these incidents are where she knew that I would end up a writer, and I can’t disagree. After all, this is where I first encountered storytelling on a personal level. These exercises inducted me into the grand tradition of oral storytelling at a very amateur level. Rather fitting as the books of the bible were no doubt handed down through oral tradition before being formally written. 

In the following years I enjoyed reading and creative writing exercises much more than factual writing. I never really liked writing essays or researching papers, at least not until later in high school when I began to feel the euphoria of completing a paper for its own sake, not just for the temporary high of completing an assignment. I was genuinely surprised when that euphoria stuck around as I entered college, and several long research papers I finished added to that high. In time I chose Journalism as a major as it forced me to write on a regular basis and still maintain a creative verve to my writing. 

That brings me, more or less, to the modern day. At this stage in my career I haven’t produced much, a handful of essays, a few short stories worth a damn and two novels no one will ever read. But, the pull of storytelling still looms large, and I still call myself a writer. 

So much for my development into a writer. I still have yet to answer the question “Why do I write?” 

In sitting down to throw some ideas together for this essay, I wondered exactly how common the impulse to be a writer is. I would think that most people have had the desire to capture something they’ve lived through, be that the emotions after a brilliant sunset, or a funny conversation between friends, or to throw ideas wildly together in hopes of producing 350 pages of text. And then I wonder, if most people have had those impulses but don’t act on them, how many have felt the call of the pen and been compelled to try again and again? 

Being a writer isn’t about putting words together into rough shape and calling it a day, after all. It’s about getting the right words in the right order, which requires scrupulous drafting and redrafting and then coming back for seconds, thirds and fourths. For those who haven’t had the call, that sounds either psychotic, masochistic, or plain old difficult. 

And yet, you don’t need me to point out the thousands of people the world over, the millions of people through history, and the billions of books, scripts, essays, pamphlets, comics and games that these lucky few million have produced. They can’t all be masochists. 

Ask yourself right now why you do anything, and you’ll probably come up with a variety of good reasons for your actions. But I would wager you might struggle to find a single satisfactory motivation for why you do what you do. For instance, George Orwell outlined four primary motivations for writers in his essay “Why I Write1”; the Egotistical impulse, the Aesthetic impulse, the Historical impulse and the Political impulse. When I ask myself “Why do I write?” I can think of a few more responses: (Being of a fanciful bent, I’ve applied George Orwell’s four motivations to each of my responses in parentheticals.)

• I don’t know what else to do with myself (Ego / Historical)
• Because I want to see my name in print (Ego)
• I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else  (Ego / Historical)
• I see it as a form of meditation or prayer (Aesthetic / Historical)
• It’s my only form of control over an uncaring and chaotic world, and I want to effect change on that world. (Political)
• For the sheer, unadulterated pleasure I take in the magic of creation (Ego / Aesthetic)
• Because I am lonely (Ego)
• Because it’s what I believe I should do (Ego)
• Because I love language and want to explore it’s possibilities (Aesthetic)
• Because I am fanciful and want others to share in my delusions (Ego / Historical)
• Because I am a hopeless romantic and want others to share in my joy (Ego / Aesthetic)
• Because I am neither theologian nor scientist (Aesthetic / Historical / Political)
• Because the written word is intrinsic to my nature (Aesthetic)
• Because I resent the crass simulacrum of creativity which are being pushed by creatively-bankrupt, profit-driven, emotionally-stunted automata through large language models (Aesthetic / Historical / Political)
• Fictions excite me, and I want to find the truth inside of fiction (Aesthetic / Historical / Political)
• Because there is truth and validity to my perspective on the universe we all share, and I must express that truth or perish.  (Aesthetic / Historical / Political)

Decent responses, perhaps, but you’ll note precious few good reasons and hardly anything you’d call an intrinsic motivation, save perhaps the penultimate response.

Perhaps a reason is all I need, but something in me rebels at that idea. I feel the call of writing like a primal, bodily urge, surely no reason is sufficient to explain that... 

I am struck with an incongruity in Orwell’s analysis. Logical and clear as it is, he appears to take his role as a writer as a given, declaring from his first paragraph, “From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer.” And yet, when he addresses his motives, he never really asks why he knew he should be a writer, merely relating his development as a writer from child to adult as if it were innate to him. Perhaps it was. 

I have the same fault; from this essay you could take it as read that I knew I would be a writer merely for inventing details while retelling Bible stories. That is obviously insufficient, and I know my innate desires pull me specifically to storytelling. I could tell stories in any number of art forms - photography, filmmaking, sculpting or architecture - but I am not compelled to any of these as strongly as I am to writing. So, I must ask myself again, why am I a writer? 

Let’s ask something else first. What is writing? 

Is it a functional exercise of language? The necessary action of thoughtful communication? Is it a form of self-reflection? The creation of identity? The exercise of will upon consciousness? The recording of human experience and emotion? Is it sensory seduction and instruction? Is it literal magic, as some authors have suggested? Is it the alchemical breakdown of reality, parsing what we see until we can understand, describe and use that to create something new? 

Yes. Yes to all of the above. 

What, then, is a writer? I feel that answer is somewhat simpler. A writer is someone who sits their ass at a desk and strings words together to purposefully engage with reality. It is insanity, and only sufficient motivation for this insanity is pure love of the craft. 

Quite simply, I love writing, and if that sounds insufficient, well, I just don’t have a better response. Does that make me insane? Maybe. Does that make me a masochist? God only knows. All I know is I have plenty of reasons to tell stories, but for a reason I don’t yet know, I love language, and I love writing. I don’t think there needs to be a deeper reason than that. 

And if there does… I guess I’ll have to keep writing to figure it out.

Sources: 

Orwell, George. “Why I Write.” The Orwell Foundation, Gangrel, 1946, www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/. Accessed 20 June 2026 

A Review of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die

Gore Verbinski is one of my favorite filmmakers, not just for his considerable talent, but for his creative spark, his not-so-subtle themes and pure sense of fun that runs through his movies. His most recognizable efforts would be the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, which I would argue are his most subtle movies, which, of course, still has his messages hammered into your face with a sledgehammer. (Seriously, the first three POTC movies are the most anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist movies I’ve ever seen. I’m not joking; the overarching villains are the British empire and the East India Trading Company, who are defeated by a loose confederation of anarchistic pirates from a diverse set of nations.) Even his less than perfect movies, like A Cure for Wellness and the Lone Ranger, both of which suffered from plotting issues and casting problems respectively, are nevertheless a certain amount of fun. 

But imagine Gore Verbinski directed a movie where decided to take his gloves off. Imagine a movie where an AI is the villain who has enslaved humanity through social media slop. Imagine said movie takes place in a world where violence is so widespread, school shooting are commonplace and parents treat it like just another Tuesday. Well you don’t have to imagine that movie because it exists, Gore Verbinski’s effort from last year, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. It’s set in a world like I just described, but it’s main plot is about a weird-looking man in a plastic raincoat holding a diner hostage while he selects a group of people who will help him destroy an AI that will eventually enslave humanity. Oh, and he claims to be from the future. 

Strap the hell in. 

Theatrical release poster, credit to the artist and Briarcliff Entertainment

Sam Rockwell plays the man from the future, adding another excellent performance to his career. Supporting roles are played by Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz and Juno Temple, who are all superb. I also want to shout out screenwriter Matthew Robinson, from  what I can tell this project developed from a story centered on Michael Peña’s character into the sci-fi flick it ended up as.

I obviously like this movie. It entered my radar earlier this year, where I was surprised to hear it had been released last year, and more or less slipped under the radar, grossing only $9Mil on a $20Mil budget. Well, it’s currently streaming on Hulu and available for rent, so go ahead and watch it. Seriously, don’t keep reading me. Spend an afternoon with it, absorb its surprisingly nuanced take on AI. Yeah, that was the greatest surprise in this movie. While it’s very much opposed to AI, it still recognizes it’s emergence as force in the tech industry, calling for appropriate safeguards. Of course, it later subverts this take and calls for AI’s utter destruction and human distancing from all forms of technology, so make of that what you will.

Point is, it’s a laugh riot. It’s a little haphazard with it’s plot, but it’s ultimately a emotionally effective story about remaining human. If we can. 

Notes on “Why I Write” by George Orwell

I’m working on an essay for a writers group I’m in. The essay comes from a prompt based off George Orwell’s article “Why I Write.” I won’t share my opinions on why I personally write just yet as I hope to share this with you once it’s done. But I did want to share some comments I’ve found interesting about Orwell’s essay. 

Eric Arthur Blair; aka George Orwell. I do not own this picture     

First note: “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a writer.” (Push in on Eric Blair’s face, cue Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches.”)

I think a lot of people who call themselves writers find the desire to write early in their youth. Whether it’s an attraction to storytelling, or the desire to replicate the books they read or some innate movement they can’t explain. Orwell notes that, with hard work, a load of reading, and an insane amount of luck, they might just be able to become writers professionally. The most interesting note I can relate here is Orwell’s description of the practice and pleasure he put into writing once he realized that his early attempts at stories were merely a long series of descriptions. He found words to be impressive on their own once he read Paradise Lost. I can relate somewhat; I read Paradise Lost when I had already discovered the pleasure of words, but I do remember being in High School and enjoying a Shakespeare play (I think Henry V) purely on account of the language. I don’t think this was the exact moment I realized I wanted to be a writer, that I'm still discerning, but it certainly helped.

Second note: Death and Motivations of the Author 

Orwell believed understanding an author’s background is essential to understanding their motivations. Note that he distinguishes between understanding motives and understanding their work. I believe in the concept of Death of the Author, that is, the idea that an artist isn’t the final authority on their own work. I think Orwell might agree with that concept, even if his own idea of artistry is to render a story so plainly that it cannot be misunderstood. In any event, I completely agree with his assessment of understanding an artist’s background before you judge their work. If nothing else, it can help you remove them entirely from their art - if necessary. 

Third Note: Do We All Share These Same Impulses? 

This is the meat of the essay. Orwell offers four main motivations that he claims most authors share - in varying degrees over time. 

1) Egoism: the “Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one.” 

• He’s right. I know my ego needs stroking off every now and then, BUT very importantly, Orwell argues that this isn’t mere selfishness, and more human nature. It’s an extremely individualistic outlook, but if you write for the public benefit, surely then it’s an altruistic outlook as well. 

2) Aesthetics: The “Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.”

• It’s not just the beauty of words arranged into a particular order to craft a perfect sentence; it’s the way they sound in your head and the images your imagination creates. This is, in a nutshell, why audio books count as reading. The beauty of words arranged in perfect order on paper cannot be understated, but words have audible component as well. Hearing a word and seeing a word might engage different parts of the brain, but the effect, from the base transmission of information to lyrical delights, are the same. 

3) Historical impulse: The “Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”

• The shortest motivation on the list, and arguably the most hard to claim. It’s been my personal experience that no writer sits down to write saying “I will write the Great American / British / French / Russian / other national identity novel.” No, writers sit down to write because they have an idea, some itch they much scratch, some message they want to convey. It’s only afterwards that a novel or a story is seen as historically significant. 

4) Political: The “Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.” 

• Coming as no surprise for anyone who’s remotely familiar with his work, Orwell identifies most strongly with this category. (He subsequently spends the rest of his article examining what it means to be a political writer.) An important note he shares is that all art is in some way political, and even saying that a book shouldn’t have a political angle is a political idea. 

Fourth Note: That’s all I’ve got. Further ideas will be shared in my personal “Why I Write” Essay

Oh, btw, all quotes in note 3 came from Orwell's essay linked above. I absolutely do not own them. 

Here We Are Again

Surprising even myself, I don’t have a lot to say this week. I didn’t read all that much, didn’t watch all that much, didn’t play anything new. So I guess this is a life update post. 

Most significantly I’ve had an interview with my local library that I’m waiting to hear back on. I’m a pretty close fit for the job so I’m really eager for it. With any luck that’ll go my way. 

I’m starting to get out a little more, looking for some fun spaces around my new place. Not many, as it turns out, but there’s a few places not too far that I can look into. 

I’ve recently decided to change up my diet, focusing more on chicken, salads and beans as primary sources of nutrition. I’m also trying to be more active, swimming and walking more. 

Not much else has happened. Life continues. Be well. 

Those We Lost in the Cracks Between

I want to encourage you to go and see the movie I’m sorta reviewing here today. The Backrooms, directed by newcomer Kane Parsons, is a spin-off / soft adaptation of a web series Parsons created when he was 16. If you’re not aware of this series, it’s based on a creepypasta that’s been circulating the internet since 2019 when a 4chan user posted a picture of a yellow-wallpapered room, (below) and included the following caption: 

“If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in.

God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you”

— Anonymous, 4chan (May 13, 2019)

(neither image or quote is mine.)

It’s a vibe as uncanny as Twin Peak’s Red Room, or the Overlook Hotel from the Shining, pure uncanny valley, distilled into one image.

I said I want to encourage you to see this movie, but I really don’t want to tell you too much about it. I was aware of the original post and had seen a few episodes of the webseries, but I wasn’t all that involved in the community that had been built up around it. This was, fortunately, the right state of mind to enjoy the movie. 

I’m certain die hard fans of the series would appreciate the movie on a deeper level than I did, but as I understand it, the story is largely standalone. Plot wise, it’s about a failing furniture salesman and his small circle of friends who stumble across a break in reality that leads to the backrooms... and the monsters that dwell inside. 

Saying anymore wouldn’t ... spoil the story per se, it’s pretty straight forward. But talking about the plot would ruin the effect that Kane Parsons successfully creates. People have complained about the pacing, without seeming to understand that the slow pace is essential to the dread growing in the movie. Parsons lets the story unfold deliberately, between long shots of the backrooms liminal spaces, and perfectly chosen edits switching to another shot. Fans of the webseries will be glad to know that the found footage effect from the series makes a return, successfully adding a direct POV to the series that really adds to the overall creepy effect. In other words, based purely on visuals alone, this is the single most anxiety inducing horror movie I’ve seen in a long time.

Of course, visuals don’t carry the story alone. Characters and performance help, and thank god for our leads Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. I really want to dig into their dynamic, and explore the way that liminality, loneliness and isolation are used thematically in their arcs, but again, saying too much will ruin the effect. I will say this; these characters broken by trauma regarding families and the ordinary failures of life. Scenes of the movie slowly reveal the isolation they feel, and their reactions to the Backrooms are the exact opposite of each other, one with horror, and one with a slow, accepting, descent into insanity.

It’s a creepy movie. I’ve mentioned Twin Peaks and The Shining, but they’re not really comparable. After watching the movie, I’ve gone back to the original series and frankly, I don’t think those are comparable either. As a movie it’s a unique encapsulation of dread, where I loved every second.  

Looking Forward

My cosmic odometer ticked over another year this past week, and I’m starting to feel my age. (27, if you’re asking.) Not that I’m getting too old to do things I still find fun.  Most of the tings I fund fun don’t take me out of my bedroom. But I am getting the urge to go out and do other things, to find more kinds of fun outside of my room. Because, I won’t lie, I kinda think I’m trapped there. despite the obvious external pressures of political realities, economic turmoil, and mental health problems I really do want to try to spend this next year of my life living like I never have before. 

The last 26 years have been... well troubling in retrospect. Not totally, of course. Highs and lows abound like in anyone’s life. But in the last six years I’ve had the clarity of mind to really questions what I had been taught, and try to learn from past experiences. This has been traumatic, and has prompted a greater shift in perspective on my life, as can be imagined. I don’t want to get into too many of the gory details of the past, but suffice to say that I’ve taken the last 6 years to discover who I really am. From there, I’ve tried to recoup myself and understand who I am and where I’m going. And now, after turning 27, I guess that I really don’t know where I’m going and what I’m doing. But I do know this: I’m tired of recouping. 

It’s time to build. I really, really want to spend this next year building something of my life. I don’t know what I’ll build, but I’m done coasting. I’ve got a few goals I want to accomplish, but I won’t beat myself up if I don’t finish them after a year. They’re goals, not end-all be-all achievements. 

[] I want to put some serious work into a piece of long creative writing. A novel or novella would be good. 

[] I want to read more, and try to break my YouTube Addiction. 

[] I want to intentionally seek out more friendships, work relationships

[] I want to try for some kind of romance. 

[] I want to take my mental and physical health much more seriously this year. 

[] I want to find a more creatively fulfilling job. 

[] I want to be kinder to myself and learn to build off the love for myself I’ve clawed back. 

Last year I seriously thought about giving up celebrating my birthday. After all I was far from home, in a new town, and trying to self-regulate my lifestyle. I’m happy to say that I’m going to continue celebrating my birthday (and hey, with a long weekend, I still am) because not celebrating is too close to real life. 

Here’s to another year! Come hell or high water, I’m going to make it a good one.