3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Bob Trevino Likes It

2024, Tracie Laymon (feature debut) -- download

This... this is an ugly cry movie. There is a scene in the trailer, from early in the movie, where Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferreira, Mile End Kicks) goes to see a free therapist and tells them about her life; the therapist breaks down crying, ugly crying. As part of the trailer, it set our expectations of this movie pretty well. As part of the plot, it had more weight as the therapist is a free therapist, at a local clinic, and she is new at her job -- her unprofessional reaction is understandable, as Lily sits before her, telling her story matter-of-factly, bluntly, seemingly not understanding the weight of such a life that up to now, has been, frankly, horrible. Her mom, an addict, left early in Lily's life. She was raised by her horrible father and just broke up with a guy who texted Lily as if she was his other girlfriend. And yet, Lily apologized to him. And comforts the therapist. Lily seemingly accepts her terrible place in life, but the fact she is seeing a therapist suggests she knows... something is wrong.

Bob Trevino (John Leguizamo, The Happening) is unrelated to Lily. He's the construction manager in a small contracting company and he is a push-over. He is friendless, meek and disconnected from his wife, as she lives her life in scrapbooking, involving him little. They lost a child early in their marriage, and never recovered. 

Bob Trevino (French Stewart, Girls! Girls! Girls!) is Lily's father, the horrible man who blames all his woes on Lily. He's a pensioner, constantly seeking a replacement for Lily's mother, dragging her along as a sort of demented idea of a wingman, and blaming her when his own personality torpedoes any chance he has with the ladies. 

After one particular encounter, where Lily mixes up some of his recent (ex) girlfriends with the new one, he cuts her off, stops answering her calls, doesn't answer the door and literally has security called on her. He is such a horrible person, and yet he appears to be Lily's only connection. Oh, she is friends with Daphne (Lolo Spencer, The Sex Lives of College Girls), the disabled woman she is a live-in caretaker for, but Lily doesn't acknowledge that to herself nor Daphne. Unable to get hold of her father, she looks him up on Facebook and bumps into the other Bob Trevino, sending him a friend request -- I am assuming her father has already unfriended her, and she is trying to reconnect their accounts, after all FB was where he shared all the details about his latest GF with Lily. Other Bob Trevino is unfamiliar with FB but needs connection in his life as well; so he clicks Accept almost immediately followed by a Like on one of her posts. Lily is thrilled despite understanding this is an entirely different Bob Trevino.

What follows is a vignette commentary on Social Media. Lily fills up her feed with fond recollections of her life and inane daily statements ("just had the greatest lunch!"), and Bob Likes or replies on each and every one. She loves the validation, and he likes (pun intended) the interaction with someone. He also knows she appears to need something.  Eventually they begin DMing and we observe, with more than a little cringe factor, but also ... how sweet. Bob tells his wife, explains its not like that and promises he won't give Lily any money, because its just online. Then Lily's toilet explodes and ... well, she calls him. He comes over, fixes her toilet and comments, "Shit happens...." That goes up on Facebook. 

Lily and Bob become friends, and more than a little surrogate father & daughter situation. It enables both of them to open up about their feelings about life and connection. Lily is still trying to reconnect with her real father, which when he learns on Other Bob, he tries to get something out of it -- literally asks her to ask him for money. He supports his asking by giving her an itemized list of all the spending he did to raise her. He is so horrible, but with Other Bob in the picture, she is starting to see  this, for real. Sometimes you don't know how bad a situation is until you get a whiff of a better one, or more likely, you don't acknowledge its possible until you see it in front of you.

Should I make a spoiler warning? In a movie like this, things either progress to a happy level, lessons are learned and we smile at the new path laid out before us. Or, things go horribly Late Second Act wrong.

Other Bob dies. His work has always been stressful to him and the elation he feels when he quits it, gives him a heart attack. He doesn't pass immediately, he gets a few weeks with his wife, but then a second one does him in. During this period, his phone is off, and Lily is desperate. No Likes, no contact. She goes to his house, tries to break in and is caught. Lily is losing it. But eventually she tries to move on, actually tries to improve her life, to be a person without either Bob Trevino.

One day she opens FB and sees the post on his page regarding his death from the second heart attack. Lily drives to Indiana, with Daphne whom she is now acknowledging as a proper friend, for the funeral and meets Bob's wife. They embrace, Lily is gifted a scrapbook of her and Bob's entire online history together. Jeannie (Rachel Bay Jones, George & Mandy's First Marriage), Bob's wife, could have freaked out about this weird relationship he had with this messed up stranger, but she saw it all, and saw how it changed her husband. The scrapbook is her gift to him, and to Lily. Begin ugly crying.

The movie is not the sort of thing I normally watch, but it would have been during the heavy days of That Guy, when I was moved more by stories being told, by lives being capture, than by Big Drama and Amazing Situations. This is most definitely melodramatic sentimentality, with more than a little cringe, but its told heartfully. Its the expansion of a premise, and a vignette of a period in a person's life, which quite frankly, are what all movies are -- just moments in long lives. 

Unless you are watching a biopic or a historical drama over a longer period.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): American Sweatshop

2025, Uta Briesewitz (TV shows including Stranger Things, The Pitt) -- download

The Internet is full of vile, vitriolic, horrible shit. It always has been. It just seems that more, of late, is being thrown in our face. Part of the reason for that is that the platforms that dominate the Internet now, primarily Social Media, are shying away from proper content moderation. What is "proper" you ask? Valuing humans over dollars, if you ask me.

At the time of writing this, social media is buzzing with the latest example of how horrible people, and in particular, men can be. A porn website exists, upon it was a chat forum where men discussed the topic of drugging and raping their partners. CNN did a story investigating the site and its content. Social Media has gone wild and is more focused on the hyperbole of both sides of the conversation, rather than just addressing exactly how horrible the activity is. The conversation on the actual topic is derailed by hype & outrage because the latter gets clicks, views and impressions. 

Daisy (Lili Reinhart, Riverdale) works at Paladin, a YouTube analog, in the role of content moderation. Its a shit job, but someone has to do it. She's an aimless soul that abandoned becoming a nurse. She works with other similarly aimless souls, some more unhinged than others. Then she sees a video of a woman being nailed to a board. "Fake! Special Effects! Kink!" everyone decries. But Daisy believes it is real and she becomes obsessed with it, and begins to spiral.

I expected this to be a standard thriller, one where she sleuths her way to the truth of the video and its even more horrible than she could conceive. It would end in her confronting the maker, probably in a violent climax. Or a twist. So, it does end with her confronting someone connected to the video, but not in the way I expected.

The movie more so focuses on the effect it has on Daisy, and all of it is negative. Her company wants her to move on. Her friends don't believe it can be real. But she cannot get it out of her head. She tries alcohol & sex to escape, but only finds more anger & violence -- this time, from her. She tries researching the video and its creators, and is sent down a misleading rabbit hole. Nothing is working out, nothing is dismissing it from her mind. Again, another movie would have this as a brief act, and eventually leading to her gearing-up and doing something about it. But we get more a character study and a commentary on the impact not only this "content" has on its victims but also the way our generally apathetic approach to its existence makes us complicit.

That said, I guess I have to lump myself into the complicit because I just see it, frown and turn away, but don't do anything. And I wonder, what is there to do.

Daisy does something. The final bit of the final act does kind of turn things around, ending with Daisy's fourth-wall breaking stare at us, a challenge to follow her path.

31 Days of Halloween: Grimcutty

2022, John Ross (Freaky Faron) -- Disney

I have an urge to watch a bunch of movies where people either summon a creature of legend (e.g. bloody mary, moth man, etc.) or at the very least get mixed up in an urban legend. Surprisingly this movie mixed up that aspect with parental "tiktok challenge" panics, not unlike the Satanic Panic of the 80s, but with more tangible results, i.e. they actually do summon.... something.

Asha Chaudry (Sara Wolfkind, Love All You Have Left) wants to a social media star, an "influencer", but doesn't really have a passion to sell to the world. Currently she is trying her hand at ASMR videos, which her parents don't get, and I am not sure she really gets either.

Of note, I am irrationally annoyed by ASMR. It is supposed to be an almost hypnotic effect created by whispering and soft scratching noises often accompanied by woo-woo imagery. I once spent a few weeks reading about it, trying it out, listening & watching, as so many people claim it is a good relaxation method. I just came away  in my usual Old Man Yelling at Clouds state, and one might claim, it had the opposite affect on me, in that it just makes me fucking pissed off whenever the topic comes up.

Then her parents hear about a "challenge" going around. Her father Amir (Usman Ally, A Series of Unfortunate Events) and another father, while they should be listening to Asha's brother quite skillfully play light jazz, end up discussing this challenge that they heard from a friend who heard from a friend. An image appears on the screen and soon kids are being asked to cut themselves, or worse. Nobody knows the origin or has ever seen the actual video, but they are still freaking out. Because, that is how this bullshit goes. Half the kids hearing about it are going to think their parents are idiots for believing it exists. The other half are going to actually try it, whether it exists or not, because they are the fucking idiots.

And then Asha actually sees the Grimcutty. Its a freaky tall, skinny creature with Cheshire Cat grin and shark teeth and white skin and a big knife. As it approaches, it tries to cut you, but anyone else will see you trying to cut yourself. Parents are panicking and trying to hide all their children's electronic devices, but its hitting the town like an epidemic. Asha is incensed, and needs to figure it out, but not because a creature is actually hurting things, but because she wants her toys back. OK, her motivations are somewhat unselfish once she sees how many of her friends it is affecting.

But she is desperate to create some sort of online identity for herself. The movie has a lot of fun playing both sides of the fence on this. Parents overreact, but kids do the stupidest shit just to be considered cool. TikTok is fucking malevolent and Mommy Bloggers can be downright evil influences. Eventually they trace the hysteria back to one such Mommy Blogger (Alona Tal, Supernatural), whose kid was the first victim. I am sure they leave the origin unexplained so they can have a followup "origin" movie, but suffice it to say that they learn enough from the encounter with the blogger and her son, to connect it to the hysteria the parents are experiencing.

At this point, Dad has gone off the deep end. The more amped up he gets, the worse and more frequent the Grimcutty appearances are. Mom (Shannyn Sossamon, A Knight's Tale) has begun to understand but its not until Dad sees Asha floating aloft in the air (held up by Grimcutty as it strangles her) that he finally believes something beyond the hysteria is going on, and sees his tie to it.

While there was a tenuous reason for this emergence of a panic induced creature, only seen by children, I did enjoy the execution of the story, and the creature itself was creepy AF.