What to watch when you have the flu
Intentional Watching, The Substance, and my Letterboxd watchlist
Life is short and we spend at least a few days of every year sick, sometimes too sick to even read. Lord forbid.
It was my 43rd birthday Friday, a good reminder of time’s ceaseless entropy, and I was sick with a cold/flu, which I no doubt got via a dude from New York who sneezed on me in an embodiment workshop last week, then claimed he just had “morning allergies” when I raised my eyebrows and scooted my yoga mat away from his germ mist, but alas, it must have been too late…
So, too sick to even read a book, I spent my birthday sneezing, watching movies, and receiving angry texts from my ex-husband about how he’s turning 44—an old man now, and how I ruined the best years of his life—highlighting a great reason never to marry anyone who has a birthday around the same time as yours. He’d forgotten my birthday, and instead was just bitching about HIS birthday.
Because we all hate getting older.
Along this theme, as I lounged around on my birthday evening, I decided to watch The Substance, which I’d seen positive reviews of, and because I knew it was about aging and my other favorite theme: female rage.
What I didn’t know was that it’s also Demi Moore’s birthday in the movie. Perfect. And it was perfect. Also totally disgusting. I loved it.
Substance is what I want movies to have
In a gist—The Substance is set in the 80s (I think, somewhat nebulous era in the film) and Demi Moore’s character is a TV actress in the fitness space reminiscent of Jane Fonda, named Elizabeth Sparkle. She turns 50 and loses her job on her birthday, so she’s understandably depressed and therefore drinks a shit ton of martinis, then stumbles down a dark path involving a hot male nurse turning her onto an injectable that creates a youthful spawn from her body.
The youthful spawn, “Sue,” however, can’t coexist with her in peace and begins to drain her old, but still hot body, of any remaining youth. Moore becomes a crone almost overnight.
It’s a total beauty blood bath with gorgeous Hollywood regency interiors, lots of interesting naked bodies, twitching spandex-covered crotches, and prosthetic faces reminiscent of Cindy Sherman’s Instagram account.
Though I had to look away multiple times and cover my eyes in several scenes, it reminded me that movies can still be creative, unique, meaningful, thought-provoking, well-crafted, complex, and good. They don’t have to be derivative drivel. Highly recommend it if you can handle gore.
This essay on the film by Gabrielle also summarizes the mood excellently.
And now that I’m feeling better, I can relay to you some additional thoughts on my intentional watching practices. Because while LA burns, many parts of the country are freezing, and so you may also have the flu now, or you will have it soon, so I’ll also share the key to my intentional watching habit, so you too can avoid slop.
Intentional Watching
Intentional watching is a useful practice in an age when Netflix has declared they’re dumbing down movies so people can follow the stories without being fully focused on the story. WTF.
Will Talvin lays it out in an essay for N+1 Magazine called, Casual Viewing: Why Netflix Looks Like That.
…slipshod filmmaking works for the streaming model, since audiences at home are often barely paying attention. Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” (“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James, in Irish Wish. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.” “Fine,” he responds. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”)
One tag among Netflix’s thirty-six thousand microgenres offers a suitable name for this kind of dreck: “casual viewing.” Usually reserved for breezy network sitcoms, reality television, and nature documentaries, the category describes much of Netflix’s film catalog — movies that go down best when you’re not paying attention, or as the Hollywood Reporter recently described Atlas, a 2024 sci-fi film starring Jennifer Lopez, “another Netflix movie made to half-watch while doing laundry.” A high-gloss product that dissolves into air. Tide Pod cinema.”
Stupid, easy-to-understand movies and TV shows for the age of distraction so you can look at 10 devices and still figure out which Love is Blind love triangle is imploding.
Of course, I too sometimes binge-watch easy-to-digest YouTube, TikTok, or TV, but even then, I want it to be good. For example, in 2024, for the first time, I watched all of Big Bang Theory and all of Young Sheldon in order, and y’all, it was one of the best experiences of my entire year. Sheldon lives forever in my heart. And I am someone who usually doesn’t even like sitcoms, but I digress. Back to movies.
The crucible of my intentional watching practice is my Letterboxd movie watchlist.
I started using Letterboxd because life is short and I don’t want to waste two hours, or even one hour on a garbage movie that doesn’t deliver. So, when I hear a human I trust talking about a movie reported to be exceptional or focusing on something of extreme interest to me, I save it to my watchlist. Then, when I’m in the mood for a movie, aka too sick to read, I ignore the algorithms of Netflix or HBO Max and only watch something from my list. Then I mark it off as watched and give it a rating.
Now, I’ve made my watchlist public so you can use it too.
My Letterboxd watchlist:
I hope you enjoy my movie watchlist!
Some of the movies come from award-winning filmmakers I know in real life and from an autistic childhood friend who has gone viral on YouTube himself and who has edited viral videos for prominent public figures.
Also, I have a Master of Fine Arts degree with a focus on documentary film, so I consider my curatorial skills somewhat refined and informed.
If you watch a film off my list, let me know.
These are movies I haven’t yet watched, but I’ve heard good things about, and plan to watch. This is where I turn to when I need a good movie to escape into and enjoy.
If you’re on Letterboxd, please follow me and I’ll follow you back.
Furthermore, I didn’t realize it until recently, but Letterboxd is mostly owned by Andrew Wilkinson, who I had a prior mini-obsession with. He’s a fascinating billionaire. The site was intended to be a Goodreads for movies and I think it’s far superior to Goodreads. I wish Goodreads was more like Letterboxd. The Letterboxd UX is just better.
For something lighter than The Substance, I also rewatched Christopher Guest’s classic dog show mockumentary Best in Show this weekend, which really held up despite being 25 years old. My teen daughter and I laughed and laughed.
To see the movies I’ve watched and to read my brief reviews of them, you can also visit my Letterboxd diary, though I’ve only very recently started logging these so there aren’t as many.
And for those of you well enough to read, this heartbreakingly dystopian essay by author Colm Tóibín is the best thing I’ve read about the LA fires.
That’s all for this week as I’m still congested and not yet 100% well.
In the next installments of this Lagoon, I’ll be sharing my tips for reading more, inspired by your comments on my I read 54 books in 2024 post, and I’ll also share Part 2 of Is the Future of Death Scheduled? Then, I’m off to Mexico for the first time for a week of yoga with a dear friend of mine. You can still join us. No affiliate, I just love my friend and yoga! It’s good that I was sick now so I hopefully won’t be sick then!
Now You
What are you watching? What’s good?
Did you watch The Substance? Opinions?
I also binge-listened to The Telepathy Tapes while I was sick, which I’m still processing and feeling mixed about, but if you listened to it, please let me know your thoughts. Did you believe it? Or do you think telepathic non-verbal autistics is wishful thinking promulgated by well-meaning, desperate adults?
My television watching habits are mainly to be entertained and relax my mind. I don’t watch that often. When I am watching a series, I may watch a few days in a row, but sometimes I don’t watch it for a couple of weeks. Most recently, I watched season 6(?) of Virgin River, a sometimes sickly sweet soap opera-ish series filmed in spectacular settings in the Pacific Northwest. It has its share of drama and tension, along with some twists and dangerous drug dealers that live in a wilderness camp nearby, characters suffering from PTSD, and another from trauma after rape. It’s complicated enough to keep my interest, and even my husband’s.
But we have turned off plenty of movies or shows that we started and didn’t like at all. I nearly always watch with my husband who watches a lot more than I do. We have multiple TVs but this feeling that watching TV is an activity done with others has stayed with me from my childhood when we only had one TV. I dont usually like watching by myself. It just occurred to me that this is probably uncommon among people younger than me.
Just joined Letterboxd, will start with your feed! It is possible to find gems on Netflix / Prime but oh lordy they do make it difficult!