I had seen Velvet Goldmine at least once before Elements because I am a huge fan of David Bowie and other glam rock icons like Iggy Pop and Marc Bolan. I was a huge fan of 70’s to 80’s rock n’ roll and I remember being able to point out almost every reference in Velvet Goldmine. Brian Slade is supposed to be a loose representation of David Bowie and a bit of Marc Bolan while Curt Wild is supposed to be Iggy Pop.

Rewatching, I somehow had a better understanding of the main character, Arthur Stuart played by Christian Bale. I felt as though maybe Arthur Stuart was probably that kid, William from Almost Famous but all grown up. It was once upon a time when little Arthur had been a huge fan of pop icon Brian Slade and Curt Wild but he’d only knew them through their music and interviews. Becoming a journalist, this film explores his fantasies as being a part of the Brian Slade and Curt Wild’s narrative. When I was in high school, I used to also really have a huge crush on David Bowie and though, I am not as noisy about how much I love David Bowie, I still keep a poster of him somewhere in my room. The moment I hear any Bowie song anywhere, I can pinpoint which album and how the music video went. Somehow it’s still in my psyche no matter what. In Velvet Goldmine, apart from it being a biography of this Brian Slade, I think it really explores more the fanatics fans of a rockstar.

It was easy to kind of ignore Arthur the first time I watched it because I only wanted to see this caricature Bowie in Brian Slade but this second time, I developed a kind of endearment for Arthur. Him, being a journalist, gave him this chance to reconnect with his past passions which he was also terrorized for liking from his parents to the sales people in the vinyl record shop. This film explores a lot about homsexual awakening. Back in the 70’s, it was a very huge deal to come out as being gay and there was a lot of discrimination to gay people. Brian Slade represented that homosexual awakening to Arthur and what Arthur had to kind of leave behind as he grew up. While the film is also a biography of Brian Slade, we see how Arthur becomes involved in this historical retelling of Brian Slade and becomes a part of the narrative, much so, it gets intertwined sometimes with his past and Arthur relives his life the lives of these rockstars he’s always admired from afar. At some points, I get lost between wondering if Arthur recalls his memories or if it’s based on his actual experience. When you’re a fan, it is so easy to dream of your favorite stars but I guess, if you’re a fan and you’re investigating about them, you can get so immersed. There’s a part where Arthur becomes roommates with the drag queens that Brian Slade first watched when he was starting up his act. There is also a scene where Arthur and Kurt Wild kiss on a rooftop so when Arthur meets Kurt in this dingy cafeteria, it’s almost as if they have already met.

The film is able to blur the lines between imagination and reality so well that me as an audience can get lost as well. The editing is so nonlinear that it jumps from the past to the present but everything is seen through the perspective of Arthur. The whole world is a mix of reality and fantasy so it is easy to get lost in it and not be able to distinguish the different anymore. It also felt like the entire thing was one really long music video. Not simply because of the film being about music stars but because it was edited so well for each scene to fit the music and really integrate what was happening to the soundtrack. I really loved the build up of when Kurt Wild and Brian Slade had started to form a romance and Satellite of Love by David Bowie was playing as the soundtrack. Kurt and Brian were in a car and they were spinning in a  studio while it was intercut with them hanging out somewhere. I love how this film is also not afraid to put in some campy editing like when Brian Slade started to develop a crush on Kurt Wild, some hearts glimmered in his eyes like a cartoon.

The whole thing really felt like a homage to the 70’s because of the fantastical, no consequence, hedonistic kind of attitude and how everything eventually falls apart because of this. For fans of that era like Arthur, revisiting this obsession leads back into a spiral of obsessions, allowing him to actually meet his idols. I still don’t know if Arthur really kissed Kurt and if he really did live with the drag queens. I might need to rewatch it again to find out but if it is reality or fantasy, I think I would also rather live in the fantasy, like Arthur.  

Convenience stores are one of the best places to kind of just doze off and look at different human beings coming all at different times, total strangers come in and out. One time, I was in a convenience store somewhere deep in Manila. I had gotten lost and the most familiar thing in that area was the 7/11 in the corner street so while ordering a Grab to get home, I decided to chill around and eat something first. Beside me, a lady with one eye that had no pupil was talking to another a lady and told her that if she did not give her money by tonight, she would have her sent away. I got kind of scared and I imagined that the lady with the strange eyes was some kind of drug lord den kingpin. It was exciting but scary and despite just having to hear a snippet of their conversation, I had all these thoughts. Maybe I just heard things out of context but I felt as though I personally knew what was happening. This same feeling that I had in that ominous 7/11 convenience store I could compare to what I felt while watching the Futureless Things (2014) directed by Kim Kyung-Mook.

Futureless Things was set in one convenient stores showing different vignettes of each time in and time outs of every employee. I would think that it was the convenience store customer that would see the most to each’s trip to a convenience store but it is actually the employees who get to see everything. The film did make me think about how maybe the strangest people could come in at the deadest hours? Or perhaps every hour, as the film showed. It is interesting how with each employee, even if you hardly knew any background story about them, their interactions with the customers would bring out so much about their life. One particular scene that really brought this out was the woman from North Korea. A racist creep was trying to disturb her and insulted her about being from North Korea and it came to a point she was so angry and told the man off. I felt the stress in her eyes and how she was shaking as she put on her nail polish. It talked so much about how she was just trying to live a normal life in South Korea like everyone else but she had this horrible discriminative customer making it hard for her to live in peace as someone who got to escape. While it started off as a kind of casual scene, it turned out to be really political.

Aside from bringing out a lot of character in each employee, the film had a really lovely way of bringing out social issues in modern society. Since the structure was episodic, each episode had some kind of message to bring which all kind of always led back to some inconvenience. I feel it was intentional for the film to be set in a convenience store and show the irony of how actually inconvenient it is, especially for the people who manage a store to answer short inconveniences of each person that store served. I remember the actor who wanted to make it to his audition but he could not because of a religious man trying to pray for his lotto ticket to be the winning one. While the employee is tied down to his job, he has bigger dreams of making it big as an actor, following his passion but is held back because of having to attend to delusional customers. To me, it could be they were both delusional. The employee, having dreams but not being very responsible about it and setting his audition schedule during his work hours while a man uses prayer to win a lottery ticket. It is not faith or luck that bring out success in this world, we are told by the film.

As the clock strikes night time, it ends with a kind of sad picture of the owner of the convenience store committing suicide and business men or the government giving him sanctions for what he did. I think the whole movie kind of was a one big picture of the problems of the Korean society and what unjust systems there are.

The place itself felt like a character in itself because of how much had happened there and was only set in that one place. When the convenience store would not open, piles and piles of people just stood outside and it looked like a funeral for store. They were not mourning for the people inside that might have lost their jobs or the possible death of someone but just because they faced a minor inconvenience.

For what seems to be a really comedic play on what is in a convenience store, it came to be a really good satire piece and critique on the injustices in Korean society without pointing a finger directly on its audience for not paying attention to what is happening around us. I think it takes a lot to be able to pull off something political without being extremely up in your face about it and still somehow make it fun to watch. It is incredible how this film tricked us even at the beginning that it was going to be a cute little love story with the typical K-drama type music at the beginning and ended up to be something of a heavy critique on society. I applaud this film. The cinematography was so clean and it looked like a commercial with all of the clear as day lighting but in the end, it left me feeling dark after.

P.S. Not even that cute dance number at the end made me feel better.

H.P. Lovecraft has made some of my favourite stories of all time. He also pioneered the genre of horror stories that I find to be one of the scariest; Cosmic Horror. He scared the world with the idea that we are insignificant nothings in a much world ruled by much much more powerful beings that don’t even know we exist. The idea of an incomprehensible being with power we can’t comprehend is something I find genuinely terrifying. The Endless is a film that uses this idea to create the uneasiness and tension that plagues the characters. This is why I enjoyed the movie so much. I like being scared.

The Endless is a movie that focuses around a camp of people subject to the power of an unseen force and the two brothers that decide to return to it. The story focuses on the bond the two brothers have and how this monstrous force tests their relationship. The two brothers, Aaron and Justin, come back to a camp they escaped years ago to find out what life there was truly like. There, they discover a hidden horror that asserts its will over the camp by the lake. The story is well told and there are a lot of moments that really freaked me out. The scares (if you can call them that) were probably what I enjoyed most about the plot. I really love stuff that creeps me out and this film succeeded multiple times on making me feel uneasy. Everything from the way the characters speak about the camp, to the lighting, and even the music all served their purpose in making me feel like something was terribly wrong about the happy campers. The many forced smiles and weird “rituals” definitely helped in this area. The entire time I felt like I was watching a broken jack-in-the-box, waiting for something to pop out only for it to never come.  The story and setting truly made me feel uneasy which is something that has become harder to do recently, but I appreciate this movie in actually succeeding.

 I liked the characters in the movie, particularly the racist man Shitty Carl, but I think it was the malevolent force that kept me watching the most. If it can be considered a character, then it definitely had my favourite scenes. All the freaky monster things that happened were all genuinely scary or creepy to me. My favourites were probably the tug of war with the moon and the 3 second loop in the tent. These were moments that really made me feel like there was something very powerful was hiding itself in the camp. When the rope became taught in darkness, I actually got goose bumps. The film lowers the audience’s guard by making an off-handed comment that someone is actually holding the rope at the other end and then stuns them by showing that supposed character standing off in the back. The 3 second tent is probably what I consider to be the most horrifying. While I didn’t get as creeped out as some of the other scenes, thinking about it later was what scared me a lot. I can’t imagine being stuck in a cycle of death that only lasts 3 seconds; the pure terror and torture of it all. These were the moments that truly made me feel scared of the camp and its people.

Overall, this movie probably scared me the most of out all the films we’ve seen. It was a nice departure from the regular movies that turn into weird stuff and I really appreciated watching it. It made the idea of being stuck in a cycle actually scary and it was fun getting scared of the different things in the camp. Now I have to be afraid of circles too.

Sorry to Bother You was the only film I wasn’t able to watch in class due to me getting the measles; so, I had to watch this movie by myself. I chose a Starbucks near my church as the place to enjoy my viewing experience while waiting for my friends. This was a very big mistake on my part. There were multiple times I had to shut my laptop screen because of a little child behind me when the crazy stuff started happening on screen. Even when my friends got there, they started filming my very animated reactions in the public setting. However, I wouldn’t say this hampered my experience at all; in fact, it probably made watching the movie even more fun and enjoyable than I had expected. It also helps that this was probably one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. Again, this movie has also served to fuel my theory about what Sir Ty intends to teach us with his freaky film endings.

This movie was, to me, one of the best we’ve seen all semester. I think I enjoyed the plot and storytelling the most. Cash’s rise from a nobody to a wealthy power caller at the cost of all his loved ones was something that personally made for a compelling story. I found Cash to be a very relatable character for a lot of the movie, especially when he was presented with his choice of bettering his own life at the cost of losing the people he cares for. I personally feel like I’ve had to make this decision many times in my life, and like Cash, I feel like I’ve made wrong choices a lot too. This was probably why I found it so compelling.

I also feel compelled to mention the subtle ways the film handled race and inequality. The “white voices” of the black characters, I felt, was an excellent way of subtly (or not so subtly I thought it was cool) implying and showing the inequality present in our world today. The way how Cash and Mr. *beep* had to only use their white voices at the power caller centre or how Detroit had to use her own white voice at her art exhibit were moments that really stood out to me. Perhaps the biggest reference to inequality was actually found in the literal work horses of the film; the “Equisapiens.” They were treated as literal slaves by Steve Lift and they even had their own mini revolution towards the end. There were many moments that stood out to me as commentary on race, but these were probably my favourite.

The freaky twist towards the end of the film was again, probably my favourite part of the story. I have begun to notice a pattern in the films Sir Ty shows us. They started fairly simple and then ramp up into some crazy shit nobody really expected. I don’t mind however, in fact I really enjoy movies like this. The twist at this movie where it sort of turned into a body horror experience was something I found to be very enjoyable. Needless to say, I was very freaked out by this part but it made it so that I couldn’t stop watching until the end. Even the twist ending with Cash actually turning into a horse man was something that really stuck in my mind long after the film ended.  It was genuinely disturbing to me and I really loved it. I’m a big fan of horror stories and the way this story kind of evolved into one was genuinely scary and amazing for me.

This was one of the films I enjoyed the most throughout the semester. Its use of compelling storytelling and freaky horror elements at the end made it so that I couldn’t stop watching. This was a movie I felt is the perfect thing to freak my friends out with, and that’s all I really need in a movie.

Repo Man felt like watching an adaptation of No Country for Old Men from the past. I’m a very big fan of the latter movie and so watching this movie and how it was different was very enjoyable for me. The concept of the MacGuffin is something that many people do not enjoy but I really enjoy watching stories based around them a lot. Things like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, the infinity stones in the Marvel Universe, the One Ring in Lord of the Rings, etc. With the MacGuffin in this movie being a different object than what I’m used to was probably the part that intrigued me the most. This movie is also the one that helped me confirm Sir Ty’s obvious fetish for movies that start normal but eventually turn into crazy things.

My favourite thing in the movie is what most of the characters over for the film’s runtime. The radioactive car was the most interesting thing in the entire movie. Whenever it came on screen, I was always tense as to what new trick or danger it would pull out. I began to think of the car as its own character; it actually became my favourite character. Among all the tricks the car pulled off, the radiation was probably the one that shocked me the most. Watching the car was the thing that kept me glued to the screen. I always love watching movies like this because finding out what happens to the MacGuffin is always the best part for me. Watching the car fly into the night sky ala Neverending Story could probably be my ultimate pay off.

The story itself was also very compelling for me. As I mentioned previously, MacGuffin stories are something I actually genuinely enjoy. I really did enjoy watching the car exchange drivers and exchange owners were something I couldn’t take my eyes off of. The mystery surrounding the car as well was something I enjoyed as well. Build up is something that is very important to me in storytelling and the way it was done in this film was very compelling to me. The way they built up the mystery around the car with all the Men in Black-esque suits and all the different parties searching for it was probably my favourite part of the movie from a narrative perspective. The finale with all parties coming together was the payoff I felt I really needed at the end of the film. Overall, I felt that the build up that the filmmakers did based around a radioactive car was excellent and probably the part I enjoyed the most (aside from the car itself).

The ending of the film itself has personally confirmed a theory I’ve had since the beginning of the semester; Sir Ty very much enjoys freaking out his students. The ending with the car flying off into space like a superhero was probably the last thing I was expecting and that’s exactly why I enjoyed it so much. I wouldn’t say it’s a twist ending in particular, but it was definitely something I was not expecting. From all the set up previously in the film, I had already placed together that it was an alien thing, but flying into space was a treat that I think everyone got to enjoy (I did at least).

Overall, I would say the movie was something I really want to show to my friends (because I also have Sir Ty’s fetish for weirdness). The way they managed to build a whole movie around a radioactive flying car was something I think I can use to freak my friends out any day.

I’m a very big fan of David Bowie; a very big fan. A lot of his music was a big part of my upbringing as a child. My dad loved playing his music over that of my mom’s and his music was a lot of different kinds of rock; glam rock also being a part of that. Needless to say, Bowie’s music ingrained itself in my head from a young age; Starman being my absolute favourite. This film made me feel like I was peering into the behind the scenes life of Ziggy Stardust himself.

The movie more or less follows the story of one Brian Slade, also known by his stage moniker “Maxwell Demon,” throughout his glam rock career. It follows what I imagined to be the dark side of the rock-star life; all of the drugs, sex, alcohol, and scandals that follow a performer. It’s apparent from the start that much of the movie is based around what I imagine to be the real life story of David Bowie himself. From the bisexuality to the alternate stage persona from space even down to the flamboyant makeup and outfits, it all seems to be linked to Bowie in some way or form. While Bowie himself has directly disapproved of the film, it’s hard not to see all the similarities between him and the character that we follow in the story. This is why the movie felt quite personal to me. David Bowie was always someone I’d admired as a performer but never actually knew much about backstage. Watching this movie felt like I was finally allowed to glimpse into what his life might have been like (even though the movie was probably wildly over exaggerated).

It shows off many of the stereotypes that we have become familiar with about the glam rock life today; the vibrant sexuality and the open use of strong narcotics. A lot of the film deals with what I personally imagined the glam rock to be life. The filmmakers truly play up the stereotype of the wild crazy rock-star life. Perhaps the biggest part of it was the sexuality. Again playing off of David Bowie, a lot of story beats were based around expressing Brian’s and the other character’s sexuality. Many characters often express having very open sexual lives which is something I really admired about the film. I personally think sexuality is something that needs to be expressed more, especially in the Philippines. Seeing the way it was portrayed here, not necessarily as a bad thing and more of as an aspect as of being a rock-star, was something I desperately needed to see in film.

The music was probably my favourite aspect of the film in general. As I said previously, my dad forced a lot of his music onto me and I eventually found my own way. The music in this film is where I felt around 2 years ago. I felt like I was going on a nostalgia trip through memories that the film created for me. From what I know, most of the music on the film was originally produced which I find incredible. The music genuinely made me feel like it was all made by a 70’s or 80’s glam rock group or idol. I really felt like I was listening to a hidden Bowie album that I was meant to hear in this exact moment in time.

The movie genuinely made me feel like I was experiencing listening to my dad’s music again, but this time at least, I was listening to it by myself. It was like watching a movie about everything I imagined about the rock-star life.  

Growing up, Japanese monster movies were always a secret passion of mine. Many people would consider me weird or strange whenever I would try to bring up the topic. Things like Ultraman and Spectreman were always things I would watch in private and never tell anyone about. The Godzilla series, however, was always one of my favourites. He was a mascot of my childhood; I can still clearly remember watching him fight monsters like Ghidora and Rodan on my father’s laptop as a kid. I watched every movie in secret while I was growing up; desperate to tell someone how I felt about them but not finding anyone. It wasn’t until 2014 when Pacific Rim and the new Godzilla movie came out that giant monster movies finally entered the mainstream. I finally could force people to listen to my opinions about the films I had loved so much growing up. When I found out we were watching Godzilla’s newest movie for class, I was ecstatic; I could post what I thought. I could finally talk about the King of the Monsters.

When I think of disaster movies, I think about movies where the weather kills people or a meteor from spaces kills people. I usually consider movies that feature a living creature that kills people as monster movies, but Godzilla at his debut was a not a monster movie but a very different kind of disaster movie. Only a few years fresh after the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Japanese were quick to encapsulate the fear and paranoia they experienced during the war. They created Godzilla (in Japanese Gojira) as an icon of the disaster and danger brought about by nuclear radiation. He spent his first few movies as a force of nature; a destructive force that had to be endured, not stopped. He would wreak destruction upon Japan but this would change only a few films later. He would later become a children’s hero; defeating other monsters and defending Earth and Japan. He would befriend children, have kids, and even dance. He became a pop culture icon. Shin Godzilla is an attempt to return to that classic style of Godzilla; the force of nature. Shin Godzilla is a classic take on the character and icon that is the King of the Monsters.  

Shin Godzilla is very true to the old Godzilla formula of movies: monster breaking stuff and people talking. What this movie does differently however, is it showcases the bureaucratic chaos that is trying to make a proper decision in Japanese Government. I felt a pang of nostalgia watching people in offices talk about how to deal with the monster that would be cut to in the next scene. I found it interesting to see how the suits in the office would deal with a literal monster outside their windows. My favourite part of the film was, as usual, the monster itself. Godzilla, this movie, features a completely new style and transformation. His usual gray scales and skin have been replaced by orange rocky scales. It adds a new menacing look to the atomic lizard, which I found very refreshing. His new “evolution” that he experiences as the film progresses was probably my favourite part. He starts off as a worm like creature, walking on fat stubby legs and eventually graduating to the classic T-Rex style that he is known for today. His new “self-defensive adaptation” abilities also added some tension that lacks in Big Daddy G’s solo movies. The directors compensated for his lack of an opponent with many new and different abilities, making his conflicts with the military actually interesting; watching what new weapon he would pull out each fight is new and refreshing. The evolution of the new Godzilla seems to hint at a new form at the end of the movie with his tail seeming to branch off to create new human-like offspring. I was left excited and ready to see what Toho Studios would do with my favourite Japanese character of all time.

I am a sucker for Kaiju movies. There’s something about a huge monster stepping on paper buildings that always piques my interest. Even though Godzilla lacked a true opponent in this movie (Monster fights are always great), the sheer amount of new abilities and forms he had in this new take kept me watching. I enjoyed watching Godzilla and I probably always will.

My mom is the first Filipina actress to graduate from Julliard. She was the first Filipino woman to graduate with a degree in drama from the prestigious performance arts school. Her specialty was acting and directing in Shakespearian plays. Until now, Shakespeare is a strange part of my life and this movie felt like it was my mother testing to see if her knowledge rubbed off on me.

My Own Private Idaho kind of reminded me of Schizopolis in a way. The main character’s problem with narcolepsy allowed for the storytelling to be somewhat disjointed throughout the film. The film jumped around quite a bit and I was very confused; the beginning of the film is what I felt was the weakest part. I found it quite difficult to keep track of what was happening and I was getting quite confused. Later on, when the film began to pick up pace, I began to enjoy the movie more. The characters were probably my favourite part, mostly because they were characters that I had already been familiar with.

But even then, I had trouble enjoying movie. It wasn’t that I think the movie was bad, it was more of that I was too familiar with the story already. It wasn’t until the introduction of the character Bob that I began to finally make sense of the movie. It was also at this point where I could hear my mom quietly whispering things into my ear.

I realized that the movie is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. All of the pieces started to form together like my mom was pushing them into place for me. Much of the movie started to feel very familiar; like I was watching one of my mom’s plays. This is probably what made the film feel very tiring for me. While I personally thought the movie was well made, I had a very hard time sitting through all of it. This is probably the only movie I felt this way with, simply just due to old familiarity. The characters, particularly Scott and Bob, were what really reminded me of Shakespeare’s play. It was through these two characters that I really felt the play speaking to me through the screen.  

It was quite hard for me to enjoy the movie after I started to make the connections about it being an adaptation. From a very young age, I’ve been watching these plays and stories. This made it very difficult for me to appreciate the story I was watching. Even now, I find it very difficult to remember which things in the movie were and which things in different adaptations I’ve seen were. It was my own personal bias that really affected the movie for me. The only thing I could really think of while watching the movie was all the different adaptations I’ve already seen.  While I do remember enjoying viewing the film, it did feel like I was watching something I had already seen many times beforehand.   

I usually pride myself on being able to predict where a story is going. My mother is a drama teacher and a veteran play director and she taught me a lot about a story’s flow. My mother and I even have a game wherein the two of, while watching a TV show or movie, try to predict where each character will end up and how their stories will be resolved. This is the first story I’ve watched in a long time where I could not predict a single thing.

The story follows a structure that makes the widely different stories easier to follow; every hour is a different worker with a different story. Some of the stories are connected (some are connected in truly strange ways) while others are little independent episodes that can still be understood without watching any of the other hours. The ones in particular that stood out to me were the evil alien lady with the magic box, the worker trying to learn English during his work hours, and the lazy worker whose numerous mistakes come to fruition when his boss arrives as a surprise.

The alien lady stood out to me perhaps because this is the point in the class when I began to question Sir Ty’s intentions for showing us this movie. A lady is seen in at least 3 separate hours hugging the refrigerators and rubbing cold drinks in her armpits. I can understand her situation to some degree; I too despise the heat of the summer. At one point she asks the current clerk to hold a box for her with some specific instructions that the clerk is obviously not intelligent enough to follow. I too can relate with the clerk for I am also quite stupid and bad at following instructions. I thought this was going to be a simple silly story about a guy failing to follow instructions but I was truly blown away when the box began speaking to him about his failures. The box then proceeded to vaporize the poor soul and this was the first twist I experienced and was truly shocked by.

The next hour I was stuck by was the one with the man trying to learn English. He clearly struggles with pronunciation and grammar but this makes him quite endearing. It becomes all the more endearing when several English speaking customers enter the store and he tries in vain to communicate with them. It’s one of those incredibly cringe-worthy but also endearing movie scenes that are difficult to nail down. I personally hate those kinds of scenes; I cringe very easily and it tortures me to watch (or experience) moments such as those. These kinds of stories/experiences are far too real for me to handle. The hour was quite heart-felt as he you can really see the character struggle to improve and work hard. What surprised me (and turned my cringe up to the max) was when the Arab Women entered the store. His English speaking practice involved him repeating a phrase about the dangers of being a woman in Afghanistan. You can imagine how much I physically cringed when the women turned out to be from Syria and not Afghanistan. It was probably the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been in this class and I hope I do not go beyond that level of anxiety.   

The final scene that struck me the most (probably because I could relate to it the most) was the lazy worker who would mess up a discount given by the store. His story was relatively self-contained; only linking to one other worker throughout the entire film. He’s portrayed as a lazy man who sleeps off most of his shift while he waits for the few customers to walk through his doors. He reminds customers about a special deal regarding a specific energy drink where they can do a buy 2 get 1 free promo. Up until this point, he appears to actually be quite competent; like a veteran who knows how to properly budget his time at the store. His implied intelligence is apparent until the moment when his boss shows up. It turns out that the promo he has been giving to customers actually ended a few months ago and he has been accidentally giving away free drinks; much to the ire of his superior. Here he begins to spiral into what seems to be an episode of frustration and self-hate. This character is probably the one I can relate to the most out of all of the others. I have an intense fear of something similar to his story happening to me; I’m very afraid of one day realizing a big part of my life has actually been very wrong. To see it play out, albeit in a smaller way, such as this one actually affected me on a much deeper level than I had initially anticipated. This affected the way I experienced most of the movie.

I began to see the people working in the stores not as characters in a movie, but as actual people who might exist after the credits stopped rolling. That one scene managed to make me forget I was watching a movie and sucked me into its immersive story. I can only imagine what normal convenience store worker experiences daily in South Korea. From crazy bosses to aliens and even to ghosts, the store featured in this story seems to be in the middle of the Korean equivalent of Area 51; yet it still felt more real watching this set of characters than perhaps any of the other films I’ve watched in this class. The film took me on a ride and every hour seemed to present me with something unexpected each time, which is something that is not easy to do.

These are the first words uttered in the movie Trainspotting; a monologue about the choices and decisions that the society of today advertises as choices that lead an individual to a “good life.” The monologue presses the listeners to think about the ideas we have about what it means to lead a good life; whether it is because it is a life we have chosen to live or if it is a good choice because it is the life that society defines as being good. The film finds its story here: whether it is better to live a life that society and all those part of it have decided to be a good one or choosing to make a life for yourself, a life that has heroin.

At its core, Danny Boyle’s adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting is a story about the horrors of addiction and the choices involved in getting over it. The story follows Scotsman Mark Renton and his group of friends and their experiences scoring with heroin. It is a black comedy with a strange sense of humour that fits perfect to my taste (which may be why I enjoyed it much more than I should have). The characters are quirky and crazy but still relatable at the same time, making for a compelling narrative. I can honestly say that watching this movie has been some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time.  

One small thing that perhaps might not be anything to someone else but meant a lot to me is the story’s setting. I do a lot of different voices for different things; acting and for roleplaying in D&D. The Scottish accent was the first voice I ever learned how to do and hearing all the different characters speaking in the movie just added to my enjoyment. The characters themselves are another big reason that I enjoyed the movie. They are exactly the kind of people I expected to see in a heroin den. Some of my favourite movie scenes involve the most different personalities being put in the same room and being made to talk to one another.

Throughout the film, we are shown a group of friends as they try to make their way dealing in the world of hardcore heroin. They make choices that most of us would probably consider bad but they don’t care because as Renton says in his opening monologue, “who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?” Despite the obvious downtrodden state of their lives, Renton and his friends seem to be content for the most part. A lot of them are happy the way they are and see no point in trying to get better. As the film progresses this obviously changes but the feeling is the same throughout the film; this is the life that they have made for themselves.

Another theme that is felt throughout the film is that of addiction. Most, if not all, of the characters present in the story experience some form of addiction. For Renton and most of his boys, it’s heroin, whereas for others it might not be as obvious; cigarettes, weed, or even violence when looking at a character like Begbie. All of them have an itch of some form that they need to scratch constantly; each of them has their own ways of finding ways to circumvent their needs as well. Renton fights off the need to score heroin through getting his life together, Begbie likes winning and it seems to hold his violent nature back, Tommy had sex to fulfil his life but when he loses that he has to turn to heroin instead. Another way it is felt is through Renton’s attempt to escape the life of a junkie. For a while he manages to straighten his life out; gets a good job in London, gets his own flat, and gets off the heroin. However, like an addiction to the criminal underbelly, the life he led in Scotland slowly works its way back into his life when Begbie decides to force himself back in Renton’s life. Just like that, he’s back to the old life of dealing with junkie friends and junkie people. The addiction of heroin and the life that follows it will always try to make its way into Renton’s life it seems. This hit me on kind of a personal level; I smoke quite a bit and have been trying to be better about it. The way it was portrayed in the film is something that I can identify with on a much deeper level.

The final closing monologue is similar to the opening one but with a different perspective; instead of Renton telling the audience about what he’s come to understand as a good life, he tells the audience about what he plans to do to join us in our “good lives.” Yes, he ripped his friends off and left them for dead in a hotel somewhere in London but he claims that this is just him being who he is; a bad person choosing life. This final monologue really stuck with me as it’s something I think about quite often. A lot of people come from very different backgrounds and have many different stories that helped form the way they are today. Who am I to judge a person for where they have come from? At the end of the day, we’re all just choosing life.