Vivarium – I think Beth might have chosen to watch this near St. Patrick’s Day (yes, I’ve had this review in the works for a while) because it’s set in Ireland, even if neither of its leads, Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg, are Irish. This movie was frustrating, but in a way that was interesting to watch and had a fascinatingly surreal aesthetic. It’s about a couple, a teacher named Gemma and a landscaper called Tom, who are looking for a house. They go to look at a development where every house looks exactly the same, colorful but muted, and largely artificial. It never rains, but the clouds all look the same as well.

The realtor who shows them the house is a dull but creepy guy who imitates something she says. The two of them decide this place isn’t for them, but they’re unable to get out of it, so they live in the house they were shown for the time being. They receive food every day, which is vacuum-packed and doesn’t taste like anything. What’s more, they’re forced to raise a baby, who grows very quickly and looks like a younger version of the realtor. The kid has a habit of imitating everything, and likes to watch patterns on television that look like screensavers, apparently the only thing the TV receives. He also screams whenever he wants anything. Tom grows angry at the child and tries to lock him in the car, but Gemma pities him and tries to form a connection. As there’s really nothing else to do, Tom spends most of his time digging in the weirdly artificial yard. Aside from the arguments about the kid, Gemma and Tom mostly stick together and don’t turn against each other. Tom dies after finding a buried body in the hole, and Gemma discovers other people raising kids identical to the one forced on her before dying herself. According to the kid, her only purpose is to bring him up.

Then the boy kills and replaces the realtor, who’s grown older. There’s a definite sense of futility to the whole thing, as nothing Gemma and Tom do gets them out of this creepy place, they have to sacrifice everything and live incredibly boring lives, and they end up dying young for no real reason. The implication is that the housing development is a way for whatever these beings are to get their young accustomed to living among humans. It’s a recurring theme that they have a tendency to imitate everything, as the realtor repeats something Gemma says in the same tone for no apparent reason, and the kid is obsessed with imitating a dog, and also behaves like an insect sometimes. It looks like a popular theory is that they’re aliens, although that isn’t explicitly stated. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the film ends with XTC’s “Complicated Game,” which is thematically appropriate in addition to just being an amazing song.

I do have to admit I’m kind of bothered by the name Imogen Poots because, when I was a kid, my parents used “poot” instead of “poop.” I really don’t know why, and there’s no reason Imogen’s family would have been aware of that.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie – We saw this at the theater on its opening day. I understand it hasn’t gotten great critical reviews, and while I mostly liked it, I can understand why people wouldn’t. It definitely feels like the people who made it just decided everything they wanted to put in, and then just kind of threw it all in there without thinking too much about how it fits together. Like its predecessor, the movie is loaded to the brim with references to the games, which I think is in many ways what I want from a Mario film. The kids in the theater certainly sounded excited about seeing familiar characters. It includes what I would consider some fairly deep cuts. Wart even has lines and plays a brief but significant role.

Is this the first time he’s been voiced other than Super Mario Advance? Maybe the Japan-only Satellaview game? He’s accompanied by fellow Super Mario Bros. 2 bosses Birdo, Mouser, and Clawgrip, although they don’t say anything. And in a montage of the Mario Brothers solving problems in the Mushroom Kingdom, they fight a Boss Bass, and a few SMB3 themes play. It isn’t even limited to Mario characters. ROB appears in a scene joking about how slowly he moves, some Pikmin show up in a tiny spaceship, and Fox McCloud shows up to take the main characters through space.

He’s identified as being from a different universe, and his flashbacks are in a different animation style. Yoshi plays a major part in this, with a humorous montage of his causing trouble in New York City before warping to the inverted pyramid in Tostarena, where Mario and Luigi find him.

Is it just me, or does the movie Yoshi look a little spongy, like he’s a bath toy or something?
The plot picks up on some elements from the previous film, like Bowser being tiny and kept as a prisoner in the castle. There’s a bit of bonding between him and the brothers, but he’s quickly talked into villainy again by Bowser Jr., who has already kidnapped Rosalina.

It’s kind of weird that, after the last movie seems to quite consciously downplay Princess Peach being a damsel in distress, they played it pretty straight with Rosalina, even if the two princesses do save themselves in the end. It’s explained that Bowser left his kid in boarding school and hadn’t seen him in years, but Jr. still looks up to him and wants to impress him. It’s a little strange that all the places visited in space have mostly the same kinds of creatures as the Mushroom Kingdom, but that’s accurate to the games. The plot is really secondary to the visuals and appearances, but it’s serviceable enough. And there are some fun character moments like Yoshi joining Luigi to tease Mario about his crush on Peach and Bowser’s bedtime story to his son. Still, there are some scenes that don’t really affect anything. Sure, Bowser Jr. turning the characters into babies references both the Super Scope and the Yoshi’s Island games, but it’s undone before much of anything happens. I guess Jr. must have gotten the idea for that weapon from Borf in Space Ace, while his roller coaster through magma was something LeChuck made in The Curse of Monkey Island. They probably weren’t intentional references, but is it that far-fetched that writers with a lot of knowledge about old Nintendo properties would know about video games by other developers as well? I suspect it’s just my tendency of making unintended connections. The mystery of where Peach came from, as presented in the first movie, is here answered in a way that doesn’t reflect what’s in the games. It kind of seems like the reverse of what we see in Rosalina’s Storybook, since there she’s taken from the Mushroom Kingdom into space, while here Peach arrives in the Kingdom from space. I guess there’s nothing specifically in the game continuity that says they couldn’t be sisters, but it’s unlikely, and I doubt it will be carried over. Did the creators just want to avoid Rosalina working through her grief at her mother’s death?

Inside the Manosphere – Shouldn’t a manosphere be a sphere of hands? Oh, well. British journalist Louis Theroux interviews some misogynistic podcasters who make a good deal of money being insulting and a bad influence on the youth. I don’t think I’d heard of any of the people he talked to, but this is the kind of thing that I find both terrifying and pathetic at the same time, a not uncommon feeling for me these days, unfortunately. The documentary mentions how this seems to be a reaction to how it’s become more common to question patriarchy, which really hasn’t diminished its power very much, but has led some men to think it might. And apparently they have no real interests except being performatively masculine. There was a line a few of the podcasters used that men aren’t given anything and women are, because they can use their beauty. They also manage to work in antisemitic conspiracy theories. Honestly, I don’t think the movie was that effective in the sense that Theroux’s quiet, mild-mannered arguments didn’t really cause his subjects to think too much about what they were saying. Then again, it’s quite possible he was genuinely afraid of them, because I know I would be. But there were times when even his calm attitude seemed to bother them, as they would sometimes try to walk back the things they’d clearly said or claim that it was just to make money, which is kind of worse in some ways. And I think two of the influencers talked about “one-way monogamy,” meaning that they can have sex with as many women as they want, but their wife or girlfriend just gets him, presenting it as something she’s fine with. The fact that their partners seemed scared when Theroux tried to talk to them didn’t help to make that case.