Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves (Sometimes)!
America's Sweethearts, Thelma, and A Quiet Place: Day One
This week, we’re covering three things I watched: America’s Sweethearts, Thelma, and A Quiet Place: Day One.
A couple weeks ago, my dad sent a text to the family group chat, accompanied by a screenshot of the movie Just Getting Started: “Absolutely, without a doubt the worst Rotten Tomatoes score I have ever seen!!!” Its 4% Critics Score and 12% Audience Score was worse than the worst Rotten Tomatoes score I had ever seen, The Last Thing He Wanted (5% and 14%), which I discovered a few weeks ago while researching bad Anne Hathaway movies to prove her project-picker is often broken.
A stunning achievement on both counts!!
Which leads me to wonder: What’s the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score YOU’VE ever seen? Also, what’s your cut-off? What’s the lowest score you’d still be willing to watch anyway, all other things being equal?
I am absolutely flipping over this Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders documentary!!!!
All I can say is: HOLEEEYY SHIT! It’s so messed up!!! 10/10! Must-Watch!
I have a theory that there’s something about America that lends itself to cults. We have this big wide dream that anyone can be anything; that with nothing more than a can-do spirit and our own two thumbs, we can be part of a new world, blessed by God.
And that wide-eyed hopefulness — or, cynically, you could call it the myth of opportunity — is really easy to take advantage of.
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC), as an institution, seem to me like the convergence of that icky part of American culture. But as human beings, the cheerleaders are just that — real people, real emotions, real ambitions, real dreams, real insecurities, real struggles, real pain, real life.
That’s what ultimately makes this watchable. It gives you people to root for, even while you are pausing every five minutes to exclaim to anyone in the room with you, “DID YOU HEAR WHAT THEY JUST SAID!?!”1
To me, it feels like these women are getting STEAMROLLED by some of our worst impulses and systems: Unrestrained capitalism, sexism and objectification, institutionalized religiosity, impossible and oppressive gender and beauty standards.
It’s important to say that that might not be how every woman involved experiences the DCC. They are CHOOSING this life and only they can really decide if it’s right for them or not.
But man, listening to Charlotte Jones — daughter of Jerry Jones and current owner and “Chief Brand Officer” of the Dallas Cowboys — rattle off reasons they don’t need to pay the cheerleaders a FAIR WAGE, my mind can’t help but wander to other places I’ve heard these same excuses: Nonprofits, the Arts, Mega-Churches, Cults.
She says:
“They don’t come here for the money, they come here for something that’s bigger than that for them. It is about being a part of something bigger than themselves. It is about a sisterhood that they were able to form, about relationships that they have for the rest of their life. They have a chance to feel like they are valued, that they’re special, and that they’re making a difference. When the women come here, they find their passion and they find their purpose.”
Hello, cult script!
Thelma
What it’s about: It’s based on the writer/director Josh Margolin’s own experience of his grandmother getting taken by a phone scam. But things depart from that reality quickly, with June Squibb as Thelma going on a revenge mission to get her money back!
If you ever thought, “Give me Jason Bourne but a 90-year-old lady,” I’m happy to say she’s finally here! Someone called it “geriatric Mission Impossible” and it is sort of that, if Mission Impossible involved slow walks and 10MPH scooter rides. Delightful.
It’s also a buddy comedy, a family comedy, and a drama about aging and love. June Squibb is actually 94 years old, so honestly, this is inspirational, aspirational, and motivational!
Why I liked it: I enjoyed this movie so very much. It was funny and sweet and heartfelt. I cried at the end thinking about my two grandmothers, Norma and Karen.
Why someone might not: There is no reason not to love this unless you are Lord Voldemort and hate the elderly. [Or maybe sweet little feel-good comedies aren’t your thing. I guess that’s fine.]
Sleeper favorite performance: Parker Posey as Thelma’s daughter. She was hysterical.
A Quiet Place: Day One
What it’s about: The beginning of the end of the world! The day the creatures of A Quiet Place landed on Earth.
Scariness Scale: 4 out of 10? It wasn’t very scary. It was sadder than it was scary. There were some jump scares and it’s violent and has some nice creature horror. But I found myself way less on the edge of my seat than I was for the first two movies, which are SO intense.
What I liked: It’s totally worth the watch! I would give it a 70%. It was a tender, intimate, quietly human [and cat] story, unfurling over the backdrop of massive apocalypse monster stuff. The performances were stellar. Lupita Nyong'o is an Oscar winner, and it shows in every scene. The other main star was Joseph Quinn, who I know as Eddie Munson, the breakout favorite from the last season of Stranger Things. He was wonderful here, too.
What I didn’t like: It seemed like they just missed a lot of opportunities to tell a more inventive story. For example, call me a Signs girl, but I was really looking forward to seeing how people pieced together the secret to survival. Instead, Lupita just gets knocked out right away and wakes up after the new reality has already set in. I liked the intimacy of the story they chose to tell, but it left me with a lot of unanswered questions and missed opportunities.
Also, some of the logistics just stretched my credulity to breaking point. I’m sorry, but do you know how f*cking CREAKY New York City is?? They’re supposed to be hiding out in rubble-filled Chinatown walk-ups and not a single floorboard so much as squeaks?? Please.
How it stacks up in the franchise: Not as good as the other two, but worth the watch. That throughline of tenderness, sadness, and human connectivity is present in all three movies. While flawed in their own ways, the first two take a familiar genre and bring new depth to it, not just by framing the apocalypse through an intimate family lens but by using the genre to throw into stark relief our assumptions about a world built for the “able.” The deaf daughter becomes the audience avatar, and, at best, we find fresh empathy and a fresh vision of the world we live in.
In this one, that same theme appears but with a different twist [this isn’t a spoiler, you find out in the first few minutes]: Lupita’s character has terminal cancer. So, what is the apocalypse to someone whose days are already numbered? What is survival? Is it more than simply “staying alive”? They didn’t totally land the plane on that — and I really disliked some of the story decisions — but I liked that they were doing more than just making an alien-apocalypse film.
TL;DR: The performances raised this above the script. I cried hard.
That’s all for this week, folks! Thanks for reading! As always, I would really love to hear your thoughts in the comments — or if you’re in a hurry, drop a heart to help me grow! See you next week 💜
[Sentences that I paused this documentary to splutter about: “She’s carrying too much weight in her face.” “You’re a curvy girl in a great way.” “She’s prettier when she dances.” “It’s a shame they aren’t paid a lot” from the actual owner of the Dallas Cowboys who writes their paychecks and clearly is not willing to take responsibility for a single thing in her life.]
Give Thelma all the awards for the sweetest movie I will watch this year, or next, or probably the one after.
Also TOTALLY gunna watch Thelma now. Where would I be without this substack??