A Movie Playlist for People Who Can't Sleep
I can't sleep anymore. Here are the movies I'm watching instead.
You almost didn’t get a newsletter this week because I haven’t been sleeping. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve gotten into bed at a semi-reasonable hour, read a few chapters from one to three books (right now: A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen, Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding, and Well, This Is Exhausting by Sophia Benoit), and then laid awake for hours, begging my brain to turn off and my body to go to sleep. It doesn’t. Eventually, my alarm goes off and I spend the day in a brain fog. I am in hell.
This is not my first bout of sleeplessness in the pandemic. I don’t know if I slept at all in March and April, and insomnia’s revisited me intermittently over the last few months. Lately, my nighttime anxiety vacillates between being serious and stupid. People are rapidly getting ill and dying at a horrific rate. I am spending way too much money. Scientists say we are past the point of no return in climate change. I need to return a package before the 30 day exchange period is up. New York faces one of if not the worst eviction crisis in its history in the coming months and may not economically recover for years. I am 31 and if I don’t meet someone and fall in love in the next 3 to 5 to maybe 7 years I may never be able to have children if I want them and I don’t even know if I want them but what if it’s too late and I don’t even get to make the decision and also do I remember when am I supposed to swap out my IUD???
Once my brain starts moving, I cannot turn it off. I try to focus on my breathing and block out the thoughts, but if a single piece of anxiety manages to break through (and it always does), my body shakes itself awake. I count sheep. I name the U.S. presidents in order. I do multiplication tables. I run through the state capitals. I play Explosions in the Sky. I play a podcast (any, as they’re all boring). None of it works. Not even the podcasts (still boring). I am doomed.
Since I can’t sleep, I have started watching movies at night, pretty much all night. I am notoriously movie-ignorant. I’ve never seen a Godfather film or The Shawshank Redemption or Citizen Kane or most things Robert De Niro’s won awards for, though I’ve seen Eurotrip at least 15 times and count the 2011 Amanda Seyfried vehicle Red Riding Hood among my favorites. I considered using my insomnia as an opportunity to educate myself on some of history’s best cinematic offerings.
These are the movies I watched instead:
Guardians of the Galaxy
I saw Guardians of the Galaxy when it came out in the summer of 2014. At the time, I had a crush on someone who I thought looked a little like Chris Pratt (he did not, for the record), and I spent a lot of time listening to the soundtrack and thinking of him. Anyway, the movie is fine, I guess. Even on rewatch, I can’t seem to remember the plot.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
I developed a major crush on Johnny Depp after I saw this movie (twice in theaters!) the summer before I started high school, and though he is now canceled, I still remember more facts about his childhood and subsequent film career than I do about geometry. I’m sorry to say that this film is still delightful and the score slaps. I’m not sorry to say all the horny fanfic I wrote about the scene where Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann are trapped on an island together disappeared at least 16 years ago.
Return to Me
I saw this movie with my parents as a child and did not quite appreciate how chaotic the plot is, but: David Duchovny falls in love with Minnie Driver, who just happens to a) have Carroll O’Connor as a grandfather and b) David Duchovny’s dead wife’s heart. For some reason, Carroll O’Connor is Italian in this? I’m telling you, chaotic.
Ratatouille
A friend of mine gave me his Disney Plus password so I could watch The Mandalorian and I have since spent a full year destroying his recommendations by watching Boy Meets World and a whole bunch of Pixar and Muppet movies. Anyway, Ratatouille is still charming. Janeane Garofalo should have had a meatier part. French cuisine is overrated.
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
It seems the Pirates of the Caribbean producers actually read my aforementioned horny fanfic and then transformed it into an even less coherent plot.
Ocean’s Eleven
Ocean’s Eleven is one of those movies I always assume I’ve seen too many times to rewatch, and yet it’s still a delight. I might have something longer on this next week or some other time, but it has one of the best “Getting the Gang Together” segments in the biz (up there with Fast Five/Fast & Furious and Armageddon), everyone is great at their job, and Brad Pitt is always eating something while wearing a terrible suit. A+ 2am viewing experience.
7. The Departed
This is a classic Good Film that, in fairness, I started watching during the daytime. But since it is approximately sixteen years long, I ended up finishing it at 3am. It was nice of Martin Scorsese to let Mark Wahlberg play himself.
8. Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End
Why in the christ did I watch this?
9. Dave
I can see why people enjoyed this film in the 1990s, as Kevin Kline is very engaging and witty as the nice man who accidentally becomes president. But after the last six thousand year election, I never want to watch anything about a president again, unless it’s that scene in Mars Attacks where Jack Nicholson gets murdered by a Martian tentacle after quoting Rodney King. Fun side-note: Ben from Veep is in this.
10. The Goldfinch
This movie was so fucking boring it ended up putting me to sleep, so, good job I guess!
Catching up on the news
That attempted coup or autogolpe or whatever the academics are arguing over what it should be called has, blessedly, gotten much more stupid over the last few weeks. The latest news is that the Trump team’s star witness in the Michigan election hearing was a dead ringer for Cecily Strong’s “Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party” character on SNL:
So, things seem to be going well over there. More news: Joe Biden broke his foot, the Dems are still infighting over “defund the police,” I got a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
Other news:
VACCINE COMING!!!! Soon? Maybe? Never hope.
There are mysterious monoliths popping up everywhere that I can only assume are marketing for a car insurance company.
Well, this seems bad!
No more emotional support ostriches on planes :(
Here are some good blogs & features I am reading
I’ve been too tired to read (not sleeping!!!!), so this week’s selection is short.
“Big Mouth’s Missy Finds Her Voice” — Vulture
“Elliot Page Inspired Trans Joy — TERFs & Transphobes Can’t Take That Away” — Refinery29
“Fuck You, Catherine” — Jezebel
“America’s Dive Bars Are Among Those Hit Hardest by Alex Trebek’s Death” — Eater
And now for some good tweets (rare!!!!)
Everyone’s tweets were garbage this week so no one gets on this list, SORRY, I don’t make the rules. JK, I do. Ruling still stands.
I like all the movies. But what a dilemma. The insomnia will most likely pass, like an illness, but meanwhile it sounds miserable.