Day 4,324—Cold and Windy and Spoilers for Bugonia—

 

       My phone said it felt like 12 degrees this morning, so compared to 40 degrees yesterday, it was an extremely cold morning. I scrambled to find my robe before I headed downstairs. I wanted more time to do things this morning, so I decided I would only run a couple of miles, but then I ended up doing three, which I thought was decent for how I was feeling, and I was just miserable in the cold outside. Why does it have to be so cold suddenly!? I was hoping the worst was over for winter this year. As much as I enjoy the change of the seasons, I think I have had my fill of extremely cold days. I want to start wearing shorts every day.

Spoilers for Bugonia

        This movie was written by the same guy who wrote the Menu. If you saw that movie, you know it was a dark comedy that focused on making fun of social elites, heading towards an extreme and disturbing ending where multiple people died in a bizarre fashion. Bugonia was not that different in structure. As much as I enjoyed the early characterization and rich background, the second half of the movie went to a very bizarre conclusion, which I am going to tell you, so if you want to watch the movie, don’t read this, but everyone in the entire world dies at the end of this movie. The Emma Stone character, who plays a wealthy woman kidnapped by our protagonist because he suspect her to be an alien. It turns out she was an alien?! I don’t have a problem with her being an alien, but it makes her acting choices seem like she didn’t know that in earlier scenes. I thought it was clear that the writer knew how the film was going to end, based on different hints that indicated its direction. However, her character's transformation in the last 30 minutes was abrupt, and her basic motivation was vague at best. My other complaints about the film would have to be that it just throws in child sexual abuse, suicide, and someone accidentally killing their mother. These aren’t things that are fully developed or explored in any meaningful way; they come off as necessary plot devices, which feels cheap for such complicated subject matter. All of that to say it was better than some movies, and at least it is interesting enough that I will remember that I saw it, but at the same time, it is lacking in a basic feeling of cohesiveness. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was over an hour of additional footage that was cut from the film.