My First Substack Post
Hello.
We are currently two full weeks into the new year. That’s astounding. Never mind the looming depression that we’ll be entering the third year of this pandemic very soon, I want to congratulate all of you. Let’s focus on what makes us happy in the world and get through it one day at a time. In a way, that’s how I hope this newsletter will go. The Cozy Caterpillar is my way of sharing what makes me happy, and what’s getting me through my days. I see this as part-blog, part-reviews, but all cozy.
It’s hard starting something from the ground up. Especially when you’re a writer and you’re trying to convince other people to give you a chance. That’s why I imported my previous blog (Film Assist) onto Substack in order to give you all a little taste of what to expect. I’m not exclusively going to be writing about films, but that’s an aspect of who I am that I cannot escape. While I’ve been recuperating from Covid-19 these past few days I did watch quite a few films and that’s where I’d like to begin.
Vivo - Netflix
Recommended to me by a friend, Vivo is one of four musicals that Lin-Manuel Miranda released last year. It’s an adorable animated adventure about a kinkajou named Vivo traveling from Cuba to Florida in order to give his friend’s long-lost love one last song that he wrote before passing away. The songs are vibrant with the fingerprints of Miranda, and the animation is creative as it explores two cultures through the eyes of loneliness.
A film that helped my loneliness as I had to self-isolate in my house was The Spongebob Squarepants Movie: Sponge on the Run (Paramount+). Spongebob was a big part of my childhood and an after-school ritual for me. I never missed an episode and I loved every second of it. Spongebob has tra-la-la’d for over twenty years, and I think it’s safe to say that I hadn’t been keeping up. That said, his third theatrically released film still feels like the sponge I had grown up loving, and the pure absurdity of his and Patrick’s misadventures brought a smile to my cocoon of sickness. I was especially pleased with Keanu Reeves as Sage and the ingenious Matt Berry as Poseidon. The only downsides in this incarnation were the CG on Sandy — otherwise, a beautifully rendered movie where each character had different textures — which made her look like an old ragged horror puppet and the constant flashbacks that stopped the movie dead in its tracks so that Nickelodeon could sell their newest series Kamp Koral.
Thankfully, another beautiful family movie was on Paramount+ to help ease my first infected days and that was Rumble. The latest WWE movie is here for all ages after being pushed back again and again from the pandemic. Monster fans will love this film as they take center stage to do justice in a giant ring for tiny human amusement. How this world works with monster/human relations and their complex laws I do not understand, but what I do understand is how awesome it is to watch creative kaiju battling for honor. The film is very sweet and funny and I do hope more people give it a chance.
The last film I want to focus on is none other than Disney’s Jungle Cruise, which I watched on a 4K blu-ray. I’ve been fairly mixed when it comes to Disney’s live-action initiative. Jaume Collet-Serra is easily one of my favorite directors within the last decade and, for me, Jungle Cruise was going to be the most important film in his career. Not because there was hype for a theme park ride-turned movie, but because this is his first big budget-focused project right before another career-changing movie, Black Adam. Based on this film, I was concerned if his voice would still come out, and if it wasn’t good then what would that mean for DC’s upcoming film that’s supposed to change their universe forever?
Thankfully, Jungle Cruise is a hoot. I absolutely loved the first hour of the film as it taps into the late 90s/early 00s action genre, particularly The Mummy with Brendan Faser. The editing and music are pitch perfect as they coast across the swaths of charisma that each actor is confidently profusing. The film does slow down in the second half, but they avoid enough cliches and put a slight twist on them that it all feels like a well worth journey.
And so, I ended my week off with some comfort television, Monk, and two of Dan Slott’s latest comic work — of which I mean work he started in 2018 and I was too lazy to get to — with the Fantastic Four and Tony Stark: Iron Man. Both have great energy in their opening issues and I am especially interested in seeing what Slott has to say about the Fantastic Four.
I hope everyone is having a good week, and thank you to those who gave this newsletter a chance. The first few weeks will be rough as I try and find a voice that fits this space, so do bear with me.
As always, have a cozy day.
