Last week, I had to look at the Blu-Ray listings (from Blu-ray.com, of course) and make a last-minute call about whether one title was actually getting released then. As of late Monday night, it had no page or mention where it was supposedly being sold, so I decided not to include it, and then it went on sale Tuesday morning. None of this would matter or even merit this title being mentioned the next week, but this one I really want, maybe need, to talk about. I’ve been in the process of writing longform about Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow basically since I walked out of it, suddenly forced into a lot of agonizing thinking about myself and my self. An attempt at a personal essay like the last one quickly proved much too much for you to read or for me to have any clear perspective on at the moment, then I moved onto an idea that I like and just need to convince myself to write (it’s also shaping up to be very long). So this is technically my first published (not on Letterboxd) statement on this movie, and I’ll get to the heart of the matter: It’s a brilliant movie that’s as amorphous as TV static while also being sledgehammer-subtle if you know what it’s talking about, and if you really know what it’s talking about, it’s one of the most painful movie experiences you could imagine. You know exactly what my The Pink Opaque was, and I still worry that I’ve cultivated my personality from fiction rather than honestly seeing myself in that fiction. But every day I get to have that thought process is a miracle next to the version of myself who doesn’t see the TV glow, who I know would not realize anything was wrong as they sadly rotted away. I’ve already seen many people dragged out of the closet by Schoenbrun’s nightmare vision of eternal denial and self-hating apologies, a piercing scream to break through even the deepest repression and confusion. But it hurts, hangs over everything, and eventually heals the exact same for someone who’s supposedly heeded its warning. Stay tuned for me dredging up even more of these feelings while also discussing “Binky the Doormat”.

What good luck I had to wait until this week to include TV Glow, an almost completely dead week except for 4Ks of the Bill & Ted sequels, the third of course starring Brigette Lundy-Paine. I need to see it just to see them in a context besides pure despair, I just watched Paper Towns and liked it a little more than I otherwise would because I was just happy to see Justice Smith not slowly suffocating himself.

Babes (Decal)
Bill & Ted Face the Music 4K (Shout Factory)
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey 4K (Shout Factory)
I Saw the TV Glow (A24)