I Was a Twentysomething CineMama: More Collected Film Criticism from a Stay-at-Home Mom

By Genevieve Radosti

On the eve of her thirtieth birthday, author Genevieve Radosti invites readers to explore and enjoy this collection of exclusive film writing from "your local CineMama."

With a contagious passion for movies and film history, Radosti reflects on her twentysomethings and the first two years of parenthood. Regardless of age or parental status

• Language: English
• Publisher: Genevieve Radosti
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088100219

Genevieve Radosti

Genevieve Radosti is a writer, actress, and film history enthusiast. She lives in Omaha with her husband and their two boys. Radosti published her first book, The Terror of Motherhood: Collected Horror Film Criticism from a Stay-at-Home Mom in 2021. Learn more at GenevieveRadosti.com.

Book preview

I Was a Twentysomething CineMama

I Was a Twentysomething CineMama

I Was a Twentysomething CineMama

More Collected Film Criticism from a Stay-at-Home Mom

Genevieve Radosti

Genevieve Radosti

Contents

Introduction from an Almost-Thirty CineMama

Vision and Mission Statement - February 23, 2020

Reviews

Bill & Ted Face the Music

Chernobyl

The Decline of Western Civilization

The Devil All the Time

Greener Grass

Les Girls

Little Women (2019)

Taxi

Wrinkles the Clown

Chattanooga Film Festival 2020

A Note from 2023

Day One - Friday

Day Two - Saturday

Day Three - Sunday

Double Features

The Art of Self-Defense and The Beach Bum

The Big House and I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang!

Desperately Seeking Susan and She-Devil

The Disaster Artist and Dolemite is My Name

Losing Ground and Mahler

People

Ana de Armas

Laura Dern

Zac Efron

Walter Huston

Kay Thompson and Salka Viertel

Michaela Wadzinski

Movies to Watch Before, After, and Sometimes Instead of…

Gretel and Hansel

Joker

Wonder Woman 1984

Lists

Favorite Movies of 2019

Got Escapism? Movies from the 1940s for When It Feels Like the World is Ending

How I Spent My Springtime Quarantine

Movies to Ruin Your Valentine’s Day

The Oliver Awards – 2020

The Oliver Awards – 2021

Three Favorite Documentaries about Filmmaking

Toxic Gals Being Pals

Essays

Alfred Hitchcock’s False Endings

And So... Who Do You Want to Be?

Andy Warhol as Villain

Babitz and Patrick, Anolik and O’Meara - How Two Biographers Made Room for Future Voices by Exploring the Past

Cassandras of Physical Media Unite!

Celebrating Hollywood Heritage in Iowa

Christening with Celluloid

The Devils and Me

Duality of the Female Psyche in Film

Gowns, Gore, and Glorious Technicolor

The Greatest Award

Hollywood Legends Never Grow Old

The Humor of Anger in Marriage Story

Is This the Oscars or Saturday Night Live?

Lana Del Rey Goes to the Movies

My So-Called Adult Life in Film

No More Noir-less Novembers

A Tale of Two Petes

Thank God for Tully

Epilogue

The Good, The Bad, and the Future – April, 2020

A Note from the Future - January, 2023

Introduction from an Almost-Thirty CineMama

The book in your hands is how I’ve decided to celebrate turning thirty-years-old. These pages contain all the film blogging I did as your local CineMama, minus that which I’ve previously published as The Terror of Motherhood: Collected Horror Film Criticism from a Stay-at-Home Mom. This unique birthday project is a chance for me to appreciate what I accomplished as a writer and creative in those early years of motherhood, but also reflect on what I’ve achieved since then.

Here’s what happened in my life while writing the content within these pages.

It was 2019. I was 26. That summer, I gave birth to my first son, Oliver. After some rough weeks, I was prescribed meds for Post-Partum Depression and felt pretty unstoppable now that I didn’t cry every time my baby did. That fall, I returned to work after maternity leave and began to blog about movies in my down time. I called myself the CineMama and didn’t shy away from dishing the gritty details of trying to nurture a passion for film while also parenting an infant and working full-time. My mission statement was to joyfully spread love for film with enthusiasm and style.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, I was in my second trimester, pregnant with my second son just months after giving birth to my first. I quit my job and decided to wait until things settled down to return to the work force… Well, it’s 2023 and I am still a stay-at-home mom until further notice.

My younger son was born with a severe congenital heart defect that required emergency surgery and continues to keep us on our toes. Some – not many, but some - of these entries were written on hospital couches and hotel beds during this time, providing me a creative outlet when I didn’t have control over much else. We moved to Omaha to be closer to my son’s doctors and I continued to blog about my love for movies into 2021, when burnout and exhaustion got the best of me at the age of 28.

In compiling these pieces, I’ve edited for accuracy and clarity but tried to stay true to the spirit of the original blog posts. There will be references to my daily life, to my children, and to current events that might seem outdated in 2023 and onward. In addition to a collection of film criticism, I like to think of this book as a diary, a primary document for two years of my life.

Over the course of writing these reviews and lists and essays, my life changed. I changed. I learned a lot, discovered some ugly truths and some beautiful strengths of mine. Even though I stopped writing for myself (for now), a part of me will always be a CineMama. I can’t unsee all the films I’ve seen. I can’t stop wanting to share the joy and fulfillment that the visual and performing arts give me. And excuse me while I get sappy, but it’s my birthday project and I’ll be a sap if I want to - I won’t ever stop loving the boys that made me a mama in the first place.

I was a twentysomething CineMama and I hope that my thirties only lead me to more – more movies, more community, more writing, and more love for the people who inspire me every day to be a better person.

Vision and Mission Statement - February 23, 2020

CineMama is for Siouxlanders, because I want to do my part to make my community a better place. If I’m going to raise my boys here, I want them to have a space where film is a valued art form.

CineMama is for the underdogs or anyone who has ever felt underestimated. Moms who get pigeonholed, women in male-dominated fields, college graduates that can’t get a decent job because they aren’t the offspring of someone important. Your experience of art still matters and I want to create a space where everyone feels important.

CineMama is for the curious-minded, moviegoers who don’t want to be limited by genre or what’s streaming on Netflix. People who aren’t afraid to read subtitles, don’t shy away from a critically panned movie, and will try anything once.

CineMama wants to help make movies accessible to everyone, through events, but also by sharing my knowledge and helping my readers find resources, online and IRL. Movies are for everyone!

CineMama wants to encourage people to explore and express themselves through the art they consume. (In this case, movies.) By sharing my thoughts and experiences, I hope it helps other people recognize that their personal experience of a movie matters.

The mission statement for CineMama is Joyfully spreading love for film with enthusiasm and style and that’s what I intend to do. Thank you.

Reviews

Bill & Ted Face the Music

Twenty-five years following the last installment of the Bill & Ted franchise, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winters return to form as the titular lovable buffoons in Bill & Ted Face the Music. With the help of their families, Bill and Ted must unite the world in song and save Earth from an apocalyptic rupture of the space-time continuum…  The only problem is that their 25 year-long musical endeavor, Wyld Stallyns, hasn’t seen the top of the charts in as many years.

The final film in a totally awesome trilogy proves that Keanu Reeves can still earn belly laughs (unlike in the unfortunate rom-and-not-so-com Destination Wedding) and Alex Winters can carry a movie with his charm and comic timing. Bill & Ted Face the Music is a movie about unity told by the experts: two men so connected and platonically in love that they can’t even tell their wives they love them without using the word we.

Actress Brigette Lundy-Paine delivers a breakout performance through her spot-on young Keanu impression as Ted’s daughter Billie, while rising star Samara Weaving takes a more naturalistic approach to the role of Bill’s daughter, Theadora. I adore both actors, but Lundy-Paine steals the show as Billie, eclipsing the usually captivating Weaving. I normally would never even consider pitting the two talents against each other in such terms, but since they took such differing approaches to the roles, I think it’s a fair assessment that Lundy-Paine’s technique better fits the material. Whether the result of poor coordination between the actors or poor direction, it’s disappointing that Lundy-Paine’s killer performance brings attention to the film’s biggest flaw: the daughters seem to exist in different movies.

Despite this incongruity, the characters of Thea and Billie bring the story of Bill and Ted into the 21st century. As members of Gen Z, the young women studiously indulge in music in a completist fashion only possible because of the resources available to them through the Internet. Which begs the question, would Bill and Ted have been good students if they grew up with access to the World Wide Web? Or would public education’s standards have risen due to the accessibility of information?

While Bill and Ted are mentally stuck and culturally limited by the time in which they came of age (the late ‘80s and early ‘90s), Thea and Billie are citizens of 2020’s information economy. An information economy is defined as a society where the usage, creation, distribution, manipulation and integration of information is a significant activity. T and B, as they refer to each other, demonstrate this through their broad knowledge of music history, ranging from the Stone Age and ancient China to the Classical period and the Jazz Age to psychedelic rock and contemporary hip-hop. While they casually refer to their combination of musical knowledge and talent as sampling, Billie and Thea’s expertise is anything but casual. Their fathers may have struggled through their high school history class, but their daughters ultimately ace the test through their complete and occasionally revisionist understanding of history.

While Bill & Ted Face the Music, like any movie that deals with an impending and inevitably foiled apocalypse, lacks any true suspense (the script literally checks the audience’s watch for them by having characters announce how many minutes are left until the end of the world, er, movie), the unbridled enthusiasm and comedic talent of all involved makes the film worthwhile.

Chernobyl

I’m breaking a self-enforced rule of mine: I’m writing about a TV show. Over the course of the weekend, my husband and I watched the HBO mini-series Chernobyl, a harrowing look at the cause and aftermath of the infamous Russian nuclear disaster in the spring of 1986. (Not to be confused with the 2012 found footage mess, starring Jesse McCartney and rabbit killer-and-eater Dimitri Diatchenko, The Chernobyl Diaries.) Lurking underneath this tale of doom and gloom resides a male comradeship that, in a less deadly situation, might look something like a buddy comedy.

Jared Harris plays an earnest man of science, Valery Legasov, the one man in Russia who seems to understand how a nuclear reactor works. Stellan Skarsgard plays Valery’s bureaucratic foil, Boris Shcherbina. The Central Committee of the Communist Party assigns Valery to accompany Boris to Chernobyl to assess the situation from a scientific standpoint, while Boris represents the Soviet Union’s best interests. (Which are to keep up national and international appearances and cover up the nuclear incident.) Within moments of boarding the plane to Chernobyl, a disgruntled Boris asks Valery how a nuclear reactor works. Valery explains the basic concept in layman’s terms, to which Boris replies Now I know how a nuclear reactor works, so I don’t need you. This humorous but brusque display of arrogance plays like flirting in a romantic comedy, with Skarsgard playing the stubborn party whose icy demeanor eventually melts as Valery and Boris grow to see things eye to eye.

After an episode or two of bickering between these intelligent men of politics and science, Vasely lays down the law: due to the radiation poisoning the air they breathe, they both can expect to die within five years. They might as well work together.

Moving forward with this morbid perspective of a shared fate, the pair buckle down and bring out the best in one another. Valery thinks in scientific but occasionally apolitical terms, while Boris acts as a diplomatic reality check, keeping Valery’s head out of the mushroom clouds and translating the scientific mumbo jumbo for his fellow bureaucrats. By the end of five episodes, their mutual respect, and the brains and moral compass of Emily Watson’s character, Ulana Khomyuk, bonds the motley group together to accomplish something none of them could have done alone: publicly contradicting and correcting the Soviet Union’s version of events.

The teamwork displayed by Boris, Vasely, and Ulana defies political polarization. They all want the same thing: the truth. While their attitudes and strengths differ, the three musketeers of Chernobyl exemplify the greatness possible when we utilize our differences for the common good and focus on