A24 Film "Opus"

    

     A24’s movies are always intriguing, thrilling, and unique. They are the masterminds behind Moonlight, Midsommar, Lady Bird, Florida Project, and numerous other award winning films. I was thrilled to find out that they had come out with a movie in time for this project. Recently A24 has come out with a larger scale movie that I had seen commercials for called The Death of a Unicorn with Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd but I had no idea that they had come out with another thriller from march this year.

    The movie starts with a young couple eating at a restaurant. Ariel, is an aspiring writer who was well off as a child and continues to be well off as an adult. Her boyfriend says to her in his words, with no harm or disrespect he says that nobody cares about her opinion because it has no perspective. He says that opinions are valuable because of what a person has been through. She is considerably hurt by this but later that day she gets offered the opportunity of a lifetime. An undeniably iconic pop star who had mysteriously disappeared for twenty-seven years has surprised the world and his devoted fans with a new album. He has invited six people to view the album before it is released. Ariel and her boss happen to be two of the six. Everyone is appalled that she is picked, furthering the narrative that her boyfriend has put into our heads as well as her own. She arrives at the community that the popstar—Morretti has built over the last twenty seven years. There seems to be one giant structure where everyone lives, farms, and many courtyards. The entire settlement is enclosed by fenced and forty miles of desert. The trip to the settlement is quite eerie and when the guests arrive they are greeted by people only wearing jeans. It seems that everyone in the community wears jeans except Morretti the singer. 

As the guests are staying at the settlement, most things seem normal but Ariel begins to notice things getting odder and odder. The turning point for her was that the other guests seem to be going missing. She begins to question her situation and brings it up to her peers. Unfortunately they say she is crazy and she decided to look for her phone. Upon their arrival they are stripped of all electronics. She dodges the countless guards and constant surveillance to find everyone’s phones. When she finds the phones the screens are painted so they are unusable. She then looks up to find numerous animals and creatures in jars. The camera pans to a body hidden under the table with no head which only the viewer sees. I think you get the idea before I spoil the entire movie for you.

This movie was the first movie of Mark Anthony Green. As A24 has made some iconic cult movies in the past, this one just doesn't stand up to them. Midsommar is an iconic movie and opus is mediocre at best. This is the first full length film for the director Mark Anthony Greene. Before beginning his filmmaking career, Mark was a writer for popular men’s magazine GQ. He began writing for GQ when he was just nineteen years old. Before releasing opus with a 2.2 million dollar budget he came out with a short film in 2017 called Trapeze, U.S.A. With a ten million dollar budget and only two million in revenue, what happened?

Watching the movie, I noticed there are a lot of ideas that are left untouched. For example there are voodoo dolls shown of all of the guests but they are never mentioned besides the original scene. There were a lot of concepts that needed to be expanded on. Another example is why do they have dead animals in jars and why does everybody have scars on their hands. Why is everybody required to wear jean everything? There was one scene where every single person in the cult had to take a bite of a roll. There was no clear explanation for that either.

Despite the questions unanswered there is a strong theme emphasizing fame and the celebrity community. There are comparisons between god, and “levelists” which seems like commentary on our current view of celebrities. It is easy to become obsessed with people we see online and create parasocial relationships with them. In this movie many people worship Moretti the popstar to the point where they are blindlessly following him into a cult where they kill people and wear jeans everyday. The target audience of this movie is regular people. It is meant to shine a light on the dangerous habits of the common person and their relationships with celebrities. Throughout the movie you see the fans not being able to function when Moretti is singing. If you look closely in their eyes there is actually a little sparkle in them. You can tell how devoted they are not only by the sparkle but by the antidotes given by the members of the cult.

Since I never saw anything about this movie that might have had a huge impact on why it was not super popular. There was not a lot of advertising and the budget wasn’t well spent. Watching this did not compel me to buy anything more of the director. I was not all that impressed. I think with more explanation of the thrilling topics the movie could have been more interesting. My sister walked in while I was watching this and she was appalled by the gore in the one scene that she walked in on. Other than that I don't know anyone who has ever mentioned this movie. Despite the notable director, It is so unpopular that it is even hard to find pictures and clips of the movie.

As I am searching online it seems that the professionals agree with me. There are too many points brought up and not explored for this move to efficiently convey the issues at hand. The movie earned a 41% on rotten tomatoes and a 5.7 out of ten on IMDb. The reviews are unfortunate but I do understand and agree. The first half of the movie is not even scary. Moving forward I am excited to see what this director puts out but for now he's gonna need a little more practice.

Sources

Green, Mark Anthony. “Opus.” IMDb, 14 Mar. 2025, www.imdb.com/title/tt29929565/. Accessed 24 May 2025.

All 120 A24 Movies Ranked. editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/all-a24-movies-ranked/.

Purcell, Sammie. “In Conversation with Mark Anthony Green: From GQ to “Opus.”” Rough Draft Atlanta, 14 Mar. 2025, roughdraftatlanta.com/2025/03/14/in-conversation-with-mark-anthony-green-from-gq-to-opus/. Accessed 24 May 2025.

“Opus (2025).” Rotten Tomatoes, 27 Jan. 2025, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/opus_2025#:~:text=%E2%80%9COpus%E2%80%9D%20says%20plenty%20but%20lacks,Content%20collapsed.&text=Green’s%20screenplay%20is%20too%20self,song%20too%20many%20times%20before. 

“Opus.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 14 Mar. 2025, www.imdb.com/title/tt29929565/. 

Media Blog Project One: Smiling Friends and the Journey to Find Happiness

Television is a huge part of American society. Every night my sister and I sit down to watch tv together after a long day’s work at the restaurant. After endless hours of making people happy I thought that Smiling Friends would be a fitting show for this project. It's humor is described as  surreal and absurd but the underlying themes are very close to home for most blue collar americans like myself.

 For the blog project one, I watched “Pim Finally Turns Green” of  Smiling Friends season two episode eight on Adult Swim. It was written by Zach Hadel and Mike Cusack.  I watched the program for free on “Sling TV” without ads! The episode was only about 10 minutes long so I think that is why no ads were included. The show is identified by wikipedia as an animated sitcom surreal absurdist comedy series. The premise of the show is this organization that sends their employees to make people smile. The main characters in the show are the boss, Pim the happy guy, Charlie the yellow guy, Glep the green guy, Alan the red guy and lastly Rotten the snowman. In this episode Glep and Charlie were outside of the Smiling Friends building and they curated a snowman out of trash and snow. There were broken bottles, 8 balls, and socks that littered “rotten’s body”. As Charlie is showing his new snowman to Pim, he offers for Pim to add something. Pim chooses a daffodil. The snowman ends up coming to life. As the characters are appalled by the sight, they ask the boss what happened and we are informed that the daffodil added to the snowman was indeed nuclear and had special properties. The episode includes the journey of the snowman and its happy death at the end. New York Times author Margaret Lyons describes the show as a “deranged blast”. Roxie Mullens of the webster journal says “this is easily one of the best seasons of television I’ve seen in years, even though it’s barely over an hour”. From what I have gathered, people love this show. 

The first episode of Smiling Friends aired on April Fools' Day in 2020. I think it is telling of the type of comedy featured in the show. They had originally only planned on airing the first episode but due to the tremendous support the creators started working on the show. The rest of the first season came out in 2022 and the second season aired again on April 1st  in 2024. The audience is unsure when the third season will be aired but it has been announced that they are currently working on it. The show explores universal personal issues that almost everybody has dealt with. The business featured in the show focuses on a lot of depression, friendships, and battles with religion, all in a light and hilarious manner. For example it one of the episodes the smiling friends crew visits the devil in hell who has a gaming addiction. While they are there a pizza is delivered. I think this is so telling to our current state in society. Most people are depressed and most people order food to their house because they cant get up and out to get their food. I think this pertains to my generation more than anything. It is also interesting because the first season came out around the beginning of covid. During covid a lot of people lost track of their lives and this show does a very good job illustrating the struggles of the average person. 

Since this is an animated show, it is not filmed anywhere rather it is drawn in a studio. The show is constantly juxtaposing the weight and seriousness of life’s crises and using funny looking colorful characters in a funny looking town. The show is similar to other adult cartoons like Bojack Horseman. There are layers upon layers embedded into each episode and each character. In the episode that I watched there is a tiny little nonverbal green guy who is part of the team. You can often see him watching silly videos with headphones on not interacting with the group.  I gathered that this is a comment on today’s kids and their addiction to constant serotonin as well as us adults. His simple character embodies the childhood aspects of underperforming adults.  The primary target for this  show is young adults, or adults who are still trying to get it together. When I hear people mention this show it is usually men. I believe since it is made by men it caters more to men than to women but women are still able to enjoy it. If I was a visitor from another country I would think Americans are mostly sad and pathetic after watching this show but equally funny and hopeful. There are few who are successful and most are lost.

Smiling friends does a thorough job expressing its concerns for American society. It successfully illustrates the main issues that an average person faces while bringing a lighthearted view on serious issues. This show has so many little statements embedded into the show and I think in order to notice them one must watch it over and over again. And since there are so many layers and it is so short, it is easy to watch over and over again. Everytime you turn it on you will notice something new. Since it consistently made me chuckle, I would gladly share this show with my friends. For example the episode I watched was a spin off of Frosty the Snowman. They brought the snowman in the cooler with beer to the beach. While they played beach volleyball the snowman tossed them beers and watched. I think this show has genius comparisons and I think critics agree. The show was nominated by the Hollywood Critics Association Television Awards for best animated short film series in 2022. There are a lot of fan reviews but not many professional reviews on the show that I can find. There was a new york times article but it was unfortunately behind a pay wall.

Since this show has only two seasons so far, there are not that many reviews. I first found this show in 2020 when my boyfriend at the time told me to watch it. We didn’t have much in common so I was surprised that I had enjoyed it. I forgot all about it until I was at work a couple months ago and my male coworkers were discussing the new season. I am not a diehard fan of this show. I do not follow any of their socials. I checked to see if they have an instagram and despite not having aired an episode in an entire year, they are currently posting on their instagram story and main feed They have one hundred andt hirty thousand followers. Today as we speak there is something on their story. They are actively keeping viewers engaged by posting during the production. I checked to see if they have a tiktok but they don't. Although they do not have a TikTok, there seems to be a viewer presence about the show. I saw a lot of female presence as well which I didn't see until now. 

After my extensive research on Smiling Friends, I realized this is not only something that has been mentioned to me by people I know. It's a TikTok sensation and was even nominated for an award. As I haven't revisited for any reason besides this paper, I am surprised again by how funny it is. The issues at stake are so detrimental and realistic it is enlightening to see such a silly take on all of these issues. It gave me a little bit of space of mind knowing that there are women who watch this show. Overall I do appreciate the ability of the writers to create something so heavy and so bright at the same time.

Sources

https://websterjournal.com/2022/02/26/review-smiling-friends-is-equal-parts-gruesome-and-wholesome/ 

https://smilingfriends.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Characters

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12074628/awards/?ref_=tt_awd

Watch the episode for yourself here!

https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/cc2fb5dae1a1d4fa9f075a951476f920/watch

JN20WK1: Topic 1!

Hey everyone! 

My name is Rachel and I go by Ray. Surprisingly enough I like to cook. I've been cooking ever since I was 16 or so. I currently work as a chef(or cook) downtown Albany. As I've taken 5 years to complete two years of school, I have plenty of time for many hobbies. My favorite one at the moment is snowboarding. I've gone this season more than any year before. But so unfortunately the sun is starting to come out and the season is ending. But soon enough I'll be swapping snowboarding with swimming.

I also have indoor hobbies as well. I'd consider myself a very creative and artistic person; I love to make things, whether it's outfits or paintings. You can always see me cooking up something.

I've never been good at making decisions. So currently I am getting my associates of arts degree. This is my last term and once I've finished here, I will be traveling some in order to figure out what I want to do with my life. I've always geared toward architecture but I've never actually studied it. Currently I am beginning to dabble with the idea of becoming a teacher. So this term I will be taking this class and an education class.

With taking this class I am most looking forward to learning how to properly consume media. There is so much opinionated information in our country that I never know what to believe. I am excited to learn about medias past and how the use of phones has made everything so much more accessible. A question I am constantly asking myself is that if the world is worse than ever or if the coverage is simply the best it's ever been. Taking this class I am hoping to be able to answer that question.

I am most often consuming media on my phone or television. I hate to say it but I often use snapchat and Instagram for most of my news. I pride myself in not believing everything I see. Whenever I see something sketchy or odd I always look it up before I believe it. For example Elon Musk doing the Nazi salute at the presidential inauguration was indeed real. It's unfortunate that recently everything has been shockingly real. When I am fact checking I aim to find unbiased sources, or look at both sides. I often use NPR, PBS, or BBC, and other outside sources. With the rise of AI I am extremely concerned about everything and everyone on the internet. Especially people without critical thinking skills. 

This being said I believe the least social medial platforms can do is fact check information. They should be required to say when things are ai