“The Whale” sparks a Brenden Fraser comeback

By: Harry VanVooren LO’T Entertainment Editor

“The Whale,” directed by Darren Aronosky, is an absolutely fantastic movie that pulls at your emotional heart strings and is sure to make the most empathic individuals shed tears. The movie is about a morbidly obese man eating his life away to cope with depression.

Brendan Fraser, the actor who plays the overweight main character, Charlie, exceeds expectations in the role despite the early criticism that the film’s production crew received by not casting an actual obese actor to star in the role, according to NPR.

Ultimately, the production crew and Fraser were validated when Fraser won the Oscar for “best actor” for his performance in the movie. The movie also earned an Oscar for “Best Makeup and Hairstyling.”

“The Whale” is about an obese man who left his family for his true love, another man, and after losing his partner, he goes into a deep depression in which he uses eating as a coping device. The eating gets to him, and he eventually reaches a staggering six hundred pounds. After the weight gain, he is so ashamed of his image that he never leaves the house, and he becomes an online English teacher to make ends meet. Charlie throughout the movie just looks for real essays and how the people feel and wants people to be themselves, something he was unfortunately not able to accomplish.

While teaching online, he never turns his camera on due to his poor selfimage due to his excessive weight, and he continues to avoid the outside world by ordering food online, which only makes his problems with food and weight worse.

The movie really makes viewers think about obesity and Charlie’s unfortunate emotional battles of using food to cope with depression and life’s hardships in a different light. I personally loved the movie, and it has become one of my favorites due to the fact that many people could be living the way that Charlie is.

By the end of the movie, I found myself in near tears alongside Charlie as he realized the devastation that his weight and choices had on his life . It is hard to watch Charlie accept his fate early on in the movie.

He doesn’t want to go the hospital as he is too poor to afford the medical bills, which also makes viewers think differently about obesity.

Many see obesity as a personal choice due to lack of willpower, but the movie helps us realize that it really is a medical condition that affects people both physically and also mentally.

Furthermore, the movie also forces viewers to think about the devastating impacts of a health care system that doesn’t care for people who are poor, suggesting that if you don’t have a good job, it shouldn’t take you a lifetime to pay for a lifesaving medical procedure. After finding his daughter, he eventually reveals he does have money and wants to give it to her even though she acts entitled and extremely snobby, as he believes she still has good in her. Although the movie came out in December, it is still in theaters, and I would highly recommend you go see it.

March 31, 2023

Angry women are “all the rage” in cinema

By: Natalie Rotramel L’OT Feature Editor

For many years of cinema, female anger has been represented in the ‘silent but strong’ form. A mother lets a tear roll down her cheek before putting her smile back on and continuing. A girl purses her lips in the face of injustice. But now more than ever we are seeing pure, unbridled rage coming from angry women in film. And audiences are here for it. Specifically, many teenage girls are finally seeing their emotions portrayed accurately in movies instead of feeling childish or immature when the girl they see on the screen takes things silently and without a fight. The level of anger doesn’t even have to be completely, but given the opportunity to see the reaction you pushed below the surface actually play out is deeply satisfying for many.

This is not to say women have only recently begun to express emotion in film, but rather it is the first time they are being appreciated in their full glory. And since then ,they have now been appearing more and more often in films. Notable figures of female rage include Florence Pugh in “Don’t Worry Darling,” Megan Fox in “Jennifer’s

Body,” and a myriad of actresses from the series “Euphoria.” But it seems no one has sparked the fiery rage of female actresses like Mia Goth.

Mia Goth, the actress now dubbed the “Scream Queen” by many, is just that--the queen of cinematic female rage. Her now iconic scenes from A24 films “Pearl” and its prequel “X,” gained her the title, and it appears they’re not stopping any time soon. Just as well, because, so far, people can’t seem to get enough.