danny rosenberg
sr. copywriter

Soggy Waffles

Welcome to Soggy Waffles. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the write-up. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online.

 And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

1 = The Frozen Waffle. The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. That bite was so traumatizing that you it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

 2 = The Soggy Waffle. You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

3 = The Microwaved Waffle. This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

 4 = The Crispy Waffle. Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This is the type of movie that cracks into your End-of-Year best list, but doesn’t quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

5 = The Toasty Waffle. This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious. You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Welcome to Soggy Waffles Reviews. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the review. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online. And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-08.png

1. The Frozen Waffle

The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. The whole experience is so traumatizing that it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-07.png

2. The Soggy Waffle

You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-03.png

3. The Microwaved Waffle

This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-02.png

4. The Crispy Waffle

Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This rating is reserved for the movise that crack into your End-of-Year best lists but don't quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-01.png

5. The Perfectly Toasted Waffle

This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious (but obviously you still do). You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Rating: Perfectly Toasted.

Rating: Perfectly Toasted.

I have lots to say

About Miseducation:

Nothing but great things!

When I first saw a preview for “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” before “Eighth Grade,” I couldn’t believe my luck. I usually only get one coming-of-age movie of this caliber every few years, let alone per summer. So needless to say, I was pretty hyped for this movie. The preview had a stacked cast: Chloë Grace Moretz who I love from Kick-Ass and Let Me In, Sasha Lane who I loved in American Honey and Forrest Goodluck (whose name I had to Google but knew I recognized from somewhere (turns out he’s the son in The Revenant and possibly the only character I liked aside from the bear despite not even being in the movie for long)). The story seemed accessible yet familiar: gay teen sent to Christian conversion camp where she befriends kids with a rebellious streak like her, and they proceed to terrorize the place from the inside-out. Maybe that is me misremembering what I saw in the preview, but it turns out my idea of what I thought the plot was going to turn out to be was actually pretty far off-base. And definitely for the better. While the film could have taken the easy route and leaned into the rebellion narrative like I expected, the final result is instead a beautiful, honest exploration of the confusion and messiness of sexual identity, gender orientation and religion as seen through the lens of teenagers in 1993 who want to believe they’re good enough when their families and society are telling them otherwise.

Sorry that last sentence was so long, I hope you don’t feel as winded reading it as I did constructing it. But back to the movie. What I found so compelling about “Miseducation” is how it continually subverted becoming the type of movie that I expected it to be. I thought it would be angstier, and I thought it would serve as a rallying cry against the type of conservative religious people who would run the type of camp that Moretz’s character gets sent to at the beginning of the movie. I thought it would pit the heads of the camp as the bad guys, and we would laugh at their expense when things don’t go their way. But that is rarely the case. With the exception of Jennifer Ehle's conversion doctor, who is never redeemed and Goodluck’s character likens to  having his own personal Disney villain, but one that doesn’t let him jerk off. Otherwise, and surprisingly, the filmmakers are very delicate about how they treat their characters, always gentle and affectionate in their approach to each scene. They never judge the kids being brainwashed (my word) – not even the girl who does Blessercize, a classic ’90s mashup of a workout instructor who preaches while she leads home viewers through her routine – by the camp, or even the adults who subscribe to  the homosexuality-doesn’t-exist bullshit. Instead, everyone feels humanized and complex, which is especially uncommon for the adult characters in movies about teens. And when jokes come at a character’s expense, we’re usually laughing with them more so than at them. And “Miseducation” has no shortage of hilarious jokes and one-liners. For a movie about such heavy topics, it still manages to be “LOL funny,” which is a new term I just coined.

My only real criticism of “Miseducation” is that it’s brutally, unfairly short. Clocking in around a 90-minute runtime, I would have loved to spend a little bit more time in the world of Cameron Post and her new misfit friends. The ending isn’t wholly unexpected, but it still plays as an affectionate way to end a movie that’s been extremely affectionate toward its characters all along. I imagine that some critics might say the movie is messy and tonally inconsistent, but I am not most critics. I am Danny Rosenberg, lover of coming-of-age stories, and “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” has just shot to the top of my Coming-of-Age Stories About Teens Struggling With Reconciling Their Sexuality And Their Families’ Strict Conformity To Societal Norms list.

 

In Theaters, Perfectly ToastedGuest User