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"My Old Ass" is a fun little movie. Maisy Stella is extremely cute, in a way that women her age probably don't want to be, you know in sort of a "pinch her cheeks and hang her on your Christmas Tree" kind of way. The conceit of incidentally summoning your 39-year-old self during a mushroom trip is a different angle on one of the most fascinating ideas in fiction: what if you could somehow know the future? There are a few problems, though, starting with the tag line. "What would you ask your older self?" turns out to be simply answered and very uninteresting: "Why are you giving me this advice?" "What does that mean? "Why are you telling me that?" The true tag line should be "What would you tell your younger self?"

And that is, to me, a fascinating conceit. And the big problem with this movie. Aubrey Plaza's dialogue is terribly muddled. There really is only one big rule about these things: that the rules be internally consistent. For example: does the 39-year-old Elliott remember an older version of herself showing up during a mushroom trip on her eighteenth birthday, and, if so, did she find herself repeating, inadvertently, everything she was told twenty one years earlier? Does anything she tells her eighteen-year-old self have the power to change the future, or is it immutable? Or is the eighteen-year-old version off track and needs to act differently in order to keep "on track" in her life? Plaza's lines seem to cross all these possibilities and more.

Sadly, some of Plaza's descriptions about "the future" are absurd and some of her advice terrible. Worse, I didn't think this kind of movie could be made in 2024. Without going into detail, I'd expect picketing from the LGBT community.

The idea that an eighteen-year-old can not only summon her future self during a mushroom trip, but also keep in contact with her through somehow connecting through their phones is an idea with a lot of potential, but it's sadly not realized here. This is a fun little movie, but it could have, should have, been so much more.

I watched a dozen short films today, the live action and animated Oscar Nominees, plus two other animated shorts included to make the program long enough. This was the best.

I've seen it derided as a one joke comedy that wears very thin, and this would be true if it were a comedy. And indeed there was a scene, you'll know the one, where most of the people in the theater were laughing uproariously. I found myself attempting to get into the fetal position and unable to stop crying.

We don't do death well as a culture. Apparently the Danes don't either. Only the senior morgue attendant has been able to come to terms with death, and for him it has become banal. The acting is excellent, though Jens Jørn Spottag stands out as another man trying to come to terms with saying good bye to his wife.

This isn't to say that there is no levity here. There is a "meet cute" between Torben and Karl, and a simply amazing letter from Torben to his late wife. It must be seen to be believed. But ultimately all the performances are powerful examples of how poorly we deal with it.