• movie reviews

    Review: Notting Hill (1999) *****

    Notting Hill is one of the more charming, off-beat romcoms of the 90s, focusing on acting greats Rhys Ifans and Emma Chambers as they fall in love.

    Surely you already know household name Rhys Ifans, whether in his performance as Sherlock’s brother on Elementary (when he was a lazy but sophisticated man of the world) or when he was the villainous enemy on House of the Dragon. He really shows off his range.

    In this role, Ifans is a dodgy Welsh guy who lives in a Notting Hill flat. He wants love, but he’s not sure how to approach it. Clearly without social skills, including no sense of appropriate dresswear, Ifans has found himself a bit of an outsider. Much of his socialization comes from a flatmate who owns a bookstore, and Hugh Grant’s mumblingly incoherent character seems to tolerate Ifans at best.

    Still, it’s impossible not to fall in love with a hero who is so unabashedly himself. He doesn’t hesitate to wear a scuba suit if that’s all he’s got. When he finds himself unexpectedly in front of cameras wearing nothing but pants, it’s not a moment of shame, but a moment of self-celebration. Try not to swoon when he playfully clenches his buttcheeks.

    As his opposite, we have Chambers as Honey, the adorable sister to the bookseller flatmate. Her distinctive features are played up for effect and everyone acts like she’s odd-looking in comparison to other people, rather than just looking like a normal human. Pronounced eyes (exophthalamus) and brittle hair might be indicative of a thyroid disease, but everyone just sorta treats her as a weird lil uggo.

    It’s easy to judge Honey. Much like Ifans, Chambers’s character is socially inappropriate. She’s got no boundaries meeting a prospective sister-in-law the first time and seems to have lost the filter between her brain and mouth.

    Real love often involves meeting people exactly where they are, which Chambers and Ifans do here, falling in love over the course of some random six-month depression that Grant’s character sustains. By the end of the movie, I’m cheering for Chambers to subtly shoot a marriage proposal at the dinner table to Ifans: the celebration of love over human mediocrity.

    For the dodgy-looking weirdos out there, this is one of the most loving romcoms possible.

    Oh there’s an A-plot as well. Actress, shopkeeper. They are very attractive. I want to make them kiss like dolls.

    But mostly the Rhys Ifans stuff.

  • credit: Netflix
    movie reviews

    Review: Nimona (2023) *****

    I loved Nimona, which is essentially a trans narrative. Gorgeous movie for a lot of reasons, not least of all the animation.

    It’s striking how well Nimona captured one particular thing I don’t often see in media: How our allies/friends can hurt us so deeply and stand to reinforce the systems that abuse us all.

    Bal is our hero, and Nimona’s friend, yet he is also in several of Nimona’s flashbacks when she’s melting down over folks being cruel to her.

    At one point Bal says (to paraphrase) “Of course I’M not like this but I’m just helping teach you what the world is like.”

    I think about that sentiment a LOT. Because in that moment, Bal is ‘the world.’ He is the person reinforcing the bias against Nimona, trying to bang her into shape to escape embarrassment and oppression. Bal is her greatest ally in the movie and he’s also the one we see who most often expresses transphobic (monsterphobic) sentiments to her face.

    I think about all the teachers (and adults in general) who abused me because they said, “I don’t think this way, but I have to get you ready for the world.” Those teachers were the world. They banged me up way more than most anyone else. And they did it under the guise of helping me. Being allies.

    Nimona has left me shooketh and this particular thread is the main reason.

    I have been this Bad Ally to people. I have been Bal, unintentionally passing on the system’s abuse. I have been Nimona, abused by allies who consider themselves my friend.

    (Posted on my Letterboxd 06 Jul 2023.)
    (Image credit: Netflix.)

  • sara reads the feed

    SRF #12: Early morning nonsense-posting, grim details, and puppies

    Did you know that humans kinda naturally sleep in two blocks, divided by a wake-up period in the middle? That wake-up period is sometimes called “the watch.” It’s when humans might have refueled the fire, had sex with their partners, use the bathroom, or even written in journals (presumably sitting close to the fire they just fed).

    In that context, it’s not so weird that I sleep all split up most of the time. Seldom do I go a day without a midday nap; sometimes I wake up very early and go back to bed until midmorning instead.

    If you see me making strange posts in the early morning, I might be in some funky “watch” period of my own. I’m not really awake. I’m kind of asleep. Melatonin might still be sitting on my head. I might have taken something to fall back asleep, but it hasn’t kicked in (or it kicked in and I’m asleep on my feet).

    For some reason, I still think I have to share my opinions. It’s up to you whether these watch-hour nonsenseposts mean anything.

    ~

    The nice thing about obscurity is that such posts don’t get read unless I link to them from social media, so I can really put this stuff out there for my own satisfaction and not worry folks might think or respond.

    It’s fun checking to see my site’s analytics. Most common referrer is Facebook – perhaps not too surprising, given that I still have a lot of friends over yonder. Twitter is the second-best with about 3/4 the referrals. I wish Bluesky could give me even a fraction of that stuff, but I think I’ve gotten one or two clicks on there, max, despite getting decent on-site engagement.

    None of this means anything right now since I don’t have ads or anything on here. I’m still just posting for my own gratification. Numbers are gratifying! I like to poking stuff to see what happens.

    ~

    I have a ton of links in my feed right now, but I’m skimming a ton because I’m avoiding deals and whatnot. I’m just…not doing that this year. So here’s just a couple things I looked at, minimal commentary. Hope you’ve been enjoying time with your family lately.

    ~

    Her Hands, My Hands has a round-up of resources that could use help this holiday season.

    ~

    I’d been watching articles about the violence in Dublin, waiting to understand everything happening. It’s not good. (NPR) It looks like the tl;dr of a messy situation is that there was a stabbing in Dublin, perpetrated by a “foreign national.” A right-wing element seized on this as an excuse to begin anti-immigration riots. But while the original source of violence may have been foreign, the person who stopped the attack was also an immigrant. (Daily Beast)

    ~

    An evocative short piece called “I Am Cascadia” on Only Fragments.

    ~

    Digby’s Hullabaloo posted about the birth of a white rhino baby. :^) That’s a rhino baby smiley.

    ~

    Deadline reports that Venom 3 is back in production again. GOOD. I need more gay alien shit.

    ~

    Do you like the thing that one channel does where they sit actors down with puppies and interview them? Chris Pine did one of those things. (YouTube link)

  • image credit: Sony Pictures
    movie reviews

    Review: Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) ****

    Venom: Let There Be Carnage is not a well-written movie where decisions the characters make have an impact on the outcome of the conflicts they face. Rather, it’s a movie where a filmmaker was allowed to do whatever he wanted as long as the result involved Black Alien and Red Alien fighting each other, and the filmmaker said to himself “whatever I want is real freakin gay.”

    Eddie Brock is still living with his alien symbiote after the events of the first movie. They seem to have reached an uncomfortable, sweaty equilibrium, where Eddie is once again working at his job despite constant bickering with Venom. They can’t agree on anything.

    Now that Eddie and Venom have gotten past the exciting hookup part of the relationship, Venom still wants to be a party gay wearing light-up jewelry at a college rave, while Eddie wants to be a domestic gay. “Just shut up and be my wifey,” says Eddie. But nay, Venom must party and eat heads. Worse, Eddie doesn’t acknowledge how tenderly Venom cares for him, already fulfilling his role as wifey without appreciation.

    Needless to say, they break up. It’s a loud, messy process that victimizes Eddie’s motorcycle and leads to Venom’s many casual hookups with other hosts. But no host is as good as Eddie. The other ones keep dropping dead.

    While they’re apart, the movie doesn’t really show that they’re better or worse for the absence. Venom gets to enjoy himself. Eddie gets to focus on his job. But gosh, they miss each other, so they hook back up in a heartbeat once Carnage provides a reason* and Eddie begs thoroughly. Briefly, Eddie and Venom’s ex-girlfriend joins them in another threesome, and she concedes she might do it again because it’s awesome.

    * Carnage’s “plot” is “actor chews scenery while Carnage’s girlfriend Shriek enthuses about dating tentacles.”

    Red and Black Alien fight each other once peril is appropriately established because of plotty stuffy reasons, serial killing Woody Harrelson, idk. The reason Black Alien succeeds is, apparently, because Eddie and Venom are meant to be, whereas Cletus and Carnage are not. (As proven by Carnage trying repeatedly to kill Shriek.)

    Once the Good Gay Couple wins by eating the Bad Gay Couple, Eddie and Venom reach a happy medium in their relationship. They become Vacation Gays together and retire to a beach where Venom finally admits he’s been in love with Eddie the whole time.

    Why did I love this movie? Because everything I wrote above is completely true. I can add no other commentary. Andy Serkis et al had a plan and that plan was real freakin gay and I’m happy I got to watch it.

    (This review was originally posted on Letterboxd on 17 January 2022.)

    (image credit: Sony Pictures)

  • a dog with 3d glasses. he's sooo cute
    essays

    Criticism Is Dead, Long Live Romance

    Earlier I wrote a mini-vent on Facebook. That little diddy went like this.

    Gotta say, it’s really disappointing to go on Letterboxd and see all the bad reviews that romcoms get. Even the better-starred reviews seem self-conscious for enjoying comedies.

    There’s a lot of movie culture that thinks simply disliking things is criticism. Let me tell you: It is not.

    You are allowed to dislike things of course, that’s fine, your reaction is your reaction and very valid.

    But criticism involves looking at a piece of media in its time and place. It means looking at its intentions. It means looking at all the artists involved and seeing how they were managed, how they were allowed to perform. What is it saying? What are the themes?

    Sometimes criticism involves *research* at some point or another, because only some of that information is visible within the movie. If you don’t know what the cinematic and cultural and political landscape was in 1995, or what 1992/3/4 comedies led into the comedies of 1995, your criticism isn’t going to be able to meet the media on its level, you know?

    I often criticize movies for being bad, but I love them. And I often hate movies that I think are critically fine. There exists within me a two-axis formation of opinions allowing for nuance that I don’t see on Letterboxd much! Or frankly, anywhere.

    Literacy is grim, y’all.

    “Literacy is grim” is one of my favorite refrains, and sometimes I might say it like “literacy is grim THESE DAYS” as if there was a period of time where people were overwhelmingly literate.

    That mythical time probably doesn’t exist, which means I’m exasperated with whole generations of humanity, and humanity didn’t really have a choice.

    It’s really not like there used to be whole swaths of General Populace who were given the kind of language & literature education you need in order to be able to “read” things critically. People who had an abundance of books and the time to read them until the point where they Understand Things and can see the whole meta level.

    I’ve got the time. I’ve got the abundance of books. And then I get annoyed that other people dare to Read Things Wrong.

    So I do recognize that this is coming from a grumpy privileged place.

    ~

    Years ago, Goodreads became a bane of many authors because it grew an outrage culture, which smothered any beginnings of an actual critical culture. (It might still be like that, but I disconnected.)

    YouTube is very predatory with its outrage culture, too, especially in terms of misogyny, which means that romcoms aren’t likely to get a fair shake.

    Letterboxd doesn’t have an algorithm, per se, and thus does not push any reviews in front of anyone. But the biggest users tend to bring their own followings in from elsewhere. If the big reviewers are coming in from YouTube…yeah.

    Even the less-outragey reviews might say, “The script is so bad and predictable,” not realizing that in most commercial genres of movie, a predictable script is kinda like a foundation you build a house on. Nobody’s really looking at the foundation, you know?

    ~

    Also, you would think people might be able to recognize a movie/tv show has a lot more than a screenwriter at work.

    You have the writer who does the screenplay, of course. (Or many writers.)

    The director writes things, too.

    They do a lot of the big picture stuff, arm-in-arm with a cinematographer who sets up the shots to fulfill the director’s dream.

    An actor is a character super-specialist who adds nuance to the story.

    My favorite writer on movies is actually the editor. The pacing of a movie is one of those things that is hard to put a finger on, but a few frames cut off here and there can radically change tone. A generous editor can save a bad acting performance by cutting it right. An incompetent editor can ruin a movie that is otherwise excellent.

    It takes a whole symphony of writers to pull off a good movie.

    So if you don’t like the “predictable” writing you might find in romance, then why aren’t you looking at the work these other storytellers did? Is there really nothing there for you?

    ~

    Sometimes the answer to that last question is actually yes. Or there’s the fact that someone dropped the ball so hard, you can’t enjoy anything else about it.

    Now we’re getting into criticism because we know *why* we have bad feelings about something.

    We have expectations for the movie. The movie has expectations for itself. A bar is set, somewhere, and you have to be able to see where the bar is to know when someone doesn’t step over it.

    ~

    What’s funny is that if people actually learned to do criticism, they might realize the reason they disliked that romcom is because they aren’t getting anything out of commercial genres right now. Maybe they just aren’t in a place to enjoy something that involves predictable tropes. That’s going to rule out a lot of stuff, but I totally get it.

    Maybe people would keep their blood pressure down and feel way less outraged if they understood things and could better navigate their media environment.

    (But then where would the clicks come from?)

    ~

    The frustrating thing is that any amount of criticism has become treated as hostile by people who wanna actually enjoy stuff.

    Criticism now has the aroma of the negativity from outrage culture.

    If you don’t like it, don’t talk about it.

    Right?

    That sounds like a really great way to kneecap culture to me. Critical response flexes muscles to maintain and further grow our literacy; critical response also shapes the culture that creates the art that comes next.

    Right now, in left-leaning spaces, the criticism I see permitted is…outrage criticism! I came across a reviewer on Letterboxd earlier who uses movies as a platform to eviscerate the morality of capitalism, on a big scale that the movie really has nothing to do with. Does it sound like I’m talking about myself? Well, when I tell you this individual surprised me, maybe that should tell you what a breathtaking wall of text I saw taking out all their anarchist rage on warmly nothingburger Single All the Way.

    It’s indeed okay to criticize things for being amoral, racist, fascist-supporting, etc. You can generally find plenty of things in the creator lens to reinforce your standpoint.

    But let me tell you, if you get tripped up on that part of the analysis, you’re missing literally *everything else* about the art. Bad morals in the society that literally made the movie you’re watching doesn’t invalidate the fact some skilled artists are in there, and their work is deserving of recognition.

    Leftists are certainly not immune to the allure of an algorithm boosting them for their outrage, though.

    That kind of algorithm-fueling reaction both misses the point and deprives the community of quality criticism. Reading well-considered reviews of other work helps all artists get better.

    ~

    It’s probably not going to change any time soon, tbh.

    Public education in my country is being attacked, including broad book bans, which makes it harder for such necessary development to happen.

    The internet is increasingly limited. It feels like a lot of net neutrality is a distant dream. All the big sites people go on have narrow algorithms that show you whatever pleases that algorithm, and as far as I know, outrage will be evergreen in algorithmic engagement.

    This is a cyberpunk dystopia all right.

    Thank the gods we’ve got romcoms in such a bleak world.

    ~

    Romance in books and movies isn’t actually defined by the central couple falling in love and kissing. That’s why a lot of stuff that ends up listed as romance isn’t actually Romance, yet why it’s hard to explain the difference.

    An HEA (like seeing the couple having a baby at the end of Four Christmases) or an HFN (like at the end of The Holiday) is required, but even the presence of an HEA/HFN may not make something feel like romance.

    Romance is about the healing ability of love and hope. (I’m going to talk about mostly romantic stories here, not romance in contemporary fiction, because it’s really complicated and dark romance exists and I’m just not as literate in that area.)

    In much the way horror is supposed to make you scared/sad/excited, and comedy should make you laugh at some point, romance usually makes you feel better. The story believes that love can make everything work out, somehow. There’s often a wish fulfillment element. You step into the fantasy that everything can be all right and truly believe it.

    Something may also have a lot of the tropes of romcom (like My Best Friend’s Wedding) but lack in hope completely. There’s an HEA between one couple, but the heroine has to obliterate herself in a wildly unhealthy relationship to do it. You’ve Got Mail is truly a romcom, but it’s one that feels askew because the heroine loses so much and never gains it back.

    Something like Last Holiday feels like a romcom even though the plot is almost exclusively about the heroine’s solo emotional journey because it is drenched in hope.

    ~

    Why does that matter?

    If you take a step back to look at the role storytelling plays in the whole existence of humanity, you gotta think it’s necessary to our survival in some way…right? We’ve been doing storytelling since the very beginning.

    It’s a great way to communicate information with one another. Some of our oldest known fiction is just writing down parables passed down from generations through oral tradition. We’ve been teaching with stories for as long as we’ve been telling them. Our ability to network human knowledge in such a way is absolutely intrinsic to our survival.

    That hasn’t really changed.

    Stories now may be commodified up the wazoo, and we increasingly rely on information storage outside of ourselves, but we’re still communicating something important to our survival by telling stories.

    Hope helps people survive.

    If you don’t think there’s a chance things can get better, you won’t try to make it better.

    And the only way it gets better is if you try.

    Romance gives us something to feel hopeful about, and it gives us a mental playground where we believe things will improve. That alone is enough.

    When you’re hurting, a story modeling hope can be like a bandaid and a kiss on the forehead.

    We need to be reminded that life isn’t just the hurting parts.

    Critical killjoys don’t want to engage with the role that romance plays in modeling that kind of happiness, but that doesn’t change the fact that romance is doing it anyway. The whole genre is just sitting there, waiting to embrace you on a bad day.

    You can keep scoffing at it because it reminds you of your aunt sitting around watching Hallmark all Thanksgiving weekend, but maybe someday you’re going to want to remember your aunt, and Thanksgiving, and the times you were in the same place together, and those stories of hope will remind you that good things can indeed happen again.

    Romance keeps us going until we reach the better tomorrow, which is waiting for us. I’m pretty sure we’ll get there if we drop everything to race across this bridge and confess our love to the woman we fell in love with in Paris.

  • sara reads the feed

    SRF 11: Stefon’s worst ideas, more stupid hair, the Scream shake-up continues

    Boy I watched a lotta movies and wrote a lotta reviews yesterday.

    • Last Holiday was my genuine favorite. I cried happy tears and I don’t often do that. (Although I do cry a lot, generally.)
    • Single All the Way made me say AWWW out loud a lot and it was almost my favorite. Definitely wins for hottest love interest.
    • I truly did not expect to enjoy The Sweetest Thing so much, nor did I expect it to be so raunchy.
    • On the other hand, the new movie by Please Don’t Destroy was (warmly) just what I expected.

    I don’t know if today is going to be like that because it’s American Thanksgiving.

    I’m not sure I’ll actually be doing anything for American Thanksgiving. My in-laws typically cook for the holiday (very kindly) and I’m still not vaccinated for the year. I keep forgetting since I don’t usually leave the house. Since socializing and arguably the worst holiday ever are already not my favorite things, and I have a chronically low sense of obligation to extended family in regards to holidays, I might end up at home with more movies.

    I feel sad kinda “skipping” Thanksgiving because it always sticks out as a special day, though, and the years blur together more as I age. I don’t like turkey. I don’t love socializing. The whole pilgrim thing is an offensively silly myth. My kids don’t enjoy it either, so I can’t enjoy them. Why should I feel sad? But I dooooo~

    ~

    It’s good that everyone understands that I’m not the kind of wife/mom who has any interest whatsoever in spending all day preparing an elaborate harvest meal that everyone mostly eats out of habit.

    ~

    Variety: Seth Meyers Details ‘Stefon’ Movie That Never Got Made

    If they were going to approach it from the random comedy angle, then I’m glad they didn’t do it. Neither Hader nor Meyers (in this article) seem to understand that fans of Stefon didn’t just love him because Hader cracked. A whole lot of us were totally into Stefon hitting on Meyers and the little storyline the two of them played out casually (and! the! wedding!). A Stefon movie should have been a gay romcom about a wild partyboy who’s bad at his job but falls in love with this stuffy anchor type.

    Killing Seth off at the beginning is a funny thought but definitely would have made me not care about the movie. James Franco? Oh dear.

    ~

    Also from Variety: How Letterboxd Captured Young Moviegoers–and Martin Scorcese

    I’m not a young moviegoer anymore, I guess, since I’m President Age, but I’m on Letterboxd and adore it. I can’t say the reason I adore it for the reason everyone else does, but: it’s a site that loves movies but puts the social discoverability secondary, or tertiary, meaning you can pretty much *only* see content from people you care about. It feels like Old Internet and it’s magical. I’ll be here as long as the vibe lasts.

    Alsø alsø, Tim Burton says absolutely no revisiting “Nightmare Before Christmas.”

    ~

    As a mom who loves her two irl offspring very dearly, this story about Zack & Cody from The Suite Life refusing to tell fatphobic jokes about their TV mom is so cute.

    I’d be horrified that they were writing fat jokes about a pregnant actress, but that was pretty standard for the era, I’m afraid.

    ~

    Publisher’s Weekly: Workers at Two More B&N Stores Vote to Unionize

    Woo hoo!

    ~

    Al Jazeera English: Four US-Canada crossings shut after blast at Rainbow bridge checkpoint

    US/Canada checkpoints tend to be lowkey nothingburgers, so I was afraid this would turn into security theater.

    But a more recent update was less worrying. I guess this was some horrible accident. My condolences to the couple in the car, who didn’t survive, and their family.

    ~

    Video from AJE: Who is Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders?

    Ugh. It’s yet another dude leading a localized iteration of the contemporary fascist movement who has stupid hair. From a post I made a few days ago:

    I’m not insulting him for having stupid hair, to be clear; I’m saying that the modern fascist movement often has leaders with hair that differs from what is considered business appropriate. Trump’s hair is a distinctive feature, as was Boris Johnson’s.

    This is one way that far-right leaders shoot for populist appeal. They aren’t like the guys in the system, so they’ll be able to change it. You can trust them! They have stupid hair!

    This particular stupid-haired guy is leaning heavily on Islamophobia for his platform.

    ~

    THR: Melissa Barrera Speaks Out After ‘Scream VII’ Firing: ‘I condemn hate’

    “I believe a group of people are NOT their leadership, and that no governing body should be above criticism,” Barrera wrote Wednesday — a reference to posts she had written criticizing the Israeli government. “I pray day and night for no more deaths, for no more violence, and for peaceful co-existence. I will continue to speak out for those that need it most and continue to advocate for peace and safety, for human rights and freedom. Silence is not an option for me.”

    The initial flutter around her firing was weird, but it feels clearer now that the studio has made a real bad decision.

    ~

    From Psyche, I learned that the adult version of pedagogy is androgogy. Huh.

  • source: Columbia Pictures
    movie reviews

    Review: The Sweetest Thing (2002) ****

    If you’ve been aware of my existence for longer than five minutes, you know I’m a useless sapphic; if you’ve ever seen The Sweetest Thing, you know I’m going to complain that this isn’t a romcom where the best friends end up together. Christina Applegate and Cameron Diaz have the chemistry of two “straight” girls who are actually perfect for each other, madly in love, incessantly homoerotic, and I’m supposed to believe either of them have any need for men.

    (Selma Blair can’t end up with Applegate or Diaz because she needs to end up with me.)

    This movie has so much of this blessed trio frolicking around in states of partial dress, or no dress at all, and I just sort of sat around drooling and having zero thoughts. I’m convinced the volume of boobies was intended to disable people like me from having a single critical thought. Or a coherent thought, for that matter. Boobs.

    ~

    By the way, I am a feminist.

    ~

    In “The Sweetest Thing,” we spend a whole lot of time at a straight people breeding ground, which is the brightest, cleanest, quietest night club you’ve ever seen.

    Here, we may observe heterosexual mating habits. Predatory behavior is observed in both genders, wherein gender is presumed to correlate closely to conformation of genitalia, and sexual dimorphism is high. Females of the species dress in flamboyant colors with dropped waists, tunic shirts, and weird big jewelry. Males of the species wear garish veneers and spare jewelry (wrist watches, chain necklaces) to indicate the wealth.

    Interactions between prospective mates primarily occur on the dance floor and near the bar. Only in this communally gendered region are social interactions considered to have a sexual charge. Behavior in bathrooms cannot have sexual connotation, as demonstrated by the scene with many women fondling Christina Applegate’s breasts by the sinks. Like, am I, an innocent cinema anthropologist, supposed to be *not* gay about that?

    The assertion that same-gender sexuality is intended for the consumption of men may be inferred by the fact that Applegate only turns a suggestive situation with Diaz sexual when observed by a man. As with the metaphoric tree falling unobserved in a forest, can one woman’s face in another woman’s lap truly be gay if there is no man to have a boner about it?

    ~

    I love a good screwball comedy, honestly, and The Sweetest THing is a raunchy screwball sex comedy of the highest order. There is a romance, and it’s a comedy, so I suppose it’s also a raunchy screwball romcom. But the rom is the most boring part of it. My enjoyment peaked when something weird and gross was happening because my sibling and I got to shout at the TV. “No! Don’t scratch it! DON’T TASTE IT!”

    Comedy is a communal experience, and this movie was meant to be seen in a group of your own dumbass friends. Which of your friends would drive three and a half hours in her underwear in case she might hook you up with the love of your life? If you know that girl, watch this movie with her.

    The actresses deliver hilarious performances with outstanding chemistry. It’s gross and weird and genuinely sweet. Also, boobies.

    ~

    On a tangential note, it seems like every new-to-me movie I’ve loved lately got terrible reviews in its time. What’s up with that? Is my taste that bad? Have tastes evolved? Is it easier to be generous in evaluation with the perspective of time? Or maybe is everyone wrong and I’m just that good at picking unappreciated gems at complete random off streaming websites? I’ll let you decide.

    (Image credit: Columbia Pictures)