📖 ~ We Are Okay

rating: 3.75/5

life is so interesting. this was one of the first books i came by in 2020 which somehow stayed in my memory and by tbr. the only thing i knew was that it was a wlw queer book about loneliness and grief. now, six years later, i've finally read it—on a whim, as always. kayin, lia, hana and i were discussing books at college and i got struck by this nostalgia to read this specific nina lacour book. i think now was the perfect time to read it too because i related to marin's experience being alone in her college dorm in a way i otherwise wouldn't have six years ago. i could picture her dorm room so clearly because i'd lived in one at elmhurst myself. the click of the radiator turning on and off at specific intervals, the image of my half of the room being empty while my roommate's half is decorated and full of life, the image out of my window with snow falling: it was all so viscerally real for me. i think that, in part, makes up for a lot of my rating. i do think it's a little funny that marin doesn't have enough financial anxiety while buying things, though she's aware of her limited finances. and the dorm kitchen having sm appliances is ridiculous. but i really liked the contained setting of this novel. the non-linear storytelling lends to the mystery of the past, and expands pretty well on mabel and marin's relationship. i love the non-explicit intimacy of YA fiction. it's a lost art—giving words to the feeling of being touched and touching in return instead of being preoccupied w whose dick was being stuck in whose hole (ew). the latter is a major pitfall of recent books due to booktok's obsession w smut. i made a lot of annotations in this book because of how much i related to marin's ruminations of being alone and living. grandpa's obsession w birdie and the obscurity of his motivations and character is the weakest part of this book. marin herself doesn't know the answers, that's part of what makes that so unclear, but it's still something very ridiculous that he had a whole secret room of her mom's stuff and wrote letters to her and imitated her writing him back. bro just goes missing or drowns: we don't even know. so yeah weird plot point but eh. mabel was also a pretty weakly written character. i know nothing about her except that she has a boyfriend and is an understanding friend and former situationship. HANNAH THO. i liked hannah. she's never described so her appearance suffers white room syndrome BUT despite how scarcely she's mentioned in the story, her bond w marin still got me shipping them. AND MARIN BASICALLY CONFRIMS HER FEELINGS FOR HANNAH EVEN THOUGH SHE DOESN'T ACKNOWLEDGE IT OUT LOUD!!! i think that's beautiful. don't got much else to say. that's the review guys.

🎬 ~ Primetime

rating: 9.25/10

on the metro omw back to my dwelling in this metropolis and i shall try to write my review. first of all, it’s been such a long time since i’ve seen a non-blockbuster film in theatres. i mean, curry barker’s obsession counts too but aside from that. i think this was my second a24 theatre experience and i LOVED it. watching stuff like this really brings into perspective that movies are meant to watched in the movie THEATRE and not on ur damn phone or laptop. nothing captures the feeling of this artform quite like sitting in front of a giant screen with 4D ultra clear audio on the speakers where you can HEAR the silence. speaking of which, the sound design of this film. FUCK. it’s SO GOOD. i don’t think ik who the composer is (not a name i recall) but the editing and the score are so brilliant. i have no words. in all technical aspects—style, cinematography, sound, lighting—this film is an artistic wet dream. beauty in every frame; the composition of scenes, the long focus push-ins, the use of negative space—girl, i was geeking out. performances were spectacular. i loved andy and decoy dan specifically. skylar gisondo was blowing it out of the park in this one. i forgot he was jimmy olsen from superman (2025). the parellel w him singing the song in his first appearance vs the climax where the DA kills himself? chills. astounding. the way dan tries to model himself after hansen but ultimately chooses a different path. god, the complexity of this script. lance oppenheim i was not familiar w your game. i didn't even know anna faris was in this. it was jarring to see her in something serious that wasn't one of the Scary Movie films. AND PATTINSON. in the theatre i kept pointing out how he appears to be playing Bruce Wayne for a couple seconds before becoming Edward Cullen for a bit (there's this one flashing scene w andy by the end where he's in the exact THIS IS THE SKIN OF A KILLER BELLA stance) and then into Neil from Tenet. i like to view this role of his as an amalgamation of everyone he's played up to this point in his career. i really think this might get him nominated for the big O. ending scene was peak with the four camera layout and chris hauntingly muttering his script to himself while staring into where the DA shot himself. i didn't know the story but i still predicted that haha. great movie experience.

🎬 ~ Coyote vs. Acme

rating: 4.5/10

do i think this is one of the best thematically resonant things i've ever seen? beep beep. do i still hate the unfunny writing? beep beep. c'mon man, at least TRY to be funny with your jokes. the quips were so dry and unhumorous, a chore to watch and hear, that i couldn't help but wonder if the script was written aided by ai. but shit. just the idea: what if sisyphus loved the boulder, and the boulder loved him back? what if he loved TRYING. fuck fuck fuck i was crying when roadrunner acknowledged the pain he saw coyote go through and called him a friend. i don't think i've cried in this way in a while. one tear is normal, two simultaneously streaming down my cheeks is decidedly not. rare event guys. can't believe i carried to a fuckin looney tunes movie. i was waiting for donald duck but idk if he's looney tunes or not. BUGS BUNNY THO! MY GOAT WHO I WAS CONSTANTLY COMPARED TO AS A KID COZ OF MY OVERBITE! HE SAVES THE DAY AND IS SO SUAVE AND COOL AND I LOVE HIM!! the court scenes' inaccuracies were taking me out of the experience so bad. as someone with a fleeting interest in law even i can tell they weren't following procedure properly: idc if this is a "children's" film, at least TRY to be faithful and accurate. honestly i don't think this movie was meant to be marketed to kids either. i mean, i can see that it's written to be a kids movie (glaringly apparent coz of the severely dumbed down dialogue) but as far as i've seen the audience for this has been adults mostly who've related to the struggles of coyote. i feel like they should've leaned more into that mature audience aspect. the script kind of nukes itself trying to be too simple. at least it's a blessedly small runtime. istg that roadrunner testimony scene is the magnum opus of this movie that by itself deserves a 10/10 but the rest is bleghh. also why was a character who studied law at OXFORD back in america doing her internship in a boonies ass city in new mexico?that's my review guys. 

🎬 ~ Look Back

rating: 8/10

what do i even say? wow. i will forever associate Oasis' Don't Look Back in Anger with this movie. i didn't even know the original story was written by fujimoto, but the chainsaw man references sold me. there was also a moment in the movie where i thought kyomoto looked like rize for a second lol so it all connects. this was a sad movie, but since i went in expecting to cry, i did not cry. that happens sometimes. i always inflate my expectations for movies i know are sad. i resonated with the creative jealousy and competitiveness that fujino experiences after kyomoto starts publishing her manga strips. i mean, c'mon, as an artist, there's bound to be significant gaps in talent and skill between two people. this movie also made me feel bad for mangakas lol. all that constant work like that which fujino does while publishing her shark manga can't be good for you. i liked the animation a lot, and don't really got any other opinions to talk about. the film didn't make that solid of an impression on me 🤷🏻

🎬 ~ The Wedding Banquet

rating: 10/10

girl this film almost moved me to tears at the end. brokeback mountain did nothing for me but the wedding banquet did. there’s sm in this movie it’s hard to describe. i especially loved how waitung’s parents’ love for him is depicted in the movie. everything is so nuanced. weiwei’s unrequited feelings for waitung, her identity as a person, her homesickness, and waitung’s suppression and relationship with simon, simon’s own sadness at seeing the man he’s in love with going to such lengths to hide his sexuality from his parents. fuuuuuuck. the wedding banquet sequence was so beautiful. i loved seeing a wedding party from another culture, mostly coz it reminded me sm of how indian weddings go too. highkey gave me wedding fever. weiwei being fed lotus soup by her mother-in-law, who blows on it to cool it down before feeding it to her—that scene was so heartwarming for me. just the care and love in every scene got to me. i don’t care that this was a movie. they’re a real family to me. papa gao’s conversation with simon is also so interesting, and mama gao’s want for weiwei to have a child because she herself couldn’t have any kids after waitung. UGHH KMSSS I LOVE THIS MOVIE ITS SO COMPLICATED. i actually love that there’s no neat bowtie resolution to every conflict. if they made this movie today, they would try to make the parents woke asf and accept their son after minimal conflict. but here, the parents love their son, but they still can’t fully confront the fact that he’s  gay man in love with another man. they’re content living in the lie the son’s created despite knowing otherwise. that’s why the last scene is so powerful in a way. mama gao is crying as they walk into the airport for gloomier reasons. meanwhile papa gao looks fine and happy, and he is, coz his son’s sexuality doesn’t completely matter to him—as long as he gets his grandkid. i’m pretty sure papa gao might’ve harboured his own feelings for a guy when he was younger. he literally says he ran away from an arranged marriage when he was younger but had to marry someone to carry on the name coz his entire family line died. he’s driven by responsibility, and so is waitung. although, papa gao might’ve been bisexual coz his relationship with mama gao feels pretty genuine. waitung’s definitely homosexual. i do like waitung and weiwei’s relationship. they’re good friends, almost sibling-like if not for the fact that weiwei was in love with him and they slept together… anyways, again, LOVE THIS FILM TO DEATHH. i originally discovered it while looking for queer movies with east asian protagonists that explored desire for said east asian men. it’s kinda difficult to come by queer asians in films or tv shows, at least in mainstream hollywood, coz they’re more focused on white, black, or hispanic characters. asian characters rarely get to be queer on main. i was trying to explore this coz of scott and kenji. they mean the world to me.

🎬 ~ Voicemails for Isabelle

rating: 6.25/10

DON'T LET THE RATING FOOL YOU—I HAD SM FUN WATCHING THIS AND WAS ON THE VERGE OF RATING IT WAY HIGHER and yet i could not get over the horrible song choices (daddy's home and benson boone—who tf was in charge of the music) and tiktok cringe writing ("i don't need a man" in the middle of an emotionally charged conversation). there's something very booktok about this entire plot. this story would not work if the main characters were anything but white. and it's so white. the raciality of this is hard to look past. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT I'M TRYING TO TALK ABOUT.  the writing is bad in a lot of parts. the dialogue is fucking cringe, lifted straight out of gen z spaces in some parts. jill is the most y/n booktok heroine ever. even wes is the posterchild of booktok boyfriends, but this time i say it in a positive manner instead of being derogatory coz i LOVED how nick robinson plays him. that one scene where he's just quoting tswift back at his cousin is so funny. i love him. i haven't seen men do that in cinema without it feeling forced in a long time. there's something ann liang about him. but i also gotta talk about how underwritten he is, in true booktok boyfriend fashion. he SAYS he's broken but we don't exactly know how. yes, his mother is dead, and he seems to have attachment issues, but who is he beyond that. character is compromised in favour of creating a male lead whose main purpose is to yearn for the fmc. ik there's some layers to wes' character, but i think they're owed largely to how nick robinson plays him instead of how he was intentionally written. okay, moving on. zoey deutch. she embodies jill really well. there's also a lot of instances where she gives off y/n, or a colleen hoover protagonist. idk. she's just so quirky and so clumsy 😛 i would've hated her if i'd been reading this story as a book. but i was mostly fine w her in the film. she's so painfully straight it hurts. moving on again, NICK OFFERMAN. BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. DAWG BE PLAYIN ANYTHING. WDYM HE'S LARPING A FRENCH MAN. HES SO FUNNY. it's crazy how he can do roles like these after playing Bill in TLOU. i can never get that episode out of my head. it's so special to me. wtv. playing benson boone in the climactic scene with the male lead running to reach the love of his life was such a fumble. whoever chose the music for this movie NEEDS to be fired omg. wes calling izzy to ask for her permission tho 🫦🫦🫦 i wanted to scream so much. THAT MAKEOUT SCENE TOO. THE ONE AFTER JILL MAKES WES HIS MOTHER'S POT PIE RECIPE. oh lawd the emotions. the way he comes up behind her on the kitchen counter, overcome by feelings of what she's done for him, AND KISSES HER LIKE THAT FUCCKKKK. THE WAY THEY MAKE OUT THEIR HANDS EVERYWHERE HIS ON HER THIGH KILL ME KILL ME KILL ME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH GOD ME WHENNNNNNNNN (this is assuming i would even be into anything remotely sexual, which i have started heavily doubting as of late). i'll end the review here coz i can't think of much else to talk about. verdict: me like movie.

🎬 ~ Godzilla Minus One

rating: 9/10

watched this last night so it’s pretty fresh in my memory. i can see why it won the oscar for visual effects, but it’s also such a good monster movie that does not feel like hollywood’s reheated nachos. at its core it’s a human story about a soldier recovering from the horrors of war and finding meaningful connections in his life that make him want to be alive instead of succumbing to his guilt and trauma. and the anti-government sentiments it lays out are also so important, especially since japan’s actions are so demonized during ww2 that people often forget that it was not a decision of the common people but the demons who were in power during that time. it sorta reminds me of that short story The Enemy from our 11th or 12th grade english textbook. anyways. godzilla. that chonky lizard looked SICKKK. his hands were so tiny tho lmao the proportions were so off. AND ITS HEAT RAYYY. beautiful man. i loved akiko, noriko and shikishima’s little family. AND THE BOAT CREW!! i loved doc at first sight and finding out his name was kenji made me feel a little manic coz OF COURSE. of course my favorite character is named kenji. it’s all fate, man. i wish i could say more for the sound design because i’ve heard so much about it, but unfortunately i watched this on my cousin’s tv and we had to keep the volume at a minimum coz the kiddos were sleeping so i can’t really give a concrete opinion on it. what else, what else? i saw they’re going to make another movie in this verse. curious how that would go coz this alr feels like a pretty solid standalone. there’s also a very specific angle in the film where shikishima’s actor looked like ryan higa for a while lol. is this my first japanese live action movie? it actually might be. woah.