📺 ~ Heated Rivalry (Season 1)

 rating: 10/10

jacob tierney i love what you have done with canadian taxpayer money. this show originally stumbled into my instagram feed because i'm a diehard challengers enthusiast and an actually homosexual sports romance show that looked good was bound to catch my interest. and then i saw a von dutch edit of scenes from the trailer and was in a definitive chokehold and this show quickly became my most highly-anticipated watch of the year. what i did not expect, however, was how much this would blow up and how much i would LOVE this. suffice to say, this was perfection. jacob tierney had a vision and public support and delivered so hard. this is like an actual all-encompassing spiritual successor to challengers. the direction the cinematography the SCORE THE VISUAL CHOICES: top notch and ICONIC. the All The Things She Said remix scene from episode four qualifies as one of the best television moments of all time in the same way Running Up That Hill from Stranger Things is so iconic. the show is very tightly paced because the story itself takes place over the course of like 8+ years but it does it SO WELL. i was honestly locked in every single friday a new episode of this show like it was the reason i woke up but damn now it's over and season 2 will only come out like two years later. but anyways this show is fkin perfect and i love the fact that i stumbled upon this masterpiece AND iwtv this year. i feel like i'm not doing this show justice in this review but know that i could go on and on about so so so much but then again i don't want to exhaust myself in the rambling. but i do find it really funny that st vol 2 and heated rivalry's finale were both on christmas like damn it was a yaoi double feature fest.

🎬 ~ Avatar: Fire and Ash

rating: 9/10

watching a threequel in theatres without watching the previous two is crazy work but the way i was GLUED to the screen haha. i was really into the movie even though it was over three hours long. i read the plot of the previous two movies right before going to the theatre so i wasn’t completely lost. this film really is a practical wonder. the visuals were mesmerizing and james cameron’s influence on cinema through the world of pandora is apparent. i just could not believe that sigourney weaver was voicing a fourteen year old lol. the blue ladies were all so beautiful, and dare i say, the blue men were hella attractive as well. i am definitely violently bisexual. even the blue antagonist lady was cunty as fuck. i was also fascinated by the idea of both jake and quaritch being enemies but being united by being fathers of spider. i don’t think i’ve seen two archenemies help each other out for the sake of a common interest before, and it happened TWICE here. so while quaritch is ur typical cartoonish big movie villain, he is a father who cares for the life of his kid too. there was also an interesting thread in one scene where jake is talking about quaritch’s avatar not needing to be burdened by the actual quaritch’s memories coz the actual guy is dead. i think that creates an identity conflict that needs to be explored. however, i’m not sure how i feel about quaritch being the antagonist of every goddamn movie in this franchise. the audience is gonna get tired of his ass. even his fake death here was a collective groan moment. nonetheless, great movie. i loved it.

🎬 ~ Die My Love

rating: 7/10

i've marinated this movie in my head for 24 hours and read the summary of the book it was based on as well. i think my first impression was pretty spot on and adjacent to what was being described in the book: this story's about the effects of isolation and depression and being mentally ill and the people around you just not getting it. even tho grace's state of mind during the course of this movie can be described as being on the extreme end of post-partum depression, that's not where her problems start; rather, having a kid inflates previously existing symptoms and the lack of support and understanding on her husband's end surely does not help. grace is so alone and spiraling. she's a writer who can't write, who's lost the joy of making art. nothing feels good anymore. she has become extremely neurotic for it, or she always was and it's not controlled anymore. by the end of the story she releases her inhibitions and walks into the fire. ambiguous ending sure but we can ascertain what happened. i was a fan of the prolonged one-take opening scene with the stationary camera—it was so good because that scene alone give you so much information about the relationship between the characters and what's happening and where they're at. on a technical level this movie stood out fr. the aspect ratio, the color grading and visuals: sublime. n e ways not much to comment on except for the loose thread with harry and the biker. good on pam for being an understanding mother-in-law tho.

🎬 ~ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

 rating: 7.25/10

i am only now realising that i forgot to write a review for this movie. oops? but here it goes: this movie is a CONCEPT. it has striking visuals and imagery, the direction is most certainly wonderful. but i was also disappointed with this in the same way i was kind of disappointed with I Saw The TV Glow. i understand the point of visual storytelling but at what point does it just become stitching together pretty looking scenes and just... i don't know. this movie certainly wasn't as ambiguous and disparate as I Saw The TV Glow, but yet again both were concepts. this sounds so redundant. i like the idea of erasing the memories of someone u loved to be a bad thing. joel was the most happiest he'd ever been laying on the ice with clementine, but he loses that when his memories are erased. i liked those parts of the movie, but the movie kinda shoots itself in the foot with the needless slapstick comedy bits because it undermines the tension of the film. i'd love to watch this again someday, but i do wish there was a different cut that maintained the emotional heartbeat of the film without maiming it with unnecessary lightheartedness. kirsten dunst did a really good title drop though. that was beautiful. 

📖 ~ Heart the Lover

 rating: 3.75/5

i was really into the first half of this book. i love me some academia and relationship drama with a protagonist who reminds me so much of myself. at first i really thought this book was going to go back and forth between sam and yash in a Normal People or Past Lives-esque love triangle. while i was right about the Past Lives part, i was wrong about a definitive love triangle. i love a lot about this book. but i don't like how the pacing falls off after the paris-new york arc. i mean cmon we did not need to spend so long in the hospital. surely there were better ways for that last part to have been executed. also i absolutely was not aware that the main character once again was casey fuckin peabody. dear lord. i didn't know that until silas was namedropped and i immediately dug up old buried memories of him in Writers and Lovers and positively lost it. this book is basically a retcon because to my unreliable knowledge, there was absolutely no mention of casey's life before her being in boston in the entirety of Writers and Lovers. this book should be listed as a sequel to Writers and Lovers tbh. but anyways, i digress. i liked the thread of sam being a religious christian and as a fairly religious person myself i was very interested in exploring that aspect in the beginning but unfortunately that specific aspect of sam's identity isn't honored in this book because modern sensibilities don't fuck well with religion and his want to stick by his belief in god is othered in this book, and he loses his belief by the end of the book too. i also didn't like how casey deadass kept delaying her flight to go be with her SICK CHILD and instead stuck around yash for that long. i kinda get it but girl c'mon. but some good things include how yash was flustering me in the beginning. he's an enigmatic character in all this and a tragic case (got wasted like all his potential). this man is what i fear i'll become. i told abby that even tho he was surrounded by people who loved and cared about him in his deathbed he was still so alone because sam might've been the only person who truly understood him and casey the only person to have loved him like that. ugh. so many feelings. casey being pregnant with his kid absolutely killed me too. i was horrified. nightmare for sure. live love laugh silas tho. he's the goat. also i love casey's kids. they're adorable.

🎬 ~ Jay Kelly

 rating: 4.75/10

sorry, this movie reads pretentious to me. i had trouble connecting to jay's character coz let's be real, he's an egocentric asshole. he's selfish as fuck most of the time—it's always "i, me, my, myself" with him. any sympathy that the narrative tries to generate with him was lost on me. the only thing we know about jay kelly by the end of this is... nothing. some might say that was the point bcoz he certainly doesn't know himself either but i just find this to be redundant storytelling because we get nowhere with him. the fourth wall break at the end was interesting however it might've felt better if we liked jay as person at all. the narrative does not make the audience sympathise with him at all. jay is a caricature of himself and his true self is an enigma. laura dern's character was fun coz she's a cool actress but i was just not interested in whatever the fuck she had going on with ron. adam sandler's performance as ron is arguably the best part of this movie along with noah baumbach's direction and cinematography. the sets were so pretty and i especially loved what was happening with the lighting in the movie, especially in the train scenes where they played around with how the sunlight was captured in the frame. the italy sequences were super picturesque. riley keough was pretty good too—i like her as an actress, especially after seeing her prowess in Daisy Jones. but overall, not a strong movie. felt like a puff piece, awards season bait.

🎬 ~ Wake Up Dead Man

rating: 9.69/10

69 bcoz josh o'connor is so fucking hot and he's a PRIEST. i was so close to drooling in every scene where he had his sleeves rolled up and his slutty forearms were on display. i'm no better than a victorian man. narrative wise, i think this is the strongest installment of this franchise so far because it deals with so many deeper themes in realised ways. even the production looked the best in the series technically. the cast was obv goated too. not much criticism tbh. good movie. honorable mention: the scene where jud comforts louise over the phone was so good; the way the emotion of the scene transitions from a chaotic back and forth to complete silence in the sound design and louise's shaky breath as she asks father jud to pray for her mother—beautiful.