Quick Reviews (and stuff): February

Fun fact, when it’s the shortest month of the year, you just flat out run out of time to do stuff. Wild.

Movies

1. Magic Mike’s Last Dance — Look, you’re not watching this for the plot, I’m not watching this for the plot. Channing Tatum has great abs and the dancing is great and Matt Bomer has a highly entertaining 45 second cameo. That’s all you need to know.

2. Three Thousand Years of Longing — This feels like a movie that I should go back and rewatch someday, as I don’t feel like I was in the right headspace for it. It’s visually gorgeous and as always Tilda Swinton manages to completely inhabit any role that she’s in, but I felt a little disconnected from it overall.

3. Pearl —You know, honestly, I see why Pearl ended up the way she did. I think X works better as a traditional horror film, but Pearl is a great(ly disturbing) character study and maybe even a nice long look at nature vs. nurture. Mia Goth is, as always, so good at being unhinged (even if I have several questions about what, exactly, her accent is supposed to be here).

4. The Quiet Girl — That girl, she sure is quiet. Ha. ha. ha. But no, really. A very moving Irish film about a little girl sent to live with distant relatives and the secrets families keep. I have watched too many horror movies lately because I kept waiting for the relatives to turn out to be aliens or something. But no — just a solid, quiet drama about a girl learning what it is to be loved and cared for.

5. Eyes Wide Shut — This is just 2.5 hours of Tom Cruise’s character getting jealous, deciding to cheat on his wife, and then getting cockblocked the entire time. Not nearly as horny of a film as 1999-me thought based on the media surrounding it but a legitimately good portrait of a marriage collapsing under its own weight. Insert your own essay here about how Cruise and Kidman split just a few years later.

Books

1. Unmasked by the Marquess — Cat Sebastian: I read this all in one go, largely because I needed to know how on earth they resolved everything, but this felt like it was missing something to me. The ending felt far too easy, and yet it also meandered, like people were just repeating the same arguments. And yeah, that’s how real life works, but in a book it is repetitive. I admire Alistair for getting to a “fuck it I do what I want” point in his life, I just wanted more. I did really enjoy Alistair as a character and the journey he went on, and also the way I’m picturing him in my head, he’s incredibly hot (which is obviously crucial here lol). (I realized much after the fact that I think I might have been envisioning him as a slightly more sturdy, dark-haired Percy de Rolo from Critical Role, which I guess says everything you need to know about me as a person.) I think Sebastian could have done more with Robin/Charity’s gender/presentation — in her author note she writes about thinking of the character as nonbinary, and sure, when this book is set, there wasn’t the same language and understanding about that that we have now, but it’s far too easy to read Robin/Charity as a “just doesn’t like wearing dresses and the societal expectations for women” person. I just wanted more.

2. Legends & Latte — Travis Baldree: Cute, fluffy, and a quick read. I wish the romance aspect was a little more developed — you know it’s coming but I wish there’d been more build-up. The writing felt a little dry at times, and I wish the characters had all been a bit more fleshed out. Overall, nothing special but passed the time on a four hour flight fairly well.

3. The Consorts — Melissa Addey: First in a series of historical fiction set during the Qing Dynasty in China. A quick read about two concubines who strike up an unlikely friendship that turns into something more. This is an era of time that I know very little about, and you can tell that the author has deeply researched everything, from clothing to living arrangements to the intricacies of the Emperor’s court. I think it could have been a little longer — the last ~25% or so on my Kindle was just a preview for another book — and taken more time to flesh out some of the drama and court politics that helped drive the conflict. Enjoyable, though, and I’d absolutely check out the others in the series.

4. Atomic Anna — Rachel Barenbaum: Time travel books go wrong when they try to explain the way the time travel works. Just handwave it like the rest of us and move along. The writing is flat and all of the characters talk the same and are very difficult to like. Yes, people are flawed but no one here seemed to exhibit any self awareness about their own role in the pain surrounding them. It’s a book led by women, about Chernobyl, and time travel — all things that should have been up my alley but I was mostly underwhelmed.

5. Cold Waters — Debbie Herbert: The only good characters in this book are a four year old boy who’s in it for like two scenes, and the crows that the main character befriends. And putting the toddler on this list is being generous. This is not a good book and you don’t need to spend your time with it.

6. Ninth House — Leigh Bardugo: This was a re-read in preparation for reading the sequel and a) I’m incredibly glad I did a re-read because I could only remember the vaguest plot bits and b) I loved it just as much this time as I did the first read-through. I do think Bardugo has a habit of throwing just, like, ONE too many things into her stories, and the ultimate ending/whodunnit of this one feels like it falls into that camp, but I just love Alex and Darlington and Dawes so much that I can’t be too mad. Very excited to pick up Hell Bound soon — Alex’s final lines in Ninth House are very “face God and walk backwards into hell” and I for one am here for it.

Other Things

Went to California, saw some planes. If you go to Chino, you too can see Tom Cruise’s Mustang that stars in Top Gun: Maverick. Did I, a notoriously photo-shy person, ask my boyfriend to take my picture in front of this plane, but did not take a single picture of us doing literally anything while I was out there visiting? Listen, only god can judge me. The Planes of Fame museum in Chino, and the Palm Springs Air Museum in (obviously) Palm Springs, both highly recommended if you a) like planes and/or b) have lots of money to spend in order to get to fly in one of the cool old planes (I do not have that kind of money).

On tap for next month:

• lmao I only got to 1.5 things on my to-do list for February so just assume most all of that is STILL on the to-do list

• my library holds all came in at once so, like, that’s a thing that happened to me

• I am one episode away from finishing The Offer (about the making of The Godfather, starring Miles Teller and Matthew Goode and a lot of cocaine, streaming on Paramount+) so next month I’ll make you all read about that and also probably I’ll finally watch The Godfather, a movie that I’ve been pretending to have seen for my entire adult life.

What about you? What are you watching/reading/listening to/etc.?

Don’t forget to follow/subscribe on Medium so that you don’t miss my monthly ramble. While this is free content and I intend on keeping it free content — I can’t in good conscience charge people to read my three sentence disjointed feelings about media — if you get enjoyment from this and want to buy me a drink (or, let’s be real, a delicious baked good), you can throw some dollars my way on ko-fi.