Archive for Movies

Red, White & Royal Blue (movie)

I watched the movie Red, White & Royal Blue last night, and enjoyed it a lot. It’s a romcom. Sweet and funny and a bit larger-than-life, with no particular uncertainty about how it’s going to turn out. But I enjoy that sort of thing when it’s done well, as it is here. (Content warning for […]

Heist movies

I’ve been thinking about heist movies lately, and it occurred to me that the kind of heist movie that I like has a bunch of pretty specific traits. So here are some attributes that heist movies and TV shows that I like tend to have. (Doesn’t have to have all of these attributes for me […]

Almost going to the movies

Kam and I almost went to see Everything Everywhere All at Once last night. We’ve been hearing great things about the movie—in fact, such extremely great things that I’m having to discount them to set my expectations lower, because if I go into a movie with too-high expectations, I generally enjoy it less than I […]

My favorite new-to-me movies in 2021

I watched about 65 movies in 2021, including rewatching about 15 that I had seen before. Of the ones that I hadn’t seen before, here were my favorites, in approximate descending order: 1. The Milagro Beanfield War (1988). Lovely, funny, charming movie full of great character details. Liked it a lot. 2. In the Heights […]

What we talk about when we talk about romcoms

A lot of people don’t have the same ideas that I do about what constitutes a romcom. To me, romcom (also written as rom-com) is a genre, with such strong genre conventions that they border on formula. It doesn’t just mean a movie that has some romantic or comedic aspects. (I’m intentionally using the term […]

Mulan (2020)

Kam and I watched the new Mulan, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s very clearly intended to be a wuxia movie rather than a musical for kids. I don’t know enough about wuxia to be able to judge it as an example of that genre, but I thought it succeeded as a movie pretty […]

Some vids

I enjoyed the vid party at WisCONline last week. Here are half a dozen of my favorites—some sweet, some thoughtful, some angry. “Come ’Round for Tea” (2014), by Garrideb Showing female friendships in Marvel comics, with all the words in word balloons replaced by hearts. (song: “Baltic Sea,” by The Social Services) (2 min) “Pipeline” […]

More free books!

Books! Free to a good home. Let me know if you want any of these. Also some CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes. (All at the end of this post.) This list contains 100+ more books than the previous list I posted (a couple months ago), so even if you’ve already looked at the other one, […]