another month, another list of things i enjoyed and didn’t! this month was mostly movies which i was pretty surprised about. i can attribute that to the now-regular watch parties i have with my friends on our discord server¹. it’s been a little slower or practically non-existent on other mediums but it’s nothing i can’t hop back into later on. as always, let me know if you find something you like!

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i am once again politely offering my yearly playlist for you to check out if you’d like! not too many new additions this time, i think i spent most of this month just relistening to things i already knew i liked. i listened to so much new music in the last two months, i think i just got a little fatigued in a way.

girl with no face by allie x
her newest release! i’ve actually not heard of allie x until i had a couple of my friends talk about this album with me. i gave it a listen and i thought it was pretty enjoyable with a decent amount of tracks i liked but overall it wasn’t an album i was really, really into. a chunk of the album is just stuff i don’t have a strong desire to revisit and honestly i’m a little upset i do feel this way. i think it has a very interesting gothic take on 80s synthpop and the production on this album is wonderful! i still recommend giving the album a try if it’s something that interests you, it is far from being bad. just something i didn’t really click with as much as i would’ve liked to, sadly.
favorite songs: you slept on me, off with her tits, black eye

underdressed at the symphony by faye webster
full disclosure i only listened to this album a single time and it was an overall pretty forgettable experience. i only really paid attention to the first few tracks because the instrumentals were interesting enough, which is good because a 6 minute opener is very ambitious. it doesn’t really feel fair for me to review the album like this because oftentimes i find that listening to an album only once isn’t enough for me to process and appreciate it. i like listening to an album at least twice, even if it’s something i know i probably won’t end up liking after a relisten. don’t take my word for this one!
favorite songs: but not kiss, thinking about you, wanna quit all the time

guts (spilled) by olivia rodrigo
honestly the only artist i ever get excited about b-sides for is carly rae jepsen, but olivia had me seated for her additions to the deluxe version of guts. the new tracks are so, so fun and a pretty good testament to her range as an artist. i truly believe she could’ve added most if not all of this to the main album and it still would’ve been perfect, no skips. i might just be a very biased, delusional olivia fan but she is quite literally allergic to not serving.
favorite tracks: so american, obsessed, scared of my guitar

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like i mentioned earlier, this is pretty much where all my time went and it’s been fun! i haven’t watched movies this regularly since i was first getting into it as a medium.

are you there god? it’s me, margaret dir. kelly fremon craig
cute little movie about girlhood and growing up with a side of religion-related existential crisis. i thought it was so silly (much like being a pre-teen) and honest; i think most will find margaret’s experiences relatable. being a young girl is so difficult!

dune: part two dir. dennis villeneuve
gorgeous, gorgeous movie! what i find so interesting about dune as someone who has never read the books and probably won’t bother to is that we get to learn more about arrakis alongside paul. whatever team they have for this movie did extremely well to make it an immersive experience. said this in my letterboxd review but this really does feel like the scifi of the decade. definitely looking forward to the following films in the series :)

poor things dir. yorgos lanthimos
okay, i think this movie is absolutely gorgeous. the set design, costume design, and score are practically perfect to me. emma stone’s acting in this is peak. it’s a wonderful movie if you can ignore the glaringly regressive take on feminism, but admittedly it is extremely difficult to do so when that’s kind of what this film is marketed and being lauded as. i had such a hard time figuring out what to rate this–and i think others feel similarly: it’s a great watch but thematically it falls extremely flat. we are sooo past the era of feminism that demands women be hypersexual as a form of female liberation. she has an entire arc as a sex worker and not ONCE is there any sort of depiction of the much darker or exploitative side of sex work; no condoms in sight throughout the entire film and bella baxter doesn’t care about the possibility of being pregnant. i also ran to reddit to see what fans of the book had to say about it and it seems that a lot of important parts of the book got cut off which makes the attempt at feminism fail. hm. i wonder if it’d be better had the movie been more accurately depicted, but honestly i’m in no mood to bother with the novel.

anatomy of a fall dir. justine triet
yeah, overall just a very incredible movie—had no idea it was possible for me to be so invested in a storyline that has the majority of it take place in a courtroom. a wonderful mystery film that always leaves you with more questions than answers: did she really do it? it’s up for you to decide as a viewer. also, swann arlaud is MY white boy of the month!

teenage mutant ninja turtles: mutant mayhem dir. jeff rowe
god i love movies where it’s so painfully obvious that the people who worked on it probably had fun doing so. i’ve never seen a movie that perfectly captures what it’s like being a modern teenager. somehow none of the pop culture references felt too forced and maybe it won’t age well but it is SO GOOD for right now. the art direction for this movie is also very interesting to me because this movie is obviously marketed towards kids but it’s grimy and dirty but it really, really works. nothing special in the narrative department but who cares, it’s funny and heartfelt and definitely worth your time. i LOVE animation!!!!!

mustang dir. deniz gamze ergüven
i enjoyed this movie a lot more before i saw some reviews by turkish people who were disappointed by this movie’s failure to capture the turkish experience. if you’re curious about the movie and want to watch it while also knowing what to expect out of it, i recommend reading this spoiler-free review of it first. i still don’t think it’s a bad movie but the way i feel about this is very similar to how i feel about poor things—it’s hard to overlook a poor representation of turkish culture when the movie is quite literally about the oppression women face in turkiye. it’s still a good movie, if you find yourself able to view it outside a turkish lens, and i thought the sisterhood aspect of this was really touching, but yeah. bummer finding out about it coming off very orientalist.

bodies bodies bodies dir. halina reijn
really fun, incredibly stupid “who done it” to go see with your friends while drunk. that’s all i have to say about it, really.

priscilla dir. sofia coppola
sofia coppola’s best movies are always about deeply misunderstood women. this was a pretty portrait of loneliness in abuse and yes, i do in fact have beef with a dead man! the narrative is subtly blended into dream-like sequences of priscilla’s life. cailee spaeny’s performance here is phenomenal; somehow her silence speaks more than words possibly ever could—and it all boils down to how she commands the tone of a scene with her facial expressions. a review on letterboxd said that the choice to not include any of elvis’ music was a good one, making him nothing but another abusive man and i have to agree. lovely film all around!

taxi driver. dir martin scorsese
for someone who says they like movies, i’ve actually not seen the many films championed by film enthusiasts as “must-sees”. i haven’t seen the godfather or fight club and i haven’t seen taxi driver until now. in fact, this is actually my first time ever seeing scorsese’s work. taxi driver was an interesting watch right after priscilla because they both talk about loneliness, although taxi driver tackles this topic in an entirely different way. the loneliness travis feels is something he wants; he bathes in it, even. his loneliness is the driving force for the anger he feels towards the rest of the world; the very anger that later develops into an unbridled rage that demands violent action. travis bickle is complex and misunderstood and far from being a good person. he claims that he wishes to rid new york of it’s filth but engages in the very things that make the city he lives in “dirty” by his own standards: he spends his free time in adult theaters and takes narcotics. this is also never explicitly mentioned in the film but travis is most certainly racist—there are simply too many lingering shots of him staring at the black people who roam new york city after dark. “filth” is used as a general term by travis and obviously means crime but it also has implications of specifically referring to black people as the criminals behind it all; hell, sport and his minions were originally written as black and the only reason they aren’t is because scorsese feared the implications of this portrayal would be too much. scorsese was probably right, given the fact that the ending of taxi driver is often misunderstood by its viewers as a good thing. travis bickle did not rescue iris because he is a good person. he rescued her because he needed an outlet for his violent desires and the outlet he had chosen just happened to be something generally noble. let’s not forget that saving iris was a backup plan! his first idea was to assassinate palantine despite his cluelessness about the senator’s politics. the aftermath of the shootout feels uncomfortable with travis bickle’s deeds so loudly celebrated by the news. in truth, his murder spree didn’t really do much on a larger scale. you want to get rid of the filth in this world, travis bickle? we need to start talking social systems, baby! and after all this, travis is still the same and this confirmation comes from scorsese himself. when travis glares at the mirror after dropping betsy off, it’s a sign that bickle is not too far off from falling into rage once more. beware anyone who says they relate to travis bickle: they’re either dangerous or lack media literacy.

"the distinction between hero and villain is sometimes a matter of interpretation or misinterpretation of facts."

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that wraps up this month’s post! it feels a little odd only having two categories this time, so i’m going to talk about what i’m currently still going through a little. these will likely make it to next month’s post, i just didn’t want to force myself to finish things quicker just so that i’d have things to write about. it would kind of ruin of the philosophy i have for this blog.

anyway: i’m currently reading the travelling cat chronicles which i’m almost done with! i’ve also been slowly making my way through act two of baldur’s gate and the sudden rise in tension for this act has been really fun, i just didn’t want to write a review without at least having finished the act already. i’m thinking of playing stardew valley again with the rollout of 1.6, and maybe this time i’ll try out some mods. i also picked up ffxiv as my mmorpg of choice while waiting for toontown rewritten to update with it’s cog facility overhaul and gag balancing patch. i still haven’t started the tv shows i said i would (normal people, the bear, and a proper rewatch of fleabag² have been on my backlog for way too long—the newest season of invincible and bridgerton are also calling to me) but i have been watching the latest season of dropout’s game changers. that's all from me :)

until next time!

1. if you remember my post “habits i’m trying to develop”, i talked about recreating a pandemic discord server we used to have. i did do that! it’s been great and i love my friends.↩

2. i first watched fleabag in my animation class because my professor would play it during our 5 hour classes, either for you to pay attention to if you finished work early or have as background noise. i flip flopped between both options.↩