#the only white Cinderella i will allow is Drew Barrymore in Ever After

[megamindsecretlair]

How could anyone say this wasn't the right music for Pen and Colin? 😭 juss binged again and lordt, it's so perfect for them 😪

Because they love out loud. So why shouldn't their special scene be out loud as well?

[crowdvscritic]

round up // MAY 20

When the going gets rough, I find I keep coming back to two kinds of movies: Romantic comedies and action adventures. For whatever reason, those are my comfort food, even if I’m watching someone get their heart broken or fight for their lives.

Hopefully you’re finding small ways to make your days brighter with books, movies, music, and shows that either help you fight or forget some of the darkness around us for a time. These were a few that made my month brighter, including a number of rom coms and action flicks.

May Crowd-Pleasers

SNL at Home

I almost cried for joy when I learned SNL would finish out its season even though it wouldn’t be in Studio 8H—it felt like a glimmer of a lot of joys we’ve lost in the last few months. While the At Home episodes have an odd rhythm compared to the usual broadcast (that live audience makes a difference, especially during “Weekend Update”), I still laughed every week. A few highlights:

“Bailey at the Movies”

“Dreams”

“Grocery Store”

“MasterClass Quarantine Edition” + “Another MasterClass Qurantine Edition”

“RBG Workout”

Watch those skits, then enjoy an infographic-heavy review of the season from Vulture.

Extraction (2020)

Is this a groundbreaking action movie? Heck no, but watching Chris Hemsworth fight to save a kid with a supporting appearance from David Harbour made for a great Sunday evening. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 6/10

The Wedding Singer (1998)

Somehow I’ve never gotten around to this rom com, perhaps because Adam Sandler’s sense of humor usually isn’t my cup of tea. But here he replaces the gross out jokes with a sweet chemistry with Drew Barrymore. I liked it so much I gave 50 First Dates a shot, but, uh, I only recommend movies I finish. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 6.5/10

Baby Boom (1987)

Another not-innovative genre entry, but a satisfying one. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 7/10

Action Movies set in 1700s America: The Last of the Mohicans (1992) + The Patriot (2000)

Sometimes I don’t want a complicated villain—sometimes I just want Jason Isaacs (aka Lucius Malfoy) to be so evil I want Mel Gibson to take him down with a tomahawk. The Last of the Mohicans: Crowd - 8/10 // Critic: 8.5/10 // The Patriot - Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

Taylor Swift City of Lover concert (2020)

I’ve seen Ms. Swift live twice and have loved the stadium tour spectacle. But an intimate show heavy on acoustic performance reminds me how well her songwriting holds up no matter the production

Prop Culture (2020)

I know, I know: Disney+ original series are well executed, long-form advertising. But can you find better-executed advertising than Jason Schwartzman chatting about the Mary Poppins snow globe at a piano with Richard Sherman, the character he played in Saving Mr. Banks? These staged treasure hunts for Disney movie props may be a bit self-important, but they’re also a dose of nostalgia and lessons about the technical side of filmmaking.

This Drake Bell TikTok

If you get this, you get this.

Silverado (1985)

My weird New Year’s resolution? To watch Westerns, a genre I’ve basically skipped until now. Silverado feels like a throwback to classic Westerns with a modern sensibility and more laughs. Plus, baby Kevin Costner and Jeff Goldblum in a fur coat! Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 7.5/10

Chromatica by Lada Gaga (2020)

Turns out I’m not just a fan of the A Star Is Born/duets with Tony Bennet/Joanne Lady Gaga. I’ve always been cooler on her electronic-dance-club Top 40 hits than her recent guitar-and-vocal stylings, but I can’t stop listening to album-long jam sesh. It’s old Gaga meets 2020 beats meets Depeche Mode/Flock of Seagulls/Madonna/New Order of the ‘80s.

The Heat (2013)

Two of my favorite funny ladies teaming up was—not surprisingly—a win. No one delivers a kooky insult like Melissa McCarthy. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7/10

May Critic Picks

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, and more try to keep Hollywood and their careers afloat despite a bizarre series of kidnappings, line flubs, and tap dances. Of course the Coen Brothers have a dry, wacky take on the Hollywood studio era. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 9/10

Jane Eyre (2006)

Confession: I have not read Jane Eyre. But my mom did, and since she enjoyed the book so much, I figured a happy medium would be to watch this BBC miniseries with her commentary about what they changed from the Brontë classic.

Daisy Jones & the Six (2019)

The highest compliment I can give a book is staying up way too late to finish it, which is what I did with this buzzy Taylor Jenkins Reid book. It’s a barely-fictional oral history of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘70s, and somehow it’s not crass or gratuitous about any of them. Most impressive is that Jenkins Reid keeps her characters well-defined even though it’s not written in a traditional novel format. My favorite parts of this story are the deep dive into the creative process and the exploration of how we remember the past. Here’s hoping the Sam Claflin/Riley Keough-led, Reese Witherspoon-produced, (500) Days of Summer team-written Amazon series can do this book justice—I need this soundtrack!

The Plot Thickens podcast (2020)

A Turner Classic Movies podcast hosted by Ben Mankiewicz about film history is a specific—and predictable—Venn diagram of my interests.

Alfred Hitchcock Double Feature: Psycho (1960) + The Birds (1963)

The story about Psycho goes that my grandmother ran out of the movie theatre screaming during the shower scene. Now that I’ve finally watched it, I know why. This horror drama is still terrifying today even if you know what’s going to happen. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 10/10

The story about The Birds goes that my mother was terrified as a little girl after walking into a room where it was on TV, and now she still won’t watch it. The Oscar-winning visual effects have aged so much I didn’t find it scary, but I was still sucked in by the eerie plot. That said, I did have a frightening dream last night involving Tippi Hedren, so it may be more effective than I realized. Give me just a sec while I schedule some Hitchcock-focused family therapy. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 9/10

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Spend two hours with the two nicest bank robbers you’ll ever meet! A winsome Paul Newman and a laconic Robert Redford make their escape on the scenic trails of the Southwest, and gosh darn it, if they aren’t just a barrel of fun. I enjoyed this Western so much I recommended it in a piece I wrote for Round Trip, too. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 9/10

Katharine Hepburn Double Feature: Alice Adams (1935) + Woman of the Year (1942)

Saying you love Katharine Hepburn is like saying you love sunshine and flowers—of course you do! In Alice Adams, she’s an optimistic Cinderella with a down-on-their-luck family who falls for a high class fella (Fred MacMurray). In Woman of the Year, she’s a high-brow journalist who falls for sports columnist Spencer Tracy in their first of nine films together. She earned Oscar nominations for both, but I dare you not to fall in love with her after watching just one. Alice Adams - Crowd: 7.5/10 // Critic: 8/10 // Woman of the Year - Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

Also in May…

When you’re not allowed to travel, you get creative! For Round Trip this month, I recommended 13 movies about travel that will make you feel like you took the vacation COVID-19 made you cancel (including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). And if that’s not enough, why don’t you recreate your trip? I turned my apartment into Paris, and here’s why you might want to do the same.

Kyla and I didn’t go far back in time for most of our Gilmore Girls pop culture references on SO IT’S A SHOW? We covered three movies (or two, depending on how you see it) from the 2000s with connections to this year’s Oscars, 8 Mile and then Kill Bill. We also looked into the famous architect Stanford White and a movie he was featured in, 1981’s Ragtime, which had more connections to today’s culture than we expected.

I made another attempt at Jim Jarmusch for ZekeFilm with Broken Flowers. I still don’t get Jim Jarmusch.

My movie count in quarantine is up to 156. You can see them all on Letterboxd.

Photo credits: SNL, Taylor Swift, TikTok, Lady Gaga, Daisy Jones & the Six, The Plot Thickens. All others IMDb.com.