January

The books I read and movies I watched in January 2024, reviewed

Bryer Oden

Feb 19, 2024

Poor Things

⭐

Summary: Frankenstein, if Frankenstein wasn’t groundbreaking

Poor Things is the only movie I have ever considered walking out of the cinema for. I saw exactly what the film was trying to do, but unfortunately, I hated what they were trying to do.

I don’t know if you’ve read actual Frankenstein, but the whole first half of the book is Frankenstein being disgusted with his monster and running away from it…Which is exactly what I wished I could have done while watching Poor Things.

The positives:

Emma Stone is literally the most wonderful person on earth and I will (unfortunately) watch anything she is in, no matter how much I hate it
The costumes were absolutely pristinely breathtaking. Easily the most iconic fashion I have seen since Villanelle’s Molly Goddard dress she wore to her pyschiatric analysis. I would describe it as “Kowtow on crack.”

Poor Things is a Curious Phantasmagoria ‹ Literary Hub

The negatives:

This whole film completely dysregulated my nervous system. I felt like I was on edge the entire time - I didn’t realise it was R18 but there should be a HUGE trigger warning for anyone who doesn’t want to see SA anywhere on screen. Spoiler that is not really a spoiler: there is a LOT of sex in this movie, with Bella, a character who is ostensibly a 5 year old??? I just couldn’t get over that someone who literally was a toddler/young child (in the body of an adult woman) was having so much sex (that legally would be completely non-consensual) and no one batted an eyelid. I found it deeply yuck.
For a plot that focuses around “what it would be like to suddenly find yourself in an adult woman’s body,” they never really address the fact that (spoiler:) Bella Baxter is her own mother, as they put the brain of her unborn child in her head. Like as if that is just a really chill thing to do and shouldn’t be explored at all. They also don’t show anything about period blood or any other normal female experiences, only the sex side of things, which to me just feels like a grand oversight.
The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about the “The Mystical Pregnancy trope” in sci-fi and how pregnancy is often used as a horror or for ‘shock factor.’ I feel like this was kind of the case in Poor Things. In this video, Anna Sarkeesian quotes Laura Shapiro, stating, “The problem from my point of view is that pregnancy and birth are natural processes that are being distorted into torture porn, ways of punishing women and exploiting their terror to up the dramatic stakes." I am not sure if Poor Things intended this to be a commentary on how women are ‘trapped’ in their biology because of the way society so often takes away reproductive rights, or if it was actually just falling into the trope itself. This is how I felt throughout the entire film: I couldn’t work out if it was helpfully pointing out how women could be abused and taken advantage of, or actually just abusing and taking advantage of women because it was part of the plot (written by men and largely revolving around men?) A great place to get some more insights on this film is over at Polyester's episode, "Poor Things: Feminist Fable or Just Another Misogynistic Movie?" where I think they did a fantastic job at unpacking this!
All in all, I did not walk away with any new understandings of how naïve women could be taken advantage of in this world…It just was hard to watch, and to claim that it was a “feminist movie” is a huge reach when I felt it wasn’t really educational or groundbreaking at all.

Anyway, if you do want to watch this movie, I recommend going into it reframing Bella just as “someone who was new to earth” instead of viewing her as a literal human toddler like I did and it will be a lot more palatable.

Boy Swallows Universe

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Kid grows up with a mute brother, a drug dealer stepdad, an alcoholic father and an imprisoned heroin addict mum, in a wholesome way

Boy Swallows Universe is, as Michelle from Shameless described it, “a masterpiece.” It has some of the best acting I’ve ever seen in a television show, and I genuinely mean that - not just because I want to be supportive of Australians and, like every other girl on earth, was obsessed with Cleo from H20 Just Add Water. (Unrelated side note: fuck that bitch Charlotte.)

Travis Fimmel, Simon Baker, and Felix Cameron’s performances are absolutely perfect. This Australian show did not have to rely on having familiar faces and places for us to love it - it shone on its own accord. The actors’ performances were so nuanced and beautiful, they made characters who would so easily be written off as “the bad guys” have so much heart and soul that you immediately forgive them for their mistakes - who knew a deadbeat alcoholic dad and a smack dealer could be so complex, flawed, and loveable. The whole series is only 8 episodes and each and every one of them is perfectly paced, exciting, scary and beautiful. Based on the plot, this is not something I would have chosen to watch, but I am so happy I did because it was deeply fantastic.

Anyone But You

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Much Ado About Nothing. It’s literally Much Ado About Nothing.

Along with “No Hard Feelings,” Sydney Sweeney has come in to save RomComs. First of all, this was based on SHAKESPEARE, like other timeless classics She’s The Man, 10 Things I Hate About You, etc. Which meant it was automatically destined to be slayful.

Something I often think but have not been annoying enough to say out loud until now is: I hate when people say things like, “Billie Eilish could have written Macbeth but Shakespeare couldn’t have written Bad Guy.” As IF Shakespeare wouldn’t have been able to write the toughest verses on Bad Guy we’d ever heard. Like do you even know who you are dealing with here. This man INVENTED romcoms and drama and vibes. I’m sorry but he served so hard that it impacted generations. ugh his mind 😩

The soundtrack was wonderful and had a song written for it by Still Woozy which automatically means it was perfect!!! (I got COVID19 at a Still Woozy concert and it was so good I’d do it all over again.)

Look I came here to watch hot people be hot and that’s what they did. They did the thing at the end where the whole cast sang along to a song throughout filming it (like the infamous Build Me Up Buttercup scene at the end of There’s Something About Mary) which was an inspired move. Also it was actually funny. I just love Sydney Sweeney’s russian-speaking hot girl mechanic self and think she is a fun person who should be cast in more stuff.

Side note: All the press for the movie was SO WEIRD and hypersexual. Like I do not even think this was Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s fault but having them read thirst tweets to each other was not personally necessary for me… Also there is a full blown scene of a foreskin in this movie and I feel like I should disclose that information to you all just in case you’re allergic to that.

Beach Read

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Enemies to lovers but it’s meta

I tried to unrot my brain from social media for 2 weeks and in that time I read 3 books - Beach Read was the perfect choice for this occasion because it is SO easy to read. It would be easy to write this off as “wattpad chicklit fluff” - if you were a hater. It had a lot of heart and soul, and it actually did a great job at covering serious topics like abuse, cancer diagnoses, grief, and trauma - which is a great time to remember that chicklit is only shat on as a genre because things women enjoy are ‘low brow.’ My brows are UP HERE.

Thankfully, Beach Read was so self-aware that it is hard to criticise. The main character, January, is literally a romance author who preaches the necessity of light and happy romance novels to get people through difficult times. It’s hard to criticise a book that comes with its own justification (It insists upon itself, Lois).

The worst part about these kinds of stories is when there is a mind-bogglingly simple miscommunication that ruins things for everyone, but January literally says herself, “In my own story, I didn’t want to be the heroine who let some silly miscommunication derail something obviously good, but in my real life, I felt like I’d rather risk that and keep my dignity.” (Even acknowledging that this kind of thing works wonders because suddenly the character is self aware that letting miscommunication get in the way is ANNOYING so you trust her not to mess up.)

The negatives:

The main thing that annoyed me about January was that like every fourth page she was crying. But she is so real for that.
A few lines made me physically recoil, such as “he kissed me again, even deeper, like we were desperate to plumb the depths of each other.” We did not need to bring plumbing into this.

The positives

Sex scenes weren’t gross (except for the plumbing situation). Despite being a high-risk-cringe book it was hardly cringe at all and the fun and actual depth of the characters really pulled it back.
She gives you so much book in this book. At the end you feel like you’ve spent a lot of time with the characters.
This book is unashamedly about romance and love. It is loud and proud and doesn’t shy away from what it is and it has reminded me how fun romance books are. There’s a reason every song and every movie are all about love and that’s because love is the BEST so I hate that chicklit gets belittled for doing the exact same thing that every other text has done since the beginning of time. Not everything we read has to be pretentious or clever or mindblowing, sometimes reading about 2 authors ironically fucking against a bookshelf is enough.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it for anyone wanting to get back into reading, or anyone with a pisces moon.

Saltburn

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Barry Keoghan cuckoos his way into getting a mansion ft. Awesome naked dance number

I think Saltburn deserves many awards simply for having a montage of hot people having fun to MGMT’s “Time to Pretend.” A perfect choice. And on a Tennis court! Reading Harry Potter! It’s sooooo Tumblr 2014 Effy from Skins indie sleaze Lorde core and I love it!

I loved this movie because it felt so rich. There is so much to analyse and so much symbolism and so much fun and so much attention to detail. It made me want to time travel to year 13 and get my English and Classics teacher to talk me through everything because there is so much to unpack - I hope in 10 years time it’s something kids are writing NCEA essays about (just like I had to with American Beauty.)

I love any and every font chat in a movie so the fact that there was a whole scene about which font to put on a tombstone really really spoke to me. (There could be some really excellent analysis here of choosing Times New Roman which is like the surface level “classiest font” but probably not the actual classiest font and it’s all about keeping up appearances etc…But I won’t go into that.)

People who said Saltburn was “crazy” clearly have not seen Poor Things. Even though he fucked a grave and drank bathwater, I really could see how he got to that point and I feel like that’s what matters…Have you never been in love? Have you never listened to Work Song by Hozier and wanted someone to truly believe that no grave can hold your body down, because they’ll come home to you? (Disclaimer: Please no one do this to my grave. But I would be happy with Times New Roman, or Webdings.)

I LOVED the end scene with Barry Keoghan running naked through his mansion. I found myself saying things like, “I feel like if he was wearing clothes it would have detracted from the message” and I have no idea what that means but I stand by it. Like the nakedness was more of a costume than any costume could have been you know? (Do I even know? or did I just love the vibes?) Either way it was glorious.

Also can we get a little commotion for Jacob Elordi as the white boy of the moment? Dressing him up as Claire Danes’ Juliet from Baz Lurhman’s Romeo & Juliet 1999 was a gift from the heavens. Everyone say thank you Emerald Fennel.

If you want to see exactly how much work went in to this movie you should definitely watch the director explaining just one scene…If they released a Director’s Cut of the whole thing I would definitely watch it!

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

⭐⭐

Summary: Clay chickens get lobotomies

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023) is the sequel to Chicken Run (2000). This means it only took 23 years for the most traumatising kids’ movie of all time to be made in Claymation. As an adult woman I genuinely felt a knot of fear in my stomach while I watched this horror movie unfold - If you were looking for a way to introduce your children to Michel Foucault’s Panopticon theory (and Elf of the Shelf wasn’t cutting it for you), look no further!

Other than the terrifying subject matter (which involved chickens being drugged and held in a Squid-games like arena), I did actually enjoy this film, and despite the main chicken being super annoying (full of hope and ambition) and Rocky Rhodes rendered significantly less fuckable (not my words but I have to agree).

The rats stole the show. During this I remembered that on VCR trailers, there was a clip of them saying “Put your head between your legs and kiss your bum goodbye,” which I think of every time I am on a plane. I respect their hustle.

Good Material

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary: 500 Days of Summer if Tom and Summer were chronically online (compliment)

Good Material was so frickin good I’ve written a whole seperate piece about it, which I’ll get around to publishing soon.

But here are some of the main jots and thots I have floating around:

Dolly perfectly describes a breakup experience, and the constant seesaw of emotions, and she succeeds in what so many authors fail at doing when describing a relationship: she highlights the importance of the friendship aspect. She shows that “To be loved is to be known,” highlighting that one of the more painful aspects of a breakup is the loss of someone who understands you easily. Despite the rollercoaster of emotions, when the main characters run into each other again, their first thought is, “It just felt so good to see my friend.” No one captures the intensity of these emotions quite like Dolly in a way that is the perfect balance of heartfelt and self-deprecating.
One of my favourite parts was when she mentioned the “90/10 Rule.” She writes, “I once heard a theory about the first relationship that occurs after a big relationship ends. It’s called the 90/10 rule. The theory goes: whatever the crucial 10 per cent is that was missing from your partner who was otherwise totally right for you is the thing you look for in the following person. That missing 10 per cent becomes such a fixation that, when you do find someone who has it, you ignore the fact they don’t have the other 90 per cent that the previous partner had.”
All in all, Good Material has improved on everything that her last novel, Ghosts, was missing - while to me Ghosts felt unfinished, the ending of Good Material felt more Unwritten (in the exhilarating Natasha Bedingfield kind of way.) It also conquered the issue that I felt Sally Rooney had in her most recent novel, Beautiful World Where Are You: that all of her characters are so real and fleshed out that they were enormously dislikeable. (Sorry Sally, I literally love you so much.) Good Materials’ characters make you feel warmly towards the human race, rather than make you feel like human beings are a blight on this earth who spend 99% of our time being self-obsessed and preoccupied with trivial bullshit. And honestly that’s what I’m here for.

Quiz Lady

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Awkwafina is a quiz superstar while Sandra Oh dresses like a Shein teenager

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it would be like if Awkwafina was on The Chase, and the Chase was hosted by Buddy the Elf, here you go. I have nothing intelligent to say about this movie except that it was light-hearted and funny and I enjoyed the entire thing, and it made me happy.

I would like to include this list of “Vegan warnings” for this movie that someone took the time to write out on Letterboxed:

Fellas, is it vegan to tell a dog to shut up?

Do vegan people refuse to watch movies with poached eggs in them? Like I am being so for real I would actually love to know so if you have any opinions on this please DM me on Instagram (@healthsensation).

Palm Springs

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary: 2 people are stuck in an infinite loop, forced to relive the same wedding every day

[CW: How I Met Your Mother Spoilers? (it’s been 10 years but just in case I’d hate to ruin your life.)]

Palm Springs was one of the most perfect movies I have seen in a long long time. If I had watched this at the tender age of 13, I probably would have made this a large chunk of my personality somehow.

Maybe it was because of the roles that Andy Samberg and Cristen Milioti have played in the past that make you absolutely feel deeply invested in them (Jake Peralta? and The Mother from How I Met Your Mother? They’re two of the most adored characters in TV history). Maybe because it was just absolutely excellent writing.

Cristin Milioti on the Palm Springs Ending, Working with Andy Samberg

Palm Springs was so funny but also so sincere. Their relationship felt so real to me and they absolutely nailed the friends-to-lovers progression, not omitting any fun or silliness, which is so crucial to the plot.

I could never tell where the story was going even though this kind of time loop movie has been made a hundred times before - it wasn’t at all repetitive, it was perfectly placed, and there is a scene that, while being beautiful and touching, also had a joke about grammar, so I am the exact target audience for this movie. There’s also dinosaurs for no reason. FIVE STARS I can’t wait to watch this again.

Remarkably Bright Creatures

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: This book is half written from the perspective of an old lady and half written from the perspective of an Octopus.

Apparently the author wrote this because she took a writing class where the prompt was “to write from an unexpected perspective.” She absolutely NAILED this brief. Unfortunately, I wish the entire book was written by the octopus, because the other characters could be a bit bland.

The other main character, Tova, was actually so well-written and complex and my heart aches for all of the feelings this little old lady goes through. However, the other side character, Cameron, was just so meh. Overall the style of writing is not something I’d usually read but it was the switch up between Tova and the Octopus’ perspectives that really made this shine. It was sometimes very boring but sometimes very beautiful. I am glad I read it!

Mean Girls

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Mean Girls but worse but still good but a musical

Last but not least, Mean Girls (The Movie The Musical). Seeing Mean Girls for the first time as a child is a canon event to irreversibly alter the chemistry of young girls' brains in the best of ways, coating the world in a thick layer of lip gloss and glory.

The very best part of this entire film is the addition of Damian singing the iCarly theme song in French. I couldn’t have asked for anything better than this. This singular choice feels so true to the original film.

#mean girls 2024 from RWRB, SPN, Books, Movies, etc.

Avantika Vandanapu (Karen) was easily the best character. You would think being the most beautiful human on earth would be enough but her character was so funny as well. The line in her song, “This is modern feminism talking, we expect to run the world in shoes we cannot walk in” slays so hard.

Seeing the tiktok homepage on a movie theatre screen felt dystopian however and I hated that choice.

My favourite part (other than Leave It All To Me) was that they kept in “The jungle scene.” If you study any social interaction enough it’s crazy how it all boils down to “I’m the alpha” or “Please keep me in the pack” so this truly is the most honest experience of any high school anywhere.

All in all this was supposed to be fun and it was fun. I got what I paid for, I got to laugh with the girlies at the movies and wear pink. Life is full of simple pleasures and seeing this was one of them. (Popcorn is another.)

For more of my writing: