Sara Watches Stuff

There are movies with great ingredients that cannot succeed in spite of themselves. 2015's teenage spy rom com Barely Lethal is sadly one of the prime example of that, because for all of the elements that might be deemed watchable or all of the things you might think would make it good, no amount of charisma can pull writing like this out of the garbage. I am not one to over critique teenage girl movies while giving male fantasy a pass. I love Fast & Furious movies shamelessly, but I also will defend teenage girl franchises to the end of time. I can critique the issues with the Twilight movies while finding the vitriol directed at them to be absurd and disproportionate (Lindsay Ellis has an excellent video essay on this topic that I recommend to everyone). There is nothing wrong for making movies for or about teenagers, and there have been some excellent - or even just serviceable - ones in recent years! They can be problematic as all hell, but still elevate their material b...

The last time I wrote about The Bachelor franchise at length , my relationship with the series was in a very different place. Being a fan of such an overwhelmingly straight, overwhelmingly white  series has never been unproblematic: it's a constant acknowledgement of your part in the furthering of conservative and oppressive narratives. It was a more innocent time as well - I was cautiously optimistic about Rachel Lindsay's season as The Bachelorette heralding better representation! I hadn't yet seen her abysmal treatment at the hands of the media and the show itself, casting a Literal Racist Who Equated Black Lives Matter Activists With Terrorists. We also hadn't seen the appalling mishandling of the Bachelor in Paradise consent incident involving Corinne and Demario, in which race was neglected from the discussion and personality was used to dismiss allegations. Then came a season with a lead both difficult and boring, and I feel as though my relationship with the fra...

Lots of people have written reviews for Ava Duvernay's adaptation of Madaline L'Engle's book A Wrinkle in Time , and look, it hasn't been pretty. It's sitting on a Rotten Tomatoes 40%, and it's tangled up in grossness. Disregard any review that whinges about people who only like this movie for representation, or that the diversity in this movie is forced, because both of those things are every bit as a bogus as the make believe world that this movie takes place in. The people making those statements are often the same people who'll rush to say that a review should be about the movie and the movie alone, and it's rare that I'll agree with that, because meaning and intent are deeply entwined with what you watch. It can't be overstated that A Wrinkle in Time is every bit a children's movie. There can be movies for children which play well for all ages, and while I do feel that this has some broader appeal, it is not a movie in which you will f...