This Oscar season has been wild. Between Andrea Riseborough’s controversial nomination, All Quiet on the Western Front bursting onto the scene at the BAFTAs, and whatever’s going on in the Best Supporting Actress category, almost anything could happen tonight. The only thing we know for sure is that, against all odds, a weird little sci-fi comedy with butt plug jokes is going to sweep.
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It is probably not surprising to readers of this blog, given that I have spent a large portion of my adult life writing about Dawson’s Creek twenty years after it ended, but I also really, really love holiday romantic comedies—despite the fact that the vast majority of them end up as disappointments. The pinnacle of the genre (which is While You Were Sleeping, and yes I will fight you on this) is so good that I’ve been left forever chasing the dragon, looking for other movies that are perfect to curl up on the couch with in December with a box of chocolates or an obliging husband, even though it often ends up with me watching some garbled mess of offensive stereotypes, barely-funny “jokes” and (worst of all) no chemistry between the leads.
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Normally, around this time of year, I would be lodging many complaints about who was nominated at the Oscars: too white, too male, too many white male biopics. But this is not a normal year in any sense. Most of the traditional Oscar bait was pushed off until we can see it in theaters again, which means that most of the nominees are more indie, and, in my opinion, more deserving than usual. Stories that usually wouldn’t gain traction with the Academy–movies made by and about women, biopics about lesser-known and more radical pockets of history, smaller stories about fringe subcultures and the lives of American immigrants–are now set to sweep the Oscars on Sunday night.
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On May 12, the quintessential dance movie of our generation has its 20th birthday. No, not Black Swan! We’re talking something far better: a sweet, silly, bubbly confection full of actually great dancing that made every girl I knew want to be a ballet dancer: Center Stage.
We both rewatched the movie in honor of the big day — not that we don’t regularly rewatch it anyway — and found ample evidence to justify our predetermined conclusion that yes, this movie still rules. Continue reading →
My notes for this intro included “women,” “POC,” and “Joker rage,” which–yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Continue reading →
So recently The Ringer made a list of the top 40 Disney songs* and naturally we were completely incensed by it. Both Keets and I immediately responded, about five minutes apart, by saying, “I Won’t Say (I’m In Love) is #36? I’m mad already,” almost word-for-word.
Naturally, we needed to rectify this and provide the internet with a better list. And by “better,” we mean that we here at Adversion agree with it. Whatever else, you can rest assured that Megara’s fabulous song about not wanting to be in love is way higher than #36.
To complete our extremely scientific ranking, we each ranked the songs on this list from 1 to 60 and then sorted the total scores, lowest to highest. Whoever liked the song the most got to write about it.
* (OK, it was a few months ago… we’re behind on posting, OK?)
It’s time for the Oscars again! And wow, is it a weird race this year. On the one hand, we have a genre movie like Black Panther, which is more than deserving but would never have gotten nominated a few years ago, and Roma, an arthouse darling by an auteur director that would be a lock for Best Picture/Director if the movie industry weren’t so angry at Netflix. And then we have the old standbys–a retrograde racial reconciliation fantasy, a couple of mediocre biopics, and the requisite movie-about-show-business that the Academy historically loves. So who knows?
We got every major category correct last year, but it was also a much more standard and predictable race. So here are our predictions–and our choices–but honestly, it’s anyone’s game at this point.
PSA: Similar to last year—when I watched all the nominees except Dunkirk—I have not watched Vice. I hold a real grudge against Adam Mckay after the Margot Robbie bathtub scene in The Big Short, and I am not overly impressed by prosthetic makeup, so I don’t think it would change anything. Continue reading →
What just happened? No, seriously, what did I just watch?
Ostensibly, Aquaman is a movie where Jason Momoa plays Arthur, the half-merperson king of the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, who must go back to Atlantis to be its king and battle his half-brother Orm for control of the underwater kingdoms with the help of a magic trident. But this makes it sound like this movie in any way makes sense or has a reason for existing, which, as far as I could tell, it does not.
[Spoilers abound for Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before below. But if you haven’t watched both of these already… get thee to your preferred digital video provider and fix that!]
You’ve Got Mail came out on December 18, 1998–twenty years ago today. Having just finished a rewatch of Dawson’s Creek that could probably be subtitled, “This didn’t age so well,” we can’t help but notice that rewatching You’ve Got Mail (which I do at least twice a year, if not more) is the exact opposite experience.
For those who aren’t familiar, You’ve Got Mail is about Kathleen Kelly, the owner of an independent bookstore on the Upper West Side, and Joe Fox, the heir of a corporate fortune earned by his father, who is basically the CEO of a fictional version of Barnes and Noble. Each of them has a secret Internet pen pal that they’re in love with–not realizing that their beloved pen pal is their sworn professional enemy.
Sure, the men are all wearing wide ties and baggy pants, and the technology is hilarious–our star-crossed pair have plenty of time to cool their heels to the sound of a beeping dialup before they connect to the internet. And yeah, in the Year of Our Wokeness 2018, it’s not GREAT that Tom Hanks totally tricks Meg Ryan into telling him stuff about her relationship with his online catfish persona. But come on. This movie is the Gabrielle Union of romantic comedies. It will never grow old. So Janes and I collected 26 reasons why we still love this movie to death.
Adversion 