April in Review

April happened, allegedly, though I don't fully believe it. I think I slept through most of it, partly as a side effect of getting vaxxed (!!) and partly because I am just a tired person. Who out there is well rested? 

Here are the pieces of media I consumed in month 1,000 inside my apartment:

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

This was essentially an extra-long episode of Batman: The Animated Series. That isn't a bad thing because BTAS is great, but it does make pacing a little difficult. That being said, it had a more coherent and thoughtful plot than anything in the DCEU except the first Wonder Woman movie.

Nate Bargatze: The Greatest Average American

My first comedy special of the year! I watched this on a whim because I just needed something light. It was pretty good. It was extremely weird to watch a special made in the Age of COVID™, but also cathartic in a way. It just felt good to laugh.

Another Round

This was an odd movie. Before watching it, I wasn't sure what sort of narrative stance it was going to take and having watched it, I still don't really know. Which I kind-of like? It's been labeled both a comedy and a drama, but it's definitely a drama that makes you laugh a few times. Some of the style choices I liked and others I didn't, but my main takeaway is I feel several ways about it, none more than any other. It's been a while since a movie made me feel like that.

My Bloody Valentine 3D

I was jonesing to watch a bad horror movie (as one does) and oof, did I pick one. It was even worse than I expected, a real comedy tour de force. The 3D effects were truly something special, more than I could've hoped for. It was mostly good fun, but wowza: gratuitous nudity is a slasher movie requirement but this one really said "hold my beer." It almost made me shut it off.

Stowaway

This is a so-so space exploration movie (a genre I love). It isn't super engaging for a lot of its runtime, but it eventually finds its emotion. And all four performances are very good throughout. I couldn't shake how much it made me think of "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin, one of those English textbook short stories that has burrowed in my brain for life.

Rewatch: Dead Poets Society, Patch Adams; Iron Man, Iron Man 2. When laying in bed, waiting to see if vaccine side effects were going to sideline me, my thought process on Day 1 was "if I'm going to feel bad, I might as well feel worse and watch sad Robin Williams movies" and on Day 2 was "what if I start the MCU from the beginning?" Hardly any side effects, but possible brain damage.

The Assistant

A very quiet movie that made me scream at my TV. I get why people said The Academy snubbed Julia Garner.

Mortal Kombat

It’s a movie based on an arcade game — I got what I expected. I also got bonus fun facts about the game because Tim is a Video Game Person™.

Things Seen & Heard

White male entitlement is the spookiest thing of all. About 80% of this movie is a good old-fashioned haunted house story with a modern touch. I really liked it. Then the final 30 minutes happened and things went awry. I love Amanda Seyfried always though, including here, and I would like an entire movie about only Rhea Seehorn's character.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines

A delight! I love a good animated family movie and this one is really fun. It made me laugh, it almost made me cry. It was also produced by some of the people behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and I could tell because the animation itself was often very cool. 

Nine movies is a good amount, but April was really a TV month.

Last month, I accidentally lied on here and said I'd only been rewatching old eps of shows I've already seen. But, I also watched all of Wandavision in two days. You should do the same except maybe space it out more because it's great. Then, I watched The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a show I continuously call "Captain America: ... the Falcon and Winter Soldier." Each week, I couldn't quite tell how I felt about it, but it stuck the landing. I have a lot of thoughts.

This month, I also watched all of The Undoing in ~a day (quite good; Nicole Kidman is one of the most beautiful people in the world), all of Made For Love (loved it and would like more) and started watching Happy Endings (as good as everyone has said). And, of course, Tim and I kept making our way through both Game of Thrones and Community. I also occasionally rewatched episodes of The X Files and Buffy because I'm a creature of habit.

I also read all of Stephen King's On Writing, which I had wanted to read for years. I liked the craft stuff but I liked the memoir stuff more, especially any time he wrote about Tabitha. Now I'm trying to read both I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom and Little Weirds by Jenny Slate, but I haven't made it very far in either despite loving both of those women.

On to May, apparently.