April in Review

I'm not quite sure what to do with this blog anymore.

I created Within This Hive when I was in high school, though whatever I wrote on here then has since been purged and the oldest entry is now from Summer 2011, right after I graduated. Since then, it's sometimes been used as a place to write about my life, from recaps of trips to Austin when I didn't live here to bulleted lists of whatever I was loving at the time. It's also occasionally served as a place for weird little pop culture essays and longer-form reviews (I even graded some movies once, way back in 2013??) 

Since January 2018, I've used Within This Hive as a place to write little mini-reviews of all the films I see for the first time in a month – something I've kept track of since at least 2013. In 2019, I started tweeting even mini-er reviews as I watched films, then writing more about those films later, at the end of each month.

Now, I don't know. I still plan to keep track of the movies I watch and I think the Twitter thread works for that purpose and is also something other people enjoy. And I also still like writing about movies, even though I'm watching far fewer of them these days. But these end-of-month recaps aren't doing much for me anymore, so I think they need to change.

Maybe that means writing about only the best film or thing I experienced in a month. Maybe it means only writing about things when I feel truly affected by them, whether because they were great or because they were terrible or both. I'm not sure what the future will look like (#deep), but I think it's going to be different.

But before that:

Stay Alive

If you've followed my movie-watching journey long enough, you know that sometimes I like to intentionally watch movies – specifically horror – that I already know are going to be bad. Sometimes, bad movies are fun to watch. IYKYK. The downside is that sometimes, you end up watching a bad movie that's just bad and not fun-bad. Like this one.

Fractured

Another way to end up watching a bad movie is when you watch a trailer that looks pretty bad, but you trick yourself into thinking that maybe, somehow, sneakily, it's actually good. That's how I watched Fractured, a movie that is not remotely sneaky or good.

Rewatch: John Mulaney: New in Town, John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid. Despite being a millennial, Tim had never seen a Mulaney special, so we had to fix that.

Hannibal Buress: Animal Furnace

In response to Tim watching some Mulaney specials, we watched a Hannibal special at his recommendation. I had only ever seen Hannibal in things (mostly Broad City) and had never seen any of his specials. This one wasn't out-of-the-park funny, but it wasn't bad.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

This movie is unlike anything I've ever seen and probably ever will. I cried multiple times despite the fact that I repeatedly thought, "This is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen" At least once, I thought this while crying. It's incredible. See it as soon as you can, preferably in a theater.

Rewatch: Drop Dead Gorgeous. Saturday was Kirsten Dunst's birthday and Tim had never seen Drop Dead Gorgeous, an ailment that afflicts many but which must be cured as soon as it is detected.

This month, I also read Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi for ICYMI Book Club (sometimes funny but mostly just a perfectly ok YA book) and finished 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King (pretty good but not great like some of the other Kings I've read).

Looking forward to: seeing Haim and attending a Casey McQuiston book event within 48 hours.