Monthly Recap: November 2021

I should probably apologize for going AWOL for an entire month — and missing Dell's wonderful Girl Week blogathon — but I know that I'm going to be as inactive in December so there really is no point in that. 

Monthly Recap: October 2021

As you may have noticed, I haven't been very active the past month. I even stopped joining the Thursday Movie Picks series because I'm an all or nothing type of person and since I missed the second Thursday I thought it'd be fitting to stop completely. My goal this year was to join every single week so since I failed, why not fail big? 

Thursday Movie Picks: Halloween Edition: School

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If you are not new to the series, then you already know the month of October is horror-themed. This year we are kicking it off with movies set in schools, and I'm going with the first three movies that came to my mind. 

Monthly Recap: September 2021

I'm thinking of ending things. And by "ending things" I mean stop blogging as I yet again find myself not enjoying writing on it anymore. Even the weekly Thursday Movie Picks series, which I always loved doing, has become somewhat of a burden, a chore I have to do each week and that it's bringing me very little joy.

Thursday Movie Picks: Television Edition: Non-English Language

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It's the last week, and day, of September which means it's time for another TV-themed Thursday Movie Picks. This week we are sharing series in a language that is not English. I'm pretty sure I talked about two of these series last year for the same theme, but I love both so much I will never shut up about them.

Thursday Movie Picks: Femme Fatales

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Welcome to another Thursday Movie Picks post. As usual, I am yet again writing it last minute but this week I've also struggled to come up with three films that fit the theme of femme fatales as I've already used films whose characters would have been the perfect fit. That being said, I still managed to think of three characters/films.

Thursday Movie Picks: Outlaws

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This week with are talking about outlaws, and I seriously considered skipping it as my mind was absolutely blank (also, I'm very tired and I didn't feel like writing at all because, as usual, I couldn't write the post in advance). Then my stupid brain realised that most people in westerns are outlaws so, there you go, theme within a theme. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Actors or Actresses Playing Themselves

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I wanted to write a decent post for this week's Thursday Movie Picks. I really did. However, a dinner with co-workers, sleeping four hours the following night, and then procrastinating my way through my day off got in the way, and it's Thursday afternoon already and I have to take a nap because I work tonight so, yeah, I won't write much. Here are my top picks for actors playing themselves in movies. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar Winners Edition: Best Original Song and Best Original Score

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New month, new Oscar-themed Thursday Movie Picks. This week we are talking about one of my favourite categories as I always remember a great song or score, even when the film they are featured in isn't particularly memorable. With that being said, today I'm only picking original song winners from movies I love(d), and that I still find myself singing every now and then. 

Monthly Recap: August 2021

I'm having a really hard time believing how fast this year is passing by? Like, how the hell is it September already? How have I already wasted eight months of 2021?

Thursday Movie Picks: Television Edition: Books You Want to be Adapted into a TV Series

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As per usual with the last Thursday of the month, today, instead of movies, we are talking about TV series, and more specifically about TV series that have yet to be made as we are talking about books we'd like to see on the small screen. I picked three books I loved but, as I'm watching Normal People and I am not enjoying it, I'm not sure I really want to see them turned into series after all. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Treasure Hunt

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Treasure hunt movies are kind of cool. Sure, most of them are bad, but they still are kind of cool, and there are some I really enjoyed. That said, the temptation to be lazy and pick the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy was really, really strong this week. But I can't always be lazy so I worked a bit more this time and came up with different films. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Movies That Confused You

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For this week's Thursday Movie Picks, we are talking about films that confused us. And, although I wrote the post 5 minutes before posting it, I'm glad I picked the films in advance as I have so much brain fog lately I could/would have ended up picking Bo Burnham's Inside which I watched last week and was not confusing at all. And probably Kung Fu Panda too since I watched it in German and last language is still quite a mystery to me. Anyways, enough with the rambling, here are the films that confused me the most. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar Winner Edition: Best Costume and Best Makeup and Hairstyling

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I've really enjoyed doing these Oscar-themed Thursday Movie Picks posts these past seven months; now it's time for me to struggle to find films for this week's as I often overlook costume, makeup and hairstyling Oscars, even though they are just as important as the others. With the help of Wikipedia, here are my favourites from each category. 

Monthly Recap: July 2021

I know I am (probably) saying this every month but how on earth did another month just pass? It feels like yesterday when the year began and it's August already. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Television Edition: Book Adaptations

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The Thursday Movie Picks series is once again television-themed as July too has come to an end and this week it features one of my favourite themes, book adaptations. It's quite embarrassing that I keep picking the same series every year though. But what can I do if I absolutely adore these and can't really say the same about other adaptations (either because I haven't read the source material or because I didn't like the series as much).

Thursday Movie Picks: Summer Break

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I feel like I complain a lot lately but I could really use a summer break right now. Unfortunately, the only summer break I'm having this week is those people in the movies I, and all the other bloggers joining this series, picked. And since I am who I am, I'm going with three films starring three crushes of mine. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Non-English Language Movies

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It's foreign-language movies week and I'm so excited for it because it's thanks to this theme over the years that I've learnt about some amazing foreign films, like the beautiful Wadjda. But, while I love it because it has made me discover many hidden gems, I'm going a different route with my picks today as I decided to pick three German films I watched in German without subtitles years ago when all my German vocabulary consisted of ja, auf wiedersehen and kartoffeln. These are three films starring my (decade old) crush Matthias Schweighöfer that I've been meaning to rewatch to understand the dialogue as the plot are very easy to understand even without knowing the language. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Female Athletes

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I feel like I'm saying it a lot lately but I once again struggled to find three films that fit the week's theme for the Thursday Movie Picks series. I guess I just don't want a lot of films about sports. It's not like there are a lot of movies about female athletes anyway though. It's always about this male champion and that male champion. Anyway, here's what I came up with with the help of Google. 

Monthly Recap: June 2021

Hello there! Can you believe that half of 2021 is already behind us? I sure can't. The good news is that the year is at least improving. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar Winners Edition: Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects

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Hello July, and hello Oscar-themed Thursday Movie Picks! This week, as you can see from the title, we are choosing films that won Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. At first, I wanted to pick three for each category but, since I'm lazy and busy with work, I decided to pick three films that won both awards. So without further ado, here are my visually stunning picks. 

My Favourite LGBTQ+ Films

Pride Month has been celebrated in June across the United States for decades. This is a time people within the LGBTQ+ community and allies have dedicated to honouring the 1969 Stonewall Riots, which began on June 27, 1969, and culminated with young gays, lesbians and transgender people in New York City clashing with the police which would later expand LGBTQ+ activism both in the States and abroad. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Television Edition: Fish Out of Water

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The month of June is ending soon, and this being the last Thursday of the month we are having another television-themed Thursday Movie Picks. This week we are exploring the fish-out-of-water theme, a theme that screams Ted Lasso — and it would have been the perfect pick as not only it features one hell of a fish-out-of-water character, but it's about football and Euro 2020 is happening right now. Unfortunately, my dumb-ass used it at the beginning of the year so I'll have to do without it.

Thursday Movie Picks: Natural Disaster

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Welcome back to Thursday Movie Picks, the weekly series that really has me struggle every now and then when it features a sub-genre I don't watch a lot. And disaster movies fall into that category. Not only I don't usually watch them, but I don't even understand people's fascination with them. So, since I couldn't come up with three films about natural disasters I enjoyed, I picked the three films fitting the theme I watched more recently. 

The Normal Heart (2014)

June being Pride Month, I finally decided to watch an LGBTQ+ film that has been on my list for a very long time, Ryan Murphy's The Normal Heart. If you know me, then you know that I never read plots, and I went in assuming it was a gay romance starring Mark Ruffalo and Matt Bomer (please don't ask me where this notion came from). It took me less than five minutes to realise the film would be so much more than that, and it indeed was — a tough, brutally honest, and incredibly emotional film about the tragedy of AIDS. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Worst Book to Movie Adaptations

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Being both a bookworm and a movieholic, I love when they decide to make an adaptation of a novel I enjoyed. At the same time, I'm scared because oftentimes these cinematic adaptations suck. For this week's Thursday Movie Picks we are asked to talk about the latter, which was incredibly easy for me as it would be far more challenging to find good adaptations. Anyway, without further ado, let's get started. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar Winners Edition: Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay

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Do you know when it was the last time that the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay awarded a script written only by a woman? It was 1995 and it was Emma Thompson's for Sense and Sensibility. Thankfully, it is a bit better for the Original Screenplay category so for this week's Thursday Movie Picks, I'm going to pick only original screenplay winners, my three favourites written by women only. 

Monthly Recap: May 2021

Despite the fact that absolutely nothing has changed in my life to make this change in me, I've been feeling like a whole new person lately. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Television Edition: Globetrotting - Scripted

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I would be lying if I said I didn't struggle this week because not only globetrotting isn't a very common theme in the television world, but also because we cannot pick reality shows, travels shows, or docu-series revolving around it but only scripted series. Which being honest didn't make it that much harder for me as I don't watch those genres. Anyway, here are my picks — and I'm pretty sure I used them last year too.

Thursday Movie Picks: Cyberpunk

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I don't know if you are aware and if it happened to you as well, but last Saturday people got some of their posts deleted by Google because apparently they violated malware and viruses policies. I was one of those people and I had to say goodbye to two of my posts, one of which was a Thursday Movie Picks. There were a couple of dark hours when I contemplated closing the blog — what's the point in writing if I have to see my content erased from the internet? — but thankfully it was just Google randomly deleting posts and then they fixed it. What I am trying to say is that basically our society is already dominated by technology and hence this week's theme fits to perfection with what happened last weekend. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Period Dramas

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I know I am going to repeat myself, again, but period dramas are not my cup of tea. I just find them tremendously boring, especially when they revolve around nothing but romance — yes, that's a sideswipe at Jane Austen. So, for this week's Thursday Movie Picks, for the first time (this year), I decided to pick period dramas that I haven't seen yet but that have been on my watchlist for a while now. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar Winners Edition: Best Director

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With all that happened in this year's edition, I don't really feel like talking about the Oscars. But I did promise I'd join every single Thursday Movie Picks this year so here I am, writing this post even though I don't really feel like to. And since I don't feel like doing it, I'm going to pick directors that, in my opinion, should have NOT won the Best Director award. 

Monthly Recap: April 2021

I am actually considering not writing these recaps anymore because I just don't feel like writing anymore. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Television Edition: Scores and Theme Songs

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I am so glad it's time for another TV themed Thursday Movie Picks, even more glad that we have to pick series with great scores and theme songs — or at least that's how I'm going with it — because it doesn't require a lot of writing and I totally forgot to write it at the beginning of the week like I always do.

The Father (2020)

It has been a few days since I have seen Florian Zeller's The Father and I can't get it out of my head. And that's not because I am writing about it just now, but because of how overwhelmingly devastating, heartbreaking, and terrifying it was. This film broke me and I did not see it coming. 

My Octopus Teacher (2020)

I vividly remember one summer of many years ago — I was probably in my early teens — when I would spend my mornings watching nature documentaries, and I absolutely adored ocean-related ones. I remember learning about the existence of scorpionfishes and being fascinated by them, just as I was fascinated by every other single sea creature shown in those documentaries. So it really didn't come as a surprise when, a week ago, I sat down to watch the Netflix documentary and now Oscar winner My Octopus Teacher and ended up loving every second of it as it is a stunning, captivating, heartwarming, and moving documentary. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Psychological Thrillers

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Despite my refusal to watch Mank — I could change my mind though —, David Fincher is one of my favourite directors and he is stuck in my head as I've been (re)watching some of his films. Hence, I really, really had to pick three of his films for this week's psychological thriller-themed Thursday Movie Picks. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Female Cinematographers

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As soon as I saw this theme on this year's schedule I knew already the films I was going to pick, Ryan Coogler's. Because his direction doesn't only guarantee female cinematographers involved, but also great cinematography. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Amateur Sleuths

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I am very fond of detective movies but if it's amateur detectives we are talking about, well, I'm going to struggle a lot to come up even with a film. If to that, you add the terrible headaches I've been having for the past three days, you can imagine how hard it was for me to come up with three for this week's Thursday Movie Picks. So please bear with me if they don't fit perfectly. 

Shiva Baby (2020)

There is nothing that screams 'watch me' like a film with a short runtime does — and this is the shallow reason I decided to watch Emma Seligman's feature debut, Shiva Baby. Thankfully, the short runtime isn't the only great thing about the film as it turned out to be such a compelling, and beautifully poignant coming-of-age comedy.

The Game (1997)

 

While I didn't love The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I loved every single other film by David Fincher I have seen — Se7en and Gone Girl are even favourites of mine. So when I decided to finally watch The Game I knew I was in for a treat. But boy did I miscalculate as I was not expecting it to be the tense, nerve-racking masterpiece it turned out to be. 

Monthly Recap: March 2021

I can't believe it's been a month already since I found myself laughing for the millionth time at the "Oh, hi March" joke. I need to grow up, don't I? 

Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar Winners Edition: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress

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Since for last month's Oscar-related Thursday Movie Picks —  Best Actor and Actress — I picked three leading performances from actresses — performances that made me fall in love with them —, this month I'm picking three supporting performances from men — my favourites of the past decade, which also happen to be the first win for each actor. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Television Edition: Opening Title Sequences

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I probably love watching TV series more than movies but there's one thing I'm very bad at, watching opening sequences as I always skip them. And I blame Netflix for this as they make it possible with one click. So, yeah, this final Thursday Movie Picks of March was quite the challenge for me. However, after some thinking, and Google's help (only for one pick), I got three opening sequences.

Thursday Movie Picks: Fake Identity

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I have always been fascinated by con artists, so you can't imagine how happy I am that this week's Thursday Movie Picks is featuring them as we are asked to pick films about fake identities. Without any further ado, here are my favourite three: 

Heat (1995)

I am alone, I am not lonely, says Robert DeNiro's character around the thirty-minute mark. Thirty minutes out of a hundred and seventy and I already knew I would love Michael Mann's Heat, an astonishing crime masterpiece. 

The Handmaiden (2016)

I still remember the first time I watched Park Chan-wook's Oldboy. It was easily the most brutal, sick, and yet humorous and sweet film I had ever seen, and I absolutely adored it. And yet, while I rewatched Oldboy and his English-language films, Stoker and Snowpiercer, I kept putting off his other Korean films, specifically one I have heard nothing but great things about, The Handmaiden (아가씨 Agassi). And I'm not going to lie, it took me a lot of willpower last Tuesday to sit down and commit to watching a two-hour subtitled movie, but I did it, and I was rewarded with an exquisite experience as the film is a beautiful and suspenseful erotic thriller.

Thursday Movie Picks: Movies That Haven't Aged Well

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There is more than one way to look at this week's theme as there are several reasons why some films haven't aged well. Some aged badly because of now-obsolete special effects, some because of overacting, some because they are problematic as hell. I'm going with the latter. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Oscars Winners Edition: Best Actor and Best Actress

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Now that we have left February and romance behind, we are back on track with Oscar-themed Thursdays. This week, as we are asked to pick actors who won the Oscar for a leading role, I'm going theme-within-theme and I'm picking three films, specifically three performances, that made me fall in love with the actor.

Monthly Recap: February 2021

So... I really don't know how to start the post this month firstly because I did nothing productive, and secondly because I don't even feel like writing.