“i try to tighten my heart into a knot, a snarl, i try to learn to live dead, just numb, but then i see someone i want, and it's like a nail, like a hot spike right through my chest, and i know i’m losing.”

i first learned what AIDS was in my eighth grade health class, during a unit on STDs. we learned its history, its symptoms, its causes, its prognosis, and who it affected - “homosexuals and addicts.”…

It’s impossible for me to rate this “seriously” - I discovered this book over the pandemic, tore through it in a matter of days, and followed every part of the show’s production from start-to-finish in anticipation. I’ve been waiting for it forever, and watching something you care about so deeply in one medium come alive in another is simply one of the most exciting experiences ever. And while there’s no “perfect” adaptation (and I understand being upset with some of…

I’ve seen this and Blonde compared to one another recently - two graphic retellings of real-life tragedies that have been accused of being “exploitative” - so I was VERY apprehensive before sitting down to watch Dahmer.

But, surprisingly, I had a much better experience with this than I ever anticipated. To start, I hate that the families didn’t have a say in how this story would be told or how this project would be produced, or even if it should…

I sometimes struggled with the structure of this series - it was a little too slow to start, and the interweaving of the past and the present was clumsily constructed from time to time - but it REALLY picked up halfway through, and at the very least, it was always thematically compelling, unveiling harsh truths about religious radicalization.

Above ALL else though, this was just elevated enooormously by the exceptional ensemble. Andrew Garfield is an irably committed lead, but it’s…

Idk y’all, I thought this kinda slapped???

I’ve found the MCU Disney+ shows to be a… bit of a mixed bag so far. You’ve got the great (WandaVision), the good (Hawkeye), the middling - for me - (Loki), the afterthought (What If…?), and the dumpster fire (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). I was worried Moon Knight was gonna be a real whiff after some of the first reviews were more mixed than expected, but, to my surprise, each episode…

At risk of oversharing on Letterboxd, this miniseries meant a lot to me for many reasons. For starters, though I was a bit older than Maddy when my mom was going through something similar, I’m the child of an eventual single mother who had to escape abuse for the sake of the safety of herself and her children, and while some of my youngest and saddest memories have faded as the years go by, the feelings haven’t. 

The horror I…

Though it kinda petered out towards the end - with a final episode that felt more like an epilogue that could’ve been tacked onto the penultimate one, instead of needing to take up its own forty minutes - I was largely pretty impressed by The Girl from Plainville overall, particularly in how it added complications and complexities to the characters of the center of this tragic tale. It’s no easy to task to try and help us empathize with -…

Dopesick is one of the most emotionally devastating series I’ve seen in quite some time. Occasionally, its reach is greater than its grasp, and it’s not free of heavy-handed dialogue entirely, but it’s full of undeniably riveting righteous fury, and the ensemble is exceptionally cast, with each actor earning your engagement in spite of the slight structural stumbles here or there. Michael Keaton is going to deservedly win that Emmy, but Kaitlyn Dever is just as astounding, again asserting herself…