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Movies

“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” Film Review

Warning: Major Spoilers below! When I first watched the trailer for the new Netflix film To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (based on a novel of the same name), I wasn’t sure what to think. Personally, I am not a massive fan of overly sappy movies or shows because I find sappiness to be disingenuous most of the times, or romanticized to a point of unbelievability. That’s sort of how this film came across, but what caught my eye was that the main character was a PoC (actress Lana Condor is of Vietnamese ethnicity, playing half-Korean character Lara Jean…

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Movies

How it Ends Movie Review

The Netflix Original disaster movie How it Ends follows two men across the country as the world slowly crumbles round them.Tom Sutherland (Forest Whitaker), an ex-marine, is a devoted father to his daughter Sam (Kat Graham), and does not particularly like her boyfriend Will (Theo James), who he believes took his daughter away from him when the couple moved to Seattle. Will is in Chicago for work and to ask for Tom’s blessing to marry Sam, but when he gets cut off from Sam in a seemingly country wide power outage from an unknown source, Will and Tom must trek cross…

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Movies

Guest Post: The New Teen Rom-Com is Queer

Hello, readers! S & I have an important announcement: as of today, we will be putting up guest posts on AvidBards in addition to our own! Katherine H. writes today’s wonderful post, on the queer diversification of teen romantic comedies and what that means for mainstream media. Katherine is a graduate from the University of Edinburgh and American University. She currently lives in New Hampshire and cannot wait to start her PhD in History at Durham University. If you are interested in writing a guest post, contact us on IG or Facebook @avidbards! (Warning: this post contains minimal potential spoilers…

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Movies

“I, Tonya” Review

Even though I watched (and loved) this film the first week it came out in theatres back in December, its arrival onto Netflix reminded me of just how good it was. After re-watching it, my thoughts on it have solidified, and my love for it has grown. Here are the reasons why I thought I, Tonya (2017, dir. Craig Gillespie) is an incredibly introspective film that took a real life event and transformed itself into a thought-provoking commentary on fame, media depiction, mob mentality, and elitism in the figure skating world. (Warning: major spoilers ahead.) Here’s what you have to…

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Movies

Dark Humour in “Kingsman: Secret Service”

Happy Sunday, everyone! A little bit of academic writing never hurt anyone, so today I’m posting yet another one of my old essays I wrote for a film class back in university. The essay focuses on Kingsman: Secret Service (2014), offering an academic view on the use of dark humour, satire, and self reflexivity in the film, and how it created a successful movie. Enjoy! The British-American movie Kingsman: Secret Service, directed by Matthew Vaughn, is characterized as an “action-comedy spy film”, starring Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, and Mark Strong. The film both embraces the classical Hollywood…

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Movies

“Ocean’s 8” Film Review

The highly anticipated film, considered a “gender-bent” version of the original Ocean’s trilogy, Ocean’s 8 (directed by Gary Ross) is doing really well at the box office. But how does it compare to the original series, or even fare as a standalone film? The reviews so far are a mixed bag, and after watching the movie, I can truthfully say I understand some of those perspectives, even though I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Here’s what I thought. Warning: spoilers ahead! Ocean’s 8 (2018) starred an incredible ensemble cast, and I was super excited to see some of my favourite actresses interact…

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