Yes No Maybe So: "The Goldfinch"

by Ilich Mejía

Before you ask, five times. Five times I've tried to get past the first half of this book. Five times I've had to put it down to rewatch that one extra-good episode Bojack Horseman drops every season and then forgotten to pick it back up. To seem cultured, I will lie and say I was in the middle of a sixth try when the trailer for the movie dropped. Naturally, I've neglected to pick it back up since because I've been busy picking the trailer apart to decide how I feel about it. Join me in deciding, fellow philistines!

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TFE PSA: Stop asking Nicole Kidman about her wigs!

by Ilich Mejía

Last week, Nicole Kidman called into KIIS 1065’s The Kyle & Jackie O Show to promote the Australian release of Destroyer. The actress talked to Jackie O about working on the film and the future of Big Little Lies before the host introduced a discouraging question. 

“They do this podcast and, literally, the podcast is all about your wigs. It did make me wonder, what is your favorite wig?” Jackie started. Coolly, Kidman replied...

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Ten Reasons to Watch 'Support the Girls'

by Ilich Mejía

We interrupt your final Oscar Prediction anxiety and Nathaniel's own awards ballot for a very important public service announcement. Here are ten reasons you must watch Andrew Bujalski's feel-good-wait-nevermind-good-movies-are-complicated Support the Girls on Hulu right away.

Centered around a group of female employees working at a small breastaurant, Girls is unfairly only skirting around the awards conversation so you owe it this much. (We don't make the rules!) The movie gives us a gallery of portraits of too-real day-to-day troubles. 

TEN REASONS YOU MUST WATCH "SUPPORT THE GIRLS"

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Ranking Tully's Figures of Speech

Seven years after fucking up Charlize Theron’s silk, Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody teamed up again to fuck up just about every other fabric in her house in this year’s Tully. Here Theron plays Marlo, a soon-to-be mommy of three struggling to find any room for excitement or naps in her caffeine-deprived days. Enter Tully (Mackenzie Davis), the night nanny she hires to add some hours of sleep to her frustrations.

From the opening scene, Cody assures the audience she has no intention of grounding these characters in the reality that corresponds to them. Her script keeps this up throughout by frequently using figures of speech and occasional underwater reveries to buoy up the characters in their imagination. She reinforces the fantasies her script's players construct and dress themselves up in (from Tahitian home bars to cat ears headbands) with an equally rhetorical language. We've ranked enough of our favorite metaphors and similes from Tully that we can already hear the wheels of your high school English teacher’s TV cart rolling up to your classroom.

Ten of our favorite lines and very wet spoilers after the cut...

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Sharp Objects: Episode 3 "Fix"

Previously: Episode 2 "Dirt"

by Ilich Mejía

In this week's installment of Let's Obscure Patricia Clarkson's Face To Visually Storytell, we barely get to make out Patty's moneymaker. In all fairness, while obscured, Patricia's unreasonable Adora still gets to crush common sense with pastels and Southern charm in front of characters outside her own family this week. Out of a familial context, her obsession with perception is amplified to a chilling perversity as she willfully obstructs her daughter Camille's attempts at finding the murderer of two young girls because *gasp* what will people say! We see how even at home, protected from the scrutiny of people outside of her circle, she prioritizes presentation: heels with nightgowns before bed, suede sandals while gardening, a maid never seen without her uniform. She’s no different with less familiar acquaintances, winning over the local police chief and the grieving father with her facetious attention and sweetened coffee...

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