Reviews

There are some odd writing decisions here.

Five years have passed and somehow Lynette's twin sons have aged about eight years. Huh?

Gabby is a sad, 'fat' (spoiler alert: she's actually tiny) mom to objectively fat kids, which is played for laughs. The fatphobia on display here was offensive when the episode originally aired (did anyone think what it might do to the poor girls' self esteem?), but it comes across even worse in 2022.

Criticisms aside, when you're five seasons into a show you're invested, and this season opener leaves me with a lot of questions that I want answered, and the only way I can get that done is by staying up way too late watching more episodes. Desperate Housewives was never the most PC show, but it excels in many areas. Creating intrigue is one of them!

This film deserves at least two stars for the attentive styling of Marilyn Monroe/Norma Jean. Ana de Armas looks stunning. Unfortunately there's little else of merit to be found in Blonde. The writing is awful. The film's dialogue, implausible and frequently cringe (de Armas' take on Monroe's breathy voice has no range and certainly doesn't help reduce the cringe factor). The CGI fetuses (yes, plural, and the second one talks!), tacky and politically suspect, what with the rising tide of anti abortion legislation in America. The film, overall, is a bloated, self-indulgent mess of vignettes rather than a cohesive story. I repeatedly found myself thinking, 'OK, but why am I being shown this?' For shock value? Because there's little plot to speak of in Blonde. And it's hard to believe that artistic expression is the primary intention here: the CGI embryos make me think of the Look Who's Talking comedy franchise. Their inclusion is jarring and nonsensical. It's like the makers wanted to make the worst film possible. Another standout (in a bad way) is a scene where Monroe is beaten in her underwear by her angry fiancee. Compared to the CGI fetuses, the reason for the scene's existence is clearer. It is pornographic: gratuitous, and free from artistic merit. It's an excuse to get Ana de Armas topless, and perhaps to offend fans of Monroe in order to generate social media outrage and boost the film's viewing stats.

Blonde's sex and rape scenes succeed in creating a claustrophobic atmosphere (I believe this was intentional). In a different film, they might work. But in Blonde, they dehumanise the fictionalised Monroe. The only means through which we see her gain any sense of autonomy is through her ill-fated pregnancies. The fictionalised Monroe's abortions and miscarriages serve the function of painting a highly conservative, and some might say cruel, picture of Monroe as damaged, and deservingly so - as if to say, 'How dare she be so promiscuous?' If -- and that's a huge if -- Blonde is trying to make a point about the objectification and exploitation of Monroe, it fails, because it compounds the exploitation Monroe experienced in life. Like Hulu's Pam & Tommy, it's unable to justify its existence in ethical or politics terms.

Unlike some of the film's harshest critics, I think Monroe's life is fair game for cinema. I'm not even opposed to fictionalisation (the film is not a factual biopic, it's based on a novel that is inspired by Monroe's life). But Blonde is a slog. Not only is it offensive and exploitative, but it outright sucks.

TL;DR The backlash is justified. Only worth watching if you have some kind of Marilyn Monroe torture fetish.

Sickly sweet romcom from Billy Porter about two middle-class high schoolers - a Black trans girl with a YouTube channel and an Iranian boy who has a crush on her, and chronicles the development of their short-lived relationship over Reddit. Unless you have a heart of ice, this film's depiction of an awkward adolescent romance will probably make you smile. However, the film has some significant shortcomings.

As others have pointed out, the biggest "villains" are dark skinned Black people, which is odd for a production so concerned with positive representations of minorities.

Anything's Possible is also over-written in places. For example, the scene where the mothers of Kelsa and her former best friend argue over whether Kelsa should be permitted in a 'single sex space' is written like a Twitter fight, not a real life conversation between two women in their 40s or 50s.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this film. It was ok to pass some time while I was resting in bed with flu, but there's so many better coming of age movies out there.

Perhaps I was just in a different headspace when I watched the Aussie original, because I don't remember enjoying it as much as this one. Notably, the US adaptation includes an autistic woman acting as a dating coach of sorts for the participants, who are a really quirky selection of autistic people including a man diagnosed in his 60s. My main criticisms are that 1) I felt unsatisfied at the end, more episodes please! And 2) everyone in the show is (apparently) super straight, which simply doesn't correspond with my experience in the autistic community. No show can represent everyone, of course, but I'd love to see an LGBT spinoff of the show.

This one-off Channel 4 documentary highlights class disparities in one area of London by profiling two dog owners, Cherry and an unbelievably posh woman whose name I've already forgotten. Cherry lives with her girlfriend in a council flat from which she's facing possible eviction. The couple have serious mental health problems, which mean they're both unable to work and live hand to mouth. Austerity cuts like the 'bedroom tax' have only worsened the situation. They're also animal lovers, but their poverty hinders their ability to care for their pets properly. Desperate to pay off her rent arrears, Cherry explores the possibility of breeding her female dog, against the vet's advice, a plan that ultimately goes nowhere. She doesn't get a happy ending.

In contrast, the Shi Tzu-owning stay-at-home mum of *17 years* who lives nearby seems like she could do with *more* problems in her life. She seems to think little of dropping £100 or so on a grooming appointment for her perpetually scruffy looking pooch, and her toff accent might actually be more extreme than Jacob Rees-Mogg's. She also comes across as mildly sociopathic in a segment where she reflects up on her mother's death. Is she an actress? Is she simply edited horribly? Are there *real people* like this?

If the point of the show is to demonstrate that the class divide in London is significant, I think it makes a good case, but I didn't need a gimmicky documentary to teach me that. And the director could surely have made her point without casting the most stereotypical examples of 'posh' and 'poor' she could find.

But then I suppose the programme's entertainment value would be decreased. I did get a good laugh out of the posh woman's accent and the gratuitous dog-humping scenes. However, in the end I felt a sense of emptiness as a viewer. The experiment of sorts where Cherry and Mrs Fancy Pants meet up in a park is uncomfortable viewing. It would have been satisfying to see Mrs Fancy Pants change her worldview as a result of talking to Cherry, but of course, she doesn't. This is Britain, where class prejudice runs *deep*. In that sense, this film doesn't set any unrealistic expectations, I suppose. I hope Cherry is doing better now.