Stream this Sunday: How to Watch Tenet by Joe Sullivan

Welcome to Stream this Sunday, a column built to talk about what is easily available to stream. We’ve all seen the social media posts—“Need something to binge.” Especially during the pandemic, it seems, even with the plethora of choice, we still just don’t know what to watch. Since there is no longer your handy, weekly TV Guide, we hope this column will help you make an informed decision on your streaming habit. You might be thinking, But there are multitudes of platforms used to stream films; how will you narrow it down? The answer is we probably won’t. We will…

Film Review: 1917

By Becky Lauer

Full disclosure – I have a very limited knowledge of the events of World War I.

Personally, I like to do my research before watching historical dramas, otherwise I feel like the kid who didn’t do the reading before class discussion. So, as I waited in the theater for an early screening of the film 1917 by Sam Mendes, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was walking into.  I knew Andrew Scott, Colin Firth, Richard Madden and Benedict Cumberbatch were involved so I trusted the time spent in the theater would be worth it. I expected to see a good movie, not one the greatest movies of the year.

Summer Blockbusters of Yore: The Twentieth Anniversary of an Overshadowed Trilogy

By Pallavi Yetur

Early this year, New York magazine published a feature entitled “We Are Living in the Matrix.” The February 4, 2019 issue included several pieces about the lasting impressions left by The Matrix on everything from the way we think about and engage with the internet, to how it inspired fashion houses to send tiny-lensed sunglasses and billowing leather coats down the runways, to the film’s role in the propulsion of Keanu Reeves to the top of the A-list. The whole editorial undertaking was meant to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the launch of the iconic sci-fi trilogy. But there was another iconic trilogy that launched just three months after The Matrix and has not received the same level of attention. On May 4, 1999, Universal Pictures gave us The Mummy.

The Mummy was conceived by writer and director Stephen Sommers as a remake of the 1932 Karl Freund film starring the OG king of horror, Boris Karloff. In keeping with the original, Sommers sets his film in 1920s Egypt. Where Sommers begins to depart from the earlier film is in choosing a female protagonist. Rachel Weisz plays Evie, a librarian desperate to be taken seriously in male-dominated academia. Her awkward Egyptology geek is a charming foil and unlikely love interest for the muscly and sarcastic gunslinger-for-hire Rick O’Connell, played by the beefy Brendan Fraser. In their search for the lost city of Hamunaptra, Rick and Evie become entangled in the vengeance quest of an ancient Egyptian priest, Imhotep, who had been cursed to mummyhood after having an illicit affair with the queen and murdering the pharaoh.

The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots: Putting the Period in a Period Piece

By: Pallavi yetur

As the Oscars approach, the clear message is that among 2018’s films about lady English monarchs, The Favourite was the favorite. With ten nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, the film was director Yorgos Lanthimos applying his signature darkly comedic treatment to the story of a crumbling Queen Anne and the two women eager to pick up her pieces. By comparison, The Favourite’s royal counterpart, Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots, was snubbed, handed the obligatory, though undoubtedly well-deserved, nominations in the hair, makeup, and costume categories.

Film Review: Frank Vitale and Cris Mazza’s “Anorgasmia: Faking It in a Sexualized World”

 

By: Ashley perez

A few years ago, I wrote one of the most terrifying pieces of writing in my life. I wrote about how sex was painful for me, how in eight years of sleeping with one partner, I had never achieved orgasm, how sex felt like a duty instead of a pleasure. I was sure that I was alone and that there was something wrong with me.

Shortly after, I was introduced to Cris Mazza via email, where I spoke with her for The Nervous Breakdown about her memoir, Something Wrong With Her. We talked about the repeated phrase (and its internalized trauma) “there’s something wrong with me,” as well as our distaste for our own bodies, amongst other things.

Since Cris lives in Chicago and I live in Los Angeles, I never got to tell her in person how much our candid conversation meant to me. When I heard that she was making a documentary that continued the conversation in Something Wrong With Her, I was eager to watch the film and see how she used her distinct voice to highlight a topic that is still not getting enough attention.