Movies seen in April
May. 1st, 2026 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessOn streaming: How To Lose A Popularity Contest is a really good high-concept high school romcom with a loose literary connection (its heroine thinks she plots like Lady Macbeth because she hasn’t read the play.) It’s got a touch of Election and 10 Things I Hate About You about it, a good young cast who can do deranged plotters, cocky jocks and various shades of nerdery – but the comedy isn’t too broad – but also play vulnerable young people figuring out who they and their classmates are. Kudos to the scriptwriters, casting directors, director and everyone who made it. I saw most of your references, and I enjoyed them.
In the cinema: I went to see You, Me and Tuscany, and it about lived up/down to expectations. (Look, it’s tough, here I am with the time and space to go to the cinema and it’s still mainly horror and kids’ films that are on.) It probably took me too long to realise it was basically While You Were Sleeping…set in Tuscany. But the supporting cast decided to go big and be entertaining, and the Tuscan scenery and Regé-Jean Paige are very easy on the eye (I bet he worked hard on the Italian, and got objectified for it.)
I don’t think my takeout from the The Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer was meant to be, ‘Yes, but have you checked Miranda Priestly out for early-onset dementia?’ But it was. But I did take advantage of the fact that The Devil Wears Prada was being streamed by Four to rewatch it. It’s not actually a classic, but it has such strong actors in it, and it flies past the Bechdel test. It’s the tech that dates it the most. I was left thinking Emily Blunt should do more comedy (her Emily is much missed in the last third, but then this was one of the films that got Hollywood to notice her.) So, yes, I plan to go see the sequel, even though I think this habit of releasing sequels 15 years and more later is beyond ridiculous.
In the cinema: I went to see You, Me and Tuscany, and it about lived up/down to expectations. (Look, it’s tough, here I am with the time and space to go to the cinema and it’s still mainly horror and kids’ films that are on.) It probably took me too long to realise it was basically While You Were Sleeping…set in Tuscany. But the supporting cast decided to go big and be entertaining, and the Tuscan scenery and Regé-Jean Paige are very easy on the eye (I bet he worked hard on the Italian, and got objectified for it.)
I don’t think my takeout from the The Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer was meant to be, ‘Yes, but have you checked Miranda Priestly out for early-onset dementia?’ But it was. But I did take advantage of the fact that The Devil Wears Prada was being streamed by Four to rewatch it. It’s not actually a classic, but it has such strong actors in it, and it flies past the Bechdel test. It’s the tech that dates it the most. I was left thinking Emily Blunt should do more comedy (her Emily is much missed in the last third, but then this was one of the films that got Hollywood to notice her.) So, yes, I plan to go see the sequel, even though I think this habit of releasing sequels 15 years and more later is beyond ridiculous.
