I’m just a 21st century movie loving girl 🎬

Hi friends!

How are you? I’m doing okayyyy. Let’s talk about something nice. I am currently in between two four-day weekends, which is so absurd and fantastic. Last weekend, I finished reading a horny hockey romance and started reading a Lily Morton romance about a wedding planner secretly in love with his best friend. I’m almost caught up on the new season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, in which one source of drama is that none of the ladies commented on Taylor’s Instagram post about her presenting at the CMAs, even though some of them did privately message her congratulating her. Idk, I’m pretty sure they’re all envious, but I think I would let that shit slide if people had personally reached out to me. Taylor seems very easily triggered and impulsive about what she posts online, though. And I know there are whole new seasons of The Ultimatum: Queer Love and The Bear for me to watch, but I just keep watching old episodes of The Wire instead.

It’s been a little rough for me lately. I was very upset the other day when the Big Bullshit Bill passed, and then I saw a tweet by that lunatic Laura Loomer essentially calling for a genocide of Hispanic people in the US. (I am not on Twitter anymore thank GOD, but I still see tweets reposted on Instagram.) The blatancy of their hatred is just so upsetting to me. It’s like these people got tired of being called racist so instead of doing the hard work of educating themselves to be less racist, they took the easy way out of normalizing racism. Well, guess what happens when you do that? Concentration camps “Detention centers.”

I really felt sick about it, and then the next day was the Fourth of July, a/k/a America’s birthday, when we’re all supposed to be patriotic and shit. I was supposed to go over to my buddy’s place to grill on his roof, but I almost thought about canceling and just staying home and being sad. I’m glad I went, though, because it turns out, several hours of sitting in the sunshine playing Catan and drinking Modelos with lime was exactly what I needed. We also went around and all shared our top 10 films of the 21st century, which I’ll share with you now.

My Top 10 Films of the 21st Century

This was fun! JK, this was agonizing as a Libra and a film lover. I prioritized creativity, imagination, and point of view in my choices. Maybe you would prioritize other things in your choices, like cinematography or acting or craft services! Idk, go have fun! I love seeing what everyone picks. Here are mine, in the order I added them:

- Sideways (2004). It’s a small story about very flawed human beings, and I think those are so important. One beautiful thing about this movie is that it features two actors who were kind of stalled in their careers at the time, Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen, giving perhaps the best performances of their lives, to the tune of two Academy Award nominations. It is also so fucking funny, no matter how many times I’ve seen it.

- Paddington 2 (2018). This is just pure joy in movie form. I love how whimsical it is, but also, how grounded it is at other times. Take when Paddington goes to prison. It’s just as terrifying and serious as you would expect a prison scene in a movie to be… but then by the end of the movie, everyone is dancing and singing and wearing pink. Striking that balance is just brilliant.

- The Virgin Suicides (2000). I was obsessed with this Jeffrey Eugenides book as a teenager, and the movie is such a beautiful, faithful adaptation by Sofia Coppola that still has her point of view.

- The Royal Tenenbaums (2002). I, for one, would never try to deny the impact of Wes Anderson on cinema in the 21st century, and to me, Tenenbaums is his best and most essential work.

- The Babadook (2014). I watch a ton of horror, and this movie works for me as both a genuinely scary, well-made horror film and an artistic exploration of grief.

- Get Out (2017). A perfect movie that was also the launch of an exceptional new voice in the genre. What else can I say? It’s crazy that Jordan Peele is so good at comedy and also at making stunning horror movies.

- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Yeah, I’ll say it again: I love whimsy! The pairing of writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry is just so much talent and imagination in one movie, it’s almost overwhelming (but in a good way).

- Parasite (2019). I feel like this movie broke my brain a little bit the first time I watched it, and I love that. There are a lot of films that explore themes of privilege, but I can’t think of another movie that’s done it as creatively as Parasite. Seeing it for the first time was just such a singular cinema experience.

- The Dark Knight (2008). Honestly, I go back and forth a bit on including this one, because it is a big budget superhero movie, but it’s also an elevated one. Heath Ledger’s performance in this movie is iconic and set a new bar for acting that Joaquin Phoenix is still trying to clear, and Christopher Nolan became a blank check director because of this trilogy.

- Spirited Away (2002). For me, this is quintessential Hayao Miyazaki, and Hayao Miyazaki is a quintessential filmmaker. I! Love! Whimsy!

- Honorable Mentions: Tàr, Tangerine, Ocean’s 11, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Ratatouille, Mean Girls, Bridesmaids, The Wolf of Wall Street, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Little Women, Brokeback Mountain, Legally Blonde.

- I regret there was no David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson, or Coen Bros in this list, but my favorite films of theirs are from the 20th century. (Fight Club, Boogie Nights, and Fargo, respectively). 

Now, let’s get into some other things:

- Lauren Sànchez Bezos’ wedding dress. I’m so torn between wanting to make fun of what utter trash she and Jeff Bezos and this wedding was and not wanting to give them the attention. Well, here are a few sentences, anyway. USA Today hilariously says she “ditched her usual sexy garb” for this wedding dress, which was as tight as liquid latex and inspired by the famously unsexy Sophia Loren. I guess they were referring to the fact that it’s a full-length gown and has long sleeves, which is just idiotic to wear in Venice, Italy in late June. I just checked the weather there, and today is going to have a high of 89° F (32° C) with 70% humidity. It gets STEAMY in Venice. I just think that being well-dressed includes dressing appropriately for a) location and b) weather, even at your own wedding, but maybe that’s just me!!! They could buy and sell me and everyone I love a million times over so who cares if I’m snarky in an email newsletter!!

- Cooking. I finally made the spicy Caesar potato salad that I feel like Bon Appetit has been shoving down my throat for years! I don’t know why, but it’s constantly recommended to me on that site. I’ve never made a Caesar dressing from scratch before, but it was surprisingly easy. I served it with lemon baked chicken thighs and it was quite tasty, but then I had all these leftovers and I realized that I did not want to eat spicy Caesar potato salad even two days in a row. Maybe you would feel differently, though.

I also made my favorite summer pasta (#2 on my list of the Best Recipes of 2023), which has pesto, sausage, zucchini, and tomato in it, and I like to throw in some fresh mozzarella, too. I like that recipe because it’s very adaptable. You could easily leave out the sausage or use a meatless version, use a different kind of pesto, or throw in other summer veggies like bell peppers or eggplant. I usually make it with penne instead of gnocchi, but I think orecchiette or bow-ties would be good, too.

Then, I made fresh (meaning not fried) shrimp tacos that I made a mango salsa for from scratch!!! I’ve never made salsa from scratch before!! Turns out, it’s incredibly easy, you just chop shit up and put it in a bowl with some lime juice and salt. I was trying to do a second taco as well of chorizo and roasted potatoes, but boy, did I fuck that one up! I somehow liquefied the chorizo until it was bubbling and foamy but also burned it?? Horrible! Ended up throwing that out and just eating the roasted potatoes on the side, oh well.

I also made this super easy slow cooker bbq pulled chicken that we ate on sandwiches with pickles and a simple slaw. I don’t have access to a grill at my apartment, so during the summer, sometimes making “bbq” meats in the slow cooker is the best option when I have a craving for those flavors. Bonus: it doesn’t heat up my kitchen the way the oven does.

For the Fourth of July, I knew we’d be barbecuing on my buddy’s rooftop deck, so I decided to make this street corn pasta salad as a side to bring. I like looking at Half Baked Harvest for inspiration and some really beautiful food photography, but a lot of times, I think Tieghan overcomplicates her recipes. For example, this pasta salad has 20 ingredients listed! She wants you to make a dressing out of cream cheese and sour cream, but to also top the salad with a drizzle of chili-cayenne butter AND a drizzle of lime mayo. As Sarah Lynn would say, that’s too much, man! I skipped both drizzles and left out a bunch of ingredients (who wants romaine in their pasta salad, anyway?), and it was still pretty goshdarn tasty!

Finally, for a Sunday supper, I made the smitten kitchen simple eggplant parmesan and served it with garlic bread. I ended up doubling that recipe so we’d have leftovers, and it fit perfectly in a 9x13 roasting pan. Yes, it’s “simple,” in that you just roast the eggplant instead of breading and frying it, but it still takes a good amount of time to prepare. It is delicious, though, and eggplant is so good in the summer. You should’ve seen the size of the ones Instacart got me. Each one weighed almost two pounds! Insane.

- Here’s a song you can sing to your cat, to the tune of “Splish Splash,” which for the younguns is a song from the 1950s about a man rudely taking a bath in the middle of his own party:

Scritch scratch I was being a cat
‘Round about a Caturday night
Rub-a-dub, gettin’ belly rubs
Licking everything in sight

That’s all I have for now!

If you have a second, I’d love it if you’d like or comment on this post–just click this link to go to the post page. This post is public, so feel free to share it on social media, or forward it to a friend.

Until next time—be more whimsical!

Love,

Liz

XOXO