Lifetime movie reviews 🍿 & bougie gift shops 💸

Hello dear friends!

How are you?? I am feeling energized! As I sit down to write this, I just got back from a walk to drop off some documents at my building’s management office and, okay, mostly to pick up a BEC bagel and a cold brew with oat milk from Belle’s. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and my leg hair was fluttering in the breeze, honey! Clearly, my body is not yet ready for spring, but spring, she is a-sproingin’!

I took inventory when I walked down York Boulevard, and guys, I think we are at capacity there for vintage stores and expensive little boutiques that I, Liz Galvao, specifically, am never going to be able to afford. There were a whole bunch of new ones that had popped up from the last time I did a bagel walk not even a month ago. It’s becoming overwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some of my staples on that strip, like Nooworks and Big Bud Press and Be Nice, Have Fun, but there are also stores I’m frankly scared to go into because I know I would leave with $90 worth of candles and regret.

There is this one store that advertises themselves as “mercantile purveyors,” and you just know. You just know from that language that a beanie there costs $60. I hiss every time I walk past that store, because damn, does it lure me with its siren song!!! Of course I want to find out what “soft goods & sundries” means to them!! I’m a white woman in her late thirties, of COURSE I want to spend $40 on an impractical journal with a wooden cover that I’ll never use!!! But I don’t dare cross their threshold, because I know that I am not in their tax bracket, so instead I go to House of Intuition and spend $22 on a magical “abundance” candle. Yes, I know it’s sad! That’s my life!

My God, though, do I love a bougie gift shop! It doesn’t matter where I am in the world, I am drawn to them like a moth to a flame. I remember when we were in Japan in December, I made Ross come into the MoMA Design Store in Kyoto with me. Can you imagine?? Like I was really going to bring back some asymmetrical, light-refracting crystal vase with me in my luggage. GTFOOH. But I can’t help it, I just adore a museum gift shop. Yasss, mark that price up for me, baby! The more impractical objets d’art, the better!

The other kind of gift shop I love is what I like to call a Good Liberal Stationary Store. You can always find one in a blue city on the west coast, and they always have prayer candles with RBG on them and mugs with non-threatening feminist slogans like “Girls just wanna have FUN-damental rights.” I swear, I took a walk in NE Portland one time when I was up there and went down one street that had, like, seven of these shops in a row, all with the same merchandise. It was wild. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these stores, but sometimes I get a little cranky when feminism is commodified and sold back to us. It’s cool if that money is going to local artists or actually being used to support the kinds of causes those items purport to celebrate, but I’m skeptical that that’s always the case.

Let’s get into some things:

- I have been looking online at apartment listings and I officially have a new pet peeve. All of these new renos keep installing ¾-sized baby stoves instead of regular, full-sized ones! Look at this apartment in Echo Park, for example. How am I supposed to make Thanksgiving dinner with that? I don’t even think my sheet pans would fit in that oven! And I doubt I could fit two pans on that stovetop at the same time! It’s a shame, because other than that, many of these apartments are absolutely lovely, but I like to cook too much to settle for an itty bitty baby stove.

Hot real estate take: I actually prefer a closed kitchen to an open kitchen, because sometimes I am making something smokey or with a strong aroma, and I don’t need that filling up the whole house. I remember one time, a few years ago, I made chicken tikka masala on a Friday, and unexpectedly had friends over on that Saturday.

“Ooh, it smells good in here!” exclaimed one friend when she walked in the door.

“It does?” I was skeptical.

“Well, it smells like chicken tikka masala,” she admitted. I rest my case.

Other dealbreakers for me: must have a dishwasher (I can’t go back), must have parking and laundry on-site, and the more walkable, the better, but I would like to at least be able to walk to a coffee shop. I need my coffee walks!

The dumbest shit that apartment buildings try to pull is charging “pet rent” for cats. It can be up to an extra $100 per month! My cat doesn’t do anything destructive! She is a perfect little angel who charms everyone who walks by when she sits in the window. Her beauty actually increases the property value, probably. How dare they charge her rent?!

- I don’t know if any of you live in my current neighborhood in Los Angeles, Highland Park or CD-14, but if you do, please pay attention to the city council race that’s happening right now! It is very close, and there will likely be a run-off election. I heartily endorse Ysabel Jurado for this seat over the incumbent Kevin De Léon. If you’re not aware, De Léon was party to some disgusting racist comments about another council member’s adopted child and did jack shit. It was such a scandal, even Biden called for his resignation, yet he refused to resign. He sucks!

Meanwhile, Jurado is a tenant rights attorney who grew up in Highland Park, the daughter of formerly undocumented immigrants, and a former teen mom who lived in poverty. She would be the first Filipino-American member of the council, and also identifies as queer. She is really an extraordinary candidate, was endorsed by Knock LA in their progressive voter guide, and has run a truly grassroots campaign, choosing handwritten postcards over glossy mailers. She is also endorsed by my friend Kyle, who has been working in housing rights in Los Angeles for the past 10+ years, and who I trust implicitly when it comes to these issues.

People being unhoused and displaced is obviously a huge issue in Los Angeles, and one that many candidates make promises about, but Jurado has been walking the walk for a long time. If you are able to vote for her in the November run-off, please get out and do so, because it’s going to be a close race! Until then, you can follow her on Instagram for updates here.

- Lifetime movies! I am a longtime subscriber to the Lifetime Movie Club, but until recently, I’ve only been able to access the app on my tablet or laptop, and I need to see these dramas play out on a bigger screen, babe! Last week, though, I realized that our Hulu package has a lot of Lifetime movies on it, so now I can watch them in our living room! Yay!

My favorite Lifetime movies fall into the following categories:

1. “Based on a real story” true crime retellings

2. Oh no, something bad happened to a mom in suburbia!

3. Cheerleaders

4. Serial killers

5. Teenz r out of control!!

6. A straight-up female psychopath is running around #girlbossing

My least favorite Lifetime movies fall into the following categories:

1. Small-town romance (snooze)

2. Celebrity biopics (they always ring false, and the low budgets are reeeally apparent)

3. No way, this charming new boyfriend turned out to be abusive?! (I prefer when women are the psychopaths)

Here are some reviews of my recent Lifetime movie watches. I rated them out of 5 stars, but even a shitty Lifetime movie can still hit the spot, you know what I mean?

- Cocaine Godmother: The Griselda Blanco Story. I watched this on the plane ride back from Japan, and let me tell you, nothing pairs better with turbulence and a Klonopin haze than Catherine Zeta-Jones attempting to do a Colombian accent. Why is she always being cast in these Latina roles? And to this day? This movie is from 2018, but Wednesday premiered in 2022! It’s like we all decided we were not doing that in casting anymore, with a special exception clause for Catherine Zeta-Jones playing Hispanic characters. Uhhh what? [insert video of that cat going “huh?”]

I actually learned a lot from this movie about a woman I had never heard of before, plus, it had lots of cocaine in it, so you know people were being unhinged. Whenever anyone does drugs in a Lifetime movie, they have to be at a 10 out of 10. I think it’s a network rule. If you are interested in Griselda Blanco but don’t want to watch the whole Netflix series, this movie might be for you. 4/5 stars

- Vanished in Yosemite. This is a movie about two sisters on a trip to Yosemite National Park that goes sideways when one of them meets a guy and gets kidnapped by him. IMDB says it was filmed in Yosemite, but that can’t possibly be true, can it? It must’ve been filmed in a series of neighborhood parks either in Canada or maybe upstate New York. You could practically see people walking their dogs and pushing strollers in the background. 

At any rate, the acting in this one was… wow. The sister who gets kidnapped also had a very distracting sparkly purple pedicure. It was flawless even after days of hiking and being tied up by her kidnapper. Her character was supposed to be a bit of a bimbo, but I still don’t think anyone would pick that color if they knew they were going to be out in the woods for a week. Oh, and there was a weird plotline about hunting humans for sport, which is really wild, considering this was “inspired by true events.” 2/5 stars

- Hoax: The Kidnapping of Sherri Papini. I followed this story for years before it came out that it was all a hoax and yes, I did have my suspicions. There was just so much emphasis on the alleged kidnappers being Mexican (Sherri said they were playing mariachi music in the van. Like, girl…), and sleuths had dug up some white power-y comments made on the web under Sherri’s maiden name. That and other details all seemed suspect. Turns out, it was all bullshit!

I was curious how this movie was going to frame that story, and they showed what really happened to Sherri instead of her fictional version of the events. I think there could have been something really interesting there in playing with a depiction of the lies versus reality, but they had to wrap this shit up in 90 minutes, so I guess that wasn’t possible. I was left feeling like it was oddly sympathetic to Sherri, when she is in fact a garbage person. Maybe that was just the performance by Jaime King, whose “Personal life” section on her Wikipedia is a real wild ride! She battled heroin addiction as a teen, dated Kid Rock when she was 21, and Taylor Swift is her son’s godmother? I need a Lifetime movie about her!

One detail that still confounds me: in the movie, Sherri’s depicted as an affluent SAHM, but her husband works at Best Buy??? How are they living in that beautiful house in northern California on a single retail salary?? That’s the REAL mystery! 2/5 stars

- Party Mom. Oh, man. This movie was like if they took Amy Poehler’s “cool mom” character from Mean Girls and made a Lifetime movie about her supplying alcohol to minors. Obviously, buying alcohol for teenagers is bad, but didn’t we all kind of know a parent who did that, or at least looked the other way while you got drunk in their basement? This movie also contained a line so iconic, I had to transcribe it word for word: “Your daughter doesn’t belong in Beverly Hills, she belongs here in the Valley, with the losers that are here!” Damn, why you gotta come for the Valley like that? 2/5 stars

- Sinister Minister. I didn’t even watch this one, but it has the best title I’ve ever heard!!! 5/5 stars

Alright darlings, that’s it from me this week!

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.

Until next time—meet you in the gift shop!

Love,

Liz

XOXO