Moxie: Too Much Rage, Not Enough Discourse
Netflix’s new teen comedy Moxie — directed by Amy Poehler, who also stars as the protagonist’s mother — aims for riot grrrl rage and radical girl power action, and tries its best to be intersectional with its stellar cast. The…
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things Carves Out its Space in the Increasingly Crowded Time Loop Genre
When The Groundhog Day came out twenty-eight years ago, who would have thought it would launch a genre of time loop movies almost two decades afterwards? But that has indeed been the case: from slashers like the Happy Death Day…
To All the Boys: Always and Forever Ends the Trilogy in Grounded Fashion, Anchored Around the Leads’ Great Chemistry with Each Other
To All The Boys I Loved Before was part of Netflix’s 2018 wave of romcom revivals. While there were other good movies like Always Be My Maybe, it’s All The Boys that spawned two sequels. While the first sequel, To…
Dash & Lily is a Warm, Cozy Young Adult Romance Set Against a Christmas Backdrop
Dash & Lily is one of those saccharine sweet romcoms that is so sugary that you almost become a diabetic. The show was from a YA book titled Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan,…
Love and Monsters is a Pleasing Take on the Young Adult Apocalypse Genre (Despite Taking Many Cues from Other Popular Stories)
Love and Monsters is a throwback to the family-friendly YA fares that were so frequent during the 80s and the 90s. A lovable (and self-deprecating) dork sets out in a dangerous world filled with large, deadly monsters to reunite with…
Netflix’s Enola Holmes is a Young-Adult Take on the Sherlock Mythos, Anchored by a Fun Lead Performance
Enola Holmes isn’t out to reinvent cinema. Set against a backdrop of Victorian patriarchy, it often raises questions about women’s changing role in society, especially as key characters are involved in the suffragette movement. However, the film isn’t nearly as…
Cursed Reimagines Arthurian Legend, Struggles to Find its Voice in First Season
Cursed reorients the traditional Arthurian legend with more modern, YA sensibilities. It’s both a prequel and a reimagining, taking place during the reign of Uther Pendragon, as the future Lady of the Lake, Nimue (Katherine Langford) is sent on a…
“Take me Home”- Growing up & other reality checks
John Denver makes it so easy to miss home when he sings “Country roads”. Although my home is nowhere near West Virginia, it can make my eyes tear up a bit, because I don’t feel like I have been at…
Why it’s Perfectly Okay to Never Grow Out of Young Adult Fiction
No matter how old I am, my guilty pleasure will always be reading Young Adult books that either turn me into a rebel, or make my toes curl, filling me with utopian hopes of a happy ending. No regrets, my…
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