The Falcon And The Winter Soldier (2021)

The last time we saw Sam Wilson in Avengers: Endgame, his story had shifted monumentally. After Thanos was defeated, Steve Rogers returned the Infinity Stones to their timelines. He also returned in his 100s, having been happily married to his long lost love for decades, to pass the Shield to Wilson. While Bucky Barnes had worked on his trauma as The Winter Soldier, he could continue starting over. Not much else was known about their future except that they were meant to work, fight, and annoy each other to our delight in their own Disney+ series. 

But one question stuck in the back of mind - What happens when you already know the endgame?

Spoilers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe including Agent Carter, the general Marvel Cinematic Universe, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier are below. I'm sorry it's another long-ass post. This is just another example of my writing meltdown. Skip to the 'Basically' part at the end if you want. Otherwise, *Cap salute*.

TMP Television Edition: Fish Out of Water

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week's theme is Television Edition: Fish Out of Water. Science fiction was the first thing that came to my mind for this week's challenge. A few of the shows I thought of, I've used before...so I'm just getting a little "creative."

5 things I'd like to see change in the LGBTQ+ genre

The LGBTQ+ community seems to be all the rage right now in Hollywood. Studios and streaming platforms are moving this genre merrily along on a conveyor belt. The industry is finally making headway to get this important work produced and to realize representation (aka money) matters. But with this progress also comes a certain amount of responsibility that I'm not sure are being tackled well enough. 

As someone who identifies as queer, the steady stream of LGBTQ+ films are exciting. But with every new movie, I can't help but feel my hopes and the hype leading up to feeling 'seen' are dashed when numerous projects come across as checking boxes off a list or continuing stereotypes, steps in a lack of inequality, etc.

Since it's Pride month, I thought I'd share some changes I'd like to see in the LGBTQ+ genre.

Thursday Movie Picks: Natural Disaster Movies

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week's theme is Natural Disaster movies. 

Thursday Movie Picks: Worst Book to Movie Adaptations

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week's theme is Worst Book to Movie Adaptations.

Cruella (2021)

Young trouble-maker Estella (Emma Stone) teams up with a pair of crooks Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) after a tragic freak accident leaves her orphaned. With a deep ambition to become a fashion designer, Estella is spurned to transform into her alter-ego Cruella de Vil as she faces off against the industry’s most influential designer Baroness Von Hellman (Emma Thompson).

Though I’ve always had a soft spot for Disney’s villains, Cruella de Vil is my all-time favorite. Of all the antagonists who harbor reasonable motivations for why they turned evil, she’s always been point-blank ruthless for ruthless’ sake –there aren't too many ways to justify someone wanting to kill animals and dogs for their fur to satiate their ego. The news of her origin story in the works initially disappointed me because she'd inevitably be altered to be more marketable. But after finally seeing the latest version, this is the first in a long time I got that can't-help-but-smile kind of excitement when the credits hit. Because it’s not too shabby.

TMP Television Edition: Globetrotting (Scripted, Non-reality, Non-travel, Non-docu series)

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week's theme is Globetrotting (Scripted, Non-reality, Non-travel, Non-docu series). I'm not going to lie, I had a total brainfog on what to come up with for this challenge.

Hearts Want (2018)

Two former lovers Lily (Sam Simmons) and Jacques (Peter Christian Hansen) reunite for a play and face the consequences of a past secret that threatens to tear them apart forever. 

As a debut short film by writer Ruth Maramis of FlixChatter, Hearts Want offers a satisfying deep-dive about love and loss in such a short running time and the potential to see it as a feature-length film. Though it's only about 15 minutes long, sparks fly with the chemistry and character development to invest yourself in Lily and Jacques's relationship right from the start. The unspoken connection between the duo lends to an established repore between the Simmons and Hansens' performances and lets the conflict between their characters - a secret Lily is holding onto and vices that sweep Jacques away - culminate on its own.

Maramis's script doesn't let one scene go to waste in building the tension between the two leads, the impact they have on each other after years of separation, and where it could lead. Her strongest suit is that both are not particularly demonized for their past or choices - they're both flawed characters who will need to find a new way of dealing with a big secret. If given the space for a feature length film, it's easy to imagine how the story would progress with more of Maramis' inspiration from Jane Austen's Persuasion and build further with an in-depth running time and story. Director Jason P. Schumacher also maintains a steady hand with the pacing of every scene from a brief glimpse of the characters' reuniting on stage to the more coarse drama going on off of it.

Hearts Want is a sound short debut that is worthy to check out. The film has gained recognition in festivals around the world including Best Audience Award at The Twin Cities Film Fest. It's available on Amazon Prime with a subscription as well as to buy and rent.

Rating: ★★★

Thursday Movie Picks - Cyberpunk

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - Cyberpunk.

The Weirdest Movies Blogathon

Ronyell at The Surreal Movies and TV blog is hosting The Weirdest Movies Blogathon this May.

The rules are to list up to 5 to 10 of the weirdest movies you've ever seen. They don't have to be our favorite movies or ones we even like - just films that we thought are weird. The blogathon runs into May 20th. If you want to join in, feel free to check the official post here.

I don't watch a lot of weird movies - it's not a genre that I typically reach for. Granted these picks aren't probably odd for everyone or the weirdest ones ever, but they were out there enough for me. 

Thursday Movie Parks - Period Dramas

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - Period Dramas. This genre is one of my favorites, so limiting myself to three picks was quite the challenge. I didn't want to go overboard.

Thursday Movie Picks - Oscar Winners Edition: Best Director

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - Oscar Winners Edition: Best Director.

TMP Television Edition: TV Score and/or Theme Song

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - TMP Television Edition: TV Score and/or Theme Song. These could've easily been used for TV Opening Sequence a few weeks ago. 

The One Where Katy Doesn't Know Anything At All

I’ve been thinking for a while about what to do with my little corner on the internet, and I recently have had to force myself to realize – I don’t know.

Maybe it’s the combination of not being able to go to the movie theaters for the past year, and missing the camaraderie that the film blogging community used to have…but something has been out of whack with blogging, my love of movies, and writing for a while. And, felt like now was a good of a time to put this out here. That I just don’t know what I’m doing here.

Thursday Movie Picks - Psychological Thrillers

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - Psychological Thrillers. This theme is so vast, it'll be exciting to see what everyone picks this week. I didn't intend for this to have a sub-theme, but once the first movie popped into my head, I just went with it. 

Thursday Movie Picks - Female Cinematographers

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - Female Cinematographers - suggested by Brittani. I dropped out of last week's theme because I couldn't think of any amateur sleuths. I've been anxiously waiting for this theme to come up on the list.

52 Films By Women Challenge - Spring Update

For the first few months of 2021, I challenged myself to start the 52 Films by Women Challenge - to watch one film by a female director every week for a year. It's been a few posts since I've updated the challenge, and thought I'd share my progress so far.

In March, I started providing coverage for the Athena Film Festival, which celebrated female filmmakers from shorts to feature films and documentaries (my reviews and thoughts can be found here). Since life became more complicated offline and ate away a lot of my free time for the challenge, I couldn't quite manage both at the same time. To keep the challenge on track as much as possible, I started replacing the films from my original challenge with projects I was screening - seven in total.

I'm also considering changing my process of choosing the films to watch. However, similar to the festival, I found a lot of freedom of being able to go out and find films to watch rather than stick to a preset of options. I'm pretty happy with the way the list is right now, but I might want to change out some films as I go along. Sometimes I find something on Netflix I had never heard of before and want to add it into the mix instead.

But as of now, I'm all caught up for the challenge and just need to continue watching one movie a week. I'll probably get back to doing a bi-weekly catch-up of the films I watch at the end of April or beginning of May.

Thursday Movie Picks - Oscar Winners Edition: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks -  Oscar Winners Edition: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. I just went with some semi-recent favorites who stick out in mind.

7 Actors Who Should've Won The Oscar Instead (And Who Should Win at the 2021 Oscars)

Every year movie buffs root for their personal faves throughout the award show season. Though we might disagree on who should win, history and hindsight often reveals when other performances were worthier of recognition. In celebration of trying to figure out this year's Oscars odds, I thought it'd be fun to revisit several recent ceremonies and pin down who won versus who should've won.

Which Oscar winners in the past do you think should've won? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thursday Movie Picks - TMP Television Edition: Opening Title Sequence

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - TV EDITION - Opening Title Sequence.